Her youth whisked away, and her life as a woman completely null. But how our love can sustain us! If a person's life, however null, embodies a love for his children, that is enough: his life is fulfilled and justified in his own eyes. The person is never more poignantly aware of this than at the crucial hour, in the face of death. At that moment, all the great problems and pretensions of his existence, all that he has built up, his 'message' if he had one, seem to him derisory. But the fact that he loves, and the object of his love, do not appear derisory. They endure terrifyingly, with all their power for good and evil, while the pillars of the temple crumble. Mme Dandillot loved her daughter, and was saved. At the summit of the hierarchy of love, one would doubtless have to place the love of a father for his son, if such a love existed. But it does not exist, or rarely: men are usually too preoccupied, and moreover too dense, to pay attention to their sons otherwise than in a rough and absent-minded way; boys are only really loved by a few born educators and a few pederasts of the better sort. So that it is in a mother's love for her daughter that we see the most perfect form of human love.
For the third time that night, Mme Dandillot awoke. And instantly, with a sublime impulse, her dawning consciousness pounced upon the person of her daughter, as though some sort of right of occupancy were at issue there which it was vitally important to establish. It was not total consciousness, however, but those confused moments wherein, like river and sea at the bar, those two equally formidable adventures, sleep and wakefulness, meet and mingle and grapple with each other. Her heart was beating with morbid violence. The memory of some family keepsakes she had found in a cupboard the day before came back to her, moistening her eyes: they had reminded her of desertion and loneliness, harbingers of the desertion and loneliness of her daughter. And her whole day had been filled with a sense of inferiority: a visit to the hairdresser for another of those perms that never stayed put; a visit to the dressmaker for one of those two-thousand-franc outfits that never suited her. Suddenly, from this gelatine of bitterness, something broke loose - a certainty, an absurd, blazing certainty: Solange had gone. Gone? ...Where? Why? Between the moment when the two women had kissed each other goodnight ('If you get into a sweat tonight and want to change, call me. If you change all by yourself, you're bound to catch cold') and now, Solange had dressed, hurriedly collected her things, and left the house. Mme Dandillot switched on the light, got up, and walked distractedly to her daughter's room. On the way, she kissed one of Solange's coats which was hanging on the wall, burying her face in it for a moment.
Solange, too, was awake in the dark. (Both needed a little happiness to bring them back their sleep.) She recognized her mother's form. The form came up to the bed: 'Is that you?'
'No, Mummy, it isn't me!
'I thought you'd gone.'
'Gone?'
'Yes, that you'd got up and dressed and left with your suitcase.'
'Mummy! Are you going a bit mad?'
'I think I am … Let me kneel beside your bed without saying anything, just touching you with my hand to make sure you're there...Why are you putting on the light?' (smiling)
'Yes, it's you. I recognize you now. You're my only daughter.'
'But of course!'
'What would your father have said if he'd seen a light under your door at this hour? When I used to read after eleven, I was sure to see him come in and ask: "Can't you sleep?" Since you're awake, won't you make room for me beside you? I'd like to be warm.'
'You know I haven't enough warmth even for myself.'
'It's not really to be warm, it's just to be near you.' (She settled in.) 'Have you been awake long?'
'I don't know. I woke up once at a quarter past twelve, then at two o'clock, and then just now.'
'I woke up at exactly the same times. I've noticed before that we nearly always wake up at the same time. It's strange. ...You haven't got a pain anywhere, have you?'
'Of course not! Oh, please don't worry about me the whole day long. A few minutes ago I'd "gone"; now I'm supposed to have a pain somewhere ... '
'Your father used to say that the whole world would be full of milksops if one always imagined that the people one loves are about to be run over. Personally I think that if anyone who loves another person stops imagining they're about to be run over, well, it simply means they don't love them so much.'
