THE FEAR OF NICE

  

There were two of then, an old man permanently bent with rheumatism over an asthmatic guitar, and a younger man who sang with an operatic aggressiveness. But it was early in the morning, in Nice, and the sunlight dissolved all critical faculties. Besides, Lyndall was overloaded with pennies, there was a spare envelope in the scrap basket, her window was open, and she was doing some disagreeable re-writing. So she leaned out the window and smiled at the serenaders.

How sweet life was! She was swimming in warmth and light, floating on cotton. Other music was inspiring and ideal, like her own life; out of tune, sometimes and so often played on cheap instruments, with rheumatic fingers. Hear the funny little note; it reminded her of the time her husband was sea-sick on their honeymoon, that screechy one, of the rapacious guides who took the sublime out of their Italian pilgrimage, that long drawn out, wobbly one, of so many other inglorious moments, when her husband corrected the spelling of her exalted paragraphs, when he pronounced some of her most caressing words a  “foreign invention not to be mistaken for English as he knew it…”.

The man leaning out the window was throwing money  into a cigarette box and laughing at the ridiculous melodies, and as Lyndall could see, laughing at her too because she was swaying thoughtfully over was the balcony in rhythm with the crooning sounds below.

 

That evening Lyndall and her husband were having diner at the Grand Hotel. Lyndall thought there were too many waiters; one to light her cigarette, one to pour the wine, one to present the meat, another the fish, another the dessert, and yet another for the bill.

She tried to find a real meal in that deceptive luxury, but why did her potato salad taste of mint, and her lamb chop look like a flower? The beets were sliced so finely they tasted like air, and the bread vanished with a sound of crisp paper. There was powdered grass on everything, and a permanent wave on the puree of potatoes. A hundred dishes were brought before her on rolling tables but she could not guess what they contained; the vegetables were disguised with pink sauces, the meats were shaped like stars, marbles, scarabs, garnished with candied eyes to look like mice. She gave up guessing, swallowed without tasting, sat with dignity, fed on the anemic music, smoked unreasonably with a show of glistening nails. She had a desire to break her glass in which a stoically faced waiter had just poured water with such an absorbed, con­scientious air that she was sure it would taste like champagne.

Then Lyndall noticed that the man who had thrown money at the serenaders sat at a nearby table. He was smiling with his eyes at the food, at the old ladies, at the dames seules, at the waiters, at everything, with an equal nonchalance which vaguely annoyed her.

“Oh, but 1 know that man,” said her husband. “He is the Head of the Rubber Stamp Company. 1 saw him last week on business. 1 must speak to him.”

Introductions. No change whatever in his eyes. He had not seemed to notice Lyndall’s unique 1830 face. Even Lyndall’s husband resented this. What was the use of having so many painters classify her face as an anachronism in an age of uniform production?

“Not much of a place, this,” said Mr. Breman. “It strikes me as a vast expanse of driftwood, for people who got tired doing nothing. It’s languid, boneless, oldish …”

“From the point of view of a young businessman, yes,” said Lyndall’s husband.

“Oh, no, personally. Give me real mountains, and a wind that sweeps up the clouds and mental cobwebs.”

“1 can see you have not been in Europe long enough to succumb to the love of leisure,” said Lyndall with a glance which marked the phrase as a compliment. But the Head of the Rubber Stamp Company was impervious.

“Shall we take a walk?”

“I’l1 lead you,” said Lyndall. ‘I have discovered a wonder­ful place.”

It was a white cement walk, winding down the hill to the sea. It was edged with tropical plants, huge, fierce, bristly cactus, long-fingered bushes spreading like octopuses, others flowering like thick-leaved cabbages, others writhing like snakes, all of them thick and furry. They grew violently, clinging furiously to the ground, and bringing to mind the desert, jungle, and the bottom f the sea. The seabreeze did not move them. They could ever have been young, but must have showed from the fir t a firm plenitude, and they never grew old, never wrinkle or drooped, but showed to the end a strange agelessness. They were plants without scent or delicacy, growing without earth and mysteriously nourished with sun and water.

The three now shadowy figures bent over them and talked about them. Lyndall was afraid hat Mr. Breman would connect the talk of the rubber plant with his rubber factory, the factory with rubber stamps, and all the rest of his business. It was such a fatally smooth path; and the evening would be ruined. Or at least she would have to withdraw from it and go off by herself on a mental tour of other worlds. And Lyndall liked company.

But Breman’s mind did not seem to run that way. “Did you notice in the Hotel the lady who wears an orange silk wig, and whose chin is held in place by an injection of paraffin which would melt the minute she set foot in Algeria?”

Lyndall’s husband asked him if he preferred the South American lady who sat on two chairs at once and could not see her little Pekinese when he curled up on her lap.

“No,” said Mr. Breman.

“Would you prefer,” asked Lyndall, “A lean modern woman who can throw undecipherable phrases at you at the same time as an unanswerable tennis ball?”

“My dream,” said Mr. Breman, “is of a woman who could look pale and intellectual, wear very subtle dresses, listen to music with the expression of da Vinci’s ‘Saint Anne’; who could serve tea with deft hands, make ironic remarks…”

“Not so hard to find.”

“Wait, that is not all. She must at the same time be able to walk tirelessly through mountain roads, in a plain little woolen suit, and have tan cheeks, a cheerful whistle, and a naive conversation.

Lyndall looked quite overwhelmed with this description and answered with a long silence. “It’s too novelistic a wish,” she said at last.

“I write in my spare time,” said Mr. Breman.

“Oh,’ said Lyndall’s husband, “I now understand why the conversation was getting off the logical sphere. I thought it was the Riviera night, the plants, and the sea.”

They could hardly see each other’s faces now. Fragrance from other plants came hovering over them. The waves lapped very gently. The cigarettes gleamed like fireflies.

“I’m also a fake businessman,” added Lyndall’s husband after a moment. “1 prefer biography to economics.”

“He makes this confession only in the dark,” said Lyndall.

“It’s too bad I must leave tomorrow,” said Mr. Breman. “Tomorrow morning at nine.  Business. And then to tell you the truth, I’m afraid of Nice. It’s a tricky place. It takes the sting out of existence. I talk against it to keep myself awake, so to speak. The truth is that it enchants me, lulls me, makes me look down on all the big things I build up, makes me despise activity. And have you noticed that the people who are sunning the last years of their lives here try to keep you, offer you their guest rooms, sun porches and yachts? After a while I don’t feel that I am walking but riding on clouds; all the harsh sounds disappear, all sense of struggle, and all desire. It’s a Hindu philosophy you get here – desirelessness, annihilation.”

“It’s restful,” said Lyndall’s husband.” “Accept it as such, and then when you feel energetic again, get out.”

“But then I never do.”

“So it’s because you are afraid of Nice that you are leaving so suddenly.”

“Yes.” He tapped his side pocket. “I have my ticket here.”

The three of them got up and walked leisurely back to the hotel. In the elevator Lyndall’s husband remembered he had no cigarettes and he always smoked before going to bed. He stepped out. Lyndall and Mr. Breman stood there. Then he looked at her fully, with laughing eyes and said: “It isn’t Nice I’m afraid of, it’s you.”

 

ANAÏS NIN