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with the shadow which floods the room. I pick up my cup
to what I have just told her.
mechanically, there's a little tea left in it and I bring it to my lips.
"Paintings, statues can't be used: they're lovely facing me.
The tea is cold. I want to smoke but I don't dare. I have the
Music . . ."
terrible feeling that we have nothing more to say to one another.
"But the theatre . . ."
Only yesterday I had so many questions to ask her: where she
"What about the theatre? Do you want to enumerate all
had been, what she had done, whom she had met. But that
the fine arts?"
interested me only in so far as Anny gave her whole heart to it.
"Before, you used to say you wanted to act because on the
Now I am without curiosity: all these countries, all these cities
stage you had to realize perfect moments!"
she has passed through, all the men who have courted her and
"Yes, I realized them: for the others. I was in the dust, in the
whom she has perhaps loved she clung to none of that, at
draught, under raw lights, between cardboard sets. I usually played
heart she was indifferent to it all: little flashes of sun on the
with Thorndyke. I think you must have seen him at Covent
surface of a cold, dark sea. Anny is sitting opposite to me, we
Garden. I was always afraid I'd burst out laughing in his face."
haven't seen each other for four years and we have nothing more to
"But weren't you ever carried away by your part?"
say.
"A little, sometimes: never very strongly. The essential
"You'll have to leave now," Anny says suddenly, "I'm ex-
thing, for all of us, was the black pit just in front of us, in the
pecting someone."
bottom of it there were people you didn't see; obviously you
"You're waiting for . . ."
were presenting them with a perfect moment. But, you know,
"No, I'm waiting for a German, a painter."
they didn't live in it: it unfolded in front of them. And we, the
She begins to laugh. This laugh rings strangely in the dim
actors, do you think we lived inside it? In the end, it wasn't
room.
anywhere, not on either side of the footlights, it didn't exist;
"There's someone who isn't like us not yet. He acts, he
and yet everybody thought about it. So you see, little man," she
spends himself."
says in a dragging, almost vulgar tone of voice, "I walked out on
I get up reluctantly.
the whole business."
"When shall I see you again?"
"I tried to write a book . . ."
"I don't know, I'm leaving for London tomorrow evening."
She interrupts me. "By Dieppe?"
"I live in the past. I take everything that has happened to me "Yes, and I think I'll go to Egypt after that. Maybe I'll be
and arrange it. From a distance like that, it doesn't do any harm, back in Paris next winter, I'll write you."
"I'll be free all day tomorrow," I say timidly.
you'd almost let yourself be caught in it. Our whole story is
"Yes, but I have a lot to do," she answers dryly. "No, I can't see you.
fairly beautiful. I give it a few prods and it makes a whole string
I'll write you from Egypt. Just give me your address." '"Yes."
of perfect moments. Then I close my eyes and try to imagine that
In the shadow I scribble my address on an envelope. I have to
I'm still living inside it. I have other characters, too. . . . You have
put down Hotel Printania so they can forward my letters when
to know how to concentrate. Do you know what I read? Loyola's
I leave Bouville. Yet I know very well that she won't write.
Spiritual Exercises. It has been quite useful for me. There's a way
Perhaps I shall see her again in ten years. Perhaps this
of first setting up the background, then
is the last time I shall see her. I am not only overwhelmed at
her body and her face so much, I had fallen into a state of extreme
leaving her; I have a frightful fear of going back to my solitude
nervousness: my hands trembled and icy chills shook me. I began
again.
to look through the books on display at second-hand stalls, especially
She gets up; at the door she kisses me lightly on the mouth.
obscene ones because at least that occupies your mind.
"To remember your lips," she says, smiling. "I have to
When the Gare d'Orsay clock struck five I was looking at
refresh my memories for my spiritual exercises."
the pictures in a book entitled The Doctor with the Whif. There
I take her by the arm and draw her to me. She does not
was little variety: in most of them, a heavy bearded man was
resist but she shakes her head.
brandishing a riding whip over monstrous naked rumps. As soon
"No. That doesn't interest me any more. You can't begin
as I realized it was five o'clock, I threw the book back on the
again. . . . And besides, for what people are worth, the first
pile and jumped into a taxi which took me to the Gare
good-looking boy that comes along is worth as much as you."
Saint-Lazare.
"What are you going to do, then?"
I walked around the platform for about twenty minutes,
"I told you, I'm going to England."
then I saw them. She was wearing a heavy fur coat which made her
"No, I mean . . ."
look like a lady. And a short veil. The man had on a camel's-hair
"Nothing!"
coat. He was tanned, still young, very big, very handsome. A
I haven't let go of her arms, I tell her gently:
foreigner, surely, but not English; possibly Egyptian. They got
"Then I must leave you after finding you again."
on the train without seeing me. They did not speak to each other.
I can see her face clearly now. Suddenly it grows pale and
Then the man got off and bought newspapers. Anny had lowered
drawn. An old woman's face, absolutely frightful; I'm sure she [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]