When I Was Old Read Free Page A

photograph, a family group, posed like a royal portrait.
    I’ve wondered if really he is so indifferent to what the public thinks of him. I’ve envied him. And now he is busy writing his memoirs, in several volumes, without any interference from a journalist.
    So it’s the opposite of indifference. He wishes to set down his truth or his legend, just like Gide and so many others.
    Which reminds me of one of the first questions Gide asked, if not the very first, when, at his suggestion, we met for the first time.
    ‘Tell me, Simenon, at what period did you choose your character?’
    Now I’m not sure if he said ‘choose’ or ‘fix’. I didn’t understand him immediately.
    ‘My character?’
    For a moment I wondered if he weren’t speaking of Maigret, and I almost answered that he was not my character, that Maigret was only an accident to whom I attached little importance.
    No! He was talking about me. He explained:
    ‘Each of us, at one age or another, creates his character, to which he remains more or less faithful …’
    This confused me a good deal. I only understood what he meant when I saw photographs of him at different periods. It was true. From the age of eighteen or twenty, there were the same poses, the same look as at sixty.
    Isn’t that frightening? I haven’t chosen any character. I’ve changed my attitudes a hundred times. But I wonder now if it isn’t, at least in part, because I’ve read in the papers that I work in such and such a way that I continue to do so.
    That depresses me. It seems to me that
I am obliged to
…
    One of these days I’ll have to give myself a shake, not do what is printed in the newspapers.
    In that case, it will be best to say nothing about it, so as not to become imprisoned in a new legend.
    In fact, I’ll have to cheat!
Saturday, 9 July 1960
    Revision of my novel
Maigret et les Vieillards
finished.
    In five days. By working six or seven hours a day. Otherwise, say seven days at three hours a day, or twenty-one hours of writing. Add to that more than thirty hours to revise. The first Maigrets were revised in one day! I daren’t reread them.
    All of yesterday, an English journalist who is here for
several days, and, during the afternoon and evening, often two of them at once, Roger Stéphane, who wants to write a book on me. I talked nonstop. I tried to explain, to convince, and I didn’t even convince myself. I should have the courage to refuse these interviews. From hearing the same questions asked, from hearing myself talk as if about a ‘case’, I end by not believing in myself.
    I always stress the role of intuition. In good faith. It’s what I believe in. But by talking about it periodically for hours or days, I run the risk of becoming too conscious of it, or losing that very intuition.
    On the other hand, should I, instead of answering them, let them write all their nonsense which irritates
me
so?
    I would like to be able to be silent. I am, for months of each year, at least nine tenths of the time; then I allow myself to be tempted by contacts. I have nothing to gain by it. I have everything to lose.
    Although I drank nothing but water and Coca-Cola all day yesterday I find myself this morning with a hangover and a bad conscience, that sort of near-physical depression and anxiety of the drunkard.
    A moving letter from Miller in the mail. He believes in my stability. He envies me. He’s probably right. But, by continually furnishing reasons for this rather precarious balance, by analysing it, by dissecting oneself for the benefit of others, doesn’t one risk going completely off the track?
    To be silent, yes! But then one seems pretentious. And this silence would require a good bit of arrogance, like Montherlant’s, and I don’t have that.
    Quiet! I promised myself not to talk about these things any more. And here I am, after more than a week of interviews, and ten minutes before starting in again, with the need to explain myself in writing!