Old People and the Things That Pass

by Louis Couperus

The sunny days had come, at the end of April, in Naples; and Lot, from his room, across the green-lacquered palms of the Villa Nazionale, saw the sea stretch blue, a calm, straight, azure expanse, hazing away, farther towards the horizon, in a pearly mist, from which, in dreamy unreality, Castellamare stood out with brighter, square white patches....

He looked out of his high window, feeling a little tired after his walk with Steyn, who had just gone, after sitting with him for a long time. He had been glad to see Steyn, feeling lonely at the departure of old Mr. Pauws, who had gone back to Brussels after spending two months with Lot. Yes, the old gentleman had been unable to stand it: the scorching April heat in Naples was too much for him, whereas it sent Lot into the seventh heaven. Lot was quite well again. That had been a pleasant time with Papa: they had gone for long excursions in the Campaigna and latterly in the environs of Naples; and this constant living in the open air, without fatiguing himself, had done Lot a world of good: he felt himself growing stronger daily. Then old Pauws left him: Lot himself had insisted upon Papa's going, dreading that the sun-swept, southern spring, in Naples of all places, would affect the old gentleman's health, hale and hearty though he might be. And so old Pauws went back, regretting that he had to leave Lot by himself, but pleased with the time which they had spent together and with the harmony that existed between him and his son, who was so very different from him.

This was all because of Lot's character; he gave Lot full credit for it, for he himself was a brusque, somewhat rough, masterful man, but Lot, with his yielding gentleness and his not so very cynical laugh, smoothed away, with native ease, anything that might provoke a conflict or want of harmony between an old father and a son who was still young.

Yes, Lot was glad that Steyn had broken his journey and put in a day or two at Naples. Though Lot had acquaintances at Naples and he saw them regularly, he had found in Steyn something to remind him of home and his country and his family. It happened fortunately that Steyn arrived after Lot's father had left, so that there was no possibility of a painful meeting between these two husbands of his mother. And yet they had nothing to reproach each other with: "Mr." Trevelley came in between them!...

But Lot was very tired after his talk with Steyn. It all whirled before his mind, it swam before his eyes, which gazed out at the white fairy-city, at Castellamare in the pearly distance.... Steyn had said so much to him, revealed to him so much that he did not know, so much that Lot would probably never have known but for Steyn, things to which he was a stranger, which were strange to him, but which nevertheless made him seize and grasp and understand all sorts of things, suddenly, suddenly: sensations experienced as a child, in the little house in the Nassaulaan, Grandmamma's house.... Yes, Steyn, in the confidence arising from their association, after first lunching together, had told him of the letter which he had read, in the act of tearing it up, with Adèle Takma in the old gentleman's study; and Lot, in utter stupefaction, had heard everything: Lot now knew ... and thought that he alone knew, together with Steyn and Aunt Adèle.... How terrible, those passions of former days, of hatred, of love, of murder! He now saw, in that narrow drawing-room, each at a window, those two very old people sitting and waiting ... waiting ... waiting.... Now, now it had come, what they had so long waited for.... Now, now they were both dead.... Oh, to grow so old, under so heavy a life's secret: he could never do it, he thought it too terrible!... And, gazing wearily into the pearly evening distance, which began to turn pink and purple in the reflection of the setting sun, he felt—he, the grandchild of those two murderers—felt dread descending upon him, gigantic, as a still invisible but already palpable, wide-winged shadow: the dread of old age. O God, O God, to grow so old, to wait so patiently, to see things pass so slowly!... It took away his breath; and he shivered, closed the window, looked out through the closed window.... Oh, he had not the passion that had filled those old people; his neutral-tinted soul would never let itself be tempted to any sort of passion; his disillusioned, nerveless, dilettante nature contemplated the violent things of this life with a slightly bitter little smile, thought them superfluous, asked itself, why?... So heavy a life's secret he would never have to bear, no; but there was so much else—so much melancholy, so much silent suffering and loneliness—that, feeling the shadowy dread sink down upon him, he asked:

"O God, O my God, can I ever grow so old? So old as those two old people were?... Is it possible that I shall slowly wither and fade, gradually dying and dragging myself along, always with that same gnawing at my heart, always with that same sorrow, a sorrow which I cannot yet utter to anybody, to anybody ... not even to Steyn ... because I will not judge, because I can not judge ... because Elly is right from her point of view ... because she lives in what she is now doing and would pine if she always remained with me, by whose side she feels herself to be useless ... aimless ... aimless?..."

O God, no, let him not grow old, let him die young, die young and not, year after year, feel the dread pressing more and more heavily on his small, vain soul, his soul so childishly terrified of what was to come!... Let him not, year after year, feel that dread gnawing more and more at his heart, like an animal eating his heart away, and let him not, for years and years on end, feel that silent sorrow weeping within him, never uttered or shown, not even to Elly, if she ever came back, because he would want to assure her with a smile that he understood her aspirations and respected them and approved and admired them!

Loneliness was all around him now: his father was gone, Steyn was gone; Elly was so far from him, in a sphere to which, despite her letters, he was so little able to follow her in thought, a sphere of terror and horror so great that he kept on asking himself:

"Can she do that?... Has she the strength to keep it up?... Those hospitals ... the din of the battlefield thundering in her ears ... the sufferings of the wounded ... their cries ... their blood: could she hear and see all that ... and devote herself ... and act?..."

When he saw it looming up out of her hurried letters, it was so terrible a vision that he did not see Elly in it: she faded and passed into somebody else, he did not know her, hardly knew her even in the photograph which she had sent him and in which he vacantly looked for his wife among a number of other Red Cross nurses.... No, in this photograph she looked neither like him nor Mamma: she was herself this time, another, some one quite different.... The energy of her undreaming, harder eyes startled him: in this portrait he saw, in a sort of bewildered ecstasy, a willing, a striving perhaps to transcend the bounds which she already saw before her!... Oh, was it possible that she might soon return, worn out, and fall asleep in his arms? Had he the right to wish it, for himself ... and for her? Ought he not rather to hope that she would persevere and live according to the career which she herself had chosen? Perhaps so ... but to him it was such an unspeakable grief that she was not there, that she was not by his side, she whom he had come to love as he never thought that he could love!...