Slipping her hand under her daughter's arm, she felt the crook of the elbow, in which the nocturnal perspiration of sickly people (which had seeped through the night-dress) stagnated like damp in a fold of the ground where the sun never penetrates; looked at the veins of the fore-arm which had exactly the same contours as her own, as though they had been traced from hers; and placed her other hand over Solange's forehead, as if to gather up and expel the evil spirits. 'To think that, behind this forehead, nothing has ever been or will ever be conceived against me!' This person - this face and body - who for her was the most precious thing in the world, was the same person who made Costals yawn with boredom; the same person whom thousands of men and women passed or jostled in the street with indifference; the same person for whose body other men would have risked damnation, without loving her soul: all and nothing, supreme and defenceless. Solange was in the habit (which is that of all Arabs and many Spaniards) of sleeping always with her mouth covered, even in summer. Mme Dandillot recognized from its dampness the place where the sheet had been resting on her daughter's mouth, and buried her face in it with a little moan. She was 'Nénette', she was the 'police horse': and yet at this moment she reached the summit of all that was truly strong in her, all that was most valid. Solange looked with pity at this face, slightly swollen by sleep, in which the pouches under the eyes had sunk, like the pouches under the eyes of cockatoos, and the lines of which were criss-crossed by the creases of her pillow - and the pathetic expression of avidity and exhaustion which that gesture had suddenly given it. It is well known that desire, in the instant of gratification, assumes the mask of death; it must be said that maternal tenderness, on occasion, can assume it too. Mme Dandillot let her head fall back on the bolster (her daughter was on the pillow) and lay silent. Then she said: 'My little darling.... What else need I say to you when I've said that?' After a while she must have come down from the heights to which love had borne her for an instant, for she said (her eyes raised towards the arch of the ceiling):
'There are flaws in the wall-paper. [It was new wall-paper put up during the alterations made to the flat after M. Dandillot's death (Author's note).] Your father would never have allowed that. He may have been this and he may have been that, but as a hanger of wall-paper he hadn't an equal. At Limoges he hung a frieze in the drawing-room that took up a whole roll of it, all in one piece, and without a hitch.'
'Your father,' always 'your father'. Alive, he counted for nothing. Now that he was dead, they spoke of him constantly. To contradict him, of course. But often to praise him too.
Mme Dandillot took her daughter's hand and raised her arm, and the two fore-arms, joined, swung together with melancholy grace.
'If life could be just that - lying beside you without stirring, without having to go out, or order meals, or dress. You know I went round to Janine. But, it's funny, the older I get, the more difficult I find it is to choose. I used to look all right in any old thing more or less. I remember a blue satin blouse I made for myself in '16, which suited me so well. I was so proud when people asked me: "Where did you buy that blouse?" I always remember how pleased I was when the Curé of Pontorson asked me if I lived in Paris - and I was wearing my blouse that day! To be taken for a Parisian! And with no make-up!'
She laid her head on Solange's shoulder, with another little moan. Her head rose with each breath, like a boat lifted by the gentle respiration of the sea. At the other end of the room, beside the radiator, the two cats, mother and daughter, slept in one another's paws.
'I would like to give my life for you.'
'But, Mummy, what good would that do?'
'To
think that that pig is chasing chamois in the Atlas. [Chamois in the Atlas?...(Author's note)] while you. 'Why do you call him a pig now? Three weeks ago, you said he was a "likeable brute". That was much better.'
'I call him a pig because he makes my little daughter unhappy.'
'Oh! please don't let's talk about that.'
'This afternoon I was looking for some curtains in the big cupboard, and I opened some boxes. Goodness, what gloomy things I found! Your grandmother's wedding ring, my wedding veil, your first tooth...But to cap everything, I came across your baby clothes. The size of a bottle, you were, when you were born; yes, just about the size of a litre bottle. Your father used to say: "The only thing to do is to call her Flea. Flea Dandillot." We had to buy your clothes in a toy-shop: doll's clothes. Did you tell him that, the chamois hunter?'
