he said, adding feebly, ‘but as I explained to you …’
‘I remember,’ she said. ‘But with the change that’s taken place in me, I can assure you you no longer have any reason to move to a hotel. Listen, you want independence, adventures; but you want me, too, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then stay here. I swear you won’t have any reason to regret it. You’ll see for yourself how much I’ve changed and how little I’ll get in your way from now on.’ She stood up and reached for the telephone. ‘The concierge’s nephew will bring your things up.’
Henri rose and walked towards the stairway leading to the bedroom. ‘Later,’ he said to himself. He couldn’t after all, begin torturing her again the moment he came back. ‘I’m going to clean up a little,’ he said. ‘They’re waiting for me at the office. I just stopped off to give you a kiss.’
‘I understand perfectly,’ she replied tenderly.
‘She’s going to bend over backwards to prove to me I’m free,’ he thought unhappily as he got into the little black car. ‘But it won’t last. I won’t stay there indefinitely,’ he said to himself bitterly. ‘I’ll start taking care of that little matter tomorrow.’ But for the moment, he no longer wanted to think about Paula; all he wanted was to luxuriate in his happiness at being back in Paris. The streets were grey and the people had been cold and hungry that winter; but here, at least, everyone wore shoes. And then, you could speak to them, speak for them. In Portugal, the thing that was so depressing was the feeling of being a completely impotent witness to a totally foreign disaster.
Getting out of the car, he looked affectionately at the façade of the building. How had things gone at the paper while he was away? Was it true his novel was a success? He climbed the stairs quickly and when he reached the top he was greeted with cheers. A streamer hanging across the hallway read ‘Welcome Home!’ Standing with their backs to the walls, his colleagues formed a military arch, but in place of swords, they held their fountain pens. They began singing an unintelligible couplet in which ‘Salazar’ rhymed with ‘gal and car’. Only Lambert was missing. Why?
‘Everyone to the bar!’ Luc cried out, giving Henri a hearty slap on the back. ‘How did it go?’
‘What a sunburn!’
‘Look at those clodhoppers.’
‘Are you going to do an article on Portugal?’
‘Hey! Look at that shirt!’
They fingered his suit, his tie; they shouted and joked and asked question after question while the bartender filled and refilled their glasses. Henri in turn questioned them. Circulation had dropped off a little, but the paper would soon be going back to a larger format, which would help make up the loss; there had been some trouble with the censor – nothing very serious; everyone had nothing but praise for his book, and he had received a tremendous amount of mail; on his desk, he would find every issue of L’Espoir for the month he had been away. Preston, the Yank, was trying to arrange for a larger allotment of paper, enabling them to put out a Sunday magazine supplement. And there were a great many other things to discuss. But all this noise, the voices, the laughter, the problems, added to three nights of fitful sleeping, made him dizzy – dizzy and happy. What a silly idea to have gone to Portugal in search of a past that was dead and buried, when the present was so joyfully alive!
‘All I can say is I’m damned happy to be back!’ he exclaimed, his face beaming.
‘And we’re not exactly unhappy to have you back, you know,’ Luc said. ‘In fact we were even beginning to need you. I warn you, though, you’re going to have a hell of a lot of work to catch up on.’
‘Well, I hope so!’
The typewriters were clicking away. They separated in the hallway after a few more jokes and bursts of laughter. How young they seemed after coming from a country in which everyone was ageless! Henri opened the door to his office and sat down in his chair with the satisfaction of an old bureaucrat. He spread out the latest issues of L’Espoir before him. The usual by-lines, the same careful layout – not a fraction of an inch of space wasted. He jumped back one month and began leafing through the issues, one after another. They had got along wonderfully without him, and that, of course, was the surest proof of his success. L’Espoir wasn’t merely a wartime adventure; it was a solid enterprise. Vincent’s articles on Holland were excellent, and Lambert’s on the concentration camps even more so. No question about it, they had hit precisely the right note – no nonsense, no lies, no humbug. Because of its scrupulous honesty, L’Espoir appealed to the intellectuals, and it attracted the masses because it was so alive. There was only one weak point: Sézenac’s articles were rather thin.
‘Can I come in?’ Lambert asked, standing in the doorway and smiling timidly.
‘Of course! Where’ve you been hiding? You could at least have come to the station, you lazy bum.’
‘I didn’t think there’d be enough room for four,’ Lambert explained. ‘And their little party …’ he added with a grimace. ‘Am I disturbing you?’
‘Not at all. Pull up a chair.’
‘Was it a good trip?’ Lambert asked. ‘I guess you’ve been asked that question twenty times already,’ he added with a shrug of his shoulders.
‘Good and bad. A beautiful setting, and seven million people starving to death.’
‘They certainly have excellent cloth,’ Lambert remarked, examining Henri approvingly. He smiled. ‘Is that the style there, orange shoes?’
‘Orange or lemon. But it’s good leather. There’s plenty of everything for the rich; that’s the lousiest part of it. I’ll tell you all about it later, but first fill me in on what’s been happening here. I’ve just finished reading some of your articles; they’re damned good, you know.’
‘I felt as if I were back in school writing a composition: Describe your impressions while visiting a concentration camp,’ he said ironically. ‘I think there were more than twenty of us there writing on the same subject.’ Suddenly his face brightened. ‘Do you want to know something that’s really good? Your book. I started it after driving a whole night and day without sleep, and believe me I was really beat. But I read it straight through, couldn’t go to sleep until I finished it.’
‘You make me happy,’ Henri said.
Compliments always embarrassed him. Yet what Lambert said gave him real pleasure. It was precisely the way he had dreamed of being read – straight through in a single night by an impatient young man. That alone made writing worthwhile. Especially that.
‘I thought maybe you’d like to see the reviews,’ Lambert said, tossing a thick yellow envelope on the desk. ‘You’ll find my two cents’ worth in there, too.’
‘You’re damned right I’d like to see them. Thanks,’ Henri said.
Lambert looked at him questioningly. ‘Did you do any writing there?’
‘An article on how I found things.’
‘And now you’ll be starting another novel?’
‘I’ll get to it as soon as
