Cocaine

2

The article on cocaine addicts was a great success. The American newspaper editor telegraphed one hundred dollars to his nephew even before the article appeared in the centre columns of his sensational news page. A hundred dollars amounted to one thousand francs and convinced him that he was a great journalist; and with that belief in his epigastrium (for that is where arrogance, presumption and pride are situated) the first thing he did was to jump into a taxi, hurry to his shady little hotel in Montmartre, pay the bill, pack his bags, and move to one of the smartest hotels in Paris, the Hotel Napoléon in the Place Vendôme, where he installed himself in an unheated room on the fourth floor, facing the interior courtyard.

That same afternoon he called on the editor of a newspaper with a big circulation called The Fleeting Moment.

The editor was a very elegant individual. It is only aged teachers at technical schools who fail to understand that it is possible to be both intelligent and well dressed. A big ruby on his finger gleamed like a tiny lamp. Like one of those little lamps that novelists compare to big rubies.

“Yes, I know your uncle,” he said, as erect in his armchair as if had been fixed with a u-joint, for an editor’s conscience always remains perfectly upright no matter how much his ship is tossed by stormy seas. “Yes, I know your uncle, and if your flair for journalism is anything like his,” he added, stropping an ivory paper knife on his thigh, “you’ll go a long way. Where did you work in Italy?”

“On the Corriere della Sera.”

“And what were you?”

“Sub-editor.”

“Have you a degree?”

“In law and medicine.”

“And what are your political views?”

“I have none.”

“Good. If you are to argue convincingly for a point of view, it’s better to have none yourself. But the difficulty,” the editor went on, applying his scissors to an English newspaper, “is that I have no vacancies at the moment, and I have no work to offer you. But I shall bear you in mind and send for you as soon as there’s an opening. Where are you staying?”

Tito, gloating over the sensational impact of what he was about to say, replied with deliberate gravity: “The Hotel Napoléon.”

The editor, who had picked up a pen to jot down his address and had pressed a bell to have him shown out, put down the pen and the notebook and sent the commissionaire away.

“I’ll give you a month’s trial on a salary of 1500 francs,” he said.

“Tomorrow’s the first, so let us start tomorrow. Come and see me as soon as you arrive at the office and I’ll introduce you to your colleagues. Goodbye.”

He then pressed the button again.

That evening Tito dined at Poccardi’s and bought himself an orchestra stall at the Boîte à Fursy, where he picked up the latest tune. He went back to his hotel whistling it.

To the Hotel Napoléon.

Remember that you’re staying at the Hotel Napoléon, he said to himself. In an unheated, back room on the fourth floor, it’s true, but it’s also true that you’re staying at the Hotel Napoléon.

He unpacked his bags, arranged his toilet articles on the washstand, put his shirts, socks and vests in the drawers and hung his jackets on the clothes hangers in the wardrobe. There was even a telephone in the room.

What a shame I’ve no one to ring up, he said to himself. To have a telephone and no one to ring up is sad. But not having anyone to ring up is not sufficient reason for not using the thing.

He picked up the receiver and asked for a number, the first that came into his head.

He did not have long to wait. A female voice replied.

“Is that you?” Tito said. “What did you say? Madame… Good, it was you I wanted to speak to. I must warn you that your husband knows everything. That’s all I have to say, and it’s no good pressing me for details. All I have to say is that your husband knows everything. No, no, it’s no good pressing me for details. No, I’m not Giacomino… Well, since you have guessed it — yes, I am Giacomino. Goodnight.”

And he replaced the receiver.

“Who on earth is Giacomino, I wonder?” he said to himself with a smile. “And I wonder who she is.”

His face suddenly darkened.

“Poor creature, that was a dirty trick I played on her,” he murmured with genuine regret. “I’ve given her a bad night. Perhaps I’ll get her into serious trouble. I’ll ring her again and tell her… But I don’t remember the number. So much the worse, or so much the better. Perhaps I’ve done her a good turn.”

And he laughed again.

