Despite all my reasoning, despite the mental discipline I attempted to impose, I have to confess that when the accustomed hour approached, I was again obsessed by the window opposite me. The greater the effort to remain indifferent, the more anxious I grew. Everything that had seemed to vanish the night before my arrival returned in all its intensity. But no one opened the window. Nor the following day. Nor any other day. I felt liberated. I would sit at my desk, calmly, without thinking of anything, my spirit at rest. I remembered what I studied and was slowly but surely making progress, following a straight path. I felt solid and began to feel sure of myself. The sense of inferiority at having failed my June exams began to fade. I was exultant.
When the memory had almost vanished, and I no longer looked up from my desk — as if the window opposite now belonged to another world — I realized one day that the blinds were up. I could see into the room that for so long had been like an extension of mine. But the girl wasn’t there. Another girl had appeared, with the same young man, but she didn’t awake in me any sense of curiosity. Whether they raised or lowered the blinds, kissed in front of me or not, didn’t matter.
One day, toward evening, I heard someone climbing the stairs. I could recognize the footsteps of everyone who came to visit me; I needed to hear them only once to know who was coming to see me. But I had never heard that kind of step. “Somebody must have the wrong address,” I thought, since I lived on the top floor. But then I immediately told myself: “No, they’re coming here, the steps of someone who has never been here before.”
They stopped on the landing outside my door. A few seconds passed. The person was hesitating before knocking. Then I heard him going down. I was intrigued. The steps stopped for a long time on the floor beneath mine. Then they started up again, giving the impression of being tired. The strange visitor had decided to come up again. There was a soft knock on the door, as if they didn’t wish to be heard. If it hadn’t been for the steps, I might not have even realized someone was knocking.
I opened the door. It was the girl with the red blouse. She was paler, almost ashen. She had lost a lot of weight. Without a word she strode across the room directly to the window, as if we had known each other for years, as if I knew that she would come. And why. From my desk she gazed at the window opposite. She stood there with a sad, eager look. Speechless, motionless. She remained for an instant, as if alone in the world. I felt I should do something, move her away from the window, not let her look. I could feel she was suffering, but I was paralyzed, out of respect, and because I sensed the situation was unreal. What stood before her must have represented a happiness she would never find again.
It was almost dark. I went toward her. I have never again felt such tenderness as on that evening beside the sad girl who did not know to what degree she had taken possession of my heart. Why I decided to approach her, what words I uttered: these things have been erased from my memory. I recall, with terrible precision, only her heartrending sobs. She burst into tears in my arms, which must have seemed impersonal to her, as if she were crying against a wall. She cried with greater pain than I did when my father died. Never again have I heard a person weep like that. I felt I needed to protect her, as if destiny had brought her to me, as if in some way her future belonged to me, and mysteriously she had become my responsibility. Everything I had learned from literature (which at that time was considerable) was evoked. I carried her in my arms, like a child, shaking as she wept uncontrollably, and laid her on the bed, as if she were something that belonged to me, something not seized, but offered, found. I knelt on the floor with my face by hers, her tears dampening my cheek.
Hours and hours passed. She never said a word. The fits of sobbing became less frequent, and she fell asleep, like a flame that slowly fades. I watched over her. It was a chaste night, but I still recall her soft hair, the salty taste of her tears. How can one let the hand of a sleeping body drop! How lips parch when the heart suffers. I felt as if I held a dead bird in my hand. I must have fallen asleep in the early morning. When I awoke it was day, the room full of sun. I never saw her again. Never again have I lived hours of such passion, a night of love so pure.
THE FATE OF LISA SPERLING
. . here come the lovers. . where are the lovers?
Madame Létard picked up two saccharin tablets, put one in her cup, and was about to put the other in her subtenant Lisa Sperling’s.
“No!”
She stopped the hand with an abrupt gesture.
“Do you still have some sugar?”
“There’s a bit left.”
“Then I’ll take sugar this evening.”
She picked up the steaming cup, said good night, and went into her room. Closed the door and slowly turned the key. She set the cup on the little table in front of the window and stood a while, not sure where to start all the work she wanted to do but perhaps wouldn’t.
I’ll begin with the suitcase. She took it out from under the bed and put it on top. Letters, pictures. It’s all mine, but it seems like it already belongs to someone else. She had thin, bitter lips. The corners of her mouth were pale, slightly purple in the center, and her teeth were yellow, with large spaces between them. It looks like the mouth of a corpse, a friend of hers had once said. She picked up the letter from her son and started reading it for the hundredth time. “Dearest Mother, today we leave. Once we’re settled in Minsk, you can come. I hope the trains will soon be running properly. I don’t want you to have to make such a long journey if it’s going to be difficult for you. Trust me.” She folded the letter slowly and kissed it. But then the war with Russia had begun, and she had stayed on alone, isolated, in Limoges, where she had settled after fleeing Paris.
She took out three photos. One was her sister: “To my dear Lisa. Souvenir from Anna Sperling. Odessa, 1916.” One was her when she was eighteen. She was wearing a gauze dress, white, with a wide velvet belt. The white gauze dress with the red velvet belt. The bow, tied behind her, hung down over her skirt. I was blonder; she was the one who was going to succeed. How far away that girl is now, how very far! She put the two photos together. Anna had died young, TB. She’d left a diary and a collection of verses. She, at least, hasn’t suffered so much. The third photo was of her as a bride. So many dreams then. The only thing I’ve got left is my son’s love. My husband, no, not him. If only the kisses he offered other women had been given to me. She put the photos back in the suitcase and shut it.
She stood in the middle of the room. Now, what do I do? Ah, yes, the books. On the table lay half a dozen. She picked them up one by one, looked at the spines, slowly running her hand across the covers. Where did I put the paper and string? She found them in the drawer of the little table and began packing.
From the next room she could hear the sound of plates. Madame Létard was washing the dishes. A cat was meowing.
On a piece of paper she wrote: Monsieur Jean Schuster, 148, Avenue Carnot, Limoges.
This past winter I thought that. . He was so attentive to me. He’s alone too. It was just friendship. I’m getting old. She put her hands on her cheeks; the skin was loose, full of pores, earth-colored. Skin that has lived.