Woman Part 23

My aunt rose slowly. I saw her hands on the table knotted like a tangle of cords.

"Don't get excited. Your family received bad news, I don't know from what source. I asked them if it was official. They were all half crazy--afraid to come and tell you.... I always felt an affection for you, you know...."

"Yes, yes, I understand; he's dead."

There she still stood, her knotted hands on the table, a grin widening her flat features. There she still stood.

"Aunt, please leave me alone, please do."

Perhaps she went on talking a little, perhaps she leaned over to kiss me, perhaps I heard words falling from her lips like pellets of lead: "country--trial--sacrifice." The door closed upon my slaughtered love.

I know I tried to stand up--it was like trying to lift a tombstone--and drag myself to the window to lean my forehead on the pane; but something pulled at me from deep within, something cold and incomprehensible, like a slimy slug, like a deep gash in living flesh. And a strange dizziness, not entirely physical, threw me back into the armchair.

The walls of this black hissing pit into which I fell were the walls of my dining-room, the very same walls papered in a scallop design, and I saw a cloud of tiny coal-black b.u.t.terflies, mere specks, whirl without end from the blackened lamp-chimney.

My being turned into something enormous and gaping, which fed constantly upon a great wound. I was so overwhelmed with a senseless horror that at moments during the night his death seemed quite normal and natural. But when I withdrew my hand from under my head a mult.i.tude of serpents wriggled about within me, and I felt suffocated again and began to tumble through emptiness, while little pointed teeth bit my blood and left behind a penetrating icy poison.

It has ever been the same, Lord G.o.d. Suffering is too monotonous....

When a bit of sense and ordinary life returned and cried in my ears: "It is over. Never more," I felt that suffering is too monotonous; and when a clamor of revolt sounded in my being: "They have killed him!" I felt that suffering is too monotonous.

And when the dawn came tapping at the window and creeping toward the table, drab and livid, when I rose from my bruised knees, and when the humming and buzzing began in the indifferent house, I still felt that suffering is too monotonous.

IX

Your beloved is dead.

News that comes from the depths of the ages or the depths of the flesh; you can't tell.

One day--there--a clap of thunder. It bursts from your flesh and tries to enter your flesh again. It beats at the portals of your heart, besieges your ears, howls round your entrails, but there is no place for it, no part of your body wants it, your soul retreats to shelter, your heart drips black blood, your mind goes round and round. News, News!

Your beloved is dead!

No need for the thunder to break. I knew it was brewing in me.

When we used to come back from work and I kissed him with this very mouth and embraced him with these very arms, pressing him so hard that he laughed sometimes, it was premonition of the News that kept my lips sealed to his cheek so long, and turned my arms into iron clutches, and gave me warning when I woke up, and frightened me in the dark.

We used to talk about it and try to imagine what separation by death would be like. "If I die, if you die." We wanted to provide against it, we had accepted it.

My beloved, the knowledge of misfortune is not the misfortune itself; the knowledge of death is not death itself. When we were together we never imagined I should suffer so much. When people are together, they can't imagine what it is to be alone.

It is like childbirth over again, I a.s.sure you: I remember your face when I shrieked in travail. I am more torn now, and you are not here to hold my hands.

Why do they all say suffering is necessary and enn.o.bling? I can testify that suffering doesn't do any good.

I used to be a gay, active woman, who went about with chest expanded, a body full of pleasure, lips like kisses, and cheeks alive with color. I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and stay up until late at night. After the day's work in the evening I'd say "to-morrow" as if antic.i.p.ating the loveliest day in the world. I had poverty, laughter, an appet.i.te, I had a perfect union with another, and I maintain that this counts. I led a life according to my own will; I had a bright child. I had all this, I _was_ all this, this was my lot....

To-day I am a woman whose eyes are swollen and corroded with salt tears, whose features are sharpened, whose shoulders stoop, whose black dress bags on her reduced figure, whose eyes are turned inward, whose house is untidy and whose evenings drop into darkness without the lamplight. My little one has to call me.... I love him without a smile, and as for myself, I hate myself.

I used to try to be kind and make it pleasant for people in my home. I am like a thistle withered on its stem, I am like a fruit cut open and thrown out on the street. I am useless and bitter--I am bad.

When people come to me, I feel the p.r.i.c.king of their thorns, and I wallow in gall. They are all enveloped in an awful respect for death. It revolts me.

