‘Oui, Maître.’
‘Now, you ask for a divorce.’
‘No, not I, but Madeleine Roussellin does.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, looking first at the paper in front of him, and then at me, unconvinced. ‘We men are so virtuous, Monsieur. It’s always the women who cuckold us,’ and the storm was on me before I knew. I brushed it away with a broomstick. Catherine looked at me, as if to say, ‘What can one do? They are like that, the huissiers of Paris.’ But I still felt I could not let such vulgarity pass unnoticed.
‘So you do not love your wife any more, Monsieur?’ continued Maitre Sigon.
‘I never said that, Monsieur.’
‘But you have to say that. That is the law. Do you think they are copains of ours at the bench, and will arrange our affairs as nicely as a baby’s nappy, and offer us an aperitif after that?’
‘I am a foreigner, Maitre,’ I reminded him, ‘and I do not know French law.’
‘I know French law, Monsieur. Yes, of course, you are a foreigner. You are an Indian.’ Saying this, he told himself, that since Indians were inferior, what did it matter when he spoke ill of France or not. You could shout at your wife before your servant at home, but you kissed her hand, when you went out. For Maitre Sigon, India had not yet been free. It was a colony far away, where bananas grew, and men sang funny songs, like a mélopée. It was the country of the Buddha: it was the country of Lakmé.
‘You are a student,’ he said, after a moment’s silence.
‘Yes, Maitre, so I am.’
‘Living in the Rue de Vaugirard.’
‘Yes, that is so.’
‘You can sign here. You can say you seek divorce for ‘incompatibilité de tempéraments’. I hope you get the divorce, Monsieur. Oh, French justice is not so bad. It’s a little odd, rather like this building is, like this light. This light, now, Monsieur have a good look at it. It has seen three generations of huissiers, just as this building has seen three generations of Sigons. Once a huissier, always a huissier, is a very good proverb, I tell you.’
‘This lady,’ I said, as though to give myself some dignity, ‘this lady, the cousin of my wife, is the daughter of a notaire.’
‘Ah, I thought so, Mademoiselle, when I saw your face. Ah, I can smell a notaire like I can a good Burgundy. Where would France be without her notaires? We do not make laws like those pompous politicians at the Palais Bourdon; we keep laws functioning, that is all, and you know that is a great deal. We protect the child from the greedy grandmother, we protect the woman from her husband, we protect virtue from being sold like the girls in the opposite street. We make the continuity of France.’
‘Yes, I know,’ I said, very proud. I had heard the same discourse from Oncle Charles.
‘Well — Mademoiselle,’ said Maître Sigon.
‘No, Madame,’ I corrected.
‘Madame, will you kindly sign here, as witness. Funny, what the world is coming to,’ he said, looking up at me. ‘Formerly, if a wife separated from her husband — for divorce in the time of my grandfather was a very difficult business, what with the Church and all — I was saying, when you separated, you swore enmity to one another. If you saw her brother, mother, sister, cousin, you looked away, Monsieur, you turned your face away; and if they came too near, you looked up insolently, you insulted them; you swore from the opposite corner of the room. You even sent your card for a duel. Now, Monsieur, cousins come to sign for one another. Now, the cuckold and the lover both sit at the same table, and play bridge. Oh, Monsieur,’ concluded Maître Sigon, ‘the world is changing, changing too rapidly for me.’
Not having made much impression on us, he rose and said, ‘Monsieur, say what you will. You go to fifty other notaries in this city; they will say, the storm has come, it has blown away my car, my house, even my wife, and they will close their offices and go to a cinema. I belong to the older generation: even if there is a storm there is always a light. Is that not so, Henriette?’ He turned to his secretary. She was middle-aged all right, and her check overall gave her an air of respectability.
‘We work whether others work or not,’ she confirmed. ‘Maître Sigon is always here, ill or well. At nine-thirty he is here, before the postman is here. Even before I am here,’ said Madame Henriette, smiling. She wanted to please.
