Free The Bachelors by Henri de Montherlant

baron understood. That meant: 'Couldn't you put me up?' He shuddered at the thought of sharing a house with his brother. That, never! He felt like a healthy man who is visiting a consumptive and, ashamed of his paunch, finds himself on the point of saying to the dying man: 'You're lucky! At least they take you seriously. Now, my catarrh, if you only knew what hell it is!' The baron said hastily:
    'Big, I grant you. But what a place! Ceilings crumbling, no central heating, badly situated, never any sun!'
    Now M. Élie, with the eye of an expert valuer, was inspecting the contents of the room. Everything bespoke the solid affluence of a man who has no desire to impress but does not count the cost when it comes to buying something he likes. M. Octave found this inspection acutely embarrassing. He could read his brother's thoughts. He imagined the shabby bed-sitting-room where Élie would have to live in six months' time. Once more he looked at his watch. The glance did not escape M. Élie.
    'I see, you're throwing me out.'
    'Not at all. Only I have to prepare my report for tomorrow..
    M. Élie had already left the study and was now in the hall. But there, instead of going to the front door, he went into the drawing-room, the door of which was open. Suppressing the urge to say 'What do you want to nose around in there for?' the baron clenched his teeth and followed him in. The drawing-room was vast, and much more luxurious than the study. Whenever anything happened to annoy him, the baron stifled his displeasure by buying some objet d'art he had been coveting. There is an art in avoiding suffering, and the baron was a past master at it. Meanwhile his brother looked round the room and sniggered.
    'I say, Octave, you couldn't fix me a job as assistant caretaker at your bank?'
    'Assistant caretaker?' the baron muttered in a toneless voice.
    'Yes, me. Do you think I'll be able to live on five hundred francs a month! I'll just starve to death.'
    'One doesn't starve to death when one has a brother.'
    No sooner had he heard these words than M. Élie went back into the hall and made for the front door, as though he genuinely regarded this promise as the price for his departure. Like his nephew, he also had come to seek a pledge of support. He now had it. He could clear out.
    On the threshold M. Octave did not give his brother a vague 'Keep in touch'. He said:
    'If you go to Lebeau tomorrow, you'll probably have his answer by Monday. Come back here on Tuesday at two o'clock; I'll be alone. And we'll see what needs to be done. . . . Would you like the car to take you back?' he added.
    Three years earlier M. Octave had bought a car, which he found extremely agreeable. It enabled him to traverse swiftly and without having any contact with it, a world which he dimly felt he neither knew nor understood and which only a sort of miracle — the friendship of M. Héquelin du Page — had saved him from. At first he had placed the car at his brother's disposal whenever the occasion arose, and M. Élie had made use of it a few times. But ever since M. Octave had said to him one day, 'You ought to give Georges (the chauffeur) a tip, you know . . . It's the thing to do,' Élie would have walked from one end of Paris to the other rather than use his brother's car; and he no longer even acknowledged Georges's salute now that he felt obliged to him. So that the baron, having seen through his brother, now took pleasure in offering him the car at the slightest opportunity, delighted to have discovered this means of being brotherly on the cheap. This time, as usual, M. Élie said no, muttering 'You want to have me killed. Doesn't know how to drive, your chauffeur. And anyhow I'd dirty your cushions.' Having thus succeeded in combining, in a few short phrases, rudeness, calumny, and acerbity, the old man withdrew.
    The two brothers had been together for three-quarters of an hour. Not once had M. de Coantré's name been mentioned.
     
     

4
    M. DE C OANTRÉ