Letters to Sartre Page 16
I left her — I’m to go to her place tomorrow evening — and called in at Gégé’s, where I found a huge letter from Bienenfeld (very nice but a bit boring) and the Lunar Woman, fresh and agreeable and all dolled up, who’d come to see me, I took her for a drink at the Dome, and then — since I found her amusing — to the Crêperie Bretonne where we stuffed ourselves with pancakes and flan, and after that — since I still found her amusing — to the downstairs bar at the Schubert. This is a little Viennese restaurant on Bd Montparnasse, which has opened a basement club with piano, lights in the corners, American Bar, and drinks that are ridiculously expensive for a place of the kind — it’s 18 F. a cocktail, just like in a big place with a dance floor. Nobody dances there, though, and it’s empty and sad — but it’s not unpleasing and makes a change of scene. We chatted some more, but then at 11 we were turned out and I kept the Lunar Woman company to Bd St Michel, where she’s living now. Then, as it was a really mild, starry night, we strolled on to Châtelet and along the banks of the Seine, after which I accompanied her back and went home myself. The streets are beautiful and sinister after 11 — almost deserted, save for constant police patrols, on foot or bicycle, with big capes and gleaming helmets. They carry electric torches, which they aim at the passers-by, and stop all the men and ask them for their papers. They even inspect the urinals to see nobody has taken cover there. But they don’t ask women anything.
The Lunar Woman was full of stories — and I of patience, since it takes ages to extract the substance of these stories from the jumble of details under which she buries them. She talked almost without drawing breath. She’s quite overcome by a grand passion for some Spaniard she met this month in the Pyrenees, when she was there at her mother-in-law’s after her husband’s departure. The fellow’s a young labourer of 20, divinely handsome, who lives in the mountains half-naked and on the run. He does odd jobs, thanks to [...],163 but is hated by the people of the village (who’ve knocked off quite a number of Spanish refugees unwilling to enlist, with their bare hands or with pitchforks). The Lunar Woman, of course, has taken up the defence of all the refugees in the area. She’s thrown herself into activity, made speeches, argued, protested, and acquired a bad reputation everywhere. Since her current dream is to ‘return to the land’ and live as a peasant, she has lost her head over this handsome Spaniard all the more rapidly and, indeed, had a highly romantic affair with him. He barely knows French, so I can just imagine the conversations between that Lunar Woman and that man of the wilds. She used to meet him only in secret, with the aid of countless ruses, miles from anywhere. Once she lost her way in the darkness and did 5 km barefoot through thorns, since her sandals had fallen off. She fell, she tumbled into ravines, and she came back cut to shreds. Her one dream now is to obtain papers for him and go off to live there in some village, watching a wood fire blaze all day long and sleeping with him at night.
All this was mixed up, of course, with the most utterly insipid stories about Quakers, pear trees, and peasant feuds. She also told me about her stay with the Lunar Man at the Pointe du Raz. They stayed with some fishermen, with whom they used to get drunk every evening, and whom they’d undertaken to improve. They wanted to teach them to look after their boats better, to navigate more cautiously, to drink less, and not to send their children to Church schools — can’t you just picture them? Actually, she gave me a good description of the lives of all those people. After that they sailed off from Nantes to Bastia, arriving with just 50 F. in their pockets, and were received by Blondie’s parents — with whom things didn’t go at all well.164 She complains about your not ridding her of Blondie: if you’d only seen her twice weekly to urge her to leave him, she’d doubtless have left him by now. She talked to me about him too. Above all, she delighted me with her general attitude — on public squares, or in trains — since the declaration of war. She gets herself told off in no uncertain terms, and will end up in gaol. There were also, of course, bawdy stories about sexual goings-on, and a lovely story that happened to Leduc — that fellow from the Age Nouveau, who got the bird that day when Kos. was acting in 7 at a Time — a story about his being arrested as the result of a mix-up, which really delighted me because of the fellow’s ugly mug. It all seemed the most incredibly typical wartime evening out, but romantic and agreeable. She’s very reassuring actually, because she says: ‘We’ll be going back to the Pointe du Raz for our next holiday too.’ She explains how rotten it would be if her husband died: ‘At our age, it isn’t easy to make a new situation for yourself. You’ve put so much effort into securing your daily bread, and then you have to start hustling again.’ I’m going to the cinema with her this evening. After that she’ll be sucked dry, I think, but for a time I’ve found her amusing. She’s nice and she’s funny.
