Tender Shoots Read online

  Compared to such passages, the meagre correspondence we were discussing matters little. This does mean to say, of course, that Boileau was not an excellent, sometimes delightful, poet. And no doubt a hysterical genius was struggling in Racine’s mind, kept in check by a superior intellect, and in his tragedies it simulated for him, with a perfection that has never been equalled, the flux and reflux, the pitching and the tossing, fully grasped nevertheless, of passion. But all the admissions (withdrawn the moment they are felt to have been badly received, and reiterated, if it is feared, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they may not have been understood, and then, after many a tortuous detour, fanned into a raging blaze) that so inimitably enliven any scene from Phèdre cannot prevent us, retroactively, from feeling surprised and not remotely charmed by the Lettres aux imaginaires. Were we bound absolutely to adopt a canon of the kind that can be extracted from these Lettres, we should much prefer, at a time when, if we are to believe M. France, people no longer knew how to write, the preface (to do with his moods of near-insanity) that Gérard de Nerval dedicated to Alexandre Dumas: “They [his sonnets] would lose their charm by being explained, if that were possible; grant me credit at least for expressing myself; the last folly that will probably remain to me is to think of myself as a poet—it is up to the critics to cure me of it.” Here, if we are to take the Imaginaires as a canon, is something that is well written, that is much better written. But we do not want a “canon” of any sort. The truth is (and M France knows this better than anyone for he knows everything better than anyone else) that from time to time a new and original writer emerges (let us call him, if you will, Jean Giraudoux or Paul Morand, since, I cannot think why, Morand and Giraudoux are always being compared to each other, just as Natoire and Falconet are in the marvellous Nuit à Châteauroux, without their bearing any resemblance to one another). This new writer is generally fairly tiring to read and hard to understand because he brings things together through new relationships. We follow him easily through the first half of the sentence, but there we flag. And we feel that this is only because the new writer is nimbler than us. Original writers spring up just as original painters do. When Renoir began to paint, people did not recognise the things he depicted. Nowadays it is easy to say he was an eighteenth-century painter. But, in saying this, we omit the temporal factor, and that it took a long time, even well into the nineteenth century, for Renoir to be recognised as a great artist. To succeed, the original painter, the original writer, proceed in the way oculists do. The treatment—whether in their painting, their writing—is not always pleasant. When it is over, they tell us: “Now look”. And suddenly the world, which has not been created only once, but is recreated as often as a new artist emerges, appears to us—so different from the old world—in perfect clarity. We adore Renoir’s, Morand’s or Giraudoux’s women, whereas before they were given this treatment, we refused to see them as women. And we feel a need to walk in the forest that at first sight had seemed to us to be anything but a forest, and more, for example, like a tapestry of a thousand shades of colour in which the actual tints of the forests were lacking. Such is the new and perishable universe which the artist creates, and which will endure until a new one surfaces. To all of which there may be many things to add. But the reader, who has already guessed what they are, will be able to explain them, better than I could, by reading Clarissa, Aurora and Delphine.

  The only criticism I might be tempted to suggest to Morand is that he sometimes uses imagery other than the inevitable images. Now, all approximate images do not count. Water (given certain conditions) boils at one hundred degrees. At ninety-eight, at ninety-nine, the phenomenon does not occur. Therefore, better not to have any images. Put someone who knows neither Wagner nor Beethoven in front of a piano for six months and let him try out every combination of notes on the keys that happen to occur to him, never from out of this jumble of notes will he give birth to the Spring theme in Die Walküre or the pre-Mendelssohnian (or rather infinitely super-Mendelssohnian) phrase of the Fifteenth Quartet. It is the same criticism that might have been levelled at Péguy while he was alive, of trying to say something in ten different ways, when there is only one. The glory of his admirable death has expunged everything.

  It seems as if hitherto it has been in French and foreign mansions, built by architects inferior to Daedalus, that our minotaur Morand has sought the meanderings of his “vast retreat”, as Phèdre calls it in the scene to which I have just alluded. There he lies in wait for the young girls in their gowns, their sleeves fluttering like wings, who have been unwise enough to descend into the Labyrinth. I do not know these mansions any better than he does and would be of no use to him “in unwinding the uncertain predicament”. But if, before he becomes an Ambassador and competes with Consul Beyle, he wishes to visit the Hôtel de Balbec, then I will offer him the fatal thread.

  C’est moi, prince, c’est moi dont l’utile secours

  Vous a du labyrinthe enseigné les détours.*

  * ’ Tis I, prince, ’tis I whose valuable assistance/Has taught you the winding path out of the labyrinth.

  CLARISSA

  To the memory of E B

  I KNEW YOU, Clarissa, in happy days. Those days, filled so easily with our petty cares, recalled your glass cabinets, too narrow to contain the thousand pointless and precious knick-knacks that you loved. We used to meet every night in the best lit, most sonorous houses in town, where we would dance. Sleep would later carry me far into the day and often the ringing of the telephone would wake me up:

  “Look out of the window,” you would say, “I am sending you a beautiful cloud!”

