Evening was closing in; I planned my strategy. For some time to come,
my recovery was to be my one and only concern; my duty was my health;
I must think good, I must call right everything that was salutary to
me, forget everything that did not contribute to my cure. Before the
evening meal, I had decided on my measures with regard to breathing,
exercise and nourishment.
We used to take our meals in a sort of little kiosk that was surrounded
by the terrace on all sides. We were alone, quiet, far from everything,
and the intimacy of our meals was delightful. An old negro used to
bring us our food, which was tolerable, from a neighbouring hotel.
Marceline superintended the menus, ordered one dish or rejected
another.... Not having much appetite as a rule, I did not mind
particularly when the dishes were a failure or the menu insufficient.
Marceline, who was herself a small eater, did not know, did not realize
that I was not taking enough food. To eat a great deal was the first
of my new resolutions. I intended to put it into execution that very
evening. I was not able to. We had some sort of uneatable hash, and
then a bit of roast meat which was absurdly overdone.
My irritation was so great that I vented it upon Marceline and let
myself go in a flood of intemperate words. I blamed her; to listen to
me, it was as though she were responsible for the badness of the food.
This slight delay in starting on the régime I had decided to adopt,
seemed of the gravest importance; I forgot the preceding days; the
failure of this one meal spoilt everything. I persisted obstinately.
Marceline had to go into the town to buy a tin or a jar of anything she
could find.
She soon came back with a little terrine, of which I devoured almost
the whole contents, as though to prove to us both how much I was in
need of more food.
That same evening we settled on the following plan: the meals were
to be much better and there were to be more of them--one every
three hours, beginning as early as half-past six in the morning. An
abundant provision of every kind of tinned food was to supplement the
deficiencies of the hotel menus.
I could not sleep that night, so excited was I by the vision of my
future virtues. I was, I think, a little feverish; there was a bottle
of mineral water beside me; I drank a glass, two glasses; the third
time, I drank out of the bottle itself and emptied it at a draught.
I strengthened my will as one strengthens one’s memory by revising a
lesson; I instructed my hostility, directed it against all and sundry;
I was to fight with everything; my salvation depended on myself alone.
At last I saw the night begin to pale, another day had dawned.
It had been my night of vigil before the battle.
The next day was Sunday. Must I confess that so far I had paid very
little attention to Marceline’s religious beliefs? Either from
indifference or delicacy, it seemed to me they were no business of
mine; and then I did not attach much importance to them. That morning
Marceline went to Mass. When she came back, she told me she had been
praying for me. I looked at her fixedly and then said as gently as I
could:
“You mustn’t pray for me, Marceline.”
“Why not?” she asked, a little troubled.
“I don’t want favours.”
“Do you reject the help of God?”
“He would have a right to my gratitude afterwards. It entails
obligations. I don’t like them.”
To all appearance we were trifling, but we made no mistake as to the
importance of our words.
“You will not get well all by yourself, my poor dear,” she sighed.
“If so, it can’t be helped.” Then, seeing how unhappy she looked, I
added less roughly:
“You will help me.”
iii
I am going to speak at length of my body. I shall speak of it so much
you will think at first I have forgotten my soul. This omission, as I
tell you my story, is intentional; out there, it was a fact. I had not
strength enough to keep up a double life. “I will think of the spirit
and that side of things later,” I said to myself, “--when I get better.”
I was still far from being well. The slightest thing put me into
a perspiration; the slightest thing gave me a cold; my breath was
short; sometimes I had a little fever, and often, from early morning,
oppressed by a dreadful feeling of lassitude, I remained prostrate in
an armchair, indifferent to everything, self-centred, solely occupied
in trying to breathe properly. I breathed laboriously, methodically,
carefully; my expiration came in two jerks which, with the greatest
effort of my will, I could only partially control; for a long time to
come, I still had need of all my attention to avoid this.
