Simone Beauvoir - She Came to Stay

‘You’re pig-headed,’ said Gerbert. ‘The other day, with Vuillemin, we measured it out; the glasses hold exactly the same amount.’

‘After a meal, coffee should be drunk from a cup,’ said Pierre with finality.

‘He maintains that the taste is different,’ said Françoise.

‘He’s a dangerous dreamer!’ said Gerbert. He thought for a minute. ‘Strictly speaking, we might agree that it cools less rapidly in cups.’

‘Why does it cool less rapidly?’ said Françoise.

‘Surface of evaporation is reduced,’ said Pierre sententiously.

‘Now you’re well off the rails,’ said Gerbert. ‘What happens is that china retains the heat better.’

They were always full of fun when they debated a physical phenomenon. It was usually something they had made up on the spur of the moment.

‘It cools all the same,’ said Françoise.

‘Do you hear what she says?’ said Pierre.

Gerbert put a finger to his lips with mock discretion; Pierre nodded his head knowingly: this was the usual mimicry to express their impertinent complicity, but today, there was no conviction in this ritual. The luncheon had dragged out cheerlessly; Gerbert seemed spiritless, they had discussed the Italian demands at great length: it was unusual for their conversation to be swamped in such generalities.

‘Did you read Soudet’s criticism this morning?’ said Françoise.

‘He’s got a nerve. He asserts that to translate a text word for word is to falsify it.’

‘Those old drivellers!’ said Gerbert. ‘They won’t dare admit that Shakespeare bores them stiff.’

‘That’s nothing, we’ve got vocal criticism on our side,’ said Françoise, ‘that’s the most important thing.’

‘Five curtain calls last night, I counted them,’ said Gerbert.

‘I’m delighted,’ said Françoise. ‘I felt sure we could put it across without making the slightest compromise.’ She turned gaily to Pierre. ‘It’s quite obvious now that you’re not merely a theorist, an ivory tower experimenter, a coterie aesthete. The porter at the hotel told me he cried when you were assassinated.’

‘I’ve always thought he was a poet,’ said Pierre. He smiled, as if somewhat embarrassed, and Françoise’s enthusiasm subsided. Four days earlier, when they had left the theatre at the close of the dress rehearsal, Pierre had been feverishly happy and they had spent an intoxicating night with Xavière! But the very next day, this feeling of triumph had left him. That was just like him: he would have been devastated by a failure, but success never seemed to him to be any more than an insignificant step forward towards still more difficult tasks that he immediately set himself. He never fell into the weakness of vanity, but neither did he experience the serene joy of work well done. He looked at Gerbert questioningly.

‘What is the Péclard clique saying?’

‘That you’re right off the mark,’ said Gerbert. ‘You know they’re all for the return to the natural and all that tripe. All the same, they would like to know just what you’ve got up your sleeve.’

Françoise was quite sure she was not mistaken, there was a certain restraint in Gerbert’s cordiality.

‘They’ll be on the look-out next year when you produce your own play,’ said Françoise. She added gaily: ‘Now, after the success of Julius Caesar, we can count on the support of the public. It’s grand to think about.’

‘It would be a good thing if you were to publish your book at the same time,’ said Gerbert.

‘You’ll no longer be just a sensation, you’ll be really famous,’ said Françoise.

A little smile played on Pierre’s lips.

‘If the brutes don’t gobble us up,’ he said.

The words fell on Françoise like a cold douche.

‘Do you think we’ll fight for Djibouti?’

Pierre shrugged his shoulders.

‘I think we were a little hasty in our rejoicings at the time of Munich. A great many things can happen between now and next year.’

There was a short silence.

‘Put your play on in March,’ said Gerbert.

‘That’s a bad time,’ said Françoise, ‘and besides, it won’t be ready.’

‘It’s not a question of producing my play at all costs,’ said Pierre. ‘It’s rather one of finding out just how much sense there is in producing plays at all.’

Françoise looked at him uneasily. A week earlier when they were at the Pôle Nord with Xavière, and he had referred to himself as an obstinate mule, she had chosen to interpret it as a momentary whim; but it seemed that a real anxiety was beginning to possess him.

‘You told me in September that, even if war came, we should have to go on living.’

‘Certainly, but how?’ Pierre vaguely contemplated his fingers. ‘Writing, producing … that’s not after all an end in itself.’

He was really perplexed and Françoise almost felt a grudge against him, but she must go on quietly trusting in him.

‘If that’s the way you look at it, what is an end in itself?’ she said.

‘That’s exactly the reason why nothing is simple,’ said Pierre. His face had taken on a clouded and almost stupid expression: the way he looked in the morning when, with his eyes still pink with sleep, he desperately began searching for his socks all over the room.

‘It’s half-past two, I’ll beat it,’ said Gerbert.

He was never the first to leave as a rule; he liked nothing so much as the moments he spent with Pierre.

‘Xavière is going to be late again,’ said Françoise. ‘It’s most aggravating. Your aunt is so particular that we should be there for the first glass of port sharp at three o’clock.’

‘She’s going to be bored stiff there,’ said Pierre. ‘We should have arranged to meet her afterwards.’

‘She wants to see what a private view is like,’ said Françoise. ‘I don’t know what her idea of it can be.’

‘You’ll have a good laugh!’ said Gerbert.

‘It’s one of aunt’s protégés,’ said Françoise, ‘we simply can’t get out of it. As it is, I cut the last cocktail party, and that didn’t go down too well.’

Gerbert got up and nodded to Pierre.

‘I’ll see you tonight.’

‘So long,’ said Françoise warmly. She watched him walk off in his big overcoat which flapped over his ankles; it was one of Péclard’s old casts-off. ‘That was all rather forced,’ she said.

‘He’s a charming young fellow, but we don’t have a great deal to say to each other,’ said Pierre.

‘He’s never been like that before; I thought he seemed very depressed. Perhaps it’s because we let him down on Friday night; but it was perfectly plausible that we should want to go home to bed right away when we were so exhausted.’

‘At least so long as nobody else ran into us,’ said Pierre.

‘Let’s say that we buried ourselves at the Pôle Nord, and then jumped straight into a taxi. There’s only Elisabeth, but I’ve warned her.’ Françoise ran her hand across the back of her head and smoothed her hair. ‘That would be a bore,’ she said. ‘Not so much the fact itself, but the lie, that would hurt him terribly.’

Gerbert had retained from his adolescence a rather timid touchiness and, above all, he dreaded feeling that he was in the way. Pierre was the only person in the world who really counted in his life; he was quite willing to be under some sort of obligation to him, but only if he felt that it was not from a sense of duty that Pierre took an interest in him.

‘No, there’s not a chance,’ said Pierre. ‘Besides, yesterday evening he was still gay and friendly.’

‘Perhaps he’s worried,’ said Françoise. It saddened her that Gerbert should be sad and that she could do nothing for him. She liked to know that he was happy: his steady and pleasant life delighted her. He worked with discernment and success. He had a few friends whose varied talents fascinated him: Mollier who played the banjo so well, Barrisson who spoke in flawless slang, Castier who had no trouble in holding six Pernods. Many an evening in the Montparnasse cafés he practised bearing up under Pernod with them: he had more success with the banjo. The rest of the time he deliberately shunned company. He went to the movies; he read; he wandered about Paris, cherishing modest and persistent little dreams.