“And then, listen . . . If we can’t wait, well, too bad about it . . . you’ll come and look me up . . . or I’ll send for you . . . Happy?
After all, heroism is idiotic . . . and life is short . . .
It’s a deal!
The one who’s more unhappy will look up the other one, or will write asking him to come . . . But still we’re going to try, because . . . a honeymoon on a train . . . Happy?
What are you looking for?”
“I’m thirsty: imagine! I’m dying of thirst!
Do you want to ring for Blandine?”
“No need of her!
Stay here: I’ll go get what’s needed.”
Contented, he passively lets himself be waited on, and I watch him drink as if he were doing me a great favor.
If he wants, I’ll tie his cravat, and I’ll look after the dinner menu . . . And I’ll bring him his slippers . . . And he’ll be able to ask me in a master’s voice,
“Where are you going?”
A female I was, and a female I find myself again, to suffer from it and to rejoice in it . . .
The twilight conceals my hastily repaired face and, sitting on his lap, I allow him to inhale from my lips the breath still shaken from my recent sobbing.
As one of his hands passes, I kiss it, and it descends from my forehead to my bosom . . .
In his arms, I relapse into the state of pampered victim, quietly complaining of what she neither can, nor wants to, prevent . . .
But suddenly I jump up, struggle with him for a few seconds wordlessly, and manage to escape, exclaiming: “No!”
I nearly let myself be taken by surprise there, at the corner of the couch!
His attempt was so rapid, and so skillful! . . .
Out of reach, I look at him without anger, merely giving him this reproach:
“What did you do that for? Max, how naughty of you!”
He drags himself over to me, obediently, penitently, jostling a little table and some chairs along the way, with an occasional
“Excuse me! . . . do it any more! . . .
Darling, it’s so hard to wait,” slightly exaggerating the childlike supplication . . .
I can’t make out his features clearly because night is falling.
But in the abruptness of his attempt just now, I detected as much calculation as impetuosity . . .
“You’d be caught! You’d no longer be tramping the roads all alone . . .”
“Poor Max!” I say to him softly.
“Are you laughing at me, tell me?
Was I ludicrous?”
He humbles himself pleasantly and skillfully.
He wants to lead my thoughts to the gesture itself, thus keeping me from thinking about his real motives . . . And I tell just a little lie, to reassure him:
“I’m not laughing at you, Max.
You know, there aren’t many men who’d take the risk of pouncing on a woman the way you did, you big devil, without losing all their prestige!
It’s your peasantlike bearing that saves you, and your eyes like a wolf in love!
You looked like a day laborer returning from his farm work at nightfall and tumbling a girl by the side of the road . . .”
I leave him in order to daub on my eyes again that bluish ring which makes them look soft and shiny, to put on a cloak, and to pin to my hair one of those deep hats whose well-chosen shape and colors remind Max of Grandville’s Animated Flowers, those little flower fairies wearing an inside-out poppy on their head, or a lily-of-the-valley bell, or a large iris with drooping petals.
The two of us are going out for a sweet car ride in the darkness of the Bois de Boulogne.
I love these nocturnal outings, during which I hold my friend’s hand in the dark, so I’ll know he’s there and so he’ll know I’m there.
Then I can close my eyes and dream that he and I are departing for some unfamiliar land in which I’d have no past and no name, and where I’d be born afresh with a new face and a heart without knowledge . . .
JUST ONE more week, and I’m off . . .
Will I really go?
There are hours and days when I doubt it.
Especially days of premature spring, when my friend takes me out of Paris, to those well-traveled parks, furrowed by cars and bikes, but made mysterious, all the same, by the fresh, acrid season.
A purple fog, at the close of the afternoon, makes the avenues of trees deeper, and the unexpected discovery of a bluebell, with its three narrow, naively blue cups swaying in the breeze, takes on the value of a stolen pleasure . . .
Last week we took a long walk in the morning sunshine through the Bois, where the grooms gallop.
Snuggled against each other, we were active, happy, and little inclined to talking; I was humming a little song that makes you walk fast . . .
Turning into a deserted bridle path, we stopped, nose to muzzle, in front of a very young tawny doe that lost her self-control at the sight of us and halted instead of running away.
She was panting with emotion and her delicate knees were trembling, but her long eyes, further lengthened by a brown line—like mine—expressed more confusion than fear.
I’d have liked to touch her ears, which were pointed in our direction and as fluffy as great-mullein leaves, and her soft muzzle of downy velvet.