The sound of the horn had ceased for some time. The street and the
houses had quieted down. Silence. I passed my hand over my forehead.
My fit of emotion was over. So much the better. I recovered my
balance by an effort of will-power.
I sat down at the table and took some papers out of my bag that I had
to look over and arrange.
Something spurred me on. I wanted to earn a little money. I could
then send some to my old aunt who had brought me up. She always waited
for me in the low-ceilinged room, where her sewing-machine, afternoons,
whirred, monotonous and tiresome as a clock, and where, evenings, there
was a lamp beside her which somehow seemed to look like herself.
Notes--the notes from which I was to draw up the report that would show
my ability and definitely decide whether I would get a position in
Monsieur Berton's bank--Monsieur Berton, who could do everything for me,
who had but to say a word, the god of my material life.
I started to light the lamp. I scratched a match. It did not catch
fire, the phosphorous end breaking off. I threw it away and waited a
moment, feeling a little tired.
Then I heard a song hummed quite close to my ear.
. . . . .
Some one seemed to be leaning on my shoulder, singing for me, only for
me, in confidence.
Ah, an hallucination! Surely my brain was sick--my punishment for
having thought too hard.
I stood up, and my hand clutched the edge of the table. I was
oppressed by a feeling of the supernatural. I sniffed the air, my
eyelids blinking, alert and suspicious.
The singing kept on. I could not get rid of it. My head was beginning
to go round. The singing came from the room next to mine. Why was it
so pure, so strangely near? Why did it touch me so? I looked at the
wall between the two rooms, and stifled a cry of surprise.
High up, near the ceiling, above the door, always kept locked, there
was a light. The song fell from that star.
There was a crack in the partition at that spot, through which the
light of the next room entered the night of mine.
I climbed up on the bed, and my face was on a level with the crack.
Rotten woodwork, two loose bricks. The plaster gave way and an opening
appeared as large as my hand, but invisible from below, because of the
moulding.
I looked. I beheld. The next room presented itself to my sight
freely.
It spread out before me, this room which was not mine. The voice that
had been singing had gone, and in going had left the door open, and it
almost seemed as though the door were still swinging on its hinges.
There was nothing in the room but a lighted candle, which trembled on
the mantelpiece.
At that distance the table looked like an island, the bluish and
reddish pieces of furniture, in their vague outline, like the organs of
a body almost alive.
I looked at the wardrobe. Bright, confused lines going straight up,
its feet in darkness. The ceiling, the reflection of the ceiling in
the glass, and the pale window like a human face against the sky.
I returned to my room--as if I had really left it--stunned at first, my
thoughts in a whirl, almost forgetting who I was.
I sat down on my bed, thinking things over quickly and trembling a
little, oppressed by what was to come.
I dominated, I possessed that room. My eyes entered it. I was in it.
All who would be there would be there with me without knowing it. I
should see them, I should hear them, I should be as much in their
company as though the door were open.
. . . . .
A moment later I raised my face to the hole and looked again.
The candle was out, but some one was there. It was the maid. No doubt
she had come in to put the room in order. Then she paused.
She was alone. She was quite near me. But I did not very well see the
living being who was moving about, perhaps because I was dazzled by
seeing it so truly--a dark blue apron, falling down from her waist like
rays of evening, white wrists, hands darker than her wrists from toil,
a face undecided yet striking, eyes hidden yet shining, cheeks
prominent and clear, a knot on top of her head gleaming like a crown.
A short time before I had seen the girl on the staircase bending over
cleaning the banisters, her reddened face close to her large hands. I
had found her repulsive because of those blackened hands of hers and
the dusty chores that she stooped over. I had also seen her in a
hallway walking ahead of me heavily, her hair hanging loose and her
body giving out an unpleasant odour, so that you felt it was obnoxious
and wrapped in dirty underwear.
. . . . .
And now I looked at her again. The evening gently dispelled the
ugliness, wiped out the misery and the horror, changed the dust into
shadow, like a curse turned into a blessing. All that remained of her
was colour, a mist, an outline; not even that; a thrill and the beating
of her heart. Every trace of her had disappeared save her true self.
That was because she was alone. An extraordinary thing, a dash of the
divine in it, to be actually alone. She was in that perfect innocence,
that purity which is solitude.
I desecrated her solitude with my eyes, but she did not know it, and so
/she/ was not desecrated.
She went over to the window with brightening eyes and swinging hands in
her apron of the colour of the nocturnal sky. Her face and the upper
part of her body were illuminated. She seemed to be in heaven.
She sat down on the sofa, a great low red shadow in the depths of the
room near the window. She leaned her broom beside her. Her dust cloth
fell to the floor and was lost from sight.
She took a letter from her pocket and read it. In the twilight the
letter was the whitest thing in the world. The double sheet trembled
between her fingers, which held it carefully, like a dove in the air.
She put the trembling letter to her lips, and kissed it. From whom was
the letter? Not from her family. A servant girl is not likely to have
so much filial devotion as to kiss a letter from her parents. A lover,
her betrothed, yes. Many, perhaps, knew her lover's name. I did not,
but I witnessed her love as no other person had. And that simple
gesture of kissing the paper, that gesture buried in a room, stripped
bare by the dark, had something sublime and awesome in it.
She rose and went closer to the window, the white letter folded in her
grey hand.
The night thickened--and it seemed to me as if I no longer knew her age,
nor her name, nor the work she happened to be doing down here, nor
anything about her--nothing at all. She gazed at the pale immensity,
which touched her. Her eyes gleamed. You would say she was crying,
but no, her eyes only shed light. She would be an angel if reality
flourished upon the earth.
She sighed and walked to the door slowly. The door closed behind her
like something falling.
She had gone without doing anything but reading her letter and kissing
it.
