I no longer know ... I no longer know ...
He is often late. I have noticed that I am almost invariably the one to have to wait. Work in his office ends at the same time as mine, but the two places are at a distance from each other, and it always seems a long time before I see him coming.
The first minutes go by unheeded because the seven o'clock outpouring streams by where I post myself on the sidewalk. No signal is given. At a mysterious order and at a given moment a black wave foams and contracts at the exit, and as in greeting to the open light sends up a thousand exclamations, which make one long cry of relief.
This evening it is still light, and the escaping crowd is not inclined to hurry. The sluggishness of the air, the sonorousness, the droning, the motley street ... the crowd condenses and remains coagulated on one spot. Is it ever going to decide to pass on!
When the day's work is over, you come back to the brilliant world marvelling at the holiday sky, and blinking.... Summer is knocking at the window ... it does you good to be standing on your legs expanding your lungs. One group attracts you. They all look like wags, their conversation fascinates; if you were to listen to them, you would remain standing there with your hands in your pockets. But you are being awaited at home, and the circle almost as soon as formed breaks up with casual farewells flung over the shoulder.
When the women hurry along, rain or shine, it is in the subconscious urge to show themselves to everyone. Those who swelled the hubbub a little while ago with jostling elbows and foreheads set like a ram's—"get a move on you!"—are the first to display their pronounced busts and the slowest to walk away with chirps and winged signs and nods and a swaying of sinuous backs.
The street is emptied. Some women still pace up and down the block. They are waiting for someone too.
There he is!
From the busy far-end of the street, across the eddies of people, nothing to tell me it is he but the shape of his hat. Again I feel the security that his appearance always brings.
His tall figure hemmed in by a group detaches itself, grows bigger, and becomes more recognizable step by step. I go to meet him, slowly, smiling despite myself as he hurries, and when our hands touch, my heart breaks into bloom.... An overwhelming instant ... a soft ecstasy ... fusion.... And every evening it is as if I had never found him....
Let us go by the boulevards. The weather is so lovely, we have plenty of time.
Our questions tumble over one another, clear away bothersome trifles, do not even wait for answers, take everything for granted—what happened during the day, all the details, everything, and more than everything.
As a matter of fact, what we listen to is our footsteps. We keep even pace, our tread makes the same sound. A discovery flooding the heart—it is a single step that is carrying us along.
We walk side by side, and the space between us does not divide us. We are followed and preceded by a whole procession of couples moving with a slowness strangely rhythmic which leaves a wake behind.
We have told everything, everything we know, and everything we are. It is not a question of being alike in order to be comrades, of springing from the same roots or having drunk from the same source. The thing is, for each to serve the truth which the other lives with the same heart as his own, different truth.
No, it is not a question of being alike. Haven't I observed a hundred times that we are very different? How can one wish it otherwise? How conceive that we whose age is not the same, whose bodies are so different, whose characters are well-defined, and whose careers are opposite should respond to the same influences? Why, each of us responds to the veriest trifles according to his own temperament.... Does he perceive as I do this street, the flower-beds of the big cafés, the crowd with glowing eyes, the gritty dust? Is this instant the same instant to him? I know it is not....
A block. How shall we get through? The crossing of the huge thoroughfares, with its din, its black swarming thousands, dashing motors, clanging of bells, tooting of horns, discharges its mechanical eruption upon the city. Let us run. He has slipped his strong arm under mine; we take long joyous strides and finally land in peaceful territory out of breath and radiant.
Here at last is a boulevard where one can breathe, then an old countrified street where silence has nested. We plunge into its tranquillity.
But ... I hadn't noticed—the red rises to my cheeks—his arm is still under my arm, confident, natural. How is it that it never occurred to me that it should always be so?
Shall I dare to tell him how sweet it is to feel him so close to me, our two lives joined, our two souls welded—hownecessaryit is to me?
Feelings depart quickly, and joy too. I can scarcely follow my feelings and my joy. When my heart has slowed down, yes,Iwill speak tohim, I shall feel his breath on my voice, his warmth against my breast. And I shall obey this visible will which comes running to me, springing from the smiling house-fronts, falling from the sky padded with pink.
We are drawing near to my lodgings.
Still this street, where the gracious wind dances for its own pleasure. A few moments, and we shall be leaving each other.
Leaving each other...?
Ah, I know now what to say. I know what the will of a little while ago wanted, and my life and his life. I am going to find the words....
"Listen. I have been thinking. Don't let us part again. Never. It is I who am asking you. Let us live together ... I cannot say anything else, that sums up everything, it is everything, to live together. Is it love?... I don't know yet ... but I know we ought to live together, and you, you know it too."
My voice is thick and has the taste of tears; it scrapes in my dry throat, it won't come out. He takes my two hands, draws me close to him, his gaze caressing my eyes which strain to escape. With his body he supports my rigid, awkward body, which struggles hard to remain upright and does nothing but tremble.
The street has disappeared, the sound of the universe, the setting sun which in a golden glory celebrates our sacred betrothal.
From under my closed eyelids I no longer perceive anything but a heavy black pendulum with impetuous strokes, which beats against my breast and henceforth regulates our joint existences....
My family was exultant.
Behold me returned to "proper" life, from which I had so long been absent, by the massive trap-door of marriage.... I took on a value in their reassured eyes, I became a somebody, and in the ardor of the first moment they had the impression that they completely forgave me.
They were exultant. They sent a charming gown to my lodgings and apprised me that a big dinner was being arranged to give my future husband the chance to become acquainted. In spite of my repugnance I was caught in the cog-wheels. The joy of seeing my mother again made me pass over everything indulgently.
It was she who ruined the whole business. Could I not see her disdainful attitude towards a man's poverty, her terrorized submission to the world's judgment? "You know, you are supposed to be coming back from England, we have even given details, don't contradict us...." And the quasi-respect with which she encompassed me because of the authority with which marriage crowns a daughter!
There certainly was enough to frighten one. Their rejoicing smelled of revenge. What stifling quality, I wonder, can marriage have? What oppression, what defeats, what chains await me? Am I going to prison?
But when I turn towardshimand bathe my sight in the serene waters of his eyes, I recover my assurance and soar with him again. For them, it is clear, marriage is an irrevocable finality, a tight ring, the oppression of that wild, free instinct which you breathe out with your breath. To us marriage is only a word.
