He said nothing.
“If you did not love me,” she went on, “it would be all the same to you to let me go with you. Well, then? Why make us both suffer?. As if this were the time for it,” she added with weariness.
Kyo felt some f^amiliar demons stirring within ^m, which rather thoroughly disgusted him. He had an urge to strike her, to strike directly at her love. She was right: if he had not loved her, what would it matter to that she should die? Perhaps it was the fact that she was forcing realization upon at this moment that he resented most.
Did she feel like crying? She had shut her eyes, and the constant, silent trembling of her shoulders, in contrast with her motionless features, seemed the complete expression of human distress. It was no longer his will alone which separated them, but grief. And, since the sight of grief brings together as much as grief itself separates, he was thrown towards her once more by the expression of her face, in which the eyelids were slowly lifting-as when she was struck with surprise. Above her closed eyes, the movement of her brow ended, and that tense face in which the eyelids remained lowered became suddenly a dead woman’s face.
Many of May’s expressions had no effect on him: he knew them, he always had the feeling that she was copying herself. But he had never seen this death mask-pain, and not ' sleep, on closed eyes-and death was so near that this ilusion acquired the force of a sinister prefiguration. She opened her eyes without looking at ^m: her glance remained lost on the blank wall of the room; without a single muscle moving, a tear rolled down her nose, remained suspended at the comer of her mouth, betraying by its inexpressive animation, poignant as pain in animals, a mask which was as inhuman, as dead as it had been a moment ago.
“Open your eyes.”
She looked at ^m.
“They are open.”
“I had the impression you were dead.”
“Well?”
She shrugged her shoulders and went on, in a voice of weary sadness:
“If 1 am to die, I am willing to have you die. ” Now he understood the real feeling that urged him: he wanted to console her. But he could console her only by agreeing to let her go with him. She had shut her eyes again. He took her in his arms, kissed her on the eyelids. When they separated:
“Are we going?” she asked.
“No.”
Too honest to hide her impulses, she returned to her desires with a cat’s stubbornness, which often exasperated Kyo. She had moved away from the door, but he perceived that he had been anxious to pass only as long as he had been sure he wouldn’t pass.
“May, are we going to part on a misunderstanding?” “Have I lived like a woman who needs protection?. ”
They stood there facing each other, not knowing what else to say and not accepting silence, both knowing that that moment, one of the gravest of their lives, was ruined by the time which was passing: Kyo’s place was not here, but at the Committee, and impatience lurked under his every thought.
She indicated the door with a motion of her head.
He looked at her, took her head between his two hands, pressed it gently without kissing her, as though he were putting into that caress the mingled tenderness and violence of which all the virile gestures of love are capable. At last he withdrew his hands.
The two doors closed behind him. May continued to listen, as though she were waiting for a third door-
which did not exist-to close in its turn. With her mouth open and quivering, drunk with grief, she was becoming aware that, if she had given him the sign to leave alone, it was because she thought she was making in this way the last, the only move which might have made him decide to take her along.
Kyo had scarcely taken a hundred steps, when he met Katov.
“Isn’t Ch’en there?”
He pointed to Kyo’s house.
“No.”
“You abs’lutely don’t know where he is?”
“No. Why?”
Katov was calm, but his face was contracted and pale as though he were suffering from a violent headache.
“There are several cars like Chiang Kai-shek’s. Ch’en doesn’t know it. Either the police have been tipped off, or they’re s’spicious. If he isn’t warned he’s going to get caught and throw his bombs for nothing. I’ve been chasing him for a long time, you see. The bombs were to have been thrown at one o’clock. Nothing has happened — we would have known.”
“He was to do it near the Avenue of the Two Republics. The best thing to do would be to go to Hemmel- rich’s.”
Katov started off immediately.
“You have your cyanide?” Kyo asked him as he turned to go.
“Yes.”
Both of them, and several other revolutionary leaders, carried cyanide in the flat buckle of their belts, which opened like a box.
The separation had not freed Kyo from his torment. On the contrary: in this deserted street May was even stronger-having yielded-than right before him, opposing him. He entered the Chinese city, not without being aware of it, but with indiference. “Have I lived like a woman who needs protection?. " By what right did he exercise his pitiful protection on the woman who had even consented to his going? In the name of what was he leaving her? Was he sure that there was in his attitude no element of revenge? No doubt May was still sitting on the bed, crushed by a despair that was beyond words and thought.
He retraced his steps on the run.
The phcenix-room was empty: his father had gone out, May was still in the bed-room. Before opening he stopped, overwhelmed by the brotherhood of death, discovering how derisive the flesh appeared before this communion, in spite of its urgent appeal. He understood now that the willingness to lead the being one loves to death itself is perhaps the complete expression of love, that which cannot be surpassed.
He opened the door.
She hurriedly threw her coat over her shoulders, and followed him without a word.
Quarter past three in the afternoon
For a long time Hemmelrich had been looking at his records. No customers. Someone knocked according to the signal agreed upon.
He opened. It was Katov.
“Have you seen Ch’en?”
“Walking remorse!” Hemmelrich gambled.
“What?”
“Nothing. Yes, I’ve seen ^m. About one or two o’clock. Does it concern you?”
“I abs’lutely must see him. What did he say?”
From another room one of the child’s cries reached them, followed by the indistinguishable words of the mother trying to calm him.
“He came with two chums. One of them was Suan. Don’t know the other one. A fellow with glasses, looked like anybody else. A noble air. Brief-cases under their arms: you understand?”
“That’s why I've got to find m, you see.”
“He asked me to stay here for three hours.”
“Oh! Good! Where is he?”
“Shut up! Listen to what I’m telling you. He told me to stay here. I haven’t stirred. Do you hear?”
Silence.
“I told you I haven’t stirred.”
“Where can he have gone?”
“He didn’t say. Like you. Silence is spreading today. ”
Hemmelrich was standing in the middle of the room, hunched over, with a look almost of hatred. Katov said calmly, without looking at him:
“You’re damning yourself too much. That way you’re trying to get me to accuse you so you can defend yourself.”
“What do you know about it? And what damn business is it of yours anyway? Don’t stand there looking at me with that lock of hair like a cockscomb and your hands open, like Jesus Christ, waiting for someone to drive nails through them. ”
Without closing his hand, Katov placed it on Hem- melrich’s shoulder.