'Yes.'
'What did he say?'
'Nothing....' [In fact Costals had said: 'I see. It must have been a walking doll' (Author's note).]
'That doesn't surprise me; Southerners have no heart. I always remember the day of your christening. They were celebrating downstairs, and they'd forgotten all about me, in bed in my room. I cried. After all, not to have even thought of bringing me a glass of grenadine! So I sent out for a bottle of champagne, so as not to have to ask your father for anything. A little later he came up and found me in tears. "God, how stupid you are! We thought you were asleep".
'The day you came into the world I was also abandoned like a poor old dog. Your grandmother hadn't wanted to make the journey because of the snow! Always some excuse! Your father said: "All will be well." What did he know about it, I ask you? When your Aunt Charlotte arrived....'
Suddenly she was silent, like a little musical box which has jammed, and stops dead in the middle of its refrain. 'Are you asleep?' she asked. No answer. She switched on the light. Solange was sleeping, a little saliva at the corner of her mouth; while her mother had been meandering on, fleet-footed sleep had brushed across her face. How vast the darkness of the night is, how silent the earth, when one watches a loved one sleep! He who is obsessed by the disparity inherent in every object, and who seeks to discover therein one of the keys to the mystery of nature, must be moved to meditate on human tenderness, which is at once the height of anxiety and the height of repose. Mme Dandillot reposed in Solange, as Costals, at the end of his wanderings, always came to rest in thoughts of his son; now there was no difference between Costals and Mme Dandillot. Had they but known, they might have smiled at each other across their barriers; but they were searching elsewhere. Their two tender melodies drew near to one another, ran side by side, without ever meeting. Mme Dandillot looked at her daughter's hands, so thin that they seemed scarcely wider than her wrists, like a monkey's hands. She had an impulse to join her own hands in a prayer: 'O God, make my daughter recover from all this!', but by a not unfamiliar mechanism of substitution (which would be worth expatiating on), it was Solange's hands that she joined. No sooner had she seen her daughter with her hands joined on her breast, than she imagined her dead. She put her hand on that breast, and felt it rising and falling faintly. Then she turned off the light and lay back on the bolster. Her daughter had heard all these stories a hundred times - the doll's clothes, the bottle of champagne, the grandmother who would not put herself out because of the snow - and yet the fact that she had fallen asleep while her mother was talking to her took on a sinister significance in Mme Dandillot's mind: yes, Solange really had 'gone', as she had feared; yes, she had indeed been abandoned once more. Mme Dandillot no longer dared lay her head on her daughter's shoulder, for fear of waking her, and yet she was filled with an immeasurable hope that she would wake, that she would 'come back'; and she had to struggle with herself in order not to provoke that wakening. A few minutes went by in this way, and then she thought of her recent tears. They were waiting. Her throat tightened, her eyes misted over, and they began to flow again.
17
During February and March, Costals nomadized and hunted in the Fez region and in the Atlas. An Arab proverb says: 'A lone traveller is a devil'. He is also a saint. The long solitude, the manifold ordeals, the faces and landscapes that brush past you without ever sinking in, the enforced submission to nature's ever-disquieting dictates - what a retreat!
Lobel kept him posted. The new examination of the nasal mucus had confirmed the original diagnosis. Rhadidja was having treatment at Tighremt. She wrote once to Costals (through an Arab café proprietor in Casablanca, as she always did, so that no one at Tighremt should know she was writing to a Frenchman). The letter began: 'I am writing to let you know that I am in good health.' There's nothing like knowing, as they say. The letter passed on forthwith to other matters.
