Well, this diary has become quite different than I thought it would be. It tells about Madame Dubonnet and the Commissioner, about spiders and about Clarimonde. But not a word about the discovery I had hoped to make. — Well, is it my fault?
Tuesday, March 15
Clarimonde and I have discovered a strange new game, and we play it all day long. I greet her, and immediately she returns the greeting. Then I drum with my fingers on my window-pane. She has hardly had time to see it before she begins drumming on hers. I wink at her, and she winks at me. I move my lips as if I were talking to her and she follows suit. Then I brush the hair back from my temples, and immediately her hand is at the side of her forehead. Truly child’s play. And we both laugh at it. That is, she really doesn’t laugh: it’s only a quiet, passive smile she has, just as I suppose mine must be.
For that matter all this isn’t nearly as senseless as it must seem. It isn’t imitation at alclass="underline" I think we would both tire of that very quickly. There must be a certain telepathy or thought transference involved in it. For Clarimonde repeats my motions in the smallest conceivable fraction of a second. She hardly has time to see what I am doing before she does the same thing. Sometimes it even seems to me that her action is simultaneous with mine. That is what entices me: always doing something new and unpremeditated. And it’s astounding to see her doing the same thing at the same time. Sometimes I try to catch her. I make a great many motions in quick succession, and then repeat them again; and then I do them a third time. Finally I repeat them for the fourth time, but change their order, introduce some new motion, or leave out one of the old ones. It’s like children playing Follow the Leader. It’s really remarkable that Clarimonde never makes a single mistake, although I sometimes change the motions so rapidly that she hardly has time to memorize each one.
That is how I spend my days. But I never feel for a second that I’m squandering my time on something nonsensical. On the contrary, it seems as if nothing I had ever done were more important.
Wednesday, March 16
Isn’t it queer that I have never thought seriously about putting my relations with Clarimonde on a more sensible basis than that of these hour-consuming games? I thought about it last night. I could simply take my hat and coat and go down two flights of stairs, five steps across the street, and then up two other flights of stairs. On her door there is a little coat-of-arms engraved with her name: “Clarimonde...” Clarimonde what? I don’t know what; but the name Clarimonde is certainly there. Then I could knock, and then...
That far I can imagine everything perfectly, down to the last move I might make. But for the life of me I can’t picture what would happen after that. The door would open — I can conceive that. But I would remain standing in front of it and looking into her room, into a darkness — a darkness so utter that not a solitary thing could be distinguished in it. She would not come — nothing would come; as a matter of fact, there would be nothing there. Only the black impenetrable darkness.
Sometimes it seems as if there could be no other Clarimonde than the one I play with at my window. I can’t picture what this woman would look like if she wore a hat, or even some dress other than her black one with the large purple dots; I can’t even conceive her without her gloves. If I could see her on the street, or even in some restaurant, eating, drinking, talking — well, I really have to laugh: the thing seems so utterly inconceivable.
Sometimes I ask myself whether I love her. I can’t answer that question entirely, because I have never been in love. But if the feeling I bear toward Clarimonde is really — well, love — then love is certainly very, very different than I saw it among my acquaintances or learned about it in novels.
It is becoming quite difficult to define my emotions. In fact, it is becoming difficult even to think about anything at all that has no bearing on Clarimonde — or rather, on our game. For there is truly no denying it: it’s really the game that preoccupies me — nothing else. And that’s the thing I understand least of all.
Clarimonde — well, yes, I feel attracted to her. But mingled with the attraction there is another feeling — almost like a sense of fear. Fear? No, it isn’t fear either: it is more of a temerity, a certain inarticulate alarm or apprehension before something I cannot define. And it is just this apprehension that has some strange compulsion, something curiously passionate that keeps me at a distance from her and at the same time draws me constantly nearer to her. It is as if I were going around her in a wide circle, came a little nearer at one place, withdrew again, went on, approached her again at another point and again retreated rapidly. Until finally — of that I am absolutely certain — I must go to her.
