She went back down without saying a word, and walked through the rooms, furious at first, then desolate. She stared at the door for a long time, until she understood with inexorable lucidity that it had opened to let in the wrong man, at the wrong moment, for the wrong reasons. She went so far as to think that, in some mysterious way, the Son must have realized it, while he was traveling on the road that would take him home: she saw him at the moment when he set a suitcase down on the ground, let a train leave without getting on, stopped a car and turned off the engine. No, please, no, she said to him. Please, she said to herself.
When the Uncle came downstairs after six days, perfectly shaved and rather elegant in a tobacco-colored suit, he found her sitting on the floor, in a corner, her face unrecognizable. He looked at her just for an instant before heading to the kitchen, where he fell asleep. He hadn’t eaten for a long time: finally he did, with a certain moderation, still sleeping. Then he went to the cellar, and disappeared there for two or three hours: the time required for him to choose a bottle of champagne and one of red wine. He returned to the kitchen, where he put the champagne on ice. Without resting even for a moment, he uncorked the bottle of wine and let it breathe on the table. Worn out by his labors he dragged himself to the dining room and dropped into a chair, just in front of the young Bride. He slept for ten minutes, then opened his eyes.
Tomorrow they return, he said.
The young Bride nodded. She might also mean that nothing mattered to her.
I wonder if you have any engagements for this evening, continued the Uncle.
The young Bride said nothing. She didn’t move.
I take it as a no, the Uncle informed her. In that case, I would be honored to invite you to dinner, if it would not cause you uneasiness or, indeed, distress.
Then he fell asleep.
The young Bride stared at him. She wondered if she hated him. Yes, of course, she hated him: but no more than she hated everyone. It seemed to her that neither sweetness, nor folly, nor beauty remained to her, anywhere, ever since they had all agreed to devastate her soul. Could she do anything other than hate them? If you have no future, hating is an instinct.
Where do you want to take me? she asked.
She had to wait ten minutes for an answer.
Oh, nowhere. I thought of dining here, I’ll see to everything. I promise you it will be of a certain quality.
You cook?
Sometimes.
Sleeping?
The Uncle opened his eyes. He stared at the young Bride for a long time. It was something he never did. Stare at someone for a long time.
Yes, sleeping, he said, finally.
He got up, took a brief nap leaning on the plate rack, then headed toward the front door.
I think I’ll take a little walk, he said.
Then, before going out, he turned to the young Bride.
I’ll expect you at nine. Would you mind terribly wearing a beautiful dress?
The young Bride didn’t answer.
I can still see that set table, the same as the breakfasts table, but now it had an essential elegance, with the symmetry of two places, one opposite the other, and the white of the tablecloth spreading around them. The light was right, the placement of the silverware meticulous, the alignment of the glasses perfect. An arrangement of foods that seemed to have been chosen for their colors waited on the plates. Five candles, nothing else.
The dress I had chosen was irresistible. The same in which I had lived and sweated in the previous days, ankle-length, with an ordinary neckline, dirty, very light. But underneath I had taken off everything. I wasn’t worried about what could be seen from the outside; the very simple sensation that I had was enough. I was going to a dinner, naked. I hadn’t washed, my hands were the same as they’d been for days, on my feet were the dust, the dirt, the smell. I had cried a thousand times, and I didn’t even run water over my face. But I did something with my hair that the Mother would have liked: I brushed it all day, with perfumed brushes: in front of the mirror I gathered it on my head, trying countless architectures to find the most seductive and make the time pass. I chose a height that was slightly arrogant but in the front innocent, the whole complex enough to hint at a trick. I could let it down, in an instant, with a single skillful movement of my neck.
For all this I didn’t know the reason. I was impelled by instinct, without thinking. Nothing could be more alien to me, at that moment, than ambition toward a goal, or the expectation of some result. Time had been replaced by an infinite heat, knowledge by a distracted indolence, and all my desires by a harmless, mute suffering under my heart. I have never existed so little as on that ship, which gently cleaves the boiling dampness of the evening, transporting me and my eleven things to the white of an island that knows nothing of me—and I almost nothing of it. From land we’ll both be invisible, in the space of a thought—vanished to the world. But enveloped by a graceless beauty I was there at nine, in a curious homage to precision that, sincerely, I now can’t understand. I heard the Uncle moving about in the kitchen, then I saw him arrive. He hadn’t changed, either, he had only taken off his jacket. He arrived carrying the bottle of champagne, chilled.
The food is on the plates, he said.