Throughout the dinner time stood still, each second stagnated and told a lie. And something indefinably foul and poisonous rose from their attitude. Sometimes I felt as if I had never quitted this hypocritical spot and this gilded furniture. I held aloof from him in apparent indifference, but really to save our innocent love from their profane eyes.
They left us alone for a moment, and that moment is the one thing in the whole evening of which I retain a clear picture although scarcely a week has passed since then. In saying we were alone I am not quite accurate. A law forbade that young people should be left alone together for a single instant. My sister and her big boy of a fiancé were near us; we were not quite sure which couple had been put in custody of the other.
With arms fondly entwined about each other's waists they began to kiss and hug. She held up her lips and uncoiled the serpent of her body tantalizingly. When they were a little tired and their mouths blown, I heard a panting sentence which ended with: "You will love me always?" "Of course, always," he murmured in her ear.
I blushed. Not from offended modesty, but he and I—we had never dreamed of such vows. They seemed silly to me. How can one swear to love forever and say to a man: "Unto all eternity I shall be the most beautiful, the only one in your heart"?Always,forever, words which life at every turn refutes, how is it that a live heart would not give them the lie?
I must have looked a little haggard. My sister turning round saw that we sat apart with a gloomy, distant manner. The same thought was in his mind.
"Aren't they cold for lovers?..." By way of reply to her own question, she kissed her fiancé.
After fingering the deposit the old pot-bellied concierge livened up. "Money from lovers isn't mere money, it means good luck."
When he came back unexpectedly and with a paternal burr in his voice offered us "a little candle-end to take the measurements with; so often the ladies and gentlemen forget," it was chiefly to surprise us in an embrace, or some laughing dispute interlarded with kisses.
The apartment of three adjoining rooms like three cells in a honeycomb is very nice. It must be bright in summer, the stairs are kept clean, the courtyard is cool and fresh with its green lane of flower-pots. Our windows look right out on the top of the tree. A mighty rare thing, a tree in Paris. Spring mornings we shall be awakened by a fusillade of bird songs.
So this is where we shall live. These rooms, in which the atmosphere seems low and cramped and the floor is all splintered, are to serve us as domain and empire; these walls are to be our horizon.
When I was a child and lay tucked in bed, I used to dream of "being grown up...." Then when I was fifteen I'd say to myself "later on" so as to hear another troubling, forbidden word echo in my ears. And now my confused dreams are come to attend me here.... So here is the end of the story; it is all here, the mirage.
Only yesterday the sole reason for the existence of this place was a jaundiced, weather-beaten sign on the street.... And now our double life has found its temple, chosen its setting, and fixed upon its rallying point.
So this is the place we shall call "home." When the rain beats down out of doors and a wrecking wind blows, this will be our unchanging harbor. Whenever we make a new friend and we have told him everything and there are still more things to tell, we shall welcome him across this threshold and within these walls and let him see our ultimate selves. And when the golden May daylight rouses you from bed and sends you running to the window to feel its radiant stroke on your cheek and vague longings take possession of you, it will be the fastenings of this window which will turn to let in the breath of the dawn.
The little dining-room seems somewhat less desolate than the other wan rooms. The ceiling still bears the mark of the hanging-lamp as a sign of where the kindly light came from; a border of red arabesques runs round the top of the walls, and the fireplace of russet imitation marble with its pitted traces from invisible fingers of flame makes you feel as though the grate were still warm.
The kitchen is so tiny and so like a toy that there's not a thing in it, not even an old knife left behind through oversight. In spite of the floor with tiles missing like teeth from a mouth, the sink with dried-up pores, the stove downy with rust, it is the one room that doesn't seem to be crying for help. It needs only a glimmer in the stove and savory smells to give it life.
This is the moment to look life in the face—the real life, not the one people talk about. Until now our love has rested merely upon a foundation of clay. It has been facile, scarcely tangible. I perceive it is a love to be.
Now our love must be confronted with its kingdom, must have its boundaries and landmarks fixed, must be asked to shine in truth and be forced to the test. Let our love speak and inspire us. Later, when we shall have furniture around us, like words already spoken, we shall be less at ease.
"If you like, this shall be your room. It suits you. The neutral paper makes it restful for thinking, and the recess is all ready for a couch. Look, it's waiting for you. I will take the other room because of the clothes-closet, and I'll enjoy leaning out across the white window-sill for the fresh air.
"We shall visit each other. We shall be free and easy. You will come and go and receive your friends, do as you please, without ever having to account to me.
"But we are going to suffer, perhaps, in order to remain content and preserve the multitude of joys that one experiences when alone?
"This dividing wall is nothing more, after all, than a thin membrane through which the presence in the next room will ooze. When you are surrounded by your friends in the lively hum and buzz of comradely conversation, they will suddenly notice the shadow of an intruder moving as a woman moves. In the bottom of their hearts they will have us much married, you and me—the marriage of a friend is a little like a theft—and without your suspecting it, at that very moment, in the very midst of their talk, they will leave you.
"Do you really believe we shall be happy? I, for my part, would not like your friends to desert you. It seems unfair that you should be loved the less because of love. Are you quite sure that one has the right to impose one's unalloyed hope upon a person for a lifetime? Are you sure that in the name of love the person one has chosen can remain the best of all persons?... Tell me, are you sure you will not bear me a grudge?
"And can the most beautiful unionremainbeautiful? For we are about to sign a pact. There's no denying it. What's to be done about this transport that we are, this constant expectation, this clinging intoxication?
"You know we shall have only each other intimately. Even inanimate things will exert a tendency to influence us. When the little lodging will take on our mould and there will be chairs to hold out our habits to us and a brown pulsating clock, creature of even utterance and over-sensitive soul, the fond familiar place will weigh and impose itself upon us.
"So the host of wishes, the magnificent secrets, the kernel of sadness, the nomadic hopes must all be made to enter by this door into our associated days? Tell me, how is one to act? Must happiness,truehappiness without law or bridle, also be shut up here, here and nowhere else? And must happiness be the same for the two of us who are different?
"There's a children's fairy tale that once there was a princess whose heavily embroidered robe was by a magic command made to pass through a ring.
