Flight Without End

XXIX

One day Tunda made up his mind to ask the worthy President for help. He had hesitated for some weeks. For he did not know whether it would be better to write a frank, albeit brief and polite, letter to the old gentleman — who probably weighed his own actions very carefully and had never allowed himself to step even slightly out of line — or to pay him a visit.

Tunda discovered that all his experience did not suffice to give him assurance in a world where he was not at home. All at once he understood the timidity of invalids, those invalids who lose their eyes, ears, noses and legs in the purgatory of war and, back home again, obey the order of a servant-girl who turns them away from the front-door. His heart was beating. Whatever courage and vigour he had once been able to summon up had been only in response to some particular situation; cowardice was the condition of domesticated men.

He wrote several letters and tore them up again. He made an effort to recall the red nights, the flaming crimson of those vanished days, the immense, limitless, absolute whiteness of the Siberian ice, the tremendous silence of the forests through which he had wandered and in which nothing was audible but the breath of death, the choking hunger which had gnawed at his vitals, his perilous flight, and the day when he was slung over the back of a galloping horse, the moment when he lost consciousness — like a sudden and yet gradual descent into a dark-red gulf of softness, terror and death. But his recollections were of no avail. For the present is a thousand times more compelling than the most compelling past — and he could understand the suffering of persons who heroically endured a dangerous operation ten years ago and are overwhelmed by a present toothache.

He decided to call on the President. He had not given notice of his arrival and as he stood at the door he found some consolation in thinking that he could occupy the first two minutes with excuses for his sudden visit. To which the President would certainly reply, with his accustomed and beautifully convincing cordiality, that he was especially delighted that Tunda should visit him. Then Tunda would summon up the courage to disillusion him.

M. le President was at home, and he was alone. Once again Tunda admired the precise, unsuspecting and inexorable protocol, the formality which was never for a moment interrupted, which was unconcerned with the purpose of his visit, according him the same respect that was due to an independent, proud and free individual. The servant still treated him politely today; tomorrow, when he had finally and visibly sunk into the wretched category of rejected supplicant, he would refuse him admission just as imperturbably. There are no exceptions. Tunda thought of the decree of which the tipsy manufacturer had once spoken. One may have long since accomplished one’s escape from class, position, social category, but the protocol is still unaware of this, and before it has registered either an ascent or descent, this and that detail may no longer be true. Tunda was like a man who comes from an earthquake stricken city and is received by those who know nothing about it as if he had just descended from a train arriving on schedule.

But if ante-room and servant still seemed to him as in former times — how suddenly the few weeks had lengthened into decades! — he perceived in the President’s gaze the whole alteration in his own position. For the owners of property, the serene, the untroubled, yes, even those only modestly provided for, develop a defensive instinct against any invasion of their protected territory, they shun even the slightest contact with one from whom they may expect a request and scent the proximity of helplessness with the certainty of prairie animals detecting a forest fire. The President would have divined the change in Tunda’s condition; and even if he had been known to him up till then as a millionaire and fellow clubman of the Citroens, he would have divined it at the very moment when Tunda approached him to avow his poverty — the President would have divined it, thanks to the prophetic gift that goes with property, security, the bourgeois condition, as the sheepdog accompanies the blind brushmaker.

The President’s nobility was transformed into fear, his reserve into severity, his prudence into peevishness. Yes, even his handsomeness was now revealed as cheap, superficial, easily explicable vanity. His beautiful silver beard was the product of a brush and comb, his smooth brow an index of thoughtless and complacent egoism, his well-tended fingernails the counterpart of sophisticated claws, his gaze the expression of a glassily smooth eye that received images of the world as indifferently as a mirror.

‘I’m in a bad way, M. le President!’ said Tunda.

The President’s expression became even graver and he indicated a comfortable leather armchair, like a doctor prepared to listen and to take in the details with the cheerful interest medical men show in a case-history which might further their studies. He sat there like God the Father, shaded as in a cloud, while a broad beam of sunlight fell through the window onto Tunda so that his knees were illuminated and the light stood before him like a golden transparent wall behind which the President sat and listened, or did not listen. But then a remarkable thing came to pass; the President arose, the wall of crystalline gold advanced towards him, he broke through it, it turned into a golden veil which conformed to the shape of his body, lay on his shoulders and showed up a little white scurf on his blue suit. The President stood there, human now, extended a hand to Tunda, and said: ‘Perhaps I can do something for you.’