Tuesday, 30 January

Nothing new.

      I worked from nine till one in the library.  I organized Chapter XII and everything concerning Rollebon's stay in Russia up to the death of Paul I.  That is all finished now.  I shan't touch it again until the final revision.

      It is half past one.  I am at the Café Mably, eating a sandwich, and everything is more or less normal.  In any case, everything is always normal in cafes and especially in the Café Mably, because of the manager, Monsieur Fasquelle, who has a vulgar expression in his eyes which is very straightforward and reassuring.  It will soon be time for his afternoon nap and his eyes are already pink, but his manner is still lively and decisive.  He is walking around among the tables and speaking confidentially to the customers:

      "Is everything all right, Monsieur?"

      I smile at seeing him so lively: when his establishment empties, his head empties too.  Between two and four the cafe is deserted, and then Monsieur Fasquelle takes a few dazed steps, the waiters turn out the lights, and he slips into unconsciousness: when this man is alone, he falls asleep.

      There are still about a score of customers left, bachelors, small-time engineers, and office workers.  They lunch hurriedly in boarding houses which they call their 'messes', and, since they need a little luxury, they come here after their meal, to drink a cup of coffee and play poker dice; they make a little noise, but a vague noise which doesn't bother me.  In order to exist, they too have to join with others.

      I for my part live alone, entirely alone.  I never speak to anybody, I receive nothing, I give nothing.  The Autodidact doesn't count.  Admittedly there is Francoise, the woman who runs the Rendez-vous des Cheminots.  But do I speak to her?  Sometimes, after dinner, when she brings me a beer, I ask her:

      "Have you got time this evening?"

      She never says no and I follow her into one of the big bedrooms on the first floor, which she rents by the hour or by the day.  I don't pay her: we make love on an au pair basis.  She enjoys it (she has to have a man a day and she has many more besides me) and I purge myself in this way of a certain melancholy whose cause I know only too well.  But we barely exchange a few words.  What would be the use?  Every man for himself; besides, as far as she's concerned, I remain first and foremost a customer in her café.  Taking off her dress, she says to me:

      "I say, have you ever heard of an apéritif called Bricot?  Because there are two customers who've asked for it this week.  The girl didn't know it and she came to ask me.  They were commercial travellers, and they must have drunk it in Paris.  But I don't like to buy anything without knowing it.  If you don't mind, I'll keep my stockings on."

      In the past - even long after she had left me - I used to think about Anny.  Now I don't think about anybody anymore; I don't even bother to look for words.  It flows through me, more or less quickly, and I don't fix anything, I just let it go.  Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous.  They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.

      These young people amaze me; drinking their coffee, they tell clear, plausible stories.  If you ask them what they did yesterday, they don't get flustered; they tell you all about it in a few words.  If I were in their place, I'd start stammering.  It's true that for a long time now nobody has bothered how I spend my time.  When you live alone, you even forget what it is to tell a story: plausibility disappears at the same time as friends.  You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.  But on the other hand, everything improbable, everything which nobody would ever believe in a café, comes your way.  For example, on Saturday, about four in the afternoon, on the short wooden pavement of the station yard, a little woman in sky-blue was running backwards, laughing and waving a handkerchief.  At the same time, a negro in a cream-coloured raincoat, with yellow shoes and a green hat, was turning the corner of the street, whistling.  Still going backwards, the woman bumped into him, underneath a lantern which hangs from the fence and which is lit at night.  So there, at one and the same time, you had that fence which smells so strongly of wet wood, that lantern, and that little blonde in a negro's arms, under a fiery-coloured sky.  If there had been four or five of us, I suppose we would have noticed the collision, all those soft colours, the beautiful blue coat which looked like an eiderdown, the light-coloured raincoat, and the red panes of the lantern; we would have laughed at the stupefaction which appeared on those two childlike faces.

      It is unusual for a man on his own to feel like laughing: the whole scene came alive for me with a significance which was strong and even fierce, but pure.  Then it broke up, and nothing remained but the lantern, the fence, and the sky: it was still quite beautiful.  An hour later, the lantern was lit, the wind was blowing, the sky was dark: nothing at all was left.

      There is nothing very new about all that; I have never rejected these harmless emotions; far from it.  In order to feel them, it is sufficient to be a little isolated, just enough to get rid of plausibility at the right moment.  But I remained close to people, on the surface of solitude, quite determined, in case of emergency, to take refuge in their midst: so far I was an amateur at heart.

      Now, there are objects everywhere like this glass of beer, here on the table.  When I see it, I feel like saying: "Pax, I'm not playing anymore."  I realize perfectly well that I have gone too far.  I don't suppose you can 'make allowances' for solitude.  That doesn't mean that I look under my bed before going to sleep or that I'm afraid of seeing the door of my room open suddenly in the middle of the night.  All the same, I am ill at ease: for half an hour I have been avoiding looking at this glass of beer.  I look above, below, right and left: but the glass itself I don't want to see.  And I know very well that all the bachelors around me can't help me in any way: it is too late, and I can no longer take refuge among them.  They would come and slap me on the back and say to me: "Well, what's special about that glass of beer?  It's just like all the others.  It's bevelled, and it has a handle and a little coat of arms with a spade on it, and on the coat of arms is written Spatenbräu."  I know all that, but I know that there's something else.  Almost nothing.  But I can no longer explain what I see.  To anybody.  There it is: I am gently slipping into the water's depths, towards fear.

