Laforgue.
— You’ll soon see, replied Rosenthal as he engaged the gears.
None of them insisted: they had not yet lost their taste for mystery games.
The car left Paris by Avenue de Neuilly and Route de la Défense; at Argenteuil, which they approached via the river embankment, batteries of factory chimneys rose behind the curtain of rain over flat meadows ruffled by the wind; acid fumes hung everywhere in the harsh Sunday air; after leaving behind Argenteuil and then Bezons, they crossed the Seine a second time by the Maisons-Laffitte bridge, then turned in the direction of Saint-Germain. A little before Mesnil-le-Roi, the car stopped with a screech of brakes in front of an old house built in that rather soft facing-stone which one soon encounters along the roads of the Vexin region. The rain had just stopped. Its branches still black, barely budding after the interminable winter, the wisteria over the gate was dripping. Rosenthal rang at the iron door; a young woman emerged onto the perron and shouted to them to come in, and they pushed open the garden gate.
— Hullo, Rosenthal, how are you? asked the young woman. Weren’t you scared off by all that rain?
— Of course not, replied Bernard. It was even rather pleasant. Simone, these are the friends I’ve told you about.
— I’m sure François will be delighted to meet them, she said.
She clasped their hands at length, staring them rather myopically in the eye. She was fair, made-up, quite thin, her hand had bones of disturbing smallness and dryness. They went in; puddles formed at once beneath their raincoats. In the dining-room, there were crocheted covers, lampshades, plates bearing legends on the walls, a faded green cloth embroidered with yellow flowers on a round table where piles of journals and newspapers lay about. The young woman caught their glances:
— It’s pretty squalid, isn’t it? she said. But François needed a quiet place to work; in Paris, he can’t do anything with all his appointments and that dreadful telephone. I’m going to make you some tea, you must be frozen . . .
She went out, they heard the clatter of cups. They gathered round the wood fire that was burning at the back of the black marble fireplace.
— Who ever is that lady? asked Laforgue, and who was she talking about?
— You’re in the home of a friend of mine, Rosenthal replied. He’ll be down.
The young woman returned. They waited a while longer, drinking tea with slices of lemon from glasses.
— Do you at least like Russian tea? she asked.
The conversation flagged. They could hear somebody pacing up and down overhead.
— When François is working, the young woman said, he’s like a lion in a cage . . . I told him you were here.
They grew a little bored, but after all, for a Sunday in April . . . Through the panes they could see the valley of the Seine, which changed direction beneath the terraces of Saint-Germain, and on the blurred horizon a province of red roofs dropped at random, from the plain with its roads right up to the slopes of Mont Valérien.
— You’ve got a really splendid view, said Bloyé.
— As if I cared about that! she cried, crossing her bare legs. Nothing gets on my nerves worse than the countryside. And at this time of year!
A door closed on the first floor, footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs, which creaked, and their host entered. He was a tall man with something of a stoop, blue eyes which darted about with such mobility that at times he appeared to have a squint, and a bald forehead which gave him a faintly distraught air.
‘I’ve seen that face somewhere,’ thought Laforgue. ‘That weak mouth . . .’
— Régnier, said Rosenthal, allow me to introduce my friends. Meet Laforgue, Bloyé, Jurien, Pluvinage . . .
Régnier shook hands with them. They all knew his name, they had read his books, he was the first well-known writer they had met. They immediately wanted to make an impression, compel him to admire them. It was not easy, and ultimately they did not succeed. François Régnier talked almost the whole time, in a jerky manner, about the weather they were having; about the book on which he was working, and which as it so happened was concerned with youth, and he was so very glad to be having a chat with them; about travelling – he mentioned Spanish and Greek dishes, one would have thought travellers never emerged from restaurants.
— At La Barraca in Madrid, he said, one can eat a truly exceptional cocido . . . When you go to Madrid, you absolutely must go and see my old friend El Segobiano, who will make you an astounding bread soup . . .
Or else:
— In Athens, at Costi’s, the thing to eat is roast woodpigeon. But perhaps the best meal I ever had in Greece was really those eggs fried in olive oil that I ate at Eleusis, in the home of a grocer who was explaining some things to me about the Battle of Salamis.
They did not really find him very exceptional, indeed this superior tone of the man of forty who has seen it all made them quite cross. Every now and then, Régnier would stand up and walk round them.
— François, stop that, said the young women finally. You’re making us seasick . . .
— Simone, he replied, give me my plaid. It’s perishing in this house.
He threw a Scottish plaid over his shoulders and did not sit down. He asked the young men questions about themselves, about their ideas on love and politics. They replied evasively – what business was it of his? He quoted things famous people had said, he seemed to know all Paris:
— Herriot was saying to me only last week, he began, ‘My dear Régnier . . .’
Or:
— Philippe Berthelot was telling me that the day the Briand–Kellogg Pact was signed . . .
The name of Plato launched him into a brilliant variation on the theme of painting, about which as a matter of fact Berthelot had never understood a thing: however, these specialists fresh from their Sophist and Politicus judged it fallacious. Bloyé explained this to him with a certain insolent severity. They were not sorry to catch out in error such odious fluency, and to show Régnier that, even if he knew Berthelot, Herriot and Léon Blum, he was at any rate ignorant of Plato.
— It’s quite possible, he replied, laughing in a careless manner, baring his teeth. What a time it has been since I construed the Republic at the Sorbonne, before the war! That isn’t the least bit important, in any case. When you’re my age, you won’t give a fig for textual fidelity.
He went on explaining painting to them, which in those years played the role that the theatre had filled twenty years earlier, and since he was mentioning the names of painters they did not know, they found him vulgar.
A little later, he asked them:
— How old are you all?
— Twenty-two.
— Twenty-three.
— Twenty-three.
— Rosenthal I know, said Régnier.
—