  I scarcely had time to put down the receiver (for our houses were next door to one another), I ran barefoot to the window and I saw coming towards me, trailing across the sky, the pink or grey mass you had told me about, heavy and as if weighed down with the welcome it brought me.

  I would go and collect you in a great hurry—for these winter afternoons are short—to haggle over a piece of silk, yet another useless item, at some antique dealer’s in Ebury Street where we arrived late, while across the shop floor already wreathed in shadow a last glimmer of light shone on the gold of the lacquers, on the steel of the weapons and on the false teeth of the antique dealer who amused you.

  Those were happy days.

  When I immerse myself in their memory, two visions loom up.

  It is nighttime; a clear night, one of very few in a rain-filled spring whose warm, blue humidity it continues to exhale. The windows are open; we are standing on the balcony, our elbows on the parapet. You are leaning over to breathe in the smell of the newly mown grass that wafts up from Kensington and mingles with the animal perfume of the dance; the green acid of your Longhi cloak hangs down over the bright orange colour of the hump-backed Japanese bridge; pressed against the railings by the masks is a woman with bare breasts who laughs as she tosses bread to the carp. While the Venetian Bauta mask sets your face in shadow, allowing only a curious chemical-red mouth to be seen, the night girds all this feasting in a rich, velvety shade, illuminated only by the upturned wheels of the big dipper, which tumbles vertically above us in a motionless fall.

  Now it is daytime, in the countryside.

  The tennis court seems to have been cut into the truncated hilltop, from where the county rolls down to the sea in gentle undulations, like sumptuous, unused parkland. A young man dressed in whites accompanies the ball which he tosses up, and which his opponent is expecting, in an elongated action, gathering his movements and his shadow around him. On a mound of blue grass some young women dressed in cherry, yellow, green, cherry jumpers gather around the tea, which is served on a rattan table. And the centre of all brightness, of this glistening jollity, the luminous axle of this circle of women who are surrounded in turn by the still vaster ring of countryside and sky, is the silver teapot which sings like the wasps on the tart—reflected in the lid is a convex image of the sky, the shadow of the trees; in its ribbed body
, the attenuated shapes of the figures, and, in narrow streaks, the jumpers, cherry, yellow, green, cherry.

  But how can one detach oneself for a single second from the present moment?

  Here is a muddy moor where the sparse grass oozes like a sponge, over which the rotting green light of dusk falls; nothing restricts it except the sky and, to the left, the white wooden shacks from which the smell of rancid butter reaches my nostrils. In the puddles of water the image of an aluminium moon sends back its reflection into the washed sky, emptied of its rain. On the disintegrating roads, the faceted wheels of heavy artillery create vertebrate potholes filled with mauve water.

  Then up the steep-sided road that connects the arsenal to the barracks, climb soldiers in battledress. In the mud, beneath the low sky, ammunition wagons sway, drawn by brewers’ horses, driven by soldiers with gentle, inscrutable faces. Behind them, the plain runs down towards the leaden river, covered as far as the eye can see with tents, wagons, naval guns without mounts, shaken apart with layers of violet earth, as regular as mole-hills, the trenches of the New Army.

  Lastly, set against the sky is the city with its rearing chimneys, its squat gasometers, the lattice-girder railway bridges, the shiny rails, the signal discs, the masts of the sailing ships, the heavy smoke of the vessels under steam, and the arsenal dipping its pink steps in the river’s rising tide.

  You did not believe in the war. You used to say:

  “Anyway, it won’t last long.”

  “It would be too awful …”

  Or:

  “It’s impossible, I’ve been to Munich.”

  But the Germans made war on France in order to be able to come to the Café de Paris in uniform. They made war on England because they were convinced that English tailors made badly cut clothes for them deliberately.

  When I telephoned to tell you that Germany had declared war on Russia, you replied:

  “I was in the garden, I was cutting some roses …”

  You were upset thinking about all your relatives, your friends of France, but you could not rid yourself of that sense of security of those who live in a place surrounded by water.

  This country awoke slowly to the war. The evidence came from outside, on seeing the German Jews from Commercial Road closing their shutters, those from the West End hiding away their pictures, the slump of consols in London, the collapse of wool in Sydney, the Americans fleeing in their nickel-plated motorcars, and gold, more fearful still; on hearing that arthritic diplomats were leaving the spas, that kings were returning to their capitals, that other countries were closing their frontiers like bolted doors. Then it was the departure of the French hairdressers and chefs, going down to the stations carrying a flag.

  Warships could be seen sailing from Portsmouth as they did every year, for the regattas, but the stoppers had been removed from their guns and the German yachts did not come. The sea reacted first, then the coasts where the coastguard reservists climbed up to the semaphores with their kit folded inside a green canvas bag. And the fever eventually spread from the edges to the centre.

  All this took place imperceptibly. England did not experience that sleepless August night when millions of men kissed their wives with dry lips and burned their letters. She paid no attention to the commotion, did not close her portholes, did not slip her moorings.

  Just one policeman was put on duty outside the German embassy.

  And when they realised, some barracks were built.

  But could it be realised other than slowly, in this unscarred country, where children have never discovered cannonballs from previous wars embedded in the walls of houses?

