Woman Part 4

A song, liquid, then fiery, comes from among the reeds and carries you far off--down there--to those wild plains chiseled by the wind where the streams, driven to the surface and threshed by their rocky beds, have the fury of torrents. What a potency of attention on these serious faces!

Isn't that Markovitch?

"Come in!"

With his hardened features wrought in granite he, too, is a force. His bulbous eyes search the gathering and find what they are looking for....

Dahlia raises her head, blushes, and is veiled in delicate purple up to the golden edge of her hair. She is aware of the love of this great spoilt boy; we are all aware of it; but she has refused to be his wife because she does not love him. He will not speak of it again; nevertheless they continue to meet straightforwardly. With a free, rounded movement of her arms, like the handles of an amphora, she points to a vacant place beside her. "Here." Then in dismay: "Don't make a noise."

Prikoff is telling of a childhood recollection. You seem to see him as both the fantastic gnome and the father in the tale. You see huts a.s.sailed by icy blizzards, hazy visions of bodies blue with cold, love of _somewhere else_.... Despite his huge jaw and unkempt ma.s.s of hair, what benignity, mildness, and gentleness. It is as though he were talking to little children gathered close about him.

Is time pa.s.sing? No one notices it, we have forgotten it. Time escapes youth gathered together and bound in a sheaf; it escapes Clara's bosom from which a plaintive _lied_ is rising, while the hungry hands around Dahlia, who is doling out the manna, make time tarry. A real poor folk's supper, the supper of persons who are hungry at all hours. Thick slices of rare meat on bread, solid pastry, big bright fruit. One should see these robust young girls munching even the meat.

How fond I am of them all! Among them I feel for the first time what the human voice really is; for the first time feel the warmth which is shared and communicated from being to being, which makes of a single ent.i.ty a group of ent.i.ties, of a field of separate ears of corn the human harvest.

I wouldn't know how to choose among them. But one of the young men might slightly frighten and disconcert me; his accent might seem barbarous. My trim dress, my too-dainty shoes, and my fluffy blouses, all the things that const.i.tute my element, might cause me to feel compunction. And maybe too I might feel ashamed of the hour I spend every morning anxiously pressed close to the gla.s.s as if I were begging myself to be beautiful.

I should have the same feeling on behalf of the girls as for myself; at bottom I do not discriminate between men and women. I should go even further. If friends.h.i.+p drew me to one of them, my compunction would change to grief. Really, can one forgive Clara her over-trimmed dress conceived in a nightmare? Can one forgive all of them their down-at-heel shoes, the lack of care and regard for others that they show in their appearance?

Should I adjust my days with no ups and downs in them to their volcanic days? "What's it all coming to?" cries Trude sometimes, and throws herself on her bed sobbing and losing herself in her emotions. Time pa.s.ses and dies--one day, two days--suddenly she rises. She has forgotten her office, her meals, everything. She leans her forehead against the window-pane, and her tears flow bitterly.

If we became intimate, would they forgive me my neat room, my punctuality, my scrupulous adherence to rule and system, my moderation in everything? In the first days of our being neighbors they used to say: "You know, the little Frenchwoman who always comes and goes at the same time and makes so little noise and uses powder?" That quite described me.

This evening of the reunion of these serious creatures runs on by leaps and bounds and rises to a pitch by fits and starts. There is a glowing dewiness about Dahlia; Markovitch follows her with the green pupils of his bulbous eyes. And all of a sudden the whole company is fired at the same time. Without expecting to they burst into song--who threw the spark?--and the room lights up like a hearth all aglow with voices....

Fifteen flames mingled, but only a single flame. It is a song that rages and mounts higher, and jerks and jolts, and is convulsed with raucous shouts, in which the joy becomes frenetic and the laughter has a shudder in it. They bring to their singing the fervor and the earnestness of application that they bring to everything.

I am sitting in the retreat of the little chimney-piece hidden from their eyes, and I should like to ask their forgiveness for not knowing their fervid song and not being in harmony with them. I should like to ask pardon of all of them for everything.

I should like to ... I should like to....

Breathes there a human being on earth who has nothing to forgive, whom one has nothing to forgive?...

To be with him, his equal, close to him, face to face with him, _and alone with one_.

VI

The two Loiseaus and I were sitting in their dining-room, a narrow rectangle with waxed floor and small straw mats here and there exactly like a convent parlor.

The evening--a dark evening out of doors--encompa.s.sed the walls with mystery. The darker it grew the less we felt like getting up and lighting the lamp. Why bother after all? There was a whole grate full of flames. They leaped and emitted a lively red crackling, shot forth luminous circles, hung high in the hearth, dancing tongues of fire, orange-colored mountain crests, aigrettes of blue light, grimaces of demons ... whirlpools ... fairyland ... crash and collapse ...

foolery....

All of us felt drowsy, each imprisoned in his own silence. The shadows quivered gently above our shoulders. The silence, a trifle stagnant emanating from the three of us, seemed to be compressed up under the toned-down white of the ceiling.

I was curled up in front of the hearth, my eyes at the mercy of the glowing surge, my chin thrust forward. A languid sense of well-being spread all around, played over the hollow of your arms, and padded the nape of your neck: you thought of nothing.

