Four Novels

by Marguerite Duras

  She said nothing. It was he who spoke.

  “You remember? Verona?”

  “Yes.”

  If he reached out, Pierre would touch Maria’s hair. He had spoken of Verona. Of love all night, the two of them, in a bathroom in Verona. A storm too, and it was summer, and the hotel was full. “Come, Maria.” He was wondering. “When, when will I have enough of you?”

  “Give me another cigarette,” Maria said.

  He gave it to her. This time she didn’t sit up.

  “If I spoke to you about Verona, it’s because I couldn’t help it.”

  The smell of mud and wheat came in whiffs into the corridor. The hotel was bathed in this odor, as well as the town, Rodrigo Paestra and his dead, and the inexhaustible but perfectly vain memory of a night of love in Verona.

  Claire was sleeping soundly. Then she turned suddenly and moaned because of the recent stir of Pierre’s hands, that night, on her body.

  Pierre also heard Claire’s moan. It was over. Claire grew quiet. And Maria next to Pierre only heard the sound of children breathing, and the police kept marching by more and more regularly as morning came closer.

  “You’re not asleep?”

  “No,” said Maria. “What time is it?”

  “A quarter to twelve”—he was waiting. “Here, have another cigarette.”

  “All right. At what time is dawn in Spain?”

  “Very early at this time of year.”

  “I wanted to tell you, Pierre.”

  She took the cigarette that he was holding out to her. Her hand trembled a little. He waited until he was lying down again before asking her.

  “What do you want to tell me, Maria?”

  Pierre waited a long time for an answer which didn’t come. He didn’t insist. Both of them were smoking, lying on their backs because of the tiles that bruised their hips. You had to surfer this bruise as best you could. She couldn’t remove the free end of Judith’s blanket that was covering her without being exposed to Pierre’s look. She could only try to close her eyes between each puff of her cigarette, open them again, without moving at all, keeping quiet.

  “Lucky we found this hotel,” Pierre said

  “Lucky, yes.”

  He was smoking faster than she. He had finished his cigarette. He put it out in the narrow space between him and Maria, in the middle of the corridor, between the sleeping bodies. The showers lasted only a short length of time now, the length of one of Claire’s sighs.

  “You know Maria. I love you.”

  Maria also was through with her cigarette, she put it out, just like Pierre, on an empty tile in the corridor.

  “Yes, I know,” she said.

  What was happening? What was in the air? Was this really the end of the storm? Whenever there were showers, it was like pails of water spilled on the skylight and the roofs. A sound of showering that would only last a few seconds. They should have fallen asleep before this phase of the storm. Have accepted the idea of this last night before this moment.

  “You must sleep, Maria.”

  “Yes. But the noise,” she said.

  She could do it, she could turn over and find herself right against him. They would get up. They would go away together far from Claire’s sleep whose memory would grow dimmer with the passing of night. He knew it.

  “Maria, Maria. You are my love.”

  “Yes.”

  She hadn’t moved. In the street, more whistling announced that dawn was close, always closer. There was no more lightning, except weak and far away. Claire moaned again because of the memory of Pierre’s hands clasping her hips. But that too you became accustomed to like the soft scraping noise of the children breathing. And the smell of rain engulfed the uniqueness of Claire’s desire, mixing it with the sea of desire which, that night, raged through the town.

  Maria sat up quietly, hardly turned toward him, stopped moving and looked at him.

  “It’s crazy, but I saw Rodrigo Paestra. He is there on the roof.”

  Pierre was asleep. He had just fallen asleep, as suddenly as a child. Maria remembered that it had always been like that.

  He was sleeping. Her need to be sure was funny. Hadn’t she been sure?

  She sat up a little more. He didn’t move. She got up completely, brushed against his body, freed, lonely, abandoned in its sleep.

  When Maria reached the balcony, she looked at the time she carried with her on her wrist, her time. It was half past midnight. In about three hours, at this time of year, it would be dawn. Rodrigo Paestra, the same statue of death she had seen earlier, was waiting for this dawn, and to be killed.

