As she walked heavily towards me from the darkness of the garden into the light of the doorway, I saw for the first time the woman I had always been hungry to know. I saw Johanna’s eyes burning, I heard her voice so rusty and tragic saying: “I wanted to see you alone,” and immediately I felt drowned by her beauty, felt that I would do anything Johanna might ask of me.
I wanted to say: “I recognize you. I have often imagined a woman like you.” But I was too timid, tead I sat silent in the tall black armchair.
Johanna did not sit still like an idol to be worshipped. She talked profusely and continuously, with feverish breathlessness, like one in fear of silence. She sat as if she could not bear to sit for long, and when she walked about she was eager to sit down again. Impatient, alert, watchful, as if in dread of being attacked. Restless and keen, making jerking gestures with her hands and shoulders, drinking hurriedly, speaking hurriedly, smiling swiftly, and listening to only half of my phrases.
“You’re beautiful, beautiful,” I said simply.
“Women, what things women see,” said Johanna as if she were talking to herself, but looking at me all the while. “The way you hand over the glass of Madeira—you have the gestures of a temple dancer.”
Johanna’s dress shimmered like black water. We sat wide apart on the green couch, fearful of the silence between our phrases and of the way our eyes clung to each other. Johanna left many of her phrases unfinished. She described everything rapidly, hazily, so that the impression was blurred and strange. She would not linger too long over any of her phrases, as if in fear of their effect. If the phrase was bitter she would smile to blunt it.
After a short circuitous anecdote, she would come back to me.
“Hans’ description of you,” she said, “simply left out everything that was important. You are all nuances. Even your pallor is different from mine. Mine is white and yours golden.”
“And you,” I said, “you’re the only woman who ever answered the demands of my imagination.”
“It’s a good thing then that I’m soon going away. You would unmask me too quickly.”
At this I looked at Johanna and my eyes said so clearly, “I want to become blind with you,” that Johanna trembled a little and turned her face away.
“I thought your eyes were blue,” she said, “but I See now they are a strange and beautiful grey-gold. You glide when you walk.”
I noticed the hole in Johanna’s sleeve. And suddenly I felt ashamed not to have a hole in my sleeve, too.
“Let me look at your feet. They are so lovely and delicate and alive. And you wear sandals. I love sandals. I never wore anything else until… until…”
She looked down at her worn shoes. I saw that she was wearing cotton stockings, and it hurt me to see Johanna in cotton stockings.
“Let’s go out and get some sandals,” I said.
“Later, later,” said Johanna hoarsely. And then we both began to tremble. Johanna began to talk again, vaguely. The intimacy vanished. Her talk was like a turbulent river, like a broken necklace. Suddenly Johanna was silent, and then a changed voice she resumed:
“What a lovely way of dressing you have! I love this dress, its faded color, the little velvet jacket, the lacing over the breasts. I love the way you cover yourself, too: there is so little nudity showing—just your neck really. I never wanted to imitate any one else before, but now I should like to become as much like you as possible.”
Her hands were shaking.
“Johanna,” I thought, “I want to touch you.”
“When you look up at me you look like a child. When you look down you look like a sage, very old and very sad,” said Johanna.
There was a long silence.
“Let me sit on the floor and put my head over your knees,” I said.
“No, no,” said Johanna in a low, frightened voice.
“I will make you a cape like mine. I want you to wear my cape draped around your body.”
“Johanna, Johanna,” I thought, “I want to touch you. Why are you afraid? I want to kiss you.”
When Johanna talked again volubly, recklessly, I did not try to silence her. Now I knew we were talking against a deeper, inner talk, against the things we could not say.
I waited at the corner of the Rue Auber. I would see Johanna in full daylight advancing out of the crowd. I would make certain that such a thing could be, that Johanna was not a mirage which could melt as dreams melt in the morning.
I was secretly afraid that I might stand there at the corner of the Rue Auber exactly as I had stood in other places watching the crowd and knowing no Johanna would ever appear, because Johanna was an invention. As people passed by I shivered at their ugliness, at their drabness, at their likeness to each other. Waiting for Johanna I experienced the most painful expectancy, as if for a miracle. I could not believe Johanna would arrive by these streets, cross such a Boulevard, emerge from a handful of dark, faceless people. What a profound joy to watch the crowd scurrying and then to see her striding forward wearing her shabby shoes, her shabby black dress, her shabby cape and an old violet hat with a royal indifference.
“I hate the daylight,” said Johanna, and under the brim of her hat her eyes darkened with anger. The dark blue rings under her eyes were so deep they marked her flesh. It was as if the flesh around her eyes had been burned away by the white beat and fever of her glance.
In the café her pallor turned ashen. I saw ashes under the skin of her face. Hans had said she was very ill. Would she die? I trembled with fear. Would Johanna die before I had put m arms around her? Then I would follow her there too, I would follow her anywhere to tell her I loved her. I would keep Johanna’s sombre beauty from death.
“There are so many things I would love to do with you,” said Johanna. “With you I would take drugs. I would not be afraid!”
“With you I would do anything, go anywhere.”
I looked at Johanna’s hair, the blond strands tumbling out of the hat, wind-blown; at her eyebrows peaked like a demon’s, at her smile slanting perfidiously, a gem-like smile which made a whirlpool of my life, of my feelings.
“You’re strong, although you look so frail,” said Johanna, taking my hand…
I did not seek the meaning of Johanna’s words. I was suspended to her feverish mouth, to her discolored lips badly rouged. I felt in myself a new, man-like strength, a desire to protect her. I felt dizzy and feverish, and ready to abandon everything for her.
A man passed by and laughed at our absorption.
“Don’t mind, don’t mind,” I said softly, without taking her hand away. I enveloped and disguised my own tremblings and timidities in an Oriental calm. Johanna drank and smoked feverishly.
“I don’t want to do you any harm,” said Johanna.
“You can’t do me any harm.”
“I destroy people without wanting to. Everywhere I go everything gets confused and terrifying. I wish you had known Hildred. She made masks. She had supple and slender hands like yours. She made the Count for me. Oh, you don’t know the Count. Let’s go and get him, please. Let’s go there before we go for the sandals.”
We rushed to her hotel in a taxi. Johanna brought out the Count, a marionette with a depraved face, criminal’s hands, purple hair, violet eyelids, consumptive cheeks. She sat him in front of us in the taxi and laughed. “He was on the stage with me.” When the taxi started, he fell over, bowing to us with the lamentable weeping willowiness of his purple hair.
“I would like to go back to New York now and become beautiful for you. I will go away and make a new start. I’ll become a great actress. I won’t appear any more with clothes that are held together with safety pins! I’ve been living stupidly, blindly, doing nothing but drinking and smoking and talking. I’m afraid of disappointing you, Djuna.”