i
And so I tried, yet once more, to close my hand over my love. But what
did I want with peaceful happiness? What Marceline gave me, what she
stood for in my eyes, was like rest to a man who is not tired. But as
I felt she was weary and needed my love, I showered it upon her and
pretended that the need was mine. I felt her sufferings unbearably; it
was to cure her that I loved her.
O days and nights of passionate tender care! As others stimulate their
faith by exaggerating the observance of its practices, so I fanned my
love. And Marceline, as I tell you, began forthwith to recover hope. In
her there was still so much youth; in me, she thought, so much promise.
We fled from Paris, as though for another honeymoon. But on the very
first day of the journey, she got much worse and we had to break it at
Neuchâtel.
I loved this lake, which has nothing Alpine about it, with its
grey-green shores, and its waters mingling for a long space,
marsh-like, with the land, and filtering through the rushes. I found
a very comfortable hotel, with a room looking on to the lake for
Marceline. I stayed with her the whole day.
She was so far from well the next day, that I sent for a doctor from
Lausanne. He wanted to know, quite uselessly, whether there were any
other cases of tuberculosis in my wife’s family. I said there were,
though, as a matter of fact, I knew of none; but I disliked saying that
I myself had been almost given up on account of it, and that Marceline
had never been ill before she nursed me. I put the whole thing down to
the score of the clot, though the doctor declared that this was merely
a contributory cause and that the trouble dated from further back. He
strongly recommended the air of the high Alps, which he assured me
would cure her; and as just what I myself wished was to spend the whole
winter in the Engadine, we started as soon as she was able to bear the
journey.
I remember every sensation of that journey as vividly as if they
had been events. The weather was limpid and cold; we had taken our
warmest furs with us.... At Coire, the incessant din in the hotel
almost entirely prevented us from sleeping. I myself should have put
up cheerfully with a sleepless night and not found it tiring; but
Marceline ... And it was not so much the noise that irritated me as the
fact that she was not able to sleep in spite of it. Her need of sleep
was so great! The next morning we started before daybreak; we had taken
places in the coupé of the Coire diligence; the relays were so arranged
that St. Moritz could be reached in one day.
Tiefenkasten, the Julier, Samaden ... I remember it all, hour by hour;
I remember the strange, inclement feeling of the air; the sound of
the horses’ bells; my hunger; the midday halt at the inn; the raw egg
that I broke into my soup; the brown bread and the sour wine that
was so cold. This coarse fare did not suit Marceline; she could eat
hardly anything but a few dry biscuits, which I had had the forethought
to bring with me. I can recall the closing in of the daylight; the
swiftness with which the shade climbs up the wooded mountain side;
then another halt. And now the air becomes keener, rawer. When the
coach stops, we plunge into the heart of darkness, into a silence that
is limpid--limpid--there is no other word for it. The quality, the
sonority of the slightest sound acquire perfection and fullness in
that strange transparency. Another start--in the night, this time.
Marceline coughs ... Oh, will she never have done coughing? I think of
the Sousse diligence; I feel as if I had coughed better than that. She
makes too great an effort.... How weak and changed she looks! In the
shadow there, I should hardly recognize her. How drawn her features
are! Used those two black holes of her nostrils always to be so
visible?... Oh, how horribly she is coughing! Is that the best she can
do? I have a horror of sympathy. It is the lurking place of every kind
of contagion; one ought only to sympathize with the strong. Oh! she
seems really at the last gasp. Shall we never arrive? What is she doing
now? She takes her handkerchief out, puts it to her lips, turns aside
... Horror! Is she going to spit blood too? I snatch the handkerchief
roughly from her hand, and in the half light of the lantern look at
it.... Nothing. But my anxiety has been too visible. Marceline attempts
a melancholy smile and murmurs:
“No; not yet.”
