Night, absolute night. Shadows thick as velvet hung all around.
Everything sank into darkness. I sat down and leaned my elbow on the
round table, lighted by the lamp. I meant to work, but as a matter of
fact I only listened.
I had looked into the Room a short time before. No one had been there,
but no doubt some one was going to come.
Some one was going to come, that evening perhaps, or the next day, or
the day after. Some one was bound to come. Then other human beings
would follow in succession. I waited, and it seemed to me as if that
was all I was made for.
I waited a long time, not daring to go to sleep. Then, very late, when
silence had been reigning so long that it paralysed me, I made an
effort. I leaned up against the wall once more and looked prayerfully.
The Room was black, all things blending into one, full of the night,
full of the unknown, of every possible thing. I dropped back into my
own room.
. . . . .
The next day I saw the Room in the simplicity of daylight. I saw the
dawn spread over it. Little by little, it began to come out of its
ruins and to rise.
It was arranged and furnished on the same plan as my own room.
Opposite me was the mantelpiece with the looking-glass above. On the
right was the bed, and on the left, on the same side as the window, a
sofa, chairs, armchairs, table, wardrobe. The rooms were identical,
but the history of mine was finished while the history of the other one
had not yet begun.
After an insipid breakfast, I returned to the spot that attracted me,
the hole in the partition. Nothing. I climbed down again.
It was close. A faint smell from the kitchen lingered even here. I
paused in the infinite vastness of my empty room.
I opened my door a little bit, then all the way. In the hall the door
of each room was painted brown, with numbers carved on brass plates.
All were closed. I took a few steps, which I alone heard--heard echoing
too loudly in that house, huge and immobile.
The passage was very long and narrow. The wall was hung with imitation
tapestry of dark green foliage, against which shone the copper of a gas
fixture. I leaned over the banister. A servant (the one who waited at
the table and was wearing a blue apron now, hardly recognisable with
her hair in disorder) came skipping down from the floor above with
newspapers under her arm. Madame Lemercier's little girl, with a
careful hand on the banister, was coming upstairs, her neck thrust
forward like a bird, and I compared her little footsteps to fragments
of passing seconds. A lady and a gentleman passed in front of me,
breaking off their conversation to keep me from catching what they were
saying, as if they refused me the alms of their thoughts.
These trifling events disappeared like scenes of a comedy on which the
curtain falls.
I passed the whole afternoon disheartened. I felt as if I were alone
against them all, while roaming about inside this house and yet outside
of it.
As I passed through the hallway, a door went shut hastily, cutting off
the laugh of a woman taken by surprise. A senseless noise oozed from
the walls, worse than silence. From under each door a broken ray of
light crept out, worse than darkness.
I went downstairs to the parlour, attracted by the sound of
conversation.
A group of men were talking, I no longer remember about what. They
went out, and I was alone. I heard them talking in the hall. Then
their voices died away.
A fashionable lady came in, with a rustle of silk and the smell of
flowers and perfume. She took up a lot of room because of her
fragrance and elegance. She carried her head held slightly forward and
had a beautiful long face set off by an expression of great sweetness.
But I could not see her well, because she did not look at me. She
seated herself, picked up a book, and turned the pages, and the leaves
cast upon her face a reflection of whiteness and thoughtfulness.
I watched her bosom rising and falling, and her motionless face, and
the living book that was merged with her. Her complexion was so
brilliant that her mouth seemed almost dark. Her beauty saddened me.
I looked at this unknown woman with sublime regret. She caressed me by
her presence. A woman always caresses a man when she comes near him
and they are alone. In spite of all sorts of separation, there is
always an awful beginning of happiness between them.
But she went out. That was the end of her. Nothing had happened, and
now it was over. All this was too simple, too hard, too true.
A gentle despair that I had never experienced before troubled me.
Since the previous day I had changed. Human life, its living truth, I
knew it as we all know it. I had been familiar with it all my life. I
believed in it with a kind of fear now that it had appeared to me in a
divine form.