The woman who had been confined was
moved with exquisite care into the next room, which
she had occupied previously. It was larger and
more comfortable.
They cleaned the room from top to
bottom, and I saw Anna and Philip seated in the room
again.
“Take care, Philip,” Anna
was saying, “you do not understand the Christian
religion. You really do not know exactly
what it is. You speak of it,” she added,
with a smile, “as women speak of men, or as
men when they try to explain women. Its fundamental
element is love. It is a covenant of love between
human beings who instinctively detest one another.
It is also a wealth of love in our hearts to which
we respond naturally when we are little children.
Later all our tenderness is added to it bit by bit,
like treasure to treasure. It is a law of outpouring
to which we give ourselves up, and it is the source
of that outpouring. It is life, it is almost
a work, it is almost a human being.”
“But, my dear Anna, that is
not the Christian religion. That is you.”
In the middle of the night, I heard
talking through the partition. I struggled with
my sleepiness and got up.
The man was alone, in bed. A
lamp was burning dimly. He was asleep and talking
in his sleep.
He smiled and said “No!”
three times with growing ecstasy. Then his smile
at the vision he saw faded away. For a moment
his face remained set, as if he were waiting, then
he looked terrified, and his mouth opened. “Anna!
Ah, ah!-Ah, ah!” he cried through
gaping lips. At this he awoke and rolled his
eyes. He sighed and quieted down. He sat
up in bed, still struck and terrified by what had
passed through his mind a few seconds before.
He looked round at everything to calm
himself and banish his nightmare completely.
The familiar sight of the room, with the lamp, so
wise and motionless, enthroned in the middle, reassured
him. It was balm to this man who had just seen
what does not exist, who had just smiled at phantoms
and touched them, who had just been mad.
I rose the next morning, all broken
up. I was restless. I had a severe headache.
My eyes were bloodshot. When I looked at them
in the mirror, it was as if I saw them through a veil
of blood.
When I was alone, free from the visions
and scenes to which I devoted my life, all kinds of
worries assailed me-worry about my position,
which I was risking, worry about the steps I ought
to be taking and yet was not taking, worry over myself
that I was so intent upon casting off all my obligations
and postponing them, and repudiating my wage-earning
lot, by which I was destined to be held fast in the
slow wheelwork of office routine.
I was also worried by all kinds of
minutiae, annoying because they kept cropping up every
minute-not make any noise, not light a light
when the Room was dark, hide myself, and hide myself
all the time. One evening I got a fit of coughing
while listening at the hole. I snatched up my
pillow and buried my head in it to keep the sound from
coming out of my mouth.
Everything seemed to be in a league
to avenge itself upon me for I did not know what.
I felt as though I should not be able to hold out
much longer. Nevertheless, I made up my mind
to keep on looking as long as my health and my courage
lasted. It might be bad for me, but it was my
duty.
The man was sinking. Death was evidently in
the house.
It was quite late in the evening.
They were sitting at the table opposite each other.
I knew their marriage had taken place
that afternoon, and that its purpose had been only
to solemnise their approaching farewell. Some
white blossoms, lilies and azaleas, were strewn on
the table, the mantelpiece, and one armchair.
He was fading away like those cut flowers.
“We are married,” he said.
“You are my wife. You are my wife, Anna!”
It was for the sweetness of saying,
“You are my wife,” that he had so longed.
Nothing more. But he felt so poor, with his
few days of life, that it was complete happiness to
him.
He looked at her, and she lifted her
eyes to him-to him who adored her sisterly
tenderness-she who had become devoted to
his adoration. What infinite emotion lay hidden
in these two silences, which faced each other in a
kind of embrace; in the double silence of these two
human beings, who, I had observed, never touched each
other, not even with the tips of their fingers.
The girl lifted her head, and said, in an unsteady
voice:
“It is late. I am going to sleep.”
She got up. The lamp, which
she set on the mantelpiece, lit up the room.
She trembled. She seemed to
be in a dream and not to know how to yield to the
dream. Then she raised her arm and took the pins
out of her hair. It fell down her back and looked,
in the night, as if it were lit by the setting sun.