. . . . .
I returned to my corner lonely, more terribly alone than before. The
simplicity of this meeting stirred me profoundly. Yet there had been
no one there but a human being, a human being like myself. Then there
is nothing sweeter and stronger than to approach a human being, whoever
that human being may be.
This woman entered into my intimate life and took a place in my heart.
How? Why? I did not know. But what importance she assumed! Not of
herself. I did not know her, and I did not care to know her. She
assumed importance by the sole value of the momentary revelation of her
existence, by the example she gave, by the wake of her actual presence,
by the true sound of her steps.
It seemed to me as if the supernatural dream I had had a short while
before had been granted, and that what I called the infinite had come.
What that woman, without knowing it, had given me by showing me her
naked kiss--was it not the crowning beauty the reflection of which
covers you with glory?
. . . . .
The dinner bell rang.
This summons to everyday reality and one's usual occupations changed
the course of my thoughts for the moment. I got ready to go down to
dinner. I put on a gay waistcoat and a dark coat, and I stuck a pearl
in my cravat. Then I stood still and listened, hoping to hear a
footstep or a voice.
While doing these conventional things, I continued to be obsessed by
the great event that had happened--this apparition.
I went downstairs and joined the rest of my fellow-boarders in the
brown and gold dining-room. There was a general stir and bustle and
the usual empty interest before a meal. A number of people seated
themselves with the good manners of polite society. Smiles, the sound
of chairs being drawn up to the table, words thrown out, conversations
started. Then the concert of plates and dishes began and grew steadily
louder.
My neighbours talked to those beside them. I heard their murmur, which
accentuated my aloneness. I lifted my eyes. In front of me a shining
row of foreheads, eyes, collars, shirtfronts, waists, and busy hands
above a table of glistening whiteness. All these things attracted my
attention and distracted it at the same time.
I did not know what these people were thinking about. I did not know
who they were. They hid themselves from one another. Their shining
fronts made a wall against which I dashed in vain.
Bracelets, necklaces, rings. The sparkling of the jewels made me feel
far away from them as do the stars. A young girl looked at me with
vague blue eyes. What could I do against that kind of sapphire?
They talked, but the noise left each one to himself, and deafened me,
as the light blinded me.
Nevertheless, at certain moments these people, because in the course of
conversation they thought of things they had at heart, revealed
themselves as if they were alone. I recognized the revelation of this
truth, and felt myself turning pale on remembering that other
revelation.
Some one spoke of money, and the subject became general. The assembly
was stirred by an ideal. A dream of grasping and touching shone
through their eyes, just as a little adoration had come into the eyes
of the servant when she found herself alone.
They recalled military heroes triumphantly, and some men thought, "Me,
too!" and worked themselves up into a fever, showing what they were
thinking of, in spite of their ridiculously low station and the slavery
of their social position. One young girl seemed dazzled, looked
overwhelmed. She could not restrain a sigh of ecstasy. She blushed
under the effect of an inscrutable thought. I saw the surge of blood
mount to her face. I saw her heart beaming.
They discussed the phenomena of occultism and the Beyond. "Who knows?"
some one said. Then they discussed death. Two diners, at opposite
ends of the table, a man and a woman who had not spoken to each other
and seemed not to be acquainted, exchanged a glance that I caught. And
seeing that glance leap from their eyes at the same time, under the
shock of the idea of death, I understood that these two loved each
other.
. . . . .
The meal was over. The young people went into the parlour. A lawyer
was telling some people around him about a murder case that had been
decided that day. The nature of the subject was such that he expressed
himself very cautiously, as though confiding a secret. A man had
injured and then murdered a little girl and had kept singing at the top
of his voice to prevent the cries of his little victim from being
heard. One by one the people stopped talking and listened with the air
of really not listening, while those not so close to the speaker felt
like drawing up right next to him. About this image risen in their
midst, this paroxysm so frightful to our timid instincts, the silence
spread in a circle in their souls like a terrific noise.
Then I heard the laugh of a woman, of an honest woman, a dry crackling
laugh, which she thought innocent perhaps, but which caressed her whole
being, a burst of laughter, which, made up of formless instinctive
cries, was almost fleshy. She stopped and turned, silent again. And
the speaker, sure of his effect, continued in a calm voice to hurl upon
these people the story of the monster's confession.
A young mother, whose daughter was sitting beside her, half got up, but
could not leave. She sat down again and bent forward to conceal her
daughter. She was eager and yet ashamed to listen.
Another woman was sitting motionless, with her head leaning forward,
but her mouth compressed as if she were defending herself tragically.
And beneath the worldly mask of her face, I saw a fanatical martyr's
smile impress itself like handwriting.
And the men! I distinctly heard one man, the man who was so calm and
simple, catch his breath. Another man, with a characterless business
man's face, was making a great effort to talk of this and that to a
young girl sitting next to him, while he watched her with a look of
which he was ashamed and which made him blink. And everybody condemned
the satyr in terms of the greatest abuse.
And so, for a moment, they had not lied. They had almost confessed,
perhaps unconsciously, and even without knowing what they had
confessed. They had almost been their real selves. Desire had leaped
into their eyes, and the reflection passed--and I had seen what happened
in the silence, sealed by their lips.
It is this, it is this thought, this kind of living spectre, that I
wished to study. I rose, shrugging my shoulders, and hurried out,
impelled by eagerness to see the sincerity of men and women unveiled
before my eyes, beautiful as a masterpiece in spite of its ugliness.
So, back in my room again, I placed myself against the wall as if to
embrace it and look down into the Room.
There it was at my feet. Even when empty, it was more alive than the
people one meets and associates with, the people who have the vastness
of numbers to lose themselves in and be forgotten in, who have voices
for lying and faces to hide themselves behind.