A Fleeting Sorrow Read online

  But then, how could he be so sure? How did he know what had become of Michael? Maybe Michael had turned into one of these lean and driven men entirely focused on material success. Or maybe Michael had, on the contrary, become a fat slob, done in by life. On the most basic level, a careerist or a failure by society’s standards. Or perhaps Michael had evolved into one of those myopic, uncaring men who somehow can’t transcend their own concerns, who have no time or inclination for altruism. And for the first time in the two hours since he had left Robert’s office, Paul was suddenly filled with a feeling of utter disdain for the man. He had never been a good judge of human nature, according to Helen, who found him morally lax, whereas he, Paul, knew that the problem was simply that he had a hard time making up his mind about people. Slow to judge, and even slower to misjudge. No, Michael would still be the same as ever: Paul would have talked to him about life, about death in general, and about his death specifically; he would have viewed death as a normal, albeit fascinating and lyrical journey, with all its vicissitudes. He would have used that banal illness as a springboard, a basis for thought and reflection, for discussion between them, not — as Robert had — as something incongruous, which he found repugnant, or, worse, refused to accept.

  So these next six months were going to be not only cruel but boring. In any case for the new Paul, the ironic and lucid Paul who had emerged out of the blue this morning when the bad news had hit him. A light-hearted Paul who would irritate Paul the sick and suffering, Paul the wounded, Paul the heroic, Paul the sorrowful. A Paul who would necessarily be narrow-minded, who would let the world know he was ill, then be ashamed at his admission. A second-rate architect, who was generally liked and who had lung cancer, a womanizer and a liar, a man who was in turn tolerant and cowardly, sentimental and egotistical. Who after all would he have wanted to be? Picasso? Talleyrand? Someone of extraordinary talent and power? Not really; all he wanted to be was himself, which struck him as the ultimate pretension. But all he knew for sure was that if Mathilde had still loved him he would have been a better, happier man — and therefore probably more talented and successful.

  Would he have grown tired of Mathilde? Probably not. Every moment of their relationship struck him then, as it struck him now, as a bright burst of fun, or of pleasure; in any case, a moment truly shared. No, he would never have grown tired of either Mathilde’s intelligence or her character (which were in perfect harmony), nor would he ever have wearied of the wonderful touch of wildness that was hers. The more he thought, the more he was convinced he would have loved her forever. And what impressed him most was not that, after all this time, he was so sure of his feelings for Mathilde but that he both could and wanted to believe them. Especially in light of the fact that, after their breakup, in self-defense and out of a desire for happiness, an innate need for love, and a refusal to wallow nostalgically in the past, he had systematically refused to see her again, to think about her, even to dream about her. This morning’s news that he was going to die had made him turn back to her, made him envision their being together again. . . .

  Held up at an interminable red light, he was telling himself all this with such conviction and emotion that the driver in the car next to him was staring over in disbelief. Turning his head as if he were talking to an invisible passenger in the back seat, Paul stepped on the gas, his mood black again. When was he going to stop acting like a normal man, a man of regular habits, an adult? He had to stop pretending he was still leading a normal life. . . . All of a sudden he noticed he was approaching his neighborhood gas station, and pulled in. He told the attendant — a man he had known for five years now — to fill the tank. He gave the man an overly generous tip, which prompted an overly generous smile and “Thank you very much.”

  “Beautiful day, eh?” the attendant said, he for whom a fat tip always served to chase the clouds away.

  “You’re right,” Paul said. “It is a beautiful day all right. The only problem is, in six months I won’t be around to enjoy it. I just got the bad news this morning.”

  “Come on, you can’t be serious.” The attendant was smiling just as broadly as before, maybe even more broadly. His customers must have included a fair share of big-time jokers.

  “It’s no joke,” Paul said. “Lung cancer,” and he tried looking the attendant straight in the eyes.

