The temperature of the day, the temperature in which the blood flowered and the skin unfurled its minuscule pores like the petals of the most secretly folded flower. The temperature of that day which could be repeated in time, perhaps a hundred times in my life: the temperature would be reproduced but never the hour with Hans lying on the couch watching me dressing, never his words or my response to his words, which were a dark wish to enclose the whole day in a strangling hand, to snuff out its color and temperature, so that no fragment of it would ever repeat itself, a fragment which might recall the whole, a fragment which might come upon me ten years later perhaps while I would be sitting in Asturias. The gold, the breathlessness of the air, the temperature, without his presence, his words and my response. The tantalizing incompleteness and uniqueness of an event, repeating only the setting perhaps, under a variance of moods, of feelings and of personages. And for that future day when I might again stand before my mirror perfuming myself, doing only a fraction of what I did on that other day, for the pain that unfinished, unreproduceable hour aroused in me, I would kill it, or I would sit for many hours juggling with words in order to imprison it.
Have I got it now? I asked myself. Have I got it, or will I return to these words one day and find them faded, find that it has all faded like a painting after a hundred years, that the colors are altered and unrecognizable?
I am only recomposing the whole of that hour because I am ill and thus so much closer to the fear of death. To-morrow when I get well I will rejoice that a different hour will replace this one I worship; I will rejoice that no moment of life ever repeats itself whole.
I wanted to send for Hans, but I hesitated. He was only for the joyous days, the courageous days. I wanted only the good things for him. While I was lying there he sent me a letter and this letter which was written to the sick Djuna overflowed with his own jubilant mood, with rutilant good health. In the last few days, he related, he had discovered a hundred new things which interested him.
He could not imagine my m gonor divert me from it. He could never divine others’ moods. His own were immense and loud and they filled his world and deafened him to all others. Like to-day: “I feel such well-being,” he shouted.
Until to-day I had believed in his phrases. It was enough that he said now and then: “I want to give you things.” It did not matter if he did not give them. It did not matter that he added: “But I wouldn’t give you perfume. I don’t understand your wanting foolish things like perfume.”
He came to see me, all buoyant with his own mood. He sat before me and said:
“What’s the matter with you? You look so frail. What’s all this moodiness about?”
His blue eyes looked cold. He talked about his work, about his jaunt through the country, about his lunch on the road and the marvelous wines he had tasted.
“Here is the book you wanted,” I said.
But I was tired of giving. I could not keep myself from saying:
“The other day you said you would come and help me finish my article, revise it. You came, and you chose to paint a water color instead.”
“That’s true,” said Hans, unflurried.
“The other day when there was a rumor of war, and we were discussing what we would do, I was concerned for your security… I made plans… I was full of anxiety. And you, what did you think of? Of your manuscripts—what would become of your papers, your notes, your letters. You never thought of me.”
“It’s true,” said Hans.
“You gave Andre’s little slut the only pair of fine stockings I own—I never have a decent pair of stockings myself; I’m always buying you books instead of getting stockings. Your feeling of pity for her was greater than any desire to protect me. I know I’m talking about little things, but they’re so full of significance! You don’t know what love is!”
“About the selfishness, I don’t know what to say. About not loving you, well…”
He began to laugh. “You’ve just got to believe in that.”
He said it so simply.
“You were quick, you know. Ordinarily you wouldn’t be hurt by my selfish enjoyment of life. You would relish it. When I wrote you that exultant letter about my being filled with the Holy Ghost, I thought to myself afterwards how queer it is that I should want to palm it off on the Holy Ghost. You are the Holy Ghost inside me. You make my spring.”
I began the day in a golden mood which I carried like a fragile egg. I carried it against my breast, warming it. I rushed to Hans to awaken him, to present him with it, to tell him it was a tropical day, to bring him out into the sun. I offered him my mood like another gift.
But Hans awoke depressed. Some one had been knocking at his door—some devil with a fiendish persistence. And he had refused to open, as usual. He had been lying there in fear, cursing and sweating, unable to get up and unable to dismiss the incident. He had been lying there prostrated, paralyzed with fear. Whenever there came an unexpected knock Hans would imagine it was some one come to threaten him. A knock at the door could fill him with absolute terror. All his life there had been this frightful knocking at the door—creditors, lovers, jealous husbands, inquisitive friends, bores whom he couldn’t shake off, miserable devils whom he had befriended and couldn’t get rid of, lunatics, tramps, chess fiends, rumhounds, etc., etc. A constant evasion, a perpetual fear of pursuit and of persecution, a tremendous feeling of guilt. His life with Johanna had been a sort of elaborate “underground” existence—a maze of lies and intrigues, of scandals and treacheries and petty deceits. A knock at the door could darken his whole day. It made him furtive, upset, distraught. It was impossible for him to pull himself together again.
I laid my mood aside and attuned myself to his. As he talked I saw with naked eyes what our life together was, and what I saw was again an ultimate loneliness with intermittences of companionship.
Looking around when left alone in the kitchen, as if I were looking at everything for the last time. Looking attentively at the painting on the wall of a couple making love on a bench in front of a urinoir posted with ” Maladies des voies urinaires” and ” Chocolat Menier.” Looking at the menu, hanging on a nail, of the things Hans and Andre imagined they were going to eat every day. Bouchees a la Reine, Pate de foie gras truffe, Dinde aux champignons, Canard a la puree de marrons, etc. Looking at the maps on the walls of the streets Hans had played in as a child, looking at the lampshade made out of a corset which Hans had bought from the Marche aux puces… as if I were parting from them and the roguish spirit playing in them. Looking at Hans’ coat hugging the chair, seeing the form of his shoulders and ribs, and feeling his body without the tightening and clutching pains of suffocating jealousies. Parting not from Hans but from the immense pain of jealousy. Taking only the joys he gave me. Sifting away the whole, the dark dependence, the passion which alone caused torture, so that he might mention Johanna and his whores without bleeding me. The multiple bleedings of jealousy through which all my strength had wasted itself, all my joys dispersed and lost themselves. Taking only the joys, his soft swagger, the rough touch of his coat, his mouth and his coups de belier in my womb. Ejecting the pain, the total giving. Placing a distance between the life-giving climate and that shabby kitchen so that all my substance might not be enclosed in his pranks, the effervescence of his voice when he said: “That’s good.” The word good in Hans’ rich mouth generated goodness and richness. That’s good. And: ” What is it?” He could say “What is it… what’s the matter?” with the most sensitive, the most mellow intonations, as if he cared supremely, supremely, with a melting sympathy. ” What is it?” He awaited the answer, melted, with the softest expression of his otherwise steel-bladed curiosity.