He undressed and put his watch, money and a small golden box on the table. He opened the box. It was nearly empty; during the two intervals at the theater he had inhaled a few grams to celebrate his getting a job on that great daily The Fleeting Moment, and little more than a gram was left. He poured it on to the back of his hand and inhaled voluptuously.

He took the last things from his suitcase: his pajamas, a Bible, and a revolver. He put on his pajamas and put the Bible on the commode.

They say that all good men should have a Bible at their bedside, he told himself. I’ve never read it, but I always have it by my bedside.

He got into bed, drew the bedclothes up to his mouth, and switched off the light.

The fresh, volatile odor of cocaine descended to the very bottom of his lungs. How cold one’s feet get in this hotel, he grumbled, and curled up.

With his head on the pillow he could hear the beating of his heart.

My heart has started racing, he said to himself, it’s chasing my nose that has run away. I’m going to be a huge success on that newspaper. I’ll be editor within a year. Then I’ll marry a politician’s daughter. And I’ll be a deputy. A deputy at the Palais Bourbon. And from there I shall make speeches: “And believe me, Alcibiades, it is better to associate with one of those not unwilling youths than with the hetairae of Athens…”

But why had a phrase from Plato’s Symposium that he had picked up years ago at school, heaven knows when or why, suddenly returned to his mind?

And how cold his legs were.

His heart quieted down, but his imagination still ran riot. His brain was like a carnival in a madhouse; his closed eyes saw a blue darkness in which cold sparks ignited and exploded. Each split into two, then each half again divided. One of the sparks expanded like unraveling thread and throbbed with amoeba-like movements, invading his whole field of vision and flooding out all the darkness. His closed eyes were full of light.

And in that light a mobile, elastic circle formed and grew into a square, then into a rectangle, then into a parallelepiped; a black parallelepiped with one golden side and then two and then three; it was a book, the Bible.

The Book of Genesis — what a jester, what a great humorist God is, Tito said to himself, while his heart beat loudly in the bed, which was as resonant as a resonance chamber. What a jester, what a humorist God is.

God said: “Let there be light

Let there be heavens

Let there be grass

Let there be trees

Let there be the sun

Let there be the stars for when there’s no gas

Let there be gas for when there are no stars

Let there be reptiles

Let there be birds

Let there be farmyard animals

Let there be wild animals for the menageries

Let there be male human beings

Let there be female human beings…”

And then He told them to have children, authorizing them to lord it over the fish in the sea, the birds of the air and the beasts that wander over the face of the earth. All he had to do was to say: “Let there be stars” or “let there be crocodiles,” “let there be Mediterranean monk seals” — or porcupines — and all those creatures came into existence ready-made and complete at the mere sound of their names.

If that was how it was done the Creation was not very hard work. Nevertheless on the seventh day He felt He needed a rest.

What a jester God is, Tito went on. No doubt it was He who created such blessings as water to make the grass grow, grass to fill animals’ bellies, animals to fill men’s bellies, women for men to keep, the serpent to cause trouble to both sexes, truffles to slice and serve with lobsters, the sun to dry washing, the stars to shine on poets, and the moon so that Neapolitan songs could be written about it. But it strikes me as strange that things should have emerged from nothing at the mere sound of their names. I think the Almighty likes parlor tricks and arranged the whole thing beforehand, that like a good conjurer He had His boxes with double bottoms and His glasses prepared in advance, and that His bravura in seeming to create everything out of nothing in six days was a piece of American-style ballyhoo designed pour épater les bourgeois.

But He had a trick up His sleeve.

To give life to man He breathed the breath of life into his nostrils.

I believe He did this, not to give him life, but to inject into him an artistic assortment of germs. Adam in fact lived for only 930 years, though he could have lived much longer.

God began on a lavish scale, creating the stars with their huge orbits, the sun with its eternal light, and innumerable species of plants and animals. He acted entirely regardless of expense. But to make woman He performed the niggardly act of using one of Adam’s ribs.

What a humorist the Almighty is.

He knew from experience that when you see a “no smoking” notice you have an irresistible desire to light a cigarette. He regretted the excessive favors granted to Adam and his wife and wanted to withdraw them without making a bad impression, so He applied to the serpent, suggesting to it that dirty trick with the apple that we all know about. And the serpent fell in with the idea.

