Woman Part 3

Mme. Noel is more of an imp than a woman. She has the figure, the voice, and the darting roguishness of a slim young thing of twelve.

When I was getting settled the first morning, I suddenly heard her insect-step close by--I had left my door open--and without giving me time to draw back, she besieged me with questions:

"How old do you think I am?"

"I don't know."

"Guess anything."

"Thirty-four ... thirty-three ... thirty."

On looking at her closely a few seconds, it seemed to me she was probably forty.

"Fifty-two, my dear!" To convince me of her age she stuck her finger under a slab of hair waved and dyed red and actually exposed an abundance of fading white hair.

Her face was no bigger than a fist, with cheeks like baked apples. Her shrewd naked eyes pried about. She came farther into the room and perched lightly on one of my rickety pieces of furniture, balancing it with her body. Then she began to unfold the story of her life, rummaging, unpacking, digging it up by huge armfuls: her husband, her lover, and then another, a painter she adored. The first one came back.... Love, adventures.... So it is possible to speak about your love and adventures?

Before leaving me--I was quite dazed; which must have been evident--lowering her voice a little:

"_He_ is so good.... I myself am not crazy about him, but _he_ loves me so...."

"He?"

"The boarding-house--it is not only for what it pays, you understand.

It's for _the company_!"

"The company?"

With the springy elegance of a cat, her tapering elbows breaking the evenness of her outline, Mme. Noel slid on to the bed. The mattress reared up, the coverings billowed, the pillow, struck slantwise, was about to fall. But she needed so little room, and she carefully patted the hollow she made for herself.

"Well, is there nothing you want?... Ah, these young things--a handkerchief round their heads and they still look pretty."

Instinctively I pulled off my handkerchief. I stammered: "To keep off the dust" and--what could I do to make her go?--I smiled awkwardly.

"Oh, by the way, I came near forgetting to tell you. If ... you want to receive in your room ... after all, what of it? You surely have somebody.... It's just between us women. A beautiful girl like you, it would be a shame.... You won't be bashful, will you? To me love is sacred. And you will tell your little secrets to Mme. Noel? I have told you mine. Only of course you will be careful not to make any noise. I say this on account of the Russians in the next room. They used to receive swarms of people up to all hours. The rumpus! I tell you, I put a stop to it. But you, you're different. I liked you from the start."

I had to answer, I was going to answer ... but my tongue was dry with confusion. Besides, how edge a word in? There she was back at her huge pile of love stories. She even tried to pump me, lifting and lowering her powdered little nose; one sc.r.a.p of information she set aside for use presently. At last she disappeared trippingly with a pointed _au revoir_ which crisped the hide of her cheeks.

An odor of imitation white lilac persists, but so much suns.h.i.+ne streams in through the open window, so many quickening exhalations that the odor will soon be dissipated.

Love ... yes....

Perhaps by listening hard to the inner voice you may get to let it speak out loud. If I give in to this habit, I want to hear myself say: "I do not like love." I even want to add: "Keep it away," because love seems to be an outside force which smites or spares without your having deserved or banished it.

I have seen too many couples in which the man is nothing but a craving for conquest, the woman nothing, absolutely nothing, but a need to be conquered. I have seen too many who have not been visited by grace and have d.a.m.ned themselves to mutual ruin. A veritable attack and a semblance of defence. I have seen what is taken for love.

I have seen women steeped in trickery; the wilier they were the more love surrounded them. I have seen the heavy looks of men set about everywhere like traps.... I am worth nothing as yet, but my sound heart--I refuse it. And I say it quite low to exorcise the invisible danger: I do not like love.

"To me love is sacred...."

I understand fully what those small, naked, prying eyes were glorifying.

And in the adventurous life of those eyes I see neither more nor fewer blemishes and lies than in the eyes of the young girls. Neither more nor fewer. At moments there even flashed in those eyes sparks, reflections, gleams....

A cloud is darkening the window; my room is obliterated.

But if by leaning forward and boldly offering my face to the sun and stretching out further, I could take in all his golden bounty and all his light?

I withdraw hastily from the springtime window because when a gentle flame ran over my wrist I became aware of lack of dignity: my untidy hair, the dust on me, the disorderly room.

Since the sun lives, since I long for it, love must exist. I shall find the proof of it. Quickly, my Sunday frock, order about me, flowers....

Keep it far away from me. I do not feel I am ready....

V

Trude's twenty-fourth birthday. Twenty-four candles around the monster of a cake. Trude announces that Edda, the youngest of us, is to light the candles when we're ready for the toasts and the dessert.

I lent my vases, my old red-flowered armchair, and my draperies. This morning when the preparations were completed and their voices in triple unison leapt to me: "Come and look!" I was in the room in three bounds like an answering echo.

