My dear friends, I knew you were faithful. At my request you came to me at once, just as I should have come to you. Yet it is three years since you have seen me. May your friendship, so resistant to absence, resist as well the accounting I am about to make. For if I summoned you abruptly and made you travel to the out-of-the-way place where I live, it was solely that I might see you, that you might hear me. That is all the help I need: to speak to you. For I am at a moment in my life past which I can no longer see my way. Yet this is not exhaustion. The point is, I no longer understand. I need … I need to speak, I tell you. The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task. —Let me talk about myself; I shall tell you my life, simply, without modesty and without pride, more simply than if I were speaking to myself. Listen to me:
The last time we saw each other, it was near Angers, I remember, in the little country church where I was being married. There were very few people, but the intimacy of the friends present made the commonplace ceremony into a touching one. It seemed to me that others were moved, and that moved me as well. We left the church and gathered in the house of the woman who had just become my wife; then a carriage that had been ordered drove the two of us off, according to the custom which connects, in our minds, the notion of a wedding with the vision of a railway platform.
I knew my wife very little and I supposed, without minding it too much, that she knew me no better. I had married her without loving her, mostly to please my father who, on his deathbed, was wracked by the thought of leaving me alone. I loved my father dearly; preoccupied by his suffering, I thought of nothing, those sad days, but making his last moments easier; and so I pledged my life without knowing what life could be. Our deathbed engagement was an unsmiling one, but not without a somber joy, so great was the peace it afforded my father. If I did not love my fiancée, as I say, at least I had never loved any other woman. That was enough, I assumed, to insure our happiness; and though I knew nothing about myself as yet, I believed I was giving her my whole being. She was an orphan as well, and lived with her two brothers. Marceline was just twenty; I was four years older.
I said I did not love her; at least I felt for her nothing of what is called love, yet I did love her if love means tenderness, a kind of pity, as well as a good deal of respect. She was a Catholic, I am a Protestant … but such a tentative one! The priest accepted me, I accepted the priest. Matters were arranged easily enough.
My father was what is called an “atheist”; at least so I suppose, prevented as I was from discussing his beliefs with him by a kind of insurmountable reticence which I suspect he shared. My mother’s stern Huguenot teachings had slowly faded, with her lovely image, from my heart; you know how young I was when I lost her. I did not yet suspect how great an influence that childhood morality exerts upon us, nor what mental habits it forms. That austerity for which my mother had given me a taste by indoctrinating me from the start with its principles I applied fervently to my studies. I was fifteen when my mother died; my father reared me, sustained me, devoted all his passion to my education. I was already familiar with Latin and Greek; from him I soon learned Hebrew, Sanskrit, and even Persian and Arabic. By the age of twenty, I was so advanced that he allowed me to collaborate with him. He enjoyed claiming I was his equal, and wanted to prove it to me. The Essay on Phrygian Religious Customs, published under his name, was my work; he had scarcely read it through; nothing brought him so much praise. He was delighted, though I was embarrassed by the success of this hoax. But I was launched on my career. The most learned scholars treated me as their colleague. I smile now at all the deference that was paid me … And so I turned twenty-five, having looked at almost nothing but ruins or books, and knowing nothing about life; I lavished on my work a remarkable fervor. I cared for a few friends (you were among them), but actually prized friendship rather than friends; my devotion to them was great, but it was a craving for nobility; in my heart of hearts I gloated over each fine feeling. Moreover, I knew nothing about my friends, as I knew nothing about myself. Not for a moment did it occur to me that I might lead a different life, or that others might live differently.
For my father and myself, simplicity sufficed; the two of us spent so little that I was twenty-five before I realized that we were rich. I had supposed, without dwelling much on the subject, that we had enough to live on, and acquired, after my father’s example, habits of economy which rather embarrassed me when I discovered how much we actually had. I was so inattentive to such matters that even after my father’s death, as his sole heir, I did not really grasp the extent of my fortune, but only upon the drawing-up of my marriage contract, when I also discovered that Marceline would bring me almost nothing.
Another and perhaps even more important thing I knew nothing about—my own health was extremely delicate. How could I have realized this, never having put it to the test? I suffered from colds now and then, and paid little attention. The excessively sedentary life I was leading weakened and protected me at the same time. Marceline, on the other hand, seemed quite strong; that she was stronger than I we were soon to learn.
We spent the night after our wedding in my Paris apartment, where two rooms had been prepared for us. We stayed in Paris only long enough for the indispensable shopping, then continued to Marseilles, where we embarked at once for Tunis.
The urgent demands, the confusion of events in too-swift succession, the obligatory emotion of my wedding immediately following the more genuine one of my grief—all this had exhausted me. It was only on shipboard that I discovered how tired I was. Hitherto each occupation, while increasing my fatigue, distracted me from it. The enforced leisure of the crossing permitted me to reflect, at last. And, it seemed, for the first time.
For the first time, too, I was willing to be deprived of my work for an extended period. Heretofore I had permitted myself only brief vacations. A trip to Spain with my father, shortly after my mother’s death, had lasted over a month, it is true; another to Germany, six weeks; there had been others, but always to do research—my father never forsook his very technical studies; and I, when I was not following his example, would be reading. And yet no sooner had we left Marseilles than the various memories of Grenada and Seville awakened—of a purer sky, of sharper shadows, of festivities, laughter and song. That was what we would rediscover, I thought. I went up on deck and watched Marseilles slide away.
Then, all at once, I realized I was rather neglecting Marceline.
She was sitting in the bow; I walked toward her, and for the first time really looked at her.
Marceline was very pretty. You know that; you saw her. I chided myself for not having noticed it from the first. I had seen her too often to see her afresh; our families had been connected as long as I could remember; I had watched her grow up; I was used to her charm … For the first time I was startled, so great did it seem.
She was wearing a long veil draped over a simple black straw hat. Her coloring was blond, yet she did not seem delicate. Her skirt and bodice were both made from a Scotch plaid we had picked out together. I had not wanted her grace to be clouded by my mourning.
She sensed that I was looking at her, turned to face me … Up till then, I had shown her no more than routine attentions, replacing love as best I could by a kind of cool gallantry which, I was well aware, rather embarrassed her; did Marceline realize at that moment that I was looking at her, for the first time, in a new way? She stared back in her turn; then, very tenderly, smiled at me. Without a word, I sat down beside her. I had lived for myself or at least on my own terms till then; I had married without imagining my wife as anything but a comrade, without really supposing that, by our union, my life might be transformed. I had just understood at last that the monologue was ending now.
We were alone together on deck. She held up her face; I pressed her gently against me; she raised her eyes; I kissed her on the eyelids and suddenly felt, in the wake of my kiss, a new kind of pity; it filled me so fiercely I could not restrain my tears.
“What’s the matter?” Marceline asked.
We began to speak. Her entertaining comments delighted me. I had somehow acquired ideas about the stupidity of women. Beside Marceline, that evening, it was I who seemed clumsy and stupid.
So this woman to whom I was binding my life had a life of her own—and a real one! The importance of this discovery wakened me several times that night; several times I leaned over the edge of my berth to look down at Marceline, my wife, asleep in the berth below.
The next day the sky was splendid; the sea almost flat. A few leisurely conversations diminished our awkwardness still further. The marriage was truly beginning. On the last day of October we landed in Tunis.
My intention was to remain there only a few days. I shall admit my foolishness to you: nothing in this new country attracted me except Carthage and a few Roman ruins—Timgad, which Octave had told me about, the mosaics of Sousse, and above all the amphitheater of El Djem, which I intended to visit immediately. We would have to reach Sousse first, and from there take the mail coach; I was sure that nothing between here and there deserved my attention.
Yet Tunis proved a great surprise. At the contact of new sensations, certain parts of myself stirred, dormant faculties which, not having functioned as yet, retained all their mysterious youth. I was more astonished, bewildered, than entertained, and what pleased me most was Marceline’s delight.
