Simone Beauvoir - The Mandarins

‘I never said it was.’

‘No, but that’s what you think.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, when will we see each other?’

He hesitated. ‘Honestly, Nadine, I haven’t a minute to spare these days.’

‘You do sit down at a table and eat occasionally, don’t you? I really don’t see why I can’t sit down opposite you.’ She looked Henri squarely in the face. ‘Unless I give you a pain in the neck.’

‘Of course you don’t.’

‘Well?’

‘All right. Meet me at the office tomorrow between nine and ten.’

‘I’ll be there.’

He was quite fond of Nadine and seeing her didn’t, as she put it, give him a pain in the neck. But that wasn’t the point. The thing was that he had to organize his life as efficiently as possible. And there was simply no place in it for Nadine.

‘Why were you so hard on Vincent?’ Nadine asked. ‘You really shouldn’t have been.’

‘I’m afraid he’ll do something foolish.’

‘Something foolish! Whenever anyone wants to do something, you call it foolishness. Don’t you think writing books is the most goddamned foolish thing of all? Everyone applauds you and for a while you’re all puffed up. But afterwards they all stick your book in a corner and no one gives it another thought.’

‘That’s my profession,’ he said.

‘It’s a funny profession!’

They continued walking in silence. When they arrived at the door to the newspaper Nadine said dryly, ‘I’m going home. See you tomorrow.’

‘So long.’

Hesitantly, she turned back and stood before him. ‘Between nine and ten – that’s rather late, isn’t it? We won’t have much time to do anything. Can’t we begin the evening a little earlier?’

‘I won’t be free before then.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘All right then, at nine-thirty. But what’s the use of being famous and everything if you don’t take any time out to live?’

‘To live!’ he thought as she turned on her heels and walked briskly away. ‘To them that always means only one thing; to spend your time with them. But there’s more than one way of living!’

He liked that familiar smell of stale dust and fresh ink that greeted him as he entered the building. The offices were still empty, the basement silent. But soon a whole world would rise from this stillness, a world which was his creation. ‘No one will ever lay his hands on L’Espoir,’ he repeated to himself. He sat down at his desk and stretched out his legs. There was, he told himself, no sense in getting upset. He would not give up the paper; somehow you always manage to find time for things you want to do; and after a good night’s sleep his work would move along much more smoothly.

He went through his mail quickly and looked at his watch. He had an appointment with Preston in half an hour, which left him ample time to have it out with Sezenac. ‘Ask Sezenac to come to my office,’ he said to his secretary. He went back to his desk and sat down. It’s all well and good to have confidence in people, but there were a lot of guys who would jump at the chance of taking Sezenac’s place and who deserved it more than he did. When you stubbornly decide to give one man a chance, you arbitrarily deny it to another one. And that was not right. ‘Too bad!’ Henri said to himself. He recalled how promising Sezenac had seemed when Chancel had first brought them together. For a year he had been the most zealous of the liaison agents; maybe he needed extraordinary circumstances to bring out his best. But now, pale, puffy, glassy-eyed, he constantly trailed in Vincent’s wake and he was no longer able to write a coherent sentence.

‘Ah! There you are! Sit down.’

Sézenac sat down without saying a word. Henri suddenly realized that he had been working with him a whole year and that he knew him not at all. He was more or less familiar with the lives of the others, their tastes, their ideas. But Sezenac kept things to himself.

‘When are you going to turn in something better than the junk you’ve been giving us lately?’ Henri said much more sharply than he had intended to.

Sézenac shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

‘What’s wrong?’ Henri asked. ‘Not getting laid enough? Got yourself in a jam?’

Sézenac sat quietly, rolling a handkerchief between his hands and staring stubbornly at the floor. It was really difficult to get through to him.

‘What’s wrong?’ Henri repeated. ‘I’m willing to give you another chance.’

‘No,’ Sézenac said. ‘Journalism just isn’t my dish.’

‘At first you were doing all right.’

Sézenac smiled vaguely. ‘Chancel helped me a little.’

‘He didn’t write your articles for you, did he?’

‘No,’ Sézenac replied without assurance. He shook his head. ‘No use in pressing the matter. It’s not the kind of work I like.’

‘You could have told me sooner,’ Henri said with a trace of annoyance. Again there was a brief silence, and then Henri asked, ‘What would you like to do?’

‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll get along.’

‘How?’

‘I’m giving English lessons. And I’ve been promised some translations.’ He stood up. ‘It’s really been good of you to keep me on so long.’

‘If you ever feel like sending us something …’

‘If I get round to it.’

‘Can I do anything for you?’

‘You can lend me a thousand francs,’ Sézenac said.

‘Here’s two thousand,’ Henri said. ‘But that’s no solution.’

Sézenac shoved his handkerchief and the money into his pocket and then, for the first time, he smiled. ‘It’s a temporary solution; they’re the surest.’ He opened the door. ‘Thanks.’

‘Good luck,’ Henri called after him. He was disturbed. It seemed almost as if all Sézenac had been waiting for was a chance to escape. ‘I’ll get news of him through Vincent,’ he thought in order to reassure himself. But it bothered him a little not to have been able to make him talk.

He took out his fountain pen and placed a sheet of writing paper in front of him. Preston would be along in fifteen minutes. He didn’t want to think too much about the magazine before he was sure, but his head was full of plans. The weeklies that were being published since the end of the Occupation were all rather pitiful; that would make it all the more fun to put out something really good.

Henri’s secretary poked her head in the door. ‘Mr Preston is here.’

‘Ask him to come in.’

In his civilian clothes, Preston didn’t look at all like an American. The very perfection of his French, however, made him somewhat suspect. He came to the point almost immediately.

‘Your friend Luc must have told you that we saw each other several times during your absence,’ he said. ‘Both of us deplored the state of the French press; it’s really sad. It would be a very great pleasure for me to help your paper by furnishing you with additional newsprint.’

‘Yes, that would fix us up fine!’ said Henri. ‘Of course, we couldn’t think of changing our format,’ he added. ‘The agreement with the other papers is still in effect. But there’s nothing to stop us from bringing out a Sunday magazine supplement, and that would open up a whole new area.’

Preston smiled reassuringly. ‘As far as the newsprint is concerned,’ he said, ‘there’s no problem. You could have it tomorrow.’ He slowly lit a cigarette with his black enamelled lighter. ‘I have to ask you a very blunt question. L’Espoir ’s political line is not going to change, is it?’

‘No,’ Henri replied. ‘Why?’

‘To my way of thinking, L’Espoir represents precisely the guide your country needs,’ Preston said. ‘That’s why my friends and I want to help it. We admire your independent mind, your courage, your lucidity …’