She seemed anxious, as if someone wanted to reopen a wound that no longer hurt. Dronsart knew nothing about her, not even her real name.
‘I’m your Nel,’ she would say, caressing him tenderly. ‘I have a name just for our love. You should be glad I’m not the same for you as for others. Anyway, there’s nothing apart from us, you’re the whole world for me.’
Nel would wrap her arms round him, trembling, loving, passionate. That was the way Dronsart had found her on that very first evening, responsive to the sensual thrill, neither too experienced, nor too naïve, quickly falling into a mute abandon which said nothing about her initiation.
The mystery surrounding her remained intact. Never for one moment did she break the strict silence in which she seemed to have forgotten herself. Contrary to other women who invent complicated stories—a rich childhood, serious liaisons which, however, had ended badly—she remained a closed book.
Dronsart was not even able to make any deductions from clues, signs, scattered indications which, when put together, would make sense, begin to take shape. He learnt nothing, could not even put his finger on one single detail. No remark slipped out, no word which would act as a key to open the door to the clearer corridors, the great halls of certainty. There are words which can suddenly reveal what kind of childhood one had, and what loves. Had she grown up in Paris or in the country? What had her love life been like? She had certainly had liaisons, she wasn’t a virgin. But how far had it gone? With whom? And with what sort of lovers? It ought to be possible to piece them together, since most men have expressions, habits derived from their professions. And women immediately pick them up. But Nel had retained no trace of anyone, of anything. It seemed to Dronsart that she started with him, as if he himself had created her in the golden Eden of the old gardens that October evening. Nel! She was his Nel. She had taken the name for him. And that evening she had become dead to her real name, to her past and all the rest.
They were happy. Nel, pale and delicate, fell ill with pneumonia. It was serious from the start. The night-light that shone through her white complexion dimmed, her skin took on the dull, leaden tone of snow about to melt. Nel’s life was was in danger. At that Dronsart became concerned about the mystery that had never been cleared up, the continuing enigma of her identity. She was young, she doubtless had parents who were still alive. And a husband she had left, perhaps. Ought they not to be informed? Who knows whether she herself, during these last days, when one goes over one’s life, whether she wasn’t thinking about seeing them again without daring to say so? Dronsart decided to ask her.
‘Wouldn’t you like to have your mother here to look after you? Is there anyone you’d like to see?’
‘Oh! Does that mean I’m going to die?’ Nel exclaimed, with a heart-rending cry.
Without another word, she turned to the wall. For a long time Dronsart heard her crying under the blankets.
Not until the evening did she speak again. ‘Tell me I’m going to get better! That I’ll live! We were so happy!’Adding, reproachfully, ‘You were asking questions again.’
‘Of course not, you misunderstood me.’
‘What is it to you?’ she said in almost solemn tones. ‘Even if I do die, isn’t it better like that? Our love will not have had a name, no other name but ours. I was Nel—that is to say myself—for you alone. And it will be the best one of your life. Do you remember how we would stop, in the museums where you used to take me, at portraits with the title: Unknown. And we dreamt for a long time. That will be my love and it will be all the sweeter for it…
Nel died. Dronsart, sobbing, inconsolable, knowing nothing about her, not even her real identity, could only offer the name of Nel, damp with tears, to the clerk in the registry office who was unhappy with that and demanded dates, age, family details.
For Dronsart did not know anything at all about the woman who had been his lover for two years. But, recalling their last conversation, he had her cross in the cemetery marked with the melancholy but true inscription: ‘Unknown’, as if cemeteries were truly museums as well, the museums of death.
The Dead Town
They had arrived in the dead town a few days previously. They had left Paris as abruptly as if they had been fleeing. Tired of all the misery of adultery—the secretiveness, the lies, the quick glances, the brief kisses—of which true love is ashamed, like a king having to dress as a beggar to be safe, they had suddenly come to a decision. Theirs was a noble passion and they would acknowledge it openly. She would leave her husband, he would leave his wife. They would refashion their destiny. And that is what they did.
They had chosen a dead town away up in the north, in the mist, which had been made fashionable through books and the enthusiasm of visitors. It seemed so distant and yet was so near. They had arrived after barely a day’s journey by rail. Immediately Paris was far, far away. And the life they had left behind as well? Oh, the sudden change of perspective brought about by travel and absence! How different everything was here: the people in the streets, the houses, the colour of the air, the sky above the roofs, a low sky, very close, with moulded clouds, and which looked as if it had come out of a painting. A unique setting, a subtle atmosphere of silvery greys, the patina of centuries on the old walls—a shimmering marvel for the eyes of a painter. He had told himself that he would work there, in seclusion, transposing these incomparable townscapes. A virgin subject. And the fame being the painter of all that would bring!