The serpent acted in league with God, and the whole thing was a put-up job.

And the fruit of that fruit was the following: the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened and they saw that they were naked; so they sewed themselves suits made to measure of fig leaves. But how did they know they were naked if they had never seen themselves with clothes on?

Next morning the Lord called on Adam who, always the perfect gentleman, put all the blame on his wife.

In slightly cowardly fashion God caused the apple to be paid for dearly by inventing morning sickness and labor pains. So women with a retroflexed uterus will know whom to thank for it, since the Lord said: “Thou shalt bear thy children in pain; the earth shall bring forth thorns; thou shalt gain thy daily bread with the sweat of thy brow and that of thy baker, and thou shalt pay dearly for it, because the American exchange rate is fantastic.”

Then He drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and at the entrance He put a police guard equipped with flaming swords and He called them cherubim. In short, like all arranged marriages, the marriage of Adam and Eve was unhappy.

But what repels me most is seeing the Almighty feigning ignorance. He, who is all-seeing, all-knowing and makes all the worst arrangements, goes to Adam and with hypocritical ingenuousness says to him: “What have you done with the apple?”

And He goes to Cain and says to him? “What have you done with your brother?”

If I had been in Cain’s position I would have given Him a punch in the eye.

The eye of God. The eye of God who sees everything — and hears everything. Perhaps He’s listening to my blasphemy now. And He’s capable of striking me down.

But how cold my feet are.

All the same, if I were to die now, I should be almost glad. No, I don’t want to commit suicide, but I should like to fade away and die gently. To depart from life as one gets out of a bath. What a fine thing is death. Only decomposing corpses are happy; the more advanced the decomposition, the greater the happiness. And if I’m not going to die, I should like at least to remain here, inert, like a mineral, devoid of will, devoid of initiative, devoid of rebellion, letting everything take its course all round me, letting everything collapse, without lifting a finger, behaving like decent women in the old days who grew old and ugly and disintegrated without the use of make-up or lipstick. But what an extraordinary effect cocaine has on me. Cold feet, fireworks in my head, a torrent of stupid ideas, my heart throbbing like a sewing machine, and a calm acceptance of the idea of total inertia. All the same, I’d like to stay in bed for two or three days until the staff came and knocked; then the owner would come, and then the police, and I wouldn’t answer any of them, I’d let myself be shaken and I’d let myself be taken away, as they liked and where they liked… What a strange effect cocaine has on me.

His heart went on beating hard, and the whole of his body trembled as a result; it trembled, vibrated and shook like a stationary car with the engine left running.

But the exalting and depressing effect of the drug began to fade. Tito came back to himself.

And fell asleep.

When he awoke the sun was high. He did not notice it, because in Paris the sun is always at the same height; so high that you never see it.

He had to be at the newspaper office at ten. The editor, thrusting his fierce animal-tamer’s moustaches at him, had told him to report to him personally. So he would have to have a good shave.

Standing in front of the mirror and applying his safety razor to his thin, lathered cheeks, he said to himself: How boring life is. How futile. Having to get up every morning, put on your shoes, shave, see people, talk, look at the hands of your watch returning inexorably to where you have seen them millions of times before. Having to eat. Having to eat bits of dead bodies, or dead fruit, or fruit worse than dead, adulterated by cooking; having to pick fruit that is so beautiful only to spoil it and pass it through our bodies. Having to swallow dead things until we become dead things ourselves. Having to make new things in order to use and so destroy them so that other new things may result from their destruction. Everything around us is dead; here and there are some traces of life, but everything else is dead: the wool of my jacket is dead, the pearl that adorns a young woman’s neck is the coffin of a worm… Having to smile at women; having to try and be a bit different from the majority of mankind. Yet even we who try to be different and make wide detours to avoid following the main road end up exactly where ordinary people end up, that is, following the main road. Life is an arc from A to B. Except for the stillborn or congenital idiots, it’s not a straight line. For those with some intelligence the curve is gentle; for the highly intelligent the curve is greatest; for the simple-minded it’s almost a straight line. The brainy, the eccentric, the odd and out-of-the-way individuals who want novelty, flavor, something different from the normal, arrive more slowly but just as inevitably at the point that conventional people reach without question and without hesitation. The only difference is in the width of the arc. Those with a taste for liberty and adventure who scorn marriage end by envying those who marry young and have a large family; those who live a dazzling life of unpredictable changes of fortune, alternating between poverty and wealth, luxury and hunger, end by regretting not having had a career in the civil service. I believe that at heart the great actress envies the good housewife who washes and plays with her children. I believe that the great statesman who makes history regrets not having been a country schoolteacher or a stationmaster.

