The Difficulty of Being (10 page)

Sartre has raised a great hare here. But why does he restrict himself to visible commitment? The invisible commits further. This is to exclude the poets, who commit themselves for no other reason than to lose. My detractors acknowledge in me a freedom that commits me—in wrong directions. I know what they are thinking of. Of opium, of police raids, etc.… What have opium and police raids to do with this business? Our commitment is a matter for the soul. It consists in not keeping for oneself an iota of comfort.

One haunted hotel was the Hotel Welcome at Villefranche. True, it was we who haunted it, because nothing predisposed it to be so. There was of course the shaded street. There were of course the Vauban ramparts and the barracks which, at
night, evoke the absurd magnificence of dreams. There was, of course, on the left Nice, on the right, Monte Carlo and their pretentious architecture. But the Hotel Welcome was quite charming and seemed to have nothing to fear. Its rooms were painted with Ripolin. They had put a coat of yellow paint over the Italianate
trompe-l’oeil
of its façade. The bay harboured fleets. The fishermen mended their nets and slept in the sunshine.

It all began with Francis Rose. His mother was clairvoyant. In the dining-room she would get up from the table, approach some gentleman or lady and foretell their future. She wore linen dresses on which Francis used to paint flowers. He was nearly seventeen. Everything dates from the dinner party given for his seventeenth birthday. An armchair draped in red velvet had been prepared for me at the end of the table and a bust of Dante stood beside my plate. Lady Rose had only invited some English officers and their wives. About eight o’clock a strange procession appeared at the bottom of the slope which led from the town to the harbour. Crowned with roses, Francis gave his arm to Madame Isadora Duncan in a Greek tunic. She was very fat, a little drunk, escorted by an American woman, a pianist and a few people picked up
en route
. The stupefaction of Lady Rose’s guests, her anger, the entry of the procession, the fishermen flattening their noses against the windowpanes, Isadora kissing me, Francis very proud of his crown, that is how this birthday dinner began. A deathly silence turned the guests to stone. Isadora kept laughing, sprawling against Francis. She even rose and led him into a window recess. It was just then that Captain Williams, a friend of the Roses, came on the scene. He had a habit of bringing pigeons and rabbits out of his sweater and his sleeves. He drank a lot. I suppose he had drunk a lot. He was holding a stick. He crossed the room, approached the
window and, crying out in a loud voice, ‘Hi, you old hag, let go of that child!’ he brought his stick down on the head of the dancer. She fainted. Everything dates from that blow with the stick. Our rooms became, as in
Le Sang d’un Poète
, stage-boxes from which henceforth we watched the show, the battles between the sailors from French, English and American ships. Christian Bérard, Georges Hugnet, Glenway Wescott, Mary Butts, Monroe Wheeler, Philippe Lassell lived at the hotel. We drew, we invented, we visited from one room to another. A mythology was born of which
Orphée
sums up the style. Stravinsky was living at Mont Boron. I used to take him the Latin texts of
Oedipus Rex
. He was composing the oratorio as he received them. Those invisible people, who come when they will and keep an eye on us, were filling the hotel. They brought to it drama, dizziness, sacred fire.

I am told that of the Hotel Welcome nothing remains but the walls.
^‡
That is the final triumph of the emptiness. Doubtless it will be rebuilt. But let travellers beware. It is haunted. Ghosts are not killed by bombs.

IT WOULD BE LOGICAL TO BEAR PAIN BETTER WHEN
one is young, since one has a stretch of time before one and the hope of recovery. The pains of my youth, however, made me more impatient than I feel now. Yet I ought to say to myself that I have not much margin left and that if these pains last much longer there is a risk of my never getting rid of them. I take it that my present age is less foolish than was my youth, and that it is not through resignation or fatigue that I bear my complaints better, but through a sense of equilibrium. Perhaps too, having no time to lose, I tell myself that one must overcome the complaint and undertake the work of which it tries to defraud me. Perhaps again, no longer having any use for my person, other than a spiritual one, physical degradation affects me less. The fact is that I have been suffering every minute for the last six months, that I see my ills assuming every shape and form, defying medicine, and yet I remain alert and courageous. Writing these lines relieves me. It can even happen that in giving myself up to my memories, although this book urges me to curb them, I entirely forget my complaint and that I feel as if I were living, not in the room where I work, but in the place and the period I am describing.

