The Project Gutenberg eBook ofWomanThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: WomanAuthor: Magdeleine MarxAuthor of introduction, etc.: Henri BarbusseTranslator: Adele Szold SeltzerRelease date: October 5, 2010 [eBook #33943]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Mary Meehan andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttp://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: WomanAuthor: Magdeleine MarxAuthor of introduction, etc.: Henri BarbusseTranslator: Adele Szold SeltzerRelease date: October 5, 2010 [eBook #33943]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Mary Meehan andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttp://www.pgdp.net
Title: Woman
Author: Magdeleine MarxAuthor of introduction, etc.: Henri BarbusseTranslator: Adele Szold Seltzer
Author: Magdeleine Marx
Author of introduction, etc.: Henri Barbusse
Translator: Adele Szold Seltzer
Release date: October 5, 2010 [eBook #33943]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Mary Meehan andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttp://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN ***
BOOK IBeing BornBOOK IIBeingBOOK IIIBecoming
A splendid book in which a soul lives so profoundly human and so purely feminine that any words of introduction seem leaden and intrusive. You feel as though you were violating the essential delicacy and powerful life of this soul to comment upon the remarkable revelation of it between the very covers that contain the revelation.
Yet, as a modest friend of letters, I should like to express an opinion here—the author did not ask me for it—and pay homage to the brilliant originality of this work. I want to give myself the pleasure of saying how important I think it is.
It expresses—and this is a fact of considerable literary and moral import—what has never been exactly expressed before. It expresses Woman.
The more woman has been spoken about, you might say, the less she has been revealed. She has been hidden under a plethora of words. The supreme vision rising up out of these pages is as luminous as a heavenly revelation. From the author's tone, so simple and penetrating, you perceive that women feel differently about the things that we men see and proudly proclaim.
The thought and spirit ofWomanwill be a surprise and a shock to the old masculine traditions, in which women also acquiesce, probably because of their old traditions of slavery. But we know that always and everywhere the opposition such thought arouses is sublimely lacking in truth.
Here is a woman who cries out with magnificent impressive sincerity against the fallacy of the maternal instinct—the "call of the blood"—against the exclusiveness of love; who knows and asserts that death kills only the dead, and not those who are left behind; who recreates in new forms the law and the creed of the relations between man and woman, motherhood, and suffering. And this new expression of woman—a new expression, therefore, of the whole of life—this striking gospel, young and strong, which overcomes artificial, unnatural ideas, resounds at the very time when woman is at last entering humanity and is preparing to change her rôle of breeder of children and handmaid in common.
The book is strictly, religiously objective. Everything is perceived only through the eyes, the mind, the heart of the "heroine"—the word usage thrusts upon us for this woman who has no name, who is just truly herself. Through the commanding will of the author the creative richness of the book springs altogether from the magnificent oneness of a human being. No outside approach mars this unity. In no other book perhaps so markedly as in this has the integrity of an individual been more respected, and never has an imaginary character so consistently warded off whatever is not of itself. You don't even seem to feel that this "Woman" talks or tells a story. You simply know what she knows.
And because of this very fact, this intimate association which unites us jealously with this one being of all others, the book is poignant and moving. A world is born beneath our eyes. In some scenes, short or long but always important and vital, a tragedy shudders, and the entire succession of the events of life, ordinary and on a big scale, passes in the book in clear outline, in essential poetry.
To say this is to say that the author is a master, that her technique is subtle, that the action concentrates all the dramas of the world in one spiritual drama, and the book reveals a prodigious gift for presenting a whole of vast impressions which creates unity.
Womandoes not belong to any class of writing; it is not tied down by any formula; it does not lower itself by imitating. It is a powerful, a rebel, a virgin work, and it ranks Magdeleine Marx among the loftiest poets of our age.
HENRI BARBUSSE.
The sun was beginning to shine.
I had been walking and walking....
I had just left the brambly path which cuts a bed of sand through the forest, laying bare its rusty bowels.
I felt full-fed by the subtle nourishment that space distils, crammed with air, and my forehead seemed drawn taut. Was it the motes dancing in the sunbeams? I don't know. I was spent. The fancy throbbed beneath my temples, did its work, and I let it go.
You must have been sincere at least once in your life to know what an hour is face to face with yourself, a whole hour, step by step, minute by minute. And I never had been sincere. Now I escaped from my clogging limbs, from the clay of myself. Until now I had done nothing but breathe and sleep. All of a sudden I was alive. It was intoxicating....
Dizzy though I was I felt an exhausting need to keep on going.
I penetrated deep into the woods walking at random, my mind almost a blank. When the leafy undergrowth enclosed me, I let myself slide to the ground on to the dried-up grass, the fallen twigs, and the crackling russet pine-needles.
All about in a dense circle, the rugged plant life. A moving splendor in the play of the varying greens. Damp, aromatic smells. And a sense of invisible swarming life everywhere....
The silence, so fresh and penetrating, was like a living thing, and I turned round several times thinking I heard some one behind me panting. No one. The uneven trunks of the great trees; lower down, behind their serrated green, a slate-colored screen of mist; here, the shadow-broidered ground; above, the patches of blue sky—and I.
I....
I was a little ashamed to link my Self to myself in this way, to give my Self its value. The old attitude of humility, of attaching no importance to Self—was that going to begin again? Now I felt more profoundly alone than in the harmonious exaltation I had experienced while walking. In a mixture of alarm and idleness I tried not to remain motionless, but to plant my elbows on the ground and lie flat on the grass with my head between my hands, so as to divert myself with living noise.... I could not.
Then I stretched out on my back, my eyes fixed on the sky, my body relaxed; and the full-blooded tide of my thoughts flowed over me.
They flowed on, of themselves, no longer halting, as they had on the walk, on the edge of each discovery; I no longer kept saying to myself as when I hammered out my pitiless steps: "I have lied, I have always lied, I have lived only on the outskirts of my life...." The air was still, the soul alone sounded, and the soul also was at peace. I went down into the depths—to find the soul's sweet beginnings, I suppose.
There were no beginnings. Though my early memories came back obediently, they were not illuminating. The catechism.... With outstretched hands and rounded voice, the Abbé Daudret was telling of the wicked, those whom the Almighty was waiting to punish in the hereafter. Crushed by the word wicked, stifled by the heavy solemnity of the church, withdrawn into my littleness, I comprehended, with dull, recurring pangs, that I was among the damned, I, the model little girl. We went home again; I was calm, unruffled, obedient, but if any one used the word sinful in my hearing, if I came across it threatening in black and white, I felt as if a brutal fist had struck my shoulder; I blushed, a swift remorse flamed in my bowels; that word was meant for me,Iwas the guilty one.
At last one day I found out why I was guilty. I had not known before.
