everyone pretended to think the contrary, much less would I have written the story of our painful history. I knew only the beginnings of other people’s novels from memory. I belonged to an analogous story. I was a character transmigrated from another novel, its stylization in a smaller dimension, without grandeur and without tragedy. At least my model had his own grandeur as a gangster. But my part did not foresee madness, without even a dream for which to sacrifice life, without even a lost Daisy—or worse, my Daisy was you, but you, however, were Nicole. I was a game in our game: I was your dear little Gatsby.
The night advanced with little steps. You’d have liked this sentence in my story, too, right? I’ll satisfy you: the nightadvanced with little steps. In fact, the tender night advanced with little steps. Now the phonograph played Charlie Parker’s “Easy to Love.” I had bought that record. Under the sobbing horn of poor Bird there was an almost happy chatter from Stan Freeman’s piano, almost smothered chuckles, a little phrasing of happiness. I would have preferred Jelly Morton, but for Rosemary he was a bore. It was impossible to dance to Jelly Morton. Well, what to do at that hour of the tender night advancing with little steps? St. Raphaël or l’Hôtel du Cap? St. Raphaël was better. What do you do at the Cap once you’ve had the Negronis? You croak from boredom. And the handsome Brady (but what was the handsome Brady’s name in real life?) agreed to any program whatsoever as long as he could make sheep’s eyes at you. His stupid little blonde would have followed him anywhere. “
C’est cocasse
,” she chirped, “
c’est cocasse
.” It was all
cocasse
, funny. Even Deluxe’s old Benz was
cocasse
, with its beige mudguards and its inner dividing windows. It had belonged to a retired Parisian taxi driver. He boasted about having bought it so cheaply. “I’m heartbroken only because he wanted to keep the taximeter. Sometimes there are people who get fond of such stupid things! …” And he laughed with all those very white teeth. He had too many teeth: deluxe teeth. Oh, was that a cheap shot?
But who was Mr. Deluxe, a refined musicologist? Come on, with that name! I think that he, too, was a little
cocasse
, like his Benz. “I loved your novel very much for its musicality,” he told me. What a fool. “But in your next novel—because you are writing another one, aren’t you?—in your next novel have the courage to express your love of music. Don’t be afraid of quotations, cram it with names, titles, they quickly create magical fiction. Put in the names of Coltrane and Alban Berg. I know you love Coltrane and Alban Berg, and I find myself in agreement.” He spoke of loving Alban Berg. He would have liked “to have more time to discuss it,” but then he didn’t gofurther than Gershwin. But how could he understand death, with that beautiful smile of his? You couldn’t understand death either, it was out of your reach for the moment. You could understand the dead, but death and the cadaver are two different things.
Death is the curve in the road: to die is only not to be seen
. Do you remember these lines? I said them one evening, but I deceived you. They weren’t by Fitzgerald, even though everyone believed they were. It was a false quotation, and inside myself I enjoyed the deception. We were on the coast, I think near Villefranche. I quoted the phrase and said: Fitzgerald,
This Side of Paradise
. Deluxe braked almost at once. He murmured something like “Sublime, sublime,” some such nonsense, and wanted us to go down to the beach. We had to take off our shoes and walk as far as the shore line holding hands, a man and a woman, a chain. It was urgent to do
something lustral
, they were his words, it was an homage to being, to being there, to the fact of being on the straight and narrow path of life. In short, to hell with the curves, this was the concept.
Your mother, yes,
The night advanced with little steps. You’d have liked this sentence in my story, too, right? I’ll satisfy you: the nightadvanced with little steps. In fact, the tender night advanced with little steps. Now the phonograph played Charlie Parker’s “Easy to Love.” I had bought that record. Under the sobbing horn of poor Bird there was an almost happy chatter from Stan Freeman’s piano, almost smothered chuckles, a little phrasing of happiness. I would have preferred Jelly Morton, but for Rosemary he was a bore. It was impossible to dance to Jelly Morton. Well, what to do at that hour of the tender night advancing with little steps? St. Raphaël or l’Hôtel du Cap? St. Raphaël was better. What do you do at the Cap once you’ve had the Negronis? You croak from boredom. And the handsome Brady (but what was the handsome Brady’s name in real life?) agreed to any program whatsoever as long as he could make sheep’s eyes at you. His stupid little blonde would have followed him anywhere. “
C’est cocasse
,” she chirped, “
c’est cocasse
.” It was all
cocasse
, funny. Even Deluxe’s old Benz was
cocasse
, with its beige mudguards and its inner dividing windows. It had belonged to a retired Parisian taxi driver. He boasted about having bought it so cheaply. “I’m heartbroken only because he wanted to keep the taximeter. Sometimes there are people who get fond of such stupid things! …” And he laughed with all those very white teeth. He had too many teeth: deluxe teeth. Oh, was that a cheap shot?
But who was Mr. Deluxe, a refined musicologist? Come on, with that name! I think that he, too, was a little
cocasse
, like his Benz. “I loved your novel very much for its musicality,” he told me. What a fool. “But in your next novel—because you are writing another one, aren’t you?—in your next novel have the courage to express your love of music. Don’t be afraid of quotations, cram it with names, titles, they quickly create magical fiction. Put in the names of Coltrane and Alban Berg. I know you love Coltrane and Alban Berg, and I find myself in agreement.” He spoke of loving Alban Berg. He would have liked “to have more time to discuss it,” but then he didn’t gofurther than Gershwin. But how could he understand death, with that beautiful smile of his? You couldn’t understand death either, it was out of your reach for the moment. You could understand the dead, but death and the cadaver are two different things.
Death is the curve in the road: to die is only not to be seen
. Do you remember these lines? I said them one evening, but I deceived you. They weren’t by Fitzgerald, even though everyone believed they were. It was a false quotation, and inside myself I enjoyed the deception. We were on the coast, I think near Villefranche. I quoted the phrase and said: Fitzgerald,
This Side of Paradise
. Deluxe braked almost at once. He murmured something like “Sublime, sublime,” some such nonsense, and wanted us to go down to the beach. We had to take off our shoes and walk as far as the shore line holding hands, a man and a woman, a chain. It was urgent to do
something lustral
, they were his words, it was an homage to being, to being there, to the fact of being on the straight and narrow path of life. In short, to hell with the curves, this was the concept.
Your mother, yes,
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