My exhaustion meanwhile became greater day by day; but I would have been ashamed to yield to it. I coughed, and felt a strange pain in the upper part of my chest. We are heading south, I thought; the warm weather will restore me.
The Sfax coach leaves Sousse at eight in the evening; it passes through El Djem at one in the morning. We had reserved inside seats. I expected to find no more than a rattletrap; the seats, however, were quite comfortable. But the cold!… With what naïve confidence in the mild air of the South had we dressed so lightly, and brought no more than a shawl? No sooner out of Sousse and the shelter of its hills than the wind began blowing. It galloped across the plain, screamed, whistled, leaked into each crack around the doors; nothing could protect us from it. We arrived frozen through; I, in addition, had been exhausted by the jolting of the carriage and by a terrible cough that shook me even more. What a night! —And in El Djem, no inn; a dreadful bordj was our only recourse. The coach was leaving; the village was asleep; the apparently limitless darkness afforded no more than a glimpse of the shapeless mass of the ruins; dogs were howling. We went back into a filthy room where two wretched cots had been set up. Marceline was shivering from the cold, but here at least the wind no longer got at us.
The next morning was bleak. We were surprised, as we came outside, to see a sky uniformly gray. The wind was still blowing, but less violently than the night before. The coach would not be back until evening … It was, I tell you, a dreary day. The amphitheater, explored in a few minutes, disappointed me; it actually seemed ugly under that leaden sky. Perhaps my exhaustion contributed to, increased, my boredom. Around the middle of the day, having nothing better to do, I returned to it, vainly seeking some inscriptions on the stones. Marceline, in a nook out of the wind, was reading an English book she had providently brought with her. I came and sat down beside her.
“What a miserable day!” I exclaimed. “Aren’t you bored to death?”
“No, as you see: I’m reading.”
“Why in the world did we come here? I hope you’re not cold, at least.”
“It’s not too bad. What about you? You must be cold, you’re so pale.”
“No …”
At night, the wind regained all its force … Finally the coach arrived. We set off again.
With the first jolts my entire body began to ache. Marceline, very tired now, soon fell asleep against my shoulder. But my cough will wake her, I thought, and very gently disengaging myself I leaned against the other side of the coach. Meanwhile I was no longer coughing, no: I was spitting; this was new; I brought it up effortlessly; it came in little spasms at regular intervals; the sensation was so peculiar that at first it was almost a diversion, but I was quickly disgusted by the unfamiliar taste it left in my mouth. My handkerchief was soon of no use to me. Already my fingers were covered. Should I wake Marceline?… Luckily I remembered a long scarf she was wearing in her belt. I carefully pulled it free. The sputum, which I no longer repressed, came more abundantly now. I was extraordinarily relieved by it. This is the last of my cold, I thought. Suddenly I felt very weak; everything began to spin, and I realized I was going to faint. Should I wake her?… No, for shame!… (I have kept, I think, from my puritanical childhood this hatred of any surrender to weakness; I immediately called it cowardice.) I mustered my forces, making a desperate effort, and finally overcame my dizziness … I thought we were on shipboard again, and the noise of the wheels became the noise of the waves … But I had stopped spitting.
Then I subsided into a kind of sleep.
When I awakened, the sky was already bright with the dawn; Marceline was still asleep. We were approaching Sousse. The scarf in my hand was dark-colored, so that at first I noticed nothing; but when I took out my handkerchief again, I saw with stupefaction that it was soaked with blood.
My first impulse was to hide this blood from Marceline. But how? —I was covered with it; I saw it everywhere now; on my fingers especially … I must have had a nosebleed … That’s it; if she questions me, I’ll tell her I had a nosebleed.
Marceline was still asleep. The coach arrived. She had to get out first, and saw nothing. Two rooms had been reserved for us. I was able to rush into mine and get rid of the blood. Marceline had seen nothing.
Nonetheless I felt very weak, and ordered tea for both of us. And while Marceline served it, very calm, a little pale herself, smiling, a kind of irritation seized me that she had noticed nothing. Of course I knew this was unfair, I told myself that if she saw nothing it was because I had concealed it so well; all the same, despite my efforts, it grew in me like an instinct, overpowered me … Finally it became too strong and I could no longer hold out against it: almost casually, I said to her, “I spat blood last night.”
She did not cry out; she simply grew much paler, reeled, tried to catch herself, and fell heavily to the floor.
I sprang toward her in a kind of fury: Marceline! Marceline! —After all, what have I done! Wasn’t it enough that I should be sick? —But as I said, I was very weak; I almost fainted myself then. I managed to open the door; I called; someone came.
In my valise, I remembered, was a letter of introduction to some local official; I used this as my authority for summoning the medical officer.
Meanwhile Marceline had revived; she was at my bedside now, where I lay shivering with fever. The doctor arrived, examined us both; there was nothing wrong with Marceline, he declared, and she was none the worse for her fall; I was seriously ill; he would not venture a diagnosis, and promised to return before evening.
He returned, smiling, spoke to me and gave me various medications. I realized that he had no hope for me. —Shall I confess, I had no reaction at all. I was exhausted. I simply let myself go. —“After all, what did life have in store for me? I worked to the end, did my duty resolutely, devotedly. The rest … what does it matter?” I thought, rather admiring my stoicism. But what did make me suffer was the ugliness of the place. “This hotel room is hideous”—and I stared around it. All at once I realized that in the identical room next door was my wife, Marceline; and I heard her speaking; the doctor had not left; he was conferring with her, keeping his voice low on purpose. A short while passed; I must have fallen asleep …
When I awakened, Marceline was there. I realized that she had been crying. I was not so attached to life as to be sorry for myself; but the ugliness of that place distressed me: almost voluptuously, my eyes rested on her.
Now, not far away, she was writing. How pretty she looked! I watched her seal several letters. Then she stood up, came over to my bed, tenderly took my hand. “How do you feel now?” she asked.
I smiled and asked grimly, “Will I get well?”
But she answered at once, “You will!” with such passionate conviction that, almost persuaded myself, I had a confused sense of all that life might be, of Marceline’s love, the vague vision of such pathetic beauties that the tears welled up in my eyes and I wept a long time without trying or wanting to stop.
With what loving determination she was able to get me out of Sousse; enveloped in what tender care, protected, supported, nursed … from Sousse to Tunis, then from Tunis to Constantine, Marceline was magnificent. She chose Biskra as the place where I was to recuperate. Her confidence was complete; her zeal never flagged for a moment. She supervised everything, managed the departures, arranged the lodgings. She could not, alas, make that journey itself less agonizing. More than once I thought I would have to stop, give up. I perspired like a dying man, gasped for breath, repeatedly lost consciousness. At the end of the third day I reached Biskra, on the point of death.
Why speak of the first days? What is left of them? Their hideous memory is mute. I no longer knew who, or where, I was. All I can see, still, leaning over my bed of pain, is Marceline, my wife, my life. I know that her devoted care, that her love and nothing else, saved me. And one day, finally, like a shipwrecked sailor catching sight of land, I felt a glimmer of life awakening; I could smile at Marceline. Why tell all this? What matters is that death had brushed me, as the saying goes, with its wing. What matters is that merely being alive became quite amazing for me, and that the daylight acquired an unhoped-for radiance. Till now, I would think, I never realized that I was alive. Now I would make the thrilling discovery of life.
The day came when I could get up. I was utterly entranced by our lodgings—little more than a veranda, but what a veranda! Both my room and Marceline’s opened onto it, and it projected above the rooftops. Its upper deck overlooked houses, palm trees, the desert; a lower one, shaded by the branches of the nearest mimosas, adjoined the municipal park; between them, the veranda continued around the little oblong courtyard with its six symmetrical palms and ended at the stairs leading down from it. My room was huge, airy; whitewashed walls, completely bare; a little door to Marceline’s room, a large glass one to the veranda.
