Simone Beauvoir - The Mandarins

‘Well, the cod was good, and so were the beans.’

‘Another drop of oil and I’d have been sick,’ she said, spitting angrily. ‘There’s even oil in my saliva.’

Suddenly and calmly she pulled off her blouse.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Can’t you see?’

She was wearing no brassiere. Lying on her back, she offered up to the sun the nakedness of her firm, small breasts.

‘Nadine! No! Suppose someone should come …’

‘No one’ll come.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Anyhow, I don’t give a damn. I just want to feel the sun on my body.’ Her breasts exposed to the wind and sun, her hair spread out on the sand, she looked up at the sky and said reproachfully, ‘It’s our last day; we’ve got to take advantage of it.’

Henri said nothing.

‘Must we really go back to Lisbon tonight?’ she asked in a whining voice.

‘You know very well they’re expecting us.’

‘We haven’t even seen the mountains yet. And everyone says they’re beautiful. With a whole week left, we could see a lot of them.’

‘Nevertheless, as I’ve already told you a dozen times, I’ve got to see those people.’

‘Your old gentlemen in stiff collars? They might look pretty good in the showcases of the Musée de l’Homme. But as revolutionaries … don’t make me laugh.’

‘Well, they affect me differently,’ Henri said. ‘And they do take big risks.’

‘They talk a lot,’ Nadine said, sifting the sand between her fingers. ‘Words, nothing but a lot of words.’

‘It’s always so easy to feel superior to people who are trying to accomplish something,’ he said, slightly annoyed.

‘What I have against them is that they’re really not trying to accomplish anything at all,’ she replied irritably. ‘Instead of gabbling so much, I’d blow Salazar’s brains out.’

‘That wouldn’t help much.’

‘He’d be dead, and that would help. Like Vincent says, at least death doesn’t forgive.’ She looked meditatively at the sea. ‘If you’re willing to be killed with him, you could certainly get rid of him.’

‘Don’t you try it!’ Henri said with a smile. He placed his hand on Nadine’s sand-encrusted arm. ‘That’d be quite a spot you’d put me in.’

‘It would be quite an exit,’ Nadine said.

‘Are you in such a hurry to make yours?’ he asked.

She yawned. ‘Do you enjoy living?’

‘I’m not bored,’ he said cheerfully.

She raised herself on one elbow and studied him curiously. ‘Tell me. Scribbling from morning to night the way you do, does that really fill your life?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘When I’m writing my life is full. In fact, I’m damned anxious to get back to it.’

‘What made you want to become a writer?’

‘Oh, that goes a long way back,’ Henri replied. Yes, it went very far back into the past, but he couldn’t decide how reliable his memories of the beginning were. ‘When I was a young boy,’ he said, ‘a book seemed like a magic thing to me.’

‘But I like books, too,’ Nadine said spiritedly. ‘Only there are so many of them already! What good will it do to add one more?’

‘We all have different things to say. Every writer has his own life, his own way of seeing things, his own way of writing about them.’

‘And it doesn’t upset you to realize that things have been written that are far above anything you’ll ever pound out?’ Nadine asked in a vaguely irritated voice.

‘At first I didn’t think that was true,’ Henri replied, smiling. ‘You’re very arrogant when you haven’t done anything. And then, once you get into it, you’re too interested in what you’re writing to waste time comparing.’

‘Naturally,’ she said sullenly. ‘You can always justify yourself.’ She let herself fall back on the sand and stretched out lazily, at full length.

He didn’t know how to answer her. It’s hard to explain the joys of writing to someone who doesn’t enjoy it. Besides, was he capable of explaining it even to himself? He didn’t for a moment imagine he would be read forever and yet while he was writing, he felt as if he were secretly settled in eternity. Whatever ideas he was able to shape into words on paper seemed to him to be preserved, fully rescued from oblivion. But how much truth was there in that feeling? How much of that also was only an illusion? That was one of the things he should have figured out during his vacation, but as a matter of fact he had figured out nothing at all. One thing was certain: he felt an almost agonizing pity for all who did not even attempt to express themselves – Paula, Anne, Nadine. Suddenly he remembered that this was the day on which his book was to be published. It had been a long time since he had last faced the public and it frightened him a bit to think that at that very moment people were reading his novel and talking about it.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked, bending over Nadine and smiling at her gently.

