‘Ahah, I see, a radical socialist like me! So what’s he waiting for to enrol you in the Jeunesses Radicales?’10
‘Do the Jeunesses Radicales really exist?’
The idea seemed completely laughable. The composite image of a radical socialist in people’s minds generally consisted of Édouard Herriot’s fat stomach, Ferdinand Buisson’s goatee and the flapping trouser seat of the man Léon Daudet had nicknamed ‘stuck-up Bonnevay’. When it came to life, the portrait had Édouard Daladier’s gravelly voice, whose only intelligible words were ‘my party’. Could young people really be tempted to rally to the banner of such men? The salesman appeared outraged by Jean’s ignorance. He was a novice to be converted, to be trained so that France — a great democracy — would be, thanks to its young people’s enthusiasm, the leading nation of Europe. Jean did not know how to answer this. To his immense relief they were coming into Aix, and the salesman pulled up at a garage to fill his tank and put some water in his radiator. Jean was startled: the garage’s name was Chez Antoine. For several minutes he was intensely miserable at the memory of Mireille’s sign. Was she going to remind him of her existence like this all the way back? Let us note in passing that Charles Ventadour was not there. He rarely appeared at his garage since he had been elected to the departmental assembly and the board of a new company that was planning to build luxury villas on a plot of land on the Marseille road. It is true that Jean and he have no reason to be interested in each other. Their conversation would resemble that of the commercial traveller who, interested only in acquiescence, was so delighted by his travelling companion that in a surge of generosity he asked him to lunch.
‘The patronne does all the cooking herself. A true woman of Aix, my young friend. Kind but firm at the same time. You’ll have her chicken with Provençal herbs. She harvests her own herbs. It’s turned on a spit over a fire of vine branches. We’ll drink a Côtes du Rhône. There isn’t much else around here. And if you want my advice, be careful with the rosés. They’re only drinkable where they’re grown, at the vigneron’s. The minute they leave the vineyard, they get adulterated with all sorts of things.’
Jean accepted the invitation, although the man bored him to tears. When the dessert came, he excused himself, went outside, got his bag out of the Renault, and hid in the town until the angry salesman had left. Shortly afterwards, on the Montélimar road, an old Mathis driven by a priest in a beret stopped.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To Grangeville,’ Jean answered absent-mindedly.
‘Grangeville? Where’s that?’
‘Near Dieppe … But I meant, anywhere that takes me closer to it will be welcome, Father, Montélimar, Valence.’
‘Near Dieppe? Well, why not? I just wonder whether this car will last the journey. I lost a wheel this morning. Marvellous … I saw it roll away in front of me but I was still moving, on three legs as it were. I came to a halt on the grass verge, and the hardest thing was finding the nuts again. In any case, the wheel’s still holding with two. See … I can even let go of the steering wheel …’
The Mathis zigzagged dangerously across the road, to the priest’s great enjoyment. He was a man in his thirties with a fairly prominent nose, yellowish skin, and black slanting eyes with the lashes of an Arabian dancing girl.
‘You’re not saying that you’re going near Dieppe, Father?’
‘No, I wasn’t heading that way, but I have a taste for adventure. Having said that, I’m not certain that this Mathis will make it as far as Dieppe. She overheats as soon as I go faster than forty. You don’t smoke?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Ah, I see … keeping fit. I could have sworn you were a sportsman.’
He pulled a pipe out of his pocket, skilfully filled it with one hand, keeping his eye on the road, then held out a lighter to Jean.
‘Get me going, will you?’
A delicious scent of tobacco filled the car that was nothing like the strong, sour smell of the caporal that Albert smoked.
‘What is that?’ Jean asked.
‘My tobacco? Oh, a blend. I can give you the address: a little place in the City, behind the Stock Exchange. Ask for John Mulligan and tell him you’re a friend of mine and you’d like my tobacco. It has a number, the 253.’
‘You get your tobacco from London?’
‘Why not?’
At the slightest gradient the Mathis panted and laboured. Jean wondered if they would reach Montélimar. The priest seemed entirely confident, laughing when he was overtaken.
‘Mad! All quite mad! When we have our whole lives in front of us. How old are you?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘I’m thirty. My name’s Constantin Palfy.’
‘Jean Arnaud.’
The Mathis coughed, then sneezed. It sounded as if it really couldn’t last much longer, but the priest took his foot off the accelerator, it cleared its carburettors with a series of misfires, and resumed its sedate progress.
‘Admirable, don’t you think?’ Father Palfy said. ‘The courage of the meek: do or die. She won’t give up until she can’t go any further. When she stops, it will be to lay down her bones for the last time. She will have earned her absolution.’
They thought she was about to earn it for certain when, a kilometre outside Pont-Saint-Esprit, she hiccuped and came to a halt at the roadside. The priest refused to be disheartened, however, and pulling a long, roughly calibrated stick from the boot, he lowered it into the petrol tank.