The French cemetery at Touggourt is a hideous place, half devoured by
the sand.... What little energy I had left I spent in carrying her away
from that miserable spot. She rests at El Kantara, in the shade of a
private garden she liked. It all happened barely three months ago.
Those three months have put a distance of ten years between that time
and this.
* * * * *
Michel remained silent for a long time. We did not speak either, for
we each of us had a strange feeling of uneasiness. We felt, alas, that
by telling his story, Michel had made his action more legitimate. Our
not having known at what point to condemn it in the course of his long
explanation seemed almost to make us his accomplices. We felt, as it
were, involved. He finished his story without a quaver in his voice,
without an inflexion or a gesture to show that he was feeling any
emotion whatever; he might have had a cynical pride in not appearing
moved, or a kind of shyness that made him afraid of arousing emotion
in us by his tears, or he might not in fact have been moved. Even now
I cannot guess in what proportions pride, strength, reserve or want of
feeling were combined in him. After a pause he went on:
“What frightens me, I admit, is that I am still very young. It seems
to me sometimes that my real life has not begun. Take me away from
here and give me some reason for living. I have none left. I have
freed myself. That may be. But what does it signify? This objectless
liberty is a burden to me. It is not, believe me, that I am tired of my
crime--if you choose to call it that--but I must prove to myself that I
have not overstepped my rights.
“When you knew me first, I had great stability of thought, and I know
that that is what makes real men. I have it no longer. But I think it
is the fault of this climate. Nothing is more discouraging to thought
than this persistent azure. Enjoyment here follows so closely upon
desire that effort is impossible. Here, in the midst of splendour and
death, I feel the presence of happiness too close, the yielding to it
too uniform. In the middle of the day, I go and lie down on my bed to
while away the long dreary hours and their intolerable leisure.
“Look! I have here a number of white pebbles. I let them soak in the
shade, then hold them in the hollow of my hand and wait until their
soothing coolness is exhausted. Then I begin once more, changing the
pebbles and putting back those that have lost their coolness to soak
in the shade again.... Time passes and the evening comes on.... Take
me away; I cannot move of myself. Something in my will is broken; I
don’t even know how I had the strength to leave El Kantara. Sometimes
I am afraid that what I have suppressed will take vengeance on me.
I should like to begin over again. I should like to get rid of the
remains of my fortune; you see the walls here are still covered with
it.... I live for next to nothing in this place. A half-caste innkeeper
prepares what little food I need. The boy who ran away at your approach
brings it to me in the evening and morning, in exchange for a few sous
and a caress or two. He turns shy with strangers, but with me he is
as affectionate and faithful as a dog. His sister is an Ouled-Naïl
and in the winter goes back to Constantine to sell her body to the
passers-by. She is very beautiful and in the first weeks I sometimes
allowed her to pass the night with me. But one morning, her brother,
little Ali, surprised us together. He showed great annoyance and
refused to come back for five days. And yet he knows perfectly well how
and on what his sister lives; he used to speak of it before without the
slightest embarrassment.... Can he be jealous? Be that as it may, the
little rascal has succeeded in his object; for, partly from distaste,
partly because I was afraid of losing Ali, I have given the woman up
since this incident. She has not taken offence; but every time I meet
her, she laughs and declares that I prefer the boy to her. She makes
out that it is he who keeps me here. Perhaps she is not altogether
wrong....”
* * * * *
_No writer living today has caused such storms of
discussion as André Gide, and few have reached such
eminence. In the course of an active career which
reached back into the last century he has always
managed to be a step ahead of the succeeding sets of
moderns, and perhaps the most remarkable thing about
his books is that not one of them dates. There are
few surer tests of genius. His first great success
in America came in 1927 with the publication of
The Counterfeiters, and since then there has been
an ever-growing interest here in a writer whose
distinguished and versatile gifts were long ago
recognised throughout Europe._
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