“You don’t look it.”
“It’s because I’m unhappy!” he doesn’t fail to reply.
You big ninny! . . .
I smile at his unhappiness, that mild unhappiness of a man who has given a clumsy kiss to the woman he loves . . .
I smile at him from a considerable distance, across the chaste black river in which I was bathing a few minutes ago . . . I hold out a bowl filled with his favorite cigarettes, made with a sweet yellow tobacco smelling like gingerbread . . .
“Not smoking today?”
“I will. But I’m unhappy all the same.”
Sitting on the couch, his back against the low cushions, he mechanically emits long wisps of smoke from his nostrils—I almost said, from his muzzle.
I smoke, too, to put up a good show by behaving like him.
He looks better without a hat.
A top hat makes him look ugly, whereas a soft fedora makes him look so pretty he almost resembles a “Latin lover” . . .
He looks at the ceiling as he smokes, as if the gravity of what he’s preparing to say kept him from being concerned with me.
His long, shiny lashes—the only feminine and sensual adornment of an excessively virile face—beat frequently, revealing agitation and hesitation.
I can hear his breathing.
I also hear the ticking of my little traveling clock, and the hood of my fireplace as it is suddenly shaken by the wind . . .
“Is it raining outside?”
“No,” he says, with a start. “Why do you ask me that?”
“Just to know, I haven’t been out since lunchtime, and I have no idea what the weather is like.”
“It’s ordinary weather . . . Renee! . . .”
Suddenly he has sat up, tossing aside his cigarette.
He takes me by the hands and looks at me close up, so close up that his face seems almost too large to me, its features too pronounced, the grain of his skin too clear, like the moist, palpitating corners of his wide eyes . . . How much love—yes, love—there is in those eyes!
How expressive, and soft, and entirely enamored they are!
And those big hands squeezing mine with a steady, communicative strength, how earnest they feel to me! . . .
It’s the first time I’ve let my hands linger in his.
At first, I think I’m subduing my repugnance, then their warmth undeceives me and persuades me, and I’m about to yield to the fraternal and surprising pleasure, unfamiliar for so long, of entrusting myself wordlessly to a friend, of leaning on him for a moment, of comforting myself with the support of a reliable, warm, affectionate, silent being . . . Oh, to be able to throw my arm around the neck of some being, dog or man, some being who loves me! . . .
“Renee!
What, Renee, you’re crying?”
“Am I crying?”
But he’s right!
The light is dancing, in a thousand broken, crisscross rays, in my hanging tears.
With the corner of my handkerchief I deftly wipe them away, but I don’t think of denying them.
And I smile at the thought that I was on the verge of tears . . .
How long has it been since I’ve wept?
It’s been . . . years and years! . . .
My friend is upset, and draws me near him, compelling me (and I don’t put up much of a fight!) to sit next to him on the couch.
His eyes are moist, as well, because he’s only a man, no doubt capable of feigning an emotion but not of concealing one . . .
“My dear child, what’s wrong with you?”
Will he ever forget the muffled cry and the shudder that reply to him?
I hope so . . .
“My dear child . . .” His first tender words are
“My dear child!”
The same words, in nearly the same tones, as that other man . . .
A childish fear tears me from his arms, as if the other man had just appeared in the doorway, with his Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, his filmy, lying eyes, his huge shoulders, and his short thighs, like a peasant’s . . .
“Renee!
Darling!
Won’t you say even a word to me? . . .”
My friend is quite pale, and he doesn’t try to embrace me again . . . At least let him remain ignorant of the pain he has just innocently caused me!
I no longer feel like crying.
My cowardly, delectable tears slowly return to their source, leaving a burning sensation in my throat and eyes . . . With a gesture I reassure my friend, as I wait for my voice to regain its steadiness . . .
“Have I made you angry, Renee?”