XI
When everybody was assigned a seat in the carriages, whips cracked and the procession got under way.
The carriage at the head in a splash of sunshine drew the whole line after it, shattering the massive silence of the street. The occupants were still settling themselves, the ladies with a great rustling of silk and a vast deal of twisting and turning before they got themselves comfortably installed, while the men were obliged to sit forward on the edge of the seats and be very careful of the disposition of their legs.
"Lovely weather," said one of the two ladies, "they're lucky." No one answered. They held themselves in abeyance for the usual conviviality to come later, and passed the time looking through the lowered windows at the unknown quarter through which the procession was winding, where the houses sank upon each other and the people in workaday clothes stood still to stare with eyes of envy.
The second carriage had set off at a rapid pace; the coachman was holding in his frisky pair.
"Say what you like, she's a beautiful bride."
Like most very old ladies, this one suggested widowhood. Even in talking she exhaled the attenuated sadness that invests old people with a protective halo.
"Oh, she's just like the rest. What's in her favor is that she's fair. A brunette bride always makes you think of a fly in milk. At least, that's my opinion...."
That was a good start. One remark led to another; the conversation livened up. The ladies in their silk gowns felt conscious of sharing in pomp and an important ceremony.
"I was told she ran away from home last year, with...."
The carriage jolted and zigzagged, but the group sat undisturbed. Each felt drawn to the other three by a decidedly increasing sympathy.
What spirit haunted these carriages? All these people were held by an obsession. They had seen the bride in her starry whiteness and persistently retained an image with a halo round it. The bride was the sole topic.
"I don't approve of a double standard," said another lady. "They did a tremendous amount for her sister's wedding; you know they did, while they're not doing a thing for this poor child." A shrug of the shoulders. "I don't think it's fair."
Everything she said came out with a ripple in it from the unevenness of the paving. Her neighbor was plunged in dreams, unaware. A day triumphal arose out of the distant past when she too walked in white. "Twenty-seven years like one month! How time does fly!"
They warmed up to their subject.
"She is making a very bad match: he hasn't a cent...."
"You forget she's well over twenty-two. A girl has got to take a husband when she finds one. Husbands don't grow in the front-yard."
The perspiration came out in beads on their fleshy foreheads. A stop. What had happened? A block? An accident? Plumed hats were stuck out of carriage doors. "Get in again, madam, you can't see anything. You'll break your aigrette. If I tell you...."
The procession shortened like a snake drawing in its coils.
"Ha, ha! I know someone who will not find it dull to-night!"
Their laughter took on a sharper edge; smiles lurked in the corners of their mouths just deep enough to show that they understood, that they had their own recollections and at the same time were in well-bred company.... This lady with the air of knowing a thing or two.... What?... Without waiting to be importuned, she drew herself up heroically and whispered something over the frilled hat of the little girl beside her. They threw themselves back beaming, stuffed full. "Impossible!"
Boots creaked, gowns rustled. The carriages began to clatter through the streets again.
The laughter of young people. Not very loud. Hiding something sweet and indefinably solemn. She was only fourteen. She had nothing but her thin little feelings, which, however, kept her straight and haughty as an Infanta. By leaning over slightly she succeeded in seeing the bride. The bride ... the white word flitted about her like a light ball.... But straightway she saw the bride her eyes fell. The same emotion had surprised her on Sunday at mass when she saw the host rise in a beam of light, and also when she listened to the hand-organ grind out arias. Ecstasy leapt within her and hope sang: "Me too some day...."
The last carriage kept behind; a low coupé with drawn shades. A stiffly wired bouquet shed its fragrance within. As it sped rapidly by, heads turned around for a long look and for the sake of the virginal memory it left behind.
I was in that last speeding carriage. I had obeyed my mother's entreaties, I had agreed to figure in this masquerade.
