The Fire Within by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle

Author:Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2023-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

6

A few moments later, Alain and Dubourg were walking side by side between the Seine and the Tuileries. They were sad and bitter.

Dubourg saw that the chance to save Alain had passed. He was thinking that if he had been really sure of himself, he would have attacked Alain, insulted him, shouted at him: “You’re mediocre, accept your mediocrity. Stay at the level where nature put you. You’re a man; by the fact of your mere humanity, you’re still invaluable for other people.”

But he was not strong enough to treat someone like Alain that way. And besides, was Alain mediocre, since he was irreplaceable, inimitable? Wasn’t it actually his duty to praise him? In this lost man there was a secret desire to excel in some part of life, a desire which approval might revive . . .

Yet Dubourg was forced to acknowledge that he could not go far in this direction. He could scarcely admire Alain, much less approve of him. And so he reverted to his first regret. Not being able to admire Alain, he would have to make Alain admire him: and for that he needed to be a more powerful man. In Alain’s downfall he recognized his own defeat.

As for Alain, he knew that he was seeing Dubourg for the last time. Dubourg’s attitude, among other excuses, gave him every reason for dying: life in his case had not managed to justify itself. It had shown a face disturbed, taxed with misrepresentations, tormented by impotent allegations.

The two friends were walking along the Seine. The river flowed gray, under a gray sky, between gray buildings. Nature that day could be no help to men; the square stones softened in the humid air. Dubourg shivered; the man walking beside him had no recourse: neither woman nor man, neither mistress nor friend, and heaven was silent. Perhaps it was his own fault; since Alain had never learned to count on himself, the universe, centerless, revealed no consistency.

A woman passed them, pretty and elegant. She glanced at them briefly; Alain obviously attracted her. Dubourg smiled and shook Alain’s arm.

“You see, you want to touch her. Paris is like that woman; so is life. One smile, and the gray sky clears. This winter we’ll go to Egypt together.”

Alain shook his head.

“You remember . . .” Dubourg began.

Alain stopped and stamped his foot.

“You’re driveling.”

They had frolicked for ten years on the banks of this river: all their youth, for Alain all his life.

“I don’t want to grow old.”

“You regret your youth as if you had done something with it,” Dubourg blurted out.

“It was a promise. I lived on a lie. And I was the liar.”

Saying this, Alain looked at the Chamber of Deputies. What was this cardboard façade, with its foolish little flag? And in front of it, this tide of wheels?

“Where are they going? It’s stupid,” he snarled.

“But they’re not going anywhere, they’re just going. I love what exists—its intensity touches me. It’s eternity.”

Alain looked at Dubourg one last time. There was something positive in that face.

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