Silent lightning flashes, alternate shafts and shadows burn our eyelids. The four hours of the watch pass. My eyes are fixed on the blackness; my dreams encircle the earth every moment. A procession of memories has accompanied the storm. Perfumes from Indo-China, the theaters of Paris, negresses of Guadeloupe, Madagascar cyclones, idylls of the West and tragedies of the East, tropic homesickness, and the English countryside—the whole procession of the past glides through my watch. Smiling, mystical, dim, it hastens to respond to my mood of nervous fatigue. It leaps upon the bridge to companion my solitude. About all my comrades, about the officers, who like me have become hermits of the deep, there crowds in the same way the phantoms of the past. We do not summon them. They run to us, form in line, yield place to others; the train of our dreams is more mobile than the sea. Meanwhile duty does not suffer. The round of memories never deflects our eyes or our ears from the surface of the waters. When necessary, we can scatter the memories with a single gesture, and do whatever is needful.
In the freshness of the early dawn the breath of the breeze calms all this fever. My mind pauses on the last rung of the ladder of memory. There it rests, and at the end of my watch I find myself back again in a garden of Malta. According to the calendar this episode dates only eight days back, but it seems to me that our life has thrown it into the remote past.
In the midst of the arid rocks of Malta there is a garden, enclosed with high walls. The parterres of black soil, imported from Sicily, are cut by alleys of gravel. On the terrace bloom the rarest flowers under the sun. They are not European, they are choice specimens from America and Asia. The corollas which grow in this garden come only from certain Southern archipelagoes, but human skill has made them live in Malta.
Arbors shelter benches of ancient stone. Here and there arches of perfume brush the dreamer’s head. Since it is a place of quiet and sovereign beauty, human beings do not frequent it. Every evening, before returning to the noisy streets of Malta, I spend a few solitary hours in the company of the flowers. Only the gardeners disturb my revery, but they early become acquainted with me. The third evening one offered me the bouquet that still perfumes my cabin, and refused my grateful reward.
That evening I was walking at the end of the garden, by a fountain with a brim of stone and two basins of green water. In it the twilight reflections dissolve. The fragrance that lingers there is enchanting. On this little lake float two white swans. They know that their prison will never be larger; the paddles of their feet are still; their dazzling wings, rose-tinted in the setting sun, open like a sail to the breaths of the breeze, and they glide very gently, bending their necks as if to breathe in the exquisite sweetness of the evening.
A little dog, tawny and silken, ran around the fountain, barking at the swans when they skirted the rim, at their disdain when they moved towards the center of the pool. On a bench a woman dressed in mauve was reading a book, turning the page slowly. The air held only the last vestiges of light. When this woman raised her attentive eyes towards the dog, she revealed a sorrowful face and eyes heavy with passion.
I am slightly disturbed by these neighbors, but I sit down and abandon myself to the witchery of the colors and odors of the dying day. Sorrow is solaced by an excess of sorrow, and the exile finds joy only in an excess of exile. Solitary, between the past and the future, I am at peace.
There in the fragrance of the garden, the sea, the war, the how and why of things, all disappear. My thoughts float, without support, like the exhalations of flowers which hasten to give out a sweet odor before falling asleep. But the little tawny dog, excited by the play of the swans, leaps towards the nearest ones, and falls into the water. He keeps himself up, paddling round in the same place; he scratches at the slippery rim of the fountain. Unable to climb out, he whines piteously. I fish him out by his silky ears. He shakes himself, shakes water on my shoes, and the lady in mauve rises to thank me.
Who ever remembers words spoken at twilight? She spoke the soft Italian tongue, and I replied in kind. Why, as I came from the shores of Malta, should I forget French in favor of the tongue of Dante and d’Annunzio? The little tawny dog followed us. I learned that he is called Jimmino.
Deep eyes, a face which was not pretty but which I thought to be more beautiful than beauty, was sometimes raised to mine. We walked along together, both weary. Our words were vague, and yet each one found its mark. I understood my own fatigue; but what was this woman’s with the tragic face? We had not told each other our secrets, and yet it seemed that for each other we had no more secrets. She was beautifully dressed, in rare and simple material. Her jewels were real. Night had enveloped us when we reached the gates of the town. You wish to know what we said to each other on the way? I do not remember. Under an electric light in the street, we pressed each other’s hands; her eyes dominated her pale face, and I thought her fingers trembled. Who is this passer-by whom perhaps I shall never see again, and will she take her place in the company of the shadows who people the life of the sailor? I do not even know her name.