Time goes by, Delphine does not come. London no longer gives back what is given to it. Like a loose net, it receives and retains everything. There are, in this gamut of houses, many creatures like her, who are not living there because of a grief or specific pleasures, but who do not know how to leave. Without chewing them up, between neat quays, London swallows up in its marine oesophagus all the products of the globe which, continuously, remain there when the ships’ toil is ended.
She won’t come. In the zoo nearby, the roaring of the lions makes the reinforced concrete caverns quiver. Macaws gash the evening with their cries. I remain alone with a heart full of charity.
AURORA
THE WINDOW OPENS onto a courtyard, where morning has not yet reached the far end. Above me, the worn sheet of the sky, studded with stars, with splashes of acid already in the east. Atrocious morning for an execution. The courtyard is an echoless in-draught. It is too narrow for a dull silence — this one is vertical, as in drainpipes.
Beneath the ground, the apprentice bakers let the heavy dough flop down again, each time for the last time.
I do not want to live here any longer, I’m choking; sleep would be possible were it not for the dreams and the overwhelming weariness of waking up; it is even more impossible to live far from one’s friends than with them. I gnaw at my nails, I pull out my hair, I have some successes; but I do not kill time, I wound it.
I should like to go away on my own, with my chequebook hung round my neck in a small metal box; with my suitcase. My suitcase whose smooth flanks are like cheeks, over which all the winds have blown, all fingers have passed; labels from hotels and stations; multi-coloured chalk marks from the customs; and the worn-out bottom that is turning blue with sweat, sea water, vomit, and red where the bottles of eau de cologne have broken inside. Unfortunately, I can no more escape from this city than from myself. There still remains the walk beneath the covered courtyard, the docile pastures of Upper Tooting, the suburban omnibuses, the parks that are as inappropriate as a flower-pot on the balcony, and, behind the Opera house, the aroma of agricultural labours, beneath the colonnade, in the midst of the market that perfumes Beecham’s art with a smell of cabbage …
Behind me, I can hear people enjoying themselves. Is there not one among them willing to forsake their entertainment, in order to follow this portent whose interpretation appears to be required of me this morning? Who may also wish to leave? Or, at least, share my sorrow at not leaving? Or console me for the anonymous farce of creation? An advertisement in the newspapers perhaps?
I turn round — it is a woman in an orange tunic tied with a gold cord; arms bare, tanned, very long. Tattooed bracelets. It is Aurora. I recognise her from having seen her dance in the rain at the open-air theatre at Bagatelle one evening in spring. And then there are the illustrated covers of the Tatler: “Aurora feeds her pumas.” “We walk badly, how Aurora places her feet.” On her forefinger, alas, a black diamond, from the Burlington Arcade.
In spite of that, she is attractive. She speaks simply, as if accustomed to controlling her breathing, with measured words. Here she is at the centre of a circle of young men — she has their slimness, their narrow hips, their short hair, their small head; her eyes are level with theirs.
She herself would say: “Women are odalisques with legs that are too short; when they confront a man, their eyes are level with his lips, he looks straight into their bosom — is that seemly?”
Aurora has no bosom and deprives us of furtive pleasures, but of those alone.
This evening there are a few society ladies. Aurora loses all her self-assurance in their presence; she does not like their expressions, conceals her bare feet in their golden sandals beneath her tunic and, pinning her brooch higher, reduces the opening of her neckline.
All the other women, on the other hand, approach her with confidence, kiss her hands, lay their pretty, made-up faces, looking like sweets, upon her shoulder and tell her smutty stories involving generals, theatre directors, servants, suicides, cocaine dealers. Meanwhile, Roger, seated at the piano, his back heaving, plays Parsifal.
I am sleepy. The weariness is such that it is restful just to stay where you are and say you are weary. The conversation is lumbering. I go to the dining room. A few dried-up sandwiches are left on the plates, shrivelled at the corners like postage stamps not properly licked, cigarette ash, corks; the level of the liquids is going down in the bottles; the beards of the guests are growing again implacably. Their hands are sticky and their faces ache.
I return to my window. The street is now bluish, steely cold. Beneath the roof, in a tube shaped like an S, a woman sews at her machine, trying to stop the fraying of the night with a hem.
I feel a pointed chin digging into my shoulder. I feel a breast swelling against my back, inhaling the air of the new day which the leaves in the parks has washed at last and sent back with their own fragrance.
“What a life!” Aurora says.
“What a life!” I reply, but I am not really aware of what I am saying. I no longer have the strength to think about who we are, why we are there, whether I like Aurora or dislike her; I no longer care about modulating my voice, my welcome, no longer care about bothering to be charming, about opening my eyes.
Aurora says:
“Whose house are we in?”
“I don’t know … brought by friends … tepid, sweet champagne … get away … where’s the door?”
“Ah!” cries Aurora with passion—“to live simply, logically, in harmony with one’s self and with the world, the equilibrium of the Greeks, the joy …”
At these foolish words I pull myself together. Here in my nerve-ends is the strength my muscles deny me; exasperation awakens me. I want to ask her why she goes out dolled up like this, why she camps out like a gypsy instead of living under a roof, like everyone else; I want to crush her perfect feet in their gold sandals with my heel, to wring her neck. I think of fairground manoeuvres under the eye of the police, in the rain, of wretched circus entertainers, I spew up Helvetic heresies and visions of art. Nothing will soothe me other than shaming her, humiliating her.
“Can you do the splits?”
“Of course.”
She sets out two chairs and starts to split herself in two.
It is too much. I hurl myself at her so as to strangle her. I squeeze her powerful neck with all my strength, but, with a smile, she clenches her muscles so firmly from chin to shoulders, that, gasping for breath, I have to let go.
She laughs. I am furious.
“Let’s go,” I say, “I’ll take you back.”
Aurora climbs into the taxi as if she were mounting a chariot. The vehicle advances silently. Aurora sits in the shadow, her legs crossed, holding her chin.
Calmed down, I have kindly thoughts: “In fact, she has simplified herself extraordinarily. Neither lies nor bombast issue from her slender lips, nor anxiety from her eyes, nor pointless gestures from her hands. She controls her body with lucidity like a precision instrument with powerful and delicate movements on which the strains that crush us are shattered, where, even at this hour, the organs function smoothly.”
I envy her harmonious perfection, her inner life free of conflict, her joints free of arthritis, her feet free of corns, her back free of stiffness.
Were I to ask her: “What is to prevent you from behaving badly when you want to, since you are certain you won’t have a bad headache the next day?” she would reply: “My personal hygiene.”