Old People and the Things that Pass/Chapter VI

CHAPTER VI
"OOF!" said Lot, outside, putting two fingers in his ears, which had been deafened by the birds. "No more uncles and cousins for the present, Elly: I'm not going to Uncle Harold and the D'Herbourgs after this! A grandmamma, a future grandpapa, an uncle, an aunt and a very old family-doctor: that's enough antediluvianism for one day! I can't do with any more old people to-day, not even Uncle Harold, who is far from being the most repellent. So many old people, all in one day: it's too oppressive, it's stifling! ... Let's walk a bit, if you're not tired. It's fine, the wind'll refresh us, it won't rain.... Come into the dunes with me. Here's the steam-tram coming: we'll take it as far as the Witte Brug and then go into the dunes. Come along!"

They went by tram to the Witte Brug and were soon in the dunes, where they went and sat in the sand, with a strong sea-breeze blowing over their heads.

"I hope I shall never grow old," said Lot. "Elly, don't you think it terrible to grow old, older everyday? ..."

"Your pet aversion, Lot?" asked Elly.

She smiled. He looked at her seriously, almost pale in the face, but, because he saw her smiling, he managed to speak lightly:

"Worse than that. It's my nightmare. To see more and more wrinkles every day in your skin, more streaks of grey in your hair; to feel your memory going; to feel the edge of your emotions growing blunt; to feel an extra crease in your stomach which spoils the fit of your waistcoat; to feel your powers waning and your back bending under all the weight of the past which you drag along with you ... without being able to do a thing to prevent it! ... When your suit gets old, you buy a new one: I'm speaking from the capitalist's point of view. But your body and soul you get once for all and you have to take them with you to the grave. If you economize with either of them, then you haven't lived, whereas, if you squander them, you have to pay for it.... And then that past, which you tow and trail along! Every day adds its inexorable quota. We are just mules, dragging along till we can go no farther and till we drop dead with the effort.... Oh, Elly, it's terrible! Think of those old people of to-day ! Think of Grandpapa Takma and Grandmamma! I look upon them as something to shudder at.... There they sit, nearly every day, ninety-three and ninety-seven, each looking out of a window. What do they talk about? Not much, I expect: their little ailments, the weather; people as old as that don't talk, they are numbed. They don't remember things. Their past is heavy with years and crushes them, gives them only a semblance of life, of the aftermath of life: they've had their life... Was it interesting or not? You know, I think it must have been interesting for those old people, else they wouldn't trouble to meet now. They must have lived through a good deal together."

"They say that Grandpapa ..."

"Yes, that he was Grandmamma's lover....: Those old people: to believe that, when you see them now! ... To realize love ... passion ... in those old people! ... They must have lived through a lot together. I don't know, but it has always seemed to me, when I see them together, as if there were something being wafted between them, something strange, to and fro: something of a tragedy which has become unravelled and of which the last threads, now almost loose, are hovering between the two of them.... And yet their souls must be numbed: I cannot believe that they talk much; but they look at each other or out of the window: the loose threads hover, but still bind their lives together.... Who knows, perhaps it was interesting, in which case it might be something for a novel...."

"Have you no idea, at the moment?"

"No, it's years since I had an idea for a novel. And I don't think that I shall write any more. You see, Elly, I'm getting ... too old to write for very young people; and who else reads novels?"

"But you don't write only for the public; you have your own ideal of art!"

"It's such a barren notion, that principle. All very fine when you're quite young: then it's delightful to swagger a bit with that ideal of art; you go in for it then as another goes in for sport or a cultivated palate.... Art really isn't everything. It's a very beautiful thing, but, properly speaking, it oughtn't to be an aim in life. Artists combine a great deal of pretentiousness with what is really a small aim."

"But, Lot, the influence they exercise ..."

"With a book, a painting, an opera? Even to the people who care about it, it's only an insignificant pleasure. Don't go thinking that artists wield great influence. All our arts are little ivory towers, with little doors for the initiate. They influence life hardly at all. All those silly definitions of art, of Art with a capital A, which your modern authors give you art is this, art is that are just one series of exaggerated sentences. Art is an entertainment; and a painter is an entertainer; so is a composer; so is a novelist."

"Oh, no, Lot!"