I had been summoned to the small drawing-room; the shutters were closed; my mother, a dim figure in the twilight, was saying good-bye to a lady in deep mourning whose veil framed a face of alabaster. How beautiful she was! The quivering shadows made a halo around her. I scarcely dared to approach her because I remembered the whispers that buzzed about her name and the envy that glittered in the eyes of the women. How beautiful she was!... Her heavy lashes weighed down her lids.... I wanted to say something to her, just one word. I could not, could not even repeat what my mother, leaning towards me, told me to say.... As the lady was leaving she turned in the doorway, fixed her great wide eyes on me and said with an even sadder note in her velvety voice: "The child is going to be beautiful."
I heard myself exclaim with joy. As soon as the door closed, I ran to the glass, which seemed to be waiting for me. My whole being was aflame as I raised myself on tiptoe to receive the first echo of her words from the mirror.... But my mother was already coming back and saying severely: "You know it isn't true...." I was still on tiptoe. "You are ugly!" My spirits dropped and instantly were bottled up in me. Everything was clear, I understood, I understood....
It was an epitome of my life. The seasons passed; I maintained silence, always, hiding my good qualities, hiding my bad qualities, encountering only remorse between the two extremes; for it is by remorse that they are joined together.
Consequently my mind stored up no happening, no deeper or fainter impression, only remorse. Remorse never left me.
But yes, it did leave me, just now, suddenly, at the bend of the road, where the bank slopes gently down to the ditch, when I bowed my head to the thought, "They think me gentle, simple, just like the others; they say I am cleverer. It is only because I dissemble more than the others."
At that I raised my eyes.
"What after all does my lying matter to them? Do they want the truth? No. They spurn it, scourge it, hunt it down. They are not worth trying to find out the truth for. Enough."
The sunshine seemed to tighten its clutch on the earth and whitewashed the pathway.
"But it is not this matter of lying that one must bewail; the point is, there is an essentialsomething else. There is—I feel there is—the true life, my life, and it is this true life that I have betrayed. My true life is now pushing on, bravely, along the gray stony path.... I don't know where it is going, nor what it is, since I have never seen it in anything that I have done, but it must live. If I die for it, what does it matter? It will live on. It was hidden in my body, it stayed there ashamed of itself, then came at night to beset me with its sadness and put me to sleep with the taste of dust and ashes on my lips; and in the morning, as soon as my eyes opened, was it the light that flooded over me, painted the walls of my room with flame, and instantly died away?"
The blue density of the forest, the corrugated, soaring columns of the trees, high and distinct in their parallel lives, the clear quivering azure are all around me. Where is their obscure will?
I have come to these things, I have lain down in their midst, I have watched them. Before these things one no longer lies. And behold, I find myself.
I see myself as I am.
My heavy hair, flame-colored, which gives out little glints of light above my forehead, my complexion with the mother-of-pearl coloring of the full daylight, the violet reflections in my eyes deepened by the scanty shade of the trees, the firm red line of my lips, and beneath my light dress, the fleet suppleness encased in my limbs.
Is it possible? I am no longer ashamed to be like this, nor toknowwhat I am like. I have let fall, at last, like a bothersome mask, the modest air that makes people say: "She's all the prettier because she doesn't know she's pretty."
Do you think, pray, that there is a single woman in the world who, if she is good looking, doesn't know it?
I know, I know with a vengeance, that I am beautiful; I know it better than anything else about myself. There are not only looking-glasses, there are all the men. Whether old man, beggar, or chance passerby, you drink in, in one long intoxicating draught: "I am beautiful." And the women, if you know the terror in their eyes, the appeal, the envy, and their mute defense.... You seem unaware, smiling, distant, but you are on the eager watch for the pain you inflict.
To please.... In the presence of other people to please is wicked vanity, strutting, flaunting vanity; but here, on the bony ground, it is simply a bit of me. It is a power which has been given me, I shall not give it back; it is merely a harmony, a response to the beauty I feel, a craving to convince, a very strong craving; my life is lovelier than I.
My life is here. But what makes up my life? Not entirely my rosy good health, nor this firm equilibrium which exercises control in the centre of my being. My health and poise are, chiefly, the things that remove me from my life. My life is a need to use my muscles, it is vigorous movement, it is the notion I have that I can crush the world between my arms; yes, the longing to run, to take part in everything, to shout aloud, to dance; this animal ardor and glow in movement, this uncontrollable blood, this body swelling with liberty, with sap, with bursts of laughter, this unexpected gift of myself to myself, this curiosity and contentment, this zest and turmoil....
I have heard others speak of youth, I have seen the word of quicksilver glitter on the pages of books; I am still ignorant of its meaning; I am not quite twenty.
I hug to me all that is mine; it is not much. At first there was nothing above my head but a liquid ocean of silence, I saw nothing but a forest without perspective, but my watchful solitude became supernatural; and now as I see the solemnity of the trees, their strong solid reaching up towards heaven, as I seemyself, I feel very deeply that I am alive for the first time.
I do not wish to think of the future. Let the future wait for me; it is as if a new era were beginning....
And may memory never take possession of this morning of utter unreserve; memory might distort it. And may memory never say: "This was the day of your birth and you were excited."
I am not unduly excited.... The present is always very simple. The sun is only an iridescent frolic, which flits and laughs without resting on the chapped bark of the pines.
This moment—this and none other—is made up of my robust body, the lullaby rustle of the wind-stirred leaves, the fragrance of resinous wood, the screech of a great bird, and the sky cleft by its black and white passage.
No illumination or help from elsewhere. Slowly, gropingly, by great effort, I arrive at lukewarm moments in which it is as though my head were leaning on my heart. Am I going toknowat last and make up my mind? But when I put my hand on my breast, everything collapses and I have to begin all over again.
It is because there is an empty past which rings to the touch like an empty bowl, a lack of practice which benumbs your arms, a sort of shame.... You don't attain to your real truth at the first attempt.
And then above all—you must be honest with yourself—you don't seek your true self with aconstantheart; far oftener you try to distract your mind from the thought of it. About me on the ground are patches of light, and I am simply bent upon catching them. I stretch out my hand, stoop down, put my cheek to them, they quiver and vanish; in their place a piercing warmth steals dancing over my face.
Then, without my having done anything and without my being worthy of it, the sacred mood of revolt returns, lifts me up, and forces me to my knees; I hear the rising breath of a sudden call....
Is it my life, O God? Whither does it go—answer!—when it develops in a deep breast, and you approach, again and again, as I am now approaching, something infinite whose name you seek to know?
Will the noise never stop? But there are walls to shut it out.
Let them hop about, shout, dance, amuse themselves. As for me, I have left them, I am alone in my room, I don't want to see or hear them any more.
I burrow my head desperately in the dark depths of the cushions. In vain. The eddying music follows its implacable course, drapes its arabesques of melody about me, and when I stop my ears, still keeps whirling round and round.
A mazurka. Who was it begged for a mazurka? Ah yes, I remember. When I left the group of young girls sitting on the watch, a quivering basket of artificial flowers, one of them was saying: "After the mazurka, I'll takehimout into the garden, where I'll manage to make him kiss me."
