Kien had this sentence firmly fixed in his head. But as an answer to his violent attack, it disturbed him greatly. Quickly he compared the dates to see if they fitted. When he was fifteen he had been secretly devouring book after book, much against his mother's will, by day at school, and by night under the bedclothes, with a tiny pocket torch foi sole wretched illumination. When his younger brother George, set to watch by his mother, woke up by chance during the night, he never failed to pull the bedclothes off him, experimentally. The fate of his reading programme for the ensuing nights depended on the speed with which he could conceal torch and book underneath his body. At thirty he was fixed in the path of knowledge. Professorial chairs he rejected with contempt. He might have lived comfortably on the income from his paternal inheritance. He preferred to spend the capital on books. In a few more years, three perhaps, it would all be spent. He never even dreamed of the threatening future, he did not fear it. He was forty. Until this day he had never known a doubt. But he could not get over The Trousers of Herr von Bredow. He was not yet sixty, otherwise his ears would have been opened. But to whom should he open them?
Confucius came a step closer to him, as if he had guessed the question, bowed, although Kien was at least two heads taller, and gave him the following confidential advice:
'Observe the manner of men's behaviour, observe the motives of their actions, examine those things in which they find pleasure. How can anyone conceal himself! How can anyone conceal himself!'
Then Kien grew very sad. What had it availed him to know these words by heart? They should be applied, proved, confirmed. For eight long years he had had a human being in the closest proximity, and all for nothing. I knew how she behaved, he thought, I never thought of her motives. I knew what she did for my books. I had the evidence of it daily before my eyes. I thought, she did it for money. Now that I know what she takes pleasure in, I know her motives better. She takes the grease spots off wretched and rejected books for which no one else has a good word to say. That is her recreation, that is her rest. Had I not surprised her in the kitchen, out of shameful mistrust, her deeds would never have come to light. In her solitude she had embroidered a pillow for her foster-child and laid it softly to rest. For eight long years she never wore gloves. Before she could bring herself to open a book, and this book, she went out and bought with her hard-earned money a pair of gloves. She is not a fool, in other things she is a practical woman, she knows that for the price of the gloves she could have bought the book, new, three times over. I have committed a great sin, I was blind for eight years.
Confucius gave him no time to think again. 'To err without making amendment is to err indeed. If you have erred, be not ashamed to make the fault good.'
It shall be made good, cried Kien. I will give her back her eight lost years ! I will marry her ! She is the heaven-sent instrument for preserving my library. It there is a fire I can trust in her. Had I constructed a human being according to my own designs, the result could not have been more apt for the purpose. She has all the elements necessary. She is a born foster-mother. Her heart is in the right place. There is room for no illiterate fools in her heart. She could have had a lover, a baker, a butcher, a tailor, some kind of barbarian, some kind of an ape. But she cannot bring herself to it. Her heart belongs to the books. What is simpler than to marry her?
He took no more notice of Confucius. When he chanced to look in his direction, he had dissolved into air. Only his voice could still be heard, saying faintly but clearly: 'To see the right and not to do it is to lack courage.'
Kien had no time to thank him for this last encouragement. He flung himself towards the kitchen, and seized violently upon the door. The handle came off in his hand. Thérèse was seated in front of the cushion and made as if she were reading. When she sensed that he was already behind her, she got up, so that he could see what she had been reading. The impression of his last conversation had not been lost on her. She had gone back to page 3. He hesitated a moment, did not know what to say, and looked down at his hands. Then he saw the broken door handle; in a rage he threw it to the ground. He took his place stiffly in front of her and said: 'Give me your hand!' 'Excuse me,' breathed Thérèse and stretched it out to him. Now for the seduction, she thought and began to sweat all over. 'No,' said Kien; he had not meant her hand in that sense. 'I want to marry you!' So sudden a decision had been beyond Therese's expectations. She twisted her astonished head round in the opposite direction and replied proudly, though with an effort not to stammer: 'I make so bold!
