Actually the contents of these books mattered little. What did matter was what they first felt when they went into the library, where they would see not the walls of black books but multiplying horizons and expanses that, as soon as they crossed the doorstep, would take them away from the cramped life of the neighborhood.
Then came the moment when—each of them provided with the two books they were allowed, holding them close against their sides with their elbows—they slipped out onto the boulevard, dark by this time; they squashed underfoot the fruits of the big plane trees while calculating the delights they were going to extract from their books, comparing them already with those of the previous week, until, having arrived on the main street, they would first open them by the uncertain light of the first streetlight, to pick out some phrase (for ex.: “his was a most uncommon strength”) that would heighten their joyous and avid hopes. They would part quickly and dash to the dining room to open the book on the oilcloth by the light of the kerosene lamp. A strong smell of glue rose from the crude binding that also was rough to the touch.
The way the book was printed would give the reader advance notice of the pleasure he would derive from it. P. and J. did not like books set in large type with wide margins, such as pleased readers of more refined tastes, but rather pages set in small type stretching all the way across tightly justified lines, filled to the brim with words and sentences, like those enormous rustic dishes you can eat at long and heartily without ever emptying them, and are all that can satisfy some gigantic appetites. They had no use for subtleties; they knew nothing and wanted to know everything. It mattered little if the book was poorly written and crudely printed, as long as the writing was clear and it was full of violent activity; those books, and those alone, would feed their dreams, and on that they could go into a heavy sleep.
Moreover, each book had its own smell according to the paper on which it was printed, always delicate and discreet, but so distinct that with his eyes closed J. could have told a book in the Nelson series1 from one of the contemporary editions Fasquelle was then publishing. And each of those odors, even before he had begun reading, would transport Jacques to another world full of promises already [kept], that was beginning even now to obscure the room where he was, to blot out the neighborhood itself and its noises, the city, and the whole world, which would completely vanish as soon as he began reading with a wild exalted intensity that would transport the child into an ecstasy so total that even repeated commands could not extract him:k “Jacques, for the third time, set the table.”
Finally he would set the table, his expression empty and without color, a bit staring, as if drunk on his reading, and he would return to his book as if he had never put it down. “Jacques, eat,” and finally he would eat food that, heavy as it was, seemed less real and less solid than what he found in the books; then he cleared the table and went back to his book. Sometimes his mother came to him before seating herself in her usual place. “It’s the library,” she would say. She mispronounced this word she had heard spoken by her son that had no meaning to her, but she recognized the jackets of books.l “Yes,” Jacques said without looking up. Catherine Cormery leaned over his shoulder.
She looked at the double rectangle under the light, the regular rows of the lines; she would inhale the odor, and sometimes she would run her swollen fingers, wrinkled by the water from doing laundry, across the page, as if she were trying better to understand what a book was, to come a little closer to these mysterious signs, incomprehensible to her, but where her son so often and for hours on end found a life unknown to her and from which he would return with such an expression, looking at her as if she were a stranger.
Her gnarled hand gently caressed the boy’s head; he did not react; she sighed, then went and sat down, far from him. “Jacques, go to bed.” The grandmother repeated the command. “You’ll be late tomorrow.” Jacques got to his feet, prepared his satchel for the next day’s classes, not letting go of his book, which he held in his armpit, and then, like a drunkard, he fell into a heavy sleep, after slipping the book under his bolster.
So, for years, Jacques’s existence was divided unequally into two lives between which he was unable to make any connection. For twelve hours, to the sound of the drum, in a society of children and teachers, amidst games and study. For two or three hours of daily life, in the home in the old neighborhood, close to his mother, whom he did not really join except in the sleep of the poor. Although the earliest part of his life was this neighborhood, his present and even more his future were at the lycée. So that in a sense the neighborhood eventually blended in with night, with sleep and with dreams. Moreover, did this neighborhood even exist, and was it not the desert it became for the child one evening when he was unconscious? He had fallen on cement … At the lycée, in any case, there was no one he could talk to about his mother and his family. In his family no one he could talk to about the lycée.
No friend, no teacher ever came to his home during all the years before he received his baccalaureate. And as for his mother and grandmother, they never came to the lycée, except once a year, when awards were given, at the beginning of July. On that day, it is true, they would enter by the monumental door, in a crowd of dressed-up parents and students. The grandmother put on the black dress and scarf she wore for major outings; Catherine Cormery wore a hat adorned with brown net and black waxen grapes, a brown summer dress, and the only pair of shoes with heels that she owned.
Jacques wore a short-sleeved white shirt with an open-necked collar, pants that were first short then long, but always carefully ironed by his mother on the previous evening; and, walking between the two women, he himself led them to the red trolley, at about one o’clock in the afternoon, settled them on a seat in the motorcar while he remained standing at the front, looking back through the glass partition at his mother, who smiled at him from time to time and throughout the journey checked the angle of her hat or whether her stockings were falling, or the position of the small golden medal of the Virgin she wore at the end of a thin chain.
At the place du Gouvernement began the daily journey along the length of the rue Bab-Azoun, which he made just once in the year with the two women. Jacques sniffed the [lampero] lotion on his mother, which she had liberally applied for the occasion, the grandmother walking erect and proud, scolding her daughter when she complained about her feet (“That’ll teach you to wear shoes too small for you at your age”), while Jacques persisted in showing them the stores and shopkeepers that had come to have such an important place in his life.
At the lycée, the monumental door was open, potted plants adorned the monumental stairs from top to bottom, stairs that the first parents and students were beginning to climb, the Cormerys naturally being far ahead of time, as the poor always are, for they have few social obligations and pleasures, and are afraid of not being punctual for those few.m Then they arrived at the older students’ courtyard, full of rows of chairs rented from a firm that staged dances and concerts, while at the far end, under the great clock, the whole width of the courtyard was occupied by a platform filled with chairs and armchairs; it too was decorated, and profusely, with green plants.
Little by little the yard was filled up with light-colored outfits, women being in the majority. The first arrivals chose places sheltered from the sun, under the trees. The others fanned themselves with Arab fans made of fine plaited straw decorated with red woolen tassels on their rims. Above the audience the blue of the sky congealed and became harder and harder as it baked in the heat.
At two o’clock a military orchestra, out of sight in the upper arcade, launched into the “Marseillaise,” all the spectators rose to their feet, and the teachers entered in their square caps and long gowns trimmed in colors that differed according to their discipline, led by the headmaster and the official personage (usually a high-ranking bureaucrat in the colonial administration) drafted this year for the occasion. Another military march covered for the seating of the teachers, and right after that the official personage took the podium and gave his opinions on France in general and education