  “If that’s true,” the attendant said, “you gotta be very careful. Take it real easy. I should know. My sister had a thing with her lungs, and I can tell you it was a big deal. . . . So long. Gotta another car waiting. . . .”

  And with that the Attendant in Charge of Pumping Gas moved imperiously toward his next customer, smiling still but only halfheartedly as, with the majestic gesture of someone sowing grain, he was directing Paul and his lungs back into the thick of traffic.

  For all the guy cared, Paul could have driven headlong into a brick wall. No skin off the attendant’s nose. Paul’s tires burned rubber as he hit the accelerator. He was less angry at the attendant than he was at himself. What had he expected? That this Pumper of Gas was going to turn immediately into a Shedder of Tears? That he was going to inundate his overalls with salty sobs? Besides, Paul was not all that faithful a customer anyway, and here he was making a special effort to befriend the guy at the gas station. The guy probably wouldn’t even miss his biweekly visits. In fact, when he thought about it, which of the several shopkeepers he dealt with, the people from whom he bought his goods and services, would miss him? He lived a little like a nomad. He bought clothes when and where the urge hit him. When he ate out, there were a dozen or so restaurants he went to more or less at random. He bought his cigarettes at the nearest tobacco shop whenever he ran out. And his food and wine were ordered through his office. No, he couldn’t even claim to be anyone’s good customer!

  Well past two o’clock. What was he going to do with himself for the rest of the day? Sonia wasn’t home, he knew. Neither was Helen. He should have gone back to the office and talked with his colleague Jean-Claude, his trusty number two, a man as decent as he was tactful. But he knew the man had his own problems. Besides, hadn’t he sworn to keep the news a secret, at least in the office? No, he was alone. He was alone, he was famished, and he was going to offer himself a fantastic, gastronomic lunch. He was not by nature a gourmet, but for once he would force himself to be. Before he died he had to discover and savor all the pleasures he had till now neglected: fine dining, for example. He ran down the list of three-and four-star restaurants he knew, but decided to settle for a place in Montparnasse he liked and where he was known. Besides, since most of the top restaurants in Paris stopped serving at two, he knew it was wisest to opt for the known, where he might have a less than perfect meal but where the maître d’ would be sure to welcome him. Now there was one who might be sad to lose him. . . . Andre, the chef of the Globe restaurant . . . My God, Paul: to what depths have you sunk! Searching high and low, from one end of Paris to the other, for someone who will truly miss you!

  Paul felt humiliated and guilty, two feelings he disliked the most.

  He felt like doing something ridiculous, and try as he might he couldn’t shake the idea. He went downstairs to the rest rooms and telephone. The stairway, of dark tile, was moist and slippery and, like those of all Paris bistros, was poorly lighted. He thought of all the countless times he had descended this staircase, or dozens like it, a song in his heart if not on his lips. How many times had he gone down to call someone he loved, someone he worked with, or someone with whom he simply felt like having a good time? How many times . . . Oh, for God’s sake, he had to stop trying to transform his life, or the memories of his life, into a long, boring, repetitive balance sheet.

  He went into the men’s room, the outer door to which could not be locked. He didn’t want to be disturbed, so he took the chair that was sitting in a corner and pushed it against the door handle. He quickly stripped to the waist, draping his suit coat, shirt, tie, and undershirt over the chair. When someone knocked on the outer door, first timidly then more and more insistently, Paul shouted, “Someone’s in here!” in a voice loud and authoritative enough, he hoped, to frighten the man away.