  Four

  THE SKY HAD RISEN above the town, but in the distance, it was still flush with the wheat fields. But this was the end. The lightning was weaker. And the rumbling of the thunder was weaker. In two and a half hours it would be dawn whatever the weather. A bad, veiled dawn, a bad dawn for Rodrigo Paestra. Now everyone was asleep in the hotel and in the town, except Maria, and Rodrigo Paestra.

  The police whistles had stopped. They were keeping watch around the town, guarding all exits, waiting for the bright daylight when they would catch Rodrigo Paestra. In two and a half hours.

  Perhaps Maria would fall asleep. Her desire to drink was so strong. Perhaps it was too much for her to wait for dawn. The time of night had arrived when, already, each hour pushed you into the weariness of the next, unavoidable day. The mere anticipation of its coming weighs down on you. During this next day, their love would grow still stronger. Wait.

  Maria stayed on the balcony, even when a new shower split the sky again. The shower was light, and warm.

  The pointed roof opposite her was washed by the rain. On top of it, around a square chimney, where the two sides of the roof met, was this thing whose shape had remained identical to what Maria had seen at ten-thirty, in a flash of lightning. The thing was wrapped in darkness. The rain fell on it just as it fell on the roof. Then it stopped. And the shape was there. It fitted the shape of the chimney so perfectly that, if you looked at it long enough, you might doubt it was human. Perhaps it was cement, propping up the chimney, darkened over the years. And yet at the same time, whenever lightning lit up the roof, it was the shape of a man.

  “What weather,” Maria said. She had spoken as if she had said it to Pierre. Then she waited.

  The shape remained identical. One chance in a lifetime that it was a man. Silent, tired policemen walked by in the street, their boots splashing. Then they were gone.

  This time Maria called.

  “Rodrigo Paestra.”

  The possibility that he might answer, move, abandon this inhuman position was enough to make her imagination leap with joy.

  “Hey,” Maria called out. She gestured toward the roof.

  Nothing moved. Little by little Maria woke up. She still felt like drinking. She remembered that there was a bottle of brandy in the car. A while ago, when she mentioned it to Pierre, this desire to drink was slight, hardly noticeable, but now it had become violent. She looked into the corridor, and beyond, to see if some light in the dining room would offer her hopes of getting a drink. None. If she asked Pierre, he would do it. Tonight, he would do it, he would go and wake up one of the waiters. But she wasn’t going to do it, she wasn’t going to wake up Pierre. “You know, Maria, I love you.” He was sleeping near Claire ever since she left the corridor. So let him sleep near Claire. Let him sleep, let him sleep. If this was Rodrigo Paestra, this night in particular, what luck for Maria. What relief from boredom. This time it was because of Claire.

  “Hey there,” Maria shouted again.

  Wait. Why should this shape be a man? Once in a lifetime it was possible that this would be he, a man. But it was possible. Why not then accept this possibility?

  “Hey,” Maria shouted again.

  Once more the slow, dull sound of the police moving closer toward dawn. Maria was silent. Could it be Rodrigo Paestra? It was within the realm of possibility that it was he. As long as s
he was Maria. It was in the realm of possibility that he should have happened on her, Maria, the night. Wasn’t the proof right there in front of her? The proof was urgent. Maria had just invented that this was Rodrigo Paestra. No one else knew it but this woman who was eleven yards away from him, away from this man wanted by the police, the storm murderer, this treasure, this monument of suffering.

  Again the rain fell softly on him. And on everything else too, the other roofs, the wheat, the streets. The shape hadn’t moved. It was waiting to be caught, death for the dawn of the coming day. At dawn, little by little, the roofs would be lit. When the storm would have blown over the wheat fields, dawn would be pale red.

  “Rodrigo Paestra, Rodrigo Paestra,” Maria called.

  Did he want to die? Again the police. Respectful of the people’s sleep, they made their rounds without speaking, without calling, sure of themselves. They turned into the swampy streets, on the right, and their footsteps disappeared without echoes. Maria called a bit louder.

  “Answer, Rodrigo Paestra. Answer me.”