The lovers had settled in an old hostelry on the Market Square, opposite the Belfry. They chose it for its great age, for the gable with crow-steps bordering the façade of pink bricks repointed with fresh white bands of plaster. And then they had read that Michelet, the great historian and writer, had stayed there sixty years ago. The man who had written, in L’Amour and La Femme, pages full of caresses, of flashes of insight, would be there, invisible, in the atmosphere round the mirrors, like a smiling presence, a guardian angel…
How sweet are the first days and weeks spent together! They were masters of their own destiny, they became aware of themselves, they became aware of the town. It was intoxicating yet at the same time solemn.
The days passed by monotonously, but is true happiness not monotonous? They walked along the quais, where lifeless water was dreaming. They sometimes looked at themselves, from up on a bridge, in the water of the canals. Empty water where there was nothing but the two of them… Their faces were beside each other, but very pale, very far off, the reflection adding distance, like absence or memory. Mirrored there, they looked so sad! It was as if they were distressed at the thought of being already reduced to a reflection, a transient image that was wavering and about to sink to the bottom.
A great melancholy was hanging in the air, giving their love a more languid, more tender feeling. It was like the love one feels before a separation, it was like love in a country where there is a war, in a town where epidemics are raging. A strong love, from feeling close to death. Here death reigned, it was as if the town were the Museum of Death. Every day he thought he was going to get down to work, but what was the point of creating a living work in this silence in which everything was decomposing? He had responded with ecstatic admiration to the works of the Primitives preserved there: triptychs of the Annunciation and the Crucifixion, reliquaries with medallions as exquisite as miniatures, portraits of the kneeling donors on the wings—defining masterpieces of the old painters whose fingers, like those of priests, touched God. They had painted—the way we pray.
What can one do after them? The futility of any effort appeared. And also the delusion of fame, the swift passing of the days, the cruelty of life, which shows less pity towards people than towards things, all these painted faces still intact while the faces of flesh and bone had turned into some anonymous mud, some imperceptible dust.
The lovers spent their days taking slow walks. Sometimes they went into one of the churches, but there, too, the obsession with death resurfaced. The floor was covered wit
h large funerary slabs, the tombs of bishops, of churchwardens, of famous parishioners, whose names, titles, dates of birth or death had gradually been eroded by the steps of the centuries. And they had the impression that their love was walking amid death.
Even during the nights, their nights punctuated by unending kisses, they were sometimes irritated by the carillon, which sounded every quarter of an hour from the top of the belfry opposite. A slow, indistinct jingling which seemed to come from far, far away, from the depths of childhood, from the depths of the ages. It was like a dead bouquet falling, an autumn of sound shedding its leaves over the town… The lovers listened, uneasy about something, though they couldn’t say what. They stopped their kisses. Was it the devout town objecting to their love? And were these hours of ecstasy, during which they were more alive than ever, a provocation to death, which held sway over the town? Once the carillon had fallen silent their lips sought each other again hesitantly and for a while their kisses had a taste of dead ashes.
To them the carillon seemed like the disheartening proximity of death…
The woman was wearying of it. She was the one who had had the idea of going there. All lovers desire solitude in order to possess each other more completely. They create for each other a new universe inhabited by the two of them alone. But these two had not reckoned on death, which immediately made its presence felt here. Yes, their love was walking on dead ground. Everything was ceaselessly dying in the dead town. The woman, sophisticated Parisian that she was and instilled with a taste for perfume, had a refined appreciation of scents, a subtly educated sense of smell.
Here everything smelt of death. The centuries-old walls along the quais sweated—the salty smell of old tears. The ancient façades with their damp patches made one think of a poisonous tattoo. In the churches a stench of dampness hung in the air, of stale incense, of faded altar cloths in a sacristy cupboard the key of which has been lost for hundreds of years. The smell of death spread equally round all the districts of the town, as if coffins containing mummies had been opened somewhere—or the old tomb of the dead centuries reopened.
The woman suffered from this persistent smell which each day took away a little more of her zest. Especially since her lover also seemed to gradually detach himself from her and from everything. Their kisses became less frequent, the carillon no longer bothered them at night. They slept without clasping each other, their love lying between them, already cold and motionless, like the water of the canals between the stone embankments. Seeing him bored and with nothing to occupy him, she said, ‘Why don’t you do some work?’
‘Tomorrow.’
He always said, ‘Tomorrow.’ He made plans, chose a good place, started to sketch something out, then stopped, put things off again. He did not feel in the mood, he who had thought he could work so well here, who had initially been filled with enthusiasm for these combinations of water, trees and towers beneath a silver sky, unique. To capture that light! To be the painter of this dead town as Turner was of Venice.
An Impressionist ideal and truly modern! That was what he had thought at first. How was it that, after having admired, adored the Primitives of the Flemish race, he had come to fall little by little under their spell, their influence, the longer he stayed? The colours on his palette grew darker, as if the shadow of all the dead fell across it. The gestures in his designs became stiff. He also started to paint Virgins, men weighing out gold, donors. He imitated the old masters and it was not long before all he was doing was copying them. He felt that here any other art but theirs was a sacrilege. Ridiculous to want to be oneself in the midst of them! A feeble candle burning in the sun. The painter was vanquished. Here the dead had triumphed once more. The dead town had caused his new art to wither as it had withered his new love.
