I’m going home alone, at night, without letting anybody know.
Brague and the Old Caveman, whom I treated to drinks, are now asleep somewhere in Boulogne-sur-Mer.
We killed three quarters of an hour in doing accounts and chatting, in planning a South American tour, then I beached up on this Tintelleries station, so deserted at this hour that it seems to be out of service . . . The electric globes on the embankment haven’t been turned on merely for my benefit . . . A little cracked bell is shivering timidly in the darkness, as if hanging from the neck of a freezing day.
The night is cold and moonless.
Near me, in some invisible garden, there are fragrant lilacs crumpled by the wind.
Far away I heard the sound of foghorns at sea . . .
Who could guess that I’m here, at the very end of the embankment, huddled in my cloak?
How well concealed I am!
Neither darker nor lighter than the blackness of the night . . .
At daybreak I’ll be entering my apartment, noiselessly, like a burglar, because I’m not expected this soon.
I’ll wake up Fossette and Blandine, and then the hardest moment will come . . .
I purposely imagine the details of my arrival; with necessary cruelty I conjure up the memory of the twofold smell that clings to the wallpaper: English tobacco and somewhat oversweet jasmine; I mentally squeeze the satin cushion that bears, in the form of two pale stains, the trace of two tears that fell from my eyes in a moment of very great happiness . . . On the tip of my tongue I have that little muffled
“Oh!” of an injured woman who bumps her wound against something. I do this on purpose. It will hurt less a little while from now.
From a distance I say goodbye to everything that might detain me back there, and to the man who will have nothing more from me than a letter.
A cowardly but rational prudence makes me avoid seeing him again: no “honest explanations” for us!
A heroine like me, who’s only flesh and blood, isn’t strong enough to vanquish every demon . . . Let him scorn me, let him curse me a little, it will only be better for him: poor darling, he’ll get over me more quickly!
No, no, not too much honesty! And not too much phrasemaking, because it’s by keeping quiet that I’ll spare his feelings . . .
A man is walking across the tracks at a sleepy gait, pushing a trunk on a cart, and suddenly the electric globes in the station light up.
I stand up numbly, I hadn’t realized I was so cold . . . At the end of the embankment, a lantern is bouncing in the darkness, swung by an invisible arm.
A distant whistle replies to the hoarse foghorns: it’s the train.
Already . . .
“GOODBYE, DARLING. I’m off to a village not very far from here; then I’ll no doubt leave for the New World with Brague.
I won’t see you any more, darling.
When you read this, you won’t take it to be a cruel joke, because the day before yesterday you wrote asking me, ‘My Renee, don’t you love me any more?’
“I’m leaving; it’s the smallest pain I can inflict on you.
I’m not mean, Max, but I feel all worn out, as if I were incapable of getting used to love again, and frightened at the thought that love might make me suffer again.
“You didn’t think I was such a coward, did you, darling?
What a measly little heart I have!
And yet, in the past it would have been worthy of yours, which offers itself so candidly.
But now . . . what would I be giving you now, my darling?
In a few years, the best part of me would be that undirected maternal love which a childless woman transfers to her husband.
You wouldn’t accept that, nor would I.
Too bad . . .
There are days—even for me, though I see myself growing older with resigned terror—days when old age appears to me like a reward . . .
“Darling, some day you’ll understand all this.
You’ll understand that I wasn’t cut out to be yours, or anyone’s, and that, in spite of a first marriage and a second love, I’ve remained a kind of old maid . . . an old maid, like some women who are so much in love with Love that no love seems beautiful enough to them and they turn down their suitors without condescending to explain; they reject any misalliance that their feelings urge them into, and go home, to sit by a window as long as they live, bent over their sewing, alone with their matchless fanciful ideal . . . Like them, I wanted everything; a lamentable error has punished me.
“There’s no more venturesomeness in me, darling—that’s it, there’s none left.
Don’t be angry if, for some time, I concealed from you how hard it was to revive in myself the enthusiasm, the risk-taking fatalism, the blind hope, and all the qualities that are merry companions of Love.
The only fever I experienced was that of my senses.
Unfortunately, no other fevers have such clearsighted periods of remission!
You would have consumed me in vain, though your gaze, your lips, your long caresses, and your touching silences briefly healed a distress for which you weren’t responsible . . .
“Goodbye, darling.
Far from me, seek for some young woman with fresh, intact beauty, seek for faith in your future and in yourself—in short, seek for the kind of love you deserve, the kind I might have given you once.
But don’t seek for me.
I have just enough strength to run away from you.
If you were to walk in right now, while I’m writing this . . . but you won’t!
“Goodbye, darling.
You’re the only human being in the world whom I call my darling, and after you I have no one left to give that name to.
For the last time, hug me as you did whenever I felt cold, hug me very tight, very tight, very tight . . .
“RENEE.”