Thus they would live on—laughing, reading books, marveling at gilded fireflies, talking of the flowering walled prison of the world, and he would tell her tales and she would listen, his little Cordelia, and nearby the sea would breathe beneath the moon…. And exceedingly slowly, at first with all the sensitivity of his lips, then in earnest, with all their weight, ever deeper, only thus—for the first time—into your inflamed heart, thus, forcing my way, thus, plunging into it, between its melting edges …
The lady who had been sitting across from him for some reason suddenly got up and went into another compartment; he glanced at the blank face of his wristwatch—it wouldn’t be long now—and then he was already ascending next to a white wall crowned with blinding shards of glass as a multitude of swallows flew overhead.
He was met on the porch by the late person’s friend, who explained the presence of a heap of ashes and charred logs in a corner of the garden by the fact that there had been a fire that night; the firemen had had trouble bringing the raging flames under control, had broken a young apple tree, and of course nobody had gotten any sleep. Just then she came out, in a dark knit dress (in this heat!) with a shiny leather belt, and a chain on her neck, wearing long black stockings, the poor thing, and at this very first instant he had the impression that she was not quite as pretty as before, that she had grown more snub-nosed and leggier. Gloomily, rapidly, with nothing but a feeling of acute tenderness for her mourning, he took her by the shoulder and kissed her warm hair.
“Everything could have caught fire!” she exclaimed, raising her rosily illumined face with the shadows of foliage on her forehead and goggling her eyes, in which shimmered the liquidly transparent reflections of sun and garden.
She contentedly held onto his arm as they entered the house behind its loudly talking mistress—and the spontaneity had already evaporated, already he was awkwardly bending his arm (or was it hers?)—and, at the door to the parlor, where resounded the monologue that had preceded them accompanied by the opening of shutters, he freed his hand and, feigning an absentminded caress (but actually totally engrossed for an instant in a good, firm feel, complete with dimple), he patted her on the hip—as if to say, run along, child—and then he was already sitting down, finding a place for his walking stick, lighting up, looking for an ashtray, saying something in answer to a question, filled all the while with a savage exultation.
He refused tea, explaining that at any moment the car he had ordered at the station would arrive, that it already contained his luggage (this detail, as occurs in dreams, had a certain glimmer of meaning), and that “you and I will be off to the seashore”—which he almost shouted in the direction of the girl who, looking back in mid-step, nearly crashed into a stool, but instantly regained her youthful balance, turned, and sat down, covering the stool with her settling skirt.
“What?” she asked, brushing back her hair with a sidewise glance at the hostess (the stool had already once been broken). He said it again. She joyously raised her eyebrows—she had no idea it would happen like this, today.
“And I was hoping,” lied the hostess, “that you would spend the night with us.”
“Oh, no!” cried the girl, rushing over to him with a parquet slide, and then continued with unexpected rapidity, “Do you think I can learn how to swim soon? A friend of mine says you can, right away, all you have to do is learn not to be afraid first, and that takes a month….” But the woman was already nudging her by the elbow so she would go finish packing, with Maria, the things that had been laid out in the left section of the wardrobe.
“I confess I don’t envy you,” she said, turning over her tutelage, after the child had run out. “Lately, especially after her flu, she’s been having all kinds of outbursts and tantrums; the other day she was rude to me—it’s a difficult age. All in all I think it would be a good thing if you hired some young woman to look after her and, in the fall, found her a good Catholic boarding school. As you can see, the death of her mother has not been too much of a shock to her—of course, she may be holding it in, for all I know. Our shared existence is over with…. By the way, I still owe you… No, no, I won’t hear of it, I insist…. Oh, he doesn’t get home from work till around seven—he’ll be very disappointed…. That’s life, what can you do. At least she has found her peace in Heaven, poor thing, and you are looking better too…. If it hadn’t been for our encounter… I simply don’t see how I could have kept supporting someone else’s child, and as for orphanages, they lead directly you know where. That’s why I always say—you never know in life. Remember that day, on the bench—remember? It never occurred to me she could find a second husband, and yet my feminine intuition told me that something in you was longing for just that kind of refuge.”
