I was cold and tired. I realized that I must have been walking for a long time without taking any notice of my direction. Now I saw that I was in a street which I did not know very well. Night had fallen, the lights glowed mistily through a thin haze. I looked at my watch and saw that the hour arranged for the interview had almost arrived.
No sooner had I discovered this than a change seemed to come over everything. It was as though, in some mysterious way, I had become the central point around which the night scene revolved. People walking on the pavement looked at me as they passed; some with pity, some with detached interest, some with more morbid curiosity. Some appeared to make small, concealed signs, but whether these were intended for warning or encouragement I could not be sure. The windows lighted or unlighted, were like eyes more or less piercing, but all focused upon me. The houses, the traffic, everything in sight, seemed to be watching to see what I would do.
I turned round and began to walk quickly in the direction of the hotel. I hurried in order not to be late for my appointment, but the idea of taking a taxi for some reason never occurred to me. The attention of the city accompanied me as I went, the bright eyes of the cars followed me faithfully, with speculation or foreknowledge. In my head I could hear D’s pleasant voice telling me that I must act on my own initiative. His face, with the black eyebrows that always recalled an elusive memory, floated before me, no larger than a mouse, and then vanished away.
I came to the hotel entrance which was brilliantly lighted. People were going in and out of the revolving doors. I walked slower and finally stood still. Even now I half believed that I should go inside, keep the appointment, and behave creditably, too, at the interview. But then my feet were carrying me away, and I knew, what I think the watching eyes had known all the time, that rather than face the situation I would escape anywhere, into no matter what shame, what guilt, what despair.
Shall I be able to endure my self-condemnation now? But that is only a rhetorical question, because, although it is difficult to live with so much unhappiness and so many failures, to die seems to be harder still.
THE SUMMONS
R is one of my oldest friends. Once, long ago, we used to live in flats in the same building, and then, of course, I saw a great deal of him. Afterwards the circumstances of our lives altered, wider and wider distances divided us, we could only meet rarely and with difficulty — perhaps only once or twice in a whole year — and then only for a few hours or at most for a weekend. In spite of this our friendship — which was purely platonic — continued unbroken, although it was naturally not possible to maintain quite the original degree of intimacy. I still felt that a close and indestructible understanding existed between R and myself: an understanding which had its roots in some fundamental character similarity and was therefore exempt from the accidents of change.
A particularly long interval had elapsed since our last encounter, so I was delighted when we were at length able to arrange a new meeting. It was settled that we should meet in town, have dinner together, and travel by train later in the evening to the suburb where R was living.
Our appointment was for seven o’clock. I was the first to arrive at the restaurant, and, as soon as I had put my bag in the cloakroom, I went upstairs to the little bar which I often visited and where I felt quite at home. I noticed that a waiter was helping the usual barman, and in the idle way in which one’s thoughts run when one is waiting for somebody, I wondered why an assistant had been brought in that evening, for there were not many customers in the bar.
R appeared almost immediately. We greeted each other with happiness, and at once fell into a conversation which might have been broken off only the previous day.
We sat down and ordered our drinks. It was the waiter and not the barman who attended to us. As the man put down the two glasses on the table, I was struck by his ugliness. I know that one should not allow oneself to be too much influenced by appearances, but there was something in this fellow’s aspect by which I couldn’t help feeling repelled. The word ‘troglodyte’ came into my head as I looked at him. I don’t know what the cave dwellers really looked like, but I feel that they ought to have been very much like this small, thick-set, colourless individual. Without being actually deformed in any way, he seemed curiously misshapen; perhaps it was just that he was badly-proportioned and rather stooping. He was not an old man, but his face conveyed a queer impression of antiquity; of something hoary and almost obscene, like a survival of the primitive world. I remember particularly his wide, grey, unshaped lips which looked incapable of anything so civilized as a smile.
Extraordinary as it seems, I must have been paying more attention to the waiter than to my friend, for it was not until after we had lifted our glasses that I noticed a certain slight alteration in R’s appearance. He had put on a little weight since our previous meeting and looked altogether more prosperous. He was wearing a new suit too, and when I complimented him upon it, he told me that he had bought it that day out of a considerable sum of money which he had received as an advance on his latest book.
I was very glad to hear that things were going so well with him. Yet at the same time a small arrow of jealously pierced my heart. My own affairs were in such a very bad way that it was impossible for me not to contrast my failure with his success, which seemed in some indefinable manner to render him less accessible to me, although his attitude was as friendly and charming as it had ever been.
When we had finished our drinks we went down to the restaurant for dinner. Here I was surprised, and, I must admit, rather unreasonably annoyed, to see the same waiter approaching us with the menu. ‘What, are you working down here as well as upstairs?’ I asked him, irritably enough. R must have been astonished by my disagreeable tone, for he looked sharply at me. The man answered quite politely that his work in the bar was finished for the evening and that he was now transferred to the restaurant. I would have suggested moving to a table served by a different waiter, but I felt too ashamed to do so. I was very mortified at having made such an irrational and unamiable display of feeling in front of R, who, I felt sure, must be criticizing me adversely.
It was a bad start to the meal. All on account of this confounded waiter, the evening had acquired an unfortunate tendency, like a run of bad luck at cards which one cannot break. Although we talked without any constraint, some essential spark, which on other occasions had always been struck from our mutual contact, now withheld from us its warmth. It even seemed to me that the food was not as good as usual.
I was glad when the waiter brushed away the crumbs with his napkin and set the coffee before us. Now at last we should be relieved of the burden of his inauspicious proximity. But in a few minutes he came back, and putting his repulsive face close to mine, informed me that I was wanted outside in the hall.
‘But that’s impossible — it must be a mistake. Nobody knows I’m here,’ I protested: while he unemphatically and obstinately insisted that someone was asking for me.
R suggested that I had better go and investigate. So out I went to the hall where several people were sitting or standing about, waiting to meet their friends. I could see at a glance that they were all strangers to me. The waiter led me up to a man of late middle age, neatly and inconspicuously dressed, with a nondescript, roundish face and a small grey moustache. He might have been a bank manager or some such respectable citizen. I think he was bald headed. He bowed, and greeted me by my name.