Levels of Life by Julian Barnes Read Free Book Online

me. I shall always go where danger and adventure call. I shall always seek a skirmish. If my country needs me, I shall always answer.’
    ‘I am happy to know that.’
    ‘But …’
    ‘But?’
    ‘Madame Sarah, the future lies with heavier-than-air machines. However much we balloonatics might prefer it not to.’
    ‘Have we not discussed this and agreed?’
    ‘Yes. But that is not what I intended.’
    He paused. She waited. He knew that she knew where he was going. He began again.
    ‘We are both bohemians. Both travellers, footloose. We live against the common run of things. We do not take orders easily.’
    He paused, she waited.
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Madame Sarah. You know what I am going to say. I cannot bandy metaphor any longer. I am not the first man who has fallen in love with you on sight, nor, I fear, will I be the last. But I am in love with you as I have never been before. We are kindred spirits, this I know.’
    He gazed at her. She looked back at him with what he took to be perfect tranquillity. But did that mean she agreed with him, or was unmoved by what he said? He went on.
    ‘We are both grown up. We know the world. I am not some parlour soldier. You are not an ingénue. Marry me. Marry me. I lay my sword at your feet as well as my heart. I cannot say it more straightforwardly than that.’
    He waited for her response. He thought her eyes glistened. She put her hand on his arm.
    ‘ Mon cher Capitaine Fred,’ she replied – but her tone made him feel more like a schoolboy than an officer of the Blues. ‘I have never taken you for a parlour soldier. I do you the honour of taking you seriously. And I am very flattered.’
    ‘But … ?’
    ‘But. Yes, that is a word life forces upon us more often than we want, more often than we imagine. But – I do you the honour of answering your straightforwardness with mine. But – I am not made for happiness.’
    ‘You cannot say, after these last weeks and months …’
    ‘Oh, but I can say. And I do. I am made for sensation, for pleasure, for the moment. I am constantly in search of new sensations, new emotions. That is how I shall be until my life is worn away. My heart desires more excitement than anyone – any one person – can give.’
    He looked away from her. This was more than a man could bear.
    ‘You must understand this,’ she went on. ‘I shall never marry. I promise you that. I shall always be, as you put it, a balloonatic. I shall never take that heavier-than-air machine with anyone. What can I do? You must not be angry with me. You must think of me as an incomplete person.’
    He summoned up one last attempt. ‘Madame Sarah, we are all of us incomplete. I am just as incomplete as you. That is why we seek another person. For completion. And I too have never thought I would marry. Not because it is the conventional thing to do. But because I previously did not have the courage. Marriage is a greater danger than a pack of infidels with spears, if you want my opinion. Do not be afraid, Madame Sarah. Do not let your actions be governed by your fears. That is what my first commanding officer used to tell me.’
    ‘It is not fear, Capitaine Fred,’ she said gently. ‘It is self-knowledge. And do not be angry with me.’
    ‘I am not angry. You have a manner which quite disarms anger. If I appear angry, it is because I am angry with the universe that has made you, that has made us, so that this … so that this is how …’
    ‘Capitaine Fred. It is late, and we are both tired. Come to my dressing room tomorrow and perhaps you will understand.’
     
    (In parenthesis, another love story. In 1893 – the same year he visits Nadar and his aphasiac wife in the Forest of Sénart – Edmond de Goncourt dines with Sarah Bernhardt before a read-through of his play La Faustin . She is still out at rehearsal when he arrives, and he is shown into the studio where she receives her guests. His aesthete’s eye chillingly evaluates the tumultuous