Here the days flowed by without hours. How many times, in my solitude, I have relived those slow days!… Marceline is beside me. She is reading; she is sewing; she is writing. I am doing nothing. I look at her. O Marceline! Marceline!… I look; I see the sun; I see shadows; I see the line of shadow moving; I have so little to think about that I watch it. I am still very weak; I have great difficulty breathing; everything tires me, even reading; besides, what should I read? Being is occupation enough.
One morning, Marceline comes in laughing: “I’ve brought you a friend,” she says, and I see behind her a dark-skinned Arab boy. His name is Bachir, and he stares at me out of huge, silent eyes. I am more disconcerted than not, and such embarrassment already tires me; I say nothing, apparently annoyed. The child, faced with the chill of my response, is abashed, turns back to Marceline and with a movement of caressing animal grace, snuggles against her, takes her hand and kisses it with a gesture which exposes his bare arms. I notice that he is naked under his skimpy white gandoura and patched burnous.
“Now sit down over there,” Marceline says, observing my discomfort. “Play by yourself, and don’t make any noise.”
The child sits on the floor, takes out of the hood of his burnous a knife and a piece of djerid which he begins whittling. He is trying to make a whistle, I suppose.
After a little while, I am no longer embarrassed by his presence. I watch him; he seems to have forgotten where he is. His feet are bare, his ankles lovely, as are his wrists. He wields his wretched knife with fascinating skill. Can I really be interested in such things? His hair is shaved in Arab fashion, and he wears a shabby chichia with only a hole where the tassel belongs. The gandoura, sliding down, reveals his delicate shoulder. I must touch it. I lean down; he turns and smiles at me. I hold out my hand for his whistle, take it and pretend to admire it extravagantly. Now he wants to leave. Marceline gives him a cookie, I give him two sous.
The next day, for the first time, I feel bored; I am waiting—for what? I feel at loose ends, uneasy. Finally I can bear it no longer: “Isn’t Bachir coming this morning, Marceline?”
“I’ll see if I can find him.” She leaves the room, goes downstairs; a moment later she comes back, alone. What has illness done to me? I am on the verge of tears at seeing her return without Bachir.
“It was too late,” she explains. “School is over and the children have all gone now. Some of them are so pretty. I think they all know me now.”
“Please try to find him tomorrow, then.”
The next day, Bachir returned. He sat down as he had before, took out his knife, and in trying to whittle a hard piece of wood stuck the blade into his thumb. I shuddered, but he only laughed, holding up the shiny cut and happily watching the blood run out of it. When he laughed, he showed his brilliant white teeth, then licked the wound with delight; his tongue was pink as a cat’s. How healthy he was! That was what beguiled me about him: health. The health of that little body was beautiful.
The next day, he brought marbles. He wanted me to play with him. Marceline was out; she would have stopped me. I hesitated, looked at Bachir; the child grabbed my arm, thrust the marbles into my hand, forced me. I soon began to wheeze from bending over, but tried to play all the same. Bachir’s pleasure enchanted me. At last I could bear no more. I was covered with sweat. I pushed the marbles away and collapsed into a chair. Bachir, alarmed, stared at me. “Sick?” he asked softly; the timbre of his voice was enchanting.
Marceline returned. “Take him away,” I told her. “I’m tired this morning.”
A few hours later, I had a hemorrhage. It happened while I was walking laboriously on the veranda; Marceline was busy in her room; luckily she could see nothing. Feeling out of breath, I inhaled more deeply than usual, and suddenly it came. It filled my mouth … but it wasn’t a flow of bright blood now, like the other hemorrhages; it was a thick, hideous clot I spat onto the floor with disgust.
I staggered on a few steps. I was horribly upset, trembling with fear and rage. For up till now I had thought my recovery would simply happen, step by step; all I needed to do was wait. This brutal accident was a step backward. Strangely enough, the first hemorrhages had not affected me; I remembered how they had left me almost serene. Then what was causing my horror, my fear now? The fact that I was beginning, alas, to love life.
I turned back, bent down, took a straw and raising the clot of spittle, laid it on my handkerchief. I stared at it. The blood was ugly, blackish—something slimy, hideous. I thought of Bachir’s beautiful, quick-flowing blood. And suddenly I was seized by a desire, a craving, something wilder, more imperious than I had ever felt before: to live! I wanted to live. I clenched my teeth, my fists, concentrated my whole being hopelessly, furiously in this thirst for existence.
The day before I had received a letter from T—–; in answer to Marceline’s anxious questions, it overflowed with medical advice; T—–had even enclosed several popular medical pamphlets and a more specialized book which for that reason seemed to me more serious. I had read the letter carelessly, the pamphlets not at all; first of all because of their resemblance to the little moralizing tracts which had crammed my childhood; second because any advice whatever irritated me; and finally because I did not believe that “Instructions to Tuberculosis Sufferers” or “A Practical Cure for Tuberculosis” could apply to my case. I did not believe I was tubercular. I preferred to attribute my first hemoptysis to a different cause; or rather, as a matter of fact, to no cause at all—I avoided thinking about it, dismissed it from my mind, and considered myself if not cured at least nearly so … Now I read the letter; I devoured the book, the pamphlets. Suddenly, with horrifying clarity, I realized that I had not been receiving proper treatment. Up till now I had merely let myself live, relying on the vaguest hopes; suddenly my life seemed under attack, hideously attacked at its center. A numerous, active enemy was living within me. I listened for him, spied on him, felt him. Nor would I defeat him without a struggle … and I added half-aloud, as though to convince myself more completely: It’s a matter of will.
I prepared for war.
Evening was falling: I organized my strategy. For a while, recovery alone must become my study; my duty was my health; I must consider Good, I must call Right, whatever was healthy for me; must forget, must repulse whatever did not cure. Before supper-time, I had made certain resolutions with regard to breathing, exercise, food.
We always dined in a kind of little pavilion in the center of the veranda. Alone, serene, secluded, we delighted in the intimacy of these occasions. From a nearby hotel an elderly Negro brought us passable meals. Marceline supervised the menu, ordered one dish, sent back another … Not being very hungry as a rule, I did not mind the mediocre cooking, the lack of choices. Marceline, herself accustomed to eating lightly, had not known, had not even suspected, I was not getting enough nourishment. To eat heartily became the first of all my resolutions. I planned to act on it that very evening. I failed miserably: we were served some inedible soup, then a ridiculously overcooked roast.
My annoyance was so intense that, venting it on Marceline, I burst into a furious tirade. I reproached her; from what I said, it appeared that she should have taken the blame for the poor quality of our dishes. This tiny delay in the adoption of the new diet I had resolved upon became of the gravest importance; I forgot all the days before; this one bad meal spoiled everything. I persisted. Marceline had to go down into the town and hunt for food—a jar, a can of anything would do.
Soon she returned with a little terrine which I ate nearly all of myself, as if to prove to us both how desperately I needed more food.
That same evening, matters were decided: our meals would be of much better quality, and more numerous as well—one every three hours; the first at six-thirty in the morning. A heavy supply of canned goods would supplement the mediocre hotel cooking.
I could not sleep that night, too aroused by the anticipation of my new powers. I had a touch of fever, I suspect. There was a bottle of mineral water on the night table: I drank one glass, two; the third time, drinking straight from the bottle, I drained it in one gulp. I rehearsed my will like a lesson to be learned by heart; I educated my aggression, aimed it at whatever was around me; I had to struggle against everything: my salvation depended on no one but myself.
At last I saw the sky turn pale; the dawn had come.
This had been my vigil of arms.
The next day was Sunday. Up till now, I must confess, I hadn’t bothered much about Marceline’s religious preferences; whether from indifference or delicacy, I had decided it was none of my business; besides, I attached no importance to such things myself. That morning Marceline went to Mass, and told me upon her return that she had prayed for me. I looked into her eyes, and then, with as much gentleness as I could muster: “You shouldn’t pray for me, Marceline.”
“Oh, why?” she asked, apprehensively.
“I don’t like to be indebted …”
“You reject God’s help?”
“I’d owe Him something afterward. It makes for obligations; I don’t want any.” We seemed to be joking, but neither of us mistook the importance of our words.