At last we arrived. It was time, for she could hardly stand. I did not
like the rooms that had been prepared for us; we spent the night in
them, however, and changed them next day. Nothing seemed fine enough
for me nor too expensive. And as the winter season had not yet begun,
the vast hotel was almost empty and I was able to choose. I took two
spacious rooms, bright, and simply furnished; there was a large sitting
room adjoining, with a big bow-window, from which could be seen the
hideous blue lake and a crude mountain, whose name I have forgotten
and whose slopes were either too wooded or too bare. We had our meals
served separately. The rooms were extravagantly dear. But what do I
care? thought I. It is true I no longer have my lectures, but I am
selling La Morinière. And then we shall see.... Besides, what need
have I of money? What need have I of all this?... I am strong now....
A complete change of fortune, I think, must be as instructive as a
complete change of health.... Marceline, of course, requires luxury;
she is weak ... oh, for her sake, I will spend so much, so much that
... And I felt at one and the same time a horror of luxury, and a
craving for it. I bathed, I steeped my sensuality in it, and then again
it was a vagabond joy that I longed for.
In the meanwhile Marceline was getting better and my constant care was
having good results. As she had a difficulty in eating, I ordered the
most dainty and delicious food to stimulate her appetite; we drank the
best wines. The foreign brands we experimented on every day amused me
so much that I persuaded myself she had a great fancy for them; sharp
Rhine wines, almost syrupy Tokays, that filled me with their heady
virtue. I remember too an extraordinary Barba-grisca, of which only one
bottle was left, so that I never knew whether the others would have had
the same bizarre taste.
Every day we went for a drive, first in a carriage, and later on, when
the snow had fallen, in a sledge, wrapped up to our eyes in fur. I came
in with glowing cheeks, hungry and then sleepy. I had not, however,
given up all idea of work, and every day I found an hour or so in which
to meditate on the things I felt it was my duty to say. There was no
question of history now; I had long since ceased to take any interest
in historical studies except as a means of psychological investigation.
I have told you how I had been attracted afresh to the past when I
thought I could see in it a disquieting resemblance to the present; I
had actually dared to think that by questioning the dead I should be
able to extort from them some secret information about life.... But
now the youthful Athalaric himself might have risen from the grave to
speak to me, I should not have listened to him. How could the ancient
past have answered my present question?--What can man do more? that is
what seemed to me important to know. Is what man has hitherto said all
that he _could_ say? Is there nothing in himself he has overlooked? Can
he do nothing but repeat himself?... And every day there grew stronger
in me a confused consciousness of untouched treasures somewhere lying
covered up, hidden, smothered, by culture and decency and morality.
It seemed to me then that I had been born to make discoveries of a kind
hitherto undreamed of; and I grew strangely and passionately eager
in the pursuit of my dark and mysterious researches, for the sake of
which, I well knew, the searcher must abjure and repudiate culture and
decency and morality.
I soon went to the length of sympathizing only with the wildest
outbreaks of conduct in other people, and of regretting that such
manifestations were subject to any control whatever. I came very
near thinking that honesty was merely the result of restrictions or
conventions or fear. I should have liked to cherish it as something
rare and difficult; but our manners had turned it into a form of
mutual advantage and commonplace contract. In Switzerland, it is just
a part of one’s comfort. I understood that Marceline required it; but
I did not conceal from her the new trend of my thoughts; as early as
Neuchâtel, when she was praising the honesty that is so visible in the
faces of the people and the walls of the houses.
“I prefer my own,” I retorted. “I have a horror of honest folk. I may
have nothing to fear from them, but I have nothing to learn either. And
besides, they have nothing to say.... Honest Swiss nation! What does
their health do for them? They have neither crimes, nor history, nor
literature, nor arts ... a hardy rose-tree, without thorns or flowers.”
That I should be bored by this honest country was a foregone
conclusion, but at the end of two months, my boredom became a kind of
frenzy and my one thought was to fly.
We were in the middle of January. Marceline was better--much better;
the continual low fever that was undermining her had disappeared; a
brighter colour had returned to her cheeks; she once more enjoyed
walking, though not for long, and was not continually tired as she
used to be. I did not have much difficulty in persuading her that the
bracing air had done her all the good that could be expected and that
the best thing for her now would be to go down into Italy, where the
kindly warmth of spring would completely restore her ... and above all,
I had not much difficulty in persuading myself--so utterly sick was I
of those mountain heights.