Which of them? It is easy to imagine her: they are all alike. She laughs, I am certain, and expands her budding breasts; her beaded tunic sparkles and strikes a rivulet of light against her pretty legs; she has glossy hair faultlessly dressed and when she turns round in the mazurka, you see she has one of those plump, discreet faces over which feelings slide without leaving a mark.
But I am forgetting. Mother had to take part in the dance too, as it was the only one she knew and it unrolled tender memories. She braced herself, then started off, her features gently composed, leaning on my father, who accommodated his step to hers while seeming to guide her. "Let's see, that's not it ..." and they set out again—one, two, three, four—heavy, both of them, with their reputation as a happy, united couple, and laden with the looks that follow them.
If one knew....
The engaged couples have disappeared, swallowed up by the nearest dark corners, where passion is of scarlet and nothing exists but arms and lips and bodies surmised. When the music will have finished and they will have reappeared, the chatter and the sharp raw laugh of the young fiancée will be heard; she will open her eyes wide, like this; her childish mouth will be seen, and her slim figure, which retains an air of awkward shyness. "How unsophisticated she is," they will say in gratitude to her for being an example of the velvety purity of the young girls.
The last measures. They are all perspiring, out of breath, soberly triumphant, and as they go back to their chairs each man gives a last squeeze of the slender arm he is about to relinquish.
My father is entirely engrossed in his guests; he has led mamma, dizzy, back to her chair, and has moved off. As she sits there with her eyelashes fluttering, you would think she has returned from a wonderful long journey. "I am happy, happy," she is reflecting. "I have such a good husband." The wounds of every day are closed—they have to be overlooked—and if any cloud darkens the horizon, it is that she is thinking of me: "But that is what marriage means, my little daughter; you'll see, it is just a big renunciation: you will change, you too, and do like the rest; look at me; am I unhappy?"
No, you are not unhappy, my poor little mother, with your injured voice, your charitable eyes, and your lifeless gestures; you are dead; it is twenty years since you have had a will of your own, a desirous look, a single manifestation of impatience, a stray impulse, an hour, anything you can call your own; it is twenty years since you renounced. But your husband never goes out, he has his wife and children, he earns your living, a comfortable living; everyone respects him, and "one cannot have everything."
As for you, you can live contentedly with a twenty-year-old unhappiness upon your shoulders; you breathe, you go about; the women around you have the same fate, and this sustains you. But we, mother, who are different, the daughters of my generation, we who have sensual hearts, reasoning minds, new energies—I, who have done nothing, I cannot, I tell you, and if a future is given me, I want to snatch whatever it holds.
The music has stopped; I cannot hear them any more.... It is as if my heart were beginning to live.
The tangible darkness of the room deepens little by little. Its peace, its solitude. I can distinguish the walls, or rather the vaporous shadows of walls, the windows where the cold light of the garden is paling, the indistinct rectangle which stretches along the ceiling ... and in that silence in which God is rooted is the hunted soul returning to its place.
Ah, shattered again! The music sets the hubbub going....
Besides, certain words are too beautiful, and you say them to intoxicate yourself, but when they are gone, you realize, your arms are empty.
I asked myself: "What is youth?" This is what youth is: that terrible thing, that sin, that torture which one must stifle: it is my pure intoxication defiled by their impure intoxication. I wanted to sing my youth, give it out, exhale it. Jeering life is below, with its people, its fouling habits, its sneers and titters. They were quite right; you can't escape it. You must adapt yourself to it; it is the law. I will adapt myself; I will have a husband; he will be kind, faithful; there will be no one beside him; he will be all in all to me; he will skirt the shores of my being; he will pronounce judgment on all my actions, my comings and goings, my looks; his word will be final. I shall lie in his bed every night; he will see my timid body, my naked sleep, my sleeping life; he will stand upright in my life as in a garden which one is not afraid to ravage, and when truth will pass by us, he will sit still and let it pass.
I shall have no more confused desires, no more sudden impulses of kindliness, no more agonized expectancy, and no more of those questionings which make a stifling desert about me. I shall be satisfied. If my hell returns at times to visit me, that red-eyed narrow-chested hell, my husband will be there, seated opposite me at table; he will raise his head. "What's the matter, aren't you hungry?"
The soul, the essence, the deep voice from within—words, mere words.... There is nothing but the noise below. And only that. And I must return to it. Well, come on, go down, speak, smile. All existences are alike. When there is no longer a single lie left to tell, it means the time has come to die.
Why obstinately wish to discover a way out and knock your head against a stone wall? There is no way out. You must not cherish the impossible; get up and go gaily downstairs. A little cold water, a little powder; this is a grief you are not permitted to indulge in.
Once again and for all time I shall go to them. If they are boisterous, spineless, unobservant, with no warmth in them, perhaps after all at some time at the bottom of their hearts they have felt, if only vaguely and vanishingly, the jealous fever which weighs like a heart; perhaps they have suffered; perhaps in looking back, when the sunshine has burst forth, they have understood that the period of their twenties was sacred. The twenties! And we, the youth, say to ourselves: wisdom is within us, the future is within us, and reason, salt, blood, the truth. It is ourselves, only ourselves. And we wish to open our hearts and say to those who pass: "Come to us, ask us. It is from us that everything can be learned; we can explain the secret things, the inner meanings, the words hidden in the folds of the body, the startling confessions that are breathed on the highways, everything that is changeful, for nothing is permanent but change; we know everything, and more than everything; we who have never loved, we know the whole of love." Perhapsthey, the dancers downstairs, have stretched out their arms, tasted the fresh morning with their lips, felt the beating of a heart of sobs; perhaps they have oncebeentheir hope. I shall do what they have done; it is my turn; my time for withering will surely come too.
The farandole! Ah, they are holding each other's hands, the old folks are also joining in. "Let's enjoy ourselves!" Their faces are tense, and above their footsteps and above the avalanche of their bodies, I hear the shrill cries of the young girls.
They are leaving the drawing-room; it sounds as if they were approaching.
Don't come here. Even if it is dark in this room, even if I have wept, and even if the walls have taken on this aspect of distress, it does not mean that I can be reduced to your level.
The galop moves faster, wilder. The chain in the center is flung together in a heap, those at the end are almost scattered. The last one waves his arm in the air. The noise sickens me.
The floor of my room quivers. I will go down, I will go down to them....
But not yet....
It is done....
How shall I bring myself to believe it, how tell myself it is true, thatitis done, that it is an accomplished fact? And why is it that an absurd recollection obsesses me instead of the thing that has just taken place? Recollections are not considerate. They thrust themselves upon you willy-nilly.... It was one day when I was still little and wore my hair in a plait down my back tied with a red ribbon. An idea struck me and set me all a-quiver, to surprise my mother by secretly filling her vase with flowers, the beautiful blue vase with the band of gold, erect on its massive pedestal like a slim thing on a throne. I was very careful, I held my breath, my movements were sedulously controlled.... The vase toppled and made a clear, ringing sound. I can still hear it. My father came in unexpectedly. He stopped—he always was severe—took me by the shoulder, and shook me like a wind-tossed sapling. Then he dragged me to my room and on the threshold gave me a slap which sent me staggering. There was a whistling in my ears. I was drunk, dazed, completely bewildered.... Then he shut the door.
