“What is it?”
“I want to speak to you alone for a moment.”
“No.”
“Oh yes. Listen to me calmly for a moment if you can. I’m calm too, you can see, There’s no need to be afraid of me. I assure you I won’t mistreat you, or even swear. But I must speak to you, alone. After our meeting, and after the ball last week, we can’t part just like that. You don’t even have the right to throw me out any more after talking to me and dancing with me the other day. There’s no reason or logic in that. You got worked up … But don’t let either of us get worked up any more. I’d like to talk to you …”
“I can’t: Mrs Uxeley doesn’t like me to leave the drawing-room, when people are here. I’m dependent on her.”
He laughed.
“You’re even more dependent on her than you once were on me. But you can allow me a moment, in the next room.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“What do you want to talk to me about?”
“I can’t say that here.”
“I can’t talk to you alone.”
“Shall I tell you something? You’re afraid.”
“No.”
“Oh, yes you are, you’re afraid of me. For all your airs and graces and snootiness you’re simply afraid to be alone with me for a moment.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Yes you are. You’re not sure of yourself. You received me with a nice speech that you rehearsed in advance. Now you’ve said your piece … it’s over and you’re frightened.”
“I’m not afraid …”
“Come with me for a moment then, brave writer of the Social Position … how did it go again? Come on, come with me for a moment. I promise you, I swear to you that I’ll be calm, will say calmly what I have to say to you and you have my word of honour that I won’t strike you … What room can we go into …? Don’t you want to? Listen: if you don’t come with me for a moment, it won’t be the end of it. Otherwise it might be … and you’ll never see me again.”
“What can you have to say to me.”
“Come with me …”
It was because of his voice, not what he said.
“But no more than three minutes.”
“No more than three minutes.”
She took him into the corridor and into an empty drawing-room. “What is it?” she asked, afraid.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, with his smiling moustache.
“Don’t be afraid. I simply wanted to say to you … that you’re my wife. Do you understand? Don’t try to contradict me. I felt it the other day at the ball, when I had you in my arms, waltzing with you. Don’t try to deny that you pressed yourself against me for a moment. You’re my wife. I felt it then and I feel it now. And you feel it too, though you’re trying to deny it. But it won’t do you any good. You can’t change what has been and what has been … is still inside you. Try and tell me that I’m not speaking politely and tactfully now. You won’t hear a single curse or a word out of place from my lips. Because I don’t want to upset you. I just want to get you to admit … that what I’m saying is true: and that you’re still my wife. That law means nothing. There’s another law that governs us. There’s a law that governs you in particular. A law that brings us back together, without our ever having imagined it, even if it is by a strange roundabout route that you, you especially, took. That law governs you in particular. I am convinced you’re still in love with me. I feel it, I’m sure of it: don’t try to deny it. None of it will do you any good, Cornélie. And shall I tell you something else? I’m still in love with you too and more than before. When you flirt with those fellows, I feel it. I could strangle you and give those fellows a good hiding … Don’t worry. I shan’t do it: I’m not in a rage. On the contrary, I wanted to talk calmly to you and show you the truth. Can you see it in front of you … so ir … re … vo … cably? You see, you’ve nothing to say against it. It is as it is. Are you going to throw me out? Are you going to speak to Mrs Uxeley? I wouldn’t if I were you. Your friend, the princess, knows who I am: let that suffice. Had the old girl never heard my name, or had she forgotten it? Must have forgotten it. Don’t prod her old memory now. Let it be. It’s better if you say nothing. No, the situation is not ridiculous and it’s not funny. It’s become very serious: the simple truth is always serious. It’s strange, though, I would never have thought it. It’s a revelation for me too … And now I have said all I wanted to you. Less than five minutes by my watch. They will scarcely have missed you in the drawing-room. And now I’m going, but first give your husband a kiss, because I’ll always be your husband.”
