When she emerged from the shadow of the chestnuts the sun made a golden nimbus through her curly hair, that seemed to blend with the light, so that one could not tell where her curls began or the light ended. Beside her on the seat sat a little boy. They were talking to one another, laughing together. I saw her white teeth, but her glance, her golden glance, would she not turn it toward me? Nazzarena, Nazzarena, don’t you feel that I am here, so close to you, perched upon the wall, this wall just above you?
She laughed, she was passing, she had passed. Now the roof of the roulotte hid her. I had not called her, she had not looked at me. Was it possible that I no longer saw her face, nor her eyes, nor her golden colour? Is it possible that so tremendous a thing lasted only a tiny little minute?
My heart was bursting in my breast, and I sat there motionless. Why did I not leap from the wall to the road? Why did I not run after her? Was I nailed to my place? Now I knew that she was lost to me; now I knew that she was always lost to me. Like the shepherd leading his flock to the mountain, whose chance word taught me to know desire, so she, only by going away, taught me the pain of love-partings.
The pain of love-partings is fixed for me in that picture, a little boy astride of the wall of his ancestral home, and a little girl who in the morning light goes away along the road, goes away without turning her head....
How fast we hold to our memories! Long after, when I had become the master, the farmer came to ask permission to cut down that tree which had covered her with its shadow that last time. “Monsieur,” he urged, “the leaves are rusty, it is all rotten inside, it bears no more fruit, it is losing value every day, and before long it won’t bring anything.” I resisted his entreaties, alleging vague reasons. How make an honest farmer understand that one would preserve a dead chestnut tree merely because a little gipsy passed under it, so many years ago that one dares not count them? If there are inexplicable things, this surely is one.
My man wouldn’t give up. “Monsieur, Monsieur, one of these fine days it will fall and break down the wall.” I opine that a wall may be replaced. “Monsieur, Monsieur, one of these fine days it will crush some one passing by.” Come, that’s more serious. A passer-by can’t be made over again. Oh, well, let’s be reasonable. If it falls, it will crush nothing but my heart.
I gave the order to cut down the witness of my first love sorrow. I leaned over the hole which its torn-up roots left in the earth, and was not surprised that it occupied so much room. Now the newly-built wall has closed up the breach, and I feel myself more than ever shut up within my property. As one advances in life, it seems that the surrounding walls draw in.
Nature changes before we do. Nature dies before we do. Little by little we lose all that gave the past its character. Nothing is left to bear witness to the truth of our memories. Little by little other shadows than those of trees descend upon us. And it is hard to believe that one has been—as perhaps every one was once—a boy astride of a wall, not knowing whether he will jump over, to the free life, to the young girl who is laughing, to love, or whether he will go back, like a good boy, to The House....
VI
A WALK WITH FATHER
DURING my long convalescence, as I was not permitted to read all the time, I had constructed, with the aid of Aunt Deen, who used patiently to put on her glasses, which she was not fond of wearing, in order to be more accurate in the use of her big scissors, which sometimes gave an unlucky slip in the cardboard—all sorts of edifices, châteaux, farmhouses, cottages, and even cathedrals. I used to set them up on a great table which had been appropriated to me. The whole represented to my mind a town which my lead soldiers were to besiege. These soldiers, some of them a legacy from my brother Bernard, who even as a small child had begun to make a collection of uniforms, others which had been brought to me some Christmas Eve by the war-like Little Jesus, were innumerable; there were whole regiments of them, large and tiny, thin and plump, infantry, cavalry and artillery. Among the cavalry some were of one piece with their horses, others were detachable, a sharp pointed appendix in their rear permitting them to be fixed at will upon the perforated backs of their horses. One evening there was a tragic assault. The detached general (he was one of those provided with an appendix) had been the first to enter the breach, after which he remounted his chestnut charger, which had been by I know not what subterfuge hoisted into the interior. In the excitement of victory I set fire to the four corners of the conquered city, and when I sought to check its ravages it was too late. In another minute the fire had consumed everything, and all those houses that had cost me so many weeks’ work, and upon which I had so prided myself, were only a heap of black ashes. I was severely reprimanded for having so nearly burned the furniture, and yet I just sat there in stupefied amazement at the rapidity of the burning, compared with the time it had taken me to build.