A Family
I was on my way to revisit my friend Simon Radevin, whom I had not seen for fifteen years.
Once he had been my best friend, the true guest of my mind, that friend with whom a man spends long evenings, quiet or gay, to whom he tells the intimate secrets of his heart, for whom he finds, talking at ease, rare, delicate, ingenious and exquisite thoughts, born of a mutual sympathy that inspires and releases the mind.
For many years we had rarely been separated. We had lived, travelled, thought, and dreamed together, had the same love for the same things, admired the same books, appreciated the same works of art, quivered to the touch of the same sensations, and laughed so often at the same things that we understood one another completely, merely by the interchange of a glance.
Then, all of a sudden, he had married a provincial girl who had come to Paris to find a husband. How had this flaxen-haired, thin little creature, with silly hands, clear, empty eyes and a fresh, stupid voice, a girl like all the other hundred thousand marriageable dolls—how had she managed to pick up this youth of delicate perceptions and fine intelligence? It is one of those things one cannot understand. Doubtless he had hoped for happiness, the simple, sweet, lasting happiness to be found in the arms of a good, loving, faithful wife, and he had fancied that he saw all this in the transparent eyes of this pale-haired chit of a girl.
He had not reflected that an active man, quivering with eager life, tires of anything as soon as he has acquired the stupid reality of it, unless he becomes so besotted as to lose his proper understanding of things.
What sort of man was I going to find him? Still lively, witty, laughing, and enthusiastic, or sunk in the slumber born of life in the provinces? A man may well change in fifteen years.
The train stopped at a little station, and, as I was getting out of the carriage, a stout, a very stout man, with red cheeks and a tubby stomach, rushed towards me with open arms, shouting: “Georges.” I embraced him, but I had not recognised him.
“By Gad, you’re no thinner,” I murmured in bewilderment.
“What can you expect?” he laughed in reply. “Happy days! Good living! Good nights! Eating and sleeping, that’s my life!”
I stared at him, searching his large face for the features I had loved. The eyes alone had not changed, but I could no longer see the old light in them, and said to myself: “If it is true that the light in the eyes is the reflection of the brain, then the brain in that head is not the one I once knew so well.”
But his eyes were shining, full of joy and friendship; only they no longer held the intelligent clarity that is as true an index to the worth of a mind as are words.
“Look, these are my two eldest,” said Simon, suddenly.
A girl of fourteen, almost a woman, and a boy of thirteen, in school clothes, advanced with a timid, awkward air.
“Yours?” I murmured.
“Yes,” he replied with a laugh. “How many have you?”
“Five. Three more at home.”
He had answered with a proud, pleased, almost triumphant air; I was smitten with a feeling of profound pity, touched to vague contempt, for the innocent, frank vanity of this reproductive animal who spent his nights generating children between a sleep and a sleep, in his provincial house, like a rabbit in a hutch.
I got into a carriage that he drove himself, and we set off through the town, a sad, sleepy, dull little place, with nothing moving on the streets but a few dogs and two or three servants. From time to time a shopkeeper at his door would touch his hat, and Simon would return his greeting and tell me the man’s name, doubtless to prove to me that he knew all the inhabitants by name. It occurred to me that he might be thinking of becoming a deputy, the favourite dream of all men buried in small towns.
We were soon through the place, and the carriage turned into a rather pretentious garden, masquerading as a park, and stopped in front of a turreted house that did its best to be taken for a country mansion.
“This is my poor little place,” said Simon, fishing for a compliment.
“It’s delightful,” I replied.
On the front steps appeared a lady, attired for the visitor, with hair dressed for the visitor, and phrases prepared for the visitor. She was no longer the fair-haired, colourless girl whom I had seen at the church fifteen years before, but a stout, overdressed lady, one of those ladies with no age, no character, no elegance, no wit, nor any of the attributes that constitute a woman. She was merely a mother, a fat, commonplace mother, the breeder, the human broodmare, the procreating machine made of flesh, with no interests but her children and her cookery-book.
She bade me welcome, and I stepped into the hall, where three children stood arrayed in order according to their height, looking as though they were placed there for a review, like firemen before a mayor.
“Ah ha! so these are the others?” said I.
Simon, radiant, gave me their names: “Jean, Sophie and Gontran.”
The drawing room door was open. I went in, and saw in an armchair something that trembled, a man, an old paralysed man.
