Emmanuel Bove - Henri Duchemin and His Shadows

Paul stood up abruptly. He released my hands, shoved his chair with his foot. He was overcome by so many different emotions that I couldn’t have said if he was angry, upset, afraid, or filled with hatred. I felt lost. I can be quite a good psychologist, but only if people are calm.

“Listen to me, Jean. Everything on earth follows the same laws. Starting at one point, a man, an animal, a tree grows and grows, then slowly deteriorates. Whereas in Fernande’s mind, a feeling, instead of being born humble and fragile like everything else, sprang forth powerfully, in a monstrous way. Given what I just told you, you can imagine that we were happy, that nothing disturbed our tranquility. Then how to explain what happened? Do you want to know what happened? Well, it’s very simple. Just like that, all of a sudden for no reason, when I asked Fernande to come have dinner, she got up suddenly like I did just now, shoved her chair with her foot, and announced: ‘I don’t love you anymore. Tomorrow, I’ll be leaving.’ Did you hear what I just said? Tomorrow, she’ll be leaving. She doesn’t love me anymore. Why? I haven’t the slightest idea. Am I mad? I’ve begun to wonder if my wife’s calm hasn’t always been concealing some outburst. At first I thought she was playing, imitating an actress. She often does this, she exaggerates. But no, it wasn’t that. She doesn’t love me anymore. Tomorrow, she’ll be leaving.”

I looked at Paul. He was now gesticulating wildly. He raised his arms to the sky, then wrung his hands so hard that he almost broke a finger. He paced the room, turned around abruptly, started off again, hovered far from me and then suddenly came at me with great strides, as if he were walking down a road.

“Paul, calm down. All is not lost. Perhaps she said that without thinking.”

He dropped a book and did not pick it up.

“Don’t get so worked up.”

Then, either because a sudden rage swept over him or because he wanted to prove his strength, he struck the floor with his heel several times.

“I swear that’s what she said. She’s leaving tomorrow. She doesn’t love me anymore.”

“Of course she does!”

“So you think I’m crazy? You haven’t grasped what I just told you. I’m not making anything up. She said she doesn’t love me anymore. She said she would be leaving tomorrow. Don’t you understand? It seems very clear to me.”

I did not like his insolent tone of voice. I was only trying to console him and this is how he answered me! We were not, after all, such good friends for him to allow himself to treat me this way. When someone comes to tell you his troubles, he should at least be polite. I assure you if Paul’s pain had not seemed so genuine to me, I would have answered him coldly.

I raised my eyes. Paul was sitting on the sofa. All his anger had vanished. He appeared so unhappy, so weighed down, that my displeasure evaporated.

Poor Paul! How you were suffering. You who, during the war, spoke to me about peacetime with so much ardor, you who were expecting so many joys from it, how disappointed you must be! And to think that for a moment I was angry with you for being on edge.

My friend, although he had barely cried, was in that state of semi-consciousness that follows sobbing. He was looking at a corner of the room without even having chosen it. His hands were far apart, whereas when one is suffering they are like two close friends, never wanting to leave each other. His shoulders hunched, his head to the side, he was daydreaming.

“Paul, be brave.”

“I will be.”

We did not hear a sound, not even the sound the last buses of the night should have made. We stayed like this for several minutes, without moving.

Suddenly, so abruptly that I was startled, Paul got up, took a few steps, and kneeled down too close to me.

“Jean, Jean, I’m begging you, do something for me. Perhaps you could fix everything. You are my friend. You are almost my brother. We spent unhappy times together.”

I lowered my head and met Paul’s tearful gaze. That gaze! I will remember it the rest of my life! Humble, despairing, looking up at me, it struck me as the gaze of an animal at my mercy.

“Paul, stand up. I’ll do everything I possibly can.”

“Jean, if you wanted to, you could go see Fernande right now, you could tell her how much I love her, how I’m suffering. You could speak for me and perhaps she would be sorry.”

“Yes, Paul, I’ll take care of everything.”