When I came to my senses, I ran to the glass, I don't know why, for nothing, "just to see." A wine-colored mark streaked with red was spreading over my cheek. I held the back of my hand up and felt the glow even without touching it.
It was burning, but, oddly enough, it did not hurt. I was conscious of not suffering pain, and instantly a sadness filled me, utter and sudden as a bitter flood. I didn't know why I was sad. Even now I only glimpse the reason imperfectly. Children who are simple are also more subtle than we. It was my fate to be defrauded, not to have a definite reason for shedding tears over myself, not to suffer in real earnest from an undeserved punishment, not to be able to cherish the compensation or possess the impregnable asylum, the inexhaustible resource that grief always is. It was when I touched my cheek which did not hurt that I threw myself on my bed crying, alone, yes really alone for the first time. And to-night it is just the same way.
I have run away from home. Here I am cast out on the street in the night. There is a fine blinding sleet; I do not know as yet where I am going to spend the night, but that doesn't hurt any more than the slap on my cheek hurt. Am I unfeeling? I push on straight ahead, the houses follow one another, the streets meet and cross, the separate shadows are only one and the same shadow. I stop now and then arrested by the consciousness of having forgotten to suffer.
I have been walking a good hour.
How penetrating the night is. An hour of utter aloneness, an hour empty and bare. Ah, that it may be so until the end. Let misery come, the unknown, humiliations, but let the truth come also. You perish trying to do without the truth....
That scene.... Can the memory of it be annihilated, so that nothing remains, not even the grotesque memory of a memory?
He blazed with fury, he lashed the air first with one arm then the other; his features swelled with rage and suddenly looked youthful.... Now that I come to think of it, he looked exactly the same as on the day of the blue vase, only this time he did not dare to slap me. That's why he gesticulated so wildly. I listened to him at first with an indifferent air; I was accustomed to his storms—well, the thing would soon blow over. And before my eyes the familiar scene, which the lighting up of the chandelier always placidly ushered in, was being set according to the daily ritual—the smoking tureen, which Leontine, who had entered with her padded tread, was placing on the table (she removed her red hands, finger by finger, and stole her sidewise glance at me), and the transparent play of the glasses, with iridescent stems giving back the glitter of the silver and the white sheen of the tablecloth.
Although my eyes were occupied in following intently the details of the dinner-table, a heavy travail was going on within me. A legion of slumbering desires, halting impulses, dead aspirations were rousing themselves noiselessly, almost without my consciousness. Thoughts that come in the morning when one's eyes open, "To-day! to-day," hopes dashed to the ground, deceptions, sighs—their tune rose to the surface and changed to a peal which drew me on. Yet I remained on the spot, like a beast with lowered head led by a rope.
I saw his gesture in time.
He was advancing towards me, his fist raised. Did he mean to strike? What did it matter? I was no longer in a condition to judge. A roll of thunder was shivering my inner trouble into a thousand bits, there was a flash of lightning which unloosened everything, even my tongue. I was speaking, I was speaking at last....
What did I say? Really, almost nothing, because in the frantic swiftness of his anger he broke in upon my first words. "Get out, get out!" He showed me his hand as if he were cursing his hand, too, forever.
The door closing behind me made a very long and very impressive sound.
I was on the landing of the staircase. No sound. The electric light cruelly exaggerated the red spiral of the carpet and touched each copper bar of the banisters with a tiny comet.
Alone.
And suddenly ... what did it all mean? I no longer understood. That outburst of cries, that tempest, that sort of comedy, my reply ... what ... I went and sat down, tempted equally to laugh and to cry. I wanted to think ... but it was already done, an almost outside force was pushing me off my hinges. "Escaped!" I was like a prisoner who sees the door left open inadvertently.
I knocked gently, my entire presence of mind returning to me in a rush. Leontine came with a pseudo-contrite expression and an air of saying "Hush!" while beneath her manner was the concentrated delight of an animal lying in wait. "They are at dinner," she whispered while I got my things together, a frock, a blouse, some toilet articles, a little money, some linen, a few books.
I closed the front door on myself, slowly, without faltering, slowly. It was done. It was not difficult.
A faint wind blew from the street below which chilled me.... Ah, you are trembling already, you are drawing back. That fine courage of yours, where is it? Where is your all-powerful will, and your still surer hope?...
It was not out of cowardice that I was trembling; but as I advanced towards my Self, street by street, house by house, through my first ordeal, I got a blunter, deeper knowledge of my Self, and a sudden fear entered my breast.
I am really not a strong person. What had been struggling in me so forcibly was not my own strength; it was simply the reaction from theothers. A strong person would know at the very first step what mandate to derive from the power animating him; before destroying he would have built up. When a bird finds its cage open and takes flight, it does not hesitate, it has the idea of space, it spreads its wings, it knows where to fly, and how high.
I know nothing. I am setting out, that's all. Neither before nor behind me is the irresistible urge which is the start of a great career. Nor do I see close by the rising shape of my life. Nor about me is the ringing mirth of faery liberty. Nothing but a little tiredness, a little emptiness in my head, a little emptiness in my heart.... I am not a strong person.
Good-bye, mother, good-bye to your transparent eyes, to your shoulders which will always shrug for the wrong side, good-bye to your tender lying.
You see, I am no longer faint-hearted, because I can walk away from you forever and venture upon a vague future without a glow of eagerness. All I need is something to beckon to me.... There is nothing ahead of me except the quiet artery of a thoroughfare hemmed in by inky houses and the darkness, which melts away at the panes of the street-lamps and makes them dance and quiver below and twinkle like eyes at the top. Liberty has the taste of fog....
BOARDING-HOUSE
Shall I cross this unfriendly threshold covered with a mangy rug? I should so much like to stop walking and go to sleep. Shall I choose this house which exhales the smell of a cellar, this gloomy shelter, these dingy walls? Shall I....
Come on, fate is everywhere. This is the place I must enter.
I have found work....
A fortnight, a hundred hopes, a fortnight.... The unfriendly atmosphere of stiff faces. "The position is filled." Stairs mounted four steps at a time, then descended gravely, catechisms begun with questions that embarrass and so often ending with questions that make you blush. Then one fine day—by what magic?—the position is not filled, and you answer yes to everything required; the sky is clear, you will start to-morrow.
I have not drained to its dregs the joy there is in working at my nondescript job from morning until evening. To work for your bread, to feel dignified and straight. You cannot talk, to be sure, but at least you do not lie, you are in repose, you let the waves of your being pile up, and every evening you return to a docile home, where the silence is always nigh to flowering....
