These months were still beautiful and shining. But they were not as pure as those of the previous year. Less limpid. They were full of an exalted, excessive joy that was a little exaggerated.
A vigorous, healthy nature like Annette's must create, perpetually create, create with its whole being, body and spirit. Create, or else brood over the creation that is to be. It is a necessity, and happiness comes only through satisfying it. Every creative period has its own limited field, and its rising force follows a trajectory that descends again sharply. Annette had passed the summit of the curve. Nevertheless, the transport of creation persists in the mother for a very long time after childbirth. Suckling prolongs the transfusion of the blood, and invisible bonds keep the two bodies in communication. The creative abundance of the spirit of the infant compensates for the impoverishment of the spirit of the mother. The river that is running out tries to replenish itself from the stream that is flowing over. It becomes a torrent so as to merge with the little torrent. But strive as it may, the little one outruns it. The child was already withdrawing into the distance. Annette had difficulty in following him.
Before he was able to frame a complete sentence he already had his little hidden thoughts, cupboards of which he kept the keys. Heaven knew what he concealed there: his reflexions on people, his scraps of reasoning, odds and ends of images, sensations, play-words the sound of which amused him, though he did not know what they meant, a singing monologue that had no sequence, no end, no beginning. He was perfectly well aware, perhaps not of what he was hiding, but that he was hiding something. For the more one tried to find out what he was thinking, the more mischievously he refused to let one know. He even amused himself sometimes putting one off the track; with his little tongue, which was as clumsy as his hands, as it stumbled about among the syllables, he was already trying to lie, to mystify people. It was a pleasure to prove his own importance to others and to himself by making fun of those who tried to penetrate into his private domain. This scrap of a being, scarcely born, had the fundamental instinct of the mine that is not yours—of "You shan't have any of my peanuts." His whole wealth lay in fragments of thoughts: he built walls to hide them from his mother's eyes. And she, with that lack of foresight which is common to all mothers, was proud that he knew so well how to say the No with which he so early manifested his personality. She haughtily proclaimed, "He has a will of iron."
She thought she had forged this iron herself. But against whom?
Against herself, to begin with; for, in the eyes of this little ego, she was the not-I, the external world, a habitable external world, of course, warm, soft and milky, that one could exploit, that one wanted to dominate. External to the I . . . I am not it. I possess it. But it does not possess me!
No, she did not possess him! She began to feel it; this Lilliputian intended to belong to no one but himself. He needed her, but she needed him: the child's instinct told him so. In all probability, this instinct, guarded by his egocentricity, told him that she needed him much more and that it was therefore quite fair for him to abuse it. And, heaven knows, this was true: she did need him much more.
"Well, fair or not, abuse me, little monster! Just the same, it's no use, you can't get along without me for a long time yet. I hold you. There, I plunge you into your bath. Protest, young carp! . . . He looks insulted; his mouth is open, as if this little personage were choking with indignation at being treated like a bundle. . . . And I turn you and turn you again! Heavens, what music! You are going to be a singer, my son. Well, cry out your do-re-me. Bravo! You do the singing, but it's I who make you dance. . . . Isn't it a shame for me to abuse your weakness in this way? Oh, how mean this mother is! Poor midget! Well, you'll avenge yourself on her when you are grown up. Meanwhile, protest! In spite of your dignity, look, I'm going to kiss you on your little behind."
He kicked. She laughed. But it was in vain she held him; she held only the shell. The animal within escaped into his burrow. Every day he became more difficult to grasp. It was a loving chase, a passionate struggle. But it was a struggle, a chase. One had to keep one's wind.
The thousand little regular attentions that a baby demands fill the days. Simple, monotonous as they are, they do not allow one to think of anything else. Aside from him, always him, one's mind is in shivers. The swiftest thought is interrupted ten times over. The child invades everything; this little mass of flesh blocks one's horizon. Annette did not complain. She did not even have time to regret it. She lived in a plenitude of busy fatigue that was a blessing to her at first, but that gradually became an obscure weariness. One's strength is used up, one's soul wanders aimlessly: it does not stay where one has left it. It follows its way like a sleep-walker, and when it awakens it does not know where it is. Annette woke up one day conscious of a load of fatigue that had been accumulating for months, and an indefinable shadow mingled with the joy that dwelt in her.
She was unwilling to attribute this to anything but physical exhaustion; and to prove to herself that her happiness was in no way altered she manifested it in more clamorous effusions than were necessary. Especially before others, as if she were afraid that they would discover in her what she did not wish to be seen. This exaggerated gaiety was followed later, when she was alone, by depression. Sadness? No. An obscure uneasiness, a vague restlessness, the feeling, which she repressed, of a partial dissatisfaction. Not that she expected anything from outside (she could still get along without that), but she suffered from the unemployment of a part of her nature. Certain forces of the mind had been at a standstill for a long time; the economy of her being had undergone a disturbance. Annette, deprived of society, driven back upon herself alone and feeling the sting of a nostalgia that she tried to stifle, tried to find a resource in the company of books. But the volumes remained open at the same page; the brain had become unaccustomed to the effort of following the unfolding chain of the words; the continual breaks which the constant preoccupation with the child made in her thought dislocated her attention and shook it, somnolent and enervated as it was, as a moored ship dances on the current without the power either to advance or to remain still. Instead of reacting, Annette remained shut up in herself, musing drowsily over the open book; or she tried to divert herself in a flood of passionate nonsense with the child. Sylvie, who saw that she could not find expression for her multiple energy with the little one, said to her, "You should go out more, take exercise, walk as you used to do."