It is enough to make me wonder whether, since the work works on us and we are really not responsible for it, it is not
just a defence mechanism against sickness which forces me to write this particular book.

I like people whose youth heralds their age and whose structure allows one to visualize the appearance which will one day be theirs. Life sculptures them and perfects them. From a rough sketch they become what they should be and are firmly set in it. I have not had this good fortune. In me, youth is long drawn out. It becomes spoilt and does not set well. As a result I have the look, either of a young man blundering into old age, or of an old man blundering in an age which is no longer his. Some may think that I hang on to it. This is very far from true. If it is a fine thing for a young man to be young, it is a fine thing for an old man to be old. Moreover, youth should be apparent in speech and in looks. What worries me is this false youth that impels me into behaviour which I far from intend, since I detest sham, and if I were able to control my actions, I should play the part of an old man. I dare not confess here, even though I am resolved to tell all, the ingenuousness that shackles me and urges me towards mistakes which a person of my age would never commit. I know nothing of the world. The least learning makes a fool of me, and if my name compels me to attend the lectures of my colleagues, I am ashamed of my inability to understand what is being said. An odd old man who closes his eyes, nods his head, appears to be following the speeches and mutters to himself: ‘I am the school dunce.’ I scribble on my desk. The others think that I am giving all my attention. I am doing nothing.

From suffering I gain one advantage; it calls me constantly to order. The long periods in which I used to think of nothing, only letting words float around in me: chair, lamp, door, or other objects over which my eyes were roaming, these long periods of vacancy no longer exist. Pain harasses me and I
must think to distract myself from it. It is the opposite of Descartes. I am, therefore I think. Without pain I was not.

What will be the end of my torment? Shall I live it to the end? Shall I emerge from it? Are these not the afflictions of age beginning? Are they accidental, these phenomena, or normal? It is this too that saves me from rebellion and makes me bear my complaints in patience. I do not want to add to my absurdities that of believing myself to be a young man, prematurely stricken.

It is possible that I shall wake up one fine day without feeling pain in any limb and I may be utterly mistaken in my prognosis. That would be all to the good, but I prefer to be a pessimist. I have always been one, from optimism. I always hoped too much not to put myself on guard against disillusion.

The doctors had ordered me mountains and snow. This, they said, is the only effective medicine. My germs would disappear as if by magic. I did not believe them. These germs, whether of the animal or vegetable kingdom, are as remote from me as the stars. I feel them. They do not know me. I do not know them any better, and the microscope examines me without understanding them, as the telescope examines the sky. They seem, on the contrary, to like high places and the snow. I have already remarked on this. It pleases them that I should breathe, sleep, eat, walk, that I put on weight. They live on me. I am their god whom they torment, and Marcel Jouhandeau is right in saying that men make God suffer. Sometimes I say to myself: ‘God thinks us. He does not think about us.’ And my germs become active. And I suffer. And I think about this. And I tell myself that God suffers by reason of his worlds. That he will so suffer without end.

I can sleep when I am ill. Sleep anaesthetizes me. On waking I think that I am no longer suffering. This lasts for a flash. Another flash brings the pain back where it was. Last night the pain was so acute that sleep did not work. The germs were devouring my right hand. When I touched my face, I felt a crusty mask under which they live and radiate at top speed. Now they have reached my chest. There they are tracing out that red constellation I know so well. I wonder if the sun does not exacerbate this tribe of darkness and if yesterday’s sunshine has not something to do with this attack. What an exhausting hunt! What swift game! The doctors prescribe for me weapons that do not kill. Ointments, spirits, vaccines. I give up. Doubtless what is needed is death, that is to say an end to the world.

