Woman Part 18

Truth striking the ear is bound to impress. And that I should be alive as I am alive at this moment, with the eloquence and magic that spring from real presences, is also bound to impress. Look at me. Need I say a single word? Isn't a great love with eyes uplifted convincing?

"When you tell me sometimes that I am beautiful, it is like a gift. She would see me bearing this gift, and if she perceived her forty years moaning and fading at my approach, she would understand that age in a woman is an offense love cannot forgive.

"Your eyes are searching s.p.a.ce. You are wondering where such a conversation would lead her and me. Don't bother. It would merely lead me to the side of truth and her to its summit. I imagined that was enough and one could stop there.

"I imagined that after I had spoken, she would rise and stand without taking a single step, upright and solemn, her work at her feet, she would feel the morals of the world collapse, its false h.e.l.ls, its hardness and harshness, its monstrous delusions, everything that sheathed her in a coat of mail and incited her to self-defense....

Feeling her heart set at liberty, she would think of you, but of you with your body sloughed; of your real self hidden where neither she nor I can penetrate.

"Then she would draw nearer--would she know to what? It is a deep-seated law in us to try desperately to approach something. She would rediscover the dazzling moments when her twenty years of age gave her the power to bid the submissive universe do everything for your good. It would be a similar instant that I would place like a sheaf of wheat in her open arms. Don't you see?

"The room sparkles in all its sunlight; every surface sends forth gleams; the day calls to the day and floats before her. Are we rivals?

We are simply sisters in the same love. I want to take her hands because I remember that once you chose her....

"Well....

"But my notion is squelched. I couldn't help it. Your astonished expression squelched it. Before I spoke, when the idea was still imprisoned behind the wall of my forehead, it gave me a light like a torch, I a.s.sure you. You questioned me, and now it's a mocking will-o'-the-wisp, teasing me from a distance and vanishing as I advance.

Didn't I tell you it was an idea not to be handled?

"I have fallen short of caressing a bit of truth between my clasped hands. It escaped me.... And you smile consoled."

XXIII

Twice we said we would part at the turn of the road, at that tree, exactly at that tree, and twice we pa.s.sed by laughing at our weakness.

We still could not believe in the separation at hand.

But the moment was upon us.

There, at the house hidden behind the trees and bushes, you will go on, and I will stand still.

He pressed my hand with increasing tenderness. My laugh taunted us with so much a.s.surance that I tried to believe in it. To fill up the gaps, we bl.u.s.tered and said the needless inconsequent things people always say when they face a long separation.

It was a little before noon. The sheeted shadows cast by the sunlight burned and smoked in bluish waves. Between the trees of the woods stretching beside the sea liquid flakes blinded your eyes. You'd see annoying red spots long after you'd turned your eyes away.

I said to myself: "Only a few steps more and it will be over. One step less and another minute will be plucked from our parting." To keep down my emotion I hurriedly spoke of _something else_.

It must have rained in the morning. When we brushed against the branches, the silence was broken at our feet by the limpid sound of falling drops, the leaves wore a new skin, and the atmosphere, impregnated with freshness, smiled the smile of nature when she wants to dry her tears. The depths of the woods were enveloped in a blue down; a troop of squat little fir-trees, their skirts on a level with the ground, rang a crisp chime.

We hurried, so at one in our approaching distress that we went too fast.

The house behind the trees and bushes came into more prominent view--shutters like eyes pitilessly closed, pointed teeth of a gray-painted fence, threatening minutiae of a garden descending a bushy battered skull of a slope. But after all, there can be no such thing as separation between us two.... And for a moment, to prove the strength of love, yes, for a moment, I was ready to run.

Here we are at the house. Seen at close range with its covering of red tiles and rugged face and front fanned by two dwarf firs, the little house in the way of our free career does not seem very imposing.

It must be. What's the use of delaying any more? Is it saddening to part when each carries away the other? For I carry away your voice, and the sadness of your eyes, and this kiss I give you.... I do not leave you; I am not even distressed. Look, I am leaving you.

I took a few steps away. They rang under my eyes. I picked up every detail of our parting and held it pressed against my heart, each grain of red earth, each flash of mica in the road. It was not so difficult....

Behind me I heard him walking away with a tread heavier than mine, which seemed to set stones tumbling down a mountainside.... Two months....

What is an absence of two months? I decided not to turn around.

The road narrowed and became a serpent of clay, then a creamy winding. I tried so hard to think of nothing that I noticed a great many surprising things we had not observed before. That tree with a heavy black ball at the end of its longest branch which the birds of heaven had stuffed with earth and was now gra.s.s-grown; the slope with a red covering of rich plants made, you'd think, of fingers dipped in blood....

It was in spite of myself that I faced about. A dark figure just this side of the last bend in the road.

Ah, he turns round; he heard me. Could we remain apart? I stretch my arms out to him, I begin to run. Why did we talk of other things a few minutes ago? Were we insane?...

I have already pa.s.sed the dead aloe, I am near the house with its two firs. My abrupt race swells my decision not to leave him. I lift my eyes. He didn't see me.

His form is no more than a black point, a blind insect nibbling at the road and entering the earth's lair.... One last step. It is over, it is over.

My arms fall, I turn back stumbling, dizzy. How can you tell what sort of a road it is when the sun is the color of mourning and the summer has the taste of tears?... Doesn't he know?

Noon. The Angelus tosses its twelve bronze strokes at the sun and they slowly dissolve. But I am insensible to everything. Everything. The host of trees, the flashing breastplate of the sea turn around an empty s.p.a.ce.

Why this sky stretching out after the branches, why this sparkling happiness, why this sleepiness of the earth when I am racked and branded with a red-hot iron by what I failed to say while there was still time?

BOOK III

_BECOMING_

I

I had been counting the days until I could call the day I was yearning for by its name, a name new to me every morning. To have said good-bye for two months, to have lived apart so long and almost without news, and now finally to be able to caress the ardent moment which gives each back to the other, if only for a short s.p.a.ce; to caress it as you hold your hands up to the fire. By a great effort I succeeded in remaining calm.

I had put my house in order, filled my vases with flowers, and made myself beautiful. My velvet gown dulled the light, so that by contrast I seemed to have a halo round my bared neck.

The hour drew near. The clock struck. But, no, the clock must be fast.... The next moments stabbed the silence, dragging on leaden feet.

I went to the window. On turning back into the room, I was delighted to discover a few things to do. The little round corner table was standing tipped, there were too many leaves in the bouquet ... and this wisp of hair straggling down my cheek. No, he was not coming. Waiting is a death died over and over again.

At last....

To think I could have breathed till now! You! He moved toward me rather timidly, almost as if he were a stranger. It occurred to me that he was not familiar with my home. A panic seized me: he might not like it.

But in one bound I was close to him, my head on his shoulder and his arms around me. I forgot everything. "I am so happy, so happy." We found ourselves in my little room, where the flowers piercing the twilight opened wide their mock hearts....