“Thank you very much. I met him, dearest Hedwige, at a time when I was of no interest to anyone.”
“So were you feeling sad?”
“No.”
Hedwige considered this response for a moment.
“Tell me,” she went on, “would you feel sad now, Pierre, if I weren’t interested in you?”
“Yes.”
“So you think you need me?”
“Utterly.”
“Ut-ter-ly,” Hedwige repeated. “Are you sure about it? Explain yourself…”
“No, I won’t explain. Go to sleep.”
“Why don’t you want to explain?”
“Because it’s my business.”
“It’s mine too, and I need to know.”
Pierre sat down on the bed, pressing his face to that of his wife, and gently nibbled the base of her nose. She pushed him away.
“Be serious,” she said, “talk to me.”
“Hedwige,” said Pierre, “for me you are the present.”
Since she did not understand, he tried to make himself clearer.
“A present that I can live in, do you see, in which I can breathe, that has space… a present that’s truly present and no longer that evolving future I used to inhabit.”
Hedwige had got out of bed, put on a pink dressing gown like her mother’s and was laying the table for breakfast, an old Boisrosé custom she was unable to cast off; she opened a jar of sweet lemon jam she had brought back from Saint-Germain and started to dip into it.
“But all the same,” she said, “one can’t smell the future. It’s in the present that there are all the sensations: heat, cold, aromas, this coffee that you’re drinking, well everything!”
“Well, exactly, I couldn’t smell them. All those things you have just mentioned had no reality for me. My only reality was the future, and I firmly believed in this gaseous substance, open to billions and billions of formations and an infinite number of combinations!”
“And now?”
“Now that you’re mine, really and truly, and getting heavier, now that I can hear your fifty-five kilos causing the floorboards to bend, I have settled into the present day as I would into a padded armchair, I am bound by all sorts of exact needs and precise pleasures, I know that it is ten o’clock, that the hyacinth is white and fragrant, that the sun is pouring in, as huge as a Louis XIV brass, and that Hedwige has broken a cup trying to dry it…”
“Sorry,” she said.
“I was living on my own in the future; ever since you have been here, I’m no longer lonely and odd, I confront everything, and everything is straightforward, Hedwige, everything is suddenly so clear-cut, so calm. How lovely the home is when one doesn’t have to be making preparations for departure! How beautiful Paris is when you realize that you were born there… And all that, because you are. By giving you to me, God made me a present: the present. Admire the fact that the French language should have just one word for the two things!”
Doctor Regencrantz arrived on the stroke of one, a crafty look in his eyes, his ears full of angora hair, his bony, rabbinical nose set between two large bagpiper’s cheeks, very pink, very chubby, constantly looking as though he were rejoicing in the midst of the greatest difficulties, simultaneously discussing pathology, a detailed study of the French language, plans for departure and the making of marmalade.
To hit the right note, Pierre welcomed him with an embrace.
“Dear doctor,” he said, “I’ve missed you. Will you admit that you’ve missed me just as much and that you haven’t found many characters as interesting as me for taking what you call replicas?”
“What conceit! I file my index cards between two barrels of jams and I already have as many as I have visas on my passport!”
“I hope they will take you further.”
Hedwige came in wearing a long, flowing dress the same shade as her skin. Regencrantz looked at her without concealing his admiration.
“And so, gracious madame, you have married Monsieur Velocipedist,” he said.
“Velocipedist?” Hedwige repeated, intrigued.
“I reckon that suits him well. It was Goethe who coined the word. He spoke of a velocipedist future. He even added that we would die of it.”
“Do you hear that, Pierre?” said Hedwige.
“And at a time when the Weimar Gazette only came out once a week, Goethe was already forecasting an iron age when newspapers would appear three times a day.”
“The world has always moved quickly,” said Pierre with a shrug of his shoulders, “yet people no more know how to recognize speed than they know how to detect past beauty and former love affairs on the wrinkled faces of old women. ‘By taking the train too frequently from Paris to Saint-Germain,’ said Thiers in the 1840s, ‘one risks detaching the retina, so rapid will the succession of images be.’ I may add that my wife rather shares Monsieur Thiers’ view. Will you have an aperitif?”
“One only has to set eyes on madame,” said Regencrantz, “to realize that she is exactly the wife you need. Madame is a human character. Furthermore, madame is young and athletic, she won’t have any trouble keeping up with you.”
“Even though I have taken a thousandth of a second to give her a child and she’s going to take nine months…”
“Pierre!” screeched Hedwige, blushing furiously, “please…”
“Believe me, Monsieur Niox, adjust yourself to madame. I can tell from her aura that she has a good influence on you. Otherwise, you’ll go back to your bad habits. Pfft! Lost like a meteorite in astral space!”
“I can assure you I’m looking after myself, doctor.”
“Good, very good. You’re not alone on our terrestrial globe, you should think of others, of those who do not have your openness of judgement. You’re an intelligent man and you’re letting yourself get caught in the oldest, best-known trap of alclass="underline" tomorrow, pigs may fly.”
Hedwige wore an inscrutable smile. Regencrantz gave her a crafty look.
“A doctor is allowed to be indiscreet,” he said. “Does Monsieur Niox make you happy? Dare tell me in his presence.”
“You are not indiscreet,” she replied, “and I make no secret of my happiness.”
“I see,” said Regencrantz solemnly. “He makes you happy, but he makes you feel seasick. If I were President of France, I would punish you, Monsieur Niox.”
“Presidents don’t punish, they reprieve.”
“I would sentence you to stand still.”
“Under arrest,” Pierre corrected him.
“No, no! I know your interesting language very well, I said ‘to stand still, to several days not moving’.”9
“Why not for an entire life, like a fakir?”
“That would be a fair punishment. It’s the one St Simeon Stylites inflicted on himself. I’ve got a leaflet about him that I’ll show you. The case of this saint is a curious one.”
“Do you also take replicas of saints?”
The doctor had a good appetite: he made sure he got not just his lunch, but his dinner too. He polished off his third chop, the half-kilo of sautéed potatoes that Pierre piled on his plate, and he droned on knowledgeably:
“Before climbing up his pillar, Simeon was a successful man.”
“A runner… a womaniser,” laughed Pierre.
“Ha, ha, very good!10 Yes, a runner who was admired and very popular. He resolved everything in Rome. Princes came from the far ends of the earth to consult him, and kings used to disguise themselves so that they were not seen asking his advice; all they then had to do was to make use of this advice in order to keep their people happy. His fame spread even to the Persians and the Scythians. Since he was modest and wanted to avoid all those bores who were preventing him from concentrating on his salvation, he dedicated himself to solitude and hoisted himself up onto a pillar six cubits high, then onto another of twenty-two cubits, and finally onto a third that rose thirty-two cubits above the crowd.”