"Lovers betrothed think they understand love. But they have not lived together—andevery day. They don't know what that means. Those who love as in books do not contemplate a long journey when they set out together, and if the short-lived blaze vanishes at the first turning in the road, it is not a great misfortune. Another spark will do for another kindling. And there are those whorenounce, abdicate their own selves, bend the knee, and trust to love.... But how are those to act who are not cut in heroic marble, who do not want to lie or renounce, who don't pity theotherone, who are not afraid of themselves, who love as people love in actual life, who are like us? Perhaps you know better than I do. You are a man and older than I am, but I—I ask myself....
"I was ready, as women are, for great impossible things. I never thought about them very clearly, but I felt my emotions pierce me like dagger thrusts. They inspired me with an all-powerful spirit, and if I had had to batter down mountains, or dash through a river of fire, or die in your stead, I should have closed my eyes and done it at one go.
"And behold the test. The test is here. Why is it that the thing one awaits and expects never is the actual test? The actual test has only a sorry way about it, a commonplace aspect, a very reduced compass; it holds nothing but monotonous moments jogging along one after the other; it stops just at the foreshortened shadow at your feet, and my arms which I was about to open are, you see, arms of lead.
"Before I entered these rooms love looked like you and the future shone like a festival just beginning. What is left of all that? I no longer hear the chimes of golden promises ringing in my ears. I no longer feel the hosannas of my heart, and it's as though I scarcely saw you in the gloomy corner where you are standing."
I see the little dwelling where the hesitant evening has not yet taken its place. The silence is laid bare, life is showing us her skeleton; through the mottled panes one sees that the hour has red eyes and the walls confronting us in their inflexible truthfulness have become our four upright witnesses.
I feel like running away.
When everybody was assigned a seat in the carriages, whips cracked and the procession got under way.
The carriage at the head in a splash of sunshine drew the whole line after it, shattering the massive silence of the street. The occupants were still settling themselves, the ladies with a great rustling of silk and a vast deal of twisting and turning before they got themselves comfortably installed, while the men were obliged to sit forward on the edge of the seats and be very careful of the disposition of their legs.
"Lovely weather," said one of the two ladies, "they're lucky." No one answered. They held themselves in abeyance for the usual conviviality to come later, and passed the time looking through the lowered windows at the unknown quarter through which the procession was winding, where the houses sank upon each other and the people in workaday clothes stood still to stare with eyes of envy.
The second carriage had set off at a rapid pace; the coachman was holding in his frisky pair.
"Say what you like, she's a beautiful bride."
Like most very old ladies, this one suggested widowhood. Even in talking she exhaled the attenuated sadness that invests old people with a protective halo.
"Oh, she's just like the rest. What's in her favor is that she's fair. A brunette bride always makes you think of a fly in milk. At least, that's my opinion...."
That was a good start. One remark led to another; the conversation livened up. The ladies in their silk gowns felt conscious of sharing in pomp and an important ceremony.
"I was told she ran away from home last year, with...."
The carriage jolted and zigzagged, but the group sat undisturbed. Each felt drawn to the other three by a decidedly increasing sympathy.
What spirit haunted these carriages? All these people were held by an obsession. They had seen the bride in her starry whiteness and persistently retained an image with a halo round it. The bride was the sole topic.
"I don't approve of a double standard," said another lady. "They did a tremendous amount for her sister's wedding; you know they did, while they're not doing a thing for this poor child." A shrug of the shoulders. "I don't think it's fair."
Everything she said came out with a ripple in it from the unevenness of the paving. Her neighbor was plunged in dreams, unaware. A day triumphal arose out of the distant past when she too walked in white. "Twenty-seven years like one month! How time does fly!"
They warmed up to their subject.
"She is making a very bad match: he hasn't a cent...."
"You forget she's well over twenty-two. A girl has got to take a husband when she finds one. Husbands don't grow in the front-yard."
The perspiration came out in beads on their fleshy foreheads. A stop. What had happened? A block? An accident? Plumed hats were stuck out of carriage doors. "Get in again, madam, you can't see anything. You'll break your aigrette. If I tell you...."
The procession shortened like a snake drawing in its coils.
"Ha, ha! I know someone who will not find it dull to-night!"
Their laughter took on a sharper edge; smiles lurked in the corners of their mouths just deep enough to show that they understood, that they had their own recollections and at the same time were in well-bred company.... This lady with the air of knowing a thing or two.... What?... Without waiting to be importuned, she drew herself up heroically and whispered something over the frilled hat of the little girl beside her. They threw themselves back beaming, stuffed full. "Impossible!"
Boots creaked, gowns rustled. The carriages began to clatter through the streets again.
The laughter of young people. Not very loud. Hiding something sweet and indefinably solemn. She was only fourteen. She had nothing but her thin little feelings, which, however, kept her straight and haughty as an Infanta. By leaning over slightly she succeeded in seeing the bride. The bride ... the white word flitted about her like a light ball.... But straightway she saw the bride her eyes fell. The same emotion had surprised her on Sunday at mass when she saw the host rise in a beam of light, and also when she listened to the hand-organ grind out arias. Ecstasy leapt within her and hope sang: "Me too some day...."
The last carriage kept behind; a low coupé with drawn shades. A stiffly wired bouquet shed its fragrance within. As it sped rapidly by, heads turned around for a long look and for the sake of the virginal memory it left behind.
I was in that last speeding carriage. I had obeyed my mother's entreaties, I had agreed to figure in this masquerade.
So as not to rumple my fairy dress I forced myself not to make a movement but to remain impassive and avoid the least little stir. It was my rôle to receive the host of looks converging upon me as if levelled at a target, hard and fast, crowding, curious. I confess that beneath my snowy veil and sanctified air I lent myself to the situation with a bit of vanity.
It takes me a long time to undress. My bridal costume is fastened by a thousand hidden snaps and pins. I have trouble in getting out of it.
My room frightens me. "Take possession of us," say the chairs and tables. "Act, command, try your hand, you are in your own home, it is your life which is arising, we are watching you. What are you going to do?"
The more the furniture goads, the heavier the languor that settles upon me, the less I know, the less I advance. In vain I summon to my aid ideas from without; none takes hold. I repeat, for example, that this is the test of both of us, the beginning of our union. I fancy myself clutching at resolutions, but they fall back at my approach and sink routed into the folds of the curtains. Is it really necessary to struggle? Wouldn't it be better to put my head in my hands and drop into the softness and restfulness of my new armchair?
