IX
Your beloved is dead.
News that comes from the depths of the ages or the depths of the flesh; you can't tell.
One day—there—a clap of thunder. It bursts from your flesh and tries to enter your flesh again. It beats at the portals of your heart, besieges your ears, howls round your entrails, but there is no place for it, no part of your body wants it, your soul retreats to shelter, your heart drips black blood, your mind goes round and round. News, News! Your beloved is dead!
No need for the thunder to break. I knew it was brewing in me.
When we used to come back from work and I kissed him with this very mouth and embraced him with these very arms, pressing him so hard that he laughed sometimes, it was premonition of the News that kept my lips sealed to his cheek so long, and turned my arms into iron clutches, and gave me warning when I woke up, and frightened me in the dark.
We used to talk about it and try to imagine what separation by death would be like. "If I die, if you die." We wanted to provide against it, we had accepted it.
My beloved, the knowledge of misfortune is not the misfortune itself; the knowledge of death is not death itself. When we were together we never imagined I should suffer so much. When people are together, they can't imagine what it is to be alone.
It is like childbirth over again, I assure you: I remember your face when I shrieked in travail. I am more torn now, and you are not here to hold my hands.
Why do they all say suffering is necessary and ennobling? I can testify that suffering doesn't do any good.
I used to be a gay, active woman, who went about with chest expanded, a body full of pleasure, lips like kisses, and cheeks alive with color. I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and stay up until late at night. After the day's work in the evening I'd say "to-morrow" as if anticipating the loveliest day in the world. I had poverty, laughter, an appetite, I had a perfect union with another, and I maintain that this counts. I led a life according to my own will; I had a bright child. I had all this, I was all this, this was my lot....
To-day I am a woman whose eyes are swollen and corroded with salt tears, whose features are sharpened, whose shoulders stoop, whose black dress bags on her reduced figure, whose eyes are turned inward, whose house is untidy and whose evenings drop into darkness without the lamplight. My little one has to call me.... I love him without a smile, and as for myself, I hate myself.
I used to try to be kind and make it pleasant for people in my home. I am like a thistle withered on its stem, I am like a fruit cut open and thrown out on the street. I am useless and bitter—I am bad.
When people come to me, I feel the pricking of their thorns, and I wallow in gall. They are all enveloped in an awful respect for death. It revolts me.
My family comes to visit me, each one of them chockful of advice and dropping honied words.... Yet I was more worthwhile when I was happy. Why didn't they incline themselves when there was still time? They seem to send up a cry of relief. "At last! You're suffering! At last a person can approach you!" They console me and lull me; they are crows quarreling over the remains of a charnel-house.
But when they have the effrontery to extol his virtues, it is too much; my grief springs to the attack. The idea! They hated him while he lived! Keep quiet, don't insult him! I wish to be alone with the knowledge that he is dead.
But I don't utter a word; grief has lips of stone; I keep my secret locked within me while seeming to listen to them. I sit in front of the fire, my hair loose, my forehead drawn, watching the flames blaze and the embers fall. After all, their presence, their footsteps pawing the silence, mean only a little additional pain. Time passes, and they're sure to go eventually.
Has the door closed on them? I don't know. I can hardly move.
I am alone with you, my knees clasped in my hands, while the castle in the fire slowly crumbles on its gray dust.
Some mourners at least have the consolation of mourning real dead—real dead whom they have seen stiffen into death, whose last words they have received, whose last agonies they have tried to soothe, for whom they have done everything they could.
But you, beloved, are you dead? I don't even know. "Fallen on the field of honor?" What does that mean? Was it in the evening or the morning? Were you alone? Did you cry out? Did you suffer terribly? Did you open your eyes once more? Perhaps you couldn't, perhaps you called and called for me? Perhaps you thought I should have come? Ah yes, I should have been there; it is my fault. I have always cured you, you know I have. I simply had to hold your head in my hands and your pain was eased.
But I didn't die—I didn't die at the moment of your death, that moment too frightful to speak of. I didn't die when life was drowned in your mouth. We knew the whole truth concerning each other, yet when you were dying I may have been smiling.
For fifteen nights, fifteen days, fifteen years my heart has been crying that you are dead and that it has lost the hope of ever seeing you again in your clothes exactly as you used to look, with that manner of yours.... Fifteen days since I have been trying to learn again, begin all over again, and call everything into question again. Fifteen days of impotence. I see only what is.
There is earth on your hands, on your eyes, on every part of your body wherever it may be. Your feet are cold and gray like the feet of a pauper, your skin is bloated, worms are preying upon you. I don't want to—I cannot see you as you are. When I think of you I have a false vision of your living self with your cheeks of the color of life and your dear natural gestures. How can I help being all bewildered? Nothing is left. Even the memory of you changes from day to day. I can no longer recall the right tone of your voice. Your corpse is hidden. It is as if I were suffering for no reason at all.
Not to know how to suffer, perhaps that is what suffering is.... Not to divine where you are, is that your death?
The sparkling hearth-fire has scattered and gone out. Fire has devoured fire. A few embers reddening here and there, a porous heap of fanciful firebrands.
And now, and now, my beloved, if I no longer see you, I do see the consuming truth. I see it and here it is: I let you go. I consented. There's no doubt of it, it was I who killed you....