XXIII
Twice we said we would part at the turn of the road, at that tree, exactly at that tree, and twice we passed by laughing at our weakness. We still could not believe in the separation at hand.
But the moment was upon us.
There, at the house hidden behind the trees and bushes, you will go on, and I will stand still.
He pressed my hand with increasing tenderness. My laugh taunted us with so much assurance that I tried to believe in it. To fill up the gaps, we blustered and said the needless inconsequent things people always say when they face a long separation.
It was a little before noon. The sheeted shadows cast by the sunlight burned and smoked in bluish waves. Between the trees of the woods stretching beside the sea liquid flakes blinded your eyes. You'd see annoying red spots long after you'd turned your eyes away.
I said to myself: "Only a few steps more and it will be over. One step less and another minute will be plucked from our parting." To keep down my emotion I hurriedly spoke of something else.
It must have rained in the morning. When we brushed against the branches, the silence was broken at our feet by the limpid sound of falling drops, the leaves wore a new skin, and the atmosphere, impregnated with freshness, smiled the smile of nature when she wants to dry her tears. The depths of the woods were enveloped in a blue down; a troop of squat little fir-trees, their skirts on a level with the ground, rang a crisp chime.
We hurried, so at one in our approaching distress that we went too fast. The house behind the trees and bushes came into more prominent view—shutters like eyes pitilessly closed, pointed teeth of a gray-painted fence, threatening minutiae of a garden descending a bushy battered skull of a slope. But after all, there can be no such thing as separation between us two.... And for a moment, to prove the strength of love, yes, for a moment, I was ready to run.
Here we are at the house. Seen at close range with its covering of red tiles and rugged face and front fanned by two dwarf firs, the little house in the way of our free career does not seem very imposing.
It must be. What's the use of delaying any more? Is it saddening to part when each carries away the other? For I carry away your voice, and the sadness of your eyes, and this kiss I give you.... I do not leave you; I am not even distressed. Look, I am leaving you.
I took a few steps away. They rang under my eyes. I picked up every detail of our parting and held it pressed against my heart, each grain of red earth, each flash of mica in the road. It was not so difficult....
Behind me I heard him walking away with a tread heavier than mine, which seemed to set stones tumbling down a mountainside.... Two months.... What is an absence of two months? I decided not to turn around.
The road narrowed and became a serpent of clay, then a creamy winding. I tried so hard to think of nothing that I noticed a great many surprising things we had not observed before. That tree with a heavy black ball at the end of its longest branch which the birds of heaven had stuffed with earth and was now grass-grown; the slope with a red covering of rich plants made, you'd think, of fingers dipped in blood....
It was in spite of myself that I faced about. A dark figure just this side of the last bend in the road.
Ah, he turns round; he heard me. Could we remain apart? I stretch my arms out to him, I begin to run. Why did we talk of other things a few minutes ago? Were we insane?...
I have already passed the dead aloe, I am near the house with its two firs. My abrupt race swells my decision not to leave him. I lift my eyes. He didn't see me.
His form is no more than a black point, a blind insect nibbling at the road and entering the earth's lair.... One last step. It is over, it is over.
My arms fall, I turn back stumbling, dizzy. How can you tell what sort of a road it is when the sun is the color of mourning and the summer has the taste of tears?... Doesn't he know?
Noon. The Angelus tosses its twelve bronze strokes at the sun and they slowly dissolve. But I am insensible to everything. Everything. The host of trees, the flashing breastplate of the sea turn around an empty space.
Why this sky stretching out after the branches, why this sparkling happiness, why this sleepiness of the earth when I am racked and branded with a red-hot iron by what I failed to say while there was still time?