I had an impetuous desire to write to her. “Just to have a glimpse of you. If only to see you pass. If you would wear the blue dress, the dress you wore that last day.” I tore the letter into a thousand pieces. I know she asked about me. She would have used that neutral voice of hers: “Ah, so he’s had a daughter?” If I could only explain to her. . “I’m getting married.” If I had only been able to say: “I don’t want you to.” Her words cast me into a void, left me spinning, falling. “Gracious, you’re young!” Her youth frightened me so. Since the child was born, my son looks at me as if he were trying to understand me. I sense him smiling harshly.
I haven’t been able to sleep all night, and now my head is splitting. I got up to open the window and came back to bed. Slowly the dark room filled with starlight. I felt cold and pulled the duvet over me. The wind brushed the leaves on the lemon tree against the glass. “She’s in Algeria,” I was told yesterday afternoon. “She left two months ago.” All night I imagined the sea and the ship. I couldn’t rid myself of the image of the sea, the ship rocking back and forth like the leaves on the lemon tree. When it was almost day, I went to my daughter’s room and lifted her frantically. She grumbled but didn’t wake. I held her in my arms for a long time. Slowly the daylight returned the shape and color to objects. I clasped that tiny bit of flesh with its beating heart. I must have hurt her, for suddenly she started crying. “What is it?” My wife rushed in anxiously, tying the sash on her dressing gown. “Has she been crying long?” Then she glanced at me: “If you could only see how ill you look! What’s wrong?” “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing’s the matter. Don’t look at me like that. I assure you, it’s nothing at all. Don’t give me that look.” Never, not even on the worst day of those eighteen years, had I wished so furiously to die.
DEPARTURE
“What’s this soup made of?”
“No way of knowing. . The cook probably doesn’t even know.”
The waitress had just finished filling two bowls with a yellowish liquid: small pieces of green leaves were floating in it. They had left the suitcase sitting on the floor, beside the table. A dog went over to it, smelled it calmly, and moved away to the next table, where an old lady wearing a brown hat with a pheasant feather was holding out a fish bone.
“Don’t look at me, eat.”
He obeyed and put his spoon in the bowl. A moment later he raised his eyes and looked at her for a while.
“What do you plan to do?”
She wiped her lips, hesitated a moment, then answered:
“I don’t know.”
“I hate for you to leave like this, not knowing what you’re going to do.”
“Better not to think about it,” she said in a very low voice, looking down at the bowl.
“Yes, I do, I hate it.”
“Eat.”
The restaurant at the train station was full. The waitresses hurried up and down with little notebooks stuck in their apron pockets, pencils hanging by little metal chains from their waists. Theirs had dark hair. She must have been about forty years old, forty withered years. You could see she was tired and in a bad mood. She wore a lot of eye makeup.
From time to time he glanced at his watch: still three quarters of an hour before the train left.
“Say something.”
The waitress took the bowls and set the plate down. A warm china plate. She served them a piece of boiled hake, covered with mayonnaise, with two or three lettuce leaves.
“Say whatever you like, just say something.”
The waitress came back.
“Excuse me, I forgot to serve you the asparagus.” She gave them half a dozen, placing them beside the piece of hake.
“They count them carefully: six for you, six for me. I’m certain everyone eating dinner counts the asparagus they’re served. Six. The same number of years you and I. .”
A train whistled. You could hear the sound of hammering on wheels mixed with the station boys’ cries and the noise of the loud speakers announcing departures.
“Oh, oh! The glass. .”
It had been knocked over while he was reaching for a slice of bread from the little basket. Beer spilled over the paper that served as a tablecloth, spread to the edge of the table, and began to drip onto the floor.
“Move the suitcase!”
“Fortunately I didn’t break the glass.”
A tall, thin gentleman entered, wearing a raincoat the color of café amb llet. With a glance he surveyed the entire room, took a watch out of his vest pocket, checked it against the clock on the wall, and walked slowly away.
They continued to eat the hake. They ate mechanically: neither of them was hungry.
“When I think about you leaving with no money. . I’ll be worried about you.”
A black cat had just wandered by and the dog let out a few barks and started to chase it under the tables. A gentleman who was dining alone, a little further away, turned red, protesting with an air of great dignity.
“Better not to think about it. Ah. .! That reminds me: I forgot to tell you I left your ironed shirts on the top shelf of the armoire, the socks in the right-hand drawer, where we kept the aspirin and the electric bills. . Don’t you like the mayonnaise?”
“Yes. .”
“Then why don’t you eat it?”
“I mean. . I don’t like it much.”
The gentleman in the raincoat entered again, carrying two large suitcases. He crossed the room and sat down at the table where the lady in the hat with the pheasant feather had been earlier.
The waitress took the plates away.
“Grapes for me. And you?”
“Grapes.”
“Grapes for both of us.”
The waitress went over to the man in the raincoat, set the tray full of plates down on the table, and wrote the order in her notebook. A man and a woman entered. The man had one eye covered with a black cloth and was carrying a guitar. He started to sing with a hoarse, weary voice. From time to time he brushed the strings with his fingertips.
“I thought that was against the law.”
“What?”
“That. Begging. Do you want to smoke?”
He handed her a cigarette. He took another and put it between his lips. The cigarette shook. He lit a match and the flame shook also.
“The last two I have. I gave you the whole one. Mine has a little hole.”
“Shall we swap?”
“Oh, I’ll just cover it with my finger.”
The large hand of the clock moved and jumped a minute. The waitress brought the grapes and then served the gentleman in the raincoat a bowl of soup. At the same time she served him the plate of hake, with the lettuce leaves, the asparagus, and the mayonnaise.
“Let’s see if he counts them.”
They began to eat the grapes one by one, smoking from time to time. All of a sudden they laughed. The gentleman in the raincoat had put on his glasses: first he examined what was in the bowl, then he took his fork and calmly separated the asparagus, moving his lips slightly.
“Are you cold?”
“No. .”
“You looked like you were shaking.”
“Really?”
Through the window you could see the branches of a plane tree shining in the light from a street lamp. The leaves were yellow and shook gently in the early autumn wind.
“The leaves are already yellow. Did you notice?”
“But it’s still not a bit cold.”
“Perhaps I’d better start getting ready. Why don’t you ask for the check?”
She took a tube of lipstick and some powder out of her purse. She painted her lips, spreading the lipstick with her tongue, and powdered her face. In the mirror her eyes were hard, expressionless, still a bit congested. Suddenly she felt an infinite weariness.