One day, however, one Sunday when Marc had gone out with Leopold to a ball-game, Annette, arriving at Sylvie's, found the door of the apartment open. She went in and heard a long, heavy groan. Sylvie, alone in her closed room, was talking and moaning. Annette withdrew on tiptoe; she reclosed the door on the landing and rang. Sylvie came and opened it; her eyes were red; she said it was a cold and talked with a noisy, rather vulgar animation. She began to tell one of those eternal indecent stories of which she seemed to have an endless supply. Annette's heart sank. Was it possible she was pretending? She was only half pretending. It was herself, far more than others, whom she wished to deceive. An utter despair, without a gleam or an outlet, had brought her to a sort of jocose contempt for life. If she did not want to die, there was no other alternative but forgetfulness and this mask of careless cynicism which had ended by replacing the features of the true face. Nothing meant anything. Nothing was worth the trouble. Propriety, honor, were all humbug! Nothing was worth taking seriously. Laugh at life! Enjoy yourself! Work alone continued to exist, for work was a necessity, and one couldn't get along without it.
Many other things continued to exist beneath all this devastation. Instinct in Sylvie was sounder than thought, and when she threw away everything else Annette and her son remained in her flesh and blood. They were only one person, these three! But this instinctive, almost material, love did not prevent her from cherishing bad feeling. Sylvie had no more tenderness for Annette than she had for herself. She was aggressive and full of mockery in her attitude to her sister, whose earnestness and silent sadness, heavy with memories, irritated her like an unspoken reproach.
A reproach indeed. Annette did not have the charity to spare her. She saw clearly, however, that Sylvie was fleeing from her misery as a hunted animal flees from a dog, and she pitied her. She pitied the misery of human nature, but she despised it for seeking safety at the expense of its dearest treasures, for being always ready to betray its sacred affections in order to elude the savage pursuit of suffering. She was embittered by this; for in her own heart she heard the call of this cowardice in the presence of life, and she scourged it.
Consequently, during these months that followed the disaster, she imposed upon herself an austere discipline of the heart, a proud, pessimistic restraint that concealed her wounded love.
After the dark winter Easter had come. That Sunday morning Annette was wandering about Paris. The sky had blossomed again; the air was motionless. With her soul wrapped in its mourning, she heard the nostalgic calls of the church-bells; and their sonorous net caught her up in its meshes, drew her outside the flood of this indifferent age to the beach where the dead God lay. She entered a church. She had scarcely taken two or three steps before she was stifled by her tears; she had repressed them so long, and they were flowing again. On her knees, with bowed head, in a corner of a chapel, she let them flow. Never had she felt as now the tragedy of this day. She listened to the organ, to the hymns, the hymns of joy. . . . Joy! . . . Sylvie's laughter, with her soul weeping in its depths. . . . Ah, she realized it so clearly to-day: there was no resurrection for the poor dead! And the despairing love for one's own, that age-old love, wearing itself out denying their death. . . . How much more grand and religious this poignant verity was than an illusory resurrection! That passionate self-deception, that heart-breaking self-deception, which could not consent to losing one's beloved ones.
She could not share her thoughts with anyone. Shut up in herself, with the little dead girl, she defended her against the second, the most terrible, of deaths, oblivion. She reacted harshly against herself and against the others. And as every reaction against a way of thinking leads by its recoil to a contrary reaction, her attitude of reproach provoked those who felt themselves hurt by it to exaggerate their own. And the breach widened.
It became almost complete between the mother and the son. Marc grew further and further away from Annette. For years the antagonism had been growing more evident, but until these latter days it had remained, on the child's side, veiled, hidden, cautious. During the long period when he had lived so intimately with Annette, he had been very careful not to fall into any argument with her; he would have been no match for her, and above everything else he wanted peace. He let his mother talk. Thus, one by one, she revealed her weaknesses to him, while he revealed nothing. But now that he had found an ally in his aunt, he no longer concealed his hand. How many times in the past his mother, losing patience with this little mollusc, who drew his mind back into his shell when she wanted to reach it, had said to him, "Come out of your hole! Let's have a glimpse of your head. Don't you know how to talk?"
He knew, Annette could have her satisfaction. He talked now. . . . It would have been better if he had continued to be silent! . . . What a little wrangler! Ah, he no longer hesitated to contradict her. He allowed nothing to pass from his mother's mouth without obstinately cavilling at it. And in what an impertinent tone!
This had happened all of a sudden; and no doubt Sylvie, by maliciously encouraging this warfare, was partly responsible for it. But the real cause lay deeper. This change of attitude corresponded with a change of nature, for the crisis of puberty was approaching. The child was transformed. In a few months he had assumed another character, and his rude and crotchety ways were interspersed with returns of his old taciturnity. There was nothing left of the polite, conciliatory, rather crafty silence of the child who wanted to give pleasure; one felt now something hostile and bristling in him. . . . His brusque, off-hand manner, his flagrant impoliteness, the inexplicable harshness with which he responded to affectionate advances, made Annette's sensibility bleed. Sufficiently armed against the world, she was not at all so against those whom she loved; a single rude word from her son wounded her to tears. She did not show this, but he was not unaware of it. He went on; he seemed to be seeking for things that might be unpleasant to his mother.
He would have been ashamed to behave so with people for whom he cared nothing. But to her he was certainly not indifferent. He clung to her. How? Like the living fruit which, when the hour has come, breaks away from the mother's womb. He was made of her flesh, and to make this flesh his own he tore it.