He sat down at the table and fell asleep. He had barely looked at me. I began to eat—I chose the colors, one by one. He drank, in his sleep. I didn’t use the silverware, I wiped my fingers on the dress. But I don’t know why. Every so often, without opening his eyes, the Uncle poured me some champagne. I don’t remember asking myself about the absurd precision of that gesture, or its unlikely punctuality. I drank and that was all. Besides, in that house of life interrupted, in the privacy of our mad liturgies, besieged by our poetic maladies, we were characters orphaned of any logic. I continued to eat, he slept. I wasn’t uncomfortable, I liked it—precisely because it was absurd, I liked it. I began to think that it would be one of the best dinners of my life. I wasn’t bored, I was myself, I drank champagne. At a certain point I started talking, but slowly, and only about foolish things. In his sleep the Uncle occasionally smiled. Or he gestured with his hand in the air. He was listening to me, in some way, and it was pleasant to talk to him. It was all very light, elusive. I wouldn’t have been able to say what I was experiencing. It was a spell. I felt it closing in on us and when there was no longer anything else in the world except my voice, I sensed that in reality nothing that was happening was happening, nor would it ever happen. For a reason that must have originated in the absurd intensity of our defeats, nothing of what the two of us could do, that evening, would remain in the ledger of life. No calculation would take us into account, no sum would come out different as a result of our activity, no debt would be discharged, no credit opened. We were hidden in a fold of creation, invisible to fate and freed from any consequence. So, while I ate, sticking my fingers in the warm colors of the food that had been arranged with maniacal care, I understood with utter certainty that that lovely emptiness, without direction and without purpose, exiled from any past and incapable of any future, must be, literally, the spell under which that man had lived, every minute, for years. I understood that it was the world into which he had expelled himself—inaccessible, without names, parallel to ours, immutable—and I understood that that evening I had been admitted to it, thanks to my folly. It must have required a lot of courage for that man to imagine an invitation like that. Or great solitude, I thought. Now he was sleeping, in front of me, and I, for the first time, knew what he was really doing. He was translating the intolerable distance that he had chosen into a polite metaphor, legible to anyone, ironic, innocuous. For he was a kind man.
I wiped my fingers on my dress. I looked at him. He was sleeping.
How long since you haven’t slept? I asked.
He opened his eyes.
For years, signorina.
Maybe he was moved, or maybe I imagined
it.
What I miss more than anything else is dreams, he said.
And he remained with his eyes open, awake, looking at me. There wasn’t much light, and it wasn’t easy to see what color they were. Gray, maybe. With bits of gold. I had never seen them.
It’s all very good, I said.
Thank you.
You should cook more often.
You think?
Wasn’t there also a bottle of red wine?
You’re right, I’m sorry.
He got up, and disappeared into the kitchen.
I also got up. I took my glass and went to sit on the floor, in a corner of the room.
When he returned, he came over to pour me some wine, then he stood there, not knowing what to do.
Sit here, I said.
It was an immense chair, one of those places where I had seen him sleeping countless times, while the breakfasts flowed, river-like. If I think about it carefully, it was the same chair from which he had greeted my return, with a remark I hadn’t forgotten: You must have done a lot of dancing, signorina, over there. I’m glad of it.
Do you like to dance? I asked him.
I liked it very much, yes.
What else did you like?
Everything. Too much, perhaps.
What do you miss most?
Apart from dreams?
Apart from those.
The dreams you have in the daytime.
Did you have a lot?
Yes.
Did you fulfill them?
Yes.
And how is it?
Pointless.
I don’t believe it.
In fact you mustn’t believe it. It’s too early to believe it, at your age.
What age am I?
A young age.
Does it make a difference?
Yes.
Explain it to me.
You’ll find out, one day.
I want to know now.
It would be of no use.
Still with that story?
Which?
That it’s all pointless.
I didn’t say that.
You said it’s useless to fulfill one’s dreams.
That, yes.
Why?
For me it was pointless.
Tell me.
No.
Do it.
Signorina, I must really ask you . . .
And he closed his eyes, letting his head fall back, against the chair. It seemed drawn by an invisible force.
Ah no, I said.
I put down my glass, I got up, and stood over him, my legs spread. I found myself with my sex on his, it wasn’t what I wanted. But I began to sway. I stood with my back straight, I swayed slowly over him, I placed my hands on his shoulders, I looked at him.
He opened his eyes.
Please, he repeated.
You owe me something. Your story will be enough, I said.
I don’t believe I owe you anything.
Oh, yes.
Really?
You weren’t the one who was supposed to return, it was the Son.
I’m sorry.
Don’t think you can get out of it like that.
No?
You’ve ruined everything for me, now I want at least your true story in exchange.
He looked at the exact point where I was swaying.
It’s a story like so many others, he said.
It doesn’t matter, I want it.
I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Begin at the end. The moment you started sleeping and stopped living.
I was at a table in a Café.
Was there someone with you?
No longer.
You were alone.
Yes. I fell asleep without even nodding my head. Sleeping, I finished my pastis, and that was the first time. When I woke up and saw the empty glass, I knew it would be like that forever.
I wonder about the people around.
In what sense?
Well, the waiters, didn’t they come and wake you?