It really looked nice. Who would have recognized Clara's impossible room? Heavy ropes of foliage dotted with roses festooned the walls, my beautiful blue stuff entirely hid the toilet-table, flowers covered the mantelpiece and starred the corners of the mirror; and the table covered with a white cloth was gay with pyramids of fruit.

Now the guests are all here except Markowitch, who said beforehand he would be late. "I am not going to seat you," Clara cries to them above the rising hubbub. "Choose your own places." And she turns her back to give the last touches to the table. Her heavy braided knot hangs low on the nape of her neck. In spite of the two spreading wings of her skirt at her waist line she looks thinner than ever in her greenish dress.

Someone glides up behind her, a pink arm for an instant twines about her waist. "Clara, can I help?" She turns round. Dahlia.

Dahlia is not an ordinary creature; she is no one; she is _the young girl_. But that really is saying nothing. Juliet and Miranda are dead; our times are not made for a creature of the dawn who is supposed to be finer than the promise of herself, but who is already herself; who is supposed not to be ignorant, who is pure and who, in order to love, does not await love.

Dahlia comes of another age; she comes from the country of fjords and legends. Her father was exiled, she wanted to go with him, they had no money; they made almost the whole journey on foot. One evening when their heavy limbs would carry them no further, they were stranded in a squalid quarter on the outskirts of Paris. They took a room.... The next day the man did not get up. And since then Dahlia has bowed her head to the yoke and works all day long for a poor monthly wage in an office where the walls press upon her like a vice. "It's to keep up my father's spirits," she said with a shake of her head when I saw her the second time.

I shall never forget the first time. I had come in a little later than usual, and probably more tired, too. I did not even think of lighting the lamp, the dusk was unreal ... heavens!... a vision took shape between the threshold and the shadows, scarcely daring.... There was a brow set in pale gold, the delicate blur of a face, eyes like a thousand forget-me-nots; between two young arms the strait, retiring modesty of the angels, and their light movements also. She drew nearer.

"We have made a cake, the sort we make at home, let's divide." She disappeared. Her present remained behind on my table....

In her thin linen dress this evening, with a whiff of paradise about her, Dahlia seems to be enveloped in a pink illumination. She smiles on everybody as one must smile at happiness when one catches a glimpse of it.

"Your beautiful red dress," she a.s.sures Trude, gently clasping the soft spindles of her hands.

How can Trude remain simple and genuinely Puritanical beneath her trappings of beaded crimson plush and cuira.s.s of some hodgepodge of gold caught in at the hips. I fancy she is too simple for finery to add to her personality. Real or imitation the fineries give way; it is she who adorns them. Whatever she wears is sanctified and comes to resemble her, everything except her threefold name, Gertrude, Trude, Trudel.

She has the peculiar brilliance of the Russians, sombre, subterranean, almost undefinable. Whatever she does, whether she laughs, or is excited, or talks with fire of ordinary things, she always has a finger lifted in the air and her wide gaze raised Christ-like. She has the mouth of an evangelist. Her irises set in clear white have glints of jet. She wears the glossy foliage of her black locks straight back from her forehead, an intense forehead crowning her like a diadem.... What other woman would dare the supreme immodesty of displaying a bare forehead? What woman would gain by doing it? The strange thing is, Trude is beautiful only by a kind of miracle; the least little bit more, and her cheeks would stick out over the cheekbones of a Tartar; the least little bit less, and her nose would be obliterated. The lakes of her eyes tranquilly conceal the raging waves in their depths. How many, by a shade of ill-luck, have escaped beauty? Trude, by a miracle, has escaped ugliness.

Mania, her sister, so different with her agile, insinuating body, lovingly fingers the presents. "You have not seen everything, Trude. Do come." Books, prints, china, and elegant embroidered articles--pretty things all from poor people who will soon be setting out on foot in the darkness for their distant lodgings in order to save carfare. For we are all as poor as poor can be. Except Markowitch. Mania told me he was "immensely rich," had at least two hundred dollars a month spending money.

It is hard to say whether it is our poverty that creates this comrades.h.i.+p among us. You come in and you feel at ease, you feel _good_, you love all of them, even Lonnie, the little Swiss with cheeks lacquered with rouge, and even Michael with his tight compressed nose peaking out of the profile of a hen--Michael perhaps more than the others.

So much the worse for Markovitch: we are going to begin. The hubbub dies down a little; everyone finds a place, two on the same chair, some on the bed, a good many on the floor, young men, young girls holding each other's hands, so close together, so pure, that I can still not accustom myself....

"It is your turn, Mania."