Woman Part 5

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 Remy hurls at me over the banisters every Friday, descends upon my head. "Don't walk so fast, look where you're going." The last sc.r.a.ps of warning roll like billiard b.a.l.l.s. Remy, 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....

Remy'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!

VII

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-gla.s.s.

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 s.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.sumed 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 enn.o.bled by both his absence and his presence, my arms weighed down and my spirits in eclipse....

Who is speaking? Who is there?

Mme. Noel, the live puppet, is sticking her painted head in at the door; the thread of light holds it as in a snare. She _here_ at 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 cl.u.s.ter of tapers.

I no longer know ... I no longer know ...

VIII

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 pa.s.s 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 p.r.o.nounced 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!