But Jinny’s voice roused me. “Papa says it is an ugly country,
America--miles and miles of empty fields, just grass and grass
stretching all round.”
“Your father has never been there.”
“I know, but he knows about it. He says he would never go there,
not for anything, and that I needn’t--so if I’m never to see Great
Aunt--why bother?”
Why indeed? They were too much for me, those two, my husband and my
child.
In my depressed moods I used to go to see Clémentine. She listened
patiently, lying on a couch in purple pyjamas, smoking a cigarette
through a holder a foot long, and watching me intently while I
explained that I was no longer in control of my own life, that I was as
impotent as a paralytic, and that I hadn’t even the feeling of being a
part of anything that made up existence.
“It is all unreal--I have lost touch. I can’t grasp anything. There’s
a space,--‘_infranchissable_,’ between me and it. At times I feel that
the only reality is the past, the remote past. My childhood is real
to me, nothing much else. I remember my home in America, now this
minute sitting in your room, more vividly than the house I left half an
hour ago. Pleasure is a narcotic--I drug myself with it, but I don’t
really understand joy--I understand sorrow. Joy is a perfume that
evaporates--suffering is a poison that remains.”
Clémentine broke in abruptly.
“_Ma chère amie_--take my advice, I know what you need--take a lover.”