Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

“It’s like being an orphan,” Julia said in one of her letters. “I haven’t seen him for months. It is oddly liberating. And now that I know he’s coming back in a week or so I find myself apprehensive. I don’t know why; it’s not as if I will see him if he is in Paris any more than if he is in Milan. But I have decided to rent myself a little house by the sea for the summer. Somewhere in the Camargue, I think, where I will see no one, and be able to pretend there are no such people as fascists or communists, and no such things as depressions or gold standards, strikes or riots. I’d invite you, but I know you won’t come, and to be frank, I don’t want even you to disturb me. I have done no useful work for months and am dreadful company.”

Between Julien and Bernard there was an amity of relaxation; between Julien and Marcel, a friendship of interest. Both were loyal in their way; both believed fervently that the course they took was correct. Both Bernard the résistant and Marcel the collaborator were engaged—to borrow the lofty phrases of Manlius Hippomanes—in the business of salvation, and both were prepared to abandon humanity in order to achieve their aims. Both were, or became, accidental fanatics; circumstance brought out tendencies that otherwise would have remained hidden. That evening over the dinner that Julien had carefully crafted, from entrée to dessert, the first signs were there to be seen.

Bernard was amusing in a way that Marcel could not imitate, and did not wish to imitate. He was too serious; devoted to books and his religion. In place of skiing holidays, Marcel went, every year, to Lourdes, to help the sick and the poor and to bathe in a faith that was never shaken, and which Julien envied, remembering still the faint loss he felt when he was removed from his catechism lessons. He endured the sneers of Bernard with stoical fortitude as confirmation of his faith.

For Bernard was not only a freethinker, he was an ostentatious atheist, and took a perverse delight in insulting those with any religious sensibilities whatsoever. All were fools or cowards, often dangerously so, wedded to lost causes like the monarchy, believing in some lost idyll of order and rank that had never existed. A century and a half previously he would have sent people to the guillotine. A century and a half previously, Marcel would have been one of his victims.

Curiously, they were not dissimilar in appearance, although character obscured the resemblance so much that both would have been shocked at the idea that they looked alike. Both had fair hair, and both had green eyes. But, where Marcel cut his hair short and oiled and combed it so there was never a hair out of place, Bernard’s grew long, hanging just close enough to his collar to indicate a bohemian soul. Marcel’s eyes gazed steadily at whomever he was looking at, giving an impression of calm and consideration; Bernard’s never rested in one place for more than a few seconds. Even when studying Julia, he seemed to absorb her in fragments, while also examining the food, the way the waiter served, the diners at the other tables, all details Marcel scarcely noticed. But the greatest difference of all lay in their expressions: Marcel somber, always serious, often with a frown; Bernard always smiling, leaning forward into the conversation, managing to suggest fascination with whatever was being said.

Julien’s later dilemma could be seen in microcosm at that dinner, indeed Julia did see it; she was more perceptive because she saw with fresh eyes. She noted without commenting how Bernard interrupted the other two ceaselessly; interpreted Marcel’s seriousness and the frivolity of Bernard’s replies. And she saw how Julien took upon himself the role of pacifier, steering the conversation this way and that, trying to avoid the pitfall of open argument. It was a mistake to invite both of them to sit together; they could not help battling for his sympathy and her interest, even though both knew that Bernard would win, if victory there was to be.

In other circumstances, Julia would not have been so determinedly polite; she had not the patience. Rather she would have encouraged a brawl, or at least permitted it; it would have been good for Marcel, at least, to lose control of himself so utterly. She also noted that although Bernard was the more genial, he was the more ruthless, prepared to use his quickness to impose all manner of tiny humiliations to win his point. Marcel doggedly plodded on, severely and seriously arguing in a straight line. “But really, you must see what I am saying.”

Bernard did, of course; saw it long before Marcel did, but that was of no concern. He did not argue from principle; he argued to win. His delight was in tripping the slower one up, of demonstrating his superiority in countless little ways. Julia saw also what Julien did not, that there was the seed of true hatred there, deep buried, one expressed in the barely concealed contempt, the other in the detestation that the slow must develop when the quick strive to humiliate them. Perhaps Julien was right after all; it was only the thin crust of civility that kept these more dangerous emotions in check.

Because Marcel was polite, and because Julia was beautiful, he refrained from discoursing on the malign influence of Jews in France; he never got to the point where belief could overwhelm courtesy. Rather he talked about art, which served as a more civil cloak for the same thing. In Marcel, the conventionality of his tastes matched the orthodoxy of his religion and the conservatism of his politics. Julia, and people like her, infuriated him.

“It is not a question of understanding ,” he said at one stage during the dinner. “I am talking about responsibility. People like you have turned away from responsibility. Instead, you suit yourself.”

“I don’t think I understand,” Julia said.

“Artists should be servants. That is their glory. Either of kings or priests. You have broken that association and exist only for yourself. What was it that man said? Can’t remember which one. He painted some pictures in a church and the priest thanked him and said God would be pleased with such a gift. And he snorted and said, ‘Who cares about God? I’ve pleased myself.’ You are unrooted and egotistical, and you call it the search for beauty.”

No one at the table needed the meaning of the statement explained. Everyone knew what “unrooted” meant.

“I call it nothing of the sort,” Julia replied, not even considering getting angry, so foolish was the attack, dismissing the implications as not worth contesting. “I do not think I can please God—if there is one—if I do not satisfy myself. Am I supposed to give things which aren’t even good enough for me? I paint. Some think quite well, others think badly.”

“Why?”

“Because it pleases me. And it provides me with a small income which keeps me from feeling totally dependent on my father.”

“You might as well be a typist, then.”

“That wouldn’t please me.”

And here Bernard broke in. “She is misleading you, dear Marcel. Telling you lies to put you off the hunt. She is not saying why it pleases her.”

“It pleases me because when I am working well I am aware of nothing. Because when I have done something good I know it is good, and no one else’s opinion is of any consequence. And occasionally, not often, I do manage to do something good. What is more, I know I can do better. So I keep on trying.”

“What do you mean by ‘good’?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said impatiently. “Has anyone ever managed to say what it is? A catching of some idea. Reflecting it, pinning it down.”

“But it is rubbish, what you do. No technique, no skill. Just self-indulgent daubs on canvas. And the less people understand it, the happier you are. And you’re mistaken. I think people understand it all too well. That’s why they don’t buy it.”