The Conspiracy (17 page)

Rosenthal and Laforgue reflected how they had not seen Pluvinage since their return to Paris, but how this absence on Serge's part was not mysterious, since the holidays were not over and Serge did not necessarily know they had come back before the reopening of the Sorbonne and the resumption of lectures at Rue d'Ulm. However, they were surprised to discover that Régnier's suspicion did not strike them a priori as monstrous.

— Let's be careful, said Bernard. We've never had anything against Pluvinage up to now except his mug, and a kind of vague and rather disagreeable servility towards us – his toadying, over-obliging side . . .

— It mustn't be forgotten either, said Laforgue, that Serge is a member of the party . . . He must have joined in about May . . . Do you remember, we were flabbergasted that the first of us to take the plunge was precisely the one who seemed the least certain, the most ambiguous . . . After all, it strikes me as a pretty serious thing to suspect someone of treachery who had the courage to commit himself, make the jump, before we did . . .

But at that age nothing surprises. The most violent revelations about a man's character appear natural. One has a weak spot for monsters who confirm a theatrical idea of life: plain beings seem humdrum and false. Moreover, these suspicions, if they were confirmed, promised opportunities for Bernard and Philippe to speak as judges and find themselves pure. For three days they drove Catherine from Bernard's thoughts.

They summoned Pluvinage to the Ecole Normale, where Laforgue had ensconced himself in a wilderness of silent corridors, halls and dormitories. On the appointed day, while awaiting Pluvinage, they talked about him.

— It would be dreadful, all the same, Laforgue said.

— I'm afraid the tone of our letter may have been rather hard, said Rosenthal. He'll be on his guard, if there is anything.

The door opened. Pluvinage came in like a cat. Rosenthal and Laforgue fell abruptly silent and wondered if he had been listening to them through the door before coming in. But a strange incident gave them the courage to plunge in almost immediately. For as soon as Pluvinage was in the room, he abruptly turned and bolted the door. Bernard asked him why he was shooting the bolt. Pluvinage denied having done so – and was doubtless not lying: he had not been aware of his action.

— Very well, said Laforgue. Odd for an unconscious slip! Are you being followed?

The conversation got off to a bad start, dragged. Were they going to talk about the weather they were having? Rosenthal made up his mind, he believed in the virtues of brutality.

— Let's not beat about the bush, he said. Neither Laforgue nor I has asked you here for an exchange of views on the holidays, the rain or German phenomenology. Here's what it's all about. Do you know about the arrest of Carré, the CP Central Committee activist, in Mesnil-le-Roy, at Régnier's place?

Pluvinage looked towards the window, outside which the black tops of the trees bordering Rue Rataud were swaying, and said that he had learned of the arrest from the newspapers, a short while after those of Vaillant-Couturier and Monmousseau.

— All right, said Rosenthal. Régnier, who has told us about an odd visit you paid him just before the arrest, suspects you of bearing responsibility for the police action – whether inadvertently or by design. What do you say?

Serge at first said nothing and went to lean out of the window. A pigeon was walking along the gutter. Eventually Serge said in a low voice:

— So you reckoned that swine's suspicion was well founded?

— We didn't reckon anything, said Laforgue. We're asking you.

— Didn't you tell yourselves that you've known me for years, that you know how I live, that I'm a member of the party? Didn't you burst out laughing in the Great Author's face?

Rosenthal replied that it was necessary to examine every least ground for suspicion thoroughly; that no friendship is above the Revolution; and that there really was a coincidental connection between the visit to Carrières and the arrest, which obliged him at least to pose the question. He had
Stuart Mill's
precepts at the tip of his tongue, but thought the reference would be distasteful in such solemn circumstances. Pluvinage told him he had always been a moralist, and was still ignoble in the way moralists are. He even pronounced the word Pharisee, which seemed in extremely bad taste to Rosenthal and Laforgue, who came within an ace of speaking derisively about whited sepulchres. They pressed Serge further, without provoking anything but his anger. Serge told them, with manifest good sense, that there can be no proof of negative things, and that he could only say no and cast doubt on their suspicions. He added that he would give them his word of honour, if they wished; but that a word of honour is no better at establishing proof than a simple denial, and he could see they were determined to refuse him their trust.