“My poor friend,” she sighed, “you’ll never get better all by yourself.”
“Well, that’ll be too bad …” Then, seeing how disturbed she was, I added less harshly, “You’ll help me.”
I am going to speak at length of my body. I am going to speak of it so much that it will seem to you, at first, I am forgetting the mind’s share. My oversight, in this narrative, is a deliberate one; it was unavoidable at the sanatorium. I was not strong enough to sustain a double life; I decided that I would think about the mind and such things later on, when I was better.
I was still far from well. I broke into a sweat over nothing, and over nothing into a chill; I had what Rousseau calls “la courte haleine”; sometimes a touch of fever; often, from morning on, a feeling of dreadful weariness, and then I would collapse in an armchair, indifferent to everything, self-absorbed, my sole occupation an attempt to breathe properly. I breathed according to rule, cautiously, painfully; exhaling, I would emit two jerks which my overstrained will could not entirely control; even long afterward, I avoided them only by conscious effort.
But what I suffered from most of all was my morbid sensitivity to any change in temperature. I suppose, thinking back on it today, that some general nervous disorder complicated the disease; I cannot otherwise explain a series of phenomena irreducible, it seems to me, to a simple tubercular condition. I was always too hot or too cold; would immediately bundle up with absurd exaggeration and leave off shivering only to break out in a sweat, would take off some of my things and start to shiver as soon as I stopped sweating. Parts of my body became, despite their perspiration, cold as marble to the touch; nothing could warm them again. I was so sensitive to cold that a little water splashed on my foot while I was washing gave me a chill; and quite as sensitive to heat. This sensitivity persisted, still persists, but is today the source of voluptuous gratification. I believe any extreme sensitivity may become the cause of pleasure or of pain, depending on whether the organism is robust or sickly. All that disturbed me, once, has become delicious to me.
I don’t know how I had managed, until then, to sleep with the windows closed; on T—–’s advice, I now tried opening them at night; just a little, at first; soon I was pushing them wide; and this became a habit, a need, so that once the window was closed again, I suffocated. With what delight, later on, I was to feel the approach of the night wind, the moonlight!…
But I am eager to get beyond these first fumblings of health. Thanks to constant solicitude, then, to pure air and better food, my convalescence began. Hitherto, fearing the stairs would be too much for me, I had not dared leave the veranda; during the first days of January I came down at last, ventured into the park.
Marceline would accompany me, carrying a shawl. It was three in the afternoon. The wind, which is often violent in these regions and had greatly distressed me for three days, had dropped. The mildness of the air was delightful.
The public park. A broad path ran through it, shaded by two rows of that species of very tall mimosas called acacias. Benches, under these trees. A channeled stream—I mean, deeper than it was wide—more or less straight, bordering the path; then other, smaller channels distributing the stream, leading it through the park, to the plants; the heavy water is earth-colored, the color of gray or pink clay. Almost no foreigners, a few Arabs; they stroll about, and once they leave the sun, their white robes take the color of the shade.
A curious shudder ran through me when I entered this strange shade; I wrapped up in my shawl; yet no discomfort; on the contrary … We sat down on a bench. Marceline did not speak. Some Arabs passed; then a group of children appeared. Marceline knew several of them, and waved; they came over to us. She told me their names; there were questions, answers, smiles, faces pulled, nudgings. All this irritated me somewhat, and once again my discomfort returned; I felt weary and began to perspire. But what upset me, I admit, was not the children but Marceline. Yes, however slightly, I was upset by her presence. If I had stood up, she would have followed me; if I had taken off my shawl, she would have offered to carry it; if I had put it on again, she would have asked if I felt cold. And then, I dared not speak to the children in front of her: I saw she had her protégés; in spite of myself, but stubbornly, I took an interest in the others. “Let’s go back,” I said to her; and I made up my mind to return to the park alone.
The next day, Marceline had to go out around ten in the morning: I seized the opportunity. Little Bachir, who rarely failed to appear in the morning, carried my shawl; I felt alert, lighthearted. We were nearly alone on the path; I walked slowly, sat down a moment, started off again. Bachir followed, chattering; faithful and obedient as a dog. I came to the place along the canal where the washerwomen worked; a flat stone was set in the middle of the stream; on it lay a little girl, her face bent over the water, one hand in the stream, tossing in or picking out twigs. Her bare feet had dipped into the water, and the moist traces left by this immersion made her skin seem darker. Bachir went over to her and said something; she turned around, smiled at me, answered Bachir in Arabic.
“It’s my sister,” he told me; then he explained that his mother would be coming to do her washing, and that his little sister was waiting for her. Her name was Rhadra, which meant “green,” in Arabic. He said all this in a voice as charming, limpid, childlike, as my emotion upon hearing it.
“She wants you to give her two sous,” he added.
I gave her ten, and was about to walk on when the mother, the washerwoman, arrived. A splendid figure she was, slow-moving, her broad forehead tattooed with blue designs, carrying a basket of wash on her head like the canephora of antiquity, and like them draped simply in a broad piece of dark-blue cloth caught up at the waist and falling straight to the feet. As soon as she saw Bachir, she scolded him harshly. He answered with vehemence; the little girl joined in; among the three of them, a real quarrel began. Finally Bachir, apparently defeated, informed me that his mother needed him this morning; sadly he handed me my shawl and I was obliged to walk on by myself.
I had not taken twenty steps when my shawl began to seem unendurably heavy; covered with sweat, I sat down on the first bench I came to. I hoped some child would appear to relieve me of this burden. The one who soon came was a tall boy of fourteen, black as a Sudanese, not at all shy, who volunteered his services. His name was Ashour. If he had not been blind in one eye, I should have found him handsome. He enjoyed chatting, explained where the stream’s source was, and how beyond the park it flowed through the entire oasis. I listened to him, forgetting my exhaustion. Attractive though Bachir seemed to me, I knew him too well by now, and I was pleased by the change. In fact I resolved to come down to the park alone another day and to await, on one of the benches, the fortune of further encounters.
After having paused a few minutes more, Ashour and I reached my door. I wanted to ask him to come upstairs, but dared not, uncertain of what Marceline would say.
I found her in the dining room, fussing over a very young child so stunted and sickly that my first reaction was one of disgust rather than pity. Almost timidly, Marceline said, “The poor little thing is sick.”
“I hope it’s not contagious. What’s the matter with him?”
“I can’t quite tell, yet. He seems to hurt all over. And he doesn’t speak much French; when Bachir comes tomorrow, he can act as interpreter. I’ve given him a little tea.” Then, as if to justify herself, and because I was still standing there without saying a word, she added, “I’ve known him a long time, but I’ve never dared bring him in; I was afraid of tiring you, or perhaps upsetting you.”
“Why should you be afraid?” I exclaimed. “Bring up all the children you can find, if you want to!” And I realized, with a touch of annoyance that I had not done so, how easily I could have brought Ashour upstairs.
Meanwhile I watched my wife; she was maternal, affectionate. Her tenderness was so heartfelt that the child soon left quite restored. I spoke of my excursion, and without harshness made Marceline understand why I preferred going out alone.
My nights, as a rule, were still interrupted by paroxysms which wakened me chilled to the bone or covered with sweat. That night was a very good one and almost undisturbed. The next morning, I was ready to go out as early as nine o’clock. It was a beautiful day; I felt rested, not weak at all but happy, or rather entertained. The air was still and mild, but I took my shawl nonetheless, as an excuse for striking up an acquaintance with some child who would carry it for me. I have explained that the park adjoined our terrace—I was there at once. I entered its shade with delight. The air was luminous, perfumed by the acacias, whose blossoms appear long before their leaves—unless the faint, mysterious scent came from everywhere, seeming to enter me by several senses at once, to exalt me. I even breathed more easily and my step was lighter; yet I sat down on the first bench I came to, though not so much tired as intoxicated, dazzled. I looked … The shadows were pale and shifting; they did not fall upon the ground, but seemed merely to rest there. O light! I listened … To what? Nothing; everything; each sound entranced me. I remember one shrub whose bark, from a distance, seemed to have such a strange consistency that I had to walk over and feel it. I touched it as if bestowing a caress; the sensation was enthralling. I remember … Was this the morning I would be born at last?