And yet now, when in my idleness the detested past once more asserts
its strength, those are the very memories that haunt me. Swift sledge
drives; joy of the dry and stinging air, spattering of the snow,
appetite; walks in the baffling fog, curious sonority of voices, abrupt
appearance of objects; readings in the snug warmth of the sitting-room,
view of the landscape through the windows, view of the icy landscape;
tragic waiting for the snow; vanishing of the outer world, soft
brooding of one’s thoughts.... Oh, to skate with her alone once more on
the little lake, lying lost among the larches, pure and peaceful--oh,
to come home with her once more at night!...
That descent into Italy gave me all the dizzy sensations of a fall. The
weather was fine. As we dropped into a warmer and denser air, the rigid
trees of the highlands--the larches and symmetrical fir-trees--gave
way to the softness, the grace and ease of a luxuriant vegetation. I
felt I was leaving abstraction for life, and though it was winter, I
imagined perfumes in every breath. Oh, for long--too long, our only
smiles had been for shadows! My abstemiousness had gone to my head and
I was drunk with thirst as others are with wine. My thrift of life
had been admirable; on the threshold of this land of tolerance and
promise, all my appetites broke out with sudden vehemence. I was full
to bursting with an immense reserve of love; sometimes it surged from
the obscure depths of my senses up into my head and turned my thoughts
to shamelessness.
This illusion of spring did not last long. The sudden change of
altitude may have deceived me for a moment, but as soon as we left the
sheltered shores of the lakes, Bellagio and Como, where we lingered
for a day or two, we came into winter and rain. We now suffered from
the cold which we had borne well enough in the Engadine; it was not
dry and exhilarating here as it had been in the mountains, but damp
and heavy, and Marceline began to cough again. In order to escape it,
we pursued our way still further south; we left Milan for Florence,
Florence for Rome, Rome for Naples, which in the winter rain is really
the most lugubrious town I know. I dragged along in unspeakable ennui.
We went back to Rome in the hopes of finding, if not warmth, at least a
semblance of comfort. We rented an apartment on the Pincio, much too
vast, but marvellously situated. Already, at Florence, disgusted with
hotels, we had rented a lovely villa on the Viale dei Colli, for three
months. Anybody else would have wished to spend a lifetime in it.... We
stayed barely three weeks. And yet at every fresh stage, I made a point
of arranging everything as if we were never going to leave.... Some
irresistible demon goaded me on.... And add to this that we travelled
with no fewer than eight trunks. There was one I never opened during
the whole journey, entirely filled with books.
I did not allow Marceline to have any say in our expenses nor attempt
to moderate them. I knew of course that they were excessive and that
they could not last. I could no longer count on any money from La
Morinière. It had ceased to bring in anything and Bocage wrote that he
could not find a purchaser. But all thoughts of the future only ended
in making me spend the more. What need should I have of so much money,
once I was alone, thought I; and sick at heart, I watched Marceline’s
frail life as it ebbed away more quickly still than my fortune.
Although she depended on me for all the arrangements, these perpetual
and hurried moves tired her; but what tired her still more (I do not
hesitate now to acknowledge it) was the fear of what was in my mind.
“I understand,” she said to me one day, “I quite understand your
doctrine--for now it has become a doctrine. A fine one perhaps,” and
then she added sadly, dropping her voice, “but it does away with the
weak.”
“And so it should!” was the answer that burst from me in spite of
myself.
In my heart then, I felt the sensitive creature shiver and shrivel
up at the shock of my dreadful words.... Oh, perhaps you will think
I did not love Marceline. I swear I loved her passionately. She
had never been--I had never thought her--so beautiful. Illness had
refined--etherealized her features. I hardly ever left her, surrounded
her with every care, watched over her every moment of the night and
day. If she slept lightly, I trained myself to sleep more lightly
still; I watched her as she fell asleep and I was the first to wake.