— But we must know! exclaimed Rosenthal.

— No chance, said Laforgue. Pluvinage is right. We believe or don't believe, but we'll never have anything but moral certainties.

Pluvinage left slamming the door, after fumbling with the bolt which he had closed at the start of the meeting.

Rosenthal and Laforgue waited for several days for him to reappear, but he did not come back or give any sign of life. As time passed, they assembled memories that justified every suspicion. The accusation took shape, gradually came to seem obvious: innocent, Serge would have come back to them. This continuing absence, this silence, slowly reassured them. Eventually they wondered what they ought to do, without any shadow of real proof but with strong emotive presumptions. They hesitated to attempt an approach to the party.

— What would we look like? asked Laforgue. One doesn't turn up at the house of people one barely knows and tell them: ‘You know, your son's probably a thief, or a swindler . . .'

They did decide, however, to write to the party secretariat, reporting on the conversation with Régnier, their suspicions and Pluvinage's denials. When they had completed the letter, they found it fitting and suddenly felt their consciences at rest. Nothing in the world weighs heavier than the need to judge – they were finally relieved of that burden.

— When one comes to think of it, Rosenthal said one day, it seemed strange to us that Pluvinage should have informed only because we were thinking about his phenomenal character; but there's doubtless a great deal to be said about his intelligible character. Who is not twofold?

Laforgue found this fairground display revolting, and told his friend:

— No Kantism, I beg of you! Perhaps we've behaved like swine . . .

XVIII

No one dared look Bernard in the face.

‘The family council's a flop,' he said to himself. ‘They're afraid of me. They're still wondering if they're going to eliminate me or devour me. Shall I be too tough for my carnivores?'

He looked at them, ensconced in their judicial poses. Mme Rosenthal seated – her hands flat on her knees, motionless – in a Louis XV armchair, in front of the little marquetry bureau on which she wrote her letters and checked the accounts of her charities and her cook. M. Rosenthal standing behind the rampart of the piano, his torso illuminated by a large lamp, his face in shadow. Claude behind his mother, his hands on the back of her chair, like a squire. The circumstances smacked too much of tragedy for all the lamps to have been lit: the large drawing-room was submerged in twilight, as though there had been a local supply breakdown and just one lamp had been brought from the pantry. And in the depths of this domestic semi-darkness where the radiators knocked, like an exile from youth and summer, sat Catherine in a pale blue dress, her neck resting against the fluted wood of the settee: she had crossed her legs, her stockings gleamed, she was smoking.

Never had Bernard experienced such a sense of triumph. The evening before, Claude – wishing to ‘see over the property' at the apartment on Place Edmond Rostand, which he did not know – had arrived at his brother's place. He had entered Bernard's bedroom where Catherine, who had fallen asleep there an hour earlier, had just woken up. He had paled, he had not said a word, he had simply fled. Catherine had sprung up and in turn taken flight ten minutes later. Since five in the afternoon on the preceding day – for twenty-five hours – Bernard had remained alone, waiting.

‘Thank God,' he thought, ‘the time for deception is over. Events have taken a dramatic turn. They're going to have to find a way out . . .'

His mother had asked him on the telephone to come to Avenue Mozart. She had said, in her toneless voice:

— Your father, your brother and I have to talk to you.

Bernard was playing his first big game. Catherine was the stake – and, with her, childhood, the future, love, hope.

He came of a generation in which successes in love were almost always confused with those of an insurrection. All women conquered, all scandals, seemed victories over the bourgeoisie: it was eighteen thirty! Bernard was convinced that love was an act of revolt – he never suspected it was complicity, friendship or idleness.

‘If I tear Catherine from their clutches,' he told himself, ‘I'm definitively saved. If they keep her, what shall I do with my defeat?'

Catherine still did not move. Perhaps she was dreaming; perhaps she was trembling with impatience or dread; perhaps she was simply waiting for this ceremonial to come to an end.

‘All her strength lies in her boredom,' thought Bernard. ‘Even against me. Is she going to abandon me? Go over to the enemy? When she fled last evening, was she making her choice?'

