“No,” he said, returning to his distress. He had not left it. He realized that he had not believed May.
“Oh. ” she said merely.
She watched him return into the other room, hesitant. What was he thinking of? As long as Kyo was there, every thought belonged to him. This death demanded something of her, an answer which she did not know, but which existed none the less. Oh, the abject good fortune of others, with their prayers, their funeral flowers! An answer beyond anguish which tore from her hands the maternal caresses which no child had received from her, with the frightful urge that causes one to speak to the dead with the most affectionate gestures of life. This mouth which only yesterday had said to her: “I thought you were dead,” would never speak again; it was not with the derisive remnant of life-a body-it was with death itself that she must enter into communion. She stood there, motionless, wrenching from her memories so many agonies beheld with resignation, all tense with passivity in the vain welcome that she wildly offered to nothingness.
Gisors was once more stretched out on the divan. “And presently I shall have to wake up. ” How much longer would each morning bring this death back to him again? The pipe was there: peace. Advance his hand, prepare the pellet: after a few minutes, think of death itself with a limitless indulgence, as of some paralytic who might wish to harm him: it would no longer be able to reach him; it would lose its hold on him and would gently dissolve into the universal serenity. Liberation was there, within his reach. No help can be given to the dead. Why continue to suffer? Is grief an offering to love, or to fear?. He still did not dare to touch the tray, and anguish, as well as desire and repressed tears, choked him. He picked up at random the first pamphlet which his hand fell on (he never touched Kyo’s books, but he knew he would not read it). It was a copy of the Peking Politics which had faUen there when they had brought in the body and which contained the speech for which Gisors had been dismissed from the University. In the margin, in Kyo’s handwriting: “This speech is my father’s speech.” Kyo had never even told him that he approved him. Gisors folded the pamphlet gently and looked at his dead hope.
He opened the door, threw the opium into the night and came back and sat down, his shoulders drooping, waiting for the dawn, waiting for his grief to be reduced to silence, to become exhausted in its dialogue with itself. In spite of the suffering which half opened his mouth, which cast over his grave face a deforming expression of bewilderment, he did not lose all control. Tonight, his life was going to change: the power of thought is not great against the metamorphosis to which death can oblige a man. He was henceforth thrown back upon himself. The world no longer had any meaning, no longer existed: the irretrievable immobility, there, beside that body which had bound him to the universe, was like a suicide of God. He had expected of Kyo neither success, nor even happiness; but that the world should be without Kyo. “I am thrown outside of time”; the child was the submission to time, to the flow of things; no doubt, deep down, Gisors felt hope, as he felt anguish, hope of nothing, expectation, and his love had to be crushed in order that he should discover that. And yet! All that was destroying him found in him an avid welcome: “There is something beautiful in being dead,” he thought. He felt the basic suffering trembling within him, not that which comes from creatures or from things, but that which gushes forth from man himself and from which life attempts to tear us away; he could escape it, but only by ceasing to think of it; and he plunged into it deeper and deeper, as if this terrified contemplation were the only voice that death could hear, as if this suffering of being a man which pervaded him, reaching down to the very depth of his heart, were the only prayer that the body of his dead son could hear.
Part Seven
Paris, July
FERRAL, fanning himself with the newspaper in which the Consortium was being most violently attacked, was the last to arrive in the waiting-room of the Minister of Finance: in groups were waiting the vice-director of the Mouvement General des Forads-Ferral’s brother had wisely fallen ill the week before-the representative of the Bank of France, the representative of the principal French business-bank, and those of the credit establishments. Ferral knew them alclass="underline" one son, one son-in- law, and former officials of the Mouvement General des Forads; the link between the State and the Establishments was too close for the latter not to consider it in their interest to attach to themselves officials who were favorably received by their former colleagues. Ferral observed their surprise: ordinarily he would have been the first one there; not seeing him there, they had thought he had not been invited to be present. That he should permit himself to come last suprised them. Everything separated them: what he thought of them, what they thought of him, their manner of dress: almost all were dressed with an impersonal carelessness, and Ferral was wearing his wrinkled tweed suit and the gray silk shirt with a soft collar from Shanghai. Two races.
They were almost immediately admitted.
Ferral knew the minister only slightly. Was that facial expression which recalled another age due to his white
hair, thick like that of the wigs of the Regency? That delicate face with its bright eyes, that open smile-he was an old Parliamentarian-accorded with the tradition of ministerial courtesy; a tradition which ran parallel to that of his brusqueness when he was bitten by a Napoleonic fly. While everyone was taking his seat, Ferral thought of a famous anecdote: the minister-then Minister of Foreign Affairs-on one occasion upon pulling the coattail of the French envoy to Morocco, had caused the seam suddenly to rip up the back; he rang for the doorkeeper: “Bring one of my coats for Monsieur!” then rang again just as the door-keeper was leaving: “The oldest one! He doesn’t deserve another!” His face would have been very attractive but for the expression of the eyes which seemed to deny what his mouth promised: he had one glass eye.
They were all seated: the director of the Mouvement General at the right of the minister, Ferral at his left; the representatives, at the other end of the office, on a couch.
“You know, gentlemen, why I have called you. You have no doubt examined the question. I leave M. Ferral to summarize it for you and to present his point of view.”
The representatives patiently waited for Ferral to tell them fantastic tales, as usual.
“Gentlemen,” said Ferral, “it is customary in a conference like this to present an optimistic picture. You have before you the report of the Inspection of Finance. The situation of the Consortium is, practically speaking, worse than this report would lead one to assume. I submit to you neither exaggerated items nor uncertain credits. The liabilities of the Consortium you know, obviously; I wish to call your attention to two points in the assets which no balance-sheet can indicate, and on the strength of which your aid is requested.
“The first is that the Consortium represents the only French enterprise of its kind in the Far East. Even though it showed a deficit, even though it were on the verge of bankruptcy, its structure would remain intact. Its network of agents, its trading-posts in the interior of China, the connections established between its Chinese buyers and its Indo-Chinese production companies, all that exists and can be maintained. I don't exaggerate in saying that, for half the merchants of the Yangtze, France means the Consortium, as Japan is the Mitsubishi Company; our organization, as you know, can be compared in its scope with the Standard Oil. Now, the Chinese Revolution will not be eternal.