Journey Into the Past

  However, no sooner had he approached her for the first time than he felt an agreeable sensation as his inner tension relaxed, and even before, as he straightened his back after bowing to her, his eyes took in the face and figure of the woman speaking to him, her words had come irresistibly to his ears. Those first words were “Thank you”, spoken in so frank and natural a tone that they dispersed the dark clouds of ill humour hanging over him and went to his heart as he heard them. “Thank you very much, doctor,” she said, cordially offering him her hand, “for accepting my husband’s invitation in the end. I hope I shall soon be able to show you how extremely grateful to you I myself am. It may not have been easy for you; a man doesn’t readily give up his freedom, but perhaps it will reassure you to know that you have placed two people deeply in your debt. For my part, I will do all I can to make you feel that this house is your home.”

  Something inside him pricked up its ears. How did she know that he had been unwilling to give up his freedom, how was it that her first words went straight to the festering, scarred, sensitive part of his nature, straight to the seat of his nervous terror of losing his independence to become only a hired servant, living here on sufferance? How had she managed to brush all such thoughts of his aside with that first gesture of her hand? Instinctively he looked up at her, and only now was he aware of a warm, sympathetic glance confidently waiting for him to return it.

  There was something serenely gentle, reassuring, cheerfully confident about that face. Her pure brow, still youthfully smooth, radiated clarity, and above it the demurely matronly style in which she parted her hair seemed almost too old for her. Her hair itself was a dark mass falling in deep waves, while the dress around her shapely shoulders and coming up to her throat was also dark, making the calm light in her face seem all the brighter. She resembled a bourgeois Madonna, a little like a nun in her high-necked dress, and there was a maternal kindness in all her movements. Now she gracefully came a step closer, her smile anticipating the thanks on his own faltering lips. “Just one request, my first, and at our first meeting, too. I know that when people who haven’t been acquainted for very long are living in the same house, that’s always a problem, and there’s only one way of dealing with it—honesty. So please, if you feel ill at ease here in any way, if any kind of situation or arrangement troubles you, do tell me about it freely. You are my husband’s private secretary, I am his wife, we are linked by that double duty, so please let us be honest with one another.”

  He took her hand, and the pact was sealed. From that first moment he felt at home in the house. The magnificence of the rooms was no longer a hostile threat to him, indeed on the contrary, he immediately saw it as the essential setting for the elegant distinction that, in this house, muted and made harmonious all that seemed inimical, confused and contradictory outside it. But only gradually did he come to realize how exquisite artistic taste made mere financial value subject to a higher order here, and how that muted rhythm of existence was instinctively becoming part of his own life and his own conversation. He felt curiously reassured—all keen, vehement, passionate emotions became devoid of malice and edginess. It was as if the deep carpets, the tapestries on the walls, the coloured shutters absorbed the brightness and noise of the street, and at the same time he felt that this sense of order did not arise spontaneously, but derived from the presence of the quietly spoken woman whose smile was always so kindly. And the following weeks and months made him pleasantly aware of what he had felt, as if by magic, in those first minutes. With a fine sense of tact, she gradually and without making him feel any compulsion drew him into the inner life of this house. Sheltered but not guarded, he sensed attentive sympathy bent on him as if at a distance; any little wishes of his were granted almost as soon as he had expressed them, and granted so discreetly, as if by household elves, that they made explicit thanks impossible. When he had been leafing through a portfolio of valuable engravings one evening and particularly admired one of them—it happened to be Rembrandt’s Faust—he found a framed reproduction hanging over his desk two days later. If he mentioned that a friend had recommended a certain book, there would be a copy on his bookshelves next day. His room was adapting, as if unconsciously, to his wishes and habits; often he did not notice exactly what details had changed at first, but just felt that the place was more comfortable, warmer, brighter, until he realized, say, that the embroidered Oriental coverlet he had admired in a shop window was covering the ottoman, or the light now shone through a raspberry-coloured silk shade. He liked the atmosphere here better and better for its own sake, and was quite unwilling to leave the house, where he had also become a close friend of a boy of eleven, and greatly enjoyed accompanying him and his mother to the theatre or to concerts. Without his realizing it, all that he did outside his working hours was bathed in the mild moonlight of her calm presence.

  From that first meeting he had loved this woman, but passionately as his feelings surged over him, following him even into his dreams, the crucial factor that would shake him to the core was still lacking—his conscious realization that what, denying his true feelings, he still called admiration, respect and devotion was in fact love—a burning, unbounded, absolute and passionate love. Some kind of servile instinct in him forcibly suppressed that realization; she seemed so distant, too far away, too high above him, a radiant woman surrounded by a circle of stars, armoured by her wealth and by all that he had ever known of women before. It would have seemed blasphemous to think of her as a sexual being, subject to the same laws of the blood as the few other women who had come his way during his youth spent in servitude: the maidservant at the manor house who, just once, had opened her bedroom door to the tutor, curious to see if a man who had studied at university did it the same way as the coachman and the farm labourer; the seamstress he had met in the dim light of the street lamps on his way home. No, this was different. She shone down from another sphere, beyond desire, pure and inviolable, and even in his most passionate dreams he did not venture so far as to undress her. In boyish confusion, he loved the fragrance of her presence, appreciating all her movements as if they were music, glad of her confidence in him and always fearing to show her any of the overwhelming emotion that stirred within him, an emotion still without a name, but long since fully formed and glowing in its place of concealment.