The height of perfection is mediocrity (Tito went on). The height of perfection is the bookkeeper who shaves every other day, travels second class, aspires to purgatory, is satisfied with a dowry of 50,000 lire, lives in a third-floor flat, was a non-commissioned officer, and wears detachable shirt cuffs and silver gilt cuff links. So let mediocrity be praised.

And in that case why do I go and get a job on a newspaper in the secret hope of being a great success? But that isn’t true. At heart I don’t hope for anything at all. I have no ideals. But I have a strong beard, and this blade is blunt. That’ll do. I’ve scratched myself enough. The editor of The Fleeting Moment won’t want to embrace and kiss me, I hope. I shall be an employee, a humble employee. I shall never aspire to be the idol of the mob. The mob loves those who amuse and serve it. But to amuse it you have to love it. I love no one, least of all the mob, because the mob, the multitude, are like women: they betray those who love them.

Tito bent over the washbasin and rinsed his face. The cold water clarified his ideas.

What a pessimistic idiot I am, he said to himself. I’m an idiot and a liar. I want to succeed. And I shall.

He walked briskly down the stairs, and at the door he sent a boy resplendent in a red uniform like an acrobat’s costume to get him a taxi.

The editor of The Fleeting Moment was in the salle d’armes fencing with the drama critic, but he would be back in his office in three quarters of an hour.

In the meantime Tito took off his overcoat and hung up his hat. That is the first act that marks taking possession of an office.

A gentleman in black came towards him with outstretched hand. His jacket and hair were black, and he was all straight lines (his parting, the crease in his trousers, the shape of his mouth, the set of his shoulders); he seemed to have been drawn with a ruler in India ink.

“Aren’t you the new man?” he said. “I’m Ménier, the secretary of the editorial department. Won’t you come this way?”

He led him through three huge, richly upholstered rooms furnished with marble busts, dainty desks and huge armchairs — those soft armchairs that caressingly adjust to all the curves and bulges of the human form. The difference in substance between the flimsy desks and the hospitable armchairs was an apt acknowledgment of the supererogatory nature of work in the face of claims of idleness and sloth. After passing through the three rooms on a long length of oriental carpet they found themselves in front of the American bar.

The barman, whose generous form looked as inappropriate in his white uniform as an ancient Egyptian priest would have done if he had absent-mindedly put on the short black jacket of a contemporary Spaniard, was absorbed in mixing some highly complicated drinks for three or four members of the staff who were seated, or rather perched like lookouts, on high, slender stools.

Tito’s companion ordered two cocktails.

The barman, with the mournful precision of a chemist engaged in a highly sophisticated laboratory experiment, poured three different liquors into a kind of big glass test tube, filled it to the top with crushed ice, poured into it some drops of heaven knows what from three different little bottles, and stirred the mixture; then he pressed the edges of two glasses into a half lemon and dipped them in sugar, which stuck to the edges like brine, and poured the mixture into the glasses.

The man with the black, geometrical features, looking as neat, austere and solemn as a millionaire’s funeral, glanced at the Italian, expecting to see on his face an expression of wonder at this catastrophic concoction. When Frenchmen, and Parisians in particular, have dealings with an Italian they believe they are revealing unsuspected marvels to him and invariably expect him to be as astonished as American natives were when Christopher Columbus showed them a cigarette lighter or a box of Valda tablets. Even Parisian cocottes, when they undress in the presence of an Italian, expect him to put his hands to his brow in utter amazement at the revelation that women are differently made to men. Cocktails are made like that in my country too, Tito said to himself. If you had drunk all the cocktails that I have, you’d have delirium tremens by now.