A car materialized behind the foliage. In we get! The familiar black cap, coat over her arm, a small suitcase, help from red-handed Maria. Just wait, you’ll see the things I’ll buy for you…. She insisted on sitting next to the driver, and he had to consent, concealing his chagrin. The woman, whom we shall never see again, was waving good-bye with an apple-tree branch. Maria was shooing the chicks in. We’re off, we’re off.
He sat leaning back, holding his stick—a very valuable, antique thing with a thick coral head—between his knees, gazing through the glass partition at the beret and the contented shoulders. The weather was exceptionally warm for June, a stream of heat rushed in through the window, and soon he took off his tie and unbuttoned his collar.
After an hour the girl looked around at him (she was pointing at something beside the road but, although he turned, open-mouthed, he was too late to see anything—and, for some reason, with no logical connection, the thought crossed his mind that there was, after all, an age difference of nearly thirty years). At six they stopped for ice cream, while the talkative chauffeur drank beer at the next table, sharing various considerations with his client.
On we go. He looked at the forest that kept approaching in undulating hops from hillside to hillside until it slid down an incline and tripped over the road, where it was counted and stored away. “Shall we take a break here?” he wondered. “We could have a short walk, sit for a while on the moss among the mushrooms and the butterflies….” But he could not bring himself to stop the chauffeur: there was something unbearable about the idea of a suspicious car standing idle on the highway.
Then it got dark and their headlights imperceptibly came on. They stopped for dinner at the first roadside eatery, the philosophizer again sprawled nearby, and seemed to be glancing over less at his employer’s steak and potato croquettes than at the profile of the hair screening her face and at her exquisite cheek…. My darling is tired and flushed from the trip, the rich meat course, the drop of wine. The sleepless night with the rosy glow of the fire in the darkness is taking its toll, her napkin is slipping off the soft hollow of her skirt…. And now all this is mine…. He asked if they had rooms available—no, they did not.
In spite of her increasing lassitude she resolutely refused to exchange her seat in front for support in the car’s cosy depths, saying she would get carsick in back. At last, at last, lights began ripening and bursting amid the hot, black void, a hotel was immediately selected and the agonizing journey paid for, and that part was done with. She was half asleep as she crawled out onto the sidewalk, halting numbly amid the bluish, coarse-grained darkness, the warm burnt fragrance, the roar and throb of two, three, four trucks taking advantage of the deserted nighttime street to descend with appalling speed from behind a bend that concealed a whining, straining, grinding upgrade.
A short-legged, macrocephalous old fellow in an unbuttoned waistcoat—sluggish, dawdling, explaining at length and with guilty benevolence that he was only standing in for the owner who was his eldest son and who had had to leave to attend to family matters—searched for a long time in a black book, then announced that he did not have a free room with twin beds (there was a flower show in town, and many visitors) but that there was one with a double bed,
“which amounts to the same thing, you and your daughter will be even more—” “All right, all right,” interrupted the traveler, as the hazy child stood off by herself, blinking and trying to focus her languishing gaze on a doubling cat.
They headed upstairs. The help apparently went to bed early, or else they were absent too. Meanwhile, the stooping, groaning gnome tried one key after another; an old woman with curly gray hair, in azure pajamas, her face tanned to a nutlike hue, emerged from the toilet next door with an admiring glance at this tired, pretty girl in the obedient pose of tender victim, whose dark dress stood out against the ocher of the wall where she leaned her shoulderblades, her tousled head thrown slightly back and slowly turning from side to side, and her eyelids twitching as though she were trying to unravel her excessively thick lashes. “Come on, get it open,” irritably said her father, a balding gentleman, also a tourist.
“Is this where I’m going to sleep?” the girl asked indifferently, and when, struggling with the shutters, squeezing tight their eyelike chinks, he replied affirmatively, she took a look at the cap she was holding and limply tossed it on the wide bed.
