been able to make it out, albeit dimly, from that extraordinary voyage, from that huge, stationary conquest, from those new-found vistas and those pleasures foretold, from all that was not perhaps impossible beneath their imperfect dream and their admittedly awkward and hobbled impetus which was nonetheless charged (perhaps to the point of inexpressibility) with new emotions and new needs, from all this, nothing remained. They were opening their eyes, hearing the sound of their own voices again, with the muddled mumbling of the man they were interviewing and the hum of the tape-recorder. They could see beside a gun-rack stacked with the shiny butts and gleaming barrels of five sporting rifles, right in front of them, the multicoloured jigsaw puzzle of a land registry chart, and at its centre they could pick out, almost without any astonishment, the nearly complete rectangle of the farmhouse buildings, the grey edging on the track, the quincunx dots marking the plane trees, the heavier lines indicating the main road.
Later on, they were themselves on the grey track lined with plane trees. They were themselves the little passing glint on the long black road. They were a tiny blot of poverty on the great sea of plenty. They looked around at the great yellow fields with their little red splashes of poppies. And they felt crushed.
PART TWO
I
They tried to run away.
You cannot live in a frenzy for very long. In a world which promised so much and delivered nothing, the tension was too great. They ran out of patience. They realised, one day, or so they thought, that they had to have a place to escape to.
Their lives in Paris were treading water. They had stopped advancing. And on occasions they could see themselves - outdoing each other in the abundance of mistaken details characteristic of all their dreams — as forty-year-old petits-bourgeois , with Jérôme running a team of hawkers (Family Protection, Soap for the Blind, Students in Need) and Sylvie keeping house, in a tidy little flat, with a small car, the same little family hotel where they would spend every holiday, and their television set. Or else, at the other extreme, which was far worse, as ageing Bohemians in polo-necks and cord trousers, sitting every evening on the same café terrace in Saint-Germain or Montparnasse, scraping a living from occasional bargains and deals, misers to the tips of their dirty fingernails.
They dreamed of living in the countryside, out of temptation's way. They would lead a calm and frugal life. They would have a white stone house, on the edge of a village, warm elephant-cord trousers, heavy shoes, anoraks, metal-tipped walking sticks and hats, and every day they would go for long walks in the forest. Then they would come back home, would make tea and toast, like the English do, put big logs on the hearth; they would play a quartet on the gramophone, which they would never tire of hearing, would read the great novels they had never had time to read, would have their friends to stay.
Such flights of rural fancy were frequent but rarely got to the point of being actual plans. On two or three occasions, to be fair, they did wonder what kinds of livelihood they might find in the country: there were none. The idea of becoming primary school teachers did occur to them once, but they found it immediately unappealing as they thought of crammed classrooms and days full of stress. They talked vaguely of becoming travelling booksellers, or of going off to an abandoned Provençal mas to make rustic pottery. Then they indulged in imagining that they would live in Paris for just three days a week, earning enough to live on comfortably for the rest of their time, which they would spend in the Department of Yonne or Loiret. But these embryonic departures never went very far. They never considered what was really possible, or rather, really impossible, about them.
They dreamed of giving up their jobs, letting go of
Later on, they were themselves on the grey track lined with plane trees. They were themselves the little passing glint on the long black road. They were a tiny blot of poverty on the great sea of plenty. They looked around at the great yellow fields with their little red splashes of poppies. And they felt crushed.
PART TWO
I
They tried to run away.
You cannot live in a frenzy for very long. In a world which promised so much and delivered nothing, the tension was too great. They ran out of patience. They realised, one day, or so they thought, that they had to have a place to escape to.
Their lives in Paris were treading water. They had stopped advancing. And on occasions they could see themselves - outdoing each other in the abundance of mistaken details characteristic of all their dreams — as forty-year-old petits-bourgeois , with Jérôme running a team of hawkers (Family Protection, Soap for the Blind, Students in Need) and Sylvie keeping house, in a tidy little flat, with a small car, the same little family hotel where they would spend every holiday, and their television set. Or else, at the other extreme, which was far worse, as ageing Bohemians in polo-necks and cord trousers, sitting every evening on the same café terrace in Saint-Germain or Montparnasse, scraping a living from occasional bargains and deals, misers to the tips of their dirty fingernails.
They dreamed of living in the countryside, out of temptation's way. They would lead a calm and frugal life. They would have a white stone house, on the edge of a village, warm elephant-cord trousers, heavy shoes, anoraks, metal-tipped walking sticks and hats, and every day they would go for long walks in the forest. Then they would come back home, would make tea and toast, like the English do, put big logs on the hearth; they would play a quartet on the gramophone, which they would never tire of hearing, would read the great novels they had never had time to read, would have their friends to stay.
Such flights of rural fancy were frequent but rarely got to the point of being actual plans. On two or three occasions, to be fair, they did wonder what kinds of livelihood they might find in the country: there were none. The idea of becoming primary school teachers did occur to them once, but they found it immediately unappealing as they thought of crammed classrooms and days full of stress. They talked vaguely of becoming travelling booksellers, or of going off to an abandoned Provençal mas to make rustic pottery. Then they indulged in imagining that they would live in Paris for just three days a week, earning enough to live on comfortably for the rest of their time, which they would spend in the Department of Yonne or Loiret. But these embryonic departures never went very far. They never considered what was really possible, or rather, really impossible, about them.
They dreamed of giving up their jobs, letting go of
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