When sometimes I left her for an hour to take a solitary walk in the
country or streets, a kind of loving anxiety, a fear of her feeling the
time long, made me hurry back to her; and sometimes I rebelled against
this obsession, called upon my will to help me against it, said to
myself, “Are you worth no more than this, you make-believe great man?”
And I forced myself to prolong my absence; but then I would come in, my
arms laden with flowers, early garden flowers, or hothouse blooms....
Yes, I say; I cared for her tenderly. But how can I express this--that
in proportion as I respected myself less, I revered her more? And who
shall say how many passions and how many hostile thoughts may live
together in the mind of man?...
The bad weather had long since ceased; the season was advancing;
and suddenly the almond trees were in bloom. The day was the first
of March. I went down in the morning to the Piazza di Spagna. The
peasants had stripped the campagna of its white branches, and the
flower-sellers’ baskets were full of almond blossom. I was so enchanted
that I bought a whole grove of it. Three men carried it for me. I
went home with all this flowering spring. The branches caught in
the doorways and petals snowed upon the carpet. I put the blossoms
everywhere, filled all the vases, and, while Marceline was absent from
the drawing-room for a moment, made it a bower of whiteness. I was
already picturing her delight, when I heard her step...! She opened the
door. Oh, what was wrong with her?... She tottered.... She burst out
sobbing.
“What is it, my poor Marceline?”...
I ran up to her, showered the tenderest caresses upon her. Then as if
to excuse her tears:
“The flowers smell too strong,” she said....
And it was a faint, faint, exquisite scent of honey.... Without a
word, I seized the innocent fragile branches, broke them to pieces,
carried them out of the room and flung them away, my temples throbbing
with exasperation, my nerves ajar. Oh, if she finds this little bit of
spring too much for her!...
I have often thought over those tears of hers and I believe now that
she already felt herself condemned and was crying for the loss of other
springs.... I think too that there are strong joys for the strong and
weak joys for the weak who would be hurt by strong joys. She was sated
by the merest trifle of pleasure; one shade brighter and it was more
than she could bear. What she called happiness, I called rest, and I
was unwilling, unable to rest.
Four days later we left again for Sorrento. I was disappointed not to
find it warmer. The whole country seemed shivering with cold. The wind,
which never ceased blowing, was a severe trial to Marceline. Our plan
was to go to the same hotel we had been to at the time of our first
journey, and we were given the same room.... But how astonished we
were to see that the grey sky had robbed the whole scene of its magic,
and that the place we had thought so charming when we had walked in it
as lovers was nothing but a dreary hotel garden!
We settled then to go by sea to Palermo, whose climate we had heard
praised; we returned therefore to Naples, where we were to take
the boat and where we stayed on for a few days longer. But at any
rate, I was not dull at Naples. Naples is alive--a town that is not
overshadowed by the past.
I spent nearly every moment of the day with Marceline. At night she was
tired and went to bed early; I watched by her until she went to sleep
and sometimes went to bed myself; then, when her more regular breathing
told me she was asleep, I got up again noiselessly, dressed in the
dark, slipped out of doors like a thief.
Out of doors! Oh, I could have shouted with joy! What was I bent on?
I cannot tell. The sky that had been dark all day, was cleared of its
clouds; the moon was nearly full. I walked at random, without object,
without desire, without constraint. I looked at everything with a fresh
eye; I listened to every noise with an attentive ear; I breathed the
dampness of the night; I touched things with my hand; I went prowling.
The last night we spent at Naples I stayed out later than usual on
this vagabond debauch. When I came in, I found Marceline in tears. She
had woken up suddenly, she said, and been frightened at not feeling
me there. I calmed her, explained my absence as well as I could, and
resolved not to leave her again. But the first night we spent at
Palermo was too much for me--I went out. The orange trees were in
flower; the slightest breath of air came laden with their scent....
We only stayed five days at Palermo; then, by a long detour, we made
our way to Taormina, which we both wanted to see again. I think I have
told you that the village is perched high on the mountain side; the
station is on the sea-shore. The carriage that drove us to the hotel
took me back again to the station for me to get our trunks. I stood up
in the carriage in order to talk to the driver. He was a Sicilian boy
from Catania, as beautiful as a line of Theocritus, full of colour and
odour and savour, like a fruit.
