He was wearing bedroom slippers and he was writing, with a bottle of red wine as a paper weight on his pages. Circles of red wine on the pages. Stains. The stains of living. The edge of the table was burnt by cigarette stubs.
He didn’t care. He said that what he had written was not as good as yesterday but he didn’t care, he was enjoying it just the same, he wasn’t worrying about art, everything was good, because if he was an artist as I had said he was, then whatever he said was right, and to hang with perfection, that was for old maids, and he was out of cigarettes and if I would give him one he might finish that page. I had come at the wrong moment, I was interrupting him, but that was good too, that was life, life always getting in the way of writing, but that was good, he believed in that, let the interruptions come, let people walk in, he was glad to be stopped, because everything was good, to write was good, andnot to write was good, and eating was good, and sleeping and fucking, and now he had finished the page and he was hungry, and he wished we might go to the movies, good or bad, it was restful, good or bad he enjoyed it, everything was good…
He seemed constantly in communication with the world, as if he were forever sitting at the head of a gigantic banquet. With two agitated hands he commanded the cymbals. “I want to show you the whore with the wooden stump who waits for clients near the Gaumont cinema. I want to show you the café where the nigger jazz players go after work. I want to show you a restaurant where prize fighters and chorus girls have dinner.”
I felt my wrist watch pulsing against my pulse, fast, fast, fast. The hours pulsing against my life, pulsing too quickly.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
The room was black. Hans was asleep in my arms, heavily asleep now. I heard the accordeon. It was Sunday night in Billancourt. The music made my veins swell, as if it were hot liquid passing through me. He lay asleep in my arms. And all this would vanish at Johanna’s coming. No duration. Like a Sunday holiday. It was like a holiday, with the accordeon playing, and the Sunday crowd laughing and shouting. I must not be sad because it was only a holiday. To-day I was welded to him, and to-morrow Johanna would be back.
What baffled me was that it should be possible for Hans to lie so close, knowing only what I wished to tell him. That there should be no traces on my body of the lapses in my courage.
My thoughts, like elastics, were stretched to their thinnest meaning. I was waiting for him to awake. He would push everything into movement again. He was all movement. He lived by gusts.
It was the gusts I enjoyed. I might sit for a whole day afterwards and sail my lingering mind like a slow river boat down the feelings he had dispersed with prodigality. In my mind, like a sanctuary, I gathered his passions, his drunkenness, his speeches, his honesty, his jubilance, his pranks, his contrariness, his naturalness…
Johanna and I were not so honest… never so honest…
“Hans, wake up,” I said softly, “wake up! I have something to say for your book. Johanna and I are hypocrites, hypocrites. We always want to embellish ourselves, to make our motives appear sublime.”
“Why did she lie so much?”
“For many reasons. Because she loved you and could not bear to hurt you. Or because she loved herself and could not bear to spoil her own image of herself. Or because she feared not to be loved as she was. Or because she wanted to improve on life, because she had read too many books and they went to her head. (I too was once top heavy. When I was asked where I came from I could only answer: books!) Or because you wrote certain things about her and she wanted to live up to them. (The other day when you called me a chameleon, I immediately thought of ways to become more so, because the idea interested me). She did deprive you of so much, by her lies. Everything she gave you was false. I want to give you back Johanna washed of all pretenses. I can do it. Ask me questions. Ask me…”
“Why don’t you lie to me?”
“Because we have other things to do together. We don’t have much time to play games—to invent. I sometimes regret the fact that we don’t have time to play, that you will never see me mysterious, provoking, elusive. In a way, I have been cheated of something, by coming just when you needed peace in which to work. Johanna could lie, could be noisy, dramatic, could run away, could come back, could torture you, make you laugh, deceive or make you drunk, I am only allowed to sit still, but I don’t mind. Look at to-day, we have your new pages to read, and the next ones to dream over. I have to give you a different kind of mystery. There’s nothing to throw at each other, for the moment, but questions and answers. What was the meaning of this or that event? Do you think I have done justice to it?”
“I always suspected that when Johanna gave me so many lies it was because she had nothing else to give but mystery, but fiction. Behind the mystery there was nothing.”
“That we must find out together. Let’s begin now.”
“There’s plenty of time, plenty of time for everything,” said Hans. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go out and have a juicy steak, with plenty of onions on it, and red wine. And let’s send Johanna a cable and tell her I don’t want her any more. I know now I don’t want her to come back, that I need you terribly. If when she comes back I act exactly as she wants me to act you must not feel that I disappoint you or fail you. Her rages terrify me. What I feel with you which I don’t feel with Johanna is that beyond love we are friends. Johanna and I are not friends. You are the only woman I can be faithful to in my way. Let’s not go out. There’s some stuff in the kitchen. I feel like getting to work right now. I want to show you some notes I made.”
“Sit down then. Let me cook the dinner. Let me play at being the wife of a genius.”
He smiled. “It’s funny to see you going to the kitchen in your stately rose dress.”
As I sat there looking intently at the cups and saucers which did not match, at the liqueur glass made out of an egg holder, at the chipped plates, at the stains on the tablecloth and the mend in the corner of it, I felt that I loved this meal more than all those I ate elsewhere because it showed the traces of living. Hans made no effort to disguise the imprints of living; each object was a proof of life’s using, wearing, breaking and staining of things. Everywhere else there had been an effort made to erase the damage made by life, as there had been an effort made to escape its stains, its destruction, and I saw in him and at this table, the bare, naked life, the debris of it, the ravages small or large, like the greyness of his hair, his fatigue, his heavy note books, all as rich in the acceptance of nature as the rich soup steaming hotly in the pan it was cooked in; everything without the disguise which diluted its colors.
The ancient garden slumbered like an old man in the sun. The trees swayed and the breezes sang. The books lay about on the grass.
“According to the Chinese,” said Hans, “there was a realm between heaven and earth… this is it.”
I cooked for him. Suddenly I loved cooking because it was for Hans. I cooked richly and the odors of pungent flavors seeped through the house. I loved to see him eat, and to eat with him. I could see the food turning to rich blood in him. Red meat, buttered and peppered food, and red wine. The alchemy of his joy giving a high flavor to every moment. The miracle of his fieriness converting food and sleep and rest into joy.