Paul Morand - The Man in a Hurry

“It’s fascinating,” Pierre broke in. “And then?”

“That was all,” Regencrantz continued. “The commodore switched off the ignition and remained there, absolutely unwilling to move, sitting there solemnly, affected in turn by the lethargy that Fireflash seemed to have communicated to him; an eternal silence fell over the salty beach.

“The powder must be wet, that’s why Fireflash hasn’t set off,” I thought. “Speed must be a strange sort of fairy for everything to be sacrificed because of it, even time! Here is a great man who, in one hundred and seventeen consecutive days, has not managed to travel one mile. He’s really a saint, a patient hero, a victim of slowness. The commodore deserves fame, but not of the kind he’s searching for. It would be better for him to be famous under another name: that of the man who spent four and a half months travelling one thousand six hundred and nine metres.”

“And what about you?” said Pierre, “how many hours have you spent learning this edifying apologia by heart?”

EVER SINCE HEDWIGE’S pregnancy had prevented him from playing tennis, Pierre had replaced that sport with swimming and every morning he would go to the pool, where he met Vincent Amyot. These meetings, accidental initially, had become daily encounters and the two brothers-in-law became friends; they got changed together; that is to say that normally, while Amyot was unknotting his tie, Pierre was already putting on his swimming costume. But that morning, instead of rushing to plunge into the water, Pierre was lounging about in the sunshine with his towel round his neck, his back to the cabins.

Amyot was gazing at him.

“You’ve got thinner,” he said.

“Unlike you,” said Pierre. “That’s the belly of a happy man!”

“Does that mean that you’re not a happy man?”

Amyot lit a cigarette and sat on the ground; to his surprise, Pierre did likewise.

“Me, unhappy!” he said. “Don’t you realize what Hedwige means to me…”

He stopped talking and stared at the murky bottom of the pool, streaked with three black lines intended for racing.

“Explain yourself,” said Amyot.

“Well… to begin with, I’m only warm when I’m with her. Yes, I don’t know why, but spring hasn’t started for me this year. The thermometer shows over fifteen degrees and I’m living at zero…”

“It’s the breeze caused by your speed,” Vincent interrupted mockingly.

“…the mere presence of Hedwige gives me a warm rush. Her skin is smooth and fiery, she emits a sleek radiance like the glaze of a fine stove. Without being bubbly, she enlivens everything; she hasn’t the vulgar incandescence of effusive women, she doesn’t parch you; she radiates the true warmth of life, that of the woman, that of the breast, that of the heart. In her presence, it’s always summer.”

“You’re grateful to her for giving you a child,” said Amyot enviously.

“No, that’s not why I find her so good and so beautiful. For she’s still just as beautiful at the end of her third month; Plato says that beauty is a short-lived tyranny; with Hedwige it’s a long-lasting empire; yes, Hedwige is enduring and perfect like my most treasured belongings. She is a living High Renaissance piece, a constantly rekindled, always satisfying requirement for my eyes. Oh no! Mother Boisrosé didn’t cheat on quality!”

“Do you get on well with the mother-in-law?” asked Amyot.

“Oh yes,” said Pierre hastily, “she’s a decent woman.”

“Ah, do you think so!” said Amyot, starting to laugh. “Forgive me, but the epithet is funny.”

“Wasn’t she kind to you?”

“My dear Pierre… she has been perfectly kind, naturally; it’s just that with perfect kindness she took away my wife!”

He sighed and nodded, the still fine features of his appearance creasing into the folds of his double chin and, confronted with Pierre’s questioning gaze, he continued:

“In the beginning, I tried to keep Angélique for myself — not for me alone, of course, I wouldn’t have been able to do that — but at least share her fifty-fifty. For a year and a half I acted methodically, as befits a meticulous Polytechnique graduate. And then, I grew weary. Angélique leaves at nine o’clock in the morning and comes back at eight in the evening (on the evening she doesn’t have dinner at Saint-Germain, that is). And she sleeps there at least twice a week.”

“Hedwige very seldom goes there,” said Pierre, “I forbid her to drive in her condition.”

“I should be extremely surprised,” said Vincent, “if Madame de Boisrosé could survive a single day without seeing one of her daughters. First of all, the Rule decrees it so. You think that you have contracted a marriage; you have contracted a disease, the Boisrosé disease: for your wife this means communal life, a siesta until six in the evening, the dormitory; for you, being led by the nose and presented submissively to Bonne, while waiting for her to grab you by your protruding snout.”

Pierre, who was accustomed to being direct, suddenly turned towards Vincent:

“Is she hot-blooded, your wife?”

“She is. Only it’s not focused on men. She only opens her arms to Mamicha, she only embraces her sisters, she has Saint-Germain in her blood, she stops being unfeeling there even with Uncle Rocheflamme, and I really do think that she won’t ever know any real pleasure until she’s in the Boisrosé family grave, because, in her will, she has refused to be buried with me. When it’s a matter of climbing into the maternal bed, there’s no problem! I wish you could see her hurling off her clothes. And her impassioned messages about putting an end to her solitude, the way she glances at the door of my house, at that lovely door that will allow her to rush off ‘home’ at last! And her weariness as soon as she returns! And her eagerness as soon as she sets off there again! Not to mention the hours that she evades me. Everything she loses in insomnia and weight when she is with me, she puts on again with siestas and kilos the moment she’s gone back to her family…”

He sighed once more.

“Angélique is an accomplished lover, I’m sure of that,” he continued. “She has extravagant desires that are like rages, and a prodigious lust; she can love until she draws blood, but the blood is that which she has in her veins.”

Pierre stood up suddenly, knotted the cord of his swimming trunks and paced up and down.

“I suggest we found a club,” he said, “an association comprising all present and future men married to Boisrosé girls. We have to stand together, for heaven’s sake! We have to pit a rule against the Rule. Each of these girls is incomparable individually; they are also very beautiful all together, but I loathe having to think of them collectively. When I think of Hedwige, it makes me attribute a series of attractive qualities to the others that I had thought were particular to my wife and which, I am bound to acknowledge, don’t really belong to her. It’s very unpleasant! It’s already bad enough marrying someone who looks like her mother; it’s like living with a memento mori , with the ivory death’s head on the table, among the festive roses.”

“The Boisrosés don’t look like their mother fortunately,” said Amyot, “but I know what you mean. When you possess a beautiful piece of original cire perdue , you wouldn’t want the sculptor selling his reproduction rights to a maker of chimney stacks. Nevertheless, you have to resign yourself; Boisrosé habits are stronger and the Boisrosé girls less pliable than the hardest of metals. This family is a voodoo sect in which the sons-in-law are sympathizers, not founder members. There’s nothing to be done, we might as well give up.”