The Age of Reason Read Online Free PDF Page B

apparent at the first encounter, because they all had leathery skins. He felt an impulse to kiss Lola’s puzzled face, he said to himself that her day was done, that she had thrown away her life, and was now alone, even more so perhaps since she had fallen in love with him. ‘I can’t do anything for her,’ he thought with resignation. And he found her, in that thought, irresistibly attractive.
    ‘I’m ashamed,’ said Lola.
    Her voice was heavy and sombre, like a red velvet curtain.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because you’re such a kid.’
    ‘I like to hear you say the word — kid,’ said he. ‘It suits your voice. You say it twice in the Écorchés song, and I’d go and hear you just for that. Were there a lot of people tonight?’
    ‘A mouldy crowd. I don’t know where they came from — they just sat and chattered. And they hadn’t got any use for me at all. Sarrunyan had to ask them to keep quiet: it got on my nerves, I felt I was getting in wrong. They cheered when I came in, though.’
    ‘They’d always do that’
    ‘Well, I’m fed up,’ said Lola. ‘I loathe singing for ticks of that kind. They were the sort who came there because they’ve got to return a family invitation. I wish you could see them come in together, all over smiles. They bow, and they hold the good lady’s chair while she sits down. So really you’re interrupting them, and they just glare at you when you come in. Boris —’ said Lola abruptly: ‘I sing for my living.’
    ‘That’s so.’
    ‘If I’d thought I should finish like that, I would never have started.’
    ‘Well, but however you look at it, when you sang at music halls, you earned your living by singing.’
    ‘That wasn’t the same.’
    After a short silence, Lola added hurriedly: ‘By the way, this evening I talked to the new little chap who sings next after me. He’s a very decent fellow, but he’s no more Russian than I am.’
    ‘She thinks she’s annoying me,’ thought Boris. And he resolved to tell her once and for all that she never could annoy him. Not today — but later on.
    ‘Perhaps he has learnt Russian.’
    ‘But you ought to be able to tell me if he has a good accent.’
    ‘My parents left Russia in ’17 when I was three months old.’
    ‘It’s funny that you shouldn’t know Russian,’ observed Lola with a pensive air.
    ‘She’s fantastic,’ thought Boris. ‘She’s ashamed of being in love with me because she’s older than I am. It seems perfectly natural to me — after all one party must be older than the other.’ Above all, it was more moral: Boris wouldn’t have known how to treat a girl of his own age. If both parties are young, they don’t know how to behave, they get across each other, and the whole thing feels like a doll’s dinner-party. With older people, it’s quite different. They’re reliable, they show you what to do, and there’s solidity in their affection. When Boris was with Lola, he had the approval of his conscience, he felt himself justified. Of course he preferred Mathieu’s company because Mathieu wasn’t a girl: a man was more intriguing all the time. Besides Mathieu taught him all sorts of dodges. But Boris often found himself wondering whether Mathieu had any real regard for him. Mathieu was casual and brusque, and of course it was right that people of their sort shouldn’t be sentimental when they were together, but there were all sorts of ways in which a fellow could show he liked someone, and Boris felt that Mathieu might well have shown his affection by a word or a gesture now and again. With Ivich, Mathieu was quite different. Boris suddenly recalled Mathieu’s face one day when he was helping Ivich put on her overcoat; and he felt an unpleasant shrinking at the heart. Mathieu’s smile: on those sardonic lips that Boris loved so much, that strange, appealing, and affectionate smile. But Boris’s head soon filled with smoke, and he thought of nothing at all.
    ‘He’s off again,’ said