Chaos and Night by Henry de Montherlant

Author:Henry de Montherlant [Montherlant, Henry de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-07-16T04:00:00+00:00

6

THEY had caught the train at the Gare d'Austerlitz. For him it was the station of death, as the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l'Est were the stations of death for French soldiers returning to the front.

Pascualita was reading magazines, the nationalities of which could be recognized at once by their photographs: here, women showing their buttocks, there, idiots showing their teeth, there again, much-decorated gentlemen decorating other much-decorated gentlemen. Celestino, for his part, had taken out of his suitcase a translation of an Italian book called The Collapse of the Catalan Front in 1939, and now he was engrossed in it, hoping to find therein some discreditable observations about his Catalonian brethren. He was so indifferent to the outside world, which irritated him so much, filled him, in fact, with disgust, than anything would have done as an excuse for not having to look at it. But no, it had to be the The Catalan Front. Completely engrossed in it. Anchored to the revolution as though to a blazing star. And then, after all, what was France? It was Europe, it was all those countries whose chancelleries, a week after the pronunciamento, knew that they were not going to support the Republicans, knew that the Republicans were already doomed, and regarded the war as a heaven-sent opportunity to judge, thanks to the corpses of six hundred thousand insignificant caballeros, the quality of the Italian and German forces who would be their enemies of tomorrow.

He had to close the book, because it was time for dinner—face to face with his daughter, which he did not like. In the dining-car, a quick glance at the menu, and in comes a ghost: if they come to blows, he plunges his knife into its neck and severs the carotid artery; to the police superintendent he explains: 'I had to do it properly while I was at it.' Pascualita begins to chatter about nothing and after each nothing, a little laugh. That incurable, that uncontrollable laugh. Nothing to be done about her lumpish desire to be cheerful at any price. And all the more cheerful as they approached the land of fear. She was quite conscious of the fact that her father was not listening, but she continued just the same. In fact, she was talking to herself, as he did. His diagnosis was: ignorance, indifference (lack of love), stupidity. 'You who are always laughing, stop, for your father is dying, your father who has never done you any harm except by being.' These words were never spoken, but they were recorded in heaven, where an angel takes down all the words that are neither spoken nor heard.

The frontier: at 8.50. Another thirty-five minutes before the land of fear. It was his own country that was the land of fear. For the first time, or almost. But it was not he, Celestino, it was his old age that was afraid: pale fear, as sudden and brutal as a heart attack or an epileptic fit.

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