The boarding-house, however, is not hospitable; you never satisfy your hunger, and my narrow room with its threadbare carpet and mouldy ceiling is like a badly kept cage. But it's Sunday morning and I have undertaken to make it inviting.
A handkerchief twisted about my hair, a white blouse and bare arms.... By persisting and rubbing again, by chasing the dust, by trying a place for the books twenty times over, by pushing the chairs about, by scraping away the layers of encrusted filth, I am bound to triumph. To judge of the effect, I stop several times and perch on the tattered arm of the red-flowered armchair; the place looks better already. But to it again!
No pictures, no ornaments. I have taken down the sentimental prints hypocritically concealing the scars of the wall-paper. Nothing but the bare room and the high window with its dim panes.
The bed of a doubtful mahogany burrows into the bashful retreat of the alcove. The wardrobe would wabble if it were not secured by a thick rope tied to the rosette on the front. The rosette is typical of a curious character that the room has for all its dinginess. There was an attempt to decorate with a profusion of flowers. Flowers everywhere, spread broadcast over the walls, cutting off the corners of the wash-boards, and trailing their sallow procession in a border around the top of the walls. They are even woven into the stuff on the back of the armchair, they appear almost effaced in the maroon-colored linoleum, and ravelled out and faded in the cretonne curtains.... In this cemetery, the sweet violets blooming on my table have a sensual, almost insolent splendor; their petals look red.
For all its bareness, my room radiates light; the meagre sunlight shines in through the window and is already transfiguring the place; I feel comfortable in it.
Oftener and oftener I ask myself what is my reason for existence, my true, my sole destiny. Doubtless one must sleep in a room for a long time before encountering the soul that prepares itself there.
I am, I know, like a person who wants to build a big house without having a site or materials, who says nevertheless: "No, not this site, no, not this material." But this is of no importance, I realize. Once you have submitted to the wholesome discipline enjoined by poverty, you receive in return energetic muscles and a patient outlook.
I wait; and no longer having any need to complain or criticize, I wait with a smile. Everything is simpler than one thinks, and everything is easier, and it seems to me that—
Someone is knocking at the door.
"May I come in?"
The landlady, Mme. Noël.
Mme. Noël is more of an imp than a woman. She has the figure, the voice, and the darting roguishness of a slim young thing of twelve.
When I was getting settled the first morning, I suddenly heard her insect-step close by—I had left my door open—and without giving me time to draw back, she besieged me with questions:
"How old do you think I am?"
"I don't know."
"Guess anything."
"Thirty-four ... thirty-three ... thirty."
On looking at her closely a few seconds, it seemed to me she was probably forty.
"Fifty-two, my dear!" To convince me of her age she stuck her finger under a slab of hair waved and dyed red and actually exposed an abundance of fading white hair.
Her face was no bigger than a fist, with cheeks like baked apples. Her shrewd naked eyes pried about. She came farther into the room and perched lightly on one of my rickety pieces of furniture, balancing it with her body. Then she began to unfold the story of her life, rummaging, unpacking, digging it up by huge armfuls: her husband, her lover, and then another, a painter she adored. The first one came back.... Love, adventures.... So it is possible to speak about your love and adventures?
Before leaving me—I was quite dazed; which must have been evident—lowering her voice a little:
"Heis so good.... I myself am not crazy about him, butheloves me so...."
"He?"
"The boarding-house—it is not only for what it pays, you understand. It's forthe company!"
"The company?"
With the springy elegance of a cat, her tapering elbows breaking the evenness of her outline, Mme. Noël slid on to the bed. The mattress reared up, the coverings billowed, the pillow, struck slantwise, was about to fall. But she needed so little room, and she carefully patted the hollow she made for herself.
"Well, is there nothing you want?... Ah, these young things—a handkerchief round their heads and they still look pretty."
Instinctively I pulled off my handkerchief. I stammered: "To keep off the dust" and—what could I do to make her go?—I smiled awkwardly.
"Oh, by the way, I came near forgetting to tell you. If ... you want to receive in your room ... after all, what of it? You surely have somebody.... It's just between us women. A beautiful girl like you, it would be a shame.... You won't be bashful, will you? To me love is sacred. And you will tell your little secrets to Mme. Noël? I have told you mine. Only of course you will be careful not to make any noise. I say this on account of the Russians in the next room. They used to receive swarms of people up to all hours. The rumpus! I tell you, I put a stop to it. But you, you're different. I liked you from the start."
I had to answer, I was going to answer ... but my tongue was dry with confusion. Besides, how edge a word in? There she was back at her huge pile of love stories. She even tried to pump me, lifting and lowering her powdered little nose; one scrap of information she set aside for use presently. At last she disappeared trippingly with a pointedau revoirwhich crisped the hide of her cheeks.
An odor of imitation white lilac persists, but so much sunshine streams in through the open window, so many quickening exhalations that the odor will soon be dissipated.
Love ... yes....
Perhaps by listening hard to the inner voice you may get to let it speak out loud. If I give in to this habit, I want to hear myself say: "I do not like love." I even want to add: "Keep it away," because love seems to be an outside force which smites or spares without your having deserved or banished it.
I have seen too many couples in which the man is nothing but a craving for conquest, the woman nothing, absolutely nothing, but a need to be conquered. I have seen too many who have not been visited by grace and have damned themselves to mutual ruin. A veritable attack and a semblance of defence. I have seen what is taken for love.
I have seen women steeped in trickery; the wilier they were the more love surrounded them. I have seen the heavy looks of men set about everywhere like traps.... I am worth nothing as yet, but my sound heart—I refuse it. And I say it quite low to exorcise the invisible danger: I do not like love.
"To me love is sacred...."
I understand fully what those small, naked, prying eyes were glorifying. And in the adventurous life of those eyes I see neither more nor fewer blemishes and lies than in the eyes of the young girls. Neither more nor fewer. At moments there even flashed in those eyes sparks, reflections, gleams....
A cloud is darkening the window; my room is obliterated.
But if by leaning forward and boldly offering my face to the sun and stretching out further, I could take in all his golden bounty and all his light?
I withdraw hastily from the springtime window because when a gentle flame ran over my wrist I became aware of lack of dignity: my untidy hair, the dust on me, the disorderly room.
Since the sun lives, since I long for it, love must exist. I shall find the proof of it. Quickly, my Sunday frock, order about me, flowers....
Keep it far away from me. I do not feel I am ready....
Trude's twenty-fourth birthday. Twenty-four candles around the monster of a cake. Trude announces that Edda, the youngest of us, is to light the candles when we're ready for the toasts and the dessert.
I lent my vases, my old red-flowered armchair, and my draperies. This morning when the preparations were completed and their voices in triple unison leapt to me: "Come and look!" I was in the room in three bounds like an answering echo.
It really looked nice. Who would have recognized Clara's impossible room? Heavy ropes of foliage dotted with roses festooned the walls, my beautiful blue stuff entirely hid the toilet-table, flowers covered the mantelpiece and starred the corners of the mirror; and the table covered with a white cloth was gay with pyramids of fruit.