My family comes to visit me, each one of them chockful of advice and dropping honied words.... Yet I was more worthwhile when I was happy.

Why didn't they incline themselves when there was still time? They seem to send up a cry of relief. "At last! You're suffering! At last a person can approach you!" They console me and lull me; they are crows quarreling over the remains of a charnel-house.

But when they have the effrontery to extol his virtues, it is too much; my grief springs to the attack. The idea! They hated him while he lived!

Keep quiet, don't insult him! I wish to be alone with the knowledge that he is dead.

But I don't utter a word; grief has lips of stone; I keep my secret locked within me while seeming to listen to them. I sit in front of the fire, my hair loose, my forehead drawn, watching the flames blaze and the embers fall. After all, their presence, their footsteps pawing the silence, mean only a little additional pain. Time pa.s.ses, and they're sure to go eventually.

Has the door closed on them? I don't know. I can hardly move.

I am alone with you, my knees clasped in my hands, while the castle in the fire slowly crumbles on its gray dust.

Some mourners at least have the consolation of mourning real dead--real dead whom they have seen stiffen into death, whose last words they have received, whose last agonies they have tried to soothe, for whom they have done everything they could.

But you, beloved, are you dead? I don't even know. "Fallen on the field of honor?" What does that mean? Was it in the evening or the morning?

Were you alone? Did you cry out? Did you suffer terribly? Did you open your eyes once more? Perhaps you couldn't, perhaps you called and called for me? Perhaps you thought I should have come? Ah yes, I should have been there; it is my fault. I have always cured you, you know I have. I simply had to hold your head in my hands and your pain was eased.

But I didn't die--I didn't die at the moment of your death, that moment too frightful to speak of. I didn't die when life was drowned in your mouth. We knew the whole truth concerning each other, yet when you were dying I may have been smiling.

For fifteen nights, fifteen days, fifteen years my heart has been crying that you are dead and that it has lost the hope of ever seeing you again in your clothes exactly as you used to look, with that manner of yours.... Fifteen days since I have been trying to learn again, begin all over again, and call everything into question again. Fifteen days of impotence. I see only what is.

There is earth on your hands, on your eyes, on every part of your body wherever it may be. Your feet are cold and gray like the feet of a pauper, your skin is bloated, worms are preying upon you. I don't want to--I cannot see you as you are. When I think of you I have a false vision of your living self with your cheeks of the color of life and your dear natural gestures. How can I help being all bewildered? Nothing is left. Even the memory of you changes from day to day. I can no longer recall the right tone of your voice. Your corpse is hidden. It is as if I were suffering for no reason at all.

Not to know how to suffer, perhaps that is what suffering is.... Not to divine where you are, is that your death?

The sparkling hearth-fire has scattered and gone out. Fire has devoured fire. A few embers reddening here and there, a porous heap of fanciful firebrands.

And now, and now, my beloved, if I no longer see you, I do see the consuming truth. I see it and here it is: I let you go. I consented.

There's no doubt of it, it was _I_ who killed you....

X

I felt a great need for fresh air and light. What the nature of this hunger and thirst was I cannot tell.... The suns.h.i.+ne suddenly lighted up the window-frame. Its golden rays coming through the open cas.e.m.e.nt and falling obliquely upon the objects in my room filled it with numerous fires. It was a salute.

To be out of doors, to walk, to feel the sun on my skin!

I had a letter to mail. The thought of it brought me to my feet, impatient, ready.

Should I take the little one along? But how about a good long walk, the semblance of distraction?... I decided to go alone.

With my eyes close to the image in the mirror, I powdered my face and puffed my hair on each side under my hat as I used to do. How the least prinking helps a woman! Instead of the really ugly pointed little face smeared with pallor, which, without arousing my shame, had visibly lengthened these past weeks, there was a face of warm, even whiteness and of an oval not so p.r.o.nounced, eyes which, even if dark-rimmed, had lost their fixity, and a shower of red tendrils like coppery breaths blown on my forehead.

The early spring was making itself felt. A raw wind was raising the dust of the streets. a.s.sailed at the first step by the blue, dancing, swirling air, I walked falteringly, like a prisoner who has just been released and doesn't know where to turn.

Everything the same. The old bridge still stretching its badly joined planks from the paved street to the road where the wistaria bloomed. The patched, mossy roof of the old wash-house a few steps from the mill still displaying its dog's-eared edges. The same vistas across the green breaches between the houses.