‘Do you really want to go that much?’
‘A country where there’s sun and plenty to eat? I’d sell my soul to go.’
‘You were hungry during the war?’
‘Hungry? And bear in mind that when it came to scrounging for food, no one could beat Mother. She’d ride her bike fifty miles out into the country just to bring us back a couple of pounds of mushrooms or a chunk of meat. But that still didn’t keep us from being hungry. I literally went mad over the first American who plunked his rations in my arms.’
‘Is that what made you like Americans so much?’
‘That, and at first they used to amuse me.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Now, they’re too well organized; it’s not fun any more. Paris has become sinister again.’ She gave Henri an imploring look. ‘Take me with you.’
He would have enjoyed giving her that pleasure; nothing could be more gratifying than to make someone truly happy. But how could he ever convince Paula to accept a thing like that?
‘You’ve had affairs before,’ Nadine said, ‘and Paula put up with them.’
‘Who told you that?’
Nadine smiled slyly. ‘When a woman talks about her love affairs to another woman, it gets about pretty fast.’
Yes, Henri had admitted to a few infidelities, for which Paula had magnanimously forgiven him. But the difficulty now was that an explanation would inexorably lead him either to an entanglement of lies – and he wanted no more lies – or to abruptly demanding his freedom. And he had no stomach for that.
‘But going away together for a whole month,’ he murmured, ‘is something else again.’
‘But we’ll leave each other as soon as we get back. I don’t want to take you away from Paula,’ Nadine said with an insolent laugh. ‘All I want to do is get away from here for a while.’
Henri hesitated. To wander through strange streets and sit in outdoor cafés with a woman who laughed in your face, to find her warm, young body in a hotel room at night, yes, it was tempting. And since he had already decided to break off with Paula, what did he gain by waiting? Time would never patch things up; just the opposite.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I can’t promise you anything. Just remember, this isn’t a promise. But I’m going to try talking to Paula, and if it seems possible to take you, well … I will.’
II
I looked at the little sketch, and I was discouraged. Two months earlier I had said to the child, ‘Draw a house,’ and he had drawn a cottage with a roof, a chimney, smoke; but not a window, not a door, and surrounding the house was a tall black fence with pointed bars. ‘Now, draw a family,’ and he had drawn a man holding a little boy by the hand. And today again he had sketched a house without a door, surrounded by pointed black bars. We were getting nowhere. Was it a particularly difficult case, or was it I who didn’t know how to handle it? I put the drawing into his file. Didn’t I know how? Or didn’t I want to? Perhaps the child’s resistance merely reflected the resistance I felt in myself. It horrified me to have to drive that stranger, who had died two years earlier at Dachau, from his son’s heart. ‘If that’s the way it is, I ought to give up the case,’ I said to myself, standing silently beside my desk. I had two full hours ahead of me which I could have used to sort and file my notes, but I couldn’t make up my mind to get down to it. It’s true I’ve always been the kind to ask myself a lot of questions. Why does healing so often mean mutilating? What value does personal adjustment have in an unjust society? But nevertheless, it has always fascinated me to devise solutions for each new case. My objective isn’t to give my patients a false feeling of inner peace; if I seek to deliver them from their personal nightmares, it’s only to make them better able to face the real problems of life. And each time I succeeded, I felt I had accomplished something useful. The task is huge, it requires everyone’s co-operation. That’s what I thought yesterday. But it’s all based on the premise that every intelligent being has a part to play in a history that is steadily leading the world towards happiness. Today I no longer believe in that beautiful harmony. The future escapes us; it will shape itself without us. Well then, if we have to be content with the present, what difference does it make whether little Ferdinand once more becomes carefree and happy like other children? ‘I shouldn’t be thinking such things,’ I told myself. ‘If I go on like this, it won’t be long before I’ll have to close up my office.’ I went into the bathroom and brought back a bowl of water and an armful of old newspapers. In the fireplace, balls of paper were burning dully; I knelt down, moistened the printed sheets, and began crumpling them up. This sort of task was less distasteful to me than it used to be; with Nadine’s help and an occasional hand from the concierge’s wife, I kept the apartment in fairly good shape. At least while I was crumpling those old newspapers, I knew that I was doing something useful. The trouble was that it kept only my hands busy. I did succeed in driving little Ferdinand, as well as all thoughts of my profession, from my mind. But I gained little by it – once more the record began turning insistently in my head: There aren’t enough coffins left in Stavelot to bury all the children murdered by the SS. We had escaped; but elsewhere it had happened. They had hastily hidden the flags, buried their guns; the men had fled into the fields the women had barricaded themselves behind their doors. And in the streets abandoned to the rain, the sound of their raucous voices could be heard. This time they hadn’t come as magnanimous conquerors; they had returned with hate and death in their hearts. And then they went off again, leaving nothing behind of the festive village but burned-out houses and heaps of little bodies.
A sudden gust of cold air made me shiver; Nadine had opened the door.
‘Why didn’t you ask me to help you?’
‘I thought you were getting dressed.’
‘I finished dressing long ago,’ she said. She knelt beside me and grabbed a newspaper. ‘Are you afraid I don’t know how to do this? Don’t worry; it’s not beyond me.’
The fact is that she really wasn’t very good at it; she wet the paper too much, didn’t wad it enough. But nevertheless I should have asked her to help. I examined her critically. ‘Let me dress you up a little,’ I said.
‘For whom? Lambert?’
I took a shawl and an antique brooch from my dresser and put them on her. Then I handed her a pair of pumps with leather soles, a present from a patient who believed herself cured.
Nadine hesitated. ‘But you’re going out tonight, too. What are you going to wear?’
‘No one ever looks at my feet,’ I said laughing.
She took the shoes and grumbled, ‘Thanks.’ I almost answered, ‘You’re welcome,’ as one would to a stranger. My attentions, my generosity made her feel uncomfortable, for she wasn’t really grateful and she reproached herself for not being so. I felt her wavering between gratitude and suspicion as she awkwardly crumpled the newspaper. And after all, she was right in distrusting me; my devotion, my generosity were the most unfair of my wiles: I was seeking to escape remorse at the expense of making her feel guilty. Remorse because Diego was dead, because Nadine didn’t have any pretty dresses, because sullenness made her ugly; remorse because I didn’t know how to make her obey me and because I didn’t love her enough. It would have been more honest of me not to smother her with kindness. Perhaps I might have been able to comfort