Now the guests are all here except Markowitch, who said beforehand he would be late. "I am not going to seat you," Clara cries to them above the rising hubbub. "Choose your own places." And she turns her back to give the last touches to the table. Her heavy braided knot hangs low on the nape of her neck. In spite of the two spreading wings of her skirt at her waist line she looks thinner than ever in her greenish dress. Someone glides up behind her, a pink arm for an instant twines about her waist. "Clara, can I help?" She turns round. Dahlia.
Dahlia is not an ordinary creature; she is no one; she isthe young girl. But that really is saying nothing. Juliet and Miranda are dead; our times are not made for a creature of the dawn who is supposed to be finer than the promise of herself, but who is already herself; who is supposed not to be ignorant, who is pure and who, in order to love, does not await love.
Dahlia comes of another age; she comes from the country of fjords and legends. Her father was exiled, she wanted to go with him, they had no money; they made almost the whole journey on foot. One evening when their heavy limbs would carry them no further, they were stranded in a squalid quarter on the outskirts of Paris. They took a room.... The next day the man did not get up. And since then Dahlia has bowed her head to the yoke and works all day long for a poor monthly wage in an office where the walls press upon her like a vice. "It's to keep up my father's spirits," she said with a shake of her head when I saw her the second time.
I shall never forget the first time. I had come in a little later than usual, and probably more tired, too. I did not even think of lighting the lamp, the dusk was unreal ... heavens!... a vision took shape between the threshold and the shadows, scarcely daring.... There was a brow set in pale gold, the delicate blur of a face, eyes like a thousand forget-me-nots; between two young arms the strait, retiring modesty of the angels, and their light movements also. She drew nearer. "We have made a cake, the sort we make at home, let's divide." She disappeared. Her present remained behind on my table....
In her thin linen dress this evening, with a whiff of paradise about her, Dahlia seems to be enveloped in a pink illumination. She smiles on everybody as one must smile at happiness when one catches a glimpse of it.
"Your beautiful red dress," she assures Trude, gently clasping the soft spindles of her hands.
How can Trude remain simple and genuinely Puritanical beneath her trappings of beaded crimson plush and cuirass of some hodgepodge of gold caught in at the hips. I fancy she is too simple for finery to add to her personality. Real or imitation the fineries give way; it is she who adorns them. Whatever she wears is sanctified and comes to resemble her, everything except her threefold name, Gertrude, Trude, Trudel.
She has the peculiar brilliance of the Russians, sombre, subterranean, almost undefinable. Whatever she does, whether she laughs, or is excited, or talks with fire of ordinary things, she always has a finger lifted in the air and her wide gaze raised Christ-like. She has the mouth of an evangelist. Her irises set in clear white have glints of jet. She wears the glossy foliage of her black locks straight back from her forehead, an intense forehead crowning her like a diadem.... What other woman would dare the supreme immodesty of displaying a bare forehead? What woman would gain by doing it? The strange thing is, Trude is beautiful only by a kind of miracle; the least little bit more, and her cheeks would stick out over the cheekbones of a Tartar; the least little bit less, and her nose would be obliterated. The lakes of her eyes tranquilly conceal the raging waves in their depths. How many, by a shade of ill-luck, have escaped beauty? Trude, by a miracle, has escaped ugliness.
Mania, her sister, so different with her agile, insinuating body, lovingly fingers the presents. "You have not seen everything, Trude. Do come." Books, prints, china, and elegant embroidered articles—pretty things all from poor people who will soon be setting out on foot in the darkness for their distant lodgings in order to save carfare. For we are all as poor as poor can be. Except Markowitch. Mania told me he was "immensely rich," had at least two hundred dollars a month spending money.
It is hard to say whether it is our poverty that creates this comradeship among us. You come in and you feel at ease, you feelgood, you love all of them, even Lonnie, the little Swiss with cheeks lacquered with rouge, and even Michael with his tight compressed nose peaking out of the profile of a hen—Michael perhaps more than the others.
So much the worse for Markovitch: we are going to begin. The hubbub dies down a little; everyone finds a place, two on the same chair, some on the bed, a good many on the floor, young men, young girls holding each other's hands, so close together, so pure, that I can still not accustom myself....
"It is your turn, Mania."
A song, liquid, then fiery, comes from among the reeds and carries you far off—down there—to those wild plains chiseled by the wind where the streams, driven to the surface and threshed by their rocky beds, have the fury of torrents. What a potency of attention on these serious faces!
Isn't that Markovitch?
"Come in!"
With his hardened features wrought in granite he, too, is a force. His bulbous eyes search the gathering and find what they are looking for.... Dahlia raises her head, blushes, and is veiled in delicate purple up to the golden edge of her hair. She is aware of the love of this great spoilt boy; we are all aware of it; but she has refused to be his wife because she does not love him. He will not speak of it again; nevertheless they continue to meet straightforwardly. With a free, rounded movement of her arms, like the handles of an amphora, she points to a vacant place beside her. "Here." Then in dismay: "Don't make a noise."
Prikoff is telling of a childhood recollection. You seem to see him as both the fantastic gnome and the father in the tale. You see huts assailed by icy blizzards, hazy visions of bodies blue with cold, love ofsomewhere else.... Despite his huge jaw and unkempt mass of hair, what benignity, mildness, and gentleness. It is as though he were talking to little children gathered close about him.
Is time passing? No one notices it, we have forgotten it. Time escapes youth gathered together and bound in a sheaf; it escapes Clara's bosom from which a plaintiveliedis rising, while the hungry hands around Dahlia, who is doling out the manna, make time tarry. A real poor folk's supper, the supper of persons who are hungry at all hours. Thick slices of rare meat on bread, solid pastry, big bright fruit. One should see these robust young girls munching even the meat.
How fond I am of them all! Among them I feel for the first time what the human voice really is; for the first time feel the warmth which is shared and communicated from being to being, which makes of a single entity a group of entities, of a field of separate ears of corn the human harvest.
I wouldn't know how to choose among them. But one of the young men might slightly frighten and disconcert me; his accent might seem barbarous. My trim dress, my too-dainty shoes, and my fluffy blouses, all the things that constitute my element, might cause me to feel compunction. And maybe too I might feel ashamed of the hour I spend every morning anxiously pressed close to the glass as if I were begging myself to be beautiful.
I should have the same feeling on behalf of the girls as for myself; at bottom I do not discriminate between men and women. I should go even further. If friendship drew me to one of them, my compunction would change to grief. Really, can one forgive Clara her over-trimmed dress conceived in a nightmare? Can one forgive all of them their down-at-heel shoes, the lack of care and regard for others that they show in their appearance?
Should I adjust my days with no ups and downs in them to their volcanic days? "What's it all coming to?" cries Trude sometimes, and throws herself on her bed sobbing and losing herself in her emotions. Time passes and dies—one day, two days—suddenly she rises. She has forgotten her office, her meals, everything. She leans her forehead against the window-pane, and her tears flow bitterly.
