Woman Part 6

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 s.p.a.ce 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 cafes, 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--how _necessary_ it 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, _I_ will speak to _him_, 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 sc.r.a.pes 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....

IX

My family was exultant.

Behold me returned to "proper" life, from which I had so long been absent, by the ma.s.sive trap-door of marriage.... I took on a value in their rea.s.sured 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 pa.s.s over everything indulgently.

It was she who ruined the whole business. Could I not see her disdainful att.i.tude 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 encompa.s.sed 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 towards _him_ and bathe my sight in the serene waters of his eyes, I recover my a.s.surance 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 att.i.tude. 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 pa.s.sed 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 fiance 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 fiance.

X

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.