But after a few minutes I heard loud shouts from the water: “Come on, Roland! We’re having a swimming race! A swimming competition! A diving competition!” I stayed put; I felt as if I could lie like this for a thousand years, my skin gently warmed as the sun fell on it and at the same time cooled by the tenderly caressing breeze. But again I heard laughter, and the lecturer’s voice: “He’s on strike! We’ve really worn him out! You go and fetch the lazy fellow.” And sure enough, I could hear someone splashing towards me, and then, from very close, her voice: “Come on, Roland! It’s a swimming race! Let’s show those two!” I didn’t answer, I enjoyed making her look for me. “Where are you, then?” The gravel crunched, I heard bare feet running along the beach in search of me, and suddenly there she was, her wet swimming costume clinging to her boyishly slender body. “Oh, there you are, you lazy thing! Come along, lazybones, the others have almost reached the island.” But I lay at ease on my back, stretching idly. “It’s much nicer here. I’ll follow later.”
“He won’t come in,” she laughed, calling through her cupped hand in the direction of the water. “Then push the show-off in!” shouted the lecturer’s voice back from afar. “Oh, do come on,” she urged me impatiently, “don’t let me down!” But I just yawned lazily. Then, in mingled jest and annoyance, she broke a twig off the bush as a switch. “Come on!” she repeated energetically, striking me a playful blow on the arm to encourage me. I started—she had hit too hard, and a thin red mark like blood ran over my arm. “Well, I’m certainly not coming now,” I said, both joking and slightly angry myself. But at this, sounding really cross, she commanded: “Come on, will you! This minute!” And when, defiantly, I did not move, she struck another blow, harder this time, a sharp and burning stroke. All at once I jumped up angrily to snatch the switch away from her, she retreated, but I seized her arm. Involuntarily, as we wrestled for possession of the switch, our half-naked bodies came close.
And when I seized her arm and twisted the wrist to make her drop it, and she bent far back trying to evade me, there was a sudden snapping sound—the buckle holding the shoulder strap of her swimming costume had come apart, the left cup fell from her bare breast, and its erect red nipple met my eye. I could not help looking, just for a second, but I was cast into a state of confusion—trembling and ashamed, I let go of the hand I had been clutching. She turned away, blushing, to perform a makeshift repair on the broken buckle with a hairpin. I stood there at a loss for words. She was silent too. And from that moment on there was an awkward, suppressed uneasiness between the two of us.
“Hallo … hallo … where are you both?” the voices came echoing over from the little island. “Just coming,” I replied quickly, and glad to escape more embarrassment I threw myself vigorously into the water. A couple of diving strokes, the inspiring pleasure of driving myself forward through the water, the clarity and cold of the unfeeling element, and already that dangerous murmuring and hissing in my blood receded, as if washed away by a stronger, purer pleasure. I soon caught up with the other two, challenged the lecturer, who was not a very strong athlete, to a series of competitions in which I emerged the victor, and then we swam back to the little tongue of land where my teacher’s wife, who had stayed behind and was already dressed again, was waiting to organize a cheerful picnic unpacked from the baskets we had brought along. But exuberant as the light-hearted conversation was between the four of us, we two involuntarily avoided speaking to each other directly—we talked and laughed as if ignoring one another. And when our glances did meet we hastily looked away again, in an unspoken complicity of feeling: the embarrassment of the little incident had not yet ebbed away, and each of us sensed, ashamed and uneasy, that the other was remembering it too.
The rest of the afternoon passed quickly, with more rowing on the lake, but the heat of our enthusiasm for sport increasingly gave way to a pleasant weariness: the wine, the warmth, the sun we had soaked up gradually seeped further into our blood, making it flow redder than before. The lecturer and his girlfriend were already allowing themselves little familiarities which the two of us were obliged to watch with a certain embarrassment; they moved closer and closer to each other while we kept our distance all the more scrupulously; but the fact that we were two couples was particularly evident when the pair of them lagged behind on the woodland path, obviously to kiss undisturbed, and when we two were left alone awkwardness inhibited our conversation. In the end all four of us were glad to be back in the train, the engaged couple looking forward to an evening together, we happy to escape an embarrassing situation.
The lecturer and his girlfriend accompanied us home. We all went upstairs together, and no soon were we inside than I once more felt the tormenting premonition of his presence, the presence for which I confusedly yearned. “Oh, if only he were back!” I thought impatiently. And just as if she had divined the sigh which did not quite rise from my lips, she said: “Let’s see if he’s back yet.”
We went in. The place was quiet. Everything in his study was still abandoned; unconsciously, my agitated feelings imagined his oppressed, tragic figure in the empty chair. But the sheets of paper lay untouched, waiting as I was waiting myself. Then bitterness returned: why had he fled, why had he left me alone? Jealous rage rose more and more grimly within me, once again I dully felt my foolishly confused desire to do something to harm him, something hateful.