When we came here a little while ago, it washewho was the first to experience this sort of trouble. We had been looking over our home and when the tour was ended he took me in his arms, and I felt the warm flesh of his kiss under my chin. A blow seemed to strike my bowels. I tightened up into a ball, my muscles tense, thrown on the defensive. An evil fear made me shiver. He raised his head. I had never seen him look so tragic. His features were hardened, his eyes swimming ... I fell away from him like a flower snapped from its stem.
A sudden instinct sent me to the looking-glass, as if it held an answer to everything. Maybe looking-glasses do offer the eternal answer to the riddle of the universe.
I had said to myself: "You will be close to him, you two will be alone together, perhaps it will be beyond human power to try to be happy." I used to fancy life as a struggle, a piece of work to be done, a masterpiece, and imagined what my acts would be—all voluntary and making for perfection. I forgot that they would have to be performed by these arms with their warm flesh.
I had thought: "He knows me through and through, I have made him read everything." But no, he knows nothing. He does not know the lovely shape of my breasts, the lyre of my hips, the curves of my legs, nor this unknown body the expression of which is so changing that it is like some murmured tale which the light embraces and tells aloud.
It remains for me to bestow a final confidence upon him; that of the body unveiling itself,daringto confess itself. Is this not the purest confidence? But let it not come before its own hour, for it must lead to a moment of truth so naked and so unexpected that it frightens me a little.
It is strange: this evening I live with the whole of my body for the first time. I exist wherever it is. Even as I stand here fixed and tense in front of the glass, I follow a line which may arch, swell and melt away and which already bears the shape of love.
I can imagine everything ... for there's no need of having loved in order to be a lover. All I should have to do, if I dared, would be to twine my arms around his neck, press him hard, and harder still, and the moment would come when I should forget the modesty of my single life.
And without knowing any more one would be lost, distraught, acquiescent, lulled to sleep even to the soul, more beautiful than one is beautiful.
I can go still further, for the flesh that clasps cannot be deceived. When the man and the woman are united, it is the woman subdued, armed with her weakness, who becomes the stronger. I am sure of it already. In the depths of my ignorant flesh, I already feel domination germinating. It is not I; it is a law older than I that is seeking to fulfill itself.
And suddenly I am frightened....
But I am mad.... Man, woman, nothing but two words, which are not of the stuff of life. Is there a single emotion in which I recognize myself? Truth? But it is the truth of others. The truth that reaches you is always different. Isn't it senseless to dread what depends upon yourself? Are we strangers that I should hesitate like this to run to him? Isn't he on the other side of the door, he of whom my body isthinking? Isn't it enough for us to look upon each other? Is there a single question he cannot understand? One seeks happiness. It is all so simple....
Ah, let us go astray every day, let us deceive ourselves, let us suffer alongside our own hearts, let us try to clasp the invisible! But this evening there is nothing but a thin partition between my secret and myself. I feel my heart throbbing as if it were laid bare. I am beautiful, I am alive....
Am I not right?...
It is her eyes in particular. Ever since her eyes have made a part of my life, I have known what nostalgia for Brittany means, and the infinite mournfulness with which it permeates a human being.
She is like the rest of her race, short-legged, round, thick-set, and her gestures conceal rather than reveal her hands. She talks in a singsong and ends with a sigh. Her name is Marie, as though she were a little nurse-maid of eighteen at thirty francs a month. Oh, it's not the room she takes up. But for her blue-thistle gaze and the plaint of her body, you'd scarcely know she was there.
Seven o'clock. I am already on the street with bent head, insensible to the allurements of the shops, driven blindly on with cheeks inflamed by the wind.
The great porte-cochère, the steps three at a time, two pulls at the bell, long, breathless minutes; finally the door opens, cautiously. Marie behind the door squeezes herself up on tiptoe against the wall to let me pass.
It is almost a sacrilege to speak in a raised voice as I do and bring in so much of the outside air. "Is dinner ready, Marie, is everything ready?" Since Marie never answers, I go straight into the kitchen. Goodness, nothing done. Well, I'll have to get at the supper myself. There's still a good half-hour left, I believe.
As I hastily remove my wraps, I feel the dull pang that assails you at the sight of disorder.
There, I have the water boiling now and the cooking is well under way. I didn't know I was so quick and capable. After all, Marie's only a child.
Marie bustles about. I see her two reddish, porous, spatulate hands pounce on things, I hear the clash of utensils. Her person becomes many persons, she jostles me, moves hither and thither like a distracted tortoise, bends almost double to pick up a strainer.... To be sure the kitchenistiny.
I speak to her as one speaks to a child. "Do you understand me, Marie? Don't be afraid, I am not unkind." The lifeless fixity of her face suddenly comes undone, her features contract. Marie was dulled by the monotonous gloom of an asylum in a distant quarter of the city. She slightly raises the heavenly blue of her eyes without fastening them on anything. I see her tenacious hatred wake up and stir. A single flash. Then her red-rimmed eyes flutter and fall; she is in order again, in the vague sort of order characteristic of things inaccessible and forlorn.
I realize she cannot understand me. To her I mean constraint, uprooting, exile, that unusualness which throws simple people out of their orbits. And though she has never been accustomed to anything else than maltreatment, neglect, and beatings, I understand.... I try to be gentler, to smile when I turn toward her, for in the end visible kindness should make itself seen.... And it would be so good to reclaim this nature, to explain everything to her, beginning at the beginning.
I recall the scene of yesterday evening. We were at table. She brought in the smoking soup-tureen at arm's length. Her heavy tread rolled like a cannon-ball upon our delight in being together, then she retreated to the kitchen like a dog slinking to its kennel. A crash of china. I jumped up.
"Something broken?"
"No, madam."
"But, Marie...."
"No, madam, no, madam...."
I was close beside her and this time looked deep into her eyes. I saw the freckles on her white skin, and there emanated from her the amazing innocence of an accused child. Her voice came from her palpitating throat with a quiver in it.
"No, no, no."
Poor Marie. I felt remorseful. "I beg your pardon, Marie, we were mistaken."
Nevertheless I didn't budge, as if I were at length going to learn why one human being can be so terrorized by another.... She too stood motionless. I did not notice that her attitude was rather peculiar. I put my hand on her shoulders. "My little Marie...." At this she staggered and trod heavily on breaking china. Her face was imploring....
Hidden under her bell-shaped Breton petticoat which touched the floor lay my pretty gray china cup shivered to bits.
