Free Tropisms by Nathalie Sarraute Page A

concierge’s door, when you answered the telephone, lunched with the family, invited your friends, spoke a word to anybody, whoever it might be.
    You had to answer them and encourage them gently, and above all, above everything, not make them feel, not make them feel a single second, that you think you’re different. Be submissive, be submissive, be retiring: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, that’s true, that’s certainly true,” that’s what you should say to them, and look at them warmly, affectionately, otherwise a rending, an uprooting, something unexpected, something violent would happen, something that had never happened before, and which would be frightful.
    It seemed to him that then, in a sudden surge of action, of power, with immense strength, he would shake them like old soiled rags, would wring them, tear them, destroy them completely.
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    III
    They had come to live in the quiet little streets behind the Panthéon, near the Rue Gay-Lussac or the Rue Saint-Jacques, in apartments giving on to dark courtyards, perfectly decent, however, and comfortably equipped.
    This was what was offered them here, this, and freedom to do what they wanted, to walk about as they wanted, in any sort of getup with any sort of face, on the homely little streets.
    Here no formal behavior was required of them, no activities in common with others, no sentiments, no memories. They were offered an existence that was at once despoiled and protected, an existence like a waiting room in a deserted suburban railway station, a bare, gray, lukewarm room, with a black stove in the middle and wooden benches along the walls.
    And they were contented, they liked it here, they felt almost at home, they were on good terms with Mme. la Concierge, with the grocery woman, they took their clothes to the most conscientious and least expensive cleaner in the neighborhood.
    They never tried to recall the place in the country where once they had played, they never tried to recapture the color and the smell of the little town they had grown up in, they never saw suddenly appear before their mind’s eye, when walking along the streets in their neighborhood, when looking in the shop windows, when they went past the concierge’s door and greeted her very politely, they never saw rise up in their recollections a bit of wall inundated with life, or the paving stones of a courtyard, vivid and caressing, or the gentle steps of a front stoop on which they had sat in their childhood.
    On the stairway in their house they occasionally met the “tenant downstairs,” a teacher, who came home from school with his two children at four o’clock. All three had pale eyes set in long heads as shiny and smooth as large ivory eggs. The door of their apartment opened narrowly for a second to allow them to pass. They were seen to put their feet on little felt squares laid out on the entrance floor—and move silently away, gliding towards the dark end of the corridor.
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    IV
    They were jabbering half-expressed things, with a far-off look as though they were following inwardly some subtle, delicate sentiment that they seemed unable to convey.
    He insisted: “So why? Why? Why am I selfish then? Why am I misanthropic? Why is it? Say it, say it!”
    Deep down inside them, they knew that they were playing a game, that they were submitting to something. At times it seemed to them that they never took their eyes off a wand inside him that he kept waving as though to lead them, that he moved gently to make them obey, like a ballet master. There, there, there, they danced, pirouetted and wheeled about, provided a little wit, a little intelligence, but as though without touching anything, without ever moving on to the forbidden plane that might displease him.
    â€œSo why? Why? Why?” Go ahead! Forward! Ah, no, that’s not it! Backward! Backward! Yes, of course, the playful tone, yes, again, gently, on their toes, jesting and irony. Yes,