The man made a sudden movement and
looked at her in surprise. Not a word.
She removed a gold brooch from the
top of her blouse, and a bit of her bosom appeared.
“What are you doing, Anna, what are you doing?”
“Why, undressing.”
She wanted to say this in a natural
voice, but had not succeeded. He replied with
an inarticulate exclamation, a cry from his heart,
which was touched to the quick. Stupefaction,
desperate regret, and also the flash of an inconceivable
hope agitated him, oppressed him.
“You are my husband.”
“Oh,” he said, “you
know I am nothing.” He spoke feebly in
a tragic tone. “Married for form’s
sake,” he went on, stammering out fragmentary,
incoherent phrases. “I knew it, I knew
it-formality-our conventions-”
She stopped, with her hand hesitating
on her blouse like a flower, and said:
“You are my husband. It is your right.”
He made a faint gesture of denial. She quickly
corrected herself.
“No, no, it is not your right. I want
to do it.”
I began to understand how kind she
was trying to be. She wished to give this man,
this poor man who was sinking at her feet, a reward
that was worthy of her. She wanted to bestow
upon him the gift of the sight of her body.
But the thing was harder than the
mere bestowal of a gift. It must not look like
the mere payment of a debt. He would not have
consented to that. She must make him believe
it was a voluntary wifely act, a willing caress.
She must conceal her suffering and repugnance like
a vice. Feeling the difficulty of giving this
delicate shade to her sacrifice, she was afraid of
herself.
“No, Anna-dear Anna-think-”
He was going to say, “Think of Michel,”
but he did not have the strength at that moment to
use this one decisive argument, and only murmured,
“You, you!”
“I want to do it,” she repeated.
“But I do not want you to. No, no.”
He said this in a weaker voice now,
overcome by love. Through instinctive nobility,
he covered his eyes with his hand, but gradually his
hand surrendered and dropped.
She continued to undress, with uncertain
movements that showed she hardly knew what she was
doing. She took off her black waist, and her
bust emerged like the day. When the light shone
on her she quivered and crossed her shining arms over
her chest. Then she started to unhook the belt
of her skirt, her arms curved, her reddened face bent
down and her lips tightly compressed, as if she had
nothing in mind but the unhooking of her skirt.
It dropped to the ground and she stepped out of it
with a soft rustle, like the sound the wind makes in
a leafy garden.
She leaned against the mantelpiece.
Her movements were large, majestic, beautiful, yet
dainty and feminine. She pulled off her stockings.
Her legs were round and large and smooth as in a statue
of Michael Angelo’s.
She shivered and stopped, overcome by repugnance.
“I feel a little cold,”
she said in explanation and went on undressing, revealing
her great modesty in violating it.
“Holy Virgin!” the man
breathed in a whisper, so as not to frighten her.
I have never seen a woman so radiantly
beautiful. I had never dreamed of beauty like
it. The very first day, her face had struck me
by its regularity and unusual charm, and her tall
figure-taller than myself- had
seemed opulent, yet delicate, but I had never believed
in such splendid perfection of form.
In her superhuman proportions she
was like some Eve in grand religious frescoes.
Big, soft and supple, broad-shouldered, with a full
beautiful bosom, small feet, and tapering limbs.
In a dreamy voice, going still further
in the bestowal of her supreme gift, she said:
“No one”-she
stressed these words with an emphasis amounting to
the mention of a certain name-“no
one-listen-no one, no matter
what happens, will ever know what I have just done.”
And now she, the giver of a gift,
knelt-knelt to her adorer who was prostrated
before her like a victim. Her shining knees touched
the cheap common carpet. Her chastity clothed
her like a beautiful garment. She murmured broken
words of gratitude, as though she felt that what she
was doing was higher than her duty and more beautiful,
and that it glorified her.
After she dressed and left the room
without their having dared to say anything to each
other, I wavered between two doubts. Was she
right, or was she wrong? I saw the man cry and
I heard him mutter:
“Now I shall not be able to die.”