She behaved the way girls brought up by Sisters always do. She crouched against the wall, her forehead hidden in the crook of her arm. Her bosom as pinched as a wasp's went up and down precipitately, and the tears began to flow.
I stopped gathering up the pieces to console her gently.
"It's not your fault, Marie ... come, don't cry, don't cry."
Marie close by is bending over the sink rubbing it with a brush round and round always on the same spot. The water slaps on the tile floor and squirts over my dress. Her movements have something eternal about them and the appearance of never-ending complaint.
There is nothing to say. Whatever I do, she remains dumb, and the more I try to reach her, the more she avoids me.
But what does Marie matter? I force myself to get back to my own affairs. And quickly.Hewill come in, there will be his gaiety, the joy flashing in our voices, the day's doings to tell of, and our dear union only a fortnight old....
Marie is there; nothing can efface her. My irritation against her boils up, then turns against myself. It is not pity I feel but rather an intolerable impotence. I hurl myself with all my force against the eclipsed expression of the Breton girl, and each time it hurts.
Marie....
And I used to think that to love was to feel yourselves alone. On the contrary, it is to feel yourself to be many.
No, no, love is not the emotion of two people. No, as soon as one feels love one wants to loveeveryone, win over everyone, shine on everyone, even on this ignorant head. What sin have I committed that a single welcome should be denied me? She does not smile; that's my fault. What is lacking in my love that I should face the vexation of a culpable failure? My pity for Marie and my love for him are one, because I have only one heart. And since my heart is repulsed, is it impure?
Marie has resumed her feeble, beaten-down existence. She has set aside the brush, her blue eyes look beyond the walls, she wipes her wet hands on her apron—her hostile hands, which are peculiarly hers.
What can one do? But there must besomethingshe believes in, there must be something one can do to move her, there must be some word to say to uncover the tomb of her heart.
I stopped. For a moment I left my work....
Where find the ultimate words of love, the final words—simple and difficult—when one does not even know the word to make one poor inferior Marie blossom out?
When I am old I shall warm myself at the rich shining vision of the first days of my love. I shall hold out the dry sticks of my arms. I shall beg for a little fire, a little sap. I shall return to the present with feebly beating heart and faltering step.
Poor withered old woman, you do not remember; and others will bestow upon you the charity of showing you a picture of lovers. You see us as we, wife and husband, used to embrace, how I leapt to his side, how his mouth clung to the fruits of my cheeks, and how we laughed a matchless laughter. Well, that is enough for you, return to your winter, to the virgin plain of your old age, to your years perched precipitously over death.
Am I the first by any chance to hide the truth from you?
The truth of to-day has no brilliance or halo. My joy in being a young bride is not at all what I used to fancy it would be.
The dominant motive of my life at present, its great preoccupation, is by no means to invent new words of love. It is to give battle to the existence that one buys—buys with pennies and infinite pains.
We are poor. As we each earn our own living, we have decided that I shall manage the budget for both. It is my job to concoct the meals; and they must be wholesome, pleasing to the eye, intelligently planned, tasty. The house must be bright, beautiful, convenient, cozy, stamped with an air of prosperity. Time has to be economized, a ceaseless tyranny must be exercised over things, nothing may be neglected, order must be adhered to slavishly, hygienic principles followed vigilantly. And lastly, all these things, which are everything, must be accomplished successfully, and so successfully that once caught and conquered they will come easily.
If only I had the money with which to fare forth to battle, it might be easy, but the sum at my disposal is about enough for a doll's budget. You could hold it on the tip of a knife; it is inexorably minute.
Besides, girl that I am, I do not possess overly much of that courageous ingenuity and imagination which go so far, nor of the determination which clenches its fists and stares a sombre defiance.
Love? Why does one never foresee that there will be accounts and money cares, so important and so tormenting, and at the very start? Why doesn't one know that these things take precedence over love, over everything in daily life?
You have to get up to do the marketing an hour earlier than you're used to. You have to learn to sew because a new dress and the joy of pleasing him are a wish of love, but also represent a sum of money.
At the time I did not know it, but it was an immense triumph that he was comfortable and happy when he returned home. There was the delight his surprise gave me when, with great pride, I produced some jolly-looking fruit for dessert. And see—there was the modest glory of having been able to buy the lovely flowers for his room with my own coppers.
As a girl I walked towards love anticipating fiery words, forceful looks, and two solemn presences.... I used to say to myself: Love!...
And behold, by way of humble events and simple tasks I have found the affirmation of love.
We were sleeping side by side, our breathing intermingled; and nothing was sweeter than this nearness of our slumber.
He put out the lamp and stretched himself beside me, and we remained like that, silent, drowned in sweetness and the night. It was a living impression of repose.
Beside his close warmth a torpidity brooded, for the days were exhausting, and while he raised himself slowly on his elbow to lull me to sleep with his eyes, I broke away in spite of myself from the beneficent clasp and fell asleep like a child.
But last night, although nearly midnight, sleep was slow in coming. He kissed my lips. Suddenly a strange will broke in me.... What instinct was I obeying?... Then a violent repulsion. I knitted my brows. Ah, I detested him....
That night it was I who wide-eyed and curious watched him fall asleep.
There was one second above all....
If I had had the time to think, I should have thought that this second was worth the whole of life, the whole of death, and even more than life.
The nights are links in a chain. Previously life consisted of day and night; white, black; black, white. Since then life goes on unbrokenly.
This morning when I caught a reflection of myself in the shop windows, I noticed I had a strange air of authority, a self-assurance quite new and indefinable, a manner crisper, more clear-cut. When I purchased my provisions I had the courage to haggle, and the market-women treated me as an equal.
My firmness and decisiveness have made Marie reveal the pale ocean of her eyes. A distance seems to have been set between us.
They point to us, just stopping short of using their index fingers, as an example of a happy couple. They speak enviously of our great good fortune as if we were bound on an adventurous voyage on which you embark only once in your life.
What do their "young couple," their "happy pair" mean? Do people really imagine that you arrive at happiness so quickly and easily, and that to be sent offtogetherinto the steep mountain country, life is in itself enough to make you find the fulness of life?