“There we are,” said he after the old man had dragged in their suitcases and left, and there remained in the room only the pounding of his heart and the distant throbbing of the night. “There, now it’s time for bed.”
Reeling with sleepiness, she bumped into the corner of an armchair, at which point he, simultaneously sitting down in it, took her by the hip and drew her close. She straightened, stretching up like an angel, for a split second tensed every muscle, took another half step, and softly descended onto his lap. “My sweetheart, my poor little girl,” he spoke in a kind of general mist of pity, tenderness, and desire, as he observed her drowsiness, her wooziness, her diminishing smile, palpating her through the dark dress, feeling, through the thin wool, the band of the orphan’s garter on her bare skin, thinking how defenseless, abandoned, warm she was, reveling in the animate weight of her legs as they slithered apart and then, with the faintest corporeal rustle, recrossed at a slightly higher level. She slowly entwined a somnolent arm, in its snug little sleeve, around his nape, engulfing him with the chestnut fragrance of her soft hair, but her arm slid down, and she sleepily nudged with the sole of her sandal the bag standing next to the armchair…. A rumbling approached and receded beyond the window. Then, in the silence, the whine of a mosquito became audible, and for some reason it evoked a fleeting memory of something infinitely remote, late bedtimes in his childhood, a dissolving lamp, the hair of his sister, his coeval, who had died long, long ago. “My sweetheart,” he repeated, and, nuzzling a curl out of the way, cuddling mussily, he tasted, exerting almost no pressure, her hot silky neck near the chill of the chain; then, taking her by the temples so that her eyes lengthened and narrowed, he began kissing her parting lips, her teeth…. She slowly wiped her mouth with bent knuckles, her head collapsed onto his shoulder, and between her eyelids there showed only a narrow, sunset-hued luster, for she was virtually asleep.
There was a knock at the door. He gave a violent start (hurriedly withdrawing his hand from her belt without having figured out how to unhook it). “Wake up, get off,” he said, giving her a quick shake. She opened her vacant eyes wide and slithered down over the hummock of his knee. “Come in,” he said.
The old fellow peeked in and announced that the gentleman was wanted downstairs, that there was somebody from the police station to see him.
“The police?” he asked, grimacing with bewilderment. “The police?… All right, you can go—I’ll be right down,” he added without getting up. He lit a cigarette, blew his nose and carefully refolded his handkerchief, squinting through the smoke. “Listen,” he said before going out, “your bag is over here. I’ll open it for you and you take out whatever you need, get undressed and go to bed in the meantime. The bathroom is the first door on the left.”
“Why the police?” he thought as he descended the badly lit staircase. “What do they want?”
“What’s the matter?” he asked sharply upon reaching the entrance hall and seeing an already restive gendarme, a swarthy giant with a cretin’s eyes and chin.
“The matter,” came the willing answer, “is that apparently you’ll have to accompany me to the police station—it’s not far.”
“Near or far,” spoke the traveler after a brief pause, “it’s after midnight, and I was getting ready for bed. Moreover, please be advised that any deduction, especially such a dynamic one, is a cry in the woods to an ear unfamiliar with the previous train of thought, or, to put it more simply, what is logical gets construed as being zoological. Besides, a globetrotter freshly and for the first time arrived in your hospitable little town would be curious to know your basis—some local custom, perhaps—for selecting the middle of the night to extend an invitation, an invitation that is all the more unacceptable because I am not alone but have a weary little girl with me. No, wait, I’m not through yet…. Who ever heard of justice putting the enforcement of a law first and the grounds for its application second? Wait for some accusations, gentlemen, wait for somebody to lodge a little complaint! For the time being, my neighbor cannot see through the wall, and the chauffeur cannot scrutinize my soul. In conclusion—and perhaps most important—be so kind as to acquaint yourself with my papers.”
The now befuddled dimwit acquainted himself, came to his senses, and went to work on the unlucky old man. It turned out that the latter not only had confused two similar names, but was unable to explain when and for what destination the desired drifter had departed.
