VIII
Twenty days passed without news.
When I woke up, the early sunlight had a reassuring effect, the morning chattered familiarly, my terror of the night before took wings like a fancy. Hope swelled within me.
The postman's ring, sharp, strident, unbearable, reopened the wound. I rushed to the door. Nothing. A circular, an ordinary letter which I didn't have the will to open.
It was exactly twenty-two days. I forced myself to sit down at the table, but my courage was completely gone, and the alarms of the night which haunted the room gripped me by the throat. Well, there would be something to-morrow. It was impossible....
Anxiety, from the moment it began, made me neglect myself—no prinking, no housework, dust powdering my furniture. The most I did was to turn back my bedclothes. What did all these things matter? I wanted to sleep, sleep....
Coming back from work I slipped into my flannel dressing gown and slippers and let down my hair. I did not even take the time to warm up my dinner prepared beforehand in the morning. The plate was on the table, an orange, a piece of bread.... I'd eat.
I couldn't. The mouthfuls choked me. I couldn't do one thing. I was overwhelmed, almost paralyzed, by an unconquerable weakness. I threw myself in my armchair. I would put the room in order the next day. I would work twice as hard, but not to-night....
Sleep....
Torpor gained complete possession of me. The darkness gathered, and when the last streak of twilight came through the window fluttering on my eyelids, a little hope returned.
After all, twenty-two days was not so terrible. Many people had had to wait longer. Hadn't I had to wait sixteen days once? Letters get lost on the way.
I visualized a scene—a hospital ward, a row of beds, white coverings, nurses. How was it I had not thought of it before? Wounded!... A slight wound which kept him from writing.... I welcomed the certainty. It was so comforting that I tried to hold on to it by jumping right up and shaking off anxiety and being happy. Anxiety is an insult to love.
I groped for the lamp, turned on the light, and laid some reading matter on the table. The disorder was dismal but—to-morrow was another day. I sat down to read.
The lines leapt at my eyes. You'd have thought them an army of ants running over the page, running, yet always remaining at the same place. Should I try to work? Should I try to make up a package for him? That would be two packages this week, but two are not a whole lot.
My heart gave a great leap. The door-bell rang. Who could it be at this hour? My very life went round in a whirlwind, I flew to the door.
Some one in black shrinking in the dark doorway in the humble attitude of a sister of charity requesting alms for the poor. My aunt Finot!
I murmured a few little hypocrisies and put up my hair. I was fuming inwardly, although actually a little relieved at the prospect of a visit, which even if tedious would mean a human presence, a tangible certainty. I was so upset I came near saying "Tante Finot" and giving away the nickname by which she had been called in the family for twenty years.
"Come in, aunt...."
She stepped in ahead of me, hunching up her body. The disorder struck me ... my home was usually so neat ... and my dressing gown ... my run-down slippers—
"An awkward hour for a visit, I know," said Aunt Finot, sitting down. "Are you feeling quite well, dear?"
"Dear" in that mouth with lips like two tight-drawn catguts! It stabbed like a dagger.... She sat perched on the edge of the chair twisting the straps of her hand-bag. The lamplight threw dusky shadows on her skeleton frame and turned her eyes into the sharp-gleaming eyes of an executioner. My God!
"Has anything happened," I asked, "anything dreadful?"
"You see, dear ... don't get excited ... listen...."
"Dead!"
An abyss yawned at my feet, something flashed and grazed my eyelids. I...
My aunt rose slowly. I saw her hands on the table knotted like a tangle of cords.
"Don't get excited. Your family received bad news, I don't know from what source. I asked them if it was official. They were all half crazy—afraid to come and tell you.... I always felt an affection for you, you know...."
"Yes, yes, I understand; he's dead."
There she still stood, her knotted hands on the table, a grin widening her flat features. There she still stood.
"Aunt, please leave me alone, please do."
Perhaps she went on talking a little, perhaps she leaned over to kiss me, perhaps I heard words falling from her lips like pellets of lead: "country—trial—sacrifice." The door closed upon my slaughtered love.
I know I tried to stand up—it was like trying to lift a tombstone—and drag myself to the window to lean my forehead on the pane; but something pulled at me from deep within, something cold and incomprehensible, like a slimy slug, like a deep gash in living flesh. And a strange dizziness, not entirely physical, threw me back into the armchair.
The walls of this black hissing pit into which I fell were the walls of my dining-room, the very same walls papered in a scallop design, and I saw a cloud of tiny coal-black butterflies, mere specks, whirl without end from the blackened lamp-chimney.
My being turned into something enormous and gaping, which fed constantly upon a great wound. I was so overwhelmed with a senseless horror that at moments during the night his death seemed quite normal and natural. But when I withdrew my hand from under my head a multitude of serpents wriggled about within me, and I felt suffocated again and began to tumble through emptiness, while little pointed teeth bit my blood and left behind a penetrating icy poison.
It has ever been the same, Lord God. Suffering is too monotonous.... When a bit of sense and ordinary life returned and cried in my ears: "It is over. Never more," I felt that suffering is too monotonous; and when a clamor of revolt sounded in my being: "They have killed him!" I felt that suffering is too monotonous.
And when the dawn came tapping at the window and creeping toward the table, drab and livid, when I rose from my bruised knees, and when the humming and buzzing began in the indifferent house, I still felt that suffering is too monotonous.