The Inferno, Henri Barbusse [lightweight ebook reader .TXT] 📗

raise her spirits.

"We cannot say that, we who have reshaped our destiny. You, who have achieved a great act of will--"

But what he said was borne away like chaff.

"What good was it? Everything is useless. In spite of what I have tried to do, I am alone. My sin cannot change the face of things.

"It is not by sin that we attain happiness, nor is it by virtue, nor is it by that kind of divine fire by which one makes great instinctive decisions and which is neither good nor evil. It is by none of these things that one reaches happiness. One /never/ reaches happiness."

She paused, and said, as if she felt her fate recoiling upon her:

"Yes, I know I have done wrong, that those who love me most would detest me if they knew. My mother, if she knew--she who is so indulgent--would be so unhappy. I know that our love exists with the reprobation of all that is wise and just and is condemned by my mother's tears. But what's the use of being ashamed any more? Mother, if you knew, you would have pity on my happiness."

"You are naughty," he murmured feebly.

She stroked the man's forehead lightly, and said in a tone of extraordinary assurance:

"You know I don't deserve to be called naughty. You know what I am saying is above a personal application. You know better than I do that one is alone. One day when I was speaking about the joy of living and you were as sad as I am to-day, you looked at me, and said you did not know what I was thinking, in spite of my explanations. You showed me that love is only a kind of festival of solitude, and holding me in your arms, you ended by exclaiming, 'Our love--I am our love,' and I gave the inevitable answer, alas, 'Our love--I am our love.'"

He wanted to speak, but she checked him.

"Stop! Take me, squeeze my hands, hold me close, give me a long, long kiss, do with me what you want--just to bring yourself close to me, close to me! And tell me that you are suffering. Why, don't you feel /my/ grief?"

He said nothing, and in the twilight shroud that wrapped them round, I saw his head make the needless gesture of denial. I saw all the misery emanating from these two, who for once by chance in the shadows did not know how to lie any more.

It was true that they were there together, and yet there was nothing to unite them. There was a void between them. Say what you will, do what you will, revolt, break into a passion, dispute, threaten--in vain. Isolation will conquer you. I saw there was nothing to unite them, nothing.

She kept on in the same strain.

He seemed to be used to these sad monologues, uttered in the same tone, tremendous invocations to the impossible. He did not answer any more. He held her in his arms, rocked her quietly, and caressed her with delicate tenderness. He treated her as if she were a sick child he was nursing, without telling her what was the matter.

But he was disturbed by her contact. Even when prostrate and desolate, she quivered warm in his arms. He coveted this prey even though wounded. I saw his eyes fixed on her, while she gave herself up freely to her sadness. He pressed his body against hers. It was she whom he wanted. Her words he threw aside. He did not care for them. They did not caress him. It was she whom he wanted, she!

Separation! They were very much alike in ideas and temperament, and just then they were helping each other as much as they could. But I saw clearly--I who was a spectator apart from men and whose gaze soared above them--that they were strangers, and that in spite of all appearances they did not see nor hear each other any more. They conversed as best they could, but neither could yield to the other, and each tried to conquer the other. And this terrible battle broke my heart.

. . . . .


She understood his desire. She said plaintively, like a child at fault:

"I am not feeling well."

Then, in a sudden change of mood, she gave herself up to love, offering her whole self with her wounded woman's heart.

* * * * * * * * *

They rose and shook off the dream that had cast them to the ground.

He was as dejected as she. I bent over to catch what he was saying.

"If I had only known!" he breathed in a whisper.

Prostrated but more distrustful of each other with a crime between them, they went slowly over to the grey window, cleansed by a streak of twilight.

How much they were like themselves on the other evening. It /was/ the other evening. Never had the impression been borne in upon me so strongly that actions are vain and pass like phantoms.

The man was seized with a trembling. And, vanquished, despoiled of all his pride, of all his masculine reserve, he no longer had the strength to keep back the avowal of shamed regret.

"One can't master one's self," he stammered, hanging his head. "It is fate."