‘Yes, it’s nice here,’ she said a little peevishly.

‘It is, isn’t it?’

He lay back on the warm sand and laced his fingers in Nadine’s. Between the listless, sun-faded sea and the stark blue of the sky, happiness hung lazily in the air; a single smile from Nadine and he might have been able to grasp some of that happiness. She was almost pretty when she smiled, but now her lightly freckled face remained impassive.

‘Poor Nadine!’ he said.

She bolted upright. ‘Why poor?’

Certainly, she was an object of pity, but he wasn’t quite sure why. ‘Because you’re disappointed in the trip.’

‘Oh, I didn’t really expect too much out of it, you know.’

‘But you have to admit we had some pleasant moments, anyhow.’

‘And there could still be more,’ she said, the cold blue of her eyes growing warmer. ‘Why don’t you just forget those old dreamers? They’re not what we came here for. Let’s keep on the move; let’s enjoy ourselves while we can, while we still have flesh on our bones.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s not so easy to enjoy oneself.’

‘Well, let’s try, anyhow. Let’s drive through the mountains! Wouldn’t that be wonderful? You like driving so much. But those meetings and investigations, all they ever do is bore you.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘Well, why do you always have to be doing things that bore you? That’s no way to live.’

‘Try to understand. Can I tell those poor old men that no one’s interested in their misfortunes, that Portugal is too small, that no one gives a damn what happens to her?’ Henri leaned over Nadine and smiled gently. ‘Can I?’

‘You could ring them up and tell them you’re sick, and then we could head for Evora.’

‘It would break their hearts,’ Henri replied. ‘No, I just can’t.’

‘Say instead that you don’t want to,’ Nadine retorted bitterly.

‘All right,’ he answered impatiently. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘You’re even worse than my mother,’ she grumbled, turning her face to the sand.

Henri fell back and stretched out alongside Nadine. ‘Let’s enjoy ourselves!’ Years ago, he had known how to enjoy himself; yes, he would unhesitatingly have sacrificed the dreams of those old conspirators for the pleasures he had known then. He closed his eyes. He was lying on another beach beside a golden-skinned woman clad in a flowered sarong – Paula, the loveliest of all women. Palm trees were swaying lazily above their heads, and through the reeds he was watching three plump, laughing Jewish women inching their way into the sea, encumbered by their dresses, veils, and jewels. Sometimes at night they would sit together on the beach and watch Arab women, wrapped in their long garments, venturing into the water. And afterwards, in a tavern in an ancient Roman basement, they would sip syrupy coffee. Or they would sit in the market place and Henri would smoke a narghile while chatting with Amur Harsin. And then they would come back to their room and tumble happily on the bed. But what Henri remembered most nostalgically now were those mornings spent on the terrace of the hotel beneath the blue sky, amid the exciting fragrance of flowers. In the freshness of the newborn day, in the intense heat of noon, he would write; he would write, and under his feet the cement was burning hot. And then, dizzy from the sun and from words, he would go down to the shaded patio and drink a tall, cool anisette. The sky, the pink laurel bushes, Djerba’s violent waters, the gay talk of idle nights, and especially the freshness and excitement of the mornings – these were things he had come here to recapture. Why hadn’t he recaptured that burning, sweet taste his life had once had? He had wanted so much to take this trip; for days he had thought of nothing else, for days he had dreamed of lying on the sand under the sun. And now he was here, stretched out on a sandy beach, beneath a hot sun. Only something was missing, missing from inside himself. Happiness, pleasure – he was no longer quite sure what those old, familiar words really meant. We have only five senses, and they become satiated so quickly. Even now his eyes were growing weary of looking out on that endless blue which never ceased being blue. He felt like ripping apart that smooth, satiny surface, felt like tearing Nadine’s tender skin.