The lovers felt more and more out of sorts with themselves and with everything. The man seemed to have changed so much. He was morose, bored. He did not complain but his eyes were bathed in regret. His former life was taking hold of him again. When his companion occasionally spoke about Paris, he would quickly interrupt her, as if to remove a temptation which he would not be able to continue to resist. A great coldness developed between them, they seemed detached from each other, almost indifferent. And to think that during the months of their secret affair they had so much desired to belong to each other, entirely, day and night. But nothing specific had happened, neither was disillusioned with the other during this joint existence, this absolute intimacy. No clash, either, nor any quarrel.
What had happened to them? Now the man went out all the time, and always alone. He was out for whole afternoons, came back late, went to bed without a word. One evening he announced that he had received a letter from Paris. His art dealer had written that there was some important business to be done and he would have to deal with it in person.
‘Don’t lie! You don’t love me any more and you want to leave me,’ his lover said in resigned tones, not darkened by any feeling of rancour, simply sad, as one is when faced with the inevitable.
The man did not attempt to deny it: ‘Yes! It’s the fault of this town.’
The woman, pale and mournful, agreed: ‘It’s not our fault. Death is stronger than Love here.’
They remained silent for a long time, thinking of the dead town and their dead passion, of themselves, who felt as if they had committed suicide at the height of their love and now, resuscitated like Lazarus, had to start living again—each going their own way.
Out of Season
That autumn Mme Cantin was surprised and enraptured by what went on inside her. It was a mild October, still warm, with an end-of-season charm. In the park surrounding her house, a kind of castle on the outskirts of a small industrial town, some of the chestnut trees had blossomed again. What a joy is a large garden, restoring one to nature, to grass, leaves, water, to all those elemental things! At that particular moment Mme Cantin felt in harmony with her garden. She had just reached forty, but instead of ushering in decline and the approach of winter, this birthday signalled a revitalisation. Remontant roses were blooming anew on the bushes and she felt a parallel flowering in her heart. The evening skies were bright red; was that what had given her lips their rosy hue, as if she had painted them with the rejuvenated ruby rays of the setting sun? The garden was resplendent. The inconstant clouds played in the pond, changing their gowns, the ripe apples in the trees were radiant, flushed with the red tints of children’s bare skin.
During those days Mme Cantin spent all her time in the garden, waiting, with an impatience she had completely forgotten, for evening to fall, the time when her husband would come home. Years ago she had watched for his return like that, impatiently, even feverishly. How time had dragged without him! Every day, without fail! Every morning he went to his factory, which was the source of their wealth but which definitely took up too much of his time. Newly wed—and having married entirely for love—she would have liked to keep him to herself, all the time, every minute of the day. To make his absence shorter, she would go to meet him, almost to the factory itself. Later on she had resigned herself to his absence, quietened down, still loving her husband, but with a more restrained affection and one which had to be shared out, for she now had three daughters, three girls, all the same, with the same fair complexion, the same blond hair, honey or amber blond. They were so alike that, after having called the first one Rose, because it seemed impossible not to call her that, the two others were given the related names of Rosine and Rosette. They were like three consecutive hours of the same day. They always went walking together, arms round each other’s waist. And they had the fancy of always being dressed alike, with clothes of the same colour and style, hats with the same shape and flowers. As they walked side by side it was impossible to say where the one ended and the other began…
Mme Cantin had loved her daughters with a passionate affection, which meant there was all the less for her husband. And then, suddenly, she had started to feel the sap flowing again, a renewe
d inner turmoil in his presence, a reawakened thrill of the flesh, an impatience at having to wait for him in the evening, as she had during the first months of their marriage. That coincided with his absence abroad for a fortnight connected with a railway for which his factory was to supply the materials. It felt like a hundred years. At night she couldn’t get to sleep in the empty bed… On his return this revived love burst forth and now it burnt, persisted, lingered like the autumnal warmth in the garden. She was aware of the complicity of the season, she was in collusion with the reflowering roses. The intoxication of renewal! It was the joy of lovers making up after a quarrel, coming together again after a long absence. But are we not always parting a little? We part the moment we loosen our embrace. But of all new beginnings the most intoxicating are those which roll back the years, give us delusions about our age, reviving the initial ardor between two people, the electricity of the senses we thought had been dulled, the mystery of our own being which is like the dark, arousing bed-chamber of Love. Once again Mme Cantin experienced the profound thrills, the constant discoveries of love, which lasts as long as it keeps being renewed…
All of a sudden, after twenty years of marriage, it was like a love affair, her husband was astonished, enraptured and could not get enough of her. Their October was like a second spring. There was even the prospect of a remontant rose to add to the family, a late rose of this lascivious and colluding autumn, one more rose after Rose, Rosine, Rosette, an unexpected bloom to be added—how?—to the close-knit and harmonious bouquet of the three girls already in their teens.
Hans Cadzand's Vocation & Other Stories Page 10
