But she dodged me with a sideways movement of her body, slipped out of the armchair and went to lean against the mantelpiece. I was left kneeling like a fool, while she gazed at me without irony, without severity either, but with a sort of loftiness that seemed to me a little wild-eyed.
“And how do you know I want to get out of it? What do you know of anything? Poor child. You know nothing at all. Nor does anybody. Who listens to us, anyway? Oh, you foolish Pygmalions!” she cried and threw out her arm straight before her so that she suddenly resembled her father in his preacher’s mood. She must have seen my surprise, my alarm. She motioned with her hand. “Don’t take any notice. You ought to go…” She was stammering. “If you… if you don’t go… you’ll… you’ll be sorry. Don’t listen,” she begged. “Please, I’m asking you,” and I saw that her body was quivering like that of a restive horse held reined in at the starting line. “I’ll talk an awful lot of drivel. Don’t wait, go! Are you deaf or what?”
But I was so fascinated that I could neither speak nor budge. Her voice became jerky, convulsive.
“Oh! I don’t care a damn, after all! Listen if you like! What does it matter? I’m not asking your opinion. Who ever asked for ours? You stupid sorcerers’ apprentices! Did we ask for anything? We were happy as females. What business had we with brains? The mind is a nuisance. It only spoils one’s pleasure and makes pain unbearable. What did we need? To be kept safe and warm, to enjoy our pleasures and to procreate. But no! That wasn’t enough. We had to start thinking, too. A fat lot further that got us! When the heart has a mind, it has to labor, suffer, defend itself. Against whom? The mind. And here I’m getting away from it, and you say you won’t let me!
“Well, I’m damned if I’ll let you prevent me! Go away. I stay where I am. I won’t be caught again. I won’t let anyone force me to my knees and make me knock my head against the cold stone of the world’s absurdity. That’s your lookout, your skull is thicker, sounder—and you were determined to rebel. But what about us, with our poor thin skulls? Bumps, that’s all. And they hurt. A great success! Oh, I too thought for a long time that the mind was superior to all. But what good has it done me? What good has all I’ve ever learned done me? No good at all, or as good as none. As soon as a thing was really important, phut! There was nobody, no thought, no nothing. Actually that’s the very sign, isn’t it, by which we recognize that a thing is important! Dare you say it isn’t?
“And what am I to do with a mind that fades out whenever I’m pressed to act? With a mill that turns around and around in a vacuum? That grinds nothing but crazy desires and useless remorse? Absurd difficulties. Imaginary fears. And what else could it grind, what other flour? Well, I’m no longer hungry. I’ve had my fill. I want to be left alone to sleep. I’ve found my home, my dump, my barrel. Don’t try to drive me out of it. Or would you rather have me pray myself silly in the gloom of churches, like so many scared old hens? If I have to choose a Nirvana… I understand you: love! Yes. That is a refuge too. To belong to a man entirely, and no more thinking! No more terror before the silence of the stars. No wonder they all rush into it! But at the bottom of love there is still something: suffering. And consequently a mind. And therefore muddle. A rotten remedy! I’ll have no more of it. I want oblivion, that’s all. Oblivion! Oblivion!” she cried crescendo.
She had reeled off this nonsense at such speed that I had not been able to get a word in edgeways. As she caught her breath, I tried to dam this flood with a fierce “Listen to me!” as one hurls a stick between the legs of a bolting horse. But she shouted an even louder “Shut up!” which silenced me once more. And suddenly I was a little horrified to notice a dribble of foaming saliva at the corner of her mouth.
“I’m talking like a madwoman, aren’t I?” she rapped out, as if she had read my thoughts. “And why do you think that princesses drink till they roll under the table when they’re all alone at the end of the day? Do you want to see other women as crazy as me? I’ll show you thousands of them, tens of thousands, all over England, if you like! Yes, I know, I know, I’m a bit different, I go one better, I’m destroying myself, but what if that suits me? Who is to stop me, and by what right? Shut up!” she rapped, and then abruptly: “I’m talking, talking, of course I’m talking too much.
“Don’t pay any attention,” she repeated in a suddenly cracked voice, as if she had broken it with too much shouting or as if there had suddenly dropped on her an insuperable fatigue. “All right, I know I may be saying a lot of rubbish along with the rest, it’s on account of the stuff, it’s always like that toward the end before it wears off. Don’t worry, I have to talk, I can’t stop myself talking, a sort of verbal fever,” she murmured. “Oh, I’m out of breath, I can’t go on any more. Be a pet, open the drawer over there, no, in the small table, behind the screen. Yes. There’s a snuffbox in it. Of old china. That’s it. Give it to me. Hurry up. What?”
I had said nothing, but I had opened the snuffbox and was staring at the white powder with disgust, with positive execration. I went over to the window and opened it.
“What are you doing?” she screamed, and hurled herself upon me.
But I had already tossed the snuffbox out into the garden, and all that remained of the powder was a cloud of dust carried away by the wind.
It was such a brutal attack that I fell against a stool, stumbled, sprawled headlong under a storm of shouts. I was struck, trampled, a heel dug into my cheek. I tried to get up, shielding my face behind my crooked arms, and received such a violent blow in the chest that I lost my balance again, caught myself up at the armrest of a settee, at last managed to get to my feet and fled under an avalanche of all kinds of objects and foul abuse. I no longer know how I got to my carriage. I was running away, not from cowardice, but from a kind of unsurmountable horror, a sacred revolt. On the road, I was still shaking in every limb as I staunched the blood on my wounded face.
Chapter 24
BY the time I got home I was somewhat calmer, and also a little ashamed of my panic-stricken flight. So that was all I had been able to accomplish. That was the sum total of all my boastful promises to Dr. Sullivan. I locked myself in my study in order to think without being disturbed, to try to see things straight.
I did succeed, in a way, but there was scant comfort in my conclusion. For I saw myself at last as I was: spread-eagled and torn between Sylva and Dorothy, between an animal whom I wanted to change into a woman and a woman who wanted to change back into a beast. You’ve run away like a coward, I told myself. Tomorrow you’ll go back. You won’t give up under any pretext. You’ll fight as long as necessary, until you’ve saved her from herself. Perhaps you’ve seen the worst, and in any event you know now what to expect. A modicum of courage should be enough to help you overcome your revulsion. I avoided saying: a modicum of love.
Those were fine resolutions. Perhaps I would have kept them, too. But the next day a short and distressed note from Dr. Sullivan informed me that Dorothy had returned to London.
I reproached myself bitterly. Wasn’t I to blame once again for this departure? What an idiot I had been to throw all her supplies of the drug out of the window. A handsome, gallant, virtuous and romantic gesture! As if the only possible result wasn’t to oblige Dorothy to procure more at all cost, without delay… Perhaps she had also run away from the awful self-portrait she had shown me.
For the time being there was no question of my going after her to London. Summer was approaching, although somewhat timidly as yet, haymaking was already in full swing, wheat and barley would soon require my full time, the harvester had to be overhauled, arrangements made with the neighbors for the threshing machine, not to mention the normal day-to-day problems.