His wife had followed me. “You’ll stay to supper, I hope? You ought not to be alone today.” How did she know I was afraid of my empty room, of the creaking of the stairs, of brooding over my memories? She always did guess everything going on in me, every unspoken thought, every ignoble desire.
A kind of fear came over me, a fear of myself and the vague turmoil of hatred within me, and I wanted to refuse. But cravenly, I did not venture to say no.
I have always had a horror of adultery, but not for any self-righteous moral reasons, not out of prudery and convention, not so much because taking possession of a strange body is theft committed in the dark, but because almost every woman will give away her husband’s most intimate secrets at such moments—every one of them is a Delilah stealing his most human secret from the man she is deceiving and casting it before a stranger, the secret of his strength or of his weakness. The betrayal, it seems to me, is not that a woman gives herself of her own free will but that then, to justify herself, she will uncover her husband’s loins and expose him unknown to himself, as if in his sleep, to the curiosity of another man, and to scornfully relished laughter.
It is not, therefore, that when confused by blind and angry desperation I took refuge in his wife’s first sympathetic and only then tender embrace—ah, how fatefully swift is the move from one feeling to the other—it is not what I still feel today was the worst thing I ever did in my life (for it happened in spite of ourselves, we both plunged unconsciously, unknowingly, into those burning depths), but the fact that among the tumbled pillows I let her tell me intimate details of him, that I allowed her, all on edge as she was herself, to give away the innermost secrets of her marriage. Why did I suffer her, without repelling her, to tell me that he had not touched her physically for years, and to indulge in dark hints: why did I not command her to keep silent over this most intimate core of his being? But I was so eager to know his secret myself, so anxious to feel that he had injured me, her, everyone, that I dizzily accepted her angry confession of his neglect of her—after all, it was so like the sense of rejection I had felt myself! And so it was that the two of us, out of a shared and confused hatred, performed an act that looked like love, but while our bodies sought each other and came together we were both thinking and speaking of him all the time, of nothing but him. Sometimes what she said hurt me, and I was ashamed to be involved with what I disliked. But my body no longer obeyed my will, and instead wildly sought its own pleasure. Shuddering, I kissed the lips which were betraying the person I most loved.
Next morning I crept up to my room, the bitter flavour of disgust and shame in
my mouth. Now that the warmth of her body no longer troubled my senses I felt the glaring reality, the repulsive nature of my betrayal. I knew at once that I would never again be able to look him in the face, never again take his hand—I had robbed myself, not him, of what meant most to me.
There was only one solution now: flight. Feverishly I packed all my things, piled my books into a stack, paid my landlady—he must not find me again, I must disappear from his life, mysteriously and for no apparent reason, just as he had disappeared from mine.
But amidst all this activity my hand suddenly froze. I had heard the creaking of the wooden stairs, footsteps coming rapidly up the steps—his footsteps.
I must have turned white as a sheet, for as soon as he entered he reacted with horror. “What’s the matter with you, my boy? Are you unwell?”
I retreated. I flinched away from him as he was about to come closer and offer me a helping hand.
“What on earth is the matter?” he asked in alarm. “Has something happened to you? Or … or are you still angry with me?”
I clung convulsively to the window frame. I could not look at him. His sympathetic, warm voice tore something like a wound open in me—close to fainting, I felt it well up in me, hot, very hot, burning and consuming, a glowing flood of shame.
He too stood there in surprise and confusion. And suddenly, with his voice very faint, hesitant and low, he whispered an odd question: “Has … has someone … been telling you something about me?”
Without turning to him, I made a gesture of denial. But some anxious idea seemed to be uppermost in his mind, and he repeated doggedly: “Tell me—admit it … has anyone been telling you something about me? Anyone—I’m not asking who.”
I denied it again. He stood there at a loss. But suddenly he seemed to have noticed that my bags were packed, my books stacked together, and saw that his arrival had just interrupted my preparations to leave. Agitated, he came up to me. “You mean to go away, Roland, I can see you do … tell me the truth.”
Then I pulled myself together. “I must go away … forgive me, I can’t talk about it … I’ll write to you.” My constricted throat could utter no more, and my heart thudded with every word.
He stood quite still. Then, suddenly, that familiar weariness of his came over him. “It may be better this way, Roland … yes, of course, it is … for you, for everyone. But before you leave I would like to talk to you once more. Come at seven, at our usual time, and we’ll say goodbye man to man. No flight from ourselves, though, no letters … that would be childish and unworthy … and what I would like to tell you is not for pen and paper. You will come, won’t you?”