“Com’è bella, la Signora!” said he, in a charming voice, as he watched
Marceline go into the hotel.
“Anche tu sei bello, ragazzo,” I replied; then, as I was standing so
near him, I could not resist, but drew him to me and kissed him. He
allowed it laughingly.
“I Francesi sono tutti amanti,” he said.
“Ma non tutti gli Italiani amati,” I answered, laughing too.... I
looked for him on the following days, but never succeeded in finding
him.
We left Taormina for Syracuse. Step by step we went over the ground we
had covered in our first journey, making our way back to the starting
point of our love. And as during our first journey I had week by week
progressed towards recovery, so week by week as we went southwards,
Marceline’s health grew worse.
By what aberration, what obstinate blindness, what deliberate folly
did I persuade myself, did I above all try and persuade her that what
she wanted was still more light and warmth? Why did I remind her of
my convalescence at Biskra?... And yet the air had become warmer; the
climate of Palermo is mild and pleasant; Marceline liked it. There,
perhaps, she might have ... But had I the power to choose what I should
determine--to decide what I should desire? The state of the sea and
the irregular boat-service delayed us a week at Syracuse. All the time
I did not spend with Marceline I spent in the old port. O little port
of Syracuse! smells of sour wine, muddy alleys, stinking booths,
where dockers and vagabonds and wine-bibbing sailors loaf and jostle!
The society of the lowest dregs of humanity was delectable company to
me. And what need had I to understand their language, when I felt it
in my whole body? Even the brutality of their passion assumed in my
eyes a hypocritical appearance of health and vigour. In vain I told
myself that their wretched life could not have the same flavour for
them that it had for me.... Oh, I wished I could have rolled under the
table with them to wake up only with the first grey shiver of dawn.
And their company whetted my growing horror of luxury, of comfort, of
all the things I was wrapped round with, of the protection that my
newly restored health had made unnecessary, of all the precautions
one takes to preserve one’s body from the perilous contact of life. I
imagined their existence in other surroundings. I should have liked
to follow them elsewhere, to probe deeper into their drunken life....
Then suddenly I thought of Marceline. What was she doing at this very
moment? Suffering, crying, perhaps.... I got up hastily and hurried
back to the hotel; there, over the door, seemed written the words: No
poor admitted here.
Marceline always received me in the same way, without a word of
reproach or suspicion, and struggling, in spite of everything, to
smile. We took our meals in private; I ordered for her the best our
very second-rate hotel could provide. And all through the meal, I
kept thinking, “A piece of bread, a bit of cheese, a head of fennel
is enough for _them_ and would be enough for _me_ too. And perhaps
out there, close by, some of them are hungry and have not even that
wretched pittance. And here on my table is enough to fill them for
three days.” I should have liked to break down the walls and let the
guests flock in.... For to feel there were people suffering from hunger
was dreadful. And I went back again to the port and scattered about at
random the small coin with which my pockets were filled.
Poverty is a slave-driver; in return for food, men give their grudging
labour; all work that is not joyous is wretched, I thought, and I
paid many of them to rest. “Don’t work,” I said, “you hate it.” In
imagination, I bestowed on each of them that leisure without which
nothing can blossom--neither vice nor art.
Marceline did not mistake my thoughts; when I came back from the
port, I did not conceal from her what sort of wretches I had been
frequenting. Every kind of thing goes to the making of man. Marceline
knew well enough what I was trying so furiously to discover; and as
I reproached her for being too apt to credit everyone she knew with
special virtues of her own invention, “You,” said she, “are never
satisfied until you have made people exhibit some vice. Don’t you
understand that by looking at any particular trait, we develop and
exaggerate it? And that we make a man become what we think him?”
I could have wished she were wrong, but I had to admit that the worst
instinct of every human being appeared to me the sincerest. But then
what did I mean by sincere?
