The Inferno (9 page)

Were they father and daughter or brother and sister? It was plain that he adored her but that she was not his wife.

With his dimmed eyes he looked at the reflection of the sunlight upon
her.

"Some one is going to be born, and some one is going to die," he said.

The other woman started, while the man's companion cried in a low tone, bending over him quickly.

"Oh, Philip, don't say that."

He seemed indifferent to the effect he had produced, as though her protest had not been sincere, or else were in vain.

Perhaps, after all, he was not an old man. His hair seemed to me scarcely to have begun to turn grey. But he was in the grip of a mysterious illness, which he did not bear well. He was in a constant state of irritation. He had not long to live. That was apparent from unmistakable signs--the look of pity in the woman's eyes mingled with discreetly veiled alarm, and an oppressive atmosphere of mourning.

. . . . .

With a physical effort he began to speak so as to break the silence. As he was sitting between me and the open window, some of the things he said were lost in the air.

He spoke of his travels, and, I think, also of his marriage, but I did
not hear well.

He became animated, and his voice rose painfully. He quivered. A restrained passion enlivened his gestures and glances and warmed his language. You could tell that he must have been an active brilliant man before his illness.

He turned his head a little and I could hear him better.

He told of the cities and countries that he had visited. It was like an invocation to sacred names, to far-off different skies, Italy, Egypt, India. He had come to this room to rest, between two stations, and he was resting uneasily, like an escaped convict. He said he would have to leave again, and his eyes sparkled. He spoke of what he still wanted to see. But the twilight deepened, the warmth left the air, and all he thought of now was what he had seen in the past.

"Think of everything we have seen, of all the space we bring with us."

They gave the impression of a group of travellers, never in repose, forever in flight, arrested for a moment in their insatiable course, in a corner of the world which you felt was made small by their presence.

. . . . .

"Palermo--Sicily."

Not daring to advance into the future, he intoxicated himself with these recollections. I saw the effort he was making to draw near to some luminous point in the days gone by.

"Carpi, Carpi," he cried. "Anna, do you remember that wonderful brilliant morning? The ferryman and his wife were at table in the open air. What a glow over the whole country! The table, round and pale like a star. The stream sparkling. The banks bordered with oleander and tamarisk. The sun made a flower of every leaf. The grass shone as if it were full of dew. The shrubs seemed bejewelled. The breeze was so faint that it was a smile, not a sigh."

She listened to him, placid, deep, and limpid as a mirror.

"The whole of the ferryman's family," he continued, "was not there. The young daughter was dreaming on a rustic seat, far enough away not to hear them. I saw the light-green shadow that the tree cast upon her, there at the edge of the forest's violet mystery.

"And I can still hear the flies buzzing in that Lombardy summer over the winding river which unfolded its charms as we walked along the banks."

"The greatest impression I ever had of noonday sunlight," he continued, "was in London, in a museum. An Italian boy in the dress of his country, a model, was standing in front of a picture which represented a sunlight effect on a Roman landscape. The boy held his head stretched out. Amid the immobility of the indifferent attendants, and in the dampness and drabness of a London day, this Italian boy radiated light. He was deaf to everything around him, full of secret sunlight, and his hands were almost clasped. He was praying to the divine picture."

"We saw Carpi again," said Anna. "We had to pass through it by chance in November. It was very cold. We wore all our furs, and the river was frozen."

"Yes, and we walked on the ice."

He paused for a moment, then asked:

"Why are certain memories imperishable?"

He buried his face in his nervous hands and sighed:

"Why, oh, why?"

"Our oasis," Anna said, to assist him in his memories, or perhaps because she shared in the intoxication of reviving them, "was the corner where the lindens and acacias were on your estate in the government of Kiev. One whole side of the lawn was always strewn with flowers in summer and leaves in winter."

"I can still see my father there," he said. "He had a kind face. He wore a great cloak of shaggy cloth, and a felt cap pulled down over his ears. He had a large white beard, and his eyes watered a little from the cold."

"Why," he wondered after a pause, "do I think of my father that way and no other way? I do not know, but that is the way he will live in me. That is the way he will not die."

. . . . .

The day was declining. The woman seemed to stand out in greater relief against the other two and become more and more beautiful.

I saw the man's silhouette on the faded curtains, his back bent, his head shaking as in a palsy and his neck strained and emaciated.

With a rather awkward movement he drew a case of cigarettes from his pocket and lit a cigarette.

As the eager little light rose and spread like a glittering mask, I saw his ravaged features. But when he started to smoke in the twilight, all you could see was the glowing cigarette, shaken by an arm as unsubstantial as the smoke that came from it.

It was not tobacco that he was smoking. The odour of a drug sickened
me.

He held out his hand feebly toward the closed window, modest with its
half-lifted curtains.

"Look--Benares and Allahabad. A sumptuous ceremony--tiaras--insignia, and women's ornaments. In the foreground, the high priest, with his elaborate head-dress in tiers--a vague pagoda, architecture, epoch, race. How different we are from those creatures. Are /they/ right or are /we/ right?"

Now he extended the circle of the past, with a mighty effort.

"Our travels--all those bonds one leaves behind. All useless. Travelling does not make us greater. Why should the mere covering of ground make us greater?"

The man bowed his wasted head.

. . . . .

He who had just been in ecstasy now began to complain.

"I keep remembering--I keep remembering. My heart has no pity on me."

"Ah," he mourned, a moment afterwards, with a gesture of resignation, "we cannot say good-by to everything."

The woman was there, but she could do nothing, although so greatly adored. She was there with only her beauty. It was a superhuman vision that he evoked, heightened by regret, by remorse and greed. He did not want it to end. He wanted it back again. He loved his past.

