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

dead rat! Mathieu,’ she said, gripping his arm: ‘You don’t realize what you’re going to do.’
    ‘And when you bring a child into the world, do you realize what you’re going to do?’ asked Mathieu wrathfully.
    A child: another consciousness, a little centre-point of light that would flutter round and round, dashing against the walls, and never be able to escape.
    ‘No, but what I mean is — you don’t know what you’re asking of Marcelle: I’m afraid she may hate you later on.’ Mathieu had a vision of Marcelle’s eyes — round, hard, circled eyes.
    ‘Do you hate Gomez?’ he asked sharply.
    Sarah made a piteous, helpless gesture: she could not hate anyone, least of all Gomez.
    ‘In any case,’ she said with a blank look, ‘I can’t send you to that Russian, he’s still in practice, but he drinks nowadays: I no longer trust him. There was a nasty episode two years ago.’
    ‘And you don’t know anyone else?’
    ‘No,’ said Sarah slowly. But suddenly all her kindliness flooded into her face again, and she exclaimed: ‘Yes, I do: just the person — why didn’t I think of it before? Waldmann. You haven’t met him here? A Jew, a gynaecologist. He’s a sort of specialist in abortion: you would be quite safe with him. He had an immense practice in Berlin. When the Nazis came into power, he set up in Vienna. After that, there was the Anschluss, and he arrived in Paris with a suitcase. But he had sent all his money to Zurich long before.’
    ‘Do you think he’ll do it?’
    ‘Of course. I’ll go and see him this very day.’
    ‘I’m glad,’ said Mathieu. ‘I’m awfully glad. He isn’t too expensive, I hope.’
    ‘He used to charge up to 2,000 marks.’
    Mathieu grew pale: ‘10,000 francs!’
    ‘But that was sheer robbery,’ she added quickly. ‘He was exploiting his reputation. No one knows him here, I’m sure he’ll be reasonable: I shall suggest 3,000 francs.’
    ‘Right,’ said Mathieu between clenched teeth: he was wondering where he would find the money.
    ‘Look here,’ said Sarah, ‘why shouldn’t I go this very morning? He lives in the Rue Blaise-Desgoffes — quite near. I’ll slip on some clothes and go along. Will you wait for me?’
    ‘No — I’ve got an appointment at half past ten. Sarah, you’re a treasure,’ said Mathieu.
    He took her by the shoulders, and shook her, smiling as he did so. She had for his sake sacrificed her deepest repulsions, she had — in the kindness of her heart — become his accomplice in an act she loathed: she was beaming with delight.
    ‘Where will you be about eleven o’clock?’ she asked.
    ‘I shall be at the Dupont-Latin, Boulevard Saint-Michel. I could stay there till you ring me up.’
    ‘At the Dupont-Latin? Right.’
    Sarah’s wrap had slipped back, exposing her clumsy breasts. Mathieu clasped her in his arms, in real affection, and also to avoid looking at her body.
    ‘Good-bye,’ said Sarah, ‘good-bye, my dear Mathieu.’
    She raised her kind, ill-favoured face to his. There was in that face an intriguing, almost voluptuous humility that evoked a mean desire to hurt her, to crush her with shame. ‘When I look at her,’ Daniel used to say, ‘I understand Sadism.’ Mathieu kissed her on both cheeks.
    ‘Summer!’ The sky flooded the street with spectral effluence: the people hovered in the sky, and their faces were aflame. Mathieu breathed a green and living perfume, a youthful dust: he blinked, and smiled. ‘Summer!’ He walked a few paces: the black, melting asphalt, flecked with white, stuck to the soles of his shoes: Marcelle was pregnant — it was no longer the same summer.
    She slept, her body swathed in the enveloping darkness, and as she slept she sweated. Her lovely brown and mauve breasts lay loose upon her, and their tips, salty and white as flowers, were encircled with oozing drops of moisture. She slept. She always slept until midday. But the pustule deep within her did not sleep, it had no