They caught hold of each other's hands, shuddered slightly, panting, dispirited, tormented by their hearts.

. . . . .


Fate!

In so speaking they saw further than the flesh. In their remorse and disgust it was not mere physical disillusionment that so crushed them. They saw further. They were overcome by an impression of bleak truth, of aridity, of growing nothingness, at the thought that they had so many times grasped, rejected, and vainly grasped again their frail carnal ideal.

They felt that everything was fleeting, that everything wore out, that everything that was not dead would die, and that even the illusory ties holding them together would not endure. Their sadness did not bring them together. On the contrary, they were separated by all the force of their two sorrows. To suffer together, alas, what disunion!

And the condemnation of love itself came from her, in a cry of agony:

"Oh, our great, our immense love! I feel that little by little I am recovering from it!"

. . . . .


She threw back her head, and raised her eyes.

"Oh, the first time!" she said.

She went on, while both of them saw that first time when their hands had found each other.

"I knew that some day all that emotion would die, and, in spite of our promises, I wanted time to stand still.

"But time did not stand still, and now we scarcely love each other."

He made a gesture as of denial.

"It is not only you, my dear, who are drifting away," she continued. "I am, too. At first I thought it was only you. But then I understood my poor heart and realised that in spite of you, I could do nothing against time."

She went on slowly, now with her eyes turned away, now looking at him.

"Alas, some day, I may say to you, 'I no longer love you.' Alas, alas, some day I may say to you, 'I have never loved you!'

"This is the wound--time, which passes and changes us. The separation of human beings that deceive themselves is nothing in comparison. One can live even so. But the passage of time! To grow old, to think differently, to die. I am growing old and I am dying, I. It has taken me a long time to understand it. I am growing old. I /am/ not old, but I am growing old. I have a few grey hairs already. The first grey hair, what a blow!

"Oh, this blotting out of the colour of your hair. It gives you the feeling of being covered with your shroud, of dry bones, and tombstones."

She rose and cried out into the void:

"Oh, to escape the network of wrinkles!"

. . . . .


She continued:

"I said to myself, 'By slow degrees you will get there. Your skin will wither. Your eyes, which smile even in repose, will always be watering. Your breasts will shrink and hang on your skeleton like loose rags. Your lower jaw will sag from the tiredness of living. You will be in a constant shiver of cold, and your appearance will be cadaverous. Your voice will be cracked, and people who now find it charming to listen to you will be repelled. The dress that hides you too much now from men's eyes will not sufficiently hide your monstrous nudity, and people will turn their eyes away and not even dare to think of you.'"

She choked and put her hands to her mouth, overcome by the truth, as if she had too much to say. It was magnificent and terrifying.

He caught her in his arms, in dismay. But she was as in a delirium, transported by a universal grief. You would have thought that this funereal truth had just come to her like a sudden piece of bad news.

"I love you, but I love the past even more. I long for it, I long for it, I am consumed with longing for it. The past! I shall cry, I shall suffer because the past will never come back again.

"But love the past as much as you will, it will never come back. Death is everywhere, in the ugliness of what has been too long beautiful, in the tarnishing of what has been clean and pure, in the forgetfulness of what is long past, in daily habits, which are the forgetfulness of what is near. We catch only glimpses of life. Death is the one thing we really have time to see. Death is the only palpable thing. Of what use is it to be beautiful and chaste? They will walk over our graves just the same.

"A day is coming when I shall be no more. I am crying because I shall surely die. There is an invincible nothingness in everything and everybody. So when one thinks of that, dear, one smiles and forgives. One does not bear grudges. But goodness won in that way is worse than anything else."

. . . . .


He bent over and kissed her hands. He enveloped her in a warm, respectful silence, but, as always, I felt he was master of himself.

"I have always thought of death," she continued in a changed voice. "One day I confessed to my husband how it haunted me. He launched out furiously. He told me I was a neurasthenic and that he must look after me. He made me promise to be like himself and never think of such things, to be healthy and well-balanced, as he was.