"Juliana is very ill. I cannot understand how any one can think of
anything else but her now," I said, as if to justify myself. "You have
not seen her. She looks as if she were dying."
*XXXIII.*
For several days Juliana hovered between life and death. Her weakness
was so great that the slightest effort was followed by exhaustion. She
was compelled to remain constantly on her back, without the slightest
movement. The least attempt to raise herself provoked symptoms of
cerebral anemia. Nothing could be found to overcome the nauseas that
seized her, to lift the weight that crushed down on her chest, to remove
the buzzing that she heard without cease.
I remained day and night at her bedside, always on the watch, sustained
by an indefatigable energy that surprised even myself. I employed all
the strength of my own life in sustaining that life which was threatened
with extinction. It seemed to me that, from the other side of the bed,
death was watching, ready to profit by an opportune moment to ravish his
prey. At times I had the real sensation that I was becoming transfused
in the debilitated body of the invalid, that I communicated to her a
little of my strength, that I imparted an impulse to her exhausted
heart. Never did the miseries of illness inspire in me the least
repugnance, the slightest disgust; never did any material object offend
the delicacy of my senses. My senses, overexcited, were attentive only
in perceiving the least changes in the condition of the invalid. Before
she spoke a word, before she made a sign, I divined her desires, her
wants, the degree of her suffering. By divination, without the
physician having to make any suggestion, I had succeeded in being able
to discover new and ingenious means of relieving one of her pains, of
calming one of her attacks. I alone could persuade her to eat and to
sleep. I resorted to every stratagem, to prayers and caresses to make
her swallow her medicine. I pressed her so much that finally, incapable
of further resistance, she had to submit to a salutary effort to triumph
over the nausea. And there was nothing sweeter to me than the
imperceptible smile with which she submitted to my will. Her slightest
acts of obedience put my heart into a profound commotion. When she
said, in her feeble voice: "Is this right? Am I good?" I felt my
throat choke, my eyes become veiled.
She often complained of a painful and incessant throbbing at the
temples. Then I would pass my finger-tips over her brow to appease the
pain. I caressed her hair very softly to lull her to sleep. When I
perceived that she was asleep her respiration gave me the illusory
sensation that I was solaced, as if the benefit of the slumber were
extended even to me. In presence of this slumber I felt a sort of
religious emotion. I was invaded by a vague fervor. I felt a desire to
believe in the existence of some superior being, omnispective,
omnipotent, in order to address my Prayers to him. There arose
spontaneously from the depths of my soul the preludes of prayer
according to the Christian formula. Sometimes the inner eloquence
exalted me even to the summit of the true faith. Within me there awoke
all the mystic tendencies transmitted to me by a long line of Catholic
ancestors.
While my inner orisons were unfolding I contemplated the sleeper. She
was still as pale as her night-dress. The transparency of her skin
would have enabled me to count the veins on her cheeks, on her chin, on
her neck. I watched her as if I had had the hope of seeing the
beneficial effects of that repose, the slow diffusion of new blood
engendered by the nourishment, the first premonitory signs of cure. I
would have liked, by some supernatural faculty, to be present at the
mysterious restorative elaboration which was taking place in that
enfeebled body. And I persisted in hoping: "When she awakes she will
feel stronger."
She seemed to feel a great relief when she held my hand in her own icy
hands. Sometimes she took my hand and put it on the pillow, pressed her
cheek against it with a childlike gesture, and gradually dozed off in
that position. So as not to awaken her, I exerted all my strength to
keep for a long, long time my arm in this one position, which was
torture.
Once she said:
"Why don't you sleep here with me? You never sleep."
And she forced me to lay my head on her pillow.
"Let us go to sleep!"
I pretended I was going to sleep, to set her a good example. But when I
opened my eyes I encountered hers wide open and fixed on me.
"Well!" I cried. "What are you doing?"
"And you?" she replied.
In her eyes there was an expression of such tender goodness that I felt
my heart melt. I extended my mouth and kissed her eyelids.
She wished to kiss me the same way. Then she repeated:
"Let us go to sleep now!"
Thus, a veil of oblivion sometimes descended over our misfortune.
Often her poor feet were frozen. I felt them beneath the covers, and
they seemed to me like marble. She herself said:
"They are dead."