My friend, holding on to a chair, rose with difficulty, stumbled a bit, then sat down. His face had brightened. His eyes had grown wide and looked at me without humility. He was breathing evenly. And for the first time, he did something normal: he looked at his watch.

* * *

It was still raining. Now, however, the drizzle was so fine that when I ran my hand across my overcoat, I wiped it away. It barely moistened anything, like a fountain on a windy day. It created a misty halo around the streetlamps.

We walked briskly, without speaking. Since my friend lived close to my place, we soon arrived in front of his house.

“Jean, let’s go into this little bar. I have more to say to you.”

We went in. It was a small, very clean café. There were mirrors everywhere, yet we were reflected in none of them. The nickel, the glasses, the tin counter gave the light the coolness of water. A bit of sand crunched beneath our feet, as though we had come to sit near a spring.

A waiter approached us. His left hand, folded in, seemed to be hiding a cigarette. We ordered coffee. So that our coffee would not taste like metal, we took the spoons out of the cups.

“Jean, listen to me. Since you are kind enough to go see Fernande, let me thank you with all my heart. My happiness is in your hands. I don’t have the strength to go with you. I’ll wait for you here. In fact, it will be much better if you go alone. You see the state I’m in. Tell her I cannot live without her. Tell her I love her so much that I would give my life for her. Perhaps I have not always acted as I should have but tell her that now I will obey her, that I will be her slave. I will do anything for her to stay, for her to want to continue the life we were living. I love her so much! You can make me the happiest or the unhappiest of men.”

The little café was completely hushed. The owner was already counting his money. The waiter, leaning against a column, looked at us now and again. As for Paul, no doubt from a habit he had with his wife, he was holding my hand.

“Go now, Jean. I’ll be waiting for you here. Oh! How I’d like to know already! My God, if you were to succeed in making her understand how much I love her, I think I would dance, jump for joy, and cry out with all my strength.”

I stood up. As if he were at home, Paul walked me to the café door. Never have I seen a man so moved. I felt he was looking for one last word to say to me, one word that would sum up his pain, his hope, and he could not find it.

* * *

I shall not attempt to recount my visit to Fernande. All I can say is that she was not welcoming. Whenever I asked her a question, she would answer with these same words: “I am free to do as I please.” Although I described her husband’s suffering and his love, her attitude did not change. After hearing what my friend had to say about her, I had thought that she was, if not beautiful, at least pretty. Not at all. She was a rather corpulent, rather common woman whom I had difficulty imagining in the languid poses Paul depicted. She spoke in a disagreeable, aggressive voice. I wouldn’t say she had the behavior of a shrew, but almost. In addition, she seemed very insolent. I knew that my visit, so late in the evening, was not likely to be met with good humor. Nonetheless, she should have behaved better with a stranger and not let her annoyance at my presence show so plainly on her face. Perhaps she thought I was defending her husband for want of anything better to do! Yet she must have been aware that all of this was as disturbing to me as it was to her, and she should have been grateful to me for defending so ardently a man who, after all, was her husband and whom she must have loved, whatever she said. The more I think about this visit, the more it seems that nothing but what happened could have happened. I assure you had I known it would end the way it did, I would not have troubled myself. Paul, naturally, is not to blame, poor fellow. He thought he was doing the right thing. But I will never understand how one can be so attached to such a woman. She must have influenced everything he did. And no doubt the anger she felt on seeing me stemmed from that fact that Paul had taken the liberty of sending me to her. She could not bear the idea that her husband had done something on his own. She took it out on me. Truly, you had to be someone as good as my friend never to get angry. But in the end none of that concerns me. What I especially disliked was the offhand, overbearing way she received me when in fact I was acting in her interest just as much as in her husband’s. It was pointless of her to try to appear to be the victim of two men. Perhaps Paul had done some things of which I was unaware. But I? I simply came to try to make Fernande see what she had misjudged in her husband. That’s all. I took no one’s side. And had she treated me properly, had she answered me clearly, I would have had no reason to be angry with her.