Apart from the pain, what keeps on nagging at me is the scheme of these creatures in relation to myself. I should like to know how long their centuries last, how many generations succeed one another in them, if they live under a monarchy or a republic, their means of transport, their pleasures, the style of their buildings, the objects of their labours. It is intolerable to be the habitation of a tribe whose customs one does not know. Why last night were they working between the fingers of my right hand? Why this morning do they leave them in peace and toil at my chest, so immensely far from my fingers? Nothing but enigmas of which I am the object and which rub my nose in my ignorance. Perhaps last night I was the scene of a Hundred Years War. One war alone is waged in the world. The world takes it for several. The pauses seem to it to be the normal state of mankind, that is to say peace. Probably the same is true for my germs; that my attacks are long wars and their short periods of rest are peace. From where I view them the war never stops. From where they view themselves there are several wars, quite disconnected, divided by several periods of peace.

Last night I suffered so much that there was nothing but my pain to distract me from my pain. I had to make it my sole diversion and with good reason. It had thus decreed. It attacked at every point. Then it distributed its troops. It encamped. It so manoeuvred that it was no longer intolerable at any one of its positions, but tolerable at them all. That is to say that the intolerable being distributed, it was this no longer, except as a whole. It was something both tolerable and intolerable. The organ that breaks down and the final chord that goes on for ever. A great, full, rich pain, sure of itself. A balance of pain to which I had to get used, cost what it may.

My concern then became to condition myself to it little by little. The least rebellion might excite it and increase its anger. I had to accept as a privilege its victory, its retinue, its trenches, its tents, its camps, its sleepers, its fires.

At about nine o’clock it ended its preparations: marches and strategic movements. At ten everything was in order. It was in occupation.

This morning it seems to be holding its horses. But the sun is out for the second time since I have been living on the mountain. What to do? Should I avoid this sunlight or use it as a secret weapon against the sleeping army? Should I take it by surprise? Should I let it sleep?

The last time the sun came out I risked the attack. True, the germ population was astir. Was it afraid of the red sky which I became for its night? There was frightful chaos on the roads, jostling of men, rearing of beasts. The pain changed its position, became intense, ceased to be so, flew elsewhere. My eyes swelled, wrinkled, made pockets. Under my arms a small tribe seemed to be seeking refuge.

Medicine remains powerless in face of these problems. One must suffer until the warriors slaughter one another, until the race is exhausted, until there is nothing left but rubble.
No more than among mankind is there any remedy for this frenzy of destruction.

What is amazing is the dispatch with which my troops move from one end of Europe to the other. What am I saying? From the moon to the earth, from the earth to Mars.

If the germs merely wanted to feed on my body, they would cultivate their farms and not become restive. It seems, then, that they must know the hatreds of patriotism, the pride of great powers, the frenzy for living space—the dole, oil trusts, hegemony. It is impossible for me not to notice the similarities between the menaces in the newspapers of 1946 and the disturbances of which I am the universe. I was speaking of God. Without going as far as him, I pity the world if it experiences what I experience, if it must suffer a return of the canker, when it was hoping for rest.

Yesterday evening, and without doubt as a result of the sunshine I had absorbed, the carapace on my forehead began to run, a watery fluid varnished it, made it greasy, and if I mopped it up, it ran harder than ever.

Next my neck began to run in the same way. In the night all this became covered, developing as it dried a follicular crust. My eyes swelled up, above, below, until I could no longer see, and the skin of my face burned as if I had been struck by a back-flash.

These phenomena have kept me awake all night, and in an ineptness in which I was at a loss what to do.

This morning my face is still gilded by the sun, but it seems to be powdered with yellow and under my eyes are deep lines which make a ridge from one to the other.

Moreover I felt torturing pain between the fingers of my right hand. My armpits gave me no peace.