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

It’s usually enough for me to look at you and feel I love you. But there are moments when I wish I could get at your own real feelings.’
    ‘I understand,’ said Boris seriously, ‘but you ought to wait till I feel like it. If it doesn’t come naturally, there’s no sense in it.’
    ‘But, you little fool, you yourself say you never do feel that way unless somebody asks you.’
    Boris began to laugh.
    ‘It’s true,’ he said, ‘you put me off. But one can feel affection for somebody, and not want to say so.’
    Lola did not answer. They stopped, applauded, and the band began again. Boris was glad to observe that the pansy-lad was dancing towards them: but when he eyed him from near-by, he got a nasty shock: the creature was quite forty years old. His face retained the sheen of youth, but underneath it he had aged. He had large doll-like blue eyes, and a boyish mouth, but there were pouches under his porcelain eyes, and wrinkles round his mouth, his nostrils were pinched like those of a dying man, and his hair, which looked from a distance like a golden haze, scarcely covered his cranium. Boris looked with horror at this elderly, shaven child. ‘He was once young,’ thought he. There were fellows who seemed created to be thirty-five — Mathieu, for instance — because they had never known youth. But when a chap had really been young, he bore the marks of it for the rest of his life. It might last till twenty-five. After that — it was horrible. He set himself to look at Lola and said abruptly: ‘Lola, look at me, I love you.’
    Lola’s eyes grew pink, and she stepped on Boris’s foot. She merely said: ‘Darling!’
    He felt like exclaiming — Clasp me tighter, make me feel I love you. But Lola said nothing, she in her turn was alone, the moment had indeed come. There was a vague smile on her face, her eyelids were drooping, her face had again shut down upon her happiness. It was a calm, forlorn face. Boris felt desolate, and the thought — the grinding thought, suddenly came upon him: I won’t, I won’t grow old. Last year he had been quite unperturbed, he had never thought about that sort of thing: and now — it was rather ominous that he should so constantly feel that his youth was slipping between his fingers. Until twenty-five. ‘I’ve got five years yet,’ thought Boris; ‘and after that I’ll blow my brains out.’ He could no longer endure the noise of the band, and the sense of all these people around him.
    ‘Shall we go?’ said he.
    ‘At once, my lovely!’
    They returned to their table. Lola called the waiter, paid the bill, and flung her velvet cloak over her shoulders.
    ‘Come along,’ she said.
    They went out. Boris was no longer thinking of anything very definite, but there was a sense of something fateful in his mind. The Rue Blanche was crowded with random people, all looking harsh and old. They met the Maestro Piranese from the Puss in Boots, and greeted him: his little legs pattered along beneath his enormous belly. ‘Perhaps,’ thought Boris, ‘I too shall grow a paunch.’ What would it be like never to be able to look at oneself in a glass, nor to feel the crisp, wooden snap of one’s joints...And every instant that passed, every instant, consumed a little more of his youth. ‘If only I could save myself up, live very quietly, at a slower pace, I should perhaps gain a few years. But to do that, I oughtn’t to make a habit of going to bed at 2.0 a.m.’ He eyed Lola with detestation. ‘She’s killing me.’
    ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Lola.
    ‘Nothing.’
    Lola lived in a hotel in the Rue Navarin. She took her key off the board, and they walked silently upstairs. The room was bare, there was a trunk covered with labels in one corner, and on the farther wall a photograph of Boris stuck on it with drawing-pins. It was an identity-photograph which Lola had had enlarged. ‘Ah,’ thought Boris, ‘that will remain when I’m a wreck; in that I shall always