VIII
He is often late. I have noticed that I am almost invariably the one to have to wait. Work in his office ends at the same time as mine, but the two places are at a distance from each other, and it always seems a long time before I see him coming.
The first minutes go by unheeded because the seven o'clock outpouring streams by where I post myself on the sidewalk. No signal is given. At a mysterious order and at a given moment a black wave foams and contracts at the exit, and as in greeting to the open light sends up a thousand exclamations, which make one long cry of relief.
This evening it is still light, and the escaping crowd is not inclined to hurry. The sluggishness of the air, the sonorousness, the droning, the motley street ... the crowd condenses and remains coagulated on one spot. Is it ever going to decide to pass on!
When the day's work is over, you come back to the brilliant world marvelling at the holiday sky, and blinking.... Summer is knocking at the window ... it does you good to be standing on your legs expanding your lungs. One group attracts you. They all look like wags, their conversation fascinates; if you were to listen to them, you would remain standing there with your hands in your pockets. But you are being awaited at home, and the circle almost as soon as formed breaks up with casual farewells flung over the shoulder.
When the women hurry along, rain or shine, it is in the subconscious urge to show themselves to everyone. Those who swelled the hubbub a little while ago with jostling elbows and foreheads set like a ram's—"get a move on you!"—are the first to display their pronounced busts and the slowest to walk away with chirps and winged signs and nods and a swaying of sinuous backs.
The street is emptied. Some women still pace up and down the block. They are waiting for someone too.
There he is!
From the busy far-end of the street, across the eddies of people, nothing to tell me it is he but the shape of his hat. Again I feel the security that his appearance always brings.
His tall figure hemmed in by a group detaches itself, grows bigger, and becomes more recognizable step by step. I go to meet him, slowly, smiling despite myself as he hurries, and when our hands touch, my heart breaks into bloom.... An overwhelming instant ... a soft ecstasy ... fusion.... And every evening it is as if I had never found him....
Let us go by the boulevards. The weather is so lovely, we have plenty of time.
Our questions tumble over one another, clear away bothersome trifles, do not even wait for answers, take everything for granted—what happened during the day, all the details, everything, and more than everything.
As a matter of fact, what we listen to is our footsteps. We keep even pace, our tread makes the same sound. A discovery flooding the heart—it is a single step that is carrying us along.
We walk side by side, and the space between us does not divide us. We are followed and preceded by a whole procession of couples moving with a slowness strangely rhythmic which leaves a wake behind.
We have told everything, everything we know, and everything we are. It is not a question of being alike in order to be comrades, of springing from the same roots or having drunk from the same source. The thing is, for each to serve the truth which the other lives with the same heart as his own, different truth.
No, it is not a question of being alike. Haven't I observed a hundred times that we are very different? How can one wish it otherwise? How conceive that we whose age is not the same, whose bodies are so different, whose characters are well-defined, and whose careers are opposite should respond to the same influences? Why, each of us responds to the veriest trifles according to his own temperament.... Does he perceive as I do this street, the flower-beds of the big cafés, the crowd with glowing eyes, the gritty dust? Is this instant the same instant to him? I know it is not....
A block. How shall we get through? The crossing of the huge thoroughfares, with its din, its black swarming thousands, dashing motors, clanging of bells, tooting of horns, discharges its mechanical eruption upon the city. Let us run. He has slipped his strong arm under mine; we take long joyous strides and finally land in peaceful territory out of breath and radiant.
Here at last is a boulevard where one can breathe, then an old countrified street where silence has nested. We plunge into its tranquillity.
But ... I hadn't noticed—the red rises to my cheeks—his arm is still under my arm, confident, natural. How is it that it never occurred to me that it should always be so?
Shall I dare to tell him how sweet it is to feel him so close to me, our two lives joined, our two souls welded—how necessary it is to me?
Feelings depart quickly, and joy too. I can scarcely follow my feelings and my joy. When my heart has slowed down, yes, I will speak to him, I shall feel his breath on my voice, his warmth against my breast. And I shall obey this visible will which comes running to me, springing from the smiling house-fronts, falling from the sky padded with pink.
We are drawing near to my lodgings.
Still this street, where the gracious wind dances for its own pleasure. A few moments, and we shall be leaving each other.
Leaving each other...?
Ah, I know now what to say. I know what the will of a little while ago wanted, and my life and his life. I am going to find the words....
"Listen. I have been thinking. Don't let us part again. Never. It is I who am asking you. Let us live together ... I cannot say anything else, that sums up everything, it is everything, to live together. Is it love?... I don't know yet ... but I know we ought to live together, and you, you know it too."
My voice is thick and has the taste of tears; it scrapes in my dry throat, it won't come out. He takes my two hands, draws me close to him, his gaze caressing my eyes which strain to escape. With his body he supports my rigid, awkward body, which struggles hard to remain upright and does nothing but tremble.
The street has disappeared, the sound of the universe, the setting sun which in a golden glory celebrates our sacred betrothal.
From under my closed eyelids I no longer perceive anything but a heavy black pendulum with impetuous strokes, which beats against my breast and henceforth regulates our joint existences....