CHAPTER IV
THE MUSSEL SHELL
The wedding took place quietly. The witnesses were an oddman who could still strike a few last sparks from his tottering frame, and a worthy cobbler who, having cunningly evaded marriage himself, for the drink-sodden life of him, enjoyed watching other people's. Superior clients he would urgently press to have sons and daughters who would marry soon. He had convincing arguments in favour of early marriage. 'Settle your children properly, you'll have grandchildren in no time. Look sharp and get your grandchildren settled, and you'll have greatgrandchildren!' In conclusion he would point to his good suit which could mix with anybody. Before grand weddings he had it pressed at thé cleaners, for ordinary ones he ironed it himself at home. Only one thing he begged leave to ask, and that was reasonable notice. When his services had not been in request for some time, he would offer — slow worker though he was by temperament — repairs while-you-wait for nothing. Usually unreliable, in this sphere he was a man of his word, did the shoes on the spot and charged really very little. Children — mostly young girls — so lost to their duty as to marry without their parents' knowledge, but not so lost as to dispense with marriage altogether, sometimes made use of him. Indiscretion incarnate, he was in these matters silent as the grave. Not by a flicker did he betray his clients, even though he recounted in pompous detail the tale of her daughter's wedding to her own unsuspecting mother. Before setting off for his 'little bit of heaven' — as he called it — he would fix to the door of his workshop an enormous notice. On it could be read in writhing, soot-black letters the message: 'Out on my business. Back sooner or later. The undersigned: Hubert Beredinger.'
He was the first to learn Therese's luck and doubted the truth of her story until, offended, she invited him to the registry office. When all was over, the witnesses followed the happy pair into the street. The oddman received his tip bowed down with gratitude. Muttering his congratulations he made his way off. "... at your service any other time ...', echoed in the ears of Mr. and Mrs. Kien. Ten paces off, his empty mouth was still mumbling with zeal. But Hubert Beredinger was bitterly disappointed. He did not hold with this sort of wedding. He had sent his suit out to be pressed; the bridegroom was in his working clothes, his shoes trodden over, his suit threadbare; without love or joy, instead of looking at the bride, he had been reading the words in the book. He said 'I will' no different from 'thank you'; then never even gave his arm to the old stick, and as for the kiss, the kiss on which the cobbler lived for weeks — a kiss by proxy was worth twenty of his own — the kiss which he'd have paid good money for, the kiss which was the 'business' hung up on his workshop door; the public kiss under official eyes; the bridal kiss; the kiss for all eternity; that kiss, that kiss had never happened at all. When they parted the cobbler refused his hand. He disguised his resentment under a hideous grin. 'Just a moment please,' he giggled, like a photographer, while the Kiens hesitated. Suddenly he bent down towards a woman, chucked her under the chin, smacked his lips loudly and with eager gestures outlined her opulent figure. His round face grew rounder and rounder, his cheeks blew out to bursting, his double chin splayed out far and wide, the lines round his eyes twitched, tiny nimble snakes; his tensed hands drew ever broader curves. From second to second the woman grew fatter. Twice he looked at her, the third time, encouragingly, at the bridegroom. Then he gathered her into his arms and felt with his left hand shamelessly for her bosom.
True, the woman wi
th whom the cobbler was fooling was not there, but Kien understood the shameless dumb show and drew the watching Thérèse quickly away.
'Drunk even before lunch!' said Thérèse, and clamped herself to her husband's arm; she too was indignant.
At the next stop, they waited for the tram. To make it clear that one day — even a wedding day—was no different from any other Kien took no taxi. The tram came up; he mounted the step before her. One foot on the platform, he recollected that his wife ought to go first. His back to the street, he stepped off again and collided violently with Thérèse. Exasperated, the conductor rang the bell. The tram went on without them. "What's the matter?' Thérèse asked reproachfully. He had certainly hurt her a good deal. 'I wanted to help you up — that is, to help you, my dear.' 'Oh,' she said, 'that would be a nice thing.'
When they were at last seated, he paid for both of them. He hoped this would make amends for his clumsiness. The conductor gave the tickets to her. Instead of thanking him, she grinned broadly and nudged her husband with her shoulder. "What?* he asked. 'The things people think of!' she giggled and flourished the tickets at the stout back of the conductor. She was making fun of him, thought Kieh, and he said nothing.