We left Syracuse at last. I was haunted by the desire and the memory
of the past. At sea, Marceline’s health improved.... I can still see
the colour of the sea. It is so calm that the ship’s track in it
seems permanent. I can still hear the noises of dripping and dropping
water--liquid noises; the swabbing of the deck and the slapping of the
sailors’ bare feet on the boards. I can see Malta shining white in the
sun--the approach to Tunis.... How changed I am!
It was hot; it was fine; everything was glorious. Oh, how I wish
that every one of my sentences here could distill a quintessence of
voluptuous delight!... I cannot hope to tell my story now with more
order than I lived my life. I have been long enough trying to explain
how I became what I am. Oh, if only I could rid my mind of all this
intolerable logic!... I feel I have nothing in me that is not noble.
Tunis! The quality of the light here is not strength but abundance. The
shade is still full of it. The air itself is like a luminous fluid in
which everything is steeped; one bathes, one swims in it. This land of
pleasure satisfies desire without appeasing it and desire is sharpened
by satisfaction.
A land free from works of art; I despise those who cannot recognize
beauty until it has been transcribed and interpreted. The Arabs have
this admirable quality, that they live their art, sing it, dissipate
it from day to day; it is not fixed, not embalmed in any work. This is
the cause and effect of the absence of great artists.... I have always
thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of
beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, “Why did I
never realize before that that was beautiful too?”
At Kairouan, which I had not seen before, and which I visited without
Marceline, the night was very fine. As I was going back to sleep at the
hotel, I remember a group of Arabs I had seen lying out of doors on
mats, outside a little café. I went and lay down to sleep beside them.
I came away covered with vermin.
Marceline found the damp of the coast very relaxing {“enfeebling” in 1948
ed.} and I persuaded her that we ought to go on to Biskra as quickly as
possible. We were now at the beginning of April.
The journey to Biskra is a very long one. The first day we went to
Constantine without a break; the second day, Marceline was very tired
and we only got as far as El Kantara. I remember seeking there, and
towards evening finding, shade that was more delicious and cooler than
moonshine at night. It flowed about us like a stream of inexhaustible
refreshment. And from the bank where we were sitting, we could see the
plain aflame in the setting sun. That night Marceline could not sleep,
disturbed as she was by the strange silence or the tiniest of noises.
I was afraid she was feverish. I heard her tossing in the night. Next
morning I thought she looked paler. We went on again.
Biskra! That then was my goal.... Yes; there are the public gardens;
the bench ... I recognize the bench on which I used to sit in the first
days of my convalescence. What was it I read there?... Homer; I have
not opened the book since. There is the tree with the curious bark
I got up to go and feel. How weak I was then! Look! there come some
children!... No; I recognize none of them. How grave Marceline is! She
is as changed as I. Why does she cough so in this fine weather? There
is the hotel! There are our rooms, our terrace! What is Marceline
thinking? She has not said a word. As soon as she gets to her room
she lies down on the bed; she is tired and says she wants to sleep a
little. I go out.
I do not recognize the children, but the children recognize me. They
have heard of my arrival and come running to meet me. Can it really
be they? What a shock! What has happened? They have grown out of all
knowledge--hideously. In barely two years! It seems impossible....
What fatigues, what vices, what sloth have put their ugly mark on
faces that were once so bright with youth? What vile labours can so
soon have stunted those beautiful young limbs? What a bankruptcy of
hope!... I ask a few questions. Bachir is scullion in a café; Ashour
is laboriously earning a few pennies by breaking stones on the roads;
Hammatar has lost an eye. And who would believe it? Sadek has settled
down! He helps an elder brother sell loaves in the market; he looks
idiotic. Agib has set up as a butcher with his father; he is getting
fat; he is ugly; he is rich; he refuses to speak to his low-class
companions.... How stupid honorable careers make people! What! Am
I going to find here the same things I hated so at home? Boubakir?
Married. He is not fifteen yet. It is grotesque. Not altogether though.
When I see him that evening he explains that his marriage is a mere
farce. He is, I expect, an utter waster; he has taken to drink and lost
his looks.... So that is all that remains, is it? That is what life has
made of them? My intolerable depression makes me feel it was largely to
see them that I came here. Ménalque was right. Memory is an accursed
invention.