It was a somewhat rundown Café, with very old waiters. At that age you understand many things.
They let you sleep.
Yes.
What time was it?
I don’t know, afternoon.
How did you end up in that Café?
I told you it’s a long story, I don’t know if I want to tell it, and besides you’re swaying against me and I don’t know why.
To keep you from going back to your world.
Ah.
The story.
If I tell you will you sit on the floor again?
I wouldn’t think of it, I like it. You don’t like it?
I beg your pardon?
I asked if you like it.
What?
This, my legs spread, my sex rubbing against yours?
He closed his eyes, his head slid back a little, I tightened my fingers on his shoulders, he opened his eyes again, he looked at me.
There was a woman I loved very much, he said.
There was a woman I loved very much. She had a beautiful way of doing everything. There is no one in the world like her.
One day she arrived with a small book, used, the cover was a very elegant blue. The great thing was that she had crossed the city to bring it to me, she had seen it in an old bookstore, and had dropped everything to bring it to me immediately, she found it so irresistible, and precious. The book had a magnificent title: How to Abandon Ship. It was a handbook. The letters on the cover were clear, perfect. The illustrations inside laid out with infinite care. Can you understand that a book like that is worth more than a lot of literature?
Maybe.
You don’t find at least the title irresistible?
Maybe.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she arrived with that book. For a long time I carried it with me, I loved it so much. It was small, it fit in my pocket. I went to teach, I put it on the desk, then I put it back in my pocket. I must have read maybe a couple of pages, it was fairly boring, but that wasn’t the point. It was good to hold it in your hand, leaf through it. It was good to think that however disgusting life might be, I had that book in my pocket and next to me a woman who had given it to me. Can you understand that?
Of course, I’m not an idiot.
Ah, I forgot the best part. On the first page, which was blank, there was a rather poignant dedication. It was a used book, as I said, and on the first page there was this dedication: To Terry after the first month of his stay in St. Thomas’s Hospital. Papa and Mamma. Your imagination can wander for days on a dedication like that. It was that type of beauty that I found heartrending. And that the woman I loved so much could understand. Why am I telling you all this? Ah, yes, the Café. Are you sure you want to go on?
Of course.
Time passed, and in that time I lost the woman I loved so much, for reasons that here don’t interest us. Moreover, I’m not sure I understood them. Anyway, I continued to carry with me . . .
Wait a minute. Who said it doesn’t interest us?
Me.
Speak for yourself.
No, I’m speaking for both of us, if you don’t like it get down from there and have the Son tell you the story, when he arrives.
All right, all right, there’s no need to . . .
So it was a strange time, for me, it seemed a little like being a widower, I walked the way widowers do, you know, a little stunned, with eyes like a bird that doesn’t get it. You know what I mean?
Yes, I think so.
But always with my little book in my pocket. It was idiotic, I should have thrown away everything that the woman I loved so much had left b
ehind, but how do you do it, it’s like a shipwreck, a lot of things, of all kinds, remain floating on the surface, in these cases. You can’t, really, clean up. And you have to hold on to something, when you can’t swim anymore. So I had that book in my pocket, that day, at the Café, and, look, by now months had passed, since it had ended. But I had the book in my pocket. I had a date with a woman, nothing very important, she wasn’t a special woman, I scarcely knew her. I liked how she dressed. She had a lovely laugh, that’s it. She didn’t talk much, and, there in the Café that day, she spoke so little that it all seemed to me tremendously depressing. So I pulled out that book and began to talk to her about it, telling her that I had just bought it. She found the story strange, but in some way curious, she relaxed a little, she began to ask me about myself, we started to talk, I said something that made her laugh. It was all simple, even pleasant. She seemed to me more beautiful, every so often we leaned toward each other, we forgot the people at the other tables, it was just the two of us, delightful. Then she had to go, and it seemed natural to kiss. I saw her disappear around a corner, with a very attractive walk. Then I lowered my gaze. On the table were our two glasses of pastis, half full, and the blue book. I placed a hand on the book and I was struck by its infinite neutrality. So much love and time and devotion had been deposited in it, from Terry’s time to mine, and so much life, and of the best kind: and yet it was nothing, it hadn’t put up the least resistance to my little infamy, hadn’t rebelled, had merely sat there, available to any other adventure, utterly without a permanent meaning, light and empty as an object that had been born right then, rather than one that had grown up in the heart of so many lives. So I came to understand our defeat, in all its tragic import, and I felt vanquished by an unspeakable and final weariness. Maybe I realized that something had broken, forever, inside me. I felt that I was slipping some distance away from things, and that I would never be able to retrace that path. I let myself go. It was splendid. I felt any anguish dissolve, and disappear. I found myself in a luminous serenity, lightly veined with sadness, and I recognized the land that I had always sought. The people around saw that I was sleeping. That’s the whole story.
The Young Bride Page 15