  But love truly becomes love only when, no longer an embryo developing painfully in the darkness of the body, it ventures to confess itself with lips and breath. However hard it tries to remain a chrysalis, a time comes when the intricate tissue of the cocoon tears, and out it falls, dropping from the heights to the farthest depths, falling with redoubled force into the startled heart. That happened quite late, in the second year of his life as one of the household.

  One Sunday the Councillor had asked him to come into his study, and the fact that, unusually for him, he closed the door behind them after a quick greeting, then calling through on the house telephone to say they were not to be disturbed, in itself strongly suggested that something special was about to be communicated. The old man offered him a cigar and lit it with ceremony, as if to gain time before launching into a speech that he had obviously thought out carefully in advance. He began by thanking his assistant at length for his services. In every way, said the Councillor, he had even exceeded his own confident expectations and borne out his personal liking for him; he, the Councillor, had never had cause to regret entrusting even his most intimate business affairs to a man he had known for so short a time. Well, he went on, yesterday important news from overseas had reached the company, and he did not hesitate to tell his assistant at once—the new chemical process, with which he was familiar, called for considerable amounts of certain ores, and the Councillor had just been informed by telegram that large deposits of the metals concerned had been found in Mexico. Swift action was vital if they were to be acquired for the company, and their mining and exploitation must be organized on the spot before any American companies seized this great opportu
nity. That in turn called for a reliable but young and energetic man. To him personally, said the Councillor, it was a painful blow to deprive himself of his trusted and reliable assistant, but when the board of directors met he had thought it his duty to suggest him as the best and indeed the only suitable man for the job. He would feel himself compensated by knowing that he could guarantee him a brilliant future. In the two years it would take to set up the business in Mexico, the young man could not only build up a small fortune for himself, thanks to the large remuneration he would receive, he could also look forward to holding a senior position in the company on his return. “Indeed,” concluded the Councillor, spreading his hands in a congratulatory gesture, “I feel as if I saw you sitting here in my place some day, carrying through to its end the work on which, old as I now am, I embarked three decades ago.”

  Such a proposition, coming suddenly out of a clear sky—how could it not go to an ambitious man’s head? There at last was the door, flung wide as if by the blast of an explosion, showing him the way out of the prison of poverty, the lightless world of service and obedience, away from the constantly obsequious attitude of a man forced to act and think with humility. He gazed avidly at the papers and telegrams before him, seeing hieroglyphics gradually formed into the imposing if still vague contours of this mighty plan. Numbers suddenly came cascading down on him, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions to be managed, accounted for, acquired, the fiery atmosphere of commanding power in which, dazed and with his heart beating fast, he suddenly rose from his dull, subservient sphere of life as if in a dreamlike balloon. And over and above all this, it was not just money on offer, not just business deals and ventures, a game played for high stakes, responsibility—no, something much more alluring tempted him. Here was the chance to fashion events, to be a pioneer. A great task lay ahead, the creative occupation of bringing ore out of the mountains where it had been slumbering for thousands of years in the mindless sleep of stone, of driving galleries into that stone, building towns, seeing houses rise up, roads spread out, putting mechanical diggers to work, and cranes circling in the air. Behind the mere framework of calculations a wealth of fantastic yet vivid images began to form—farmsteads, farmhouses, factories, warehouses, a new part of the world of men where as yet there was nothing, and it would be for him to set it up, directing and regulating operations. Sea air, spiced by the intoxication of all that is far distant, suddenly entered the small, comfortably upholstered study; figures stacked up into a fantastic sum. And in an ever more heated frenzy of exhilaration that gave wings to every decision, he had it all summarized in broad outline, and the purely practical details were agreed. A cheque for a sum he could never have expected was suddenly crackling crisply in his hand, and after the agreement had been reiterated, it was decided that he would leave on the next Southern Line steamer in ten days’ time. Then he had left the Councillor’s study, still heated by the swirl of figures, reeling at the idea of the possibilities that had been conjured up, and once outside the door he stood staring wildly around him for a moment, wondering if the entire conversation could have been a phantasmagoria conjured up by wishful thinking. The space of a wing-beat had raised him from the depths into the sparkling sphere of fulfilment; his blood was still in such turmoil after so stormy an ascent that he had to shut his eyes for a moment. He closed them as one might take a deep breath, simply to be in control again, sensing his inner being more powerfully and as if separated from himself. This state of mind lasted for a minute, but then, as he looked up again refreshed, and his eyes wandered around the familiar room outside the study, they fell as if by chance on a picture hanging over the large chest, and lingered there. It was her portrait. Her picture looked back at him with lips gently closed, curving in a calm smile that also seemed to have a deeper meaning, as if it had understood every word of what was going on inside him. And then, in that second, an idea that he had entirely overlooked until now flashed through his mind—if he took up the position offered to him, it meant leaving this house. My God, he said to himself, leaving her. Like a knife, the thought cut through the proudly swelling sail of his delight. And in that one second of uncontrolled surprise the whole artificially piled edifice of his imaginings collapsed, crushing his heart, and with a sudden painful jolt of the heart muscle he felt how painful, how almost deadly the idea of doing without her was to him. Leaving her, oh God, leaving her—how could he ever have contemplated it, how could he have made that decision as if he still belonged to himself, as if he were not held here, in her presence, by all the bonds of his emotions, their deepest roots? The idea broke out violently, it was elemental, a quivering physical pain, a blow struck through his whole body from the top of his skull to the bottom of his heart, a lightning bolt tearing across the night sky and illuminating everything. And now, in that blinding light, it was impossible not to realize that every nerve and fibre of his being was flowering with love for her, his dear one. No sooner had he silently uttered the magical word love than countless little associations and memories shot sparkling through his mind, with the extraordinary speed that only the utmost alarm can conjure up. Every one of them cast bright light on his feelings, on all the little details that he had never before ventured to admit to himself or understand. And only at this point did he realize how utterly he had been in thrall to her, and for how long—many months now.