And Moktir? Ah! Moktir has just come out of prison. He is lying low.
The others will have nothing to do with him. I want to see him. He
used to be the handsomest of them all. Is he to be a disappointment
too?... Someone finds him out and brings him to me. No; Moktir has not
failed. Even my memory had not painted him as superb as he now is. His
strength, his beauty are flawless.... He smiles as he recognizes me.
“And what did you do before you went to prison?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you steal?”
He protests.
“And what are you doing now?”
He smiles.
“Well, Moktir, if you have nothing to do, you must come with us to
Touggourt.” And I suddenly feel seized with a desire to go to Touggourt.
Marceline is not well; I do not know what is going on in her mind. When
I go back to the hotel that evening, she presses up against me without
saying a word and without opening her eyes. Her wide sleeve has slipped
up and shows how thin she has grown. I take her in my arms, as if she
were a sleepy child, and rock and soothe her. Is it love, or anguish
or fever that makes her tremble so?... Oh! perhaps there might still
be time.... Will nothing make me stop?... I know now--I have found
out at last what gives me my special value. It is a kind of stubborn
perseverance in evil. But how do I bring myself to tell Marceline that
next day we are to leave again for Touggourt?...
She is asleep now in the room next mine. The moon has been up some time
and is flooding the terrace. The brightness is almost terrifying.
There is no hiding from it. The floor of my room is tiled with white,
and there the light is brightest. It streams through the wide-open
window. I recognize the way it shines into the room and the shadow
made by the door. Two years ago, it came in still further.... Yes; it
is almost at the same spot it had reached that night I got up because
I could not sleep.... It was against that very door-jamb I leant my
shoulder. I recognize the stillness of the palm-trees. What was the
sentence I read that night?... Oh, yes; Christ’s words to Peter: “Now
thou girdest thyself and goest where thou wouldest....” Where am I
going? Where would I go?... I did not tell you that the last time I was
at Naples, I went to Pæstum one day by myself. Oh, I could have wept
at the sight of those ruined stones. The ancient beauty shone out from
them, simple, perfect, smiling--deserted. Art is leaving me, I feel
it. To make room for what else? The smiling harmony once mine is mine
no longer.... No longer do I know what dark mysterious God I serve. O
great new God! grant me the knowledge of other newer races, unimagined
types of beauty.
The next morning at daybreak, we left in the diligence and Moktir came
with us. Moktir was as happy as a king.
Chegga; Kefeldorh’; M’reyer ... dreary stages of a still more dreary
road--an interminable road. I confess I had expected these oases to be
more smiling. But there is nothing here but stone and sand; at times
a few shrubs with queer flowers; at times an attempt at palm-trees,
watered by some hidden spring.... Now, to any oasis, I prefer the
desert--land of mortal glory and intolerable splendour! Man’s effort
here seems ugly and miserable. All other lands now are weariness to me.
“You like what is inhuman,” says Marceline.
But she herself, how greedily she looks!
Next day it was not so fine; that is, a wind sprang up and the horizon
became dull and grey.
Marceline is suffering; the sand in the air bums and irritates her
throat; the overabundance of light tires her eyes; the hostile
landscape crushes her. But it is too late now to turn back. In a few
hours we shall be at Touggourt.
It is this last part of the journey, though it is still so near me,
that I remember least. I find it impossible to recall the scenery of
the second day, nor what I did when we first got to Touggourt. But
what I do still remember are my impatience and my haste.
It had been very cold that morning. Towards evening a burning simoon
sprang up. Marceline, exhausted by the journey, went to bed as soon
as we arrived. I had hoped to find a rather more comfortable hotel,
but our room is hideous; the sand, the sun, the flies have tarnished,
dirtied, discoloured everything. As we have eaten scarcely anything
since daybreak, I order a meal to be served at once; but Marceline
finds everything uneatable and I cannot persuade her to touch a morsel.