The two Loiseaus are people who know how to be silent; you spend Friday evening with them, and everything--except themselves--tells you that they are pleased with the presence that makes three silhouettes dance in the room.

They are not very old, but there's no denying they _are_ old bachelors, because in their company you don't feel the torturing constraint and embarra.s.sment which the _others_ make you feel because you're a woman.

When you come, they hold out their hands good-naturedly. Remy, the great big patient Remy, takes my hat, my gloves rolled into a ball, and my cloak. He steps on my cloak and is vaguely alarmed. This adds to his confusion, and when he hangs my things on the rack in the hall he is so awkward in his carefulness that my hat rolls to the ground. We sit down and talk of the office--you cannot start by not talking--and when every topic is exhausted, I suggest making tea, a suggestion well worth the making just to rouse the gourmand look in the old boys' eyes. "Oh yes, some tea." You can almost hear them purr.

I busy myself with an ease become superlative. It is possible that for an instant I find myself a woman again between two attentive men, converted into the household G.o.ddess--she who performs the rites and dispenses the food and offers the milk, just a thimbleful, while the men's eyes are upon her as she bends over the cups. This constrains my movements and makes me tread more lightly and mince my steps. I scarcely displace the shadows.

My two old friends!

Remy pursues his reading with a frank absorption which dominates his whole body. His heavy forehead bulges, his clenched fists form two undefined cubes on the page. Migo (when I look at him I call him Migo, too), rolls his cigarette. This evening he is inclined to be talkative.

He rubs up his memory:

"The first day you came to the office what a timid manner you had."

The recollections play upon an irresistible note. Remy emerges from his corner, his good blue eyes rising to the bait; a vision hung on a thread, persons long faded. And it must be confessed that all three of us let ourselves be captured; the same smile widens our features.

The door-bell rings.... Yes, it rang.

The triple peal sends our heads apart. Remy rises, hostile and resigned.

He is always the one to open the door.

Waiting in every circ.u.mstance, even when nothing is at stake, is painful. The spirit recoils and contracts, and s.p.a.ce is left for thoughts of an inevitable misfortune and for the twinkling vision of the things which disappear. In a single instant life can completely change its aspect....

A sweeping draught. It brings in the voice of a young man. I want to leave. The two Loiseaus hover about him. "What a surprise! How nice!"

They rub their hands. "Come in and sit down!"

It is too late to leave; the stranger is already bowing to me, and the mingled exclamations pretty well hide my stammering. I am so ashamed of myself for stammering.

The newcomer seats himself near the fire on the little black chair to the right of Migo. He wants the lamp to stay unlighted. But it is no longer the same. Our silence has been routed, and the languor, and the warmth also....

I am in a good position to observe him. How old? Thirty-four, thirty-five perhaps. Is he really handsome? Hard to say. He is too dark.

His face is strongly chiseled, his cheeks sunken, his forehead hard as a hammer. The long line of his jaw lends refinement to his countenance, which is lit by eyes fearlessly open, in which the gray, in spots, seems steeped in phosphorous. His gestures are repressed and rather commanding. He talks little, but when he does talk his fire contrasts with the rarity of his words, gives them value, makes them seem to issue all alive from the bowels of the earth, while he sits with his body upright, as if at a distance, the flicker from the hearth enamelling, then removing, the burnished black of his hair ... I bethink myself: we have not yet had tea. I hope it will be just right this evening.

One by one I take out of their hiding-place the cups with the gold lines, the lovely ones, the only embroidered tea-cloth, the teapot with the golden spout, and the flowers, wan in the night. I set the luxury of these things on the table. With my head shrouded in the light-dark and my shoulders swathed in a fleece of shadow, how good it is to be among them, screened by my movements, not sitting but standing so that I can look upon the happy trio. Him especially. For alongside of him, who hardly speaks, the two Loiseaus, beaming and voluble, seem suddenly tame and stunted.

A pleasant sight, quite new to me, this group of three faces on which a common childhood springs to life, fond joys shared in the past, and names that are no more. They have almost forgotten that a woman is present. This rea.s.sures me.

But if _he_, when he raises his eyes and sees me, is going to remember I am a woman and turn to me too civilly and kindle the usual warfare under the bland honey of the customary phrases! No ... not he ... not this man. He is so frank and so fine with his two friends; what he says is so right, and he speaks so directly, without straining for effect. No, not he.

I offer each of them a trembling cup which they accept without trembling. Then I quickly withdraw again to the protecting shadow where my place is hollowed out, to listen to this amazing presence which my heart scans.

He has spoken to me.

He has spoken to me as never yet a man has spoken: without trying to see or please me, without any ulterior thoughts, just as he speaks to the two Loiseaus, probably just as he speaks to himself when alone. It does happen, then, that from the depths of simple obscurity, unexpectedly, one hears real words, real naked words from a man?

I answer in the same good faith, I no longer feel any fear or the need for self-defence. I feel a delight which helps me. And the perfume of the words that rises from the four of us--it is upon him I bestow it.

From the embers comes a live heat which settles on your cheekbones; your neck unconsciously stretches towards the red point where the conversation, which also crackles and sparkles, rests its centre. This stranger close to me seems like a king leaning over the edge of a fountain; the light carves his smile and courts that familiar brow....

Is he still a stranger?