      I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices.  All these characters spend their time explaining themselves, and happily recognizing that they hold the same opinions.  Good God, how important they consider it to think the same things all together.  It's enough to see their expressions when one of those fishy-eyed men who look as if they are turned in upon themselves and with whom no agreement is possible passes among them.  When I was eight years old and used to play in the Luxembourg Gardens, there was one who came and sat in a sentry-box, against the railing which runs along the rue Auguste-Comte.  He didn't speak, but every now and then he would stretch his leg out and look at his foot with a terrified expression.  This foot wore a boot, but the other foot was in a slipper.  The keeper told my uncle that the man was a former schoolmaster.  He had been retired because he had turned up to read out the marks at the end of term dressed as an academician.  We were terribly afraid of him because we sensed that he was alone.  One day he smiled at Robert, holding his arms out to him from a distance: Robert nearly fainted.  It wasn't the fellow's poverty-stricken appearance which frightened us, nor the tumour he had on his neck which rubbed against the edge of his collar: but we felt that he was shaping crab-like or lobster-like thoughts in his head.  And it terrified us to think that somebody could have lobster-like thoughts about the sentry-box, about our hoops, about the bushes.

      Is it that which awaits me then?  For the first time it disturbs me to be alone.  I should like to talk to somebody about what is happening to me before it is too late, before I start frightening little boys.  I wish Anny were here.

      It's odd: I have just filled up tend pages and I haven't told the truth, at least, not the whole truth.  When I wrote under the date: 'Nothing new', it was with a bad conscience: as a matter of fact there was a little incident, with nothing shameful or extraordinary about it, which refused to come out.  'Nothing new'.  I admire the way we can lie, putting reason on our side.  Obviously, nothing new has happened in a manner of speaking.  This morning, at a quarter past eight, as I was leaving the Hôtel Printania to go to the library, I tried to pick up a piece of paper lying on the ground and didn't succeed.  That's all, and it isn't even an event.  Yes, but, to tell the whole truth, it made a profound impression on me: it occurred to me that I was no longer free.  At the library, I tried unsuccessfully to get rid of that idea.  I attempted to escape from it at the Café Mably.  I hoped that it would disappear in the bright light.  But it stayed there inside me, heavy and painful.  It is that idea which has dictated the preceding pages to me.

      Why didn't I mention it?  It must have been out of pride, and then, too, a little out of awkwardness.  I am not accustomed to telling myself what happens to me, so I find it hard to remember the exact succession of events, and I can't make out what is important.  But now that's over and done with: I have re-read what I wrote in the Café Mably and it made me feel ashamed; I want no secrets, no spiritual condition, nothing ineffable; I am neither a virgin nor a priest, to play at having an inner life.

      There's nothing much to say: I couldn't manage to pick up the piece of paper, that's all.

      I am very fond of picking up chestnuts, old rags, and especially pieces of paper.  I find it pleasant to pick them up, to close my hand over them; for two pins I would put them to my mouth as children do.  Anny used to fly into a rage when I picked up by one corner pieces of paper which were heavy and rich-looking but probably soiled with excrement.  In summer or early autumn, you can find in gardens pieces of newspapers baked by the sun, as dry and brittle as dead leaves, and so yellow you might think they had been dipped in picric acid.  Other pieces of paper, in winter, are pulped, crumpled, stained; they return to the earth.  Others which are new and even shiny, white and palpitating, are as sedate as swans, but the earth has already ensnared them from below.  They twist and tear themselves away from the mud, but only to fall a little farther on, this time for good.  All these pieces of paper are worth picking up.  Sometimes I simply feel them, looking at them closely; at other times I tear them to hear the long crackling noise they make, or else, if they are very wet, I set fire to them, something which is not easy to do; then I wipe the muddy palms of my hands on a wall or a tree trunk.

      So, today, I was looking at the fawn-coloured boots of a cavalry officer who was coming out of the barracks.  As I followed them with my eyes, I saw a piece of paper lying beside a puddle.  I though that the officer was going to crush the paper into the mud with his heel, but no: with a single step he strode over paper and puddle.  I went up to it: it was a lined page, probably torn out of a school notebook.  The rain had drenched and twisted it, and it was covered with blisters and swellings, like a burnt hand.  The red line of the margin had blurred into a pink smear; the ink had run in places.  The bottom of the page was hidden by a crust of mud.  I bent down, already looking forward to touching this fresh and tender pulp which would roll into grey balls in my fingers ... I couldn't do it.

      I stayed in a bent position for a moment, I read: 'Dictation: The White Owl', then I straightened up, empty-handed.  I am no longer free, I can no longer do what I want.

      Object ought not to touch, since they are not alive.  You use them, you put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more.  But they touch me, it's unbearable.  I am afraid of entering into contact with them, just as if they were living animals.

      Now I see; I remember better what I felt the other day on the sea-shore when I was holding that pebble.  It was a sort of sweet disgust.  How unpleasant it was!  And it came from the pebble, I'm sure of that, it passed from the pebble into my hands.  Yes, that's it, that's exactly it: a sort of nausea in the hands.