There was a little Italian restaurant that we had discovered on Greek
Street. It was modest and cheap, and it was there that Michel took
Ursula, for he had very little money. And yet, despite his poverty as an
ordinary recruit, he never seemed to be able to think of enough things
to do to give Ursula pleasure.
Before the war he had been a student. He wanted to take his degree in
philosophy, he told Ursula. In 1937, his parents had got out of Poland,
and he had continued his studies in Belgium.
That was nearly all that Ursula knew of him, and she was not enough
interested in Michel to wonder about his history. She liked him well
enough and she was touched by his gentleness and his discretion.
Sometimes when Ursula talked to him about Claude, Michel gazed at her
with his childlike eyes, so unreally pure, and the black eyes, with
their thick brows always raised in a startled expression, seemed to look
at her with so complete a comprehension that Ursula thought that he must
know everything, must have divined everything, for he never asked her
any questions.
This evening he seemed gay. It was Christmas. Neither he nor Ursula was
Catholic. Ursula was nothing at all, and Michel said he was in search of
truth. And yet Christmas made them both happy.
After dinner they went out into the black street, where groups of people
passed singing. They walked without any special destination, and Michel
took hold of Ursula’s arm. At first she wanted to withdraw it. She
couldn’t understand why the slightest physical contact with Michel
frightened her. But not wanting to offend him, she did nothing, and they
continued to walk like that.
“Merry Christmas!” people in the streets called out to them, and once
more Ursula felt her heart heavy and sad. She wasn’t thinking of
Christmas in France, for she had had neither childhood nor holidays nor
a family in her past. There was almost nothing. It was as though she had
been born only the day before; her heart and her spirit were still
unmarked and they floated in a sort of prenatal obscurity.
But Michel was happy to feel her near him. She was so young. She was the
only woman who didn’t frighten him; because she seemed so defenseless,
because she didn’t know how to chatter or to laugh like most women, who
always either had an air of being on the defensive or were aggressive.
Until now he had told himself, I don’t have the right to touch her, or
to take her with me, for I have nothing to offer her, neither God, nor a
home, nor security, nor even myself—a self that wanted only to die until
I met her, a self that still wants to die. He beheld her again in the
courtyard, opening the door and halting on the lighted doorstep, a black
hazy shadow against a background of light. He saw her sitting on the
steps and saw the little movement of fear that she had had upon noticing
him—like that of a little wild animal that trembles on seeing a man. He
saw again her odd, small face, framed by her glossy hair falling thick
and straight like that of a little Indian. And an immense tenderness
more powerful even than love invaded him again.
He thought, Do I still want to die? And Michel had to answer himself
that it was still so, despite his knowing her. He loved her, but he
couldn’t draw from her the nourishment that he needed. She could not
silence the questioning in him and the agony in him. He knew that he had
found nothing and that he still wanted to die, as on that day some
months ago in Switzerland, in Fribourg, when he had decided to kill
himself. Solemnly, his great eyes open with their strange candor, he
told her all that was in his mind.
Michel, interned with several other Poles in a camp in Fribourg, had
been granted the exceptional privilege of being permitted to take
courses at the university. Scarcely seventeen, he felt as though he
carried the moral weight of the whole world on his shoulders. He lived
in profound despair, telling himself that there was no hope, that human
stupidity and the cowardice of the human mass was so great that one
could never change anything, that there would always be wars and
barriers of hatred. He wished that somehow he could speak to mankind,
explain that only humanity itself could put an end to these horrors. But
how, and in the name of what could he speak? He was timid and ugly and
he had no power of leadership. Then of what use was it to take part in
the human farce and to love when love did not exist, and to bring
children into the world in order that they might be killed in the next
war in the name of some country that pretended to be more important than
another? What for?
The boy Michel had decided to kill himself. He had bought some veronal,
and was on his way to his rooming house when he met a fellow student
from the university. This student was a monk, and strangely enough, a
Jewish monk, a convert—a huge, handsome lad who enjoyed great popularity
among the other students. He walked along with Michel, his white robe
brushing the boy at every step. The sun warmed the snow on the
mountaintops, and the air was so clear and so pure that one might almost
have washed in it. Suddenly Michel began to talk. He told the monk that
he had found his own truth and that it gave him a will to die. He told
of his decision.
There are people who always talk about committing suicide but who never
do it. But on Michel’s face there was something so serious, his black
eyes raised toward the monk were filled with such agony, that the monk
realized that Michel had made up his mind.
Instead of moralizing, he proposed a sort of bargain to Michel. “You
want to die,” he said. “Agreed. But you don’t have the right to die in
cowardice, or stupidly. There is a war going on. Every day there are men
who die, though they want to live. Leave Switzerland. Go to Spain and
then to England. Enlist, and let yourself be killed while fighting.
Perhaps you will die in place of the father of a family. Perhaps your
death will save others. Perhaps your death will hasten the peace. Go get
yourself killed, Michel. But only there, through England.”
Three days later, Michel was in unoccupied France. He managed to get
across France without much difficulty, arrived without mishap in Spain,
and passed through without being noticed by the police. This voyage,
which took months for others, took him scarcely fifteen days. From
Gibraltar he embarked for Liverpool. For Michel, everything proved easy
and simple.
Now he walked in the blackout with Ursula, who was silent. Ursula’s thin
arm was enlaced in his, and once more a flood of tenderness for her
invaded him. He wanted to help her, to be with her, to take her face in
his hands. She was so little, so gentle. She would never make him
unhappy. He would take her away from that miserable house, and from that
woman who held this child in fascination and would surely bring her
suffering.
Michel halted, and with the sudden courage of the timid, he brusquely
drew Ursula to him and kissed her on the mouth.
Ursula had expected nothing of the kind. An immense disgust welled up in
her mouth upon the touch of Michel’s lips. She felt his full lips
crushing her own, and his masculine breath, and his cheeks scratching a
little. Claude, Claude! she cried inwardly. She freed herself, and with
her eyes filled with tears she began to run in the blackout, running
blindly. She had only one thought: Claude. Claude’s gentleness, her
perfume, Claude’s soft body close to her own. Ursula cried as she ran,
surrounded by the thick night.
To reach Claude’s house was her only aim. She turned into one street
after the other, got lost, crossed a square into another street. “Merry
Christmas!” people cried in the night. And then suddenly she was in
front of Claude’s house.
The house was filled with noise. It was Christmas Eve. The Christmas
dawn would soon be born. The little room was crowded, and men and women
were laced together, some drunk, some half drunk, some boisterous, and
over everything there was a gloss of alcoholic jollity. We shouted when
the bell rang, as though some great and wonderful friend would now
appear.
Claude went to the door, her glass of whisky in her hand.
Ursula mounted the stairs, running. At the top of the stairs stood
Claude. She was wearing gray trousers and a rose silk shirt. One could
see her round breasts pressing against the silk. Ursula threw herself
into her arms, sobbing.
“What is it, Ursulita, my little girl, what’s wrong?” Claude repeated.
She drew Ursula into the room.
When she was a little quieted, with her face against Claude’s breast,
feeling calm against her, against this maternal refuge, Ursula told
Claude that Michel had kissed her.
Claude laughed, pressed the child in her arms, and told her she was a
little fool. But deep in her eyes, it seemed to me, I saw a glint of
triumph.