I had forgotten I was alone, forgotten the time, expecting nothing. It seemed to me that until this moment I had felt so little by virtue of thinking so much that I was astonished by a discovery: sensation was becoming as powerful as thoughts.
I say: it seemed to me; for from the depths of my earliest childhood there awakened at last a thousand glimmerings, a thousand lost memories. My newfound sensual awareness let me acknowledge these for the first time. Yes, my senses, awakened now, were recovering a whole history, were recomposing their own past. They were alive! had never stopped living, had maintained, during all those years of study, a latent and deceitful life.
No encounter occurred that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.
Marceline, meanwhile, overjoyed to see me recovering at last, had for several days now been telling me about the wonderful palm gardens of the oasis. She loved being out of doors, and walking. The freedom which my illness thrust upon her permitted long excursions from which she returned dazzled; hitherto she had scarcely spoken of them, not daring to encourage me to accompany her, and fearing to see me saddened by an account of pleasures in which I could not yet have shared. But now that I was recovering, she counted on their attraction to complete my convalescence. My reawakened taste for walking and for observation persuaded me to her purposes. And the very next morning, we left the house together.
She preceded me along a strange path, unlike any I have ever seen in other countries. Between two rather high mud walls it meanders almost lazily; the contours of the gardens these walls confine dispose it to leisure; it curves or doubles back altogether, and right at the start a bend bewilders us; there is no knowing where we have come from or where we are heading. The steadfast water of the stream follows the path, hugs one of the walls, which are made of the same dirt as the road, the earth of the entire oasis, a soft gray or pinkish clay which the water darkens slightly, which the scorching sun crackles, and which hardens in the heat but softens after the first shower, and forms, then, a plastic soil on which bare feet leave their imprint. Above the walls, palm trees. At our approach, turtledoves flew into them. Marceline was watching me.
I had forgotten my exhaustion and my discomfort. I walked on in a kind of ecstasy, a silent happiness, an exaltation of the senses and of the flesh. At that moment, light breezes sprang up; all the fronds stirred, and we saw the highest palm trees bend down; then all the air became still once more, and I heard distinctly, behind the wall, a flute melody. A gap in the wall; we passed through.
The place was full of shadow and of light; serene, and seemingly sheltered from time; full of silences and of rustlings: the faint noise of the water which flows through, irrigates the palms, and retreats from tree to tree; the circumspect call of the turtledoves; the tune of the flute a child was playing. Sitting almost naked on the trunk of a fallen palm, he was tending a herd of goats; he showed no alarm at our approach, did not run away, ceased playing only an instant.
I realized, during that tiny silence, that another flute was replying in the distance. We walked a little farther, then Marceline said, “There’s no use going on—these groves are all alike; they only get a little larger at the end of the oasis …” She spread the shawl on the ground. “Rest a bit.”
How long did we stay there? I don’t remember: what did time matter? Marceline was beside me; I stretched out, laid my head on her knees. The flute song flowed on still, breaking off an instant or two, then resuming; the noise of the water … Now and then a goat bleated. I closed my eyes; I felt Marceline’s cool hand resting on my forehead; I felt the hot sun, gently filtered by the palm trees; I had no thoughts: what did thinking matter? With extraordinary intensity, I felt.
And occasionally, a new sound; I opened my eyes; it was the faint breeze in the palms; it did not come all the way down to us, stirred only the high fronds.
The next morning, I returned to the same grove with Marceline; the evening of that day I went there alone. The goatherd who played the flute was there. I went up to him, spoke to him. His name was Lossif, he was only twelve, was handsome. He told me the names of his goats, told me that the canals are called seghias; water, carefully and sparingly distributed, satisfies the not all of them are used every day, he explained; the plants’ thirst, then is led away from them at once. At the foot of each palm tree, a shallow basin is dug which holds enough water to irrigate the tree; an ingenious system of sluices which the child demonstrated for me controls the water, leads it where the thirst is too great.
The following day, I saw one of Lossif’s brothers; he was a little older, less handsome; his name was Lachmi. Using the stumps of the old, severed fronds as a kind of ladder, he climbed to the very top of a pollarded palm; then descended nimbly, revealing under his loose cloak a golden nakedness. He brought down from the top of the tree, whose cyme had been cut, a little earthenware flask; it had been hung up there, under a recent incision, to catch the palm sap which is made into a sweet wine the Arabs prize highly. On Lachmi’s invitation I tasted it, but the insipid flavor, raw yet syrupy, did not please me.
The following days I went farther; I saw other groves, other shepherds and other goats. As Marceline had said, these groves were all alike, yet each was different.
Sometimes Marceline still accompanied me; but more frequently I left her at the entrance to the groves, convincing her that I was tired, that I wanted to sit down, that she need not wait for me, as she wanted more exercise; thus she would finish the excursion without me. I remained among the children. Soon I had come to know a great many; I would have long conversations with them; I learned their games, taught them others, lost all my sous at pitch-and-toss. Some would accompany me on the path (every day I walked farther), showing me a new way back, carrying my coat and my shawl when I happened to bring both at once; before leaving them, I distributed my change; sometimes they would follow me, still playing, to my very door; sometimes, at last, they would come inside.
Then Marceline brought some into the house on her own initiative. She would bring the ones from the school whom she was encouraging in their studies; when classes were over, the clever and the well-behaved ones came upstairs; the ones I brought home were different boys, but their games united them. We made sure to have a supply of sweet drinks and delicacies on hand at all times. Soon other children came of their own accord, even when we no longer invited them. I remember each one of them; I see them still …
Toward the end of January, the weather suddenly changed for the worse; a cold wind began blowing, and my health immediately showed the effects. The great open space separating the oasis from the town became, once again, impassable for me, and I was obliged, as before, to be content with the city park. Then it rained; an icy rain which, on the far horizon, to the north, covered the mountains with snow.
I spent those mournful days beside the fire, dejected, angrily struggling against the illness which, in this bad weather, triumphed. Gloomy days: I could neither read nor work; the slightest effort made me break out into a nasty sweat; to focus my attention exhausted me; the moment I stopped controlling each breath, I began choking for air.
The children, during these mournful days, were the sole diversion possible for me. When it rained, only the ones we already knew would come; their clothes were soaked; they would sit in front of the fire, in a circle. I was too tired, too ill to do anything but watch them; but the presence of their health did me good. Those whom Marceline favored were weak, sickly, and too docile; I lost my temper with her and with them, and finally drove them away. To tell the truth, they frightened me.
One morning I had a curious revelation about myself: Moktir, the only one of my wife’s protégés who didn’t annoy me, was alone in my room with me. I was standing near the fire, both elbows on the mantel in front of a book in which I appeared to be absorbed, but I could see reflected in the glass the movements of the child behind me. A curiosity I could not quite account for made me follow his every movement. Moktir did not know he was being observed, and thought I was deep in my book. I saw him stealthily approach a table on which Marceline had put down, beside some sewing, a pair of tiny scissors, which he furtively snatched up and in a single gesture stuffed into his burnous. My heart pounded a moment, but the most prudent rationalization could not produce in me the slightest feeling of disgust. Quite the contrary, I could not manage to convince myself that the feeling which filled me at that moment was anything but amusement, but delight. When I had given Moktir all the time he needed to rob me properly, I turned toward him again and spoke to him as if nothing had happened. Marceline was very fond of this child; yet it was not, I believe, the fear of giving her pain which made me, when I saw her next, instead of denouncing Moktir, devise some story or other to account for the disappearance of the scissors. From that day on, Moktir became my favorite.
