•
I had only the instinct to say: “Don’t shout.” He walked up and down the bedroom, occasionally opening a drawer in the dresser, only to slam it shut furiously, with an abrupt, brutal gesture.
“Why did you marry me? Why?”
“Don’t shout. Everyone will hear. Don’t.”
“Your past.”
He had said “Your past.” We were different then, bookish.
“If at least your past were dead! But it isn’t; it’s alive. Your past has lived with us, breathing day and night as if it were a real person. Always, always. I’ve reached the point where to continue living I have to feel that someone needs me.”
Ill. I’m old now and ill and my youth. . “For a diabetic, diet is more important than medicine.” Cookies don’t make me feel bad, the sun does. I was out in the sun too long. This mirror knows it all. My green eyes and black hair are still there, hidden inside it. The first thing they did was hold the mirror up to his lips. This same mirror. At the beginning it didn’t turn misty. “We’ll save him, I’m sure.” The doctor looked at me, as if to cheer me up, as if it were a tragedy that my husband had wished to hang himself. I too had suffered, but I didn’t hang myself. “We’ll save him.” He was left with a purple spot on his neck, a line that lingered for a long time. I watched over him that night. He had chosen our wedding anniversary, and I couldn’t forgive him for surviving.
“I keep seeing you with that mauve dress of yours, and the lilac posy on the day I met you, at the dance. You’re looking at me as if I frightened you. How could I frighten you?”
How indeed? Especially now that it’s like someone else’s story. My son, my husband, Roger. Nothing. No one. I’ve lived alone. I am alone. Alone with this bundle of dead memories, which could be mine or not. Useless, sordid. Sixty years old, ill, with a son I don’t love because he looks like Roger. My jewelry has been sold off, little by little, in order to get by; I was forced to leave my country. Stupid. Bald and stupid. I watched over him all night; in the morning he asked for a glass of water. He could hardly speak. He made a tired gesture with his hand. He took a swallow and wouldn’t let go of my hand. He asked me to kiss him. “Out of kindness, even if I frighten you.” I went over to him. We were alone, everybody was asleep. I leaned down to kiss him, and when his face was close to mine, I spat on him. I spat and ran out. He seemed to be dead already. When he died, a few years later, I didn’t cry. And he was probably the only person who had loved me. Not me, the other woman who lived inside me.
•
Slowly she raised the mirror, held it by the marble edge of the bedside table. She hesitated a moment. Should I break it? I’m so much a creature of my own time, my own time. She lowered her arm slowly and threw the mirror on the bed. She heard steps along the corridor. It was her son. He must have left work early.
“Elena, do you know if Mamà went to the doctor’s today?
The doctor, the doctor. That would be the dinner conversation.
She picked up the cookie crumbs that had fallen into her lap, raised the blinds, and threw them into the garden.
HAPPINESS
Last night, before she fell asleep, she had realized winter was almost over. “No more cold,” she thought, stretching out between the sheets. As if from a limpid world, the clear sounds of the night reached her, restored to their original purity. The ticking of the clock, almost imperceptible during the day, filled the room with a nervous throb, causing her to imagine a clock in a land of giants. The steps on the pavement sounded like an assassin, or a madman escaped from an asylum, and her heart and pulse beat faster. The sound of a woodworm gnawing was the herald of some imminent danger: perhaps the insistent pounding was a friendly ghost endeavoring to keep her awake and vigilant. With, not fear, but a sense of dread, she moved closer to Jaume and snuggled up to him. She felt protected, her mind free of thought.
The moonlight, blending with the glow of the street lamp, reached the foot of the bed, and every now and then a gust of fresh air, full of night perfume, brushed her face. She savored the caress and compared its freshness to the freshness of other spring breezes. The flowers will come, she thought, and blue days with long, pink sunsets and warm waves of sun and pale dresses. Overcrowded trains will carry people whose eyes will shine with the excitement of the big holidays. All the things that accompany fair weather will appear, to be taken away in the autumn by a strong wind and three heavy rainstorms.
She lay there awake in the middle of the night finding pleasure in the thought of leaving winter behind. She raised her arm and shook her hand: the metal jangle made her smile. She stretched voluptuously. The bracelet shone in the light of the arc lamp and the moon. It had been hers since that afternoon, and she watched it shining against her skin, as if it were part of her. She made it jangle again. She wanted three of them. All the same. Three chains to be worn together.
“Can’t you sleep?”
“I will in a moment.”
If he could know how much she loved him! For everything. Because he was so good, because he knew how to hold her tenderly as if he were afraid of breaking her, with more love in his heart than in his eyes — and she was one to know if there was love in his eyes. Because he lived only for her, the same way she had lived for her cat when she was little: anxiously. She had suffered because she was afraid her cat suffered. With troubled eyes, she would anxiously look for her mother: “He finished the milk; he’s still hungry. . His neck’s caught in the ball of yarn; he’s going to choke. . He’s playing with the fringe on the curtain, and when he hears someone he stops and pretends he doesn’t notice, but he’s so scared his heart’s pounding. .”
She felt like kissing him, not letting him sleep, pestering him until in the end he would want the kisses as much as she did. But the night was high, the air sweet, and the bracelet shiny. . Little by little she lost consciousness and fell asleep.
•
But now that it was morning, she was miserable. From the bathroom came the sound of running water. It was pouring into the sink. She recognized the unmistakable clink of his razor being placed on the glass shelf, then the bottle of cologne. Every unambiguous sound conveyed the precision of his actions.
She was uncomfortable lying facedown, elbows propped on the bed, hands pressed against her cheeks. She was counting the arrondissements in a Paris guidebook. One, two, three. . The sound of the water distracted her, and she lost count. She could only find nineteen. Where did she go wrong? She started with Île Saint-Louis and started around. Four, five, six. . The tender colors calmed her anger. The blues, pinks, purples, the splashes of green from the parks, all of them reminded her of the end of summer, when every tree turned gold or copper. On other days, the stream of water from the next room brought a rush of summer happiness, evoking memories of wide rivers reflecting low-flying birds, of white coves with seaweed on the sand, but today the sound filled her with melancholy.
Of course, it was ridiculous to worry about a morning without kisses, and she deliberately chose the word “worry” to avoid a harsher one that would give rise to waves and waves of resentment. But she had always loved the first morning kisses. . They tasted of sleep, as if discarded sleep returned through his lips and reached her closed eyes that wanted to sleep again. Those playful kisses were worth everything. One, two, three, four, five. . Île Saint-Louis, Châtelet, Rue Montyon. . seventeen, eighteen. .