58 Jackie 1930–1962
as each time that he was overwhelmed with melancholy, it was to
Michel Monory that he turned:
If only you knew how defl ated, disorientated, and desiccated
I feel. I don’t know where to look for any new zest in spirit or
soul, anything that even distantly resembles enjoyment, ardour,
a hint of inner lyricism, a faint desire to talk to someone or to
myself. Nothing, nothing, nothing... Lethargy, anaesthesia,
psychasthenia, neurasthenia, iron in the soul.^40He had no desire to read, even less to work. Perhaps it was the ambi-
ance of Algeria that prevented him. Without altogether daring to, he
would like to have let himself sink into that state of immanence so
eloquently described by Camus in Nuptials. ‘In one sense, but only
in one sense, life here is too good for anyone to think of reading,
perhaps even too good for anyone to think.’
That Algeria would soon be no more than a memory.