Our stay in Biskra was not to last much longer. Once the February rains were past, the heat suddenly grew too intense. After several days which had passed in a downpour, one morning I suddenly awakened to an azure sky. As soon as I was out of bed, I ran to the upper veranda. The air, from one horizon to the other, was cloudless. Under the already intense sun, mists were rising; the whole oasis was steaming; I heard the distant rumble of the overflowing Oued. The air was so pure, so weightless that I felt better at once. Marceline came; we wanted to go outside, but the mud, that day, prevented us.
Several days later we returned to Lossif’s palm grove; the stalks seemed heavy, soft and tumid with sap. I did not understand the forbearance of this African earth, submerged for days at a time and now awakening from winter, drunk with water, bursting with new juices; it laughed in this springtime frenzy whose echo, whose image, I perceived within myself. Ashour and Moktir accompanied us at first; I still relished their frivolous companionship which cost no more than a half-franc piece a day; but soon, tired of them and no longer so weak that I still required the example of their health, and no longer finding in their play the sustenance I needed for my joy, I focused on Marceline the exaltation of my mind and of my senses. From her evident delight, I realized that she had been sad all this time. I apologized like a child for having often forsaken her, attributed to my weakness these evasive and unaccountable moods, declared that hitherto I had been too exhausted to make love, but that henceforth I would feel my ardor growing even as my health. I was telling the truth, but doubtless I was still quite weak, for it was only a month later that I desired Marceline.
Every dawn meanwhile aggravated the heat. There was nothing to keep us in Biskra—except that charm which was to recall me to the place later on. Our decision to leave was a sudden one. In three hours our luggage was ready. The train would leave the next morning, at daybreak.
I remember the last night. The moon was nearly full; through my wide-open window, its bright light fell into my room. Marceline was asleep, I think. I was in bed, but could not sleep. I felt I was burning with a kind of happy fever, which was nothing but life itself. I stood up, soaked my hands and face in water, then, pushing open the glass door, stepped outside.
It was already late; not a sound; not a breath; the very air seemed to be asleep. Faintly, in the distance, I could hear the Arab dogs which yelp like jackals all night long. In front of me, the little courtyard; on the wall opposite, a patch of oblique shadow; the evenly spaced palms, without a vestige of color or life, seemed immobilized forever … But even in sleep you can recognize a palpitation of life—here nothing seemed asleep; everything seemed dead. I was appalled by this calm; and suddenly I was invaded again, as though in assertion, in protest, in silent grievance, by the tragic sense of my life—a feeling so violent, so painful and so sudden it would have made me cry out, had I been able to scream like an animal. I took my hand, I remember, my left hand in my right; I wanted to lift it to my face, and I did so. Why? to affirm that I was alive and to find it good to be alive. I touched my forehead, my eyelids. A shudder ran through me. A day will come, I thought, a day will come, when even to raise to my lips the very water I thirst for most, I will no longer have the strength … I went back inside, but did not yet return to bed; I wanted to mark that night, to impose its memory upon my mind, to hold it fast; uncertain what to do, I picked up a book from my desk—the Bible—and let it fall open at random; leaning over it in the brilliant moonlight, I could read; I read these words of Christ to Peter, these words, alas, I was not to forget again: “When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself and walkest whither thou wouldst; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands …” Thou shalt stretch forth thy hands …
The next morning, at dawn, we left.
I shall not speak of each stage of the journey. Parts have left no more than a vague memory; my health, sometimes better and sometimes worse, would still collapse in any cold wind, jeopardized by the shadow of a cloud, and my nervous state produced frequent complications; but my lungs, at least, were recovering. Each relapse was shorter and less serious; the attack as intense but my body better armed against it.
We proceeded from Tunis to Malta, then to Syracuse; I was returning to that classic terrain whose language and past were familiar. Ever since the onset of my illness, I had existed without scrutiny, without law, merely dedicating myself to staying alive, like an animal or a child. Less absorbed by suffering now, my life once again became consistent and conscious. After this long agony, I had supposed I would be reborn the same man, and soon connect my present to the past; in the novelty of an unfamiliar country I might thus delude myself; here, no longer. Everything was to teach me what still astonished me: I had changed.
When, in Syracuse and later on, I tried to resume my studies, to immerse myself once more in the detailed inspection of the past, I found that something had if not suppressed at least altered my enjoyment of it: the sense of the present. The history of the past now assumed, in my eyes, that immobility, that terrifying fixity, of the nocturnal shadows in the little courtyard at Biskra, the immobility of death. Before, I had delighted in that very fixity which afforded my mind its precision: all the facts of history had seemed to be museum pieces, or better still, specimens in an herbarium whose final desiccation helped me forget that once, rich with sap, they had lived under the sun. But now, if I could still take some pleasure in history, it was from imagining it in the present. Consequently, great political events stirred me much less than the reviving emotion I felt for poets, or for certain men of action. In Syracuse I reread Theocritus, and realized that his shepherds with their beautiful names were the very ones I had loved in Biskra.
My erudition, which awakened at each step, encumbered me, frustrating my joy. I could not see a Greek theater or temple without immediately reconstructing it in my mind. At each ancient festival site, the ruin which remained in its place made me grieve over its death—and I had a horror of death.
I came to avoid ruins, preferring to the finest monuments of the past those quarry gardens called latomias, where the lemons have the sweetness of oranges, and the shores of the Cyane, which flows as blue through its reeds now as when it wept for Persephone.
I came to despise in myself that knowledge which had once been my pride; such studies, formerly my whole life, no longer seemed to have more than a merely accidental and conventional relation to me. I was finding myself a different person and was happy to exist apart from them. As a specialist, I found myself stupid—as a man, did I know myself? I was scarcely born, how could I know already what I was born as? That would have to be learned.
To the man whom death’s wing has touched, what once seemed important is so no longer; and other things become so which once did not seem important or which he did not even know existed. The layers of acquired knowledge peel away from the mind like a cosmetic and reveal, in patches, the naked flesh beneath, the authentic being hidden there.
Henceforth this was what I sought to discover: the authentic being, “the old Adam” whom the Gospels no longer accepted; the man whom everything around me—books, teachers, family and I myself—had tried from the first to suppress. And I had already glimpsed him, faint, obscured by their encrustations, but all the more valuable, all the more urgent. I scorned henceforth that secondary, learned being whom education had pasted over him. Such husks must be stripped away.
And I would compare myself to a palimpsest; I shared the thrill of the scholar who beneath more recent script discovers, on the same paper, an infinitely more precious ancient text. What was it, this occult text? In order to read it, would I not have to erase, first, the more recent ones?
Nor was I any longer the sickly and studious being whom my earlier upbringing, rigid and restrictive as it was, suited so well. This was more than a convalescence—this was an increase, a recrudescence of life, the afflux of a richer, hotter blood which would touch my thoughts one by one, penetrating everywhere, stirring, coloring the most remote, delicate and secret fibers of my being. For whether we are strong or weak, we grow accustomed to our condition; the self, according to its powers, takes shape; but what if these powers should increase, if they should afford a wider scope, what if … ? Not all these thoughts occurred to me at the time, and my portrait here is a falsification. To tell the truth, I did not think at all, did not scrutinize myself; a lucky fate guided me. I was afraid that some over-hasty glance might profane the mystery of my slow transformation. Time was needed for the faded letters to reappear, not an attempt to shape them. Leaving my brain alone, then, not abandoned but fallow, I gave myself up, voluptuously, to … myself, to things, to existence, which seemed to me divine. We had left Syracuse, and I would run down the steep road between Taormina and Mola, shouting, as if to invoke him within myself: “A new being! a new being!”
My sole effort, a constant effort then, was therefore systematically to revile or suppress whatever I believed due merely to past education and to my early moral indoctrination. In deliberate scorn of my own erudition, in disdain for my scholarly pastimes, I refused to visit Agrigento, and a few days later, on the road to Naples, did not even stop near the beautiful temple of Paestum, where Greece still breathes and where I did go, two years later, to pray to some god I no longer remember.