They were so emaciated and so small that I could almost hold them in my
hand. They inspired me with a great pity. I warmed some linen at the
fire to put on them, and did not tire of giving them attention. I would
have liked to warm them with my breath, to cover them with kisses. With
this new pity there mingled the distant recollections of
love--recollections of the happy time when, by a habit that almost
resembled a vow, I reserved for myself exclusively the privilege of
putting on her shoes in the morning and taking them off at night with my
own hands, while on my knees before her.
One day, after long vigils, I was so fatigued that an irresistible
slumber seized me just at the moment when I had my hands beneath the
cover holding the little dead feet in the warm cloth. My head sank
forward, and I went to sleep in that attitude.
When I awoke I saw my mother, my brother, and the doctor, who were
smiling. I was embarrassed.
"Poor boy! He is tired out," said my mother, stroking my hair with one
of her most tender gestures.
Juliana said:
"Take him away, mother! Take him away, Federico!"
"No, no, I am not tired," I repeated; "I am not tired."
The doctor announced his departure. He declared that the invalid was
out of danger and on the road to recovery. But it was necessary, by all
means possible, to continue to excite the regeneration of blood. His
colleague, Jemma de Tussi, with whom he had consulted and found of the
same opinion, would continue the same treatment. He had less confidence
in remedies than in the rigorous observation of the various hygienic
rules and of diet that he had prescribed.
"In truth," he added, pointing to me, "I could not wish for a more
intelligent, more vigilant, or more devoted nurse. He has done
miracles, and he will do more. I shall go away perfectly easy."
It seemed to me that my heart leaped into my throat and was suffocating
me. The unexpected praise of that serious man, in my mother's and
brother's presence, caused me profound emotion. It was an extraordinary
reward for me.
I looked at Juliana, and I saw that her eyes were full of tears. And
beneath my look she burst out all at once into sobs. I made a
superhuman effort to contain myself, but could not succeed. It seemed
to me that my soul was melted. In my bosom I felt all the virtues in
the world collected together in that unforgettable hour.
*XXXIV.*
Juliana regained strength day by day, but slowly. My assiduity did not
wane. I even took advantage of the remarks made by Dr. Vebesti to
redouble my vigilance, to permit no one to replace me, to oppose my
mother and brother, who advised me to rest. My body from now on became
accustomed to the severe discipline, and scarcely ever felt fatigue. My
entire life was enclosed between the walls of that room, in the intimacy
of that alcove, in the circle where the invalid breathed.
As she required absolute quiet, as she was ordered to speak little so as
to avoid fatigue, I exercised my ingenuity in keeping from her bedside
even the members of her family. The alcove remained therefore isolated
from the rest of the house. For hours and hours we--Juliana and I--were
alone. And, crushed as she was by her illness, attentive as I was in my
pious duty, we were at times able to forget our misfortune, to lose the
sense of reality, to retain no other consciousness but that of our
immense love. At times it seemed to me that beyond the curtains nothing
existed any longer, so great was the concentration of my entire being on
the invalid. Nothing occurred to recall the frightful thing to me. I
saw before me a suffering sister, and my sole care was to relieve her
pain.
Too often these veils of forgetfulness were brutally rent asunder. My
mother spoke of Raymond. The curtains opened to give passage to the
intruder.
My mother carried him in her arms. I was present, and I felt that I
must have become pale, as all my blood flowed back to my heart. And
Juliana, what sensation did she feel?
I looked at that reddish face, the size of a man's fist, half hidden by
the bonnet trimmings, and with a fierce aversion that annihilated every
other emotion in my soul, I thought: "What shall I do to deliver myself
of you? Why were you not born dead?" My hate was boundless. It was
instinctive, blind, invincible--I might say, carnal; for it seemed to me
that it had its seat in my flesh, that it surged through all my fibres,
through all my nerves, through all my veins. Nothing could conquer it,
nothing could destroy it. It sufficed that the intruder were present,
at no matter what hour, no matter under what circumstances, for there to
be immediately induced in me a sort of annihilating rage, for me to fall
beneath the empire of a single and unique passion: my hate against him.
My mother said to Juliana:
"Look! How he has already changed in a few days! He resembles you more
than Tullio, but he bears very little resemblance to either of you. He
is still too little. We shall see later. Do you want to kiss him?"
She put the child's forehead to the invalid's lips. What sensation did
Juliana feel?
The infant began to cry. I had the courage to say to my mother without
bitterness:
"Take him away, please. Juliana needs quiet, and these shocks do her
great harm."
My mother left the alcove. The wails died away, but continued to cause
me the same sensation of painful laceration, the same desire to run and
strangle him so as not to hear them. We heard them for some time while
he was being carried away. When they finally ceased, the silence seemed
horrible to me; it fell on me like an avalanche, it crushed me. But,
instead of dwelling on my pain, I thought immediately that Juliana
required assistance.
