VII
They point to us, just stopping short of using their index fingers, as an example of a happy couple. They speak enviously of our great good fortune as if we were bound on an adventurous voyage on which you embark only once in your life.
What do their "young couple," their "happy pair" mean? Do people really imagine that you arrive at happiness so quickly and easily, and that to be sent off together into the steep mountain country, life is in itself enough to make you find the fulness of life?
Happy!... When everything tends to estrange you, the opposite natures of man and woman, their conflicting interests, their very physical attraction for each other. Happy! When you realize that two beings, however close they may be, are forever divided. When, no matter how free you are, marriage forces you to restrain and prostrate yourself. When, apart from your joint life, you have your own career to pursue. And when, after the day's work is accomplished, come the night's kisses as if to undo the good of the day's work—behold the body, the blood, the lips of love—and you change from friends into lovers again.
To be sure, there are occasionally moments of blinding delight, and it is sweet to lean on a shoulder and have a second in the duel of life and be with a man who smiles and takes you in his arms.
But to be happy! To feel that your measure is filled, that you are yourself and him.... Man and woman are above all enemies; you feel it at every turn. And yet you tell yourself that at the heart of some inaccessible firmament there does exist a sublime harmony and it must be attained, even if the road to it is superhuman and your strength fails. And this harmony and this road must be taken afresh every day, if ever one approaches them, for a human being changes from day to day.
I am already somewhat stronger and simpler, and somewhat appeased, but still we are not "happy" as yet.