Read Online The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre - Free Book Online Page A

‘I’m not going to kill anyone. I’m going to prevent a child from being born.’ Pablo was playing with his bricks once more: he had forgotten Mathieu. Mathieu reached out a hand and touched the table with his finger. And he repeated to himself with a sense of astonishment: ‘Prevent it being born...’ It sounded as though there existed somewhere a completed child, awaiting the hour to come out into the open, into the sunlight, and Mathieu was barring its passage. And indeed, that was more or less the fact: there was a tiny human creature, conscious, furtive, deceitful, and pathetic, with a white skin, wide ears, and tiny flesh-marks, and all manner of distinctive signs such as are stamped on passports, a little man who would never run about the streets with one foot on the pavement and the other in the gutter: eyes, green like Mathieu’s, or black like Marcelle’s, which would never see the vitreous skies of winter, nor the sea, nor any human face, hands that would never touch the snow, nor the flesh of women, nor the bark of trees: an embodiment of the world, ensanguined, luminous, sullen, passionate, sinister, full of hopes, an image populous with houses and gardens, tall delightful girls and horrible insects: and a pin would pierce it and explode it like a toy balloon.
    ‘Here I am,’ said Sarah, ‘have I kept you waiting?’
    Mathieu looked up, and felt relieved: she was leaning over the banisters, a heavy, amorphous figure: an adult human being, ageing flesh that looked as though it had been lately pickled and not born at all: Sarah smiled at him and hurried downstairs, her kimono fluttering round her stocky legs.
    ‘Now then: what is the matter?’ she said eagerly.
    Her large clouded eyes were set on him insistently. He turned away, and said harshly: ‘Marcelle is going to have a baby.’
    ‘Oh!’
    Sarah looked really rather pleased: she added timidly. ‘So you — you —?’
    ‘No, no,’ said Mathieu briskly. ‘We don’t want one.’
    ‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘I see.’ She bent her head and remained silent. Mathieu was irritated by a distress that was not even a reproach.
    ‘I think the same thing happened to you some time ago. Gomez told me,’ he retorted, harshly.
    ‘Yes; some time ago.’
    Suddenly she looked up, and blurted out: ‘It’s nothing at all, you know, if it’s taken in time.’
    She would not allow herself to criticize him, she abandoned her reserves, uttered no word of reproach: her sole desire was to reassure him.
    ‘It’s nothing at all...’
    He must smile, he must view the future with confidence: she alone would lament that secret little death.
    ‘Look here, Sarah,’ said Mathieu angrily, ‘you must try to understand me. I won’t marry. It isn’t just selfishness: I regard marriage...’
    He fell silent: Sarah was married, she had married Gomez five years before: and he added after a pause: ‘Besides, Marcelle doesn’t want a child.’
    ‘She doesn’t like children?’
    ‘They don’t interest her.’
    Sarah seemed disconcerted.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes... very well then.’
    She took his hands. ‘My poor Mathieu, how worried you must be. I wish I could help you.’
    ‘Well, that’s just what you can do,’ said Mathieu. ‘When you were in the same sort of trouble, you went to see someone, a Russian, I think.’ ‘Yes,’ said Sarah. (Her expression altered.) ‘It was horrible.’
    ‘Indeed!’ said Mathieu in a strangled voice. ‘I suppose it’s... it’s very painful.’
    ‘Not particularly, but...’ And she went on with a piteous air: ‘I was thinking of the child. It was Gomez who wanted it done, you know. And when he wanted anything in those days... But it was horrible, I would never... if he went down on his knees to me now, I would never have it done again.’ She looked at Mathieu with agonized eyes.
    ‘They gave me a little parcel after the operation, and they said to me: “You can throw that down a drain.” Down a drain! Like a