So I went to bed at around 1, slept till 9.30, then had breakfast at the Dome where I met Stépha. We talked for a bit, looked at the papers, did some shopping, then I went back to the Dome where I ate a brandade de morue and wrote to you. I’m going to work from 2 till 7, then see the Lunar Woman. My days are full up now, as you can see, and I’m having trouble finding room for my letters, my diary, and a bit of reading.
You were asking me some questions about That Lady, but what is there to tell you? The idea of war prevents her from sleeping, and she doesn’t find it much fun being at La Pouèze yet seems quite resigned to it. It was I who talked, mostly. I told stories — especially about you. I avoided political conversations with That Lady, because it’s painful hearing someone as well-intentioned as she is say that in 1918 we really should have pushed on to Berlin; or that the General Staff in 1914 can’t really have been as bad as all that; or other things of the same ilk. She’s dreadfully incoherent, and her own feelings are perpetually in contradiction with the convictions she has learnt. Nothing’s known about the Pupil, who perhaps went back to Argentina.
The Dome is still lively and entertaining — with something dark and heavy about it, which derives from the relations between the French and the foreigners. This morning there were heaps of familiar faces. I’m fantastically pleased to be in Paris. If it were a matter only of a short-term separation between you and me, I’d be having the most satisfactory of lives.
Goodbye, my sweet little one. There wasn’t a letter this morning at Rue d’Assas, but perhaps one will arrive this evening. I love you, my beloved. I have all your photos in a pretty little portable album which Sorokine gave me. I kiss you most passionately, yourself, my little flower.
Your charming Beaver
[Paris]
Saturday 14 October [1939]
My love, most dear little being
How sad I am that you should have remained all this time without a letter! Do you have them now? Those were precisely the letters in which I told you of my movements and projects, my hopes, disappointments and expectations. Told you, too, about getting settled in Paris. If there are any missing, let me have the dates and with the help of my little diary I’ll tell you everything entertaining or interesting over again. How much you do love me, my beloved, I’m quite overwhelmed by it. Oh! I love you so much that it’s hard, really hard, to be far away from you. Your letter made me cry, and I’m still crying. You’re so sweet to answer me at length; but it’s unbearable to think that for months this is the only way you’ll be able to answer me, in writing. You’re so present to me, and I feel myself so present to you, but your face is in darkness and you no longer have a body. I’ve nothing to touch but the characters on the paper, and your little drawing of a lighter at the end of your letter. I find your reply to my question on infinity wonderfully interesting and satisfying. I’ll read it once more in a critical spirit, but I can’t see anything there to pick up on, and it strikes me as true.
Yesterday, after writing to you, I went home to work and I worked till 6. I’m no longer really used to being confronted by a blank sheet of paper, but even so it didn’t go too badly. Then I made myself beautiful, dropped in at Gégé’s — where I found a long an
d charming letter from Little Bost — then went to the Capoulade to meet the Lunar Woman. We went to the Pantheon cinema next door, where we saw a charming English cartoon: ever so poetic, with vaguely surrealist effects and a quite original style — I’d really like to see others in the same series. They were showing Test Pilot, which is quite entertaining, though by the end you’re fed up with Myrna Loy’s restrained sufferings and Spencer Tracy’s doom-laden expressions — but Clark Gable is delightful from start to finish. Then we went back to the bar at the Capoulade, at 10 in the evening, and the Lunar Woman ordered steaks and Beaujolais. The Beaujolais made us a bit tipsy, and we began to exchange declarations of friendship. She told me how her father had raped her (something she claims never to have told anyone else right out), and other stuff about her life. Then, as they were turfing us out, we decided to buy some alcohol to drink at my place. But first she wanted to drop in on Youki — Fujita’s ex-wife, now married to Desnos — who’s sleeping with Michel, and whom Kos. used to see at the sports ground.165 We bought a small bottle for ourselves and a bigger one for Youki, and showed up in a smoke-filled room full of people and glasses of red wine and Fujita’s paintings. That appalling exhibitionist about whom Wanda must have told you was there, reading cards in another room. In the sitting-room there were crowds of people: Youki, in a Japanese kimono; a