She went to bed as obediently as a child, promising to be thoroughly sensible, to sleep and not to daydream. In order to soothe the fever of her sick headache, and make her more tranquil, she had been assured that it would soon be over: the vile sickness would be conquered and dispatched, and would not be the death of her.
Her illness took the form of a crippling lassitude; it drained all her strength and sapped all the power of her life and will. She sank into it as though into an over-warm and overly-prolonged bath, enervated to the point of discomfort but troubled by a restlessness which would not allow her to be entirely still. Her mind was similarly afflicted by the combination of dullness and agitation. She was beset by desire but found nothing to appease it; she wept over her distress, and tried in vain to console herself with the fancies of her impuissant imagination. One thing only could excite her heart with passion: the entrance of her husband immediately caused her to lift her head; one tender word from him, and her eyes lighted up; at his caress, her entire being thrilled, momentarily galvanised. In the presence of her husband, a slight pinkness animated her cheeks; her hands recovered the power to make graceful gestures; her lips had the strength, if only for a second, to meet his adored lips.
Her body seemed to her to be quite translucent, like an abandoned seashell which, if placed in the sun, would be penetrated by its light and made iridescent, like a pearl mislaid in the sand. To the melancholy eyes which contemplated her, she thought, she must resemble a precious jewel-case which had no more glory left than its intricately-carved wood, its brasswork tracery, its ornamental lock, its vermilion inlay and its nails; all the interior treasure had vanished, alas.
So she went to bed – and at first, as she had promised, she made an earnest effort to sleep profoundly. Soon, however, as time went by, her dreams drifted up towards consciousness as though they came to float on the surface of a lake, like some heavy log of wood which had in the end to submit to the law of nature, consenting to float and follow the tide. Her reawakened mind sailed away, inexorably drawn by a secret current which left the surface of the water undisturbed. She sailed on, and dreamed with closed eyes, without making a movement, without in the least disturbing the rhythm of her breathing, so that any observer might believe that she still slumbered at the bottom of the lake – thus ensuring that the observer would be pleased with her, and that she would not be scolded.
She had become so childish since being stricken by her malady, like a little girl before her first communion, so very docile! Not long ago she had been imperious and forceful, a woman whose advice was heeded – even, on occasion, a tyrannical mistess. Now she was as mild as a desireless virgin. The only joy left to her was to shut her eyes, to be surrounded by silence, and to dream.
She usually dreamed of old times: of the first kisses which had revealed to her the commanding power of love and taught her how agreeable contact with that dangerous creature man could be. She would dwell indefatigably among memories of her initiation, taking care to recall every single word and every single gesture of her lover, and the precise colour and the exact perfume of the first flowers which he had placed at her feet. When she arrived again, in due course, at the supreme and adorable night, she sometimes let loose a faint cry which disturbed the house – but anyone who came in would find her hypocritically calm, making believe that she was asleep despite that her respiration would be a little hasty, and that an unwonted redness would lie upon her pale cheeks.
On this particular evening she slept unusually well, but her dreams were bad.
This time, her memories were not extended in a rationally ordered fashion. Her imagination was overpowered, and the images which she conjured up for herself vanished in an instant, to leave her with nothing but a haunting and grotesque vision of a woman whose face was veiled by a handkerchief, and whose dress was lifted up by a brutal hand. All night, that ignominious vision danced beneath her eyelids, and the spectacle filled her, simultaneously, with a profound disgust and an impotent anger. These emotions exhausted her, overwhelming her fragile vitality.
Next morning, the dream vanished, but all through the day she was irritable and morose, oppressed by the memory of the awful night. There was no further manifestation of the obsessive image; the obscene phantoms had descended again into the abyss. But the unfortunate vision seemed to have given new strength to the secret labour of Death, and diminished accordingly the feeble flame of Life. The dwindling of her energies became frightening. The casket without treasures was no longer merely empty; the carved wood was worm-ridden now, almost reduced to dust, devoured by some obscure army of termites; the lock hung loose; the lid was thrown back on its hinges.
Soon, this work was finished, lacking only the final blow which would crush and annihilate the wretched creature. The room took on the injured and almost funereal aspect of a sickroom; worthless flasks containing impotent tinctures were strewn over the furniture, and all conversations held within it were rendered horrid by their sepulchral tone.
The clock chimed the critical hour. It was in the evening. The doctor had gone, muttering uselessly to himself. After hovering over the bed for a while, asking vain questions of the poor mute whose voice had already been stifled by impending death, the priest had pronounced the dubious formulas of absolution and sat down to wait for any possible confidences which might emerge in the respite of the penultimate minute. A nun was standing alongside, her eyes fixed upon the moribund woman, on the lookout for some gesture which might signal the desire for one last drink of water, watching that veiled expression in case its veil might suddenly tear to release a supreme smile.
The veil did tear. It did so when the dying woman sensed that her beloved was there, that the head which now leaned over her own agonising head was the adored head of her husband. The veil tore, and a gentle gleam of love illuminated the sad eyes which would soon turn their gaze towards the other side of life.
There followed, between these two beings, a macabre mute conversation – mute, because one could not speak and the other did not wish to speak, perhaps fearing to spew forth the turpitudes which swarmed in his heart. While the almost-deceased comforted herself with the illusion of a little more life, declaring with her expression and with the extremely feeble movement of her fingers the absolute truth of her invincible affection, the man whom she adored even in her agony could find no response save for a smile whose compassion scarcely served to moderate its indifference.
Having become weary at last of his dumbness, and of the pretence imposed upon him by circumstance, he opened his mouth to proffer abominable banalities and expressions of hope which were more wounding than injuries. He even talked about a journey into the country, assuring her of the benefits of travel, of the good results that might be obtained by a sojourn in the mountains of Algeria.
“We will think about all this later,” he told her. Then, without any change of tone, he said: “Your sister is here. Would you like to see her?”
Without waiting for any sign of acquiescence, he left the room, and came back immediately, accompanied by a very beautiful girl in the full bloom of youth, whose passionately sensual attitude clearly denied her virginity.
The sisters had never loved one another, and the elder of the two – the one who now entered, radiant and insolent beneath her attitude of condolence – had never forgiven the younger, who was now laid prostrate, her precocious marriage.
By virtue of a sudden divinatory gift, the dying woman understood what had passed between her sister and her husband. They had the attitude of accomplices, both of them – and in the kind of glances they exchanged there was an indefinable intimacy which seemed invisibly to unite them.
The obsessive and obscene vision passed once more, in all its awful clarity, before her affrighted eyes. Paralysed by terror, she expired with the horror of having seen, standing before her, the Other.