  Would you hope to see at a given signal the streets empty themselves of their cars, of their passers-by? The lawyers in gowns, the ushers in amaranthine robes, the judges in wigs, the bookmakers in putty-coloured overcoats with mother-of-pearl buttons, setting out on foot to the railway stations, making their way to the inland garrisons, and the peers keeping watch on the bridges over which no packed trains were yet passing, towards our frontier?

  I hear you coming, Clarissa. You walk on your heels, with big, decisive footsteps; your dress makes no silken rustling noise; you are whistling a ragtime tune.

  You are tall, broad-shouldered; a lovely figure and red hair. You are not vain about your beauty, but you like to draw attention to your hair.

  You say:

  “I adore redheads. As soon as a redhead appears anywhere, I notice her.”

  You loathe the indirect compliments that dark-haired women aspire to, affirming hypocritically that only blondes know how to please; you say:

  “I’m a redhead. Like all redheads, I’m bad-tempered.”

  At first, you are not pleasant, especially when someone meets you socially for the first time, without your house, without your friends, without all that explains you, with a hat and gloves. You glance around you disdainfully, you purse your lips, you hold your head high and you seem to be saying to people:

  “I’m taller than you.”

  You are so badly dressed! Yet in the very best taste. Your shoes are pointed at the toe; one expects to see flat heels; your dresses are simple, short, with pockets; you wear them for a very long time and from morning till evening. One imagines that your toilette is complete once you get out of the bath, when you are clean. Rising at seven o’clock, you come down to breakfast at eight, fully dressed. You have stray wisps of hair and you tuck them under your hat with your finger, in the motorcar.

  When I criticise you, you reply:

  “I haven’t the time. There are more interesting things to do.”

  This indifference is not a pose, for one sometimes finds you making concessions to fashion (especially in evening dresses), and one is sorry you should have made them.

  You are not unaware, however, of what people wear, since you yourself design for others what should be worn, and you like the company of eccentrically attired women and well dressed young men.

  I have sometimes succeeded in making you discard dresses that are fifteen years out of date for those of thirty years ago. And when you want to please me, you arrange your hair in a fringe, and you wear a black velvet ribbon around your neck, “à la Dégas”.

  From the first day I was extremely curious about you, and I have remained so. Only your rebellious character has prevented me from loving you.

  Your face is interesting. There is a great mystery in your taut lips, a great deal of sensuality in your nose with its restless, broad nostrils, and attractiveness in your yellow eyes, hypersensitive, generally rather hard, listless at times, and restricted at the corners by a mauve vein.

  Without being well-educated, you know a great deal. You know nothing about history, but you know the past and you understand it better than a scholar, when you hold a piece of embroidery, or an old slipper, in your hands.

  You do not like books. I have never seen you read a novel. In your library there are only pictures, documents and catalogues.

  I know you will never grow old, will never end. When I feel like dying, I come and call on you when you are getting ready. You do not stop what you are doing, but as you continue to polish your nails or lace up your boots, you exclaim:

  “Live! Tell yourself: ‘I’m alive’, my friend, and that’s all you need! To be able to run, stop, to be in good form, to feel weary, to be able to spit, to spit in the fire, in the water, spit out of your window on the heads of passers-by, how good and wonderful all that is!”

  And you really are like that—you rejoice in your good health, in the beating of your pulse, in the use of your limbs, in all these good fortunes, which for us are negative, with lucidity; when you wave your arms about, you experience the pleasure one would feel knowing there is only one hour left before they are to be amputated; when you use your legs, the joy of a paralytic who is suddenly able to move again. You take possession of a room, of a pavement, as if they had long been forbidden to you. You give the singular impression of a people’s feast-day when the crowds
, pressed into the clutch of run-down streets, spill out over the grass like laundry.

  Life is so much a part of you that one would have to be very determined to take it away from you. Dentists do their very best and cannot even manage to loosen one of your teeth. You pay no heed to illness. You stand up to English doctors.

  I find Clarissa in her drawing room, her hands and face black, her clothing covered in dust.

  “I’m tidying up,” she says.

  Clarissa claims to like open spaces, bare walls, polished floors in which they are prolonged, clear tables. But she succumbs, a victim of her liking for trinkets; she yields to successive solicitations of form, colour, feeling, and soon the glass cabinets, the occasional tables, the mantelpiece, are not enough; without her realising, the knick-knacks pile up in wooden chests, beneath the furniture; the drawers will no longer close, even access to the room becomes improbable. One day, Clarissa reacts; in sorrowful severance, she tears herself away from all these beloved trifles, banishes them to the attic where, having forgotten them, she discovers them years later and puts them back in their place, for the time being.

  All day, she roams around the suburban antique dealers, the second-hand shops of the Hebrew districts, the clothes vendors. Basket in hand, she sets off, with her long strides, to the scrap merchants and, unconcerned about fleas, approaches the dealers, rummages around with her rag-and-bone man’s instinct and returns home, her pockets and muff laden with new trinkets. She accommodates them all, from the rarest object to screws, doorknobs, nails, old coins.