rather lovely blonde in the alluring style, very delectable; Michel; Blanche Picard, with the visage of an intellectual and martyr; a little piège with cropped hair who’s often to be seen with Michel at the Dome, and who was smoking a pipe; Thérèse, the wife of the exhibitionist, who’s the instructress at that celebrated sports club and a close friend of Kiki from Montparnasse, with a penchant for mysticism; two insignificant other women; a rather handsome blond fellow; some tongue-tied youngsters; and a drunken, blear-eyed soldier whom I’ve often seen at the Flore. They were all in a great pother about some letter from Desnos, who has been called up and was writing in a fairly straightforward, calm fashion describing the daily round of his life. Youki was boiling with indignation, others were finding excuses, others were admiring — it was all quite hilarious. It was simply a question of what pose to strike, and as they’re in some disarray they adopt a cynical, couldn’t-give-a-damn attitude. The soldier was zealously playing his role as a combatant disgusted by the ‘civilian mentality’: he was half weeping, or laughing hysterically, and saying: ‘You give me a pain in the arse’ at every opportunity. The words ‘shit’ and ‘arse’ peppered the conversation, of course, and they were all bullshitting away in a pretty contemptible and sickening fashion. It was true they all gave the most shameful impression of people who don’t have a clue about war — but the soldier was a damnable bore too, with his claims as a future combatant. The atmosphere was very heady, charged with a crude and unbridled sexuality. The Lunar Woman spent half an hour smooching with the blond fellow, and all anyone talked about was screwing or jerking off. I really did understand what sort of impression all those women, all that kind of people, must have made on the Kos. sisters. For they do in fact place themselves on a feminine, sexual terrain — the Lunar Woman and Youki, for example. Yet that kind of femininity and sexuality nauseates the Kos. sisters. For my own part, I’m totally out of it in scenes of that kind. But they’re in a sense on the inside, despite dominating them intellectually and morally. And their scorn is aggressive, because in a sense they’re in danger (in danger not of being affected, but of being compromised in their own eyes). It’s an impression I’d like to expand on in detail with you, but we’d have to be face to face. I’m incidentally going to try and get Kos. to talk about this.
Anyway, the Lunar Woman was bestowing more and more tokens of friendship upon me. She told me she’d loved me since Berlin: ‘in a sense, against somebody’, she added — that ‘somebody’ meaning you. She has still got a big grudge against you. She told me she’d had a dreadful lot of bother because of you. She also says she never had a ‘passion’ for you. She constantly compares you with her husband, and makes you out to be more or less equal. But she considers that you produce too slowly, and also that you overestimate people, which leads them — Wanda, for instance — to overestimate themselves. You overestimate yourself and Wanda, and the Lunar Woman. I’m the only one you don’t overestimate. On the contrary, you’re too cool about acclaiming my perfection and she’s going to have a word with you about it. As for Wanda, she sees her as a nice, naive girl who believes everything you tell her. I took care, of course, not to say a word that could be passed back to Wanda. Apparently that famous night in the waiting-room, Wanda got a thrashing, or perhaps a spanking, because she slapped some fellow. And they administered her a massive purgative under the pretext of giving her a tonic, just out of revenge — I gave the Lunar Woman a piece of my mind about that. The Lunar Woman was quite agreeable all this time. She sang, everybody sang: songs by Prevert, and also old patriotic songs from 1914 — some of which are really extreme — and obscene songs, and others too. It was very entertaining, they’ve an amazing repertoire. We left at around 4, and I took the Lunar Woman back to my place with the small bottle of alcohol. The blond fellow followed and they installed themselves on my bed.
[...]
Kos. is coming tomorrow, and I’m curiously happy. I’m a little tired because of being up almost all night, and won’t be doing much work today. What with getting the Kos. sisters settled in and my sister’s arrival, I’ll have to reckon on a week before I can work properly. Wanda’s arriving on Monday — they’ve arranged things that way themselves. I mean to take her out and be very nice to her, and if that goes well all three of us will go out from time to time. I was full of sympathy for her yesterday evening, because I really understood how an ambience of that kind can both attract and disgust her, and how she must be quite out of her depth.