We have with us arrangements for making our own tea. I attend to this
trifling business, and for dinner we content ourselves with a few
biscuits and the tea, made with the brackish water of the country and
tasting horrible in consequence.
By a last semblance of virtue, I stay with her till evening. And all of
a sudden I feel that I myself have come to the end of my strength. O
taste of ashes! O deadly lassitude! O the sadness of superhuman effort!
I hardly dare look at her; I am too certain that my eyes, instead of
seeking hers, will fasten horribly on the black holes of her nostrils;
the suffering expression of her face is agonizing. Nor does she look
at me either. I feel her anguish as if I could touch it. She coughs a
great deal and then falls asleep. From time to time, she is shaken by a
sudden shudder.
Perhaps the night will be bad, and before it is too late I must find
out where I can get help. I go out.
Outside the hotel, the Touggourt square, the streets, the very
atmosphere, are so strange that I can hardly believe it is I who see
them. After a little I go in again. Marceline is sleeping quietly.
I need not have been so frightened; in this peculiar country, one
suspects peril everywhere. Absurd! And more or less reassured, I again
go out.
There is a strange nocturnal animation in the square--a silent flitting
to and fro--a stealthy gliding of white burnouses. The wind at times
tears off a shred of strange music and brings it from I know not
where. Someone comes up to me.... Moktir! He was waiting for me, he
says--expected me to come out again. He laughs. He knows Touggourt,
comes here often, knows where to take me. I let myself be guided by him.
We walk along in the dark and go into a Moorish café; this is where
the music came from. Some Arab women are dancing--if such a monotonous
glide can be called dancing. One of them takes me by the hand; I
follow her; she is Moktir’s mistress; he comes too.... We all three
go into the deep, narrow room where the only piece of furniture is a
bed.... A very low bed on which we sit down. A white rabbit which has
been shut up in the room is scared at first but afterwards grows tamer
and comes to feed out of Moktir’s hand. Coffee is brought. Then, while
Moktir is playing with the rabbit, the woman draws me towards her, and
I let myself go to her as one lets oneself sink into sleep....
Oh, here I might deceive you or be silent--but what use can this story
be to me, if it ceases to be truthful?
I go back alone to the hotel, for Moktir remains behind in the café. It
is late. A parching sirocco is blowing; the wind is laden with sand,
and, in spite of the night, torrid. After three or four steps, I am
bathed in sweat; but I suddenly feel I must hurry and I reach the hotel
almost at a run. She is awake perhaps.... Perhaps she wants me?... No;
the window of her room is dark. I wait for a short lull in the wind
before opening the door; I go into the room very softly in the dark.
What is that noise?... I do not recognize her cough.... Is it really
Marceline?... I light the light.
She is half sitting on the bed, one of her thin arms clutching the
bars and supporting her in an upright position; her sheets, her hands,
her nightdress are flooded with a stream of blood; her face is soiled
with it; her eyes have grown hideously big; and no cry of agony could
be more appalling than her silence. Her face is bathed in sweat; I try
to find a little place on it where I can put a horrible kiss; I feel
the taste of her sweat on my lips. I wash and refresh her forehead
and cheeks.... What is that hard thing I feel under my foot near the
bed? I stoop down and pick up the little rosary that she once asked
for in Paris and which she has dropped on the ground. I slip it over
her open hand, but immediately she lowers her hand and drops the
rosary again.... What am I to do? I wish I could get help.... Her hand
clutches me desperately, holds me tight; oh, can she think I want to
leave her? She says:
“Oh, you can wait a little longer, can’t you?” Then, as she sees I want
to say something,
“Don’t speak,” she adds; “everything is all right.”
I pick up the rosary again and put it back on her hand, but again she
lets it drop--yes, deliberately--lets it drop. I kneel down beside her,
take her hand and press it to me.
She lets herself go, partly against the pillow, partly against my
shoulder, seems to sleep a little, but her eyes are still wide open.
An hour later, she raises herself, disengages her hand from mine,
clutches at her nightdress and tears the lace. She is choking.
Towards morning she has another hemorrhage....
* * * * *