Happy!... When everything tends to estrange you, the opposite natures of man and woman, their conflicting interests, their very physical attraction for each other. Happy! When you realize that two beings, however close they may be, are forever divided. When, no matter how free you are, marriage forces you to restrain and prostrate yourself. When, apart from your joint life, you have your own career to pursue. And when, after the day's work is accomplished, come the night's kisses as if to undo the good of the day's work—behold the body, the blood, the lips of love—and you change from friends into lovers again.
To be sure, there are occasionally moments of blinding delight, and it is sweet to lean on a shoulder and have a second in the duel of life and be with a man who smiles and takes you in his arms.
But to be happy! To feel that your measure is filled, that you are yourself and him.... Man and woman are above all enemies; you feel it at every turn. And yet you tell yourself that at the heart of some inaccessible firmament there does exist a sublime harmony and itmustbe attained, even if the road to it is superhuman and your strength fails. And this harmony and this road must be taken afresh every day, if ever one approaches them, for a human being changes from day to day.
I am already somewhat stronger and simpler, and somewhat appeased, but still we are not "happy" as yet.
It is true; she was sincere....
While talking she cast off her enormous furs and fiddled with her rings in the unconscious wish to remove them. Her restless head was set high on a neck encircled by pearls. Minus the litter of ornaments she would have tempted you to hold your hand out to her.
The landscape, swallowed up in long gulps by the window of the railway-coach, had a sombre fascination for her, because it was moving almost as fast as her pain. You saw her shoulders gradually shrink together and slowly draw down the beautiful column of flesh supporting her head. Then you saw them raised helplessly to ask the eternal question, "What shall I do?" And then you saw them in the characteristic gesture of all sufferers—thrown back as if to toss off the pack of unhappiness loaded on her back.
Her story burst and rose in precipitate bubbles. Her voice, at moments, broke. The woman at her side remained perfectly calm, walled up in the dull indifference accompanying the forties. At the jolting of the train she merely shook her head—was she listening?—and turned toward the flying window where her own story was passing.
Darkness would soon be falling. So I had an excuse for going to sleep, and as soon as I shut my eyes the young woman took up her tale of woe anew, twice, three times, ten times. The whole of her misery escaped from under a mask of restraint.
"And listen, the other day...."
Did I need to hear what she was going to say?
At the end of one sentence I caught "my little girls." I could see her little daughters—exactly alike, well-behaved, in airy frocks, two heads with long, elastic curls, a twin step in walking—the sort of children who are their parents all over again and invariably provoke the question, "Whom does she look like—her father or her mother?" as if you have to search into a child's origin.
I could see her husband too. Haven't all these women the same way of saying "my husband"? I could see him short, bustling, jovial—really not a bad sort—and with a chubby face, the only kind I could possibly match up with the young woman's insipid face. Though she said nothing of a garden, I imagined a very strait-laced one with rectilinear, timidly-flowering walks, the sort of garden that is not cherished with love. And I also saw the family in their home, a substantial white-stone ornate building. I raised my eyes furtively. I must have got a poor view of her when she came in an hour ago. Now she looked pretty. Her features were regular, her color had heightened, her quivering mouth showed her lips to the fullest, and her distressed hand, pushing back her hair, disclosed a brow eloquent, smooth and flawless as ivory. Certain women derive their entire beauty from the pathetic. She was one of them.
Her eyes turned from the scenery; I lowered my lids.
"He doesn't understand me any more ... it's all over ... I am nothing to him ... still ... a love match...."
The scraps of her plaint were borne off by the wind, the engine snorted more vigorously, and the last remnants went down with me in the roar of a far-off, formidable lullaby.
I soon awoke. Still bemoaning her lot, with the same phrase, it seemed to me, always at the same point. She went on with such bitter persistence that in the end you couldn't help learning her story by heart. I did at any rate. The two women kept looking at each other—shadowy vis-à-vis—the younger one far from the other, far from us, far from everything, rooted in her life, in her square garden, in her thirty years. It was as if she were talking aloud for the first time.
I listened. Each detail revealed a year, a corner of the house, an important event. I felt a dull rage fermenting in me instead of the timidity and compunction one usually experiences in trespassing upon another's inmost recesses.
Why? Perhaps because I, a stranger, had not the power to interpose and hold the secret of this trouble so as to remedy it.
Ah, I no longer need to listen nor need to know the man in order to feel that he is right to lose himself in his business and be merely a good father who sees in his wife nothing but the mother of his children and shrugs his shoulders when she heaves with sighs.
The evening air was blowing in cooler through the upper half of the window. We were entering a plain where the green of the meadows was deepening into mauve. Two rows of trees, which had been a profile against the sky when seen from afar, turned into a black curtain suddenly drawn. Here and there houses stood out as though groping in the dark—faces blotted out as soon as arisen—one field swallowed up the next; the ragged line of a hedge came and went; an embankment followed, its slope daubed with brown, unwholesome stains, its top dressed with tufted grass and straggling bushes, which moved their arms like signals.
The young woman's brows were drawn. She was questioning the obscure flickering stretch of space. I read the questions in her face: Why does he merely graze her forehead when he comes back in the evening? Why does he keep her out of everything? Why does he never feast on her presence or heed her advice? How did he love her? She had been right a short while before when she had said bitterly: "A little less than a prostitute, a little more than a servant."
The woman was certainly suffering and calling upon a God who could not answer. At night when the close jealous house is asleep, she undoubtedly falls to her knees in secret and wrings her barren hands and invokes misery, love, grief, as if the sacred words were for the whole world. Thou, God whom she implores, Thou knowest well the reason of her trouble, a simple reason, brutal, elementary. Why dost Thou let her hunt for others?
I threw myself back because I both wanted and feared that my face might betray me.
The Midi was beginning, the first olive trees were rounding off the landscape, the night sky was already smiling in the rosy light of dawn.
In our times no woman has the right to live under the shelter of a man's labor. The woman who dares to accept such shelter should abdicate and commit her dignity to the hands that are productive. She should consent to her dethronement and take the condescending love that is fed to the weaker without complaining.
Men begin—the women know it well—by adoring this weakness. "My wife," that piece of fragility, those useless days, those little arms which don't know how to do anything, the jewels he brings home, the great astonished eyes, the mincing steps, everything that is touching and contrasts with the struggle of his existence. Then he comes to extract pride from this relation. "It is I who protect, sustain, feed her. It is I...." He mounts a few steps higher and sees her a little lower, incapable, infantile, unequal to battle, unequal to his power. Each day inevitably finds them a little farther apart, and she in approaching him is bound to raise her eyes while he condescends. If his love lasts it takes the very form of contempt, though neither is conscious of it. Which is just and proper.