  Hadn’t it been during Easter week this year, when she went to stay with her family for three days, that he had paced restlessly from room to room as if lost, unable to read a book, his mind in turmoil, although he could not say why? And on the night when she was to return, hadn’t he stayed up until one in the morning to hear her footsteps? Hadn’t his nervous impatience kept sending him downstairs too soon, to see if the car wasn’t coming yet? He remembered how, when his hand accidentally brushed hers at the theatre, a frisson ran from the touch of their fingers to the back of his neck. Now a hundred such little flashes of memory, trifles of which he had hardly been aware, raced stormily into his mind, into his blood, as if every dam had been breached, and they all made straight for his heart and came together there. Instinctively, he pressed his hand to his chest, where that heart was beating so violently, and now there was no help for it, he could no longer keep from admitting what his diffident and respectful instinct had so carefully managed to obscure for so long—he could not live now away from her presence. To be without that mild light shining on his way for two years, two months, even just two weeks, to enjoy no more of their pleasant conversations in the evenings—no, it was impossible to bear such a thought. And what had filled him with pride only ten minutes earlier, the mission to Mexico, the thought of his rise to have command of creative power, had shrunk within a second, had burst like a sparkling soap bubble. All that it meant now was distance, absence, a dungeon, banishment and exile, annihilation, a deprivation that he could not survive. No, it was impossible—his hand was already moving to the door handle again, he was on the point of going back into the study to tell the Councillor that he wouldn’t do it, to say he felt unworthy of the mission, he would rather stay here. But anxiety spoke up, warning him: not now! He must not prematurely betray a secret that was only just revealing itself to him. And he wearily withdrew his fevered hand from the cool metal.

  Once again he looked at her picture—the glance of her eyes seemed to be gazing ever deeper into him, but he could not see the smile around her mouth any more. Instead, he thought, she looked gravely, almost sadly out of the picture, as if to say, “You wanted to forget me.” He couldn’t bear that painted yet living gaze. He stumbled to his room, sinking on the bed with a strange sensation of horror almost like fainting, but curiously pervaded by a mysterious sweetness. Feverishly, he thought back to all that had happened to him in this house since he first arrived, and everything, even the most insignificant detail, now had a different meaning and appeared in a different light; it was all irradiated by the inner light of understanding, its weight was light as it soared up in the heated air o
f passion. He remembered all the kindness she had shown him. He was still surrounded by it; his eyes looked for the signs of it, he felt the things that her hand had touched, and they all had something of the joy of her presence in them. She was there in those inanimate objects; he sensed her friendly thoughts in them. And that certainty of her goodwill to him overwhelmed him with passion, yet deep below its current something in his nature still resisted, like a stone—there was something left unthought, something not yet cleared out of the way, and it had to be cleared out of the way before his emotions could flow freely. Very cautiously, he made his way towards that dark place in the depths of his emotion, he knew already what it meant, yet he dared not touch it. But the current kept driving him back to that one place, that one question. And it was this: was there not—he dared not say love, but at least liking for him on her part, shown in all those small attentive acts, a mild affection, if without passion, in the way she listened for his presence and showed concern for him? That sombre question went through him, heavy, black waves rose in his blood, breaking again and again, but they could not roll it away. If only I could think clearly, he said to himself, but his thoughts were in too much passionate turmoil, mingling with confused dreams and wishes, and pain was churned up again and again from the uttermost depths of his being. So he lay there on his bed for perhaps an hour or two hours, entirely outside himself, sensations dulled by his numbing mixture of emotions, until suddenly a gentle tapping at his door brought him back to himself. The cautious tapping of slender knuckles; he thought he recognized their touch. He jumped up and ran to the door.