“Allow me to introduce Dr — who deals with German politics; Professor —, who handles the Russian section, and M. — , our medical correspondent,” he said.

Then, pointing to Tito, he said.

“M. Titò Arnodi.”

“Tito Arnaudi,” the owner of the name corrected him.

“M. Titò Arnodi, our new colleague,” the man repeated.

Tito took in only the end of their names (ein in the case of the German, ov in the case of the Russian and ier in the case of the medical correspondent). The three gentlemen concerned leapt from their stools to shake hands with their new colleague.

“And now I’ll take you to your office,” the editorial secretary said. “And on the way I’ll take the opportunity of introducing you to your fellow countryman who deals with Italian politics. C’est un charmant garçon.”

Tito put his glass on the counter and shook hands with the German, the Russian and the scientist, who climbed back on to their observation stools.

Beyond the bar there was another room with two billiard tables, and beyond that there was the restaurant for the editorial staff of The Fleeting Moment and their friends.

Tito and his companion walked down a corridor, and three or four messengers rose and sat down again as they passed. It was like a hotel corridor, with doors on either side; all that was missing was shoes outside the doors and trousers hanging on hooks on the door posts. As they passed the doors they heard the clatter of typewriters, all tuned in together, the ringing of telephone bells and the sound of feminine voices.

The secretary knocked at the door.

“Entrez,” someone answered.

A number of colored cushions lay on a lounge chair, and a man lay on the cushions. One leg slid to the ground, and Pietro Nocera rose with its aid.

“Good gracious.”

“Tito Arnaudi.”

“Good heavens, Pietro Nocera.”

“Fancy seeing you in Paris.”

“I’ve been here a month. And you?”

“I’ve been here a year. Are you passing through?”

“Goodness no.”

“Are you staying in Paris, then?”

“Not only that, I’m staying on this newspaper.”

And before Pietro Nocera recovered from his surprise the secretary said: “I’m putting you in the next office. I’ll have the communicating door opened, so that you won’t have to go out into the corridor if you want to talk.”

“And how on earth did you get here?”

“I’ll tell you. And you?”

“I’ll tell you too.”

“Are you free for lunch?”

“Completely.”

“There’s a restaurant on the premises.”

“So I’ve seen.”

“So you’ll have lunch with me.”

“Do you realize the gravity of what you are saying?”

“I do.”

“In that case I accept.”

“I’ll order you oysters still redolent of the sea.”

The secretary left the two friends together to allow all their sentimental gases to expand.

Pietro Nocera telephoned to the bar. “Two Turins,” he said.

He turned to Tito and explained that he had ordered Italian vermouth for the sake of local color. “Sit there, facing me, so that I can have a good look at you. Your complexion has changed a bit, but otherwise you’re just the same. And what brought you to Paris? And how’s that old aunt of yours?”

“Don’t let’s talk indecencies at table.”

“So you’ve taken to journalism too?”

“As you see.”

“And how did that happen?”

“It’s quite simple. I’m a journalist just as I might be a cinematograph operator or a boatswain on a sailing ship or a conjuror.”

“You’re quite right,” Pietro Nocera said. “One takes refuge in journalism, as one takes refuge on the stage after doing the most desperate and disparate jobs — as priest, dentist or insurance agent. There are some who fall in love with journalism because they have had distant glimpses of its most glamorous aspects or its most successful representatives, just as they fall in love with the actors’ trade because they’ve seen an actor who played Othello being frantically applauded. I’ll play Othello too, they say to themselves.”

“And all they ever get is a walk-on part.”

“And how many walk-on parts there are in journalism! We’re not people who live real life. We live on the margins of life. We have to defend views we don’t share and impose them on the public; deal with questions we don’t understand and vulgarize them for the gallery. We can’t have ideas of our own, we have to have those of the editor; and even the editor doesn’t have the right to think with his own head, because when he’s sent for by the board of directors he has to stifle his own views, if he has any, and support those of the shareholders.