He began to feel uncomfortable. The tram filled up. A woman sat down opposite him. She had, in all, four children with her, each smaller than the next. Two of them she clutched tightly on her lap, two of them remained standing. A gentleman, sitting on Therese's right, got out. 'Over there!' cried the mother, pushing her little brood across the gangway. The children made a rush for it, a little boy and a little girl, well under school age, the two of them. From the opposite direction an elderly gentleman was approaching. Thérèse put out her hands to protect the tree seat. The children crept underneath it. They were in haste to show they could manage by themselves. Close by the seat, their little heads popped up. Thérèse flicked them away like specks of dust. 'My children!' screamed their mother, 'what are you thinking of?'
'I ask you,' countered Thérèse and gave a meaning look at her husband. 'Children last.' By this time the elderly gentleman had reached the goal, thanked her, and sat down.
Kien understood the look in his wife's eyes. He wished his brother George were here. He had set up as a gynaecologist in Paris. Not yet thirty-five years old, he enjoyed a suspiciously high reputation. He knew far more about women than about books. A bare two years after he had completed his studies, society had placed itself in his hands in so far as it was ill, and it was always ill, all those sickly women anyway. This outward sign of success had earned him Peter's well-deserved contempt. He might perhaps have forgiven George his good looks, they were congenital, he was not to blame. He could never have forced himself to undergo a plastic operation in order to escape the injurious results of so much beauty; his was unhappily a weak character. How weak was clear from the fact that he had abandoned the special branch of medicine which he himself had first chosen in order to pass with flying colours into the realms of psychiatry. It was alleged that he had done some good work in this field. In his heart he had remained a gynaecologist. Loose living was in his blood. Eight years before, indignant at George's vacillation, Peter had abruptly broken off all correspondence with him and had subsequently torn up a whole series of anxious letters. He was not in the habit of answering letters which he had torn up.
His marriage would make the best possible occasion for resuming relations with him. Peter's suggestions had first awakened in George his taste for a career oflearning. It would be no disgrace to ask for his advice on a subject which lay within the domain of his real and natural branch of medicine. What was the right way to treat this timid, reserved creature? She was no longer young and took life very seriously. The woman who sat opposite was certainly a great deal younger, but she already had four children; Thérèse had none. 'Children last.' That sounded straightforward enough, but what did she really mean by it; She probably wanted no children; neither did he. He had never thought about children. For what purpose had she said that? Perhaps she took him for a person of no morals. But she knew his life. For eight years she had been aware of all his habits. She knew that he was a man of character. Did he ever go out at night? Had a woman ever called on him, even for a quarter of an hour? When she had first taken up her post with him, he had most emphatically explained to her that he received no visitors on principle, male or female, of whatever age, from infants in arms to octogenarians. She was to send everyone away. 'I have no time!' Those had been his very words. What devil had got into her? That shameless cobbler, perhaps? She was an innocent ingenuous creature; how otherwise, uneducated as she was, could she have acquired so great a love for books? But that dirty fellow's pantomime had been all too obvious. His gestures were self-explanatory; a child, without even knowing the reasons for his movements, would have understood that he had a woman in his arms. People of that kind, capable of losing control of themselves in the open street, ought to be segregated in asylums. They induce ugly thoughts in hard-working people. She was a hard-working woman. The cobbler had insinuated ideas into her head. Why else should children have occurred to her? It was not impossible that she might have heard something about such things. Women talk among themselves. She had perhaps been present at a birth, when she was in some other service. What did it signify if she did indeed know all there was to know? Better perhaps than if he had to explain it to her himself: There was a certain bashfulness in her expression; at her age it was faintly comic.
