When I Was Old by Georges Simenon Page B

the satisfaction of possessing them when it is almost a question of survival. Sugar, for example. Sugar with a capital
s
. During the last war, afraid of a shortage, especially for my son (I had only one at that time), I bought beehives. I sweetened my coffee with honey. The tricks for getting a few litres of gasoline because you couldn’t count on the electricity. Carbide too. Rice, pastry. And, since I had three cows, the search for barbed wire.
    Thick shoes to protect against cold and mud. An overcoat of thick wool or one lined with sheepskin.
    Things took on their real value again. Their real beauty, too. The beauty – and also the odour – of a barrel of black soap, for example, and of beginning the winter knowing that we wouldn’t be cold, caressing the woodpile with our eyes.
    This atmosphere of ‘stores’ I already knew as a child, in a city, however, at my Aunt Maria’s house beside the canal at Coronmeuse. I’ve often written of it in my novels and in
Pedigree
. She used to supply the boatmen whose barges were moored above the locks. Boatmen bought what they needed there and my aunt had to stock what they wanted, from Norwegian tar to starch, along with anything else simple, rough people might need.
    The
real
. This defines as nearly as I can the word ‘real’ for me: that which relates directly to the life of human beings. That which makes it possible.
    The real is never ugly. But as soon as one gets near the realm of the superfluous … See the bazaars, the shops with many counters, etc.
    The place where I would like to live, if I had the courage, or if I had no responsibilities, would be a house, a cabin, as real as those stores: essential furniture of pine, partitions of fir, a stove, a pump in a corner, maybe a shelf for books …
    This environment is artificially manufactured today, and those for whom these places, called camps, are built, in the United States, in Canada, in Kenya, in Polynesia, are the people who have the most money, the most responsibilities, those who are called billionaires and who relax by fishing, cooking their own meals, and making their own beds.
    On a more modest scale, the ordinary camper does very nearly the same thing.
    Hence this must be a virtually general need, this return to the real, but a prefabricated real. Why does the
word ‘lard’ suddenly make my mouth water? I haven’t eaten it since the war of ’14–’18. I see it again, spread on black bread. It meant a fatty substance. We no longer need fatty substances. Eating it, we had the sense of protecting ourselves.
    Compared with this, how artificial and joyless gastronomy seems!
    Another memory of war, of the second, this time, 1939–1945. At La Rochelle I directed the Belgian refugee service and I had the right to requisition – among other things – unoccupied apartments or insufficiently occupied ones. Women with children, babies, the sick, the old were sleeping on straw.
    A woman whom I knew well, a so-called friend (I use this word too, but it has no meaning for me), urged me:
    ‘Be sure to send me
nice
people!’
    Some day I must take time to explain myself on the question of money which preoccupies so many journalists who interview me. My position is rather complicated. I’ve often thought of it. I would like to get as close to the truth as possible and it is for fear of not being precise enough that I always hesitate. It will come.
    I’ve been reunited with my son Pierre and already I find it hard to believe that he has walked only for a month. Soon I will find it improbable that there was a time when he was unable to talk.
    God! How fast it goes. And how one worries over useless concerns.
    The man seated on the threshold of his cabin who watches the sun set and does not think.
    And the gorilla, surrounded by his family, on the watch in the forest.
    He is already one step above the man in the cabin, isn’t he? He doesn’t need matches.
Monday, 8 August
    No doubt I’m going to write some more