Things and A Man Asleep Read Free

detail from The Triumph of Saint George , one of Piranesi's dungeons, a portrait by Ingres, a little pen-and-ink landscape by Klee, a sepia-tint photograph of Renan in his room at the Collège de France, a Steinberg department store, Cranach's Melanchthon - pinned to wooden panels set into the shelving. Slightly to the left of the window and at a shallow angle would be a long country table covered with a large red blotter. Wooden boxes, flat pen-holders and pots of all kinds would hold pencils, paper-clips, staples large and small. A glass tile would serve as an ashtray. A circular black leather box decorated with gold-leaf arabesques would be filled with cigarettes. Light would come from an old desk-lamp, adjustable only with difficulty, fitted with a green opaline lampshade shaped like a visor. On each side of the table, virtually facing each other, would be two high-backed wood and leather armchairs. Still further to the left, along the wall, would be a narrow table overflowing with books. A wing-chair in bottle-green leather would lead to grey metal filing cabinets and light wooden card-index boxes. On a third, even smaller table would be a Swedish lamp and a typewriter under its canvas dust-cover. Right at the back would be a narrow bed covered in ultramarine velvet and stacked with cushions of all colours. On a painted wooden stand, almost in the middle of the room, there would be a globe made of papier-mâché and nickel silver, illustrated in naïf style, a fake antique. Behind the desk, half-hidden by the red curtain at the window, would be an oiled-wood ladder which could slide on a brass rail all the way round the room.
    There, life would be easy, simple. All the servitudes, all the problems brought by material existence would find a natural solution. A cleaning lady would come every morning. Every fortnight, wine, oil and sugar would be delivered. There would be a huge, bright kitchen with blue tiles decorated with heraldic emblems, three china plates decorated with yellow arabesques in metallic paint, cupboards everywhere, a handsome whitewood table in the middle with stools and bench-seats. It would be pleasant to come and sit there, every morning, after a shower, scarcely dressed. On the table there would be a sizeable stoneware butter dish, jars of marmalade, honey, toast, grapefruit cut in two. It would be early. It would be May, the start of a long summer's day.
    They would open the mail, they would open the newspapers. They would light their first cigarette. They would go out. Their work would keep them busy for a few hours only, in the morning. They would meet for lunch, a sandwich or a steak, according to their mood; they would have coffee at a street café and then go home, on foot, slowly.
    Their flat would rarely be tidy, but its very untidiness would be its greatest charm. They would hardly bother themselves with it: they would live in it. The comfort of their surroundings would seem to them to be an established fact, a datum, a state of their nature. Their attention would be elsewhere: on the book they would open, on the text they would draft, on the record they would listen to, on their dialogue engaged afresh each day. They would work for a long while. Then they would dine, or go out for dinner; they would see old friends; they would walk together.
    Sometimes it would seem to them that a whole life could be led harmoniously between these book-lined walls, amongst these objects so perfectly domesticated that they would have ended up believing these bright, soft, simple and beautiful things had only ever been made for their sole use. But they wouldn't feel enslaved by them: on some days, they would go off on a chance adventure. No plan seemed impossible to them. They would not know rancour, or bitterness, or envy. For their means and their desires would always match in all ways. They would call this balance happiness and, with their freedom, with their wisdom and their culture, they would know how to