If we became intimate, would they forgive me my neat room, my punctuality, my scrupulous adherence to rule and system, my moderation in everything? In the first days of our being neighbors they used to say: "You know, the little Frenchwoman who always comes and goes at the same time and makes so little noise and uses powder?" That quite described me.
This evening of the reunion of these serious creatures runs on by leaps and bounds and rises to a pitch by fits and starts. There is a glowing dewiness about Dahlia; Markovitch follows her with the green pupils of his bulbous eyes. And all of a sudden the whole company is fired at the same time. Without expecting to they burst into song—who threw the spark?—and the room lights up like a hearth all aglow with voices....
Fifteen flames mingled, but only a single flame. It is a song that rages and mounts higher, and jerks and jolts, and is convulsed with raucous shouts, in which the joy becomes frenetic and the laughter has a shudder in it. They bring to their singing the fervor and the earnestness of application that they bring to everything.
I am sitting in the retreat of the little chimney-piece hidden from their eyes, and I should like to ask their forgiveness for not knowing their fervid song and not being in harmony with them. I should like to ask pardon of all of them for everything.
I should like to ... I should like to....
Breathes there a human being on earth who has nothing to forgive, whom one has nothing to forgive?...
To be with him, his equal, close to him, face to face with him,and alone with one.
The two Loiseaus and I were sitting in their dining-room, a narrow rectangle with waxed floor and small straw mats here and there exactly like a convent parlor.
The evening—a dark evening out of doors—encompassed the walls with mystery. The darker it grew the less we felt like getting up and lighting the lamp. Why bother after all? There was a whole grate full of flames. They leaped and emitted a lively red crackling, shot forth luminous circles, hung high in the hearth, dancing tongues of fire, orange-colored mountain crests, aigrettes of blue light, grimaces of demons ... whirlpools ... fairyland ... crash and collapse ... foolery....
All of us felt drowsy, each imprisoned in his own silence. The shadows quivered gently above our shoulders. The silence, a trifle stagnant emanating from the three of us, seemed to be compressed up under the toned-down white of the ceiling.
I was curled up in front of the hearth, my eyes at the mercy of the glowing surge, my chin thrust forward. A languid sense of well-being spread all around, played over the hollow of your arms, and padded the nape of your neck: you thought of nothing.
The two Loiseaus are people who know how to be silent; you spend Friday evening with them, and everything—except themselves—tells you that they are pleased with the presence that makes three silhouettes dance in the room.
They are not very old, but there's no denying theyareold bachelors, because in their company you don't feel the torturing constraint and embarrassment which theothersmake you feel because you're a woman.
When you come, they hold out their hands good-naturedly. Rémy, the great big patient Rémy, takes my hat, my gloves rolled into a ball, and my cloak. He steps on my cloak and is vaguely alarmed. This adds to his confusion, and when he hangs my things on the rack in the hall he is so awkward in his carefulness that my hat rolls to the ground. We sit down and talk of the office—you cannot start by not talking—and when every topic is exhausted, I suggest making tea, a suggestion well worth the making just to rouse the gourmand look in the old boys' eyes. "Oh yes, some tea." You can almost hear them purr.
I busy myself with an ease become superlative. It is possible that for an instant I find myself a woman again between two attentive men, converted into the household goddess—she who performs the rites and dispenses the food and offers the milk, just a thimbleful, while the men's eyes are upon her as she bends over the cups. This constrains my movements and makes me tread more lightly and mince my steps. I scarcely displace the shadows.
My two old friends!
Rémy pursues his reading with a frank absorption which dominates his whole body. His heavy forehead bulges, his clenched fists form two undefined cubes on the page. Migo (when I look at him I call him Migo, too), rolls his cigarette. This evening he is inclined to be talkative. He rubs up his memory:
"The first day you came to the office what a timid manner you had."
The recollections play upon an irresistible note. Rémy emerges from his corner, his good blue eyes rising to the bait; a vision hung on a thread, persons long faded. And it must be confessed that all three of us let ourselves be captured; the same smile widens our features.
The door-bell rings.... Yes, it rang.
The triple peal sends our heads apart. Rémy rises, hostile and resigned. He is always the one to open the door.
Waiting in every circumstance, even when nothing is at stake, is painful. The spirit recoils and contracts, and space is left for thoughts of an inevitable misfortune and for the twinkling vision of the things which disappear. In a single instant life can completely change its aspect....
A sweeping draught. It brings in the voice of a young man. I want to leave. The two Loiseaus hover about him. "What a surprise! How nice!" They rub their hands. "Come in and sit down!"
It is too late to leave; the stranger is already bowing to me, and the mingled exclamations pretty well hide my stammering. I am so ashamed of myself for stammering.
The newcomer seats himself near the fire on the little black chair to the right of Migo. He wants the lamp to stay unlighted. But it is no longer the same. Our silence has been routed, and the languor, and the warmth also....
I am in a good position to observe him. How old? Thirty-four, thirty-five perhaps. Is he really handsome? Hard to say. He is too dark. His face is strongly chiseled, his cheeks sunken, his forehead hard as a hammer. The long line of his jaw lends refinement to his countenance, which is lit by eyes fearlessly open, in which the gray, in spots, seems steeped in phosphorous. His gestures are repressed and rather commanding. He talks little, but when he does talk his fire contrasts with the rarity of his words, gives them value, makes them seem to issue all alive from the bowels of the earth, while he sits with his body upright, as if at a distance, the flicker from the hearth enamelling, then removing, the burnished black of his hair ... I bethink myself: we have not yet had tea. I hope it will be just right this evening.
One by one I take out of their hiding-place the cups with the gold lines, the lovely ones, the only embroidered tea-cloth, the teapot with the golden spout, and the flowers, wan in the night. I set the luxury of these things on the table. With my head shrouded in the light-dark and my shoulders swathed in a fleece of shadow, how good it is to be among them, screened by my movements, not sitting but standing so that I can look upon the happy trio. Him especially. For alongside of him, who hardly speaks, the two Loiseaus, beaming and voluble, seem suddenly tame and stunted.
A pleasant sight, quite new to me, this group of three faces on which a common childhood springs to life, fond joys shared in the past, and names that are no more. They have almost forgotten that a woman is present. This reassures me.
But ifhe, when he raises his eyes and sees me, is going to remember I am a woman and turn to me too civilly and kindle the usual warfare under the bland honey of the customary phrases! No ... not he ... not this man. He is so frank and so fine with his two friends; what he says is so right, and he speaks so directly, without straining for effect. No, not he.
I offer each of them a trembling cup which they accept without trembling. Then I quickly withdraw again to the protecting shadow where my place is hollowed out, to listen to this amazing presence which my heart scans.
He has spoken to me.
He has spoken to me as never yet a man has spoken: without trying to see or please me, without any ulterior thoughts, just as he speaks to the two Loiseaus, probably just as he speaks to himself when alone. It does happen, then, that from the depths of simple obscurity, unexpectedly, one hears real words, real naked words from a man?