Costals still wrote regularly to Solange. Unlike most men, who are prepared to assuage all the sorrows of the world except those they themselves have caused, he wanted her to suffer as little as possible. He wanted her to make a soft landing in a smiling landscape: that of her new life, her engagement and marriage to another man - Tomasi no doubt. He was reluctant to tell her a truth she would be unable to bear. He sought to persuade her that his affection was still alive, when in fact it was not: sometimes it is this that is called fidelity. 'The greatest proof of love I ever gave you was to leave you.' (This was pure humbug, and he knew it.) 'My love for you has blossomed in an extraordinary way now that there's no longer a zero hour' (the hippogriffical hour). 'What can I do for you?' (Certain savage tribes honour the heads of their decapitated enemies.) He wanted her to believe that he was unhappy ('I cannot find the peace and freedom for my work which I came to seek here'), when he was not suffering at all except from acting this part. This play-acting did not come easily to him, and at times it gave him a slight feeling of disgust. As he filled his letters with endearments, it sometimes struck him that the paper ought to tear under his nib in protest against the abuse of these fine phrases, and to emphasize the chasm that exists between one and the same sentence when it springs from the depths of your soul and when it is an imposture. At the end of these letters, his writing quickened, became almost joyful: the horse scenting the stable. One day, however, having changed pens, he found that the sentiments came to him much more easily.
At all events, these letters - the drafts of which he filed in a portfolio marked Flute for my fiancée [Untranslatable pun. The phrase, in French, can also mean: 'To hell with my fiancée' (Translator's note).] (doubtless in allusion to Muslem weddings, which are always celebrated to the sound of flutes) - were the most touching he had ever sent her: it is well known that the most beautiful love-letters are those that have not been written sincerely. Nothing is less eloquent than real love. When Brunet flung his arms round his father's neck and covered him with kisses, saying: 'Do you love me a lot? More than last year? Do you think of me every day, or only every other day?' all Costals could think of in reply was: 'Of course I do, stupid.' Aware that this was not sufficiently warm, he tried to think of something more affectionate to add, and eventually embraced the brat with an 'I've never met such a stupid boy as you.' Such were this writer's powers of expression when he loved with all his heart. But when he did not love, the words came gushing out. 'How well you lie!' says Athene to Ulysses.
Toiling over these missives, not only did he have to struggle against his indifference towards Solange, but, mesmerized by his desire to do her harm, to punish her for the 'season in hell' which she had made him endure, he also had to struggle against this desire. Holding her thus at arm's length was killing. How he suffered, whenever he acted out of kindness! When future biographers of this author discover all he did when driven by the Daemon of the Good, they will include him in the Golden Legend, and since at that moment he will be in hell, it will be his greatest punishment to see himself beatified. He will roast twice over.
At the end of April, once more in the Atlas, he was the guest of the kaid of the Ait Arouen, a little fellow with a goatee beard, an Auvergnat mug, a crop of hair as wiry as his own sheep's wool, a
bear-like gait; jovial, lecherous, an attacker of farms and adorer of planets and fire; in short, one hundred per cent bled-es-siba. [ Bled-es-siba: that part of Moroccan territory occupied by unsubdued tribes, outside the effective authority of the Sultan (Translator's note).]
One morning, as he was washing his hands before lunch, he suddenly stopped dead. On the outer surface of his right forearm there was a little patch. Exactly the reverse of Rhadidja's: a macula of discoloured skin, and around it a brownish halo.
He stripped, and examined as much of his body as he could (with a travelling mirror!). As far as he could see, there was nothing sinister.
He was surprised his face had not changed. How treacherous, to have leprosy without its showing on your face! He was also surprised that he was not more agitated.
Decision: get himself examined by Lobel as soon as possible. At lunch, on the pretext that a stupid oversight had made him forget that he was due in Marrakesh two days hence, he asked the kaid for a guide and a mule to take him to Souk et'Tnine, sixteen kilometres away, where he would no doubt easily find a bus or a car. That done, he ate, drank, talked, smoked, and belched as if nothing had happened: life must go on, after all. As if nothing had happened? Not exactly, for, exchanging dirty jokes with the kaid, he showed off a bit. This attitude was his first reaction to the threat.
The Lepers Page 11
