IX
We've been here a week.
Strange days, without axis or prop or stay, passed as if outside of something, as if you had been asked to step up to a door but not invited inside. Nature is not easy to reach and penetrate.
We had longed to live in this spot conceiving it beforehand as an oasis set in dew. And here it is under our feet with its earth which smells good and its breezes which tinge our cheeks. For all our ardor and assiduity nature preserves her mystery; she is an unresponsive mother insensible to the clamor of her children. When we draw near, she stops talking and either drops a veil or retires completely into seclusion. "You would like to assay my movements, cull the delicate scent of the grass blade by blade, meditate like this tree, follow the steps of the peasants who are my only kith and kin, be a wave in space, unravel the relations of things, and delude yourselves with my warmth. That is what everybody wants. May your wish recoil on you. Do not try to reach me. Do not turn your heads in my direction. Let the thrills and tremors of your feelings pass between yourselves. I know you not."
In order to arrive at a mutual understanding with nature, one undoubtedly must have more of the heart of a recluse, a body more inclined earthward, a face of greater taciturnity. We are intruders.
It is only in the evening that you blend and fall into harmony with everything. Night awaits you—you see—below the horizon, and we set out to meet it.
We take each other's arms, I feel my joy preparing; he smiles at the care I take to prevent his catching cold, and off we go, arm in arm, tramping to the tune of a sounding tread like two comrades who once were schoolmates.
The little nestling village lies far behind; at a gulp the turn in the road swallows up the last hut. The landscape ahead is still variegated, but as it draws gently nearer the colors wane, the ground flattens, the features relax as in a face after a smile.
Silence.... Twilight within us is falling also. To admit it we watch the surrounding dusk with swelling chests and quivering nostrils.
On the rising ground opposite a yellow point is kindled, another and another, performing an unconscious duty—to usher in the night. And night is now here. Close by, in the fields, she has already drowned the olive-trees, which have no compact mass to offer in resistance, scarcely even any outlines, defenseless, except for their hundred-year-old trunks. Their life is a thing of quivering, silvery breezes, and when the darkness comes slinking and whispering, a breath will lull their gray-lined brows to sleep.
Along the embankment on either side of the road, trees—you can't tell what sort of trees any more—make great human gestures, as if to give warning of a drama about to begin. Instinctively we quicken our pace and draw closer together. The rich blood runs lively in our veins. We share a fleeting warmth.
And now noises spring up, noises that belong to night alone and are a part of its peacefulness; mournful bayings, which echo throws back faithfully from yon slope; the croaking of the frogs, which blight the heart of the atmosphere; a human call now and then, direct and piercing, and from the ground the metallic chirping of the crickets.
How at ease you feel, full of loving-kindness, and how sincere you are. You have sins lurking in your flesh, crimes piled up in your brain, a sombre mood inhabiting your heart. Everything can be confessed and laid bare. The night is all-comprehending. Night-time is different from the stiffly starched daytime with its color and form to distract man from his intimate verity. You can venture upon the wildest thoughts, expand to your uttermost limits, forget your own existence, and discard all past gestures. They were all inadequate. You don't want to retain any of them except the gesture you would make here—spread your arms while walking and hold your hands open like two pure, empty chalices.
Complete blackness now. You can no longer distinguish between silence and space, fear and the rustling; all things are merged in each other, trees with trees, their masses with the slope, and the slope, deprived of its contours, with the sky, which has come down to join the earth. Everything is blended, obliterated. The very cypresses, during the daytime a spear thrust at the azure, are also added to the darkness.
Beneath our eyes, tired from not seeing anything, the road kindly extends its vaporous pallor. Except for the road no line to arrest the impulse within, no perspective. The only clear things, our own figures.
We have never before entered such solitude together, nor ever before been laid so bare to each other. It makes us walk slowly and solemnly, as if we were passing beneath the eye of God.
The idea of us as a couple. We. We two.
Must an idea, then, remain implanted in the hearts of human beings in order to keep them upright? If I did not feel the pulsing of my love constraining me to live, the night, with no reason to respect my spirit, would stretch me out, I fancy, on any chance slope beneath the large serenity.