I never thought of asking anything so vulgar of her; it did not cross my mind. I have no time. I need six hours sleep. I work until twelve, at six o'clock I get up. Dogs and other animals may do such things by day. Perhaps she expects something of the kind from marriage. Hardly. Children last. Fool. All she meant was that she knew what was necessary. She knew the chain of circumstances whose conclusion is the perfected child. She was trying to explain herself gracefully. She took the occasion of this little incident, the children were importunate, the words were apt, but her eyes were fixed on me alone; it did for a confession. Most understandable. Such admissions are naturally painful. I married because of the books; children last. That means nothing at all. I remember her saying that children learnt too little. I read out to her a paragraph of Arai Hakuseki. She was quite carried away. That was how she first betrayed herself. Who knows how otherwise I could have guessed her feeling for books. At that moment we were drawn together. Probably she only meant to remind me ofthat. She is still the same. Her views on children have not altered since then. My friends are her friends. My enemies will be her enemies. The brief speech of an innocent mina. She had no conception of any other relationship. I must be careful. She might be frightened. I shall act very cautiously. How shall Ï open the subject to her? It is difficult to speak of it. I have no books on it. Buy one? What would the bookseller think? I am not that kind of man. Send someone for it? But who? She herself— for shame — my own wife! How can I be so cowardly. I must try myself. I, myself. But Suppose she is unwilling. Suppose she screams. The people in the other flats — the caretaker — the police — the mob. But they can do nothing to me. I am married to her. I have a right. How disgusting! How came I to think of it? I am the one whom that cobbler has infected. Shame on ou. After forty years. And now to behave in this way. I shall spare her. Children last. If I only knew what she meant. Sphinx.
The mother of the four children stood up. 'Look out!' she urged them, and shepherded them forward on her left. On the right, on Therese's side, she exposed herself only, a valiant commander. Contrary to Kien's expectation, she bobbed her head at her enemy, greeted her affably and said: 'You're the lucky one, still single,' and laughed, her gold teeth glittering a parting signal. Only when she had gone did Thérèse explode, screaming in a voice of fury, 'I ask you, my husband, I ask you, my husband! No children for us! I ask you, my husband!' She pointed at him, she pulled at his arm. I must calm her, he thought. The scene was painful to him, she needed his protection, she screamed and screamed. At last he drew hims
elf to his full height and spoke out before their fellow-travellers: 'Yes,' he said. She had been insulted, she had to defend herself. Her counter-attack was as coarse as the attack had been. She was not to blame. Thérèse relaxed in her seat. No one, not even the gentleman next to her for whom she had saved the seat, took her part. The world was corrupt with kindness to children. Two stops further the Kiens got out. Thérèse went first. Suddenly he heard someone saying just behind him: 'Her skirt is the best thing about her.' 'What a bulwark!' 'Poor fellow!' "What can you expect, the old starch box.' They were all laughing. The conductor and Thérèse, already peacefully on the outer platform, had heard nothing. But the conductor was laughing. In the street Thérèse received her husband joyfully: 'A jolly fellow!' she observed. The jolly fellow leaned out of the moving tram, put his hand to his mouth and bellowed two incomprehensible syllables. He was shaking all over, doubtless with laughter. Thérèse waved and excused herself, seeing his astonished look, with the words: 'He'll be falling out in a minute.'
But Kien was surreptitiously contemplating the skirt. It was even bluer than usual and had been more stiffly starched. Her skirt was a part of her, as the mussel shell is a part of the mussel. Let no one try to force open the closed shell of a mussel. A gigantic mussel as huge as this dress. They have to be trodden on, to be trampled into slime and splinters, as he had once done when he was a child at the seaside. The mussel yielded not a chink. He had never seen one naked. What kind of an animal did the shell enclose with such impenetrable strength; He wanted to know, at once: he had the hard, stiff-necked thing between his hands, he tortured it with fingers and finger-nails; the mussel tortured him back. He vowed not to stir a step from the place until he had broken it open. The mussel took a different vow. She would not allow herself to be seen. Why should she be so modest, he thought, I shall let her go afterwards, as far as I'm concerned I shall shut her up again, I shan't hurt her, I promise I shan't, if she's deaf then God can surely explain to her what I'm promising. He argued with her for several hours. But his words were as impotent as his fingers. He hated roundabout methods, he liked to reach his goal the direct way. Towards evening a great ship passed by, far out at sea. His eyes devoured the huge black letters on its side and read the name Alexander. Then he laughed in the midst of his rage, pulled on his shoes in a twinkling, hurled the mussel with all his strength to the ground and performed a Gordian dance of victory. Now her shell was utterly useless to her. His shoes crushed it to pieces. Soon he had the creature stark naked on the ground, a miserable fleck of fraudulent slime, not an animal at all.