The window was wide open. In the dusty rays of the sunset I saw three
people with their backs to the long reddish-brown beams of light. An
old man, with a care-worn, exhausted appearance and a face furrowed
with wrinkles, seated in the armchair near the window. A tall young
woman with very fair hair and the face of a madonna. And, a little
apart, a woman who was pregnant.
She held her eyes fixed in front of her, seeming to contemplate the
future. She did not enter into the conversation, perhaps because of
her humbler condition, or because her thoughts were bent upon the event
to come. The two others were conversing. The man had a cracked,
uneven voice. A slight feverish tremour sometimes shook his shoulders,
and now and then he gave a sudden involuntary jerk. The fire had died
out of his eyes and his speech had traces of a foreign accent. The
woman sat beside him quietly. She had the fairness and gentle calm of
the northern races, so white and light that the daylight seemed to die
more slowly than elsewhere upon her pale silver face and the abundant
aureole of her hair.
Were they father and daughter or brother and sister? It was plain that
he adored her but that she was not his wife.
With his dimmed eyes he looked at the reflection of the sunlight upon
her.
"Some one is going to be born, and some one is going to die," he said.
The other woman started, while the man's companion cried in a low tone,
bending over him quickly.
"Oh, Philip, don't say that."
He seemed indifferent to the effect he had produced, as though her
protest had not been sincere, or else were in vain.
Perhaps, after all, he was not an old man. His hair seemed to me
scarcely to have begun to turn grey. But he was in the grip of a
mysterious illness, which he did not bear well. He was in a constant
state of irritation. He had not long to live. That was apparent from
unmistakable signs--the look of pity in the woman's eyes mingled with
discreetly veiled alarm, and an oppressive atmosphere of mourning.
. . . . .
With a physical effort he began to speak so as to break the silence.
As he was sitting between me and the open window, some of the things he
said were lost in the air.
He spoke of his travels, and, I think, also of his marriage, but I did
not hear well.
He became animated, and his voice rose painfully. He quivered. A
restrained passion enlivened his gestures and glances and warmed his
language. You could tell that he must have been an active brilliant
man before his illness.
He turned his head a little and I could hear him better.
He told of the cities and countries that he had visited. It was like
an invocation to sacred names, to far-off different skies, Italy,
Egypt, India. He had come to this room to rest, between two stations,
and he was resting uneasily, like an escaped convict. He said he would
have to leave again, and his eyes sparkled. He spoke of what he still
wanted to see. But the twilight deepened, the warmth left the air, and
all he thought of now was what he had seen in the past.
"Think of everything we have seen, of all the space we bring with us."
They gave the impression of a group of travellers, never in repose,
forever in flight, arrested for a moment in their insatiable course, in
a corner of the world which you felt was made small by their presence.
. . . . .
"Palermo--Sicily."
Not daring to advance into the future, he intoxicated himself with
these recollections. I saw the effort he was making to draw near to
some luminous point in the days gone by.
"Carpi, Carpi," he cried. "Anna, do you remember that wonderful
brilliant morning? The ferryman and his wife were at table in the open
air. What a glow over the whole country! The table, round and pale
like a star. The stream sparkling. The banks bordered with oleander
and tamarisk. The sun made a flower of every leaf. The grass shone as
if it were full of dew. The shrubs seemed bejewelled. The breeze was
so faint that it was a smile, not a sigh."
She listened to him, placid, deep, and limpid as a mirror.
"The whole of the ferryman's family," he continued, "was not there.
The young daughter was dreaming on a rustic seat, far enough away not
to hear them. I saw the light-green shadow that the tree cast upon
her, there at the edge of the forest's violet mystery.
"And I can still hear the flies buzzing in that Lombardy summer over
the winding river which unfolded its charms as we walked along the
banks."
"The greatest impression I ever had of noonday sunlight," he continued,
"was in London, in a museum. An Italian boy in the dress of his
country, a model, was standing in front of a picture which represented
a sunlight effect on a Roman landscape. The boy held his head
stretched out. Amid the immobility of the indifferent attendants, and
in the dampness and drabness of a London day, this Italian boy radiated
light. He was deaf to everything around him, full of secret sunlight,
and his hands were almost clasped. He was praying to the divine
picture."
"We saw Carpi again," said Anna. "We had to pass through it by chance
in November. It was very cold. We wore all our furs, and the river
was frozen."
"Yes, and we walked on the ice."
He paused for a moment, then asked:
"Why are certain memories imperishable?"
He buried his face in his nervous hands and sighed:
"Why, oh, why?"
"Our oasis," Anna said, to assist him in his memories, or perhaps
because she shared in the intoxication of reviving them, "was the
corner where the lindens and acacias were on your estate in the
government of Kiev. One whole side of the lawn was always strewn with
flowers in summer and leaves in winter."
"I can still see my father there," he said. "He had a kind face. He
wore a great cloak of shaggy cloth, and a felt cap pulled down over his
ears. He had a large white beard, and his eyes watered a little from
the cold."
"Why," he wondered after a pause, "do I think of my father that way and
no other way? I do not know, but that is the way he will live in me.
That is the way he will not die."
. . . . .
The day was declining. The woman seemed to stand out in greater relief
against the other two and become more and more beautiful.
I saw the man's silhouette on the faded curtains, his back bent, his
head shaking as in a palsy and his neck strained and emaciated.
With a rather awkward movement he drew a case of cigarettes from his
pocket and lit a cigarette.
As the eager little light rose and spread like a glittering mask, I saw
his ravaged features. But when he started to smoke in the twilight,
all you could see was the glowing cigarette, shaken by an arm as
unsubstantial as the smoke that came from it.
It was not tobacco that he was smoking. The odour of a drug sickened
me.
