Paul Morand - The Man in a Hurry

For the first time ever he is taking his time and he is doing so with infinite pleasure, for he has his life in front of him and he is moving, at a natural pace, along the widest and best-known of roads; a road whose surroundings he does not recognize and whose name he is even unfamiliar with, since he has never been along it; it’s a road designed for pedestrians, where fast cars cannot go. He is going to knock at the oracle’s door, like peasants at the door of the Blessed Virgin, to ask whether their land will be fertile. He is leaving daily life behind and is entering a dream in which children, inventors, madmen and those who draw the jackpot live, a dream conducive to the fulfilment of grand designs, not of petty desires. That is why he moves with the heaviness of a man asleep, at the slow pace of a deep-sea diver.

Hedwige regards this immemorial man as a man of today. Every generation of young women has its particular type of man just as every generation has one author and every author is only ever loyal to one hero.

Night has fallen. Pierre no longer knows how long he has been sitting on this bench without uncrossing his legs; beside him, Hedwige has not stirred, she whose pliant movements are so beautiful. The ground at their feet, ravaged by winter, is arid and skeletal and the frozen pebbles by the balusters shatter into splinters.

Up above, the Milky Way resembles a caravan trail worn away by ancient suns.

“Before God or before any other maker of the stars,” Pierre said suddenly, “I am ready to wait for you as long as is needed, and I have made up my mind not to marry anyone else but you.”

Hedwige drew closer to him and laid her head on his shoulder.

PIERRE AND HEDWIGE were married at the end of the month and went to live in Neuilly in an apartment that Pierre had hastily furnished and one that suited his wife’s nonchalant habits; in this way domestic problems were reduced to choosing common parts and drawing up demarcations of which drawers and wardrobe space were whose.

The layout of an apartment is often indicative of the layout of the heart. Pierre and Hedwige had adjoining but separate bedrooms. Pierre had wanted this partition; between him and his wife there was this enormous structure, this mountain of plaster which for two weeks had divided what the law had brought together. The two parties spoke to one another through it from their beds at night and were woken merrily each morning by knockings on the wall; and from each side of this equator, like poles apart, they kept away from each other for the night.

This was what Pierre had wanted (and Hedwige, both serious and prudish, had not appeared surprised, quite the contrary), not that he had not desired her immediately, for he was in love, youthful and deeply moved by her feelings for him. But he experienced a sharp and bitter pleasure in disciplining himself and starting life as though he had been married for thirty years. He was put off by the notion of throwing himself at Hedwige and taking her by surprise or by legal agreement. Firstly, the fulfilment of conjugal rights had something ridiculous and bestial, judicial and Louis Philippe-like about it. Undressing a woman, tearing off her dress and displaying the wife’s nightgown at the window to neighbours gathered in the street, as in certain Jewish rites, is not really the greatest homage you can pay her. Pierre had sworn to himself not to cast Hedwige all of a sudden into a new universe, that of the senses. And so it was that they lived so chastely that they might have been mistaken for campsite friends, for one of those couples innocently introduced to one another through the small ads at the Touring Club de France. Pierre had used all his strength as a man to stop himself from violating Hedwige as he violated everything else. It was the finest gift he could give her, the greatest proof of his love and respect he could pay her. He had had to make a colossal effort; proceeding slowly is not easy when you are not used to it. And, of course, he also forbade himself that sexual chemistry, those kitchen recipes for voluptuous pleasure invented over the idle centuries. No love in the saddle, no touching-up in the gods, but none of that intimate touching-up that our fathers resorted to either, none of that figure-skating beneath the mirrors of the canopy, none of those breaks at billiards that only entertain old men while they still have the means.

It was between himself and his passion for Hedwige, rather than between Hedwige and him, that Pierre had erected this partition. He had wanted to put himself to the test: “If I can restrain myself in this matter, I will be able to control myself in all other respects. Other successes will come easily to me, I shall have disassociated love with gluttony and I shall have triumphed over my demon for good.”

He could be accused of coldness, of indifference; he did not mind because all that concerned him was this haste that had until now spoilt love for him. Only Hedwige mattered; he was concerned purely for her, he cared for her alone, and he wanted to be good and humane with her. If she moved too slowly for him, he would wait for her; if he succeeded in taking her in hand, in urging her on without rushing her, he would raise her to his own speed, but by degrees. By taking her time, nature managed to transform reptiles into creatures that flew. Without risking Hedwige stumbling, he would teach her to fly. The plundering of a besieged body, the conquering caresses, the honourable wounds are a thing and a pleasure of the moment, but when what is at stake is an entire lifetime, one must set one’s watch by eternity.

Hedwige was waiting: it was certainly her turn. She watched respectfully, with all her solicitous strength, this future that she was embarking upon, this moment that society and novels trumpeted, one that she had not craved and which had crept up on her unawares. A new life was beginning for her under the gaze of this man who was a stranger, a gentle savage and a person of such terrible rapidity who would descend on her in a torrent and, with masterly precision and elemental ardour, sweep her away to goodness knows where.

Her heart beating behind the white partition, she was waiting and it seemed a long time to her, as long as boredom, toothache, insomnia and all those machines that whiled away the hours. Why did lightning not strike? “I should like it to be all over already,” she thought.

One evening, she tiptoed into Pierre’s bedroom to watch him sleeping, hoping that his stillness would betray him and reveal the secret of his strength or his weakness. The mystery of a person asleep behind that closed door seemed deeper to her than ever and it frightened her. She watched him curled up into a ball, his thumbs tucked into the palms of his hands like a small child, tangled up in his sheets, no longer knocking anything down as he passed, no longer whirling around except in dreams from which she was excluded. For the first time ever, she wondered who Pierre was and why he loved her, and she realized that what she had exchanged with him were vows, not secrets, and rings that were merely bands and not keys.

Since she was straightforward and direct, she put the question to him first thing the following morning:

“Who are you, Pierre?”

He opened his eyes in astonishment; we are always surprised when others are not satisfied with the image we present to them.

“I am the person I am to be,” he said, laughing.

But Hedwige was frowning and peering at him searchingly.

“Do you realize that I know nothing at all about you, your parents, your friends, your past life, your family history, your character?”

“I have neither parents nor friends; my character is as easy to fathom as the nose on my face, and I’ve forgotten my past because you were not part of it; in any case everything to do with yesterday bores me, I’ve only ever written one sonnet and that was in praise of tomorrow.”