Goodbye, my love. I so hope you’ll get my letters. Do keep writing to me. I love you, sweetest little one, without much joy today. I can’t believe I’m going to be a long while without seeing you, I who live only through you. I clasp your little head in my hands, my love, and passionately kiss your face.
Your charming Beaver
Le Dome
Paris, Sunday 15 October [1939]
My love,
This morning I got your little letter of the 10th; I’d already had your big one of the 11th yesterday. I’m impatient to know whether you’ve finally received mine. Bost too had to wait for a very long time for my letters of the 5th and 6th, but he did get them eventually. It pains me to feel you’re separated from me. I’m not gloomy today, but I’m not really happy. There’s a memory that has kept coming back to me these past two days — it’s your own little self in That Lady’s garden, cheering me on as I swam so diligently.166 My love, what a distance lies between those moments and the ones we’re living through now. Everyone seems to think the war will be a long one. I can’t manage to think concretely what two years without you will represent, but I do have some vague apprehension of what I shall be in six months.
Bost is 35 km. away from Bar-le-Duc, and will probably spend the winter there. He seemed gloomy in his last letters and he too has that heroic impatience you speak of and finds that the waiting is worst of all.
Yesterday after writing to you I went first to the hairdresser’s, then to buy two little turbans, and then to Lycée C. See. I have only 8½ hours, very neatly distributed — but I’m also assigned to Fénelon. I dropped in there to see the headmistress, but didn’t find her in — no matter, I’ll telephone tomorrow. I don’t think they’ll give me another final-year class, since I’m only supposed to do 14 h. — I’ll probably just have odds and ends. Fénelon has been moved to Henri IV, and the idea of being a teacher just there makes me feel all poetic.167 From Henri IV I went to the Capoulade and ate ham and eggs while writing to Bost; then I went by Metro to Porte de St-Cloud to see Sorokine. She had a girl friend there, who was very ugly and not very interesting: it was that notorious friend of hers about whom she no longer much cares, but whom she want
ed to show me. We chatted for a bit before accompanying the friend back home, then went for a walk along the river at Passy. The embankment was lovely in the darkness, with its trees festooned with dead leaves and yellow lights. I was very tender with Sorokine, taking her arm myself and telling her sweet nothings. And for the first time she was absolutely melting and happy and abandoned with me. Instead of the vague hostility of other days, there was a charming childlike complicity. We went up to her place, chatted a bit, and I’m still moved when I recall how she behaved like some little tamed animal. There’s more and more of the ‘constant nymph’ about her. The presence of her parents in the next room imposed considerable restraint, but she had a way of furtively touching my hand, offering her cheek, and making me little moues of affection that were at once discreet, animal, and moving. She was really precious to me yesterday evening, with her tartan hair-ribbon, her teddy-bear in her arms, and her serious face. It’ll be all right this year, because I have the time; but it’s a damn nuisance for the future, because I won’t ever be able to ditch her now. I went home at about 11 and found a little letter from Bienenfeld, to whom I replied at length, as I’d had a long one from her the day before yesterday. Alas! I don’t miss her much at all, poor thing; I’m much gladder to be expecting Kos. at present than if I were expecting her. I’m extraordinarily glad that Kos. is turning up again: it’s a piece of my real life — my life with Bost and you — that I’ll regain by regaining her. And I’m really fond of her now. This morning I rose at 9, spent a long while getting dressed and doing my nails, then went and picked up your little letter from Gégé’s and sent you off a parcel containing paper, newspapers and books. At the Poste Restante where he now writes to me, I found two big letters from Bost — and also a clever little supplementary note he’d sent me. You too should send me an unexpected little note over and above your letters some time. I went to the station to see whether Kos. was on the midday train, but she wasn’t. So I came to have lunch here, and will be returning to the station at 5. In the meantime, I’ll go and do some work. Goodbye, my little sweet one. As soon as I have a definitive time-table, I’ll give it to you. It’s so precious to be able to write to one another like this, and makes me feel we two still have a single life. I do so hope you’ll get my letters all right. With the most passionate kisses, my love -