“And then, if you knew how wretched it is behind the scenes of this big stage. You’ve seen the many rooms, the many carpets and many lamps; you’ve seen the bar, the salle d’armes, the restaurant, but you haven’t yet met the men. What a prima-donna atmosphere. How many ham actors preen themselves in these rooms, and how many megalomaniacs boast about successes they never had.

“Outsiders believe journalists to be privileged creatures because theaters give them free stalls, ministers give them precedence over prefects and senators kicking their heels in the waiting room, and great artists talk to them on familiar terms. But the public doesn’t know that in spite of their public cordiality all these people privately despise them. Everyone has a low opinion of journalists, from the hospital porter who gives a reporter information about a tram crash to the President of the Republic who grants an interview to the parliamentary correspondent. They are polite to them because they’re afraid of major acts of blackmail or minor acts of meanness; they willingly give them the information they need, and sometimes they actually give it to them already written out or dictate it to them word for word because, knowing their dreadful ignorance, they’re afraid of heaven knows what idiocy being attributed to them. A great musician or fashionable playwright or highly successful actor will be on familiar terms with newspaper critics, but they know perfectly well who and what those critics are: they’re individuals who between the age of eighteen and twenty-five became newspaper reporters just as you or I did, just as they might have gone into the cod-liver oil business or become a bookkeeper to an equestrian circus. Journalism put them in contact with writers, actors, painters, sculptors, musicians, and thus equipped them with a vocabulary extensive enough to write a defamatory column about a genius or eulogize an idiot.

“Nevertheless I do not wish to imply that journalism is a printing press put at the disposal of irresponsibility and incompetence; in every editorial office there are two or three men of intelligence, two or three decent human beings, and sometimes one or two who have both brains and conscience.

“In this caravansary in which you took refuge a quarter of an hour ago you’ll find some admirable persons: the editor, the chief sub-editor, the dramatic critic, who is very severe in his judgments and is a playwright —”

“A successful one?”

“No; the chief shorthand writer and the German specialist. But the others — they’re superficial types with nothing in their heads but a short list of books they haven’t read, who talk, talk, talk in disconnected fragments, in ready-made phrases without rhyme or reason, so that listening to them is like looking at a bundle of newspaper cuttings and picking out phrases here and there with no connecting link between them. There are others who never talk. But they create the impression of being plunged in deep thought, because they walk about with lowered head, as if hypnotized by the pavement, looking at every bit of spittle as if they were expecting to find a diamond; you’d think them absorbed in trying to solve some baffling problem, but in fact they’re not thinking at all; they’re like the cab horses waiting at the corner of the street, seemingly weighed down by tremendous problems though in reality they’ve nothing whatever in their noddles. All the same, I think you’ll be happy on this newspaper. Everyone here seems slightly infected with à-quoi-bonisme, with je-m’enfichisme. We don’t have here what happens in other places: that the successful look down on those whose success is still to come, like married women who look down on young ladies still looking for a husband.”

While Pietro Nocera was talking Tito looked round the room.

There was a big frosted window, a desk with some opened newspapers, some sheets of paper in disarray, a long pair of scissors lying wide open, an ink stand, a bottle of glue, a lamp, an ashtray with a great many wax match heads which looked like tiny skulls mingled with small bones in a dainty charnel-house (there were still some traces of cocaine in Tito’s head), a telephone, some newspaper cuttings stuck to a wall, and a thin shelf with a few books lying about on it. It looked not so much as if the shelf were there for the books but as if the books had been put there for the sake of the shelf.

“Your office is exactly the same,” Pietro Nocera explained. “They’re all exactly alike, like cabins in a liner.”

Someone knocked the door, and a messenger came in.

“Show her up,” Pietro said to the messenger. Then, turning to Tito, he added “It’s a temporary mistress of mine. Go next door and take possession of your office. I’ll fetch you in an hour’s time.”

“Do you mean you receive women in your office?”

“Where do you expect me to receive them, you provincial? In yours?”

Tito walked out. The woman walked in.