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

she glanced round the room.

"Let us respect this room," she breathed. Then she was ashamed at having refused, and immediately stammered, "Excuse me."

The man also looked around the room. His forehead darkened with a savage frown of suspicion, and the superstition of his race shone in his eyes.

"It was here--that he died?"

"No," she said.

* * * * * * * * *


Afterwards they did as the others had done, as human beings always do, as they themselves would do many times again in the strange future--they sat with their eyes half-closed and the same uneasy look of shame and terror in them as Amy and her lover.

But these two required no artificial stimulus for their love. They had no need of the night. And they felt no culpability. They were two grand young creatures, driven together naturally by the very force of their love, and their ardour cleansed everything, like fire. They were innocent. They had no regrets and felt no remorse. They thought they were united.

He took her soft hand in his dark hand, and said: "Now you are mine for always. You have made me know divine ecstasy. You have my heart and I have yours. You are my wife forever."

"You are everything to me," she answered.

They went forth into life like a couple in legend, inspired and rosy with anticipation--he, the knight with no shadows falling on him except the dark of his hair, helmeted or plumed, and she, the priestess