mistress who, as it turns out, would prefer to keep the child. The story
occurs within a 48 -hour period in June 1938. Mathieu, as a model of
inauthenticity, would like to be free of the encumbrance of mistress and
child. As Sartre explains in an interview after its publication in 1945 :
Sure Mathieu is guilty. But his real fault isn’t where people have looked for it. It’s
less in proposing abortion to Marcelle than it is in being committed for eight years in
a loveless relationship. And he is not really committed to Marcelle. Not because he
hasn’t married her – to my mind marriage makes no difference, it’s just the social
form of commitment. But because he knew very well that this relationship wasn’t
really a two-way street. They see each other four times a week. They say that they tell
each other everything: in reality, they never stop lying to each other, because their
relationship itself is false, it’s a lie.^42
Like Camus’ protagonist Mersault inThe Stranger, Mathieu is floating
through life unwilling or incapable of making a commitment: a self-
defining act, as Sartre will say inBeing and Nothingness.
After continuing to play the spectator self in the next volume,The
Reprieve, which catches the grasp of the Munich debacle from several
points of view, shifting back and forth like the voices in a fugue between
the parties to the “peace” pact as its being fashioned (Hitler, Chamber-
lain, Deladier and others) and those helpless individuals hoping for the
impossible but resigned to the inevitable as history advances seemingly of
its own accord. With the mobilization of troops on both sides and the
outbreak of the “phoney war,” Mathieu and his family and friends are
caught in the maelstrom. He does display a bit of courage when he comes
to the aid of a young pacifist demonstrator about to be throttled by a
group of angry men. Mathieu assumes the persona of a police officer and
snatches the hapless youth from their hands. Still, this is scarcely the
self-defining action that one might hope for. Rather, it’s more like a mere
exchange of masks, which seems to be all that is called for at this stage of
the story.
(^42) Interview at the Cafe ́Flore given to Christian Risoli and published in the journalParu,
Dec. 13 , 1945. Reprinted inLast Chance, 14 – 21. Vasey has rightly noted that the correct
English rendition ofLes Chemins de la liberte ́is “Roads of Freedom” and not “Roads to
Freedom” as in the now standard translation of this quartet of books. (Despite this limita-
tion, I have usually retained the standard version to avoid confusing the many readers
accustomed to the received title.)
156 The necessity of contingency:Nausea