Woman Part 27

The more eager a woman is to please, the less she sees _herself_ in the mirror. What she sees is the idea others have of her, a sort of consciousness of her power, the irrepressible desire to attract.

When I sat down before the gla.s.s just now, I must have seen _myself_; suddenly I felt afraid.

I had raised the tumble of ringlets from my forehead and saw a gleam--my first white hair. Then I scanned my face closely, pitilessly. At the outer corners of my eyes a place was preparing for a fine meshwork which would close up when I laughed.

A mad need fell upon me--to see myself again and again. Around each corner of my mouth an invisible line had chosen its pathway; the perfect oval of my face slipped slightly from its frame; under the chin there was an imperceptible ma.s.s which would never yield to any amount of ma.s.sage.

I wanted to run away, I wanted to look, I wanted.... I tell you my heart was leaping from between my ribs, so that you could have taken it in your hand.

How many years are there left?... Ten years?... Eight years?... Perhaps only six in which to continue to be the very same woman I am.

A day will come immersed in the other days, similar to the other days, when this woman will be dead while I shall live.

I try to question s.p.a.ce. I turn in every direction. The storm has increased. The rain is coming down in sheets and rebounding in mist. The polished pavements are cracked by quivering little ripples. The tempest drives the people ahead like leaves.

Whence this dread which blows like a typhoon from the future, breathing on my youth and freezing my blood? Whence these two words which gnaw at my breast like a canker? Six years....

No, no, it is impossible. I believe in the deluge, in the thunder, in misfortune, in oblivion. Not in that. Why should this face of mine with its curves, its marble purity and its color change? Why? I have always had a fair amount of courage, I have always done what I had to do, but this renunciation, this hideous acquiescence. I haven't got the courage for that, no, I haven't.

I am prepared to accept death. If necessary, I will stretch my hands out to it. Let the one moment of my life which wipes out the other moments flow into nothingness. Take, strike, I am prepared....

But that "six years, no more," should be written on my face, that people should see my face and I should hold it up smilingly like a ruthless gift to those I love, that I should bear the signs upon me of dull decay, wrinkles, falling hair, withered cheeks, and dimmed eyes.... What if I refuse?...

I could no longer bear to look into the mirror and see what was going to be. I held my face to the pane on which a dismal music was drumming.

I have had deep feelings as plentiful and coming as thick and fast as these drops of rain; some feelings have been vaster than the soul itself; but the only feeling truly like woman, the only feeling essentially woman, which weds her soul while wedding her body, is the immense desire to be beautiful. I have lived through my love of others, I love my child as though I were still carrying it, yet all the time, from waking up in the morning until going to bed at night, year in and year out, from as far back as I can remember, I was cloaked and upheld by a will to please.

I was not more beautiful than other women, but I wanted to be. In spite of me and in spite of themselves, the men hovered about me, lavish of their glances. I moved like a ray of joy, life was a festival redder than war; I expressed myself without saying a word, all hearts were ready, they gave me more love than I asked for and almost as much as I needed.

That was the air I breathed and had to breathe. Is it good, is it bad?

It is an instinct which keeps turning rapidly round and round in you. If you were to pull it up, it would sprout again.

Then how can it be that some day, though I shall have done nothing to bring it on, the territory of this indestructible instinct will be clouded over and made barren forever after? How can it be that I shall no longer please if I still want to please?

The rain is beating upon the streaked window-pane and glides down against my cheeks in long transparent tears. Every c.h.i.n.k in the room is an inlet for the wind. Around me there is a wailing as if drawn from a sad, dreary bowstring.

Is it the woman of the mirror? Is it the woman that I am? You can't tell which woman is speaking to the other woman....

"So you're of the sort to let yourself be disheartened?

"You thought you had said all the good-byes there are to say in life.

There is one left, even more awful than the others. You have dragged yourself over mouldering graves, yet when you arose you found something to keep you alive. But as yet you are unworthy of this last good-bye: To survive it, you need a grandeur you don't possess, a more solid strength than the furtive power you're proud of. You believed you were pure, and you were quite sure you lived in your entirety. Look!..."

How ashamed I am, O G.o.d. What a stranger the woman opposite me is....

At the outset I said to the husband I chose: "I shall cherish your happiness as much as I cherish my love for you; and if ever your happiness a.s.sumes the features of another woman, that woman shall be dear to me."

When another woman approached, I knitted my brows and formed a secret vow to blacken her in his eyes.

He loved me as you love your life, as you sing, as you kiss. And I reproached him for not leaning over close enough and telling me tender things over and over again every day. I had plighted my troth; in order not to take it back, I needed actions, words; to keep it, I had to put his heart to the proof.

When I came to know another love, my instinct could not rise to the height of my idea. I did not know how to bring the two men together, nor did I know how to make the woman who loved him receive the truth.

And I allowed useless people, useless existences to come to me. I saw them fighting around me like quarrelsome, chattering sparrows around a tree; I saw them pillage and carry away in their beaks the ripe fruit of my days. To know how to live is to know how to choose. I did not know.

Everywhere shame. Everywhere in the past, the h.e.l.l of what I have lost.

These hands capable of everything have done almost nothing. I contented myself with little and believed in humility.

I silenced nearly every appeal within me. I let regard for others govern and restrain me. I still feel how the imperious look of an unforgettable pa.s.serby once tore me; the rude superior deprecation in that look was like a cry rising above the night. Several indifferent persons were about me, my spirit fixed upon them. Perhaps it was the last of my life which a stranger mercilessly carried off in the depths of his being. I let him pa.s.s.

I believed myself beautiful. Beauty is a promise which no woman has ever kept. I have seen my features in the gla.s.s, but I have not looked for the mission to which I was appointed. What human being ever perceives that he wears a distinctive badge?

The wind redoubles in strength and howls in the face of the sky. The rain-spout near the window is choking, the drops rap-tap-tap on the pane: "What have you done? What have you done?"

Lord, I am looking myself in the face. While waiting for the light to appear and the clouds to scatter, for the damp air to s.h.i.+ne between the drops of sunlight, for the good genius who must teach us to grow old, for the inaccessible perfection for which I was built, I look and look at myself....

I went to the window to watch the storm and smoothe my hair. Leaning toward the mirror it was G.o.d I found.

G.o.d is there, I see Him approaching when I approach and smiling when I smile, G.o.d who carries me and whom I carry, G.o.d palpitating with faith, G.o.d who lowers His head....

I believe in myself.

XVI

I cannot sleep.

There's no good-bye to say, it is late, everything is ready, and yet I am stifling in this empty room, which lives only through my sleeping son and me.

But he sleeps....

I hardly recognize him when he sleeps, and I have to go close to him. He fell asleep a moment ago and is lying exactly the way I placed him, with his arm outstretched. Is there anything tenderer and frailer to behold than this little rounded face with its fine veins and pearly curves?

Beneath his sleep and the warmth of his cheeks, life is working, and what a hurry it is in!