Madame Radevin came forward:
“That is my grandfather. He is eighty-seven.”
She shouted into the palsied old man’s ear:
“A friend of Simon’s, Grandpapa.”
Her ancestor made an effort to say good evening to me, and mumbled: “Wa, wa, wa,” waving his hand. “You are too kind, sir,” I replied, and sank into a chair.
Simon had just come in.
“Ah ha!” he laughed; “so you’ve made the acquaintance of Grandpa? He’s a treasure; he keeps the children constantly amused. He’s so greedy that every meal is nearly the death of him; you can’t imagine what he would eat if he were left to himself. But you’ll see for yourself. He leers at sweet things as if they were girls. You’ve never come across anything so funny; you’ll see presently.”
Then I was shown my room, to wash and dress, for it was nearly dinnertime. On the stairs I heard a great noise of footsteps, and turned round. All the children were following me in a procession, behind their father, doubtless to do me honour.
My room looked out over the plain, an endless, bare expanse, a sea of grass, wheat and oats, without a single clump of trees or the suspicion of a hill. It was a sad and striking image of life as it must be lived in that house.
A bell rang. It was for dinner. I went down.
Mme. Radevin took my arm with a ceremonial air and we went into the dining room. A servant was pushing up the old man’s armchair, and as soon as it was in position by his plate, he threw a greedy and inquisitive look towards the pudding, with difficulty turning his shaking head from one dish to the other.
Simon rubbed his hands. “You will be amused,” he said, and all the children, realising that I was to be regaled with the spectacle of greedy Grandpa, burst into a chorus of laughter, while their mother merely smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
Radevin made a megaphone with his hands and bawled at the old man:
“Sweet rice mould this evening.”
The ancient’s wrinkled face lit up and he trembled more violently from head to foot, to indicate that he had understood and was pleased.
Dinner was begun.
“Look,” murmured Simon. Grandpapa did not like the soup, and refused to eat it. He was forced to do so, for the sake of his health; the servant forcibly thrust a spoonful into his mouth, while he blew violently to keep from swallowing the broth; it spurted out like a fountain, all over the table and over those sitting nearest him.
The children shrieked with laughter, while their father, highly pleased, repeated: “Funny old man, isn’t he?”
Throughout the meal he monopolised the attention of the whole family. His eyes devoured the dishes on the table, and his frantically trembling hands tried to snatch them and pull them to him. Sometimes they were placed almost in his reach, so that the company might see his desperate efforts, his palsied clutches, the heartbroken appeal manifested in his whole body, his eyes, his mouth, his sensitive nose. His mouth watered so that he dribbled all over his napkin, uttering inarticulate whines. And the entire family was delighted by this odious and grotesque mode of torture.
Then a very small piece would be put on his plate, and he would eat it with feverish voracity, so that he might the sooner have something else.
When the sweet rice came, he almost had a fit. He moaned with longing.
“You have eaten too much; you shan’t have any,” shouted Gontran, and they made as though he were not to be given any.
Then he began to cry. And as he wept he trembled still more violently, while all the children roared with laughter.
At last his portion, a very small one, was given him; and, as he ate the first mouthful of the sweet, he made a comically gluttonous noise in his throat, and a movement of the neck like that of a duck swallowing too large a morsel of food.
When he had finished, he began to stamp his feet for more.
Seized with pity at the heartrending spectacle of the tortures inflicted on this ridiculous Tantalus, I implored my friend on his behalf:
“Do give him a little more rice.”
“Oh! no, my dear chap,” replied Simon; “if he ate too much at his age, it might be bad for him.”
I was silent, musing on this speech. O Morality, O Logic, O Wisdom! At his age! So, they deprived him of the only pleasure he could still enjoy, out of care for his health! His health! What was that inert and palsied wreck to do with his health if he had it? Were they husbanding his days? His days? How many: ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred? And why? For his own sake? Or was it in order to preserve to the family the spectacle of his impotent greed?
He had nothing to do in this life, nothing. Only one desire, one pleasure, remained to him; why not give him full measure of that last pleasure, give it him until he died of it?
At last, after a long game of cards, I went up to my room to bed; I was sad, very, very sad.
I stood by my window. There was no sound outside save the faint, soft, sweet chirp of a bird in some nearby tree. It must have been the bird’s soft, nightlong lullaby for his mate, sleeping upon the eggs.
And I thought of the five children of my poor friend, who must now be snoring beside his ugly wife.