All very fine.
Even more than necessary.
But . . . where does it get you?
Look out!
I can see another fit of the blues coming . . . I’m awaiting it calmly; my heart is used to it and I’m sure to diagnose its regular phases and overcome it once again.
No one will know about it.
Tonight Brague is examining me with his penetrating little eyes without finding anything to say except:
“You’re really up in the clouds, aren’t you?”
Back in my dressing room, I wash my hands, which are tinged with currant blood, in front of the mirror in which my grease-painted adviser and I are measuring each other’s strength, gravely, like mutually worthy adversaries.
To suffer . . . to regret . . . to last out the darkest hours of the night in insomnia and solitary maunderings: this is my destiny tonight.
And I proceed toward it with a kind of funereal gaiety, with all the serenity of a person who’s still young and resistant, someone who’s seen much worse . . . Two habits have given me the power to hold back my tears: the habit of concealing my thoughts, and that of blackening my lashes with mascara . . .
“Come in!”
Someone just knocked, and I answered automatically, lost in thought . . .
It isn’t Brague, it isn’t my elderly dresser, it’s a strange man, tall, thin, dark, bowing his bare head and reciting in a single flow:
“Madame, for a week now I’ve been coming to applaud you in your pantomime Dominance.
Please forgive me if my visit is at all . . . inopportune, but I feel that my admiration for your talent and . . . your figure . . . justifies so . . . unorthodox an introduction, and that . . . ”
I say nothing to this imbecile.
Damp with sweat, still out of breath, my dress half open, I wipe my hands while looking at him with a ferocity so evident that his lovely phrase dies away suddenly, cut short . . .
Should I slap his face?
Should I leave on his two cheeks the marks of my fingers, which are still wet from the red-tinged water?
Should I raise my voice and hurl at that angular, very bony face, divided by a black mustache, the vulgarity I’ve learned in the wings and on the street?
This invader has the eyes of an unhappy charcoal burner . . . I don’t know what my gaze and my silence are telling him, but his expression suddenly changes:
“Truly, Madame, I’m just a ninny and a low character, as I now see too late.
Throw me out, come, I have fully deserved it, but not before I lay at your feet my deepest regards.”
He takes leave again like a man about to depart . . . but he doesn’t go.
With that somewhat whorish craftiness that men possess, for half a second he awaits the reward for his change of heart and—goodness knows, I’m not such a monster!—he obtains it:
“And so, sir, I shall say to you nicely what I would have said to you brusquely: please leave!”
I laugh good-naturedly as I show him the door.
He doesn’t laugh.
He remains there, his forehead thrust forward and his free fist, clenched, hanging loosely.
This pose makes him look almost menacing, awkward, with the slightly clumsy bearing of a polite woodcutter.
The ceiling lamp is reflected on his dark hair, which is combed to the side, smooth as if lacquered; but his eyes elude me, hidden in deep sockets . . .
He doesn’t laugh, because he desires me.
He doesn’t wish me well, that man, he wishes to have me.
He’s in no mood for jokes, even off-color ones.
This bothers me, finally, and I’d prefer to see him . . . aroused, at ease in the role of a man who’s had a good dinner and has gotten an eyeful in the first row of the orchestra . . .
His burning desire for me weighs on him like a cumbersome piece of armor.
“Well, sir, aren’t you leaving?”
He replies precipitously, as if I had awakened him:
“Oh yes, yes, Madame!
Of course I’m leaving.
I beg you to accept my apologies and . . . ”
“ . . . And I remain very truly yours!” I concluded, in spite of myself.
It’s not especially funny, but he laughs, he finally laughs, dropping that stubborn expression which was putting me out of countenance . . .
“How kind of you to rescue me, Madame!
There’s something else I wanted to ask of you . . . ”
“No, no!
You’re going to beat it at once!
I’ve exhibited a patience I can’t understand, and I risk catching bronchitis if I don’t get out of this dress, in which I’ve felt as hot as three moving-men!”
With the tip of my index finger I push him out, because when I mentioned getting out of my dress, his face became gloomy and rigid again . . . After my door was shut and bolted, I heard his muffled voice begging: