When I Was Old Read Online Free PDF

to see our house invaded, its rhythm broken, people sitting in my chair (the one in my living room where I watch television) and in my wife’s.
    The obligation to speak, to listen, becomes almost unbearable to me and perhaps it’s so I won’t have to listen that I talk so much.
    Is it age? Once I liked to be close to people, and the
days without visitors seemed empty and dull to me. I would chase around, to Montparnasse, to the Coupole, or what have you. That was the great era of Montparnasse. I even had a bar in my own house on the Place des Vosges (1925 or 1926) where I officiated with professional flourish. No doubt I had a reason. No children. Just my wife.
    Perhaps there was another reason too. I was young, just arrived in Paris. I had everything to learn. I had discovered, or believed I had discovered, that men reveal more of themselves when they are having a good time than when they are at their work. I spent evenings and nights at dance halls, at cabarets, looking, listening. The later it grew, the more people who must have been impressive in their offices became accessible, often pitiable.
    In my bar on the Place des Vosges, I forced cocktails on my guests in order to produce more quickly the release that would permit me to see them naked.
    But the evenings when I drank myself ? Wasn’t it just an alibi then? And if, during the small hours of the morning, I arranged it so that several women were naked, was that just to study the behaviour of the other males, or for my own satisfaction?
    I must speak of this sexual question, for others have spoken of it (like P. in the book he dedicated to me), and in my opinion they have been completely mistaken.
    I don’t intend to write a confession on this subject but to express certain very simple truths.
    For the moment, what concerns me (not much, really,
but enough to get it off my chest) is this sort of instinctive withdrawal, more into myself than into my family, into my house, into certain rooms of that house; my irritation when my routine is interrupted. If it is age, too bad. But I’m not sure that’s it. I was greedy for contacts up until … until I met D. in New York in 1945. And I’ve become more and more miserly with our intimacy. The children enlarged the circle. Echandens * * is arranged around us, according to the functions of each and all of us. I feel comfortable here. I establish habits here. Going into my study in the morning (not to work there, I’m not speaking of the times of the novels), my eyes seek a certain reflection on a piece of furniture, and a pencil out of place bothers me. I am with the children, in thought, in the house. I know where each one is, what he’s doing.
    Don’t strangers have anything to teach me any more? Have I no more curiosity? I have no idea, but isn’t it odd that I feel disturbed even by the children (and by the staff) if they burst in when I’m alone with my wife, if for instance they come into my room when we’re having coffee after lunch?
    D. and I aren’t even talking; we’re looking through the papers. We pass them back and forth and it’s a half hour of what at fifteen I called perfect happiness. At that time too it went with coffee and reading and additionally the eating of a wartime pudding that I had concocted myself, since rationing kept us hungry.
    I continue to love people, to be curious about them, to become passionately involved in their behaviour, in their ‘motives’, but at the same time I have a passion for our little family universe.
    The respite will be short. The nurse has left for a few days of vacation. One of the maids has had an operation. My wife is without a secretary until August. This means that I will not see her except on the run, busy with her different functions. At the weekend she will begin to pack, since we have promised Johnny and Marie-Jo to take them to Venice for ten days.
    This trip will no doubt be pleasant. I’m looking forward to it as they are. Nevertheless I feel