But what troubled me most was my morbid sensibility to changes of
temperature. I think, when I come to reflect on it today, that,
in addition to my illness, I was suffering from a general nervous
derangement. I cannot otherwise explain a series of phenomena which
it seems to me impossible to attribute entirely to a simple condition
of tuberculosis. I was always either too hot or too cold; I put on a
ridiculous number of clothes, and only stopped shivering when I began
to perspire; then, directly I took anything off, I shivered as soon
as I stopped perspiring. Certain portions of my body would turn as
cold as ice and, in spite of perspiration, felt like marble to the
touch; nothing would warm them. I was so sensitive to cold that if
a little water dropped on my feet while I was washing, it gave me a
relapse; I was equally sensitive to heat.... This sensibility I kept
and still keep, but now it gives me exquisite enjoyment. Any very
keen sensibility may, I believe, according as the organism is robust
or weakly, become a source of delight or discomfort. Everything which
formerly distressed me is now a delicious pleasure.
I do not know how I had managed to sleep up till then with my windows
shut; in accordance with T...’s advice, I now tried keeping them open
at night; a little at first; soon I flung them wide; soon it became
a habit, a need so great that directly the window was shut, I felt
stifled. Later on, with what rapture was I to feel the night wind blow,
the moon shine in upon me!...
But I am anxious to have done with these first stammerings after
health. Indeed, thanks to constant attention, to pure air, to better
food, I soon began to improve. Up till then, my breathlessness had made
me dread the stairs and I had not dared to leave the terrace; in the
last days of January I at last went down and ventured into the garden.
Marceline came with me, carrying a shawl. It was three o’clock in the
afternoon. The wind, which is often violent in those parts and which
I had found particularly unpleasant during the last few days, had
dropped. The air was soft and charming.
The public gardens!... A very wide path runs through the middle of
them, shaded by two rows of that kind of very tall mimosa, that out
there is called cassia. Benches are placed in the shadow of the trees.
A canalized river--one, I mean, that is not wide so much as deep, and
almost straight--flows alongside the path; other smaller channels
take the water from the river and convey it through the gardens to
the plants; the thick, heavy-looking water is the same colour as the
earth--the colour of pinkish, greyish clay. Hardly any foreigners walk
here--only a few Arabs; as they pass out of the sunlight, their white
cloaks take on the colour of the shade.
I felt an odd shiver come over me as I stepped into that strange shade;
I wrapped my shawl tighter about me; but it was not an unpleasant
sensation; on the contrary. We sat down on a bench. Marceline was
silent. Some Arabs passed by; then came a troop of children. Marceline
knew several of them; she signed to them and they came up to us. She
told me some of their names; questions and answers passed, smiles,
pouts, little jokes. It all rather irritated me and my feeling of
embarrassment returned. I was tired and perspiring. But, must I
confess that what made me most uncomfortable was not the children’s
presence--it was Marceline’s. Yes; however slightly, she was in my
way. If I had got up, she would have followed me; if I had taken off
my shawl, she would have wanted to carry it; if I had put it on again,
she would have said, “Are you cold?” And then, as to talking to the
children, I didn’t dare to before her; I saw she had her favourites;
I, in spite of myself, but deliberately, took more interest in the
others.
“Let us go in,” I said at last. And I privately resolved to come back
to the gardens alone.
The next day, she had to go out about ten o’clock; I took advantage of
this. Little Bachir, who rarely failed to come of a morning, carried my
shawl; I felt active, light-hearted. We were almost alone in the garden
path; I walked slowly, sometimes sat down for a moment, then started
off again. Bachir followed, chattering; as faithful and as obsequious
as a dog. I reached a part of the canal where the washerwomen come down
to wash; there was a flat stone placed in the middle of the stream,
and upon it lay a little girl, face downwards, dabbling with her hand
in the water; she was busy throwing little odds and ends of sticks
and grass into the water and picking them out again. Her bare feet
had dipped in the water; there were still traces of wet on them and
there her skin showed darker. Bachir went up and spoke to her; she
turned round, gave me a smile and answered Bachir in Arabic. “She is my
sister,” he explained; then he said his mother was coming to wash some
clothes and that his little sister was waiting for her. She was called
Rhadra in Arabic, which meant ‘Green.’ He said all this in a voice
that was as charming, as clear, as childlike, as the emotion I felt in
hearing it.