"Ah! Tullio, Tullio, it is not possible..."
"Be silent, Juliana! Be silent, if you love me! I beseech you, be
silent!"
My voice, my gesture, was supplicating. All the irritation of my hate
had fallen. I suffered only on account of her suffering; I feared only
the distress caused the invalid, the shock she had received from that
fragile life.
"If you love me you must think of nothing but your cure. Look at me! I
think only of you; I suffer only for you. You must not torment
yourself. You must abandon yourself entirely to my tenderness, in order
to get well..."
In her feeble and trembling voice she answered:
"But who knows what you secretly feel in your heart? Poor soul!"
"No, no, Juliana, do not torment yourself! I suffer only for you and
because I see you suffer. I forget all when I see you smile. When you
feel well, I am happy. You must get well therefore if you love me; you
must be quiet, obedient, patient. When you are well, when you are
stronger, then ... _who knows_? God is good."
She murmured:
"My God! have pity on us!"
"In what manner?" I thought. "In causing the Intruder to die?" So,
then, we both wished his death. The mother herself saw no other
alternative than the destruction of her child. Yes, that was the only
alternative. And my memory recalled the brief dialogue that, on one now
distant evening, we had had beneath the elms; it recalled the painful
confession. "But does she still hate him, now he is born? Can she feel
a sincere aversion against the flesh of her flesh? Does she pray God
sincerely to take from her the fruit of her own entrails?" I again
recalled the wild hope that I had conceived, as if in a flash, on the
tragic night. "Suppose the idea of crime should occur to her and
gradually become strong enough to influence her."
And I looked at her hands stretched out on the cloth, so pale that they
were distinguishable from the sheets only by the azure of their veins.
*XXXV.*
Now that the invalid's condition was improving daily, a strange sorrow
oppressed me. At the bottom of my heart, I did not see the sad days of
the alcove pass by without a vague regret. Those mornings, those
evenings, those nights, however desolate they were, had their grave
sweetness. Every day my labor of charity seemed more beautiful. An
abundance of love inundated my soul and submerged at times my sombre
thoughts, procured for me at times forgetfulness of the frightful thing,
awoke in me some consolatory illusion, some indefinite dream. Shut up
in that alcove, I felt at times a sensation similar to that felt in the
shadows of lonely chapels: I felt as if in a refuge from the violences
of life, from opportunities for sinning. At times it seemed to me that
the light curtains separated me from an abyss. I was assailed by sudden
and unknown fears. Around me, in the night, I heard the silence of the
entire house, and with the eyes of my soul I saw, in the corner of a
distant room, by the side of a lighted lamp, the cradle in which slept
the intruder, my mother's joy--my heir. A great shudder of horror ran
through me, and I remained for a long time influenced by fright, under
the sinister light of this single thought. The curtains separated me
from an abyss.
But, now that Juliana's condition improved daily, excuses failed me for
prolonging her isolation, and by degrees the routine of domestic life
invaded the peaceful room. My mother, my brother, Maria, Natalia, Miss
Edith, entered more frequently, remained longer. Raymond imposed
himself upon the maternal tenderness. It was no longer possible to
avoid it, either for Juliana or for me. We had to be lavish with kisses
and smiles. We had to feint and artfully dissimulate, to endure the
refined cruelties that chance brought to us, to be tortured by slow
fire.
Nourished with healthy and substantial milk, surrounded by infinite
care, Raymond gradually lost his first repulsive appearance and
commenced to grow. He grew whiter, acquired a more clearly defined
form, and now kept his gray eyes wide open. But all his movements were
odious to me, from the sucking of his lips when applied to the breast to
the uncertain movements of his little hands. I could never discover
anything attractive in him. I never had a thought of him that was not
hateful. When I was obliged to touch him, when my mother brought him to
me for a kiss, there ran over my entire skin the same thrill of horror
which contact with an unclean animal would have caused me. Every fibre
in me revolted, and the violence that I did myself threw me into
despair.
Every day brought its new torture, and my mother was my grand
inquisitor. Once, on unexpectedly entering the room, and parting the
curtains of the alcove, I perceived the infant lying on the bed by
Juliana's side. Nobody was present. We three were there together
without witnesses. The infant slept peacefully, bound up in its
swaddling-clothes.
"It was mother who left him here," stammered Juliana.