So, one more year.
*
At the office on Boulevard Haussmann, I sometimes run into Pierre Dogany. He’s doing a doctorate in public and company law here. He struggled as much as he could in Budapest and left when he saw it wasn’t working out. Though he intends to return there as soon as he’s completed his thesis. He’s determined to be a Hungarian whatever it costs, whatever it takes. His excess of zeal bores me. I sense he regrets that letter he sent me two years ago in Bucharest. He doesn’t forgive me for remembering so well his disillusionment with being Hungarian. He wishes he’d never complained to me of having to put up with being persecuted, oppressed and hounded, and having the very fact of being a Hungarian questioned. This relentless devotion seems excessive to me.
He invited me to the university last week, to hear a paper at Lapradelle’s seminar on international law. He spoke about the legal side of the affairs of those who opted for Romania and, as Lapardelle was legal adviser to the Hungarians at The Hague, the whole meeting was an indictment of the Romanian side of the argument. I felt bad and though I lacked the hard information, dates, figures, I felt the need for a counter-argument. To my delight, it was made by a Romanian student in the hall who, once Dogany had finished his lecture, took the lectern and spoke from there for a full half-hour, his eyes flashing at times with a passion such as has probably never been seen in that cold lecture hall.
I went up to him on the way out to introduce myself.
He introduced himself to me as Saul Berger. I was almost repelled by the facile symbolism of this, too obvious to ignore, and too melodramatic for my taste: two Jews fighting each other for nothing more than abstract victories. Destiny, inevitable destiny.
*
Blidaru asks me in his last letter when I plan to return home. He has reserved a site in Snagov through the teachers’ association and he’d like me to build him a house there.
I replied par avion.
‘I don’t know when I’ll be back, but when I am it’ll be I who builds the house. Wait, professor. You’ll have to. It’s too great a pleasure for me to miss.’
3
Maurice Buret returned yesterday from Normandy, where he had, at Oizy-sur-Glaive, a 25-day sojourn. He’s happy with the harvest he’s brought back, so happy that he’s renounced the usual modest smile with which he usually excuses his victories. He had two successes in Oizy, both of them beauties, and he now animatedly but methodically recounts them to me, in numbered chapters.
1) Doctor Sibier.
2) Register of income.
1) Doctor Sibier is the medic he was substituting for.
He went on holiday to the south of France and then asked Paris for an intern to substitute for him.
As chance would have it, they sent Buret.
‘From the outset,’ recounts Maurice, ‘I knew he was no ordinary fellow. He had two paintings in his house, a Braque and a Marie Laurencin, which in Oizy isn’t just an act of courage, it’s a provocation. A Parisian, thirty-six years old, intelligent — what’s this man doing there, in that provincial backwater, in a town of 8,000 people, alone, without connections, without memories, without hopes? I asked the driver, I asked the nurse, I asked various patients who came along. Nobody could explain it to me. So I had to take up various means of private investigation and I opened the lower drawers of his bureau. He hadn’t left me the keys, but I managed well enough with a knife. I found a stack of letters of no great interest, a few ordinary photos and, finally, an intimate diary. Some 600 pages. I read it all over two nights. Well, it’s extraordinary. I tell you, ex-tra-ord-in-ar-y, and I mean it. You’re going to read it too, and you’ll see.’
‘How, did you bring the notebooks?’
‘Ah, no. What am I, a brigand? I just read them, and transcribed the essential passages. Anyway, I had nothing much to do in the evenings. I transcribed them, then put them back in the drawer. Two days before the return of the doctor, I called a locksmith from the town to repair the damage. Nothing suspicious at all, everything in order.
2) ‘Doctor Sibier returned to Oizy on the evening of the 10th, and I had to leave at dawn the following day. I handed over the register of takings in which the consultations and money received were recorded. I counted out eighteen notes of 1,000 and a few notes of a hundred. I counted out eighteen, though there were only seventeen. A thousand remained in my wallet. Don’t ask me why. It amused me to do it, apart from the fact that 1,000 francs is 1,000 francs.’
‘He could find you out.’
‘“Find me out”! Ugly expression. He could observe a small error in calculation, you mean. Possibly, but he hasn’t observed it.’
‘He might yet.’
‘Obviously. I expect a letter from him today or tomorrow.’
‘And what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. Depends on the letter.’
Indeed, Doctor Sibier’s letter arrived.
It seems to me you have made a small error in your calculations. I’m not certain and, believe me, I dislike bothering you for such a minor matter, but I can’t account for a thousand francs. Is it possible that we’ve missed something or, conversely, noted the same figure twice?
Maurice replied immediately. He doesn’t know if there was an error, but, if there was then he is responsible and ready therefore to immediately send on the missing sum. ‘Whether it is 1,000 or 10,000 francs, it would not be too much to retain a trust which is more valuable to me than anything.’
Eighteen hours later, he received a reply by telegram.
Don’t send anything. It was not a question of you for a moment. A thousand apologies.
‘Look, this is what’s called solid good manners,’ concluded Buret, waving the doctor’s telegram.
Though I am aware of the total moral vacuum in which he lives, I’ve once again sought explanations. Maurice isn’t just some debauchee, and nor is he impulsive. He proceeds with utter calm and takes complete responsibility for his actions. It’s awkward to talk of ‘conscience’, but I’m interested in how this fellow’s head works and his system of reflection and self-examination, that private space where we each one of us judges, absolves or condemns ourselves.
‘Oh, my conscience works excellently. Like a good lung, like a good stomach. My conscience can handle the most serious crises. It’s because I don’t fool myself and I don’t make a moral problem out of a practical one. Ever played football? I have. You’ll be familiar with the general principle at any rate: getting the ball in the back of your opponent’s net. The main thing is not to touch the ball with your hands. Perfect. If you want to play football, you have to submit to this rule. If you don’t accept the rule, don’t play. Simple. But it’s one thing to accept a rule and it’s another thing to believe in it. Whether or not you touch the ball is in itself unimportant and meaningless. It only acquires sense in the context of the game. But a moralist who takes up football won’t delay in pronouncing on the transcendental nature of handling the ball. Well, I don’t go in for that kind of thing. You see, the notion of “sin” is for me an abstraction. There’s no such thing as “sin”. There’s only such a thing as “tactlessness”.’
*
I’ve been in Buret’s home but twice, back when he lived with his mother, in their apartments in the Rue Vouillet. On both occasions, I felt I was inconveniencing him. He closed doors carefully after himself and led me hurriedly through the corridor, towards his room. At one point, through a half-open door, I caught sight of a lady and greeted her awkwardly, not knowing if I should introduce myself. ‘It’s nothing, a friend,’ he told her casually, in passing — and carried on by.