‘Her aunt,’ said Maítre Sigon, ‘her good aunt, was brought up in our house. We saved her from an orphanage, and that was after the wars of 1870. She served us well at home. And now Madame Henriette is such a faithful secretary. I tell you, if I die she can run this office. That is France, Monsieur, that is France.’
The lamps outside were lit, but in the building the electric connections had still not been made. The little kerosene burner continued to spread its yellow light on the green tablecloth. Madame Henriette had a pen in her hand as she opened the door.
‘By the way, Madame,’ said Maítre Sigon, as if he had suddenly remembered something. ‘You never told me the name of your excellent father, my colleague. You have signed here, “Catherine Khuschbertieff”.’
‘My father is Maítre Roussellin, because my cousin is Madeleine Roussellin.’
‘Of course, of course,’ he said, ‘that is true. And he is from Rouen, did you say, Madame?’
‘Yes, Papa’s notariat is in Rouen. Rue St-Ouen.’
‘My regards to Maitre Roussellin, your excellent father, Madame. Remember, France is mainly run by its notaires and huissiers. Our red seal,’ he said, unhooking the seal from its peg, ‘this rules France. Au revoir, Madame, au revoir, Monsieur. Madame Henriette will lead you down the staircase. The candle will be of help — otherwise you might do the wrong thing with one another, and have to come back again to me. Au revoir, Monsieur.’
The candle-light lit parts of the staircase here and there. Once at the bottom we shouted, ‘Merci. Au revoir, Madame Henriette,’ and the light disappeared. The locksmith was still hammering at something — he also had a little oil-lamp. The cold wind blew on our faces. Spring was coming.
‘27. 3. 54. Yes, I say to myself: “I must leave this world, I must leave, leave this world.” But, Lord, where shall I go, where? How can one go anywhere? How can one go from oneself?
‘I walk up and down this mansard, and say: “There must be something that exalts and explains why we are here, what is it we seek.” And suddenly, as though I’ve forgotten where I am, I begin to sing out aloud, “Shivoham, Shivoham,” as if I were in Benares, on the banks of the Ganges, sitting on Harishchandra Ghat and singing away. In Benares, it may still sound true — but here against the dull sky of Paris, this yellow wallpaper, with its curved and curling clematis, going back and forth, and all about my room… I say, “Clematis is the truth, must be in the truth.” I count, one, two, three, simply like that, and count 177 clematis in my room. “If I add a zero,” I say to myself, “it will make 1770 and they would cover ten mansard rooms.” I look out and count the number of windows in the Lycée St Louis. It has eighteen windows: one, two, three, five, eleven, eighteen windows. And I say, “If they had clematis on their walls, how many would there be? Each room there is about three times the width of my room.” My arithmetic goes all wrong, for I must subtract one wall out of every three, and that’s too complicated. I roll back into my bed. “Hara-Hara, Shiva-Shiva,” I say to myself, as if I were in Benares again, then “Chidananda rupah, Shivoham, Shivoham”, I began to clap hands and sing. The Romanian lady next door again knocks to remind me I am in Paris. I go out, with my overcoat on, wander round and round the Luxembourg Gardens by the Rue d’ Assas, feeling that three times round anything you love must give you meaning, must give you peace. Buses still go on the streets, and students are still there chez shining, mirrored Dupont. I wish I could drink: “It must be wonderful to drink,” I say to myself. The students get drunk and are so gay. That Dutch boy, the other day, was quite drunk; he sat in the hotel lounge, with his mouth on one side, and started singing songs. If you don’t feel too warm at heart, you can always warm yourself in the Quartier Latin. You never saw more generous girls in the world. Existentialism has cleared the libido out of the knots of hair. Wherever you go, girls have rich bosoms, fiery red lips. They don’t need cards — not because the gendarme does not ask for them, but because girls have grown too pure. Purity is not in the act but in the meaning of the act. Had I been less of a Brahmin, I might have known more of “love”.’