Why did I say “my sole effort”? What interest could I take in myself, except as a perfectible being? This unknown perfection, vaguely as I imagined it, exalted my will as never before in my longing to achieve it; I dedicated this will utterly to fortifying my body, turning it to bronze. Near Salerno, leaving the coast, we had stopped in Ravello. Here the keener air, the lure of cliffs filled with hiding places and surprises, the unexplored depth of the valleys, all contributed to my strength, to my joy, and nourished my will.
Not so much secluded from the shore as it is adjacent to the sky, Ravello, on its steep height, faces the flat, distant shore of Paestum. Under Norman rule, this was almost a major city; it is no more, today, than a cramped village where we were the only foreigners, I think. We lodged in an ancient religious establishment, now transformed into an inn; situated at the cliff’s edge, its terraces and garden seemed to jut into the blue air. Past the wall loaded with vines, there was nothing to be seen, at first, but the sea; you had to walk up to the wall in order to be able to follow the terraced fields which, by stairs rather than paths, led down from Ravello to the shore. Above us, the mountain continued. Olive groves, enormous carobs; in their shade, cyclamens; higher still, chestnut groves, cool air, alpine plants; lower down, lemon trees beside the sea. They are set out in tiny, almost identical terraced gardens, shaped so by the slope of the terrain; a narrow path runs through the center from the highest point, all the way down; noiselessly you enter, like a thief. You dream, under this green shade; the foliage is dense, heavy; not a single sunbeam penetrates unfiltered; like drops of thick wax, the lemons hang, scented; in the shade they are white and greenish; they are within reach of your hand, of your thirst; they are sweet, harsh; they quench your thirst.
The shade was so deep, beneath them, that I dared not pause there after a walk which still made me perspire. Yet the stairs no longer tired me; I practiced climbing them with my mouth closed; I kept extending the intervals between rests, promising myself I could venture that far without weakness; then, reaching my goal, finding my reward in my satisfied vanity, I breathed deeply, powerfully, over and over until I seemed to feel the air penetrate my lungs more completely. I transferred my old assiduity to all these bodily preoccupations. I made progress.
I was amazed, occasionally, that my health was returning so quickly. I managed to convince myself that I had initially exaggerated the seriousness of my condition; to doubt that I had been so very ill; to laugh at the blood I had spat up; to regret that my cure had not continued to be more arduous.
I had given myself, at first, very foolish treatment, unaware of my body’s needs. I made a patient study of these, and developed, with respect to precautions and care, an ingenuity so unremitting that I made it into something like a game. What I still suffered from most was my morbid sensitivity to the slightest change in temperature. Now that my lungs were clear, I attributed this hyperesthesia to my nervous debility, an after-effect of the disease. I resolved to overcome this. The sight of the splendidly tanned peasants whose sun-drenched skins I glimpsed when they threw off their jackets in the fields encouraged me to let the same thing happen to me. One morning, stripping myself naked, I examined my body; the sight of my skinny arms, of my shoulders which the greatest efforts could not keep from slouching, but especially of the whiteness, or rather the colorlessness, of my skin filled me with shame, and tears came to my eyes. I dressed again quickly, and instead of heading down toward Amalfi, as I was accustomed to do, I made for the rocks covered with low-growing grass and moss, far from houses or roads, where I knew I could not be seen. Here I slowly undressed. The air was quite cool, but the sun broiling. I offered the whole of my body to its flames. I sat, lay down, turned over. I felt the hard soil beneath me; the stirring grass brushed my body. Though sheltered from the wind, I trembled at each breath of air. Soon a delicious radiance enveloped me; my whole being brimmed to the surface of my skin.
We stayed two weeks in Ravello; each morning I would return to those rocks, resume my cure. Soon even the one garment I still wore became uncomfortable, superfluous; my invigorated skin stopped sweating incessantly and could protect itself, now, by its own warmth.
The morning of one of those last days (it was mid-April), I dared more. In a declivity of the rocks I am describing flowed a spring of clear water. It ran down the rocks in a scanty cascade, but had hollowed out a deeper basin where it fell, and the water that collected there was very pure. Three times I had come here, had leaned over, had reclined on the brink, filled with thirst, with longing; I had stared fixedly at the smooth rocks on the bottom, where I could see no stain, no weed, and where the sun, sinking through the water, cast its shimmering net. That fourth day, I walked resolutely to the water, where it glowed brighter than ever, and without another thought plunged straight into it. Numb with cold, I came out almost at once, stretched my body on the grass, in the sunlight. There was a clump of mint growing nearby, the perfume overpowering. I picked a stalk, crushed its leaves and rubbed them all over my body, damp now but incandescent with the sun’s heat. I looked at myself a long time, without any more shame, with joy. I judged myself not yet strong, but capable of strength, harmonious, sensual, almost beautiful.
Thus I occupied myself, as far as any real action was concerned, with physical exercises which of course suggested my new ethic but already seemed no more than an apprenticeship, a means, and no longer satisfied me in themselves.
Nonetheless I shall account for one action here, foolish though it may seem to you, for in its very puerility it clarifies my tormenting need to express outwardly the inmost change of my being: In Amalfi, I had my beard shaved off.
Up till then I had worn a full beard, and cut my hair very close. It had never occurred to me that I might just as well have presented myself differently. And all of a sudden, the day I had stretched out naked on that rock for the first time, my beard bothered me; it was like a final garment I could not strip off; it felt artificial; carefully trimmed as it was, not pointed but squarish, it now seemed ugly, ridiculous. Back in my hotel room, I gazed at myself in the mirror and disliked what I saw; I looked like what I had been up till now: a bookworm. Right after lunch, I went down to Amalfi, my mind made up. The town is a tiny one: I had to make do with a common stall on the main square. It was market day; the shop was full and the wait endless; but neither the dubious razors, the yellowing brush, the smell, nor the barber’s comments could make me waver now. Feeling my beard fall under the scissors, I seemed to be peeling off a mask. Yet when I looked at myself afterward, the emotion which filled me—though I choked it back as well as I could—was not joy but fear. I am not questioning this emotion, I am stating it. I found my features quite handsome. No, the fear grew out of my sense that others could read my thoughts now, thoughts which to me seemed suddenly fearful.
In compensation, I let my hair grow.
This was all that my new, still-idle being had found to do. I imagined it would provoke actions astonishing to myself—but later on; later on, I reassured myself, when your being is more fully formed. Forced to live on expectations, I maintained, like Descartes, a provisional mode of action. Marceline, for this very reason, may have been deceived. The change in my expression, it is true, especially the day when I appeared without my beard, the new relation of my features to each other, may perhaps have disturbed her, but she already loved me too much to see me clearly; what is more, I kept reassuring her as well as I could. It was essential that she not interfere with my rebirth; to shield it from her gaze, I would have to dissimulate.
Moreover, the man Marceline loved, the man she had married, was not my “new being.” And I kept reminding myself of this, in order to force myself to conceal that being from her. Consequently I showed her no more of myself than an image which, constant and faithful to the past as it was, grew falser day by day.
My relations with Marceline therefore remained the same—although more exalted from day to day by an ever-greater love. My very dissimulation (if I may use such a word to express the necessity of shielding my thoughts from her judgment), my dissimulation increased my love. I mean that my enterprise unceasingly involved Marceline. Perhaps this need to lie cost me something, at first: but I soon realized that what are supposedly the worst things (lying, to mention only one) are hard to do only when you have never done them; but that each of them becomes, and so quickly! easy, pleasant, sweet in the repetition, and soon a second nature. Thus, as in each instance when an initial disgust is overcome, I ended by enjoying the dissimulation itself, savoring it as I savored the functioning of my unsuspected faculties. And I advanced every day into a richer, fuller life, toward a more delicious happiness.
The road from Ravello to Sorrento is so beautiful that I was reconciled, that morning, to seeing nothing finer on earth. The warm ruggedness of the rocks, the air’s abundance, its fragrance and limpidity—everything filled me with the joy of being alive until my whole being seemed no more than a hovering rapture: memories or regrets, hope or desire, future and past fell silent; I knew nothing of life but what the moment brought to it, took from it. O physical joy! I exulted, O confident rhythm of my muscles, O health!
