Tete-a-Tete Read Online Free

Nizan did not speak to his companion. Sartre was hurt. And when Nizan took ayear’s leave from the overheated atmosphere of the Normale and caught a boat to Aden, in Yemen, Sartre felt as if he’d been jilted.
    Almost a year later, Sartre was alone in his study one evening, moping over a girlfriend, when Nizan burst in without knocking. Sartre was overjoyed. The two went out drinking. It was like old times. Over brimming beers, they again put the world on trial. Sartre thought they had taken up their friendship where they left off. But Nizan did not return to board at the Ecole Normale. Instead, he moved in with his fiancée’s family, in Montparnasse. A few months later, he got married. Sartre was appalled. “I had made of bachelorhood a moral precept, a rule of life—thus it couldn’t be otherwise for Nizan.” 7
    Sartre was known for his brilliance, and was expected to come first in the agrégation. In June 1928, to everyone’s astonishment, he failed the written exams. That was why he was sitting them again a year later, in the summer of 1929, at the same time as Paul Nizan, who had lost a year by going to Aden, and as Simone de Beauvoir, who had gained a year by taking her teacher’s diploma at the same time, giving herself a double load.
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    Beauvoir had heard considerable gossip about Sartre and Nizan, those godless young men who mocked bourgeois hypocrisies and Catholic sanctities and only bothered to drop in on certain lectures. Around Sartre, in particular, there swirled rumors of drunken binges and visits to brothels. The third member of their trio, René Maheu, did not share their legendary reputation. Although he, too, held himself aloof from most of his fellow students, Maheu was slightly less intimidating.
    In January 1929, Maheu had given a talk in class that provoked an animated discussion. Beauvoir was charmed by Maheu’s slightly mocking voice, his “broad, liquid smile,” and the “ironical twist he gave to his mouth.” 8 Despite his well-cut suits, his ruddy complexion and blond hair lent him the air of a country boy. She wished she could get to know him.
    One morning in spring, Beauvoir looked up from her books at the Bibliothèque Nationale and saw Maheu walk in. She watched himtake off his blue overcoat and scarf and sit down to work. At lunchtime she saw him get up, leaving his books behind. Normally, she ate a sandwich in the gardens of the Palais Royal. That day, she went to the library café. Maheu flashed her a smile and cleared a place for her at his table as if they had arranged to meet. They talked about Hume and Kant.
    After that, whenever he came to the library, Maheu would greet her warmly. Before the Easter break, he came and sat next to her in one of Leon Brunschvicg’s lectures. (Sartre and Nizan boycotted these.) After Easter, when lectures resumed, he sat next to her again. He told her he was “an individualist.” So was she, she said. He stared at her. “What? You!” He had been convinced that she was a good Catholic, devoted to good works. Not at all, she assured him. 9
    â€œMeeting with René Maheu, or with myself?” Beauvoir wrote in her journal that evening. “Who else has ever made such a strong impression on me? Why am I overwhelmed by this meeting, as if something had really happened to me at last?” 10
    She started to save the seat next to hers in the library. Maheu turned up most days. For weeks, he called her “Mademoiselle,” in that slightly ironic voice of his. One day, he reached across, took her notebook, and wrote on the cover in large capital letters: BEAUVOIR = BEAVER . Her name resembled the English word, and she also worked like a beaver. From that day on, he called her Beaver, le Castor.
    He told her about the “little comrades,” as they called themselves. He had met them at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, when he first came to Paris from the