She stood before him trembling. It was his voice, pouring into her soul, into her body like molten bronze, draining her strength and paralysing her. It was his persuasive voice, his persuasive, seductive voice, the voice that she remembered from the past that forced her to bow to his will. Beneath that voice she was like an object, a thing that belonged to him, after he had first left his imprint on her as his wife. She was helpless to expel him from within her, to shake him off, to erase the brand of possession from her. She was his, and everything that was hers had deserted her. There was no more memory or thought in her brain.
She saw him approaching and putting his arms around her. He hugged her slowly but so firmly that it was as if he were taking complete possession of her. She felt herself melting away in his arms as if in a warmth-giving flame. She felt his mouth on her lips, his moustache pressing, pressing, pressing, till she closed her eyes, half fainting. He went on speaking softly into her ear with that voice, beneath which she counted for nothing, as if she were nothing, as if she existed only through him. When he let go of her, she swayed.
“Come on, pull yourself together,” she heard him saying, omnipotent and sure of himself. “And accept things as they are. That is just how it is. There’s nothing to be done. Thank you for letting me say my piece. Everything’s right between us now, I’m sure of it. And now good-bye for now. Au revoir …”
He kissed her again.
“Give me a kiss in return,” he asked, with that voice of his …
She threw her arms round him and kissed him on the mouth.
“Au revoir,” he said again.
She saw him smiling, that smiling moustache, and his eyes smiled at her with a golden flame, and he went. She heard his steps descending the stairs, then ringing on the marble of the hall, with the power of his firm tread … She stood there, her mind a blank. In the drawing-room, next to the room she was in, there was a loud buzz of laughing voices. She saw Rome before her, Duco, in a short lightning flash … It had gone … And sinking onto a chair, she let out a stifled cry of despair, covered her face with her hands and gave a muffled sob — keeping her helplessness hidden from all those people — as if she were suffocating.
LI
SHE HAD ONLY ONE THOUGHT: to flee. To flee from his mastery, to flee the emanation of his dominance, which mysteriously but inexorably erased every trace of will, energy, self, with his embrace. She remembered she had felt the same before: rebellion and anger when he became angry and coarse, but an annihilation of herself when he embraced her, an inability to think when he laid his hand on her head, a swooning into a single great nothingness, when he took her in his arms and kissed her. She had felt it from the first time she had seen him, that he stood in front of her and looked down at her with that hint of irony in his voice and his moustache, as if he were enjoying her resistance — then still in the form of flirtatiousness, later irritability, later passion and rage — as if he were enjoying her vain woman’s attempts to escape his domination. He had seen at once that he dominated this woman. And she had found in him her master, her sole master. No other man oppressed her like this with this majesty that stemmed from blood and flesh. On the contrary, she was usually the superior one. She had a cool indifference about her, which always prompted her to destructive criticism. She had a need for jokes, for a merry conversation, for coquettishness and flirting, and being never lost for an answer she created openings for ripostes, but apart from that she did not have a high opinion of men, and saw the ridiculous side of everyone: this one was too small, that one too tall, this one gauche, the other stupid; in everyone she found something that provoked her laughter and criticism. She would never be a woman who gave herself to many men. She had met Duco and given him her love totally and unconditionally, as a great, indivisible, golden gift, and after him she would never love again. But before Duco she had met Rudolf Brox. Perhaps if she had met him after Duco, his mastery would not have dominated her … She did not know. And what was the good of puzzling about that? It was as it was as it was. In her blood she was not a woman for many: in her blood she was all wife, spouse, mate. In her flesh, in her blood she was the wife of the man who had been her husband, she was his wife, even without love. Because she could not call this love; love was only that exalted, tender feeling, that deep perfection of harmonious existence, that progression together along a golden line, merged from two glistening lines … But as if in a cloud the hands had loomed up around them, and mysteriously, fatefully forced their golden line apart, and hers, a winding arabesque, had sprung back like a trembling coil and had crossed a dark line from her past, a gloomy path from the past, a dark avenue of unconsciousness and fateful slavery. Oh, how strange, how infinitely mysterious and strange those lifelines were: they could be curled back, forced back to their starting point! Why had it all been necessary?