He wanted to think only about fighting: a fighter is always delivered. He looked at his brother, perhaps for the first time in twenty years without hatred. The unease, the strange anguish he had always felt in his presence had just evaporated. He had finally been cured of his family by scandal, by daylight. He had finally forced them to enter with him the world without lies: the unpolished world of Cain and Abel,
Eteocles and Polynices
, the Seven against Thebes – the world of tragedy. Claude was crushed and certainly looked it: everything was about to collapse – family tradition, primogeniture, brotherly love. The irruption of the unforeseen into the Rosenthal order was making him doubt his reason and his eyes.

‘Who'll dare to speak?' Bernard wondered. ‘They'd be wrong to think I'm going to begin . . . My mother, no doubt – the woman for big occasions.'

Bernard sat down. The silence, of course, was unbearable. From time to time the sound of glassware could be heard coming from the dining-room: the housemaid was setting the table. Even if there is a dead person in the house, one has to eat. Mme Rosenthal said, quite quietly:

— Bernard . . .

‘Here we go, then,' he said to himself. ‘I knew it . . .'

— Bernard, you know no doubt that we know. Claude has told us everything. Catherine has confessed. We wanted to talk to you, in front of her.

Bernard looked at Catherine, who still did not move, who was no longer even smoking. The smoke from her cigarette climbed straight, then trembled at a distant eddy of Mme Rosenthal's voice.

— I suppose, she said, that it's no use reading you a sermon.

— No, it isn't, Bernard said.

— Be quiet, said Mme Rosenthal. You're a kind of monster. You fill me with horror. And please don't defy us.

— Oh, of course, said Bernard.

Mme Rosenthal burst out sobbing. She lost face at the thought that she must renounce all power over her son. When she was able to speak, she sighed:

— And I almost hoped that when you saw us, you'd understand the horror of your behaviour . . . that you'd at least have some good impulse, some cry of regret. From you, my poor child, there's nothing more we can look for . . .

— Look for what? said Bernard, casting another glance in Catherine's direction, catching the ghost of a smile which she suppressed and telling himself: ‘She still sees them with my eyes!' What good impulse? Ought I to throw myself at Claude's knees? Since I didn't imagine he could ever forgive me, I don't really see what we could do in the way of tender feelings, morals and collective tears . . . And since I regret precisely nothing . . .

— Swine! exclaimed Claude, tensing and gripping the back of his mother's chair.

— Claude, said Mme Rosenthal.

M. Rosenthal, who could stand no more, left abruptly slamming the door. His wife shrugged her shoulders.

— So, we have very little to say to one another, said Mme Rosenthal. No one must know anything about our troubles. Catherine will remain with her husband . . .

She looked towards Catherine, who gave a slight nod. Bernard thought it was impossible, they were all crazy and this family tribunal was vile.

— You'll live on your own, his mother continued, as you've begun to do. Your father will pay you your monthly allowance. If you want to, you may come here whenever you wish – you're our child. I shall make arrangements so that you don't meet either your brother or his wife here. There will be no public rupture: I won't tolerate a scandal. Later, we shall see . . .

— Time doesn't solve anything, said Bernard. Let's make no plans. Is that all?

Was it all? He still waited. Was no one shouting? Was no one hurling themselves at him? He had had a moment of hope, when Claude had called him a swine. It was over, they were all silent now, they were curling up like hedgehogs, softening the impact of the blow.

‘Are they hoping I'll roll at their feet, or weep? I look a fool, nothing's happening. No tragedy. No sentimental drama. At most a bourgeois piece, second-rate Diderot, that middle course . . .'

Bernard stood up and walked to the far end of the room, towards Catherine. Catherine's cigarette, almost completely burnt down, was still smoking in the ashtray. It was the time for decision. Catherine watched him coming, she straightened her body, crossed her fingers. Mme Rosenthal stood up. Claude held his breath.

— Let's go, Catherine, Bernard said. Come and put your coat on . . .

Catherine raised her eyes and looked at Bernard.

— Go away, she said.

— Yes, go away, said Mme Rosenthal.

Everyone began to move. Catherine uncrossed her legs and her fingers, leant back on the settee, closed her eyes. Claude kissed his mother, Bernard left.