Mickey returned to Down Street. Faithfully, almost as though she had
gone through the experience in order to tell us about it, she recounted
the scene. She felt disappointed, but like all of her feelings, this
didn’t penetrate deeply. “It’s life,” she concluded, and she was
satisfied.
That night, when the phonograph had finally become silent, and when the
last bed-to-bed whisperings were over, Mickey could not get to sleep.
The roaring planes above the barracks and the regular explosions of the
bombs didn’t disturb her; she was used to all that. But she was thinking
of Robert, of the hotel room, of the faded jonquils in the vase.
I was on fire-watch duty that night on the roof, and suddenly I found
Mickey sitting beside me on the parapet in the dark; a pensive Mickey,
who talked almost as though to herself.
“It’s life,” she repeated musingly, and then she told me what she had
been thinking, and somehow she was led back to a childhood memory, a
very distant memory. It was of the time when she had first realized that
lies were a part of life, that it was necessary to lie.
One summer she had been in the mountains with some of her father’s
family in France. Mickey had then been six or seven years old. One day
in August her uncle and aunt had taken her along on an excursion. Mickey
loved the mountains, and she loved these walks.
Toward midday they had picnicked in a little clearing at the edge of a
stream, in bright sunlight. They were all alone in the sunlit silence of
the mountain.
They had finished the lunch of boiled eggs, potatoes, and fruit that her
aunt had prepared. Mickey’s uncle, a thin little man, jaundiced and
bad-tempered, was standing looking at the slope across the valley. His
sharp silhouette was outlined against the cloudless sky. He pointed with
his cane to something in front of him and said, “Look at the goats over
there.”
Mickey’s aunt rose, joined her husband, shaded her eyes, and said,
“Where?” And following her husband’s directions, she finally discovered
the goats, tiny black and white spots, going down the opposite slope of
the mountain.
Then Mickey too rose and slipped to her uncle’s side, trying to see what
he saw. She sought everywhere, inspecting every rock, every tree, every
bush, following his every indication, but she couldn’t find any goats.
At first her uncle had tried to help her out. “But look, look there,
right in front of you. You see the tree, the small round tree, you see
it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now look to the right, and down a little. You see the white
stone? Good. To the right now, a little lower, you’ll see them, eight
goats with a black one in front. You see them now?”
Mickey saw nothing.
Then her aunt had joined in, adding her explanations. “But pay attention
to what you are told, my dear. Don’t you see the rock that your uncle
showed you? And the three trees in a diagonal line? Then drop your eyes
six feet to the right, and you’ll see a white stone. And still to the
right, a sort of reddish spot—you see the red spot? There, there, a
whole flock of goats!”
Mickey tried desperately to see them, her eyes searching in all
directions, going up, going down. She didn’t see any goats anywhere at
all. There was nothing to be done.
Her uncle lost his temper. “She’s doing it on purpose!” he shouted.
“She’s making fun of us. Why, it’s impossible! She’s not blind.”
And then, in order to put an end to the shouting, and simply to please
them and to have some peace, Mickey told a lie. She announced that she
saw the goats at last. “Oh, yes, there! Of course! To the right. I see
them now.”
Her uncle and aunt smiled upon her again, and her aunt gave her
chocolates. For the first time in her life, and at the age of seven,
Mickey had discovered that in the world of grownups, it was necessary to
lie. She was astonished and a little sad. She had just discovered that
the world was different from what she had thought until then, and that
life was different. People had always told her, “You mustn’t lie.” And
that itself was false, because it was necessary to lie. Therefore
probably everything that she had been told was false.
From that time on, she had listened with skepticism to the moral counsel
of her parents. Besides, they were both so old, as old as other
children’s grandparents. And her aunt and uncle were also aged. Mickey
did not like old people. She was always wanting to laugh, to have fun,
and that made noise. And so she was always in rebellion. But among the
things that she still believed in at the age of eighteen, there had been
love with a capital L, such as one read about in novels.
That night she decided that love, too, was like the rest. Still another
lie. And she laughed in the dark.
“Oh, after all, it’s not important. One can be satisfied with what it is
and have fun. It’s not serious.”
She didn’t want to pity herself like an old woman. She declared, “Since
it’s necessary to lie and to say that it’s wonderful, I’ll learn to do
it. I’ll learn to make love.”
She didn’t yet know how she was going to go about this, but she knew
that she was going to begin on the very next occasion. She wanted to get
to be like Ginette, like Claude. And already, her scene with Robert, as
she remembered it, seemed less sad. Robert was handsome. The jonquils
hadn’t been so faded after all.
I was thankful to Mickey that night, not only because I felt she had at
last shown me her true self, but because, in a way, she had been through
something for me, for every one of us, and perhaps she had spared me
pain.