So as not to rumple my fairy dress I forced myself not to make a movement but to remain impassive and avoid the least little stir. It was my rôle to receive the host of looks converging upon me as if levelled at a target, hard and fast, crowding, curious. I confess that beneath my snowy veil and sanctified air I lent myself to the situation with a bit of vanity.
It takes me a long time to undress. My bridal costume is fastened by a thousand hidden snaps and pins. I have trouble in getting out of it.
My room frightens me. "Take possession of us," say the chairs and tables. "Act, command, try your hand, you are in your own home, it is your life which is arising, we are watching you. What are you going to do?"
The more the furniture goads, the heavier the languor that settles upon me, the less I know, the less I advance. In vain I summon to my aid ideas from without; none takes hold. I repeat, for example, that this is the test of both of us, the beginning of our union. I fancy myself clutching at resolutions, but they fall back at my approach and sink routed into the folds of the curtains. Is it really necessary to struggle? Wouldn't it be better to put my head in my hands and drop into the softness and restfulness of my new armchair?
When we came here a little while ago, it was he who was the first to experience this sort of trouble. We had been looking over our home and when the tour was ended he took me in his arms, and I felt the warm flesh of his kiss under my chin. A blow seemed to strike my bowels. I tightened up into a ball, my muscles tense, thrown on the defensive. An evil fear made me shiver. He raised his head. I had never seen him look so tragic. His features were hardened, his eyes swimming ... I fell away from him like a flower snapped from its stem.
A sudden instinct sent me to the looking-glass, as if it held an answer to everything. Maybe looking-glasses do offer the eternal answer to the riddle of the universe.
I had said to myself: "You will be close to him, you two will be alone together, perhaps it will be beyond human power to try to be happy." I used to fancy life as a struggle, a piece of work to be done, a masterpiece, and imagined what my acts would be—all voluntary and making for perfection. I forgot that they would have to be performed by these arms with their warm flesh.
I had thought: "He knows me through and through, I have made him read everything." But no, he knows nothing. He does not know the lovely shape of my breasts, the lyre of my hips, the curves of my legs, nor this unknown body the expression of which is so changing that it is like some murmured tale which the light embraces and tells aloud.
It remains for me to bestow a final confidence upon him; that of the body unveiling itself, daring to confess itself. Is this not the purest confidence? But let it not come before its own hour, for it must lead to a moment of truth so naked and so unexpected that it frightens me a little.
It is strange: this evening I live with the whole of my body for the first time. I exist wherever it is. Even as I stand here fixed and tense in front of the glass, I follow a line which may arch, swell and melt away and which already bears the shape of love.
I can imagine everything ... for there's no need of having loved in order to be a lover. All I should have to do, if I dared, would be to twine my arms around his neck, press him hard, and harder still, and the moment would come when I should forget the modesty of my single life.
And without knowing any more one would be lost, distraught, acquiescent, lulled to sleep even to the soul, more beautiful than one is beautiful.
I can go still further, for the flesh that clasps cannot be deceived. When the man and the woman are united, it is the woman subdued, armed with her weakness, who becomes the stronger. I am sure of it already. In the depths of my ignorant flesh, I already feel domination germinating. It is not I; it is a law older than I that is seeking to fulfill itself.
And suddenly I am frightened....
But I am mad.... Man, woman, nothing but two words, which are not of the stuff of life. Is there a single emotion in which I recognize myself? Truth? But it is the truth of others. The truth that reaches you is always different. Isn't it senseless to dread what depends upon yourself? Are we strangers that I should hesitate like this to run to him? Isn't he on the other side of the door, he of whom my body is thinking? Isn't it enough for us to look upon each other? Is there a single question he cannot understand? One seeks happiness. It is all so simple....
Ah, let us go astray every day, let us deceive ourselves, let us suffer alongside our own hearts, let us try to clasp the invisible! But this evening there is nothing but a thin partition between my secret and myself. I feel my heart throbbing as if it were laid bare. I am beautiful, I am alive....
Am I not right?...