Inevitable

VI

SHE STAYED IN for a few days, and ate in her room. One morning, however, she went for a walk in the Borghese gardens and bumped into the young Van der Staal on his bicycle.

“You don’t cycle?” he asked, jumping off.

“No …”

“Why not?”

“It’s a kind of movement that doesn’t agree with my kind of person,” replied Cornélie, annoyed at meeting someone who disturbed the solitude of her walk.

“May I walk with you?”

“Of course.”

He left his bicycle in the charge of the gateman, and walked along beside her, naturally, without saying much.

“It’s so beautiful here,” he said.

His words sounded simple and sincere. She looked at him closely, for the first time.

“You’re an archaeologist, aren’t you?” she asked.

“No,” he said defensively.

“What then?”

“Nothing. Mama says that to excuse me. I’m nothing and a quite useless member of society. And not even all that rich.”

“But you’re studying, aren’t you?”

“No. I read a bit here and there. My sisters call that studying.”

“Do you like going out, as your sisters do here?”

“No, I think it’s dreadful. I never go with them.”

“Don’t you enjoy meeting and studying people?”

“No. I like paintings, statues and trees.”

“Poet?”

“No. Nothing. Really, nothing.”

She looked at him more and more attentively. He was walking beside her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, a tall thin fellow of maybe twenty-six, still more a boy than a man in his build and his face, but on the other hand with a certainty and calm that made him older than his years. He was pale, he had dark, cool, almost accusing eyes, and there was something nonchalant about his tall, thin figure in his dishevelled cycling suit, as if he cared nothing about his arms and legs.

He said nothing more, but walked beside her, easily, companionably, without finding it necessary to talk. But Cornélie became nervous and did not know what to say.

“It’s so beautiful here,” she stammered.

“Oh, it’s very beautiful here,” he replied calmly, without seeing that she was nervous. “So green, so wide, so peaceful: those long avenues, those perspectives of avenues, an ancient arch over there, and there, look, so blue, so distant, St Peter’s, always St Peter’s. Shame about all those funny things further on; that cafeteria, that milk stand … They spoil everything these days … Let’s sit down here: it’s so beautiful …”

They sat down on a bench.

“It’s so marvellous when something is beautiful,” he went on. “People are never beautiful. Things are beautiful: statues, paintings. And so are trees, clouds!”

“Do you paint?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted reluctantly. “A bit. But actually everything’s already been painted, and I can’t really say I paint.”

“Do you write too perhaps?”

“Even more has been written than has been painted. Perhaps not everything has been painted yet, but everything has been written. Every new book that has no particular scholarly importance is superfluous. All poetry has been said and every novel has been written.”

“Don’t you read much?”

“Almost nothing. I sometimes leaf through ancient writers.”

“But what do you do then?” she asked suddenly, in irritation.

“Nothing,” he said calmly, and looked at her humbly. “I do nothing, I exist.”

“Do you think that a good approach to life?”

“No …”

“But why don’t you try a different one?”

“Like buying a new jacket, or a new bicycle?”

“You’re not being serious,” she said crossly.

“Why are you so angry with me?”

“Because you irritate me,” she said in annoyance.

He got up, took his leave very politely, and said:

“Then I’d rather go and cycle a bit.”

And he slowly walked off.

“Idiotic fellow!” she thought petulantly.

But she was upset at having squabbled with him, because of his mother and his sisters.