Pierre stock-still, what an amazing sight! As motionless as a quivering arrow, as a missile in an arsenal. Pierre wasting his time, but feeling and giving the impression that he was benefiting in every respect. Pierre lethargic, Pierre munching; munching his apple tart instead of choking on it, not unscrewing the sugar sprinkler, not eating everything from the same plate, not covering his cake with salt instead of sugar. Pierre polishing his rough edges, making the most of his evening and thoroughly immersing himself in every second of it. Could it last?
It did last, however. They savoured their food. They sipped their drinks. The ladies dipped sugar lumps in their coffee. Pierre listened to Madame de Boisrosé expressing various complaints about the present age and her daughters countering her moans with timid objections and deferential approval. They also listened to the wind howling and the red oven crackling. He listened to the polytechnicien, his thesis about the gyratory movement of long-term investments and his paradoxes that concluded with a QED. And when, in turn, Uncle Rocheflamme spoke, Pierre was quite pleased to listen to him grinding his coffee and making banal remarks, the former in between his legs, the others through gritted teeth.
“Even so, France…” Amyot began, joining in with this very French phrase.
“We are letting ourselves be led by circumstances,” groused Monsieur de Rocheflamme, sounding as idiotic as the radio. “It’s one of our misfortunes not to have any leaders. We have men of distinction, but no characters. Now Poincaré, he was a leader.”
“Poincaré had substance,” said Pierre, glad to cling instinctively in this deluge of generalizations onto an actual name.
“Yes, but he carried no conviction: I’m going to fill you in on the problem with France. All things being equal…”
And to start with, backing his argument up with anecdotes and a few drawn-out metaphors, Amyot explained that what was lacking in the Treaty of Versailles “was heart”.
Interspersed with peerless notions on the art of leading nations, the evening had reached its highest degree of dreariness when Pierre, benumbed and anaesthetized, suddenly felt his evil genius rising to the surface. With a firm but gentle nudge, this familiar phantom was pointing him towards the door.
Pierre looked at the door, a large, handsome door with three panels and a gleaming doorknob that only required a hand to turn it.
“I can’t just leave like that,” he thought, steeling himself. “It’s impossible.”
“What the Treaty of Versailles could have been…” Amyot was expanding.
The door appeared to open onto a magical staircase that led up a gentle slope to the street. Often, as he was falling asleep, the man in a hurry imagined a model house, a house which one would leave via gradients as speedy as toboggan runs, where a lift would transport you in your car up to the drawing room; a house from which you could send your letters and parcels straight from the window giving onto the street along spiralling chutes, as in the large stores; in which, as in the dining rooms of Ludwig II of Bavaria, the table would rise ready-laid from under the floor through a trapdoor; in which one’s clothes, by means of a system of pulleys, would dress you instantly; in which visitors, triggered by a clock, would arrive at the stated time in armchairs pulled by trolleys and would depart again on rails as soon as the most important words had been spoken, leaving the conversations recorded on wax walls.
“Always peripheral to events, our statesmen…” Amyot was still dragging on.
Monsieur de Rocheflamme, who was no longer even responding to his nephew by marriage, was now admiring his sister’s success. The three girls were talking among themselves. Pierre awoke with a start. He had been asleep. Nobody appeared to have noticed. For how long had he been asleep?
“… a more sincere outlook,” Amyot continued.
By piecing both ends of the sentence together, Pierre concluded that he had only been asleep for three words.
He now felt a great weight upon his shoulders, as overburdened as he did when he jumped out of bed on a day crammed with anxieties and meetings. And yet, five minutes earlier, he had been happy. But his familiar and demanding phantom was continuing to lead him towards the door. He absolutely had to get a breath of air.
“I’ve no more tobacco,” he said. “Would you mind if I went to buy some?”
“The tobacconist’s is a long way away,” Bonne de Boisrosé pointed out.
“We have some Virginia,” Fromentine offered.
“Do you want some Caporal?” said Monsieur de Rocheflamme.
“Forgive me. I’m used to a Turkish tobacco from the Levant. I’ll be back. It will only take a moment.”
Pierre dashed down the stairs four at a time. In the street, he took a deep breath. Hundred-year-old street lamps were making circles through the mist. The avenue was deserted, the city indifferent. Pierre took to his heels. He breathed the air deep into his lungs. Never in his life had he felt so happy. His rubberized soles held the road well, his arms flew in the air, his long, well-built legs gave him total freedom. What a pleasure the party had been! He felt no qualms about causing a disturbance in a sleeping neighbourhood where the guard dogs were all barking.
He walked past the tobacconist’s shop without going in because he had Turkish tobacco in his pocket.
He stopped, he felt better. A clock chimed ten o’clock. His swiftness had kept him sane. He felt more inclined to be polite now and he even thought that he might enjoy going back to his hosts. He retraced his steps.
“I had to go on foot. My car wouldn’t start,” he said by way of excuse. “You must think me extremely rude?”
Hedwige smiled. Pierre could see that she had not been taken in, but was grateful for the effort he had made. He rejoined the group. On seeing him, Uncle Rocheflamme rushed over.
“I’m not well established,” he said, “and you would search in vain for the name of Rocheflamme in the directory of antique dealers: it’s not there. I’m a maverick; I put independence above everything else… Look, my dear fellow, here’s something that will interest you,” he said, opening his wallet, “read this card from Waldeck-Rousseau. Yes, I had some correspondence with him. Good God, it wasn’t exactly yesterday, this was in 1901… listen.”
He read in a very loud voice: “‘I can only approve, sir, the title of your forthcoming newspaper and I wish long life to the Indépendant. Independence means setting oneself free from other people, that is to say true freedom, freedom that a subsidy from the Ministry of the Interior might compromise’… mmm… mmm… The rest is of no importance,” Monsieur de Rocheflamme muttered.
“Nice letter,” said Pierre, embarrassed.
“I’ve lots of others,” the uncle went on, having rediscovered his self-assurance. “My contemporaries have been pleased to pay tribute to my public-spirited activities as well as to my professional ones. I spent the war as pennant-bearer to General Hély d’Oissel, despite my age. But take a look at my commendation.”
He produced a folded and torn shred of paper and handed it to Pierre.