"I assure you it is so. You're still so precious in your conception of art, Elly, but it'll wear away, dear. It's an affectation. Artists are entertainers, of themselves and others. They have always been so, from the days of the first troubadours, in the finest sense of the word. Make the sense of it as fine as you please, but entertainers they remain. An artist is no demigod, as we picture him when we are twenty-three, like you, Elly. An entertainer is what he is; he entertains himself and others; usually he is vain, petty, envious, jealous, ungenerous to his fellow-entertainers, puffed up with his principles and his art, that noble aim in life; just as petty and jealous as any one else in any other profession. Then why shouldn't I speak of authors as entertainers? They entertain themselves with their own sorrows and emotions; and with a melancholy sonnet or a more or less nebulous novel they entertain the young people who read them. For people over thirty, who are not in the trade, no longer read novels or poems. I myself am too old to write for young people. When I write now, I have the bourgeois ambition to be read by my contemporaries, by men getting on for forty. What interests them is actual life, seen psychologically, but expressed in concrete truths and not reflected in a mirage and poetized and dramatized through fictitious personages. That's why I'm a journalist and why I enjoy it. I like to grip my reader at once and to let him go again at once, because neither he nor I have any time to spare. Life goes on. But to-morrow I grip him again; and then again I don't want to charm him any longer than I grip him. In our ephemeral lives, this, journalism, is the ephemeral and the true art, for I want the form of it to be frail but chaste.... I don't say that I have got so far myself; but that is my artistic ideal...."

"Then will you never write any more novels?"

"Who can say what he will or will not do again? Say it ... and you do something different all the same. Who knows what I shall be saying or doing in a year's time? If I knew Grandmamma's inner life, I should perhaps write a novel. It is almost history; and, even as I take an interest in the story of our own time, in the anticipation of our future, so history has a great charm for me, even though history depresses humanity and human beings and though our own old folk depress me. Grandmamma's life is almost history: emotions and events of another period...."

"Lot, I wish you would begin to work seriously."

"I shall start working as soon as we are in Italy. The best thing, Elly, is not to think of setting up house yet. Not with Mamma and also not by ourselves. Let us go on wandering. When we are very old it will be time enough to roost permanently. What draws me to Italy is her tremendous past. I try to reach antiquity through the Renascence, but I have never got so far and in the Forum I still think too much of Raphael and Leonardo."

"So first to Paris ... and then Nice ..."

"And on to Italy if you like. In Paris we shall look up another aunt."

"Aunt Thérèse?"

"Yes. That's the one who is more Catholic than the Pope. And at Nice Ottilie.... Elly, you know that Ottilie lives with an Italian, she's not married: will you be willing to see her all the same?"

"I should think so," said Elly, with a gentle smile. "I am very anxious to see Ottilie again.... The last time was when I heard her sing at Brussels."

"She has a heavenly voice ..."

"And she's a very beautiful woman."

"Yes, she is like Papa, she is tall, she doesn't take after Mamma a bit.... She could never get on with Mamma. And of course she spent more of her time with Papa.... She's no longer young, she's two years older than I.... It's two years since I saw her.... What will she be like? I wonder if she is still with her Italian.... Do you know how she met him? By accident, in the train. They travelled in the same compartment from Florence to Milan. He was an officer. They talked to each other ... and they've been together ever since. He resigned his commission, so as to go with her wherever she was singing.... At least, I believe they are still together.... 'Sinful and hysterical,' Aunt Stefanie would say! ... Who knows? Perhaps Ottilie met a great happiness ... and did not hesitate to seize it.... Ah, most people hesitate ... and grope about!

"We're different from Ottilie, Lot, and yet we don't grope ... or hesitate...."

"Elly, are you quite sure that you love me?"

She bent over him where he lay, stretched out in the sand, leaning on his two elbows. She felt her love inside her very intensely, as a glowing need to live for him, to eliminate herself entirely for his sake, to stimulate him to work, but to great, very great work.... That was the way in which her love had blossomed up, after her grief.... Under the wide sky, in which the clouds drifted like a great fleet of ships with white, bellying sails, a doubt rose in her mind for perhaps one moment, very vaguely and unconsciously, whether he would need her as she herself intended to give herself. ... But this vague, unconscious feeling was dissipated in the breeze that blew over her temples; and her almost motherly love was so intense and glowing that she bent over him and kissed him and said, quite convinced and certain of herself, though not so certain of life and the future:

"Yes, Lot, I am sure of it."

Whatever doubt he may have entertained was scattered in smiles from his soul after this tender and simple affirmation that she loved him, as he felt, for himself alone, in a gentle, wondering bliss that already seemed to see happiness approaching....