“But no, no, you’re wrong, Chopin is still a poet, a melancholy poet, a musician for neurotics; Beethoven personifies courage in suffering, the struggle against misfortune. His infirmity enriched him instead of diminishing him. His behavior should be an example for us. All of his compositions are hymns to life. Listen…”
He plays Chopin’s Concerto no. 1 for a minute and then Beethoven’s Concerto no. 5.
“Compare them,” he adds.
“Well, my old phonograph doesn’t have the same sound. It’s a very old machine, you know.”
Jean Luze laughs, he is happy. He needed friends! I bring them glasses, ice and what is left of the whiskey M. Long brought.
“No, Claire, some rum, Joel prefers rum and lately so do I,” Jean Luze tells me.
He leans over Joel.
“You are only twenty years old,” he tells him, “and you live in an outdated world. I will guide you. What authors do you like? It’s amazing to discover someone like you in a place like this, someone so curious, educated, enthusiastic and sensitive.”
“A lot of those arrested by Caledu were like me, hungry for more education. There were many of us here writing poetry, interested in music and literature. Our meetings were forbidden. We protested and they hunted us down. Some have disappeared and others have fled. I would like to leave too but, sadly, I am too poor.”
His shaking hand reaches for the rum bottle, and he helps himself. Later in the day, I see him staggering home.
Jean Luze has no idea how easily these misunderstood poets can get drunk.
Maybe this vice of theirs brings them a false sense of transcendence.
I’m being unfair. They are right to seek distraction from their suffering, to drown their unhappiness in a sea of alcohol, because their future is as dark as an abyss…
Jean Luze now feels compelled to restrict Joel’s drinking. He even preaches to him about it.
“Take it easy, Joel, easy,” he said to him today, taking the rum bottle from his hands. “It’s a slippery slope.”
Joel, already drunk, doesn’t take it well.
“Oh no, absolutely no lectures please or I’ll drink elsewhere.”
He becomes abusive and Jean Luze calms him.
“I only want what’s right for you, you know.”
“I know, I know. But what bothers me about our friendship is that you will never understand…”
“Never understand what? That you want to get piss-drunk. No, I’ll never get that. I understood your despair better when you were trying to console yourself with poetry. All of you seem to think you have a monopoly on suffering. Nothing can better drag a nation into moral and intellectual bankruptcy than believing its misery is special.”
“And what do you know about misery?” Joel screams.
“I know what I know!”
“Do you know who my brother was? Do you know what he meant to me? When my parents died, he took care of me like a father. He was intelligent, honest. They drove him insane. It’s their fault, you hear me, their fault! And I too will go insane one day…”
“Oh, enough of that!” Jean Luze lashes out in a voice so forceful that the boy is startled. “Are you also going to throw yourself headfirst into the trap they’ve set for you? You want it to be your turn to serve as their target?”
Joel looks away.
“What’s the use, they’re going to get us all,” he mutters in a mournful and desperate voice. “We’re caught in the teeth of the gear and the only solution is flight or despair.”
“No, you have to fight.”
“With our bare fists?”
“You have to hope,” Jean Luze replies more gently. “Those who sow hatred will reap it one day. Those who beat and torture are only cogs in an already weak system. Behind their hatred lie other hatreds. You have to hold it together and wait for your moment.”
Joel listens to him passionately.
Oh, imagine following him in pursuit of some impossible dream! Yes, he’s an idealist. But how rejuvenating it is to hope wildly and even dream about building a new and better world.
Last night he entertained Joel’s friends. Sad poets, overcome with alcoholism, who stumble along the walls when the sun goes down. He has found people to protect, guide, advise. He feels he’s doing something useful with his life. Maybe thanks to them he will decide not to leave!
“Jean has finally made some friends,” Felicia says. “I hear Joel is incredibly intelligent, and that he likes music and books as well.”
How lonely he must have been! I am ashamed of us. Oh! What I wouldn’t give to get rid of my complexes. They stop me from opening my mouth and expressing my ideas even when I’m choking on them. We put all of our intellect in the service of profit and flattery Whatever Dr. Audier says, terror has turned us into resigned cowards. Who will help us? Who is fearless and has the courage to cry out the truth if not Jean Luze? I listen without taking part in any of these conversations. The screams wafting from the prison make both of us wince. “Filthy torturer! Filthy torturer!” he muttered the other night, angrily running his hand through his hair. He’ll end up making himself a suspect. I can see the moment when Caledu will accuse him of meeting with “suspicious intellectuals.” My silent hatred has even contaminated Felicia. “I can’t take it anymore,” she once burst out, covering her ears… She was so afraid of her own voice that she suddenly fell silent with her eyes closed and her mouth agape. And I could see her lashes trembling with tears.
Eugenie Duclan is getting married. She is happy as a lark, going door-to-door to announce the joyful event. Annette bursts out laughing when she shares the news with Felicia.
“Paul is sure that poor Charles has been ‘past it’ for ages, if you know what I mean. Eugenie will be so disappointed! But who would think to get married at that age!”
She takes me as her witness.
It seems that past a certain age, marrying for the sake of convenience is as ridiculous as marrying for love. Custom is as powerful as fashion-impossible to disregard either without giving offense.
sings Annette. She did not invent the song, everyone knows it, as she is amused to tell Felicia.
Eugenie wants a first-class wedding and dares invite me to be part of her procession along with the other Daughters of Mary. She has done her hair and made herself up like a young girl. It looks like she’s wearing a wrinkled, sexless, tragic mask.
“I know people are making fun of me,” she tells me, “but that’s too bad. Would you agree to be my maid of honor? We have to stick together…”
Who should stick together, and why?
I nearly throw her out after promising to do everything she wants. The only thing I’m afraid of is Jean Luze catching me in such grotesque company. I don’t care to belong to any sisterhood. The idea that I’m an old maid, set apart and original, pleases me…
Jean Luze is talking with Joel in the living room as Annette flits around them. Felicia is nursing Jean-Claude. Jean Luze is so absorbed in conversation that he doesn’t even notice Annette’s presence. He is leaning over Joel and speaking to him in a low voice. It’s Joel who seems distracted. His eyes follow Annette, and Jean Luze turns around angrily.
“Why are you buzzing around us?” he asks her.
“Me, buzzing around you?” she asks, taken aback. “But I’m doing no such thing.”
She runs downstairs and joins Felicia in the dining room.
“Apparently, I am a nuisance to our gentlemen and their philosophical discussions. I wonder what your husband
