Capitu turned her back to me and faced the mirror. I took hold of her hair, gathered it all together, and began to smooth it out with the comb, from her forehead to the tips: it stretched down to her waist. It was no good with her standing up; you won’t have forgotten that she was a shade taller than I was, but even if we have been the same height it would have been impossible. I asked her to sit down.
“It’ll be better if you sit here.”
She sat down. “Let’s see the great hairdresser,” she said with a laugh. I went on smoothing out her hair, very carefully, and divided it into two equal parts, to make the two plaits. I didn’t make them straight away, or as fast as a professional hairdresser might imagine: slowly, very slowly, I enjoyed the feel of those thick strands, which were a part of her. I did the work clumsily, sometimes out of sheer ineptitude, at others deliberately, so as to undo what I had done and do it again. My fingers brushed her neck, or her back with its cotton dress: it was á delicious sensation. But in the end, however interminable I wanted this to be, I ran out of hair. I didn’t ask the heavens for the strands to be as long as Aurora’s, because I was as yet unfamiliar with this goddess who was later introduced to me by the poets; but I did want to comb them for ever and ever, weaving two braids that would envelop infinity an unnamable number of times. If all this seems a little emphatic, irritating reader, it’s because you have never combed a girl’s hair, you’ve never put your adolescent hands on the young head of a nymph … A nymph! I’ve become all mythological. A little while ago, talking about her undertow eyes, I even wrote “Thetis”*; I crossed out Thetis, let’s cross out nymph; let’s say only a beloved creature, which is a word which embraces all the powers, pagan and Christian. In the end, I finished the two braids. Where was the ribbon to tie their ends together? On the table, a miserable little piece of crumpled material. I tied the ends of the braids, joined them with a bow, gave the work some final touches, stretching it out here, smoothing it there. Then I exclaimed:
“Ready!”
“Let’s see if it’s all right.”
“Look in the mirror.”
Instead of going to the mirror, what do you think Capitu did? Don’t forget that she was seated, with her back to me. Capitu leaned her head backwards, coming so far that I had to hold it in my hands; the chair had a low back. Then I bent over her, face to face, but inversely, the eyes of one in line with the mouth of the other. I asked her to lift her head: she might get dizzy or hurt her neck. I even said she looked ugly; but not even that affected her.
“Get up, Capitu!”
She would not. She didn’t lift her head, and so we remained, staring at each other, until she pursed her lips, I lowered mine, and…
The kiss had an extraordinary effect; Capitu got up quickly, and I recoiled to the wall with a kind of vertigo, speechless, my eyes darkened over. When vision returned, I saw that Capitu had her eyes on the ground. I dared not say anything; even if I had wanted to, I was tongue-tied. I was caught, stunned: no gesture or impulse could pry me from the wall and make me rush towards her with a thousand warm and endearing words … Don’t make fun of my fifteen years, precocious reader. At seventeen, Des Grieux—Des Grieux, what’s more—had not yet thought about the difference between the sexes.*