I had left early in the morning, preceding Marceline, whose excessive composure might have tempered my joy, as her pace would have slackened mine. She would join me by carriage at Positano, where we were to lunch.
I was just approaching Positano when the sound of wheels, forming the ground bass to a peculiar singing, made me turn round abruptly. And at first I could see nothing, for the road along the cliff’s edge is a winding one; then all at once a carriage dashed into view—Marceline’s carriage. The driver was singing at the top of his lungs, gesticulating wildly, standing on his seat and savagely whipping the terrified horse. What a brute the man was! He rushed past, leaving me just enough time to get out of the way, and did not stop when I shouted … I ran after him, but the carriage was moving too fast. I was afraid Marceline might jump out, and equally afraid she might remain inside; if the horse gave a start, she could be thrown into the sea. Suddenly the horse collapsed. Marceline got down and was about to run away, but already I was at her side. The driver, once he saw me, greeted me with a stream of profanity. I was in a fury with the man, and at his first insult I rushed at him, dragged him down from his seat. We rolled together on the ground, but I didn’t lose my advantage; he seemed dazed by his fall and soon was still more so from the punch in the mouth I gave him when I saw he was trying to bite me. I didn’t let him go even then, but knelt on his chest and tried to pin down his arms. I stared into that hideous face which my fist had just made uglier; he was spitting, slobbering, bleeding, swearing—a horrible creature altogether! Truly, strangling seemed no more than he deserved, and I might have done it … At least I felt capable of it; and I believe that only the thought of the police prevented me.
I managed, with some difficulty, to tie up the maniac, and then I threw him into the carriage like a sack.
What glances, after that, Marceline and I exchanged! The danger had not been great; but I had had to show my strength, and in her defense. Then and there I realized I could give up my life for her, and give it joyfully … The horse had staggered to its feet. Leaving the drunkard in the back of the carriage, Marceline and I climbed up onto the box, and driving as best we could, managed to reach Positano, then Sorrento.
It was on that night that I possessed Marceline.
Have you understood me, or must I repeat that I was virtually a novice in all that has to do with love? Perhaps it was to its novelty that our wedding night owed its grace. For it seems to me, recalling it today, that that first night was the only one—so greatly did the anticipation and the surprise of love add to its pleasures; so sufficient is a single night for the utterance of the greatest love; and so stubbornly does my memory revive only that one night. It was a momentary laughter, in which our souls united. But I think there comes a point in love, a unique moment which later on the soul seeks in vain to surpass, and that the effort to revive such happiness depletes it; that nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness. Alas! I remember that night.
Our hotel was outside the town, surrounded by gardens, by orchards; our room opened onto a wide balcony; branches brushed against it. Dawn entered freely through our wide-open windows. I got up in silence and leaned tenderly over Marceline. She was asleep, and appeared to be smiling in her sleep. It seemed to me, now that I was stronger, that she had become even more delicate, as if all her grace were a kind of fragility. Tumultuous thoughts whirled through my mind. I realized she was telling the truth when she said that I meant everything to her; and my next thought was: what am I doing for her happiness? I abandon her almost the whole of every day; she expects everything of me, and I forsake her—poor Marceline! Tears filled my eyes. Vainly I ransacked my past debility for an excuse: what need had I now of her constant care and of my selfishness? Was I not stronger than she at this moment?
The smile had left her cheeks; dawn, though gilding everything, revealed her to me suddenly sad and wan—and perhaps the morning’s approach awakened my anxiety. I challenged myself: must I some day, in my turn, take care of you, worry about you, Marceline? I shuddered; and overcome with love, with pity, with tenderness, I gently rested my lips between her closed eyes in the tenderest, the most loving and the most reverent of kisses.
The few days we spent in Sorrento were smiling days, somnolent ones. Had I ever enjoyed such calm, such content? Would I enjoy their like again?… I was with Marceline unceasingly; paying less attention to myself and more to her, I found in our conversations the pleasure I had taken, the days before, in my silence.
I was amazed at first to learn that our wandering life, which I claimed to find so satisfying, appealed to her only as a temporary condition; but all at once the idleness of such an existence became apparent to me, and I acknowledged that it was only a phase; for the first time, a desire to work born of the very leisure granted at last by my recovery, I spoke seriously of going home; from Marceline’s joy at my words, I realized she had been dreaming of this for a long time.
Yet the various historical studies I began reconsidering no longer afforded me the same pleasure. I’ve told you: since my illness, all abstract and neutral knowledge of the past had seemed futile to me, and if not so long ago I might have undertaken philological research, applying myself, for instance, to determining the Goths’ responsibility in the corruption of the Latin language, and neglecting, misunderstanding such figures as Theodoric, Cassiodorus, Amalaswintha and their splendid passions for the sake of mere signs, the residue of their lives; now these same signs, and philology as a whole, were no more to me than another means of penetrating deeper into a subject whose barbaric grandeur and nobility had just become evident. I decided to consider this period more closely, to limit myself for a while to the final years of the empire of the Goths, and to take advantage of our imminent visit to Ravenna, the scene of its death throes.
But, I must admit, the figure of the young king Athalaric was what attracted me most to the subject. I imagined this fifteen-year-old, covertly spurred on by the Goths, rebelling against his mother Amalaswintha, balking at his Latin education, rejecting culture like a stallion restive in harness and, preferring the company of the tumultuous Goths to that of the old and over-prudent Cassiodorus, enjoying for a few years with unruly favorites his own age a violent, voluptuous, unbridled life, dying at eighteen, utterly corrupted, glutted with debauchery. I recognized in this tragic thirst for a wilder and unspoiled existence something of what Marceline used to call, with a smile, my “attack.” I sought relief by applying to it at least my mind, since my body was no longer concerned, and I did my best to convince myself there was a lesson to be read in Athalaric’s hideous death.
Before Ravenna, then, where we would stay for two weeks, we would do a little sightseeing in Rome and Florence, and by leaving out Venice and Verona would shorten the end of our trip, not stopping again until we reached Paris. I discovered an entirely new pleasure in discussing the future with Marceline; some uncertainty still remained about our summer plans; both of us were tired of traveling and had no desire to set out again; I wanted complete calm for my studies; and we thought of the farm between Lisieux and Pont-l’Évêque, in the greenest part of Normandy—an estate that once belonged to my mother where I had spent several of my childhood summers with her, but to which I had not returned since her death. My father had entrusted its management to a bailiff, now an old man, who collected the rents and sent them to us regularly. The large and very pleasant house, in a garden crisscrossed with running streams, had left me with magical memories; the place was called La Morinière; it seemed to me it would be a good place to live.
I mentioned the possibility of spending the following winter in Rome; as a worker, this time, no longer as a tourist. But this latest plan was quickly altered: in the pile of mail which had long been waiting for us in Naples, one letter unexpectedly reported that when a chair at the Collège de France had fallen vacant, my name had been proposed several times; it was only an interim appointment, but one which, for that very reason, would leave me more freedom in the future; my informant suggested the various steps to be taken, if I were interested, and strongly advised me to accept. I hesitated, regarding the post, at first, as no more than a kind of bondage; then I decided it might be interesting to present, in a series of lectures, my work on Cassiodorus. The pleasure I would be giving Marceline managed to convince me. And once my decision was made, I saw only its advantages.
In the scholarly circles of Rome and Florence, my father maintained various connections with whom I myself had entered into correspondence. They afforded me every means of making whatever investigations I wished, in Ravenna and elsewhere; I no longer thought of anything except my work. Marceline found a thousand charming ways to further my project by her countless attentions.
Our happiness, during this last part of the trip, was so untroubled, so calm, that I have nothing to tell about it. The loveliest creations of men are persistently painful. What would be the description of happiness? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it, can be told. —And now I have told you all that had prepared it.