He held out his hand feebly toward the closed window, modest with its
half-lifted curtains.
"Look--Benares and Allahabad. A sumptuous ceremony--tiaras--insignia,
and women's ornaments. In the foreground, the high priest, with his
elaborate head-dress in tiers--a vague pagoda, architecture, epoch,
race. How different we are from those creatures. Are /they/ right or
are /we/ right?"
Now he extended the circle of the past, with a mighty effort.
"Our travels--all those bonds one leaves behind. All useless.
Travelling does not make us greater. Why should the mere covering of
ground make us greater?"
The man bowed his wasted head.
. . . . .
He who had just been in ecstasy now began to complain.
"I keep remembering--I keep remembering. My heart has no pity on me."
"Ah," he mourned, a moment afterwards, with a gesture of resignation,
"we cannot say good-by to everything."
The woman was there, but she could do nothing, although so greatly
adored. She was there with only her beauty. It was a superhuman
vision that he evoked, heightened by regret, by remorse and greed. He
did not want it to end. He wanted it back again. He loved his past.
Inexorable, motionless, the past is endowed with the attributes of
divinity, because, for believers as well as for unbelievers, the great
attribute of God is that of being prayed to.
. . . . .
The pregnant woman had gone out. I saw her go to the door, softly with
maternal carefulness of herself.
Anna and the sick man were left alone. The evening had a gripping
reality. It seemed to live, to be firmly rooted, and to hold its
place. Never before had the room been so full of it.
"One more day coming to an end," he said, and went on as if pursuing
his train of thought:
"We must get everything ready for our marriage."
"Michel!" cried the young woman instinctively, as if she could not hold
the name back.
"Michel will not be angry at us," the man replied. "He knows you love
him, Anna. He will not be frightened by a formality, pure and simple--
by a marriage /in extremis,"/ he added emphatically, smiling as though
to console himself.
They looked at each other. He was dry, feverish. His words came from
deep down in his being. She trembled.
With his eyes on her, so white and tall and radiant, he made a visible
effort to hold himself in, as if not daring to reach her with a single
word. Then he let himself go.
"I love you so much," he said simply.
"Ah," she answered, "you will not die!"
"How good you were," he replied, "to have been willing to be my sister
for so long!"
"Think of all you have done for me!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands
and bending her magnificent body toward him, as if prostrating herself
before him.
You could tell that they were speaking open-heartedly. What a good
thing it is to be frank and speak without reticence, without the shame
and guilt of not knowing what one is saying and for each to go straight
to the other. It is almost a miracle.
They were silent. He closed his eyes, though continuing to see her,
then opened them again and looked at her.
"You are my angel who do not love me."
His face clouded. This simple sight overwhelmed me. It was the
infiniteness of a heart partaking of nature--this clouding of his face.
I saw with what love he lifted himself up to her. She knew it. There
was a great gentleness in her words, in her attitude toward him, which
in every little detail showed that she knew his love. She did not
encourage him, or lie to him, but whenever she could, by a word, by a
gesture, or by some beautiful silence, she would try to console him a
little for the harm she did him by her presence and by her absence.
After studying her face again, while the shadow drew him still nearer
to her in spite of himself, he said:
"You are the sad confidante of my love of you."
He spoke of their marriage again. Since all preparations had been
made, why not marry at once?
"My fortune, my name, Anna, the chaste love that will be left to you
from me when--when I shall be gone."
He wanted to transform his caress--too light, alas--into a lasting
benefit for the vague future. For the present all he aspired to was
the feeble and fictitious union implied in the word marriage.
"Why speak of it?" she said, instead of giving a direct answer, feeling
an almost insurmountable repugnance, doubtless because of her love for
Michel, which the sick man had declared in her stead. While she had
consented in principle to marrying him and had allowed the preliminary
steps to be taken, she had never replied definitely to his urgings.
But it looked to me as if she were about to make a different decision,
one contrary to her material interests, in all the purity of her soul,
which was so transparent--the decision to give herself to him freely.
"Tell me!" he murmured.
There was almost a smile on her mouth, the mouth to which supplications
had been offered as to an altar.
The dying man, feeling that she was about to accept, murmured:
"I love life." He shook his head. "I have so little time left, so
little time that I do not want to sleep at night any more."
Then he paused and waited for her to speak.
"Yes," she said, and lightly touched--hardly grazed--the old man's hand
with her own.
And in spite of myself, my inexorable, attentive eye could not help
detecting the stamp of theatrical solemnity, of conscious grandeur in
her gesture. Even though devoted and chaste, without any ulterior
motive, her sacrifice had a self-glorifying pride, which I perceived--I
who saw everything.
. . . . .
In the boarding-house, the strangers were the sole topic of
conversation. They occupied three rooms and had a great deal of
baggage, and the man seemed to be very rich, though simple in his
tastes. They were to stay in Paris until the young woman's delivery,
in a month or so. She expected to go to a hospital nearby. But the
man was very ill, they said. Madame Lemercier was extremely annoyed.
She was afraid he would die in her house. She had made arrangements by
correspondence, otherwise she would not have taken these people in--in
spite of the tone that their wealth might give to her house. She hoped
he would last long enough to be able to leave. But when you spoke to
her, she seemed to be worried.
When I saw him again, I felt he was really going to die soon. He sat
in his chair, collapsed, with his elbows on the arms of the chair and
his hands drooping. It seemed difficult for him to look at things, and
he held his face bowed down, so that the light from the window did not
reveal his pupils, but only the edge of the lower lids, which gave the
impression of his eyes having been put out. I remembered what the poet
had said, and I trembled before this man whose life was over, who
reviewed almost his entire existence like a terrible sovereign, and was
wrapped in a beauty that was of God.