  Above the sink there was a large mirror lit by a long neon bulb, and Paul looked at himself. A not very attractive, slightly greenish face stared back. His gaze slipped quickly down from the face to the neck, then came to rest on the torso. He looked long and hard at the image before him. He found himself ugly. He found all men ugly, especially when they were naked. And that went for their sex as well, that silly dangling thing between their legs, which he found perfectly ridiculous. In fact he had never understood how women — some women in any case — practically swooned over that unmanageable, graceless, and unruly part of the male anatomy. His eyes sought out that part of his chest beneath which lay the heart, trying to detect a sign of its steady beat. His gaze stopped at a point just below the first two ribs, where a fine forest of blond hair descended to the belly button: there, beneath that spot in his chest, an animal, a many-armed beast, a pitiless insect, was at this very moment living and growing, was slyly sharpening its claws, smacking its lips. Now, at this very moment, in the darkness of the organs, in the somber and bloody magma of his body, this foul, stubborn, invincible something was in the process of destroying him, of bringing him down, depriving him of the sun and the wind, pleasure and beauty, his future and his past. His past: what did any of his friends, and even his family, know about his past? The only one who had a clue was an aunt in the provinces, whom in any case he disliked. So his past, and his awareness of it, was going to disappear with him. All the various Pauls — the little boy, the pimply adolescent, the wild and crazy young man, Paul the insatiable womanizer, Paul the enthusiastic architect — all these Pauls were going to die. There. Right there. And slowly he moved his forefinger toward the guilty area, where the tumor lay — at least where he thought it lay — and around this strategic point he drew a circle. Yes, now, right there, his finger was passing above the beast, and he wondered if the beast could feel it, wondered if perhaps the beast might be afraid, and he pressed his finger hard against the flesh. Then he hit himself so hard in the same place that it almost took his breath away.

  He coughed, he was shaking, he was sweating as if he had just boxed a couple of tough rounds. Slowly, very slowly, he began to put his clothes back on, his mind still deaf to the sound of the loud knocking at the bathroom door, as the frustrated and angry customer vented his increasing rage. And when Paul opened the door and emerged from the toilet he passed the man without even seeing him. He had doused his head with water, and as he headed back up the stairs, still out of breath, he slapped his cheeks with a gesture that was almost mechanical. It was only when he reached his table, where his favorite maître d’ was waiting, that he was more or less himself again.

  “Are you alone today, Mr. Cazavel?”

  “We’re always alone,” Paul said, smiling. He sat down at a table for four with a certain feeling of satisfaction. The table was next to the window, and the afternoon sun poured through at an angle and spilled onto the white cloth. He was alone, yes, but that was because he had chosen to be. All he would have had to do was call Helen, or call Sonia, as soon as he had left the doctor’s office, or even at some later point, and by now he would have been surrounded by tender, loving women vying to see what they could do for him. But no, he had had the stupid idea of stopping off to see his dear old friend Robert. . . and at the thought he could feel his lip curling sarcastically. But look on the bright side of it: he had taken a lovely drive along the Seine, even if it was a part of the river that was uncommonly banal; and a truck had come within a hair of speeding up, or making short shrift of, his future martyrdom. And again he became aware of the self-pity filling his mind and felt horribly ashamed. Considering the situation, perhaps it was a normal reflex, but still he refused to allow it in his case. He was not going to give in. He would fight this horrible thing tooth and nail, with any ruse he could find. What did it matter! He only had six months to live. He wasn’t going to waste them spending his every waking hour in a state of abject terror, in the horrified certainty of his imminent disappearance. From this moment on he was going to enjoy life as he always had, even if there might be a diminution of the pleasure; he was going to take full advantage of the gifts and bounty that nature had bestowed on him. In the same way he had adamantly refused to let himself mope over the loss of Mathilde, so now he would outlaw once and for all the fear of death from his emotional repertoire, if only out of pride. He was not going to ruin “life.”

  The maître d’ had poured Paul a glass of muscadet from the bottle he had ordered, a light wine especially pleasant to the palate, and Paul sipped it slowly, his eyes half closed. A woman at a neighboring table looked at him with a mixture of pleasure and desire, the way one looks at a well-fed, satisfied animal, the way one looks at a happy fellow creature.