A woman supported by her husband has no right to protest. If she is notearningher living, she should have some work to do, should use her arms, her idle strength, her health. Merely bringing children into the world is not enough.
The fat lady starts up from her entrenchment of cushions. "We are almost there. We must get ready."
Bags pulled open emit the animal odor of leather and give out nickel glints as they are snapped shut again. Then the fire of the rings disappears under the gloves. "We are there!" They are now quite free to stare at me.
What a metamorphosis. She has resumed her former appearance of a lady. She is scarcely pretty. In the glimmer of the night-lamp she seems sharp-featured and masked by a ghastly pallor, as if the generous sun had abjured her forever.
Each turn of the wheels brings us closer to the town. The young woman drawing herself up reassumes her manner of a somebody. She is back in her setting, already less unhappy because she is nearer her unhappiness. She pulls out her watch. Five minutes still. Time enough to lean on one's elbow and think sad thoughts pro tem, which come running like a docile flock.
I put my hand up to my forehead to prevent her searching my eyes for the fountain of compassion denied her. There is no compassion for her in me, neither is there in the opal-tinted meadows, nor under the sapphire of the sky. To find compassion she would have to reconstruct her life from top to bottom. A fate such as hers lies outside the fate of humanity; suffering such as hers is beside and apart from the suffering of humanity. I say her fate has not made her suffer enough yet and the woman does not deserve to live.
A woman who does nothing is fallen in the sight of love.
He and I are going to the country on our holiday. I have been thirsty for its freshness....
The carriage is empty now. You feel the double pulse of the train as it rolls between two slopes spitting out rings of smoke, pursued, you'd think, by its own speed, travelling on, on, on....
We've been here a week.
Strange days, without axis or prop or stay, passed as if outside of something, as if you had been asked to step up to a door but not invited inside. Nature is not easy to reach and penetrate.
We had longed to live in this spot conceiving it beforehand as an oasis set in dew. And here it is under our feet with its earth which smells good and its breezes which tinge our cheeks. For all our ardor and assiduity nature preserves her mystery; she is an unresponsive mother insensible to the clamor of her children. When we draw near, she stops talking and either drops a veil or retires completely into seclusion. "You would like to assay my movements, cull the delicate scent of the grass blade by blade, meditate like this tree, follow the steps of the peasants who are my only kith and kin, be a wave in space, unravel the relations of things, and delude yourselves with my warmth. That is what everybody wants. May your wish recoil on you. Do not try to reach me. Do not turn your heads in my direction. Let the thrills and tremors of your feelings pass between yourselves. I know you not."
In order to arrive at a mutual understanding with nature, one undoubtedly must have more of the heart of a recluse, a body more inclined earthward, a face of greater taciturnity. We are intruders.
It is only in the evening that you blend and fall into harmony with everything. Night awaits you—you see—below the horizon, and we set out to meet it.
We take each other's arms, I feel my joy preparing; he smiles at the care I take to prevent his catching cold, and off we go, arm in arm, tramping to the tune of a sounding tread like two comrades who once were schoolmates.
The little nestling village lies far behind; at a gulp the turn in the road swallows up the last hut. The landscape ahead is still variegated, but as it draws gently nearer the colors wane, the ground flattens, the features relax as in a face after a smile.
Silence.... Twilight within us is falling also. To admit it we watch the surrounding dusk with swelling chests and quivering nostrils.
On the rising ground opposite a yellow point is kindled, another and another, performing an unconscious duty—to usher in the night. And night is now here. Close by, in the fields, she has already drowned the olive-trees, which have no compact mass to offer in resistance, scarcely even any outlines, defenseless, except for their hundred-year-old trunks. Their life is a thing of quivering, silvery breezes, and when the darkness comes slinking and whispering, a breath will lull their gray-lined brows to sleep.
Along the embankment on either side of the road, trees—you can't tell what sort of trees any more—make great human gestures, as if to give warning of a drama about to begin. Instinctively we quicken our pace and draw closer together. The rich blood runs lively in our veins. We share a fleeting warmth.
And now noises spring up, noises that belong to night alone and are a part of its peacefulness; mournful bayings, which echo throws back faithfully from yon slope; the croaking of the frogs, which blight the heart of the atmosphere; a human call now and then, direct and piercing, and from the ground the metallic chirping of the crickets.
How at ease you feel, full of loving-kindness, and how sincere you are. You have sins lurking in your flesh, crimes piled up in your brain, a sombre mood inhabiting your heart. Everything can be confessed and laid bare. The night is all-comprehending. Night-time is different from the stiffly starched daytime with its color and form to distract man from his intimate verity. You can venture upon the wildest thoughts, expand to your uttermost limits, forget your own existence, and discard all past gestures. They were all inadequate. You don't want to retain any of them except the gesture you would make here—spread your arms while walking and hold your hands open like two pure, empty chalices.
Complete blackness now. You can no longer distinguish between silence and space, fear and the rustling; all things are merged in each other, trees with trees, their masses with the slope, and the slope, deprived of its contours, with the sky, which has come down to join the earth. Everything is blended, obliterated. The very cypresses, during the daytime a spear thrust at the azure, are also added to the darkness.
Beneath our eyes, tired from not seeing anything, the road kindly extends its vaporous pallor. Except for the road no line to arrest the impulse within, no perspective. The only clear things, our own figures.
We have never before entered such solitude together, nor ever before been laid so bare to each other. It makes us walk slowly and solemnly, as if we were passing beneath the eye of God.
The idea of us as a couple. We. We two.
Must an idea, then, remain implanted in the hearts of human beings in order to keep them upright? If I did not feel the pulsing of my love constraining me to live, the night, with no reason to respect my spirit, would stretch me out, I fancy, on any chance slope beneath the large serenity.
But I am upheld. Every intake of fresh air gives a new thrill and a youthful vigor to the idea in my heart, and I feel it mounting so swiftly that I must run to keep up with it. So as to hold it fast for my protection I rake together my loveliest recollections. Are my loveliest recollections those of our nights in each other's arms, our kisses, the storm that beat against our bodies?... No, they are not. As I raise my eyes to where the firmament should be—if it still exists—I find the blessed peacefulness which comes from his presence. The sentiment that grips my heart when I feel myself taking part in his life is lofty. It has something in it of respect, and trust, and pity; it is hard to say just what. It spurs me to action, even to boldness, and it raises around me a strong wall in which I am secure.