  She was against the iron railing of the balcony. The railing beat. It was Maria’s heart. He didn’t answer. Hope was getting thinner, became minute, disappeared. She would know at dawn if it was he. But then it would be too late.

  “I beg you, Rodrigo Paestra, answer me.”

  It wasn’t he? Nothing was sure. Except that Maria wanted it.

  Someone coughed in the corridor. Moved. Pierre. Yes, Pierre.

  Within the next two days, Pierre and Claire would come together. They would devote themselves to this purpose. They would have to find where. What would follow was still unknown, unpredictable, an abyss of time. A length of time not yet known to them, nor to Maria, which was already spreading beyond the storm. Madrid would be its beginning. Tomorrow.

  What words should she use? What words?

  “Rodrigo Paestra, trust me.”

  It was already one in the morning. In two hours Rodrigo Paestra would be trapped like a rat if nothing happened until dawn but the passage of time.

  Maria leaning over the balcony was looking at the man. Above him the sky was clear. The rain had to stop now, it had to. It seemed there was some blue, and moons, appearing in the light, endless sky. Around the chimney, nothing, nothing moved. The rain that had already fallen, flowed down, murmuring, from the shape as well as from the roofs. Fire, as well, could burn it. He wasn’t going to surrender at dawn. It was certain that he was waiting to be crushed right there by the city’s licensed snipers.

  Maria, her body bent over the balcony, started to sing. Very softly. A tune from that summer, that he should know, that he should have danced to with his wife on Saturday nights.

  Maria stopped singing. She waited. Yes, the sky had cleared. The storm had moved away. Dawn would be beautiful. Pale red. Rodrigo Paestra didn’t want to live. The song had brought no change to his shape. To this shape that had become less and less identifiable with anything but him. A sharp, without sharp angles, long and supple enough to be human, with this sudden roundness on top, the small surface of the head surging from the mass of the body. A man.

  Maria complained for a long time, in the night. It was like dreaming. The shape did not move. It was like dreaming that it did not move from the moment it could be Rodrigo Paestra. To the shape, Maria was complaining about her fate.

  The town became abstract like a jail. No longer the smell of wheat. It had rained too much. It was too late. You could no longer talk about the night. But about what then, about what?

  “Oh, I beg you, I beg you, Rodrigo Paestra.”

  She would have turned him in for a sip of brandy that she didn’t go and get. Maybe we can do something, Rodrigo Paestra. Rodrigo Paestra, in two hours it will be light.

  She now said words that meant nothing. The difficulty was so great. She called him, called this beastliness of pain.

  “Hey there, hey there.”

  Without stopping, softly as she would with an animal. Louder and louder. She had closed the balcony windows behind her. Somebody had moaned, then fallen asleep.

  Then the police came. There they were. These men had just arrived there, they were probably fresh troops, they were talking. They were talking more than the others. Reinforcements for dawn. There had been a rumor in the hotel that they would come. They talked about the weather. Maria, leaning over the railing of the balcony, could see them, one of them raised his eyes, looked at the sky, didn’t see Maria, and said that the storm had definitely vanished from these parts. On the square, in the distance, a light appeared. The truck bringing reinforcements? Or a café that they had had opened that night, so early, because of the murder and so the police could drink and eat there while waiting to surround the town at dawn? They were talking of thirty men, reinforcements that had arrived at the hotel. Rain, from Maria’s wet hair, turned into sweat. The patrol had left.

  “Hey, hey,” Maria called again as she would call an animal.

  The moon disappeared behind a cloud, but it wasn’t going to rain again. He didn’t answer. It was a quarter past one. She couldn’t see him while the cloud moved in the sky. Then the sky freed itself from this cloud. It hadn’t rained. There he was again around the chimney, still motionless, unalterable, there for eternity.

  “You’re an idiot,” Maria shouted.

  No one had waked up in the town. Nothing happened. The shape had remained wrapped in its stupidity. In the hotel nothing had moved. But a window lit up in the house next to the hotel. Maria moved back a little. She had to wait. The light went out. No more shouting. The shout had come from the hotel, from a tourist. Therefore people went back to sleep. Again the deadly silence. And in this silence, Maria insulted him again.

