All men are mortal PDF
Preview All men are mortal
NORTON PAPERBACK FICT I ON ALL MEN ARE MORT~L Simone de Beauvoir TRANSLATED BY LEONARD M. FRIEDMAN ALL NEW YORK • LONDON a novel by SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR MEN ARE MORTAL WOW-NORTON & COMPANY Other books by Simone de Beauvoir from Norton The Coming ojA ge The Mandarins She Came to Stay Copyright © 1946 by Editions Gallimard First English edition published in the United States in 1955. Originally published in France under the title, Tous Les Hommes Sont Mortels. All righ ts reserved First published as a Norton paperback, 1992. Translated by Leonard M. Friedman Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beauvoir, Simone de, 1908- [Tous les hommes sont mortels. English] All men are mortal: a novel I by Simone de Beauvoir ; translatf:d by Leonard M. Friedman. p. em. Translation of: Tous les hommes sont mortels. ISBN 0-393-30845-6 I. Title. PQ2603. E362T613 1992 843' . 914-dc20 92-6620 ISBN 0-393-30845-6 (pa) W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 www.wwnorton.com W.W. Norton & Company, Ltd. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street London WIT 3QT 7890 TO JEAN -PA UL SAR TRE PROLOGUE CHAPTER 1 ~ The curtain went up again. Regina bowed and smiled. Pink spots from the glare of the brilliant lights flickered above the multicolored dresses and dark suits. In every face there were eyes, and reflected in each pair of eyes was Regina, bowing and smiling. The roaring of cataracts and the rumbling of avalanches filled the old theater, and then an impetuous force ripped her from earth and sent her soaring toward heaven. She bowed again. As the curtain came down, she felt Florence's hand in hers. Quickly, she dropped it and walked toward the wings. "Five curtain calls! Not bad!" the stage manager remarked. "Well, not bad for a city like Rauen." She went down the stairs which led to the lobby, and they were there, waiting for her with flowers. Suddenly she fell back to earth. When they were seated in the shadows, invisible, anonymous, it was im possible to tell who they were-she might very well have been perform ing before a gathering of gods. But now, seeing them in the light, one at a time, she found herself confronted by mortal beings of no special importance. They spoke the proper words of course-"A work of genius! An overpowering performance!"-and their eyes glowed with enthusiasm, a little flame that lit up at the right time and was thriftily snuffed out the moment it was no longer needed. They surrounded Florence, too, and brought her flowers. And when they spoke to her, they turned on that little flame in their eyes. As if they could like the both of us! Regina peevishly thought. The one was blonde, the other brunette, completely different. Florence was smiling. Nothing in the world could stop her from believing that she had just as much talent, that she was just as beautiful as Regina. Roger was waiting for Regina in her dressing room. He took her in his arms. "You were never better than tonight!" he said. "Too good for that kind of an audience," Regina replied. "Did you hear that applause!" Annie exclaimed. 4 ALL MEN ARE MORTAL "It doesn't mean much. They applauded Florence just as long." She sat down at her dressing table and began combing her hair while Annie unbuttoned her dress. Florence doem't give a dmml about me, she thought. lVhy should I 'Worry over her? But she did worry and there was a bitter taste in her mouth. "Is Sanier really here?" she asked. "Yes. He got in from Paris on the eight o'clock train," Roger an- swered. "He's going to spend the weekend with Florence." "She has him pretty well hooked, hasn't she?" "That's the way it looks." She stood up and let her dress fall to her feet. Sanier did not interest her in the least, and she even thought him rather ridiculous. But still, she was pained by what Roger had told her. "I wonder what Mauscot will have to say about it." "He lets Florence get away with a lot," Roger said. "But doesn't Sanier mind Mauscot?" "It's my guess he doesn't know about him." "Yes, I suppose so," Regina said. "They're waiting for us at the Royal to have a drink. Shall we go?" "By all means! Let's go!" A fresh river breeze was blowing in the direction of the cathedral, the notched towers of which were just barely visible. Regina shivered. "If As You Like It is a hit I'll never go on tour again." "It's going to be a hit," Roger assured her. He squeezed Regina's arm. "You'll be a great actress." "She is a great actress," Annie declared indignantly. "Really, it's very nice of you to say so, but ..." "Why? Don't you believe it?" Roger interrupted. "\-Vhat would that prove?" She pulled her scarf tightly around her neck. "There has to be some sort of sign, like a halo suddenly appearing over your head, and then you'd really know you're Rachel or La Duse or Sarah Bernhardt." "There'll be plenty of signs," Roger said gayly. "But none of them will really be certain. You're lucky not to be ambitious." He laughed. "What's to stop you from imitating me?" Regina laughed, too, but mirthlessly. "Myself," she replied. A red cavern opened at the end of the darkened street-the Royal. They went in and she caught sight of them immediately, seated at a SIMONE DE BEAU VOIR 5 table with the rest of the troupe. Sanier had his arm around Florence's shoulder. He held himself stiffly in his well-cut suit of English cloth and he was looking at her with the expression that Regina knew well, having seen it so often in Roger's eyes. Florence was smiling, revealing her beautiful, childlike teeth. In her mind she was turning over the words he had just said~r was about to say: "You'll be a great actress. You're not like other women." Regina sat down next to Roger. "Sanier is wrong," she thought, "and so is Florence. She's nothing but a talented child without any real genius. No woman in the world can compare with me. But how can I prove it? And she doesn't worry about me, but in my heart she's an acid wound. I will prove it," she fervently said to herself. She took a small mirror from her purse and pretended to arrange the arc of her lips-she had to see herself. She loved her face, the lively shade of her blonde hair, the noble austerity of her high foreh~ad and her nose, the ardor of her mouth, the audacity in her blue eyes. She was beautiful, with a beauty so severe and so solitary that at first it was startling. "Ah! if only there were two of me," she thought, "one who spoke and the other who listened, one who lived and the other who watched, how I would love myself! I'd envy no one." She closed her purse. At that very moment there were thousands of women who were complacently smiling at their reflections in thousands of little mirrors. "Shall we dance?" Roger asked. "No, I don't feel like dancing." Florence and Sanier had gotten up; they were dancing. They danced badly, but they were unaware of it, and they were happy. Love was in their eyes, only love. The great human drama was unfolding between them, as if no one on earth had ever loved before, as if Regina had never loved. For the first time, in anguish and in tenderness, a man desired.a woman; for the first time a woman felt herself become an idol of flesh in the anns of a man. Springtime blossomed anew, unique as every springtime, and Regina was already dead. She dug her pointed finger nails into the palm of her hand. It was undeniable: no amount of success, no triumph could, in that instant, prevent Florence from shining with sovereign glory in Sanier's heart. I can't sta1ld it, I 'U:Oll't stand it. "Do you want to leave?" Roger asked. "No." She wanted to stay there, wanted to watch them. She watched them
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