I came home with a friend through remarkably crowded streets. She lived a long way off and we were late, so she stayed with us for the night. I roused myself in the evening and we worked together on the women’s manifesto. It was about midnight when my mother came in to us, and, as I usually do when I have written something, I asked her opinion and followed her advice. Then she drove us off to bed. When I was left alone I tried to allay my restlessness by polishing the manuscript. Thus the time passed. It was two o’clock.
Suddenly, I don’t know why, yesterday’s excited expectation came over me again. I looked up and thought I heard the clanging of a bell a great distance away. My throat became dry, and my heart beat madly. I threw the window open.
But out there all was hopelessly quiet. It was just an hallucination.... For a while I leaned out into the cold, black street. A shot was fired. Then the night resumed its stillness.
“I can stand it no longer.” How often did we say that during the war! Then came the protracted debâcle of autumn; then winter, and our country was torn to pieces. We can’t stand it.... But we stood it. And who knows how much more we shall have to stand this spring?
I leaned on the window-sill, and in the dark I began to see visions, as if I were dreaming a nightmare. Suddenly the visions became definite. I saw myself in a big ugly house, with unusually high windows, opening in its bare high walls. We were sitting in the last room, waiting for something which we could not escape. There was no door in the room leading into the open, and down there the gate was wide open, with nobody to guard it. Through the draughty porch steps came inwards, and nobody stopped them. They came up the stairs. For some time one door in the house opened after another. One more, and one more, each nearer than the last....
We can’t stand it any longer.... The minutes stretch to horrible infinity, and yet we cannot move, and expectation becomes terror. The steps are already hesitating at the last door. Something is happening there. Nobody is yet visible, but the door-handle moves, slowly, carefully, and then it creaks.
For God’s sake open it. Let anything happen, whatever it is, but only let it happen!
March 21st.
Rain falls, and water flows from the dilapidated gutters. The drops beat on the metal edging of my window and sound as if a skeleton finger were knocking, asking for admittance.