This time to conceal her exhaustion from Rango she took the Dover-Calais boat intending to hide in London for a few days at the house of a friend.
Sitting on deck, on a foggy afternoon, she felt so utterly tired and discouraged that she fell asleep. Tired tired tired, her body sank into deep sleep on the deck chair. Sleep. A deep deep sleep…until she felt a hand on her shoulder as if calling. She would not open her eyes; she would not respond. She dreaded to awaken. She feigned a complete sleep and turned her head away from the hand that was beckoning…
But the voice persisted: “Mademoiselle, mademoiselle…” A voice pleading.
She felt the spray on her face, the swaying of the ship, and began to hear the voices around her.
She opened her eyes.
A man was leaning over her, his hand still on her shoulder. “Mademoiselle, forgive me. I know I should have let you sleep. Forgive me.”
“Why did you wake me? I was so tired, so tired.” She was not fully awake yet, not awake enough to be angry, or even reproachful.
“Forgive me. I can explain, if you will let me. I am not trying to flirt, believe me. I’m a grand blesse de guerre. I can’t tell you how seriously wounded, but it’s left me so I can’t bear fog, damp, rain, or the sea. Pains. Such pains all over the body. I have to make this trip often, for my work. It’s torture, you know. Going back to England now… When the pains start there is nothing I can do but to talk to someone. I had to talk to someone. I looked all around me. I looked into every face. I saw you asleep. I know it was inconsiderate, but I felt: that’s the woman I can talk to. It will help me—do you mind?”
“I don’t mind,” said Djuna.
And they talked, all the way, on the train too, all the way to London. When she reached London she was near collapse. She took the first hotel room she could find and slept for twelve hours. Then she returned to Paris.
No more questioning, no more interpretations, no more examinations of her life. She was resigned to her destiny. It was her destiny. The grand blesse de guerre on the ship had made her feel it, had convinced her.
So she made a pirouette charged with sadness, on the revolving stages of awareness, and returned to this role she had been fashioned for, even down to the face, even when asleep.
But when people play a role motivated by false impulses, moved by compulsions formed by fear, by distortions, rather than by a deep need, the only symptom which reveals that it is a role and that acts do not correspond to the true nature, is the sense of unbearable tension.
The ways to measure one’s insincerities are few, but Djuna knew that the most infallible one was joylessness. Any task accomplished without joy was a falsity to one’s true nature. When Djuna indulged in an extravagant giving to Zora she felt no joy because it was misinterpreted by both Rango and Zora. If there was a natural goodness in Djuna it was not this magnified, this self-destructive annihilation of all of herself.
But this role could last a lifetime, since Rango denied the possibility of change by clairvoyance, the possibility of a lucid change of direction. They were rudderless and at the mercy of Zora’s madness.
She did not even gain the prestige granted to the professional actor, for there is this about roles played in life, and that is that no one is deceived. The most obtuse, the most insensitive people feel a dissonance, sense an imposture, and, whereas the actor is respected for creating an illusion on the stage, no one is respected for seeking to create an illusion in life.
She planned another escape, this time with Rango and Zora. She felt that taking them to the sea, into nature, might heal them all, might strengthen Zora and bring them peace.
It was a most arduous undertaking to get Zora to pack and to free Rango from all his tangles. They missed not one but several trains. Zora had two trunks of belongings. Rango had debts and his debtors were reluctant to let him leave Paris. They overslept in the mornings.
Rango borrowed some money and bought Djuna a present, a slender white leather belt from Morocco. It was his first present and Djuna was overjoyed and wore it proudly. But when the three met at the station she found Zora wearing an identical belt, so her own lost its charm for her and she threw it away.
The fishing port they reached in the morning lay in the sun. The crescent-shaped harbor sheltered yachts and fishing boats from all over the world. The cafes were all gathered on the edge and as they sat having coffee they saw the boats come to life, the sailors and voyagers emerging from theircabins. They saw the small portholes open, the hatches lifted, and sails spread. They saw the sailors starting to polish brass and wash decks.
Behind them rose the hills planted with white houses built during the Moors’ invasion of the Mediterranean coast.
The place was animated, like a perpetual carnival. The fluttering, glitter, and mobility of the harbor and ships were reflected in the cafes and visitors. Women’s scarves answered the coquetries of the sails. The eyes, skins, and smiles were as polished as the brass. Women’s sea-shell necklaces reflected the sky and the sea.
Rango found a place for Zora and himself at the top of a hill within a forest. Djuna took a room in a hotel farther down the hill and nearer to the harbor.
When Rango came down the hill on his bicycle and met Djuna at one of the cafes on the port, the sun was setting.
The night and the sea were velvety and caressing, unfolding a core of softness. As the plants exhaled a more mysterious flowering, people, too, shed their brighter day selves and donned colors and perfumes more appropriate to secret blooms. They dilated with the leaves, the shadows, at the approach of night.
The automobiles which passed carried all the flags of pleasure unfurled in audacious smiles, insolent scarves.
All the voices were pitched to a tone of intimacy. Sea, earth, and bodies seeking alliances, wearing their plumage of adventure, coral and turquoise, indigo and orange. Human corollas opening in the night, inviting pursuit, seeking capture, in all the dilations which allow the sap to rise and flow.
Then Rango said: “I must leave. Zora is afraid of the dark.”
To make it easier for Rango she bicycled back with him but when she returned alone to her room all the exhalations of the sea tempted her out again, and she returned to the port and sat at the same table where she had sat with Rango and watched the gaiety of the port as she had watched that first party out of her window as a girl, feeling again that all pleasure was unattainable for her.
People were dancing in the square to an accordion played by the village postmaster. The letter carrier invited her to dance, but all the time she felt Rango’s jealous and reproachful eyes on her. Every porthole, every light, seemed to be watching her dance with reproach.
So at ten o’clock she left the port and its festivities and bicycled back to her small hotel room.
As she climbed the last turn in the hill, pushing her bicycle before her, she saw a flashlight darting over her window which gave on the ground floor. She could not see who was wielding it, but she felt it was Rango and she called out to him joyously, thinking that perhaps Zora had fallen asleep and he was free and had come to be with her.
But Rango responded angrily to her greeting: “Where have you been?”
h, Rango, you’re too unjust. I couldn’t stay in my room at eight o’clock. It’s only ten now, and I’m back early, and alone. How can you be angry?”
But he was.
“You’re too unjust,” she said, and passing by him, almost running, she went into her room and locked the door.
The few times that she had held out against him, such as the time he had arrived at midnight instead of for dinner as he had promised, she had noticed that Rango’s anger abated, and that his knock on the door had not been imperious, but gentle and timid.