  After a hearty four-course meal, and two after-dinner coffees drunk in the golden rays of the slanting sun, and after exchanging a few pleasantries with Andre, who could not do enough for him (and who was far too gracious and affable for Paul to lay his heavy burden on him), Paul made up his mind to leave the restaurant. Sonia would not be home for another hour. The fashion house where she worked would let her out late today, only after she had paraded for the last, demanding customers, who would frequently ask her to model a particular dress for them two or three times to help them make up their minds. After having paraded for the rich and famous like a haughty priestess, with her majestic bearing and gait, Sonia would come home and act like a little girl, curl up on the sofa and whine in a childlike voice. (Paul had had to put down his foot to avoid sharing her apartment with a collection of stuffed animals.) Well, in six months maybe they would console her for the loss of her Big Bear — her native American nickname for Paul.

  Meanwhile, what should he do? Go to the movies? No, there was no way he could relate or empathize with the petty problems of the characters. And if he were to hit a comedy, there’d be little chance he would find the damn thing funny. No, there was no way under the sun that he was going to waste any of his precious time on some unknown film director. Nor was there any question of holing up with a pile of mysteries, much less seeing their film adaptations. As for playing mindless card games to take his mind off reality, forget it! Which left open the other end of the spectrum: was he therefore going to plow his way through Proust, haunt the museums and other cathedrals of culture? And then there was the choice of gambling the rest of his life away in casinos. No, not that either. Which eliminated for him both the high and low ends of the scale. Which left a comfortable, and probably utterly boring, middle ground; these next six months were going to be a real ball! No, what I actually need, he said to himself — that is, after I have told both of the women in my life the whole truth — is to take stock of myself. Self-communion. It had been a long time since he had allowed himself the leisure of introspection, and he had to admit that he was looking forward to it with a certain amount of curious pleasure — curious because of the conditions under which he felt compelled to do it; pleasure because, however modest and fragile, it struck him as somehow comforting. Yes, that was the word, “comforting.” He was fairly sure he was not going to fall apart; he felt he was able to judge himself without condescension, as he knew he was fully capable of ferreting out his detours and deviations from the truth. It was as if a sudden truce had been declared between his vulnerable self on the one hand and that mocking echo he could hear directly behind it, as if someone had moved in behind the series of counterfeit Pauls the world knew and made him somehow coherent, endowed him with a real, authentic life. “As if death had given me back my life,” he said out loud, and he burst out laughing at the melodramatic, ridiculous paradox. And although he had been talking to himself and laughing as he threaded his way through the crowded streets, no one turned around wide-eyed to stare at him. “At least no one noticed me,” he told himself, and then the thought went through his mind that perhaps he had already crossed the threshold beyond which he didn’t give a damn what people thought about what he did or said. High time, he said to himself.

  Well, if he could get his act together and find his true center it was entirely possible that he would at the same time become a fully aware person, which in turn would clarify his conduct during the coming months. Just how was that going to come about? Under what conditions? Suffering, he knew, was out of the question. Both the sensitive and tender Paul and the cynical, womanizing Paul — and he was fully aware of this split personality, which he not only recognized but nurtured, since he felt it gave him a certain piquancy — had a very low threshold of pain. Moreover, it seemed to him that from time to time these two Pauls, these two cliches, were slightly watered down by the force of circumstance and replaced by a silhouette, a one-dimensional cardboard cutout of Paul, around whom bullets whizzed without ever hitting him. An idealized Paul, affable and supple, because till now he had been spared the actual slings and arrows of these battles. Yes, it was as if a replica of himself had been set up in his place — a replica that was perhaps more accurate, or truer, than the original and, if and when it was necessary, more essential than the other copies.

  But this nimble and discreet character would, he knew, turn into an instant coward when his body began to fail him, and he knew there was a foreordained timetable for that. Paul was one of those people who could grit his teeth and bear it when the going got tough and yet at the same time would panic if a wasp landed on his body. Waiting for Pain was not a play he could star in. So where did he go from here? And with whom? Who would he choose as helpmate? There was always the option of suicide, of course. But that implied being alone. Could he really pull that off alone?