Sete, and the sea!
There it was, flanking the full length of the train, returning just when I had stopped thinking of it.
The seven-o’clock sun, still low, was not yet piercing it; the sea was refusing to let itself be possessed; not yet fully awake, it retained a nocturnal tint of blue ink, with white crests . . .
Saltpans were parading by, rimmed by turf gleaming with salt, and there were sleeping villas as white as that salt amid their dark laurels, lilacs, and Judas trees . . . Half-asleep, like the sea, surrendering myself to the rocking of the train, I thought I was skimming the nearby waves with the cutting flight of a swallow . . .
I was savoring one of those perfect moments, one of those joys felt by a sick man unaware of his surroundings—when a sudden memory, an image, a name, changed me back into the ordinary creature I had been the day before and the days before that . . . For how long had I just forgotten Max, for the first time?
Yes, forgotten him, as if I had never known his gaze or the caress of his lips; forgotten him, as if there were no more imperious concern in my life than to search for words, words to express how yellow the sun is, how blue the sea, how gleaming the salt with its fringe of white jet . . . Yes, forgotten him, as if there were nothing urgent in the world other than my desire to possess the wonders of the earth by way of my eyes!
At that same moment, an insidious spirit prompted me:
“What if there really were nothing more urgent?
What if everything else were nothing but ashes? . . .”
IAM LIVING amid mental storms that never let me be.
Painfully and patiently I’m regaining my vocation for silence and dissimulation.
I find it easy again to follow Brague across a city, up, down, through the squares, cathedrals, and museums, into the smoke of the little pubs where “the food is terrific!”
In our cordial relationship we don’t talk much, we seldom smile, but sometimes we burst out laughing, as if we were more open to merriment than to gentleness.
I laugh readily at Brague’s stories, making my laughter shrill, just as, when he talks to me, he exaggerates his very artificial vulgarity.
We’re sincere with each other, but not always perfectly candid . . . We have our traditional jokes, which cheer us up traditionally: Brague’s favorite, which irritates me, is to play the satyr.
This pantomime is performed on trolley cars, where my colleague chooses for his victim, now a timid young woman, now an aggressive old maid.
He sits down opposite her, slouching grossly; he gives her a lustful stare to make her blush, cough, adjust her veil, and turn her face away.
The “satyr’s” stare becomes insistent, lecherously, then all his features, mouth, nostrils, eyebrows contribute toward denoting the special pleasure of a sex fiend . . .
“It’s an excellent exercise for facial expression!” Brague assures me. “Once they establish a pantomime chair for me in the national school of music and drama, I’ll rehearse it with all my female pupils, together and separately.”
I laugh, because the poor woman, terror-stricken, never fails to get off the trolley very quickly, but the grimacing perfection of the nasty practical joke gets on my nerves.
My body, somewhat strained, undergoes illogical attacks of intolerant chastity, out of which I fall into a brazier, kindled in a second by the memory of a scent, gesture, or amorous cry—a brazier which lights up the pleasures I haven’t felt, and in the flames of which I am consumed, motionless, knees together, as if at the slightest movement I’d risk having my burns spread farther.
Max . . . He writes me, he’s waiting for me . . . How cruel his trustingness is for me to bear!
More cruel to bear than to delude, because I, too, write, I write at length with inexplicable freedom.
I write letters on shaky pedestal tables, sitting sidewise on chairs that are too high, I write with one foot shod and the other bare, my paper wedged between the breakfast tray and my open handbag, amid my brushes, perfume bottle, and buttonhook; I write in front of the window that enframes a rear court or the most delightful gardens or vaporous mountains . . . I feel at home amid this disorder of a temporary camp, this no-matter-where and no-matter-how; I feel lighter than I do among my own haunted furniture . . .
*** “How does South America grab you?”
That bizarre question of Brague’s, yesterday, dropped like a stone into my after-dinner reverie, during that all-too-short hour when I fight off sleep and my distaste for putting on makeup and undressing while I’m just beginning to digest my food.
“South America?
It’s far away.”
“Lazybones!”
“You don’t get it, Brague.
I said, ‘It’s far away,’ exactly as if saying, ‘It’s beautiful!’”
“Oh, good! . . . In that case . . . Salomon is feeling me out for a tour in those parts.
Well?”
“Well?”
“We can think it over?”
“We can think it over.”
Neither one of us is the dupe of our feigned nonchalance.
I’ve learned, to my cost, never to get my impresario excited about a tour by showing my eagerness to go.
On Brague’s part, till further notice he’s careful not to show me the profitability of a deal, for fear of instigating a raise in my percentage of the gross salary.
South America!
Hearing those two words, I was dazzled like an ignorant woman who sees the New World through a shower of magical stars, gigantic flowers, precious gems, and hummingbirds . . . Brazil, Argentina . . . what sparkling names!
Margot once told me she was taken there when very small, and my dumbfounded eagerness is fastening onto her description of a spider with a silver belly and a tree covered with fireflies . . . Brazil, Argentina, but . . . What about Max?
What about Max? . . .
Since yesterday I’ve been loitering around that question mark.
What about Max?
What about Max?
It’s no longer a thought, it’s a refrain, a sound, a little rhythmic croak that inevitably brings on one of my “fits of vulgarity.”
What foulmouthed ancestor is barking in me with this virulence which is not merely one of words, but also one of feelings?
I’ve just crumpled up the letter to my sweetheart that I had begun, and I’m swearing under my breath.
“What about Max?