Paul Morand - The Man in a Hurry

Pierre rings the bell. It’s almost as if he is there already. He doesn’t open doors, it’s as though he were forcing his way in. He dashes through, striding past the entrance hall and the ritual introductions and into the drawing room where he is awaited, not without ceremony, since the presence of a stranger is fairly rare at Saint-Germain. Fromentine, who had opened the landing door to him, followed at a run, hoping, quite wrongly, that she would reach the drawing room at the same time as him. As soon as enters the room, Pierre exclaims:

“So much finery and so much beauty just for me!”

“In this way you are sure of being favoured,” Fromentine replied playfully. “Excuse me one moment, I’m going to find Hedwige.”

Pierre was left in private conversation with Angélique. She headed astutely straight for the Mas Vieux. Pierre gave her an enthusiastic description of it in a few words.

“I don’t know the house, unfortunately,” Angélique replied. “Father bought it when he was separated from Mamicha and he sold it without informing us. Poor Papa was very ill and was probably badly advised. So were we, we don’t have anyone to help us, we’re four women on our own who know nothing about business matters.”

Pierre interrupted her:

“I know what’s bothering you, but believe me, don’t worry. I have an idea… still unformed, but achievable. Your sister Fromentine teases me about my haste; this time, you see, I am taking my time.”

“Can I not know beforehand?” asked Angélique.

“Why do such beautiful women concern themselves with all this language of business and money? It’s for men like me to free them from their worries.”

He was so unaccustomed to these phrases of gentlemanly chivalry that he was astonished to hear himself utter them.

Fromentine returned, bringing Hedwige with her.

“Come and say hello to my mother. Forgive her for receiving you lying in bed, she’s not feeling very well today.”

Pierre feared disturbing Madame de Boisrosé and resisted; he resisted badly, because he was watching Hedwige as she spoke. He was mesmerized by women’s lips; he saw little else, initially. It was through their lips that he began to puzzle them out; it was the first real effect they made on him. Just as a deaf man uses the lips of the person he is conversing with to understand the words he is unable to hear, so it was from their lips that he interpreted their distinctive features, their affectations, the truths about them. It is the mouth, first of all, that gives her away. Pierre had had his fill of pretty, foolish mouths that never shut; despondent mouths that try to cheer themselves up by applying lipstick, but whose muscles slacken and droop; elastic, hysterical mouths that shoot off in every direction; restless mouths that muddle up the words to be spoken; tragic mouths, on stage and in speeches, looking rather like a black hole in Melpomene’s mask; fashionable mouths, advertisements for toothpaste; busy, harsh mouths that hold the purse strings; mouths that have disintegrated due to illness.

But Hedwige had a firm, well-balanced mouth that radiated serenity and contemplation; a mouth that was in harmony with her eyes and with every part of her face and her soul.

Fromentine was growing restless:

“Yes, yes, you must come and see Mother,” she said. “You will be obliged to go in there since we are having dinner at the foot of her bed. It’s what we call the little dining table.”

And she opened the bedroom door with a great shriek of laughter, pushing Pierre closer to the bed.

“I must compliment you on your daughters, madame,” he said with a bow.

“Three daughters, it’s a disaster. Don’t remind me, monsieur, that I have three daughters.”

“They’re very beautiful.”

“As far as that’s concerned, yes, they’re beautiful and they’re good,” said Madame de Boisrosé with such natural pride that it could no longer be termed pride. And with a wave of her hand she sought the agreement of her son-in-law Amyot and Monsieur de Rocheflamme, who were keeping her company.

Pierre thought it was charming to have dinner in the bedroom. He was fascinated by this intimacy of women in its purest state, without any affectation, cunning or social concerns. The cooking resembled some sort of leisure activity, the cutlery something of a conjuring trick; saucepans, plates, bottles protruded from every corner and they lent this tea party an atmosphere of make-believe and entertainment. Pierre was on the point of saying: “How much quicker it is than in a restaurant!”, but he preferred not to remind them of that disastrous first evening.

Vincent Amyot, Angélique’s husband, was a witty mind inside a ninety-kilo body. Although extremely intelligent in private, as soon as he wished to shine and make himself attractive to a stranger he lost his natural wit and expressed himself like a book, like a boring book. This former poly-technicien 5 wrote articles on economic affairs for the weeklies that were brimming with authority and facile pessimism. He had tried his hand at writing detective novels and historical essays, and he wrote too much; but unlike the work of artists, musicians and orators, who overwhelm their friends and relations with exhibitions, concerts and conferences, the creations of a friend who’s a writer are always avoidable. And so no one was familiar with Amyot’s output. Apart, that is, from a few ministers of finance who, with the sensitivity peculiar to all politicians, did not absorb the lessons that he delivered with theoretical infallibility from on high, and which resulted, in practice, in a forecast of banking disasters. Pierre listened to the conversation, stock-still.

Pierre stock-still, what an amazing sight! As motionless as a quivering arrow, as a missile in an arsenal. Pierre wasting his time, but feeling and giving the impression that he was benefiting in every respect. Pierre lethargic, Pierre munching; munching his apple tart instead of choking on it, not unscrewing the sugar sprinkler, not eating everything from the same plate, not covering his cake with salt instead of sugar. Pierre polishing his rough edges, making the most of his evening and thoroughly immersing himself in every second of it. Could it last?

It did last, however. They savoured their food. They sipped their drinks. The ladies dipped sugar lumps in their coffee. Pierre listened to Madame de Boisrosé expressing various complaints about the present age and her daughters countering her moans with timid objections and deferential approval. They also listened to the wind howling and the red oven crackling. He listened to the polytechnicien , his thesis about the gyratory movement of long-term investments and his paradoxes that concluded with a QED. And when, in turn, Uncle Rocheflamme spoke, Pierre was quite pleased to listen to him grinding his coffee and making banal remarks, the former in between his legs, the others through gritted teeth.

“Even so, France…” Amyot began, joining in with this very French phrase.

“We are letting ourselves be led by circumstances,” groused Monsieur de Rocheflamme, sounding as idiotic as the radio. “It’s one of our misfortunes not to have any leaders. We have men of distinction, but no characters. Now Poincaré, he was a leader.”

“Poincaré had substance,” said Pierre, glad to cling instinctively in this deluge of generalizations onto an actual name.

“Yes, but he carried no conviction: I’m going to fill you in on the problem with France. All things being equal…”

And to start with, backing his argument up with anecdotes and a few drawn-out metaphors, Amyot explained that what was lacking in the Treaty of Versailles “was heart”.

Interspersed with peerless notions on the art of leading nations, the evening had reached its highest degree of dreariness when Pierre, benumbed and anaesthetized, suddenly felt his evil genius rising to the surface. With a firm but gentle nudge, this familiar phantom was pointing him towards the door.