“No.”
“Just as well. I’m… I’m used to it.”
She took up again her delicate operation, cleaning with oxygenated water then with the iodine tincture a small cut she had not noticed until now.
“Yes, I’m used to it. To that and to other things. Look, Grig… You’d have to meet him.”
“Isn’t he coming here this evening?”
“He was supposed to… But now he won’t be coming. Not this evening and not many other evenings…”
“I’m sorry, believe me.”
“I’m not. I swear I’m not.”
“Do you love him?”
Nora sensed an ironic undertone in his question. She was convinced that he was smiling just as he had smiled on the street, amid that group of bystanders in which he alone had been indifferent.
She raised her head quickly, in order to surprise him, and was astonished on looking at him to see that she had been wrong. He wasn’t smiling.
“No, I don’t love him. I don’t think I love him. He comes here… to this apartment… He comes, he leaves, he phones me, he gets angry, he makes up… That’s him. I think you’d find him amusing.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. It seems like he’s the exact opposite of you.”
“And how do you know that?”
“For lots of reasons. Your voice. Your tie.” She got up and came towards him. “Yes, your tie. His is always perfectly tied. Yours is crooked. You don’t know how to tie it. Will you let me?”
She sat down on the low back of the armchair and undid the knot of his tie with fluid, measured movements. He didn’t resist. He waited dutifully for her to finish. The aroma of lavender passed through her porous bathrobe, bearing a wave of heat in which she felt something like a distant beating of her blood, the fine throbbing of her pulse.
When she had finished knotting the tie, Nora stepped away from him and observed him to see how he looked.
“No, it doesn’t work. It’s perfect, but it doesn’t look right on you. It’s too perfect for you.”
And, with that worry, she was compelled to ruin the too-perfect knot in his tie in order to restore his negligent air.
He was ready to leave. He put on his hat. My God, how tall he looks in that hat! He was preparing to bid her good evening.
“Are you really going?”
“It’s late.”
“You haven’t even introduced yourself.”
“Do you need to see my identity papers?”
“There’s no harm in our looking at them.”
He searched with a serious expression in the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out an I.D. card, which he held out to her.
Nora looked it over for a moment, as though she wished to verify the photograph, the personal information, the signature. Then she looked at him in sudden surprise.
“You were born on December 18th?”
“Yes.”
“December 18th? You’re sure?” Without waiting for his reply, she turned her head towards the calendar on the wall. “You did realize that today is your birthday? You realized that you’re turning…” She stopped, opened again the I.D. card in her hand, read his birthdate… “You knew that you were turning thirty today? Exactly today?”
He didn’t look surprised. He looked far more amused by her open stupefaction. She insisted. “Tell me, you did know?”
He lifted his shoulders; again, his indifferent lifting of his shoulders. “No.”
Nora tried not to believe him.
“It’s not true. Isn’t that right — it’s not true? And isn’t somebody waiting for you somewhere this evening? Your wife, your girlfriend. Someone who knows…”
She came to a halt. There was something in his hazy, settled silence that made her suddenly certain that she would not be able to wrest a reply from him.
He took a step towards the door. Nora seized his arm. “Don’t leave yet.”
On a bookshelf, in a glass vase, were three carnations with long stalks. She took a carnation and offered it to him without smiling, almost with gravity.
“For your birthday.” Then, with unexpected enthusiasm, she pressed even closer to him. “Stay here. As you can see, it’s bright, it’s warm. We can call the porter and send him to the grocery store. We’re going to make a big dinner and clink our glasses. That’ll bring us luck.”
“You think so?” he said, distracted.
“I’m sure.”
A boyish sparkle lighted up his eyes. “I accept. But you’ve got to let me go down to the shop.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because you won’t come back.”
“Of course I will.”
… And she had no more time to refute him because he had opened the door and disappeared down the stairs in a tempestuous rush.
Nora remained on the threshold, listening to his steps fading away.
She looked restlessly at the clock on her desk: twenty minutes had gone past. He may not come back.
An immense silence filled the entire building. From somewhere on a distant floor came the feeble sound of a song on a gramophone or on the radio:
Goodnight, Mimy,
And sweet dreams
Goodnight, Mimy
And deep sleep…
Nora thought about that Mimy, who no doubt had been sleeping for a long time as a result of the song’s persuasion.
She would have liked to sleep, too. It seemed wrong to have taken off that soft bathrobe in which she had felt so warmly embraced. In this evening dress she had the uncomfortable impression of being a visitor in her own apartment. But she had seen that he took with complete seriousness the “dinner” for which she was preparing, and she thought with pleasure that when he returned he would find a stunning woman… Stunning. She repeated the word in her head and smiled with slight fatigue.
A dull hum cut through the silence of the building. Someone was coming up in the elevator.
Acquainted with the building’s most intimate secrets, Nora’s ear followed the sound as it would have followed the rise of mercury in an oversized thermometer.
First floor, second floor…
As it approached, the hum of the elevator vibrated like the lower chords of a piano, prolonged by the pressure of the pedals. Would it stop on the third floor…? No, it had continued upward.
At each floor there was a brief thunk, like a pulse beating harder.
Nora closed her eyes. She felt the rising of the elevator inside her, as though a secret driving-belt had taken over her blood and nerves.
Fourth… Fifth… Had it stopped?
It seemed as though, within the silence that had existed until now, a new, deeper zone of silence had opened.
Had it stopped?
Yes. It had stopped. The interior lattice work, made of wood, clattered back with a meshing shudder, the door opened and closed mechanically, the hum of the elevator’s chords fell away, dwindled…
It’s pointless to wait for him. He’s not coming back.
Nora got up from the armchair and approached the mirror. She observed herself for a long time. “How absurd you are, my dear girl. How absurd you are!” she said to herself in a loud voice.
She felt pity for her black dress, her bare arms, for those two carnations that she could see in the mirror trembling in the glass vase, too heavy for their slender stalks as though they, too, were tired from waiting.
She lifted the telephone receiver and kept it in her hand for a while, without a thought. Then she put it back, not knowing why she had picked it up.
“No, he’s not coming back.”