But I am upheld. Every intake of fresh air gives a new thrill and a youthful vigor to the idea in my heart, and I feel it mounting so swiftly that I must run to keep up with it. So as to hold it fast for my protection I rake together my loveliest recollections. Are my loveliest recollections those of our nights in each other's arms, our kisses, the storm that beat against our bodies?... No, they are not. As I raise my eyes to where the firmament should be—if it still exists—I find the blessed peacefulness which comes from his presence. The sentiment that grips my heart when I feel myself taking part in his life is lofty. It has something in it of respect, and trust, and pity; it is hard to say just what. It spurs me to action, even to boldness, and it raises around me a strong wall in which I am secure.
This is not a recollection; it is a bit of the future, and the future alone is what you discover as you go forward into the infinite. At one bound you mount to the summits of love. Love is the future magnetized by the heart.
He is there. His profile is massive in outline. He towers over the sunken country, the clods crunch beneath his feet. I walk close beside him. I ask for nothing. Maybe my only wish is that my footsteps should make less noise and my shoulders take up less room.
But I have another wish. I know what it is. Although I love him with my whole heart, I want to love him more. One does not attain to love once for all; the heart can never be filled to the full. How far shall we go? I can go on and on without stopping and outdistance the sources of the night; my youth is inexhaustible, my feet will never weary. I want to love him more.
Space heaves a deeper breath. She is traversed by currents, scoops of darkness, aromatic whiffs. The perfume sweetens the lips; flowers must be dotting this hedge. And suddenly space goes mad. A black wind swirls down from the tree-tops and fills the nocturnal expanse with the creaking of branches.
Must we stop at the greatest moment, at the point where the road looks supernatural, as though it possessed a density of its own and were suspended in space?... I should have liked to walk further; one never goes far enough. Must we really return to the stolid lamp and babbling kisses?
Not immediately. Let us prolong this great sombre moment. Let us stay here where even time might come to a standstill. The trees droop lower here, and in these tranquil meadows the spirit may play hide-and-seek.
It is really unhappiness that makes you stop. I return from the night; all I bring back is this strangled throat, a body like a tortoise-shell covering a silent heart and blinded eyes.
If I emerge from myself, disconsolateness everywhere, spread all over the world. The sleeping desert....
He is close beside me, but since he lives, he can do nothing for me. I can do nothing for him. I used to think that in loving him I crowned him. Love is not enough. This evening I saw his life rise from the ground, distinct from love, outside of mine; I saw his life, bared to all the winds, isolated from everything, raise and satisfy itself. I see that this is right.
His life is complete in itself, unique and important; his life is not merely the image that inspires me, the voice that I evoke, the face I love dearly. His life is an insuperable force, vivid, inviolable and free, which my heart out of sheer love of him failed to recognize. I was right a few minutes ago to want to blot myself out, because I ought not to count. Beyond my limited, restricted presence, he has the whole of infinity to breathe in.
Then where are the nights which are to enlighten me? Of him I know nothing but my love, nothing except that by his very existence he contradicts what I know of him. Who will tell me how far I must go and to what I must attain? I have slept in his arms, I have lived side by side with all his cares, and I have given myself up to him with a joy like unto which there is nothing. All I have given is myself. And yet more is necessary.
And a great conviction rises up straight and strong and shines as if a light had sprung from the midst of the meadows.
I am only a woman, I can think only spasmodically. I love as one weeps, but there comes a day of which this is the night, on which your forehead touches the profound truth. You feel the loving-kindness of your heart aroused, and you oddly understand that the perfect union of man and woman has never been part of the natural scheme of things, and in order to be happy together it is not enough to love one another.
Come. We may return. Press me close to you, if you will, closer still. Don't let us talk.
I know why I am content: your arms, my all-powerful life, our firm footsteps. I do not know why the slight shadow seems to have vanished: to live, go forward, pierce the narrow track of the road with your clear eyes for stars, follow a night one does not see....
And then, O God, in braving the heavens, to understand with love that which transcends love.