Simone Beauvoir - The Mandarins

‘If you can get angry, that means you still do believe in certain things.’

‘No, frankly, when you begin asking yourself questions, nothing stands up. There are a lot of values you’re supposed to take as fundamental facts. In the name of what? When you get right down to it, why freedom? Why equality? Does justice have any meaning? Why give a damn about other people? A man who wants nothing else but to enjoy life, like my father, is he so wrong?’ Lambert gave Henri a worried look. ‘Am I shocking you?’

‘Not at all. Sometimes you have to ask yourself questions.’

‘More than that, there has to be someone to answer them,’ Lambert said, his voice growing heated. ‘They beat us over the head with politics, but why side with one party rather than another? First of all, we need a set of principles, an approach to life.’ With a trace of defiance in his eyes, Lambert looked steadily at Henri. ‘That’s what you ought to give us; it would be a damned sight more worthwhile than helping Dubreuilh write manifestos.’

‘A set of principles necessarily includes a political attitude,’ Henri said. ‘And on the other hand, politics is itself a living thing.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Lambert replied. ‘In politics, all you’re concerned with are abstract things that don’t exist – the future, masses of people. But what is really concrete is the actual present moment, and people as separate and single individuals.’

‘But each individual is affected by collective history,’ Henri said.

‘The trouble is that in politics you never come down from the high plateau of history to the problem of the lowly individual,’ Lambert said. ‘You get lost in generalities and no one gives a damn about particular cases.’

Lambert’s voice as he spoke these words was so determined that Henri looked at him curiously. ‘For example?’ he said.

‘Well, for example, take the question of guilt. Politically, abstractly, people who worked with the Germans are no-good bastards not fit to spit upon. No problem, right? But now, when you look at one of them all by himself, close up, it isn’t at all the same any more.’

‘You’re thinking of your father?’ Henri asked.

‘Yes. I’ve been wanting to ask your advice about that for some time now. Should I really continue to turn my back on him so stubbornly?’

‘But my God! The way you were talking about him last year!’ Henri said, surprised.

‘Because at that time, I thought he had denounced Rosa. But he convinced me he had no part in it; everybody knew she was Jewish. No, my father was involved in “economic” collaboration, which is bad enough. But after all, he’s getting old, and they’re going to make him stand trial, and it’s almost certain he’ll be convicted …’

‘You’ve seen him again?’

‘Once. And since then he’s sent me several letters, letters that rather upset me, I must admit.’

‘If you feel like making up with him, you’re perfectly free to do so,’ Henri said. ‘But I always thought you got along so badly?’ he added.

‘When I first met you, yes.’ Lambert paused a moment and then continued with some effort. ‘He raised me, you know. I believe that in his own way he liked me a lot; only you could never disobey him.’

‘Before you got to know Rosa, you’d never disobeyed him?’ Henri asked.

‘No. That’s what made him furious; it was the first time I ever went against him,’ Lambert said. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose it suited me to believe he denounced her; that way, there wasn’t any problem. I’d have killed him with my own hands at the time.’

‘But what made you suspect him?’

‘Some friends of mine put the idea in my head – Vincent among others. But I talked to Vincent about it again; he has absolutely no proof, not a shred. My father swore on the grave of my mother that it was a lie. Now that I’ve cooled off and can look at things objectively again I’m convinced he could never have done a thing like that. Never.’

‘It would have been a ghastly thing to do,’ Henri said. He hesitated for a moment. Now Lambert hoped that his father was innocent, just as two years earlier, without any proof, he had hoped he was guilty. And there was probably no way of ever knowing the truth. ‘Vincent likes to think of himself as a cloak-and-dagger character,’ Henri said. ‘Listen, if you no longer have any reason to suspect your father, if personally you don’t bear him any grudge, it’s not for you to act as his judge. Go and see him, do as you see fit, and don’t worry about what anyone else has to say.’

‘Do you really think I can?’ Lambert asked.

‘Who’s to stop you?’

‘Don’t you think it would be a sign of infantilism?’

Henri gave Lambert a surprised look. ‘Infantilism?’

Lambert blushed. ‘I suppose I mean cowardice.’

‘Not in the least. It’s not cowardly to live as you see fit.’

‘Yes,’ Lambert said, ‘you’re right. I’ll write to him.’ Gratefully, he added, ‘I’m glad I talked to you about it.’ He dipped his spoon into the small saucer of pink, shimmering gelatine. ‘You could really help us so much,’ he murmured. ‘Not only myself, but a lot of other young people who are in the same boat.’

‘Help you in what way?’ Henri asked.

‘You have the sense of what is real. You ought to teach us how to live for the moment.’

Henri smiled. ‘Formulating a set of principles, an approach to life, doesn’t exactly enter into my plans.’

His eyes shining, Lambert looked up at Henri. ‘Oh, I stated that badly. I wasn’t thinking of a theoretical treatise. But there are things that you consider important, there are values you believe in. You ought to show us the pleasant things on earth. And you could also make it a little more livable by writing beautiful books. It seems to me that that is what literature should do.’

Lambert delivered his little speech in a single breath. It seemed to Henri that he had prepared it in advance and that for days he had been waiting for the right moment to get it off his chest.

‘Literature isn’t necessarily pleasant,’ he said.

‘But it is!’ Lambert said. ‘Even things that are sad become pleasant when they’re done artistically.’ He hesitated. ‘Maybe pleasant isn’t exactly the right word, but it’ll do.’ He paused again and blushed. ‘I’m not trying to dictate to you what you should write. Only you mustn’t forget that you are first and foremost a writer, an artist.’

‘I never do forget it,’ Henri said.

‘I know, but …’ Once more Lambert paused, seemed embarrassed. ‘For example, your series on Portugal is very good, but I remember those pages you once wrote on Sicily. It makes you feel a little sad not to find anything like them in what you’re writing now.’

‘If you ever go to Portugal, you won’t feel very much like describing pomegranates in bloom,’ Henri said.

‘I wish you’d feel that way again,’ Lambert said urgently. ‘Why not? You certainly have the right to stroll along the seaside without worrying about the price of sardines.’

‘But the fact is that I couldn’t,’ Henri replied.

‘After all,’ Lambert continued vehemently, ‘we fought in the Resistance to defend the individual, to defend his right to be himself and to be happy. It’s time now to reap what we sowed.’

‘The trouble is that there are several hundred million individuals for whom that right still doesn’t exist,’ Henri said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I think it’s precisely because we began to take notice of them that we can no longer stop.’

‘Then everybody has to wait for the whole world to be happy before trying to be happy?’ Lambert said. ‘And art and literature must be put off until that golden age? It’s now, right now, that we need them!’