I answer in the same good faith, I no longer feel any fear or the need for self-defence. I feel a delight which helps me. And the perfume of the words that rises from the four of us—it is upon him I bestow it.
From the embers comes a live heat which settles on your cheekbones; your neck unconsciously stretches towards the red point where the conversation, which also crackles and sparkles, rests its centre. This stranger close to me seems like a king leaning over the edge of a fountain; the light carves his smile and courts that familiar brow.... Is he still a stranger?
But suddenly, what time is it? Twenty past eleven! Time to go. Yes, yes, I must go.
At the shock which brings me to my feet the whole group breaks up. They discuss who is to see me home, and I have to refuse three offers at the same time.
Give me your brotherly hands, I want to go home by myself. And you, turn upon me those eyes so different from other men's eyes.
As I go down the stairs the fidgety advice repeated a hundred times, which Rémy hurls at me over the banisters every Friday, descends upon my head. "Don't walk so fast, look where you're going." The last scraps of warning roll like billiard balls. Rémy, old friend, have no fear, go in again. I am carrying away an immense wonder. It is hurrying me along in its round. I want to dance, to cry....
Rémy's voice is cut off abruptly, along with the cone of light in which the steps reeled.
On the street ... a narrow, formidable street, full of a palpable, limpid night.
Whither goes the volatile sky pursued by the pale flock of clouds? Whither go those grand transports which seize and overwhelm you? Here below there is a man honest in his voice, straightforward in his look, a brotherly man. And I have met him!
For the first time I have spoken about myself to a living being. Not so much in words or details or episodes as in the profound desire to open up the depths of my soul and finally give a true view of it.
To talk of oneself! That enigmatic, incomplete, elusive, warm thing, tossed by conflicting currents, adding to itself constantly, this thing that one is. To say what it is!... To tell of it with modest lips, with lids raised, with voice sure, with silence....
I should never have believed in the possibility of such a boon. And in the first minutes of our being together on Sunday, I still did not know of the possibility.
Two weeks after the Friday at the Loiseaus', I was stamping my feet with the cold in the queue of people waiting at the little door of the theatre to buy the two-franc seats. I happened to turn and was mechanically studying the faces—there he stood eight or nine persons away....
My delighted gaze rested upon him so hard that his head turned compliantly. He saw me, his face lighted up. The crowd was interested, the women stared with their unabashed curiosity, the men joked, but not one of them, you may be sure, was willing to budge. Through the interstices between the hats, our cheeks glowing with the wind, we exchanged greetings, and I divined rather than heard that he wanted to see me. It was at that moment that I felt as if I were flinging myself overboard.
"Next Sunday at my house if you like?"
A strange current was carrying me away. Certain prejudices must be deep-rooted. What was so extraordinary about receiving him in my room? The fact that I took the initiative of inviting him seemed to be trumpeted to the four quarters of the globe; and when his answer came calm and natural, I couldn't continue to face him; I had to hide my burning ears up against the old gentleman in the greatcoat, who fastened his mocking persistent faun's gaze upon me. During the concert I felt by turns as if I had committed a crime and a glorious feat.
"Two o'clock," I had called to him.
I was up early in the morning, and by ten minutes to two everything was ready. The flowers and foliage bought at market had had time to freshen up and expand. The petals of the anemones, shut up like a tight case in the morning, were spreading in a crown around the big pompoms of black pistils. The bed was successfully disguised by a draped covering, and my room, all polished and groomed, shone like a jewel. It looked really homelike. At the last moment I put on my dress of white woollen stuff, the one with the cord girdle and elbow sleeves. The hardest task was the arranging of my hair. Not to look untidy with a fiery mop of a head, yet to be a little beautiful, oh joy, beautiful, to please him. I set-to furiously on the image in the looking-glass.
Five minutes to two. Three little raps, three moments of insensibility, three echoes.
My hand trembled slightly as I held it out to him, and when his gaze travelled over me, an amazing sense of shame seized and chilled me. I promptly hid my arms in my scarf. But my terror was quickly dissipated. He conveyed the lofty ease of people of perfect simplicity. He was there with all his manly gravity, all his attention, and his good smile imparting a sense of security. I felt his calm transfuse itself into me.
We sat down. I no longer know how we began or by what avenue of conversation he came to tell me of his crushed childhood, his needy youth, his mother, his studies, the present career he had chosen for himself.... I listened; I followed him from year to year, from picture to picture, from place to place; and within me a larger and larger void was filling up with hopes and thoughts that seemed to have dwelt there always.
What a flood of sweetness, what warmth and space, and what.... I hardly breathed....
"Your turn...."
He was sitting on my little chair near the window with his back partly to the light. From the depths of the armchair, the white fleece of my scarf looping at my feet, I saw the quality of his gaze.
My story was not so straight and consecutive. Here and there I lost my way and had to stop, with nothing more to say. Nevertheless, insight into me kindled under his eyes, we advanced together as happy and at as even a pace as if we were holding each other's hands; and my flimsy past assumed a little weight.
We spoke of love—you always speak of love when you talk about yourself—but without distinguishing it from ourselves. Who can say what love is? Love is I, it is he. On the day when I shall love, love will be changed and will resemble me and will no longer be that love of which one speaks in general. It will be I—I simply stirred up.
When we were silent under the influence of the slack atmosphere of the room, we two souls at the same pitch, my gaze plunged in the creamy muslin of the curtains, I knew he found me beautiful. I realized I was waiting for him to say so. I would have hugged his words, I should have liked to see them come from his lips without covetousness, I should have wanted them to be nothing but my craving for beauty....
I believe I closed my eyes. A loving alliance took place between my visible body and my hidden being. I was no longer divided against myself. Thanks to him....
How long did we remain that way, grave and smiling, opposite each other? I cannot tell exactly....
The flowers on the table with widespread petals held out their black hearts to us. A gentle pearl-gray breeze was stirring the curtains.
He is gone, is he? His going made no break or clash and left no sense of finality. I had scarcely felt him take my hand when he released it, the doorway was empty. I returned to the empty armchair in the room ennobled by both his absence and his presence, my arms weighed down and my spirits in eclipse....
Who is speaking? Who is there?
Mme. Noël, the live puppet, is sticking her painted head in at the door; the thread of light holds it as in a snare. Shehereat this moment!... One impatient start and I go over to her. "My compliments, a handsome fellow!" This time it is too much. "Such looks, such eyes! Good for you!" Letting out a chain of cackles, the little floury face retreats under cover, the streak of light narrows, gilds the frame of the door, and dissolves in the shadow.
Alone.... But am I still alone?
The cold window-pane refreshes my forehead. The street lounges lazily in its Sunday repose, and the room into which I turn back embraces a fateful, solemn evening; its ripe perfume rises like incense, the flower-decked mantelpiece resembles an altar beneath a cluster of tapers.