  “Idiot, idiot,” she said softly, being careful.

  The patrol came again. Maria stopped shouting insults. The patrol passed. They had been talking about their families, about jobs. If Maria had a weapon she would shoot at the shape. So it would be done. The rain which would not dry made Maria’s blouse stick to her shoulders. She must wait for dawn and Rodrigo Paestra’s death.

  She wasn’t calling any more. He knew it. Again she opened the corridor door. She saw, she could see them, the others, sleeping, cruelly separated. She looked at them for a long time. It hadn’t been fulfilled yet, this love. What patience, what patience, she didn’t leave the balcony. Rodrigo Paestra knew that she was there. He was still breathing, he existed still in this dying night. He was there, in the same place, geographically related to her.

  As often happens in summer, a climatic miracle occurred. The fog had disappeared from the horizon and then little by little from the whole sky. The storm dissolved. It no longer existed. Stars, yes stars, in the pre-dawn sky. Such a long time. The stars could make you cry.

  Maria wasn’t calling any more. She wasn’t shouting insults any longer. She hadn’t called him ever since she had insulted him. But she stayed on this balcony, her eyes on him, on this shape which fear had reduced to animal idiocy. Her own shape as well.

  A quarter of an hour passed, shortening by that much the time that moved toward a green dawn; the dawn which would start by poking its nose into the wheat fields, and then would sweep this roof, opposite her, and would reveal him, and his terror, to the eyes of everyone. No, Maria wasn’t calling any more. Time was getting old, buried. She wasn’t going to call any more. Never again.

  The night moved at a dizzy speed, without ever halting in its course.

  Without events acting as relays. None but the bitter duration of failure. Maria recognized it.

  There was one chance left. If he could see, through his shroud, that she was still there, at her post, waiting for him. And if, in his turn, he thought he should display a last act of kindness, and signal to her. One chance that he should remember that time was passing while she was waiting uncomfortably, on this balcony, where perhaps she would stay until dawn. One chance that, because of her, he should step for a short instant out of the artlessness of despair, that he
should remember certain general principles of human behavior, of war, of flight, of hatred. That he should remember the pale red dawn moving over his land; the ordinary reasons for living, in the long run, until the end, even when these reasons have disappeared.

  A blue light now fell from the sky. It wasn’t possible that he didn’t see this woman’s shape leaning toward him—as no other ever had—on the hotel balcony. Even if he wanted to die, even if he wanted this particular fate, he could answer her one last time.

  Again the policemen of hell. They went by. Then there was silence. Behind Maria, the blue sky lit up the hallway where Claire and Pierre were sleeping, apart. An indescribable difference brought on by sleep, was keeping them apart for a few more hours. Tomorrow, their love would be fulfilled, unparalleled, screaming, in the hotel, in Madrid. Oh, Claire. You.

  Did he lose hope of seeing her again while she had turned?

  Something had emerged from the black shroud. Something white. A face? or a hand?

  It was he, Rodrigo Paestra.

  They confronted each other. It was a face.

  The renewal of time asserted itself. They were face to face and looked at each other.

  Suddenly, in the street, below, the police went by, already in the talkative, happy mood of the approaching killing.

  Maria had fallen prey to happiness. They became bolder. While the police were passing by they kept looking at each other. The waiting finally burst open, released. From every corner of the sky, from all the streets and from those who were lying there. Just from the sky Maria would have guessed that this was Rodrigo Paestra. It was now ten to two. An hour and a half before his death, Rodrigo Paestra had accepted to see her.

  Maria raised her hand to say hello. She waited. A slow, slow hand came out of the shroud, rose and also made the gesture, of mutual understanding. Then both of the hands fell down.

  At last, the horizon was completely cleared by the storm. Like a blade it was cutting the wheat fields. A warm wind rose and began to dry the streets. The weather was beautiful, just as it would be beautiful during the day. The night was still whole. Perhaps solutions could be found to the problems of conscience. Perhaps.