Public Enemies_ Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World - Bernard-Henri Levy [106]
He was imperious and courteous, his hands trembled slightly, there was something tender, almost pink about his face, but his eyes were severe like two pieces of blue Delft sunk into his sockets and shone with a sparkle that was at times unbearable. “Am I disturbing you?” he began, as he sat down and without waiting for my answer ordered a lemonade with no ice, then continued in a more familiar tone, “How would you like the role of Paul Denis?” Taken aback, I replied that yes, of course, I kept Aurélien on my bedside table but … “Well, you are Paul Denis. I want you to play him.”
There was no irony in his tone, no sort of second degree. Just Louis Aragon and his formidable presence. He seemed like a great lord, unarmed but terribly impressive.
Old?
Not really that old.
Not the tipsy old man that some people these last years have chosen to describe and ridicule.
On the contrary, he makes me think of a sort of golden mask through which that incredibly intense blue stare emerged.
His forehead was high and narrow, the shape of a crown, which made him look like those kings in disguise who at nighttime mingle with their subjects in order to spy on them more effectively.
There was something Christlike too in his posture, but a dry, tearless Christ who has given up on salvation.
And when he left me, two hours later, that silhouette, still just as straight, moved off with a steady step on the narrow pavement leading to the boulevard Saint-Germain. He stopped only, though several times, to examine the façade of a house by the light of the moon, perhaps the house of a famous fashion designer, perhaps Chateaubriand’s house on his return from exile. I watched him but was too far away, so I couldn’t tell …
Why am I telling you this?
First, because you mentioned his name and the scene came back to me as a chunk of memory and images.
Because I consider the author of Défense de l’Infini, Les Voyageurs de l’impériale, and Henri Matisse roman as one of the great writers of the twentieth century and I’m happy to take this opportunity to remember him.
And also because, on referring to my notes (once again that diary that I have been dictating every evening into my secretary’s answering machine for so many years), I realize that the ground we covered in our conversation that evening was, strangely enough, not too far from the matters you and I have been discussing.
We began with that matter of Aurélien, which—and I’m not in the habit of saying these things just to be polite—was truly one of my cult books. So you can imagine how I jumped at the offer, and how I took the opportunity to ask some of the questions that had been torturing me for years! Whether Crevel had inspired Paul Denis, whether Denise Lévy had been the model for Bérénice …* about Aragon’s relations with Drieu, with Breton … whether he regretted not seeing those old accomplices again now that they were dead. And how was it possible that, having started out as those tempestuous young people, brothers in apocalypse and pyromania, they could have ended up like that, two worlds ignoring each other, two strangers, completely cut off …
We also talked a bit about politics. It was impossible to avoid talking politics, at least a little, when face-to-face with this great French intellectual (at the end of the day, there haven’t been too many others of his stature) who, despite the crimes, the shame, the crushing of the Prague Spring, which he himself had described as a “spiritual Biafra”; who, despite having been called “Stalinist scum” by a certain Daniel Cohn-Bendit† in the middle of May 1968, remained loyal to the party until the end, to his party, the French Communist Party which, alongside the Portuguese Communist Party, was the worst of the communist parties in Europe. So I interrogated him about this hideous loyalty, which caused his supporters to despair, and his answer was strange, unexpected, and rather beautiful: that all he expected from the party was an “honorable decline.”
I had the unfortunate thought—hoping to impress him—of mentioning François Mitterrand,