Clarimonde is sitting at her window and spinning. Threads — long, thin, infinitely fine threads. She seems to be making some fabric — I don’t know just what it is to be. And I can’t understand how she can make the network without tangling or tearing the delicate fabric. There are wonderful patterns in her work — patterns full of fabulous monsters and curious grotesques.
For that matter — but what am I writing? The fact of the matter is that I can’t even see what it is she is spinning: the threads are much too fine. And yet I can’t help feeling that her work must be exactly as I see it — when I close my eyes. Exactly. A huge network peopled with many creatures — fabulous monsters, and curious grotesques...
Thursday, March 17
I find myself in a strange state of agitation. I no longer talk to any one; I hardly even say good morning to Madame Dubonnet or the porter. I hardly take time to eat; I only want to sit at the window and play with her. It’s an exacting game. Truly it is.
And I have a premonition that to-morrow something must happen.
Friday, March 18
Yes, yes. Something must happen to-day... I tell myself — oh, yes, I talk aloud, just to hear my own voice — that it is just for that that I am here. But the worst of it is that I am afraid. And this fear that what has happened to my predecessors in this room may also happen to me is curiously mingled with my other fear — the fear of Clarimonde. I can hardly keep them apart.
I am afraid. I would like to scream.
6 P.M.
Let me put down a few words quickly, and then get into my hat and coat.
By the time five o’clock came, my strength was gone. Oh, I know now for certain that it must have something to do with this sixth hour of the next to the last day of the week... Now I can no longer laugh at the fraud with which I duped the Commissioner. I sat on my chair and stayed there only by exerting my will power to the utmost. But this thing drew me, almost pulled me to the window. I had to play with Clarimonde — and then again there rose that terrible fear of the window. I saw them hanging there — the Swiss traveling salesman, a large fellow with a thick neck and a gray stubble beard. And the lanky acrobat and the stocky, powerful police sergeant. I saw all three of them, one after another and then all three together, hanging from the same hook with open mouths and with tongues lolling far out. And then I saw myself among them.
Oh, this fear! I felt I was as much afraid of the window-sash and the terrible hook as I was of Clarimonde. May she forgive me for it, but that’s the truth: in my ignominious fear I always confused her image with that of the three who hanged there, dragging their legs heavily on the floor.
But the truth is that I never felt for an instant any desire or inclination to hang myself: I wasn’t even afraid I would do it. No — I was afraid only of the window itself — and of Clarimonde — and of something terrible, something uncertain and unpredictable that was now to come. I had the pathetic irresistible longing to get up and go to the window. And I had to do it...
Then the telephone rang. I grabbed the receiver and before I could hear a word I myself cried into the mouthpiece: “Come! Come at once!”
It was just as if my unearthly yell had instantly chased all the shadows into the farthest cracks of the floor. I became composed immediately. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and drank a glass of water. Then I considered what I ought to tell the Commissioner when he came. Finally I went to the window, greeted Clarimonde, and smiled.
And Clarimonde greeted me and smiled.
Five minutes later the Commissioner was here. I told him that I had finally struck the root of the whole affair; if he would only refrain from questioning me to-day, I would certainly be able to make some remarkable disclosures in the very near future. The queer part of it was that while I was lying to him I was at the same time fully convinced in my own mind that I was telling the truth. And I still feel that that is the truth — against my better judgment.
He probably noticed the unusual condition of my temper, especially when I apologized for screaming into the telephone and tried to explain — and failed to find any plausible reason for my agitation. He suggested very amiably that I need not take undue consideration of him: he was always at my service — that was his duty. He would rather make a dozen useless trips over here than to let me wait for him once when I really needed him. Then he invited me to go out with him to-night, suggesting that that might help distract me — it wasn’t a good thing to be alone all the time. I have accepted his invitation, although I think it will be difficult to go out: I don’t like to leave this room.