Inexorable, motionless, the past is endowed with the attributes of divinity, because, for believers as well as for unbelievers, the great attribute of God is that of being prayed to.

. . . . .

The pregnant woman had gone out. I saw her go to the door, softly with maternal carefulness of herself.

Anna and the sick man were left alone. The evening had a gripping reality. It seemed to live, to be firmly rooted, and to hold its place. Never before had the room been so full of it.

"One more day coming to an end," he said, and went on as if pursuing
his train of thought:

"We must get everything ready for our marriage."

"Michel!" cried the young woman instinctively, as if she could not hold
the name back.

"Michel will not be angry at us," the man replied. "He knows you love him, Anna. He will not be frightened by a formality, pure and simple-- by a marriage /in extremis,"/ he added emphatically, smiling as though to console himself.

They looked at each other. He was dry, feverish. His words came from deep down in his being. She trembled.

With his eyes on her, so white and tall and radiant, he made a visible effort to hold himself in, as if not daring to reach her with a single word. Then he let himself go.

"I love you so much," he said simply.

"Ah," she answered, "you will not die!"

"How good you were," he replied, "to have been willing to be my sister
for so long!"

"Think of all you have done for me!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands and bending her magnificent body toward him, as if prostrating herself before him.

You could tell that they were speaking open-heartedly. What a good thing it is to be frank and speak without reticence, without the shame and guilt of not knowing what one is saying and for each to go straight to the other. It is almost a miracle.

They were silent. He closed his eyes, though continuing to see her, then opened them again and looked at her.

"You are my angel who do not love me."

His face clouded. This simple sight overwhelmed me. It was the infiniteness of a heart partaking of nature--this clouding of his face.

I saw with what love he lifted himself up to her. She knew it. There was a great gentleness in her words, in her attitude toward him, which in every little detail showed that she knew his love. She did not encourage him, or lie to him, but whenever she could, by a word, by a gesture, or by some beautiful silence, she would try to console him a little for the harm she did him by her presence and by her absence.

After studying her face again, while the shadow drew him still nearer to her in spite of himself, he said:

"You are the sad confidante of my love of you."

He spoke of their marriage again. Since all preparations had been made, why not marry at once?

"My fortune, my name, Anna, the chaste love that will be left to you from me when--when I shall be gone."

He wanted to transform his caress--too light, alas--into a lasting benefit for the vague future. For the present all he aspired to was the feeble and fictitious union implied in the word marriage.

"Why speak of it?" she said, instead of giving a direct answer, feeling an almost insurmountable repugnance, doubtless because of her love for Michel, which the sick man had declared in her stead. While she had consented in principle to marrying him and had allowed the preliminary steps to be taken, she had never replied definitely to his urgings.

But it looked to me as if she were about to make a different decision, one contrary to her material interests, in all the purity of her soul, which was so transparent--the decision to give herself to him freely.

"Tell me!" he murmured.

There was almost a smile on her mouth, the mouth to which supplications had been offered as to an altar.

The dying man, feeling that she was about to accept, murmured:

"I love life." He shook his head. "I have so little time left, so little time that I do not want to sleep at night any more."

Then he paused and waited for her to speak.

"Yes," she said, and lightly touched--hardly grazed--the old man's hand
with her own.

And in spite of myself, my inexorable, attentive eye could not help detecting the stamp of theatrical solemnity, of conscious grandeur in her gesture. Even though devoted and chaste, without any ulterior motive, her sacrifice had a self-glorifying pride, which I perceived--I who saw everything.

. . . . .

In the boarding-house, the strangers were the sole topic of conversation. They occupied three rooms and had a great deal of baggage, and the man seemed to be very rich, though simple in his tastes. They were to stay in Paris until the young woman's delivery, in a month or so. She expected to go to a hospital nearby. But the man was very ill, they said. Madame Lemercier was extremely annoyed. She was afraid he would die in her house. She had made arrangements by correspondence, otherwise she would not have taken these people in--in spite of the tone that their wealth might give to her house. She hoped he would last long enough to be able to leave. But when you spoke to her, she seemed to be worried.

When I saw him again, I felt he was really going to die soon. He sat in his chair, collapsed, with his elbows on the arms of the chair and his hands drooping. It seemed difficult for him to look at things, and he held his face bowed down, so that the light from the window did not reveal his pupils, but only the edge of the lower lids, which gave the impression of his eyes having been put out. I remembered what the poet had said, and I trembled before this man whose life was over, who reviewed almost his entire existence like a terrible sovereign, and was wrapped in a beauty that was of God.

Some one knocked at the door.

It was time for the doctor. The sick man raised himself uncertainly in
awe of the master.

"How have you been to-day?"

"Bad."

"Well, well," the doctor said lightly.

They were left alone together. The man dropped down again with a slowness and awkwardness that would have seemed ridiculous if it had not been so sad. The doctor stood between us.

"How has your heart been behaving?"

By an instinct which seemed tragic to me, they both lowered their voices, and in a low tone the sick man gave his daily account of the progress of his malady.

The man of science listened, interrupted, and nodded his head in approval. He put an end to the recital by repeating his usual meaningless assurances, in a raised voice now and with his usual broad gesture.

"Well, well, I see there's nothing new."

He shifted his position and I saw the patient, his drawn features and wild eyes. He was all shaken up by this talking about the dreadful riddle of his illness.

He calmed himself, and began to converse with the doctor, who let himself down squarely into a chair, with an affable manner. He started several topics, then in spite of himself returned to the sinister thing he carried within him, his disease.

"Disgusting!" he said.

"Bah!" said the doctor, who was blasé.

Then he rose.

"Well, till to-morrow!"

"Yes, for the consultation."

"Yes. Well, good-by!"

The doctor went out, lightly carrying the burden of misery and cruel memories, the weight of which he had ceased to feel.