“All right, all right,” said the traveler peaceably, having vented his vexation for the delay entirely on his too hasty foe, and fully aware of his own invulnerability (thank Doom she did not sit in the back of the car; thank Doom they did not go mushroom-hunting in the June sun—and, of course, that the shutters were tight).
Reaching the landing at a run, he realized he had not noted the room number, paused in hesitation, spat out the butt of his cigarette…. Now, however, the impatience of his emotions kept him from going back down for information, and besides it was unnecessary—he recalled the arrangement of the doors in the corridor. He found the right door, licked his chops, grabbed the doorknob, was about to—
The door was locked; he felt a horrid pang in the pit of his stomach. If she had locked herself in, it was to keep him out, it meant she was suspicious…. Shouldn’t have kissed her like that… Must have frightened her off, or she may have noticed something… Or the reason was sillier and simpler: she had naively decided that he had gone to bed in another room, it had not even entered her mind that she would be sleeping in the same room with a stranger—yes, still a stranger. And he knocked, as yet scarcely aware himself of the intensity of his alarm and irritation.
He heard some abrupt female laughter, the repulsive exclamation of bedsprings, and then the slap-slap of bare feet. “Who is it?” asked an angry male voice….“Wrong room, eh? Well, next time please find the right room. There’s somebody in here hard at work, there’s somebody in here trying to train a young person, that somebody is being interrupted….” Another burst of laughter resounded in the background.
A vulgar mistake, nothing more. He continued along the corridor—and suddenly realized he was on the wrong landing. He retraced his steps, turned the corner, cast a puzzled look at a meter on the wall, at a sink beneath a dripping faucet, at somebody’s tan shoes outside a door, turned again—the staircase had vanished! The one he finally found turned out to be different: he went down only to lose his way in some faintly lit storage rooms where stood trunks and, from the corners, now a cabinet, now a vacuum cleaner, now a broken stool, now the skeleton of a bed protruded with an air of fatality. He swore under his breath, losing control, exasperated by these obstacles…. At last he reached a door and gave it a shove, banged his head on a low lintel, and ducked out into the entrance hall next to a dimly illuminated nook, where, scratching the bristles of his cheek, the old man was peeri
ng into his black book, and the gendarme snored on a bench next to him—every bit as in a guardroom. Getting the needed information was a matter of one minute, slightly prolonged by the old man’s apologies.
He went in. He went in and first of all, before he looked at anything, stooping furtively, turned the key twice in the lock. Then he saw the black stocking with its elastic under the washstand. Then he saw the opened suitcase containing an incipient disorder, and a waffle-textured towel half extracted by its ear. Then he saw the dress and underwear heaped on the armchair, the belt, the other stocking. Only then did he turn toward the island of the bed.
She was lying supine atop the undisturbed blanket, with her left arm behind her head, in her little robe, whose lower part had fallen open—she had not been able to find her nightgown—and, by the light of the reddish lampshade, through the haze and stuffiness of the room, he could see her narrow, concave belly between the innocent, projecting hipbones. With the roar of cannon fire a truck ascended from the bottom of the night, a glass tinkled on the marble top of the night table, and it was strange to see how her enchanted slumber flowed evenly past everything.
Tomorrow of course we’ll begin at the beginning with a carefully pondered progression, but for now you’re asleep, you’re extraneous, don’t interfere with grown-ups, this is how it must be, it’s my night, it’s my business. He undressed, lay down to the left of the captive, rocking her ever so slightly, and froze, cautiously catching his breath. So. The hour he had deliriously desired for a full quarter century had finally come, yet it was shackled, even cooled by the cloud of his bliss. The flow and ebb of her light-colored robe, mingling with revelations of her beauty, still quivered before his eyes, intricately rippled as if seen through cut glass. He simply could not find the focal point of happiness, did not know where to begin, what one could touch, and how, within the realm of her repose, in order to savor this hour to the fullest. So. To start with, proceeding with clinical caution, he removed from his wrist the walleye of time and, reaching over her head, placed it on the bedside table between a glistening drop of water and the empty glass.