This is not a recollection; it is a bit of the future, and the future alone is what you discover as you go forward into the infinite. At one bound you mount to the summits of love. Love is the future magnetized by the heart.
He is there. His profile is massive in outline. He towers over the sunken country, the clods crunch beneath his feet. I walk close beside him. I ask for nothing. Maybe my only wish is that my footsteps should make less noise and my shoulders take up less room.
But I have another wish. I know what it is. Although I love him with my whole heart, I want to love him more. One does not attain to love once for all; the heart can never be filled to the full. How far shall we go? I can go on and on without stopping and outdistance the sources of the night; my youth is inexhaustible, my feet will never weary. I want to love himmore.
Space heaves a deeper breath. She is traversed by currents, scoops of darkness, aromatic whiffs. The perfume sweetens the lips; flowers must be dotting this hedge. And suddenly space goes mad. A black wind swirls down from the tree-tops and fills the nocturnal expanse with the creaking of branches.
Must we stop at the greatest moment, at the point where the road looks supernatural, as though it possessed a density of its own and were suspended in space?... I should have liked to walk further; one never goes far enough. Must we really return to the stolid lamp and babbling kisses?
Not immediately. Let us prolong this great sombre moment. Let us stay here where even time might come to a standstill. The trees droop lower here, and in these tranquil meadows the spirit may play hide-and-seek.
It is really unhappiness that makes you stop. I return from the night; all I bring back is this strangled throat, a body like a tortoise-shell covering a silent heart and blinded eyes.
If I emerge from myself, disconsolateness everywhere, spread all over the world. The sleeping desert....
He is close beside me, but since he lives, he can do nothing for me. I can do nothing for him. I used to think that in loving him I crowned him. Love is not enough. This evening I saw his life rise from the ground, distinct from love,outsideof mine; I saw his life, bared to all the winds, isolated from everything, raise and satisfy itself. I see that this is right.
His life is complete in itself, unique and important; his life is not merely the image that inspires me, the voice that I evoke, the face I love dearly. His life is an insuperable force, vivid, inviolable and free, which my heart out of sheer love of him failed to recognize. I was right a few minutes ago to want to blot myself out, because I ought not to count. Beyond my limited, restricted presence, he has the whole of infinity to breathe in.
Then where are the nights which are to enlighten me? Of him I know nothing but my love, nothing except that by his very existence he contradicts what I know of him. Who will tell me how far I must go and to what I must attain? I have slept in his arms, I have lived side by side with all his cares, and I have given myself up to him with a joy like unto which there is nothing. All I have given is myself. And yet more is necessary.
And a great conviction rises up straight and strong and shines as if a light had sprung from the midst of the meadows.
I am only a woman, I can think only spasmodically. I love as one weeps, but there comes a day of which this is the night, on which your forehead touches the profound truth. You feel the loving-kindness of your heart aroused, and you oddly understand that the perfect union of man and woman has never been part of the natural scheme of things, and in order to be happy together it is not enough to love one another.
Come. We may return. Press me close to you, if you will, closer still. Don't let us talk.
I know why I am content: your arms, my all-powerful life, our firm footsteps. I do not know why the slight shadow seems to have vanished: to live, go forward, pierce the narrow track of the road with your clear eyes for stars, follow a night one does not see....
And then, O God, in braving the heavens, to understand with love that which transcends love.
I hesitate to go out on the street. I feel that people's eyes are drawn to my figure. There's no use fooling myself. The little girls actually point to me with furtive, vinegary glances, for they are more ingenuously hypocritical than women. Their insistent gaze embarrasses me.
Two long months to wait before the first cry of my child! If only I carried nothing beside my child. I feel also an imprisoned love developing which beats at the bars of its cage and chafes so that I don't know how to distract it.
The layette is quite ready; swaddling-bands warm to the touch, chemises like a doll's, caps which will never be of use; the equipment of a marionette; linen as soft as lint, bibs round and puffy as cockades. I have spread everything out in front of me, and each article as it passes through my hands assumes a shadowy lifelikeness.
Two months before I shall really know whether I am to be like other mothers, a brooding hen, with folded wings and in-turned heart, passionate for my own children, cattish and carping in my attitude toward other children. Two months before I shall know the secret force of that wild love which, they say, springs up all at once.
I am being initiated however. The other women give me a hearty welcome; they make the impression of crowding together to make room for me. A real sisterhood? Or the imperceptible joy of seeing a rival temporarily diminished? Under their escort I enter into the forbidden arcana. "What do you feel?I——" They make me a target for their reminiscences.
Each shamelessly outdoes the other. From the quantity and finished preciseness of the details narrated I infer that the story has been oft told. The least loquacious are the mothers who "have had a lot of them." These have nothing left but a vast, frequently refreshed memory in which their life merges in a blur with the life they have so many times carried beneath their hearts.
Which of them am I to believe? Many have broached the subject to me, many have discussed it, none has told me the secret of being a mother, the word that would reveal, the sign, flashing and disappearing, by which the treasure awaiting me would shine from afar, which wouldmake me understand. I have heard them bemoan the misery of the months before childbirth and the sufferings of childbirth itself. I have heard them boast, with the reverence of fetich-worship, of the care they gave their little ones. But here their maternity stops. I still do not know. I have two months to wait.
I plunge my fingers into the milky mass of the little garments. "Do you," I say to my husband, "see the head of your child underneath this hood? Let us try to imagine...."
He smiles without answering, shaken in his flesh, so lucid and so well prepared for his approaching fatherhood that I feel myself a hundred leagues behind. He, at least, knows why he will love his child, why he already loves it.
As for me, my vision is obscured by the disconcerting pictures drawn by the other women. Perhaps also I am under the ancestral pressure exerted by the long line of my foremothers. Why should I be different? What quality would make me better?
The animal heaviness reasserts its rights. My body is an unwieldy sheath overspread with sleepiness, ramified by thick blood, its cells given over to contented, torpid well-being. My very heart is struck with stupor.
To lie at full length, on my bed beneath the weight of my breasts of rock, no longer to move or think, only to feel at momentary intervals a light stirring, a caress, which gently turns on its self and folds its wings.