I only nodded. My gaze still dared not move from the window. But I saw none of the brightness of the morning any more; a dense, dark veil had dropped between me and the world.
At seven I entered that beloved room for the last time: early dusk filtered dimly through the portières, the smooth stone of the marble statues scarcely gleamed from the back of the room, and the books slumbered, black behind the mother-of-pearl shimmer of the glass doors over the bookcase. Ah, secret place of my memories, where the word became magical to me and I knew the intoxication and enchantment of the intellect as nowhere else—I always see you as you were at that hour of farewell, and I still see the venerated figure slowly, slowly rising from his chair and approaching me, a shadowy form, only the curved brow gleaming like an alabaster lamp in the dim light, and the white hair of an old man waving above it like drifting smoke. Now a hand, raised with difficulty, was proffered and sought mine, now I saw the eyes turned gravely towards me, and felt my arm gently taken as he led me back to the place where he was sitting.
“Sit down, Roland, and let us talk frankly. We are men and must be honest. I won’t press you—but would it not be better for this last hour to bring full clarity between us? So tell me, why do you want to leave? Are you angry with me for that thoughtless insult?”
I made a gesture of denial. How terrible to think that he, the man betrayed, the man deceived, was still trying to take the blame on himself !
“Have I done you some other injury, consciously or unconsciously? I know I am sometimes rather strange.
And I have irritated and tormented you against my own will. I have never thanked you enough for all your support—I know it, I know it, I have always known it, even in those moments when I hurt you. Is that the reason—tell me, Roland, for I would like us to part from one another with honesty.”
Once again I shook my head: I could not speak. His voice had been firm; now it became a little unsteady.
“Or … let me ask you again … has anyone told you anything about me, anything that you think base … repulsive … anything that … that makes you despise me?”
“No! No, no!” The protest burst from me like a sob: did he think I could despise him? I despise him!
His voice now grew impatient. “Then what is it? What else can it be? Are you tired of the work? Or does something else make you want to go? A woman … is it a woman?”
I said nothing. And that silence was probably so different in nature that he felt in it the positive answer to his question. He leaned closer and whispered very softly, but without agitation, without any agitation or anger at all:
“Is it a woman? Is it … my wife?”
I was still silent, and he understood. A tremor ran through my body: now, now, now he would burst out, attack me, strike me, chastise me … and I almost wanted him to whip me, the thief, the deceiver, whip me like a mangy dog from his desecrated home. But strangely, he remained entirely still … and he sounded almost relieved when he murmured as if to himself: “I might have known it.” He paced up and down the room a couple of times. Then he stopped in front of me and said, as it seemed to me, almost dismissively:
“And that … that is what you take so hard? Didn’t she tell you that she is free to do as she likes, take what she likes, that I have no rights over her? No right to forbid her anything, nor the least desire to do so … And why, for whose sake, should she have controlled herself, and for you of all people … you are young, you are bright, beautiful … you were close to us, how could she not love you, such a beautiful young man, how could she help but love you? For I …” Suddenly his voice began to falter, and he leaned close, so close that I felt his breath. Again I sensed the warm embrace of his gaze, again I saw that strange light in his eyes, just as it had been before in those rare and strange moments between us. He came ever closer.
And then he whispered softly, his lips hardly moving: “For I love you too.”
Did I start? Did I show involuntary alarm? My body must have made some movement of surprise or evasion, for he flinched back like a man rejected. A shadow fell over his face. “Do you despise me now?” he asked very quietly. “Am I repulsive to you?”
Why could I find nothing to say? Why did I simply sit there in silence, unlovingly, embarrassed, numbed, instead of going to the man who loved me and disabusing him of his mistaken fear? But all the memories were in wild turmoil within me; as if a cipher had suddenly solved the coded language of those incomprehensible messages, I now understood it all with terrible clarity: his tender approaches and his brusque defensiveness—shattered, I understood that visit in the night and his grimly determined flight from the passion I so enthusiastically pressed on him. Yes, I had always felt the love in him, tender and timid, now surging out, now forcibly inhibited again, I had loved and enjoyed it in the radiance fleetingly falling on me—yet as the word love now came from his bearded mouth, a sensuously tender sound, horror both sweet and terrible entered my mind. And much as I burned in humility and in pity for him, confused, trembling, shattered boy that I was, I could find nothing to say in answer to his unexpected revelation of his passion.
He sat there crushed, staring at my silence. “It seems to you so terrible, then, so terrible,” he murmured. “You too … you will not forgive me either, you to whom I have kept my mouth so firmly closed that I almost choked—from whom I
have hidden myself as from no one else … but it’s better for you to know it now, and then it will no longer weigh on my mind. It was too much for me anyway … oh, far too much … an end is better, better than such silence and concealment.”