Free The Janeites by Nicolas Freeling Page B

he thought summed-up the matter.
    ‘He was a type one has known more of, afraid only of being afraid. It is good to see a young man in love with his own honour. He accused himself of physical cowardice; full of a reckless nervous courage. He said once that if he saw a man, or even a child, fallen inthe Seine he would be frightened to jump in. The speed of imagination is such that he saw himself drowning while incapable of saving another, since he was a poor swimmer. Adding that he wouldn’t jump in the Seine anyhow since any doctor knows the extent of chemical and bacteriological hazard. I told him that he would have gone in to a fire. No no, he said; afraid of pain. I treated that with contempt. He would laugh at pain, and even while shouting for morphia. Proud as Satan, what he could not bear was that another should think him afeared.’ Not a bad reading, one would admit.
    He has been thinking about words – ‘Sweet of you’ he’d said to her invitation. In French gentil but the English would not say ‘gentle of you’. Miss Joséphine is not very sweet, but she has her gentle side. The Marquis would probably add that gentility had nothing to do with being a gentleman (a word the French associate with good manners); he enjoys these ‘little phrases’.
    The airport check-in girl has not her mind on her work. Her little radio was only mouthing commercials.
    “What is it?”
    “Crash on the autoroute,” managing to be distant, rude and patronizing in those few syllables. Tornado in Arkansas, mass destruction, hundreds homeless, but on the midday news it’s ‘Is that all?’ On the Western Front, nothing to report; General Haig is said to be preoccupied. Here, now, is a police mouthpiece saying (being French) that a certain-number-of-questions have been raised, calling-for-clarification. Quite. Such as, why are human beings inhuman? Ray crawls into a corner, suffering from depression.
    Before the flight was even called he has heard it all from the neighbours. Chap overtaking, another has the same idea; big truck brakes too hard and goes crossways; six more go barrelling straight into him. Before you can say Air Bag. Yes and it could have been me. But not in the Café de Commerce, which is here. ‘What I always say Is…’ The poor lunk who suggests people ought to drive slower is howled down by Our Individual Liberties.
    La France Moisie ;it will translate as musty, mouldy, mildewed. Never quite submerged. Much is submerged, much of the time, so that nobody ever quite knows how much there really is. But a lot. Itwas happy through most of the nineteenth century; perturbed by 1848 – much more by the Commune. The twentieth was less good: it is still having a dreadful time trying to hold down the memory of ’40 to ’44. Mildew-France hates everyone but particularly Jews, blacks, Brits, Germans, the neighbours, Europe, and the State. Doctor Valdez, like all his profession, can put his sense of smell in abeyance at will, more or less, but there’s a fearful stink in the afternoon shuttle.
    Quite a different atmosphere from this morning (heavy with the sense of doom, guillotines-at-dawn). This crowd got it Done-by-lunchtime, hilarious when the Presentation went well; not going back to the office, neither: boss expects you to be on call up to eleven at night, and fuck that. Raymond’s neighbour is chatty. Asked his racket Ray says ‘Endocrinologist’ but this stopper does not always work. His new-pal gets into athletics, alarmingly. ‘These Tour de France riders, stuff they have, dope no? Increase your red corpuscles, doesn’t show up in the weewee.’ Raymond to his sorrow knows about this, is led (to the greater) to speak of it. To make it work you inject a lot of iron, more than the metabolism copes with. By the end of your career you’ve a simply lovely little liver-cancer all set up and waiting for you. No, he doesn’t know what can be done about it.
    Discontent; certaintly thinking Endocrinwhatsit, all