“She wants you to give her two sous,” he added.
I gave her fifty centimes and prepared to go on, when the mother, the
washerwoman, came up. She was a magnificent, heavily built woman, with
a high forehead tatooed in blue; she was carrying a basket of linen on
her head and was like a Greek caryatid, like a caryatid too, she was
simply draped in a wide piece of dark blue stuff, lifted at the girdle
and falling straight to the feet.
As soon as she saw Bachir, she called out to him roughly. He made an
angry answer; the little girl joined in and the three of them started a
violent dispute. At last Bachir seemed defeated and explained that his
mother wanted him that morning; he handed me my shawl sadly and I was
obliged to go off by myself.
I had not taken twenty paces when my shawl began to feel unendurably
heavy. I sat down, perspiring, on the first bench I came to. I hoped
some other boy would come along and relieve me of my burden. The one
who soon appeared and who offered to carry it of his own accord, was
a big boy about fourteen years old, as black as a Soudanese and not in
the least shy. His name was Ashour. I should have thought him handsome,
but that he was blind of one eye. He liked talking; told me where the
river came from, and that after running through the public gardens,
it flowed into the oasis, which it traversed from end to end. As I
listened to him, I forgot my fatigue. Charming as I thought Bachir, I
knew him too well by now, and I was glad of a change. I even promised
myself to come to the gardens all alone another day and sit on a bench
and wait for what some lucky chance might bring....
After a few more short rests, Ashour and I arrived at my door. I
wanted to invite him to come in, but I was afraid to, not knowing what
Marceline would say.
I found her in the dining-room, busied over a very small boy, so frail
and sickly looking that my first feeling was one of disgust rather than
pity. Marceline said rather timidly:
“The poor little thing is ill.”
“It’s not infectious, I hope. What’s the matter with him?”
“I don’t exactly know yet. He complains of feeling ill all over. He
speaks very little French. When Bachir comes tomorrow, he will be able
to interpret.... I am making him a little tea.”
Then, as if in excuse, and because I stood there without saying
anything, “I’ve known him a long time,” she added. “I haven’t dared
bring him in before; I was afraid of tiring you, or perhaps vexing you.”
“Why in the world!” I cried. “Bring in all the children you like, if it
amuses you!” And I thought, with a little irritation at not having done
so, that I might have perfectly well brought up Ashour.
And yet, as I thought this, I looked at my wife; how maternal and
caressing she was! Her tenderness was so touching that the little
fellow went off warm and comforted. I spoke of my walk and gently
explained to Marceline why I preferred going out alone.
At that time, my nights were generally disturbed by my constantly
waking with a start--either frozen with cold or bathed in sweat.
That night was a very good one. I hardly woke up at all. The next
morning, I was ready to go out by nine o’clock. It was fine; I felt
rested, not weak, happy--or rather, amused. The air was calm and warm,
but nevertheless, I took my shawl to serve as a pretext for making
acquaintance with the boy who might turn up to carry it. I have said
that the garden ran alongside our terrace, so that I reached it in
a moment. It was with rapture I passed into its shade. The air was
luminous. The cassias, whose flowers come very early, before their
leaves, gave out a delicious scent--or was it from all around me that
came the faint, strange perfume, which seemed to enter me by several
senses at once and which so uplifted me? I was breathing more easily
too, and so I walked more lightly; and yet at the first bench I sat
down, but it was because I was excited--dazzled--rather than tired.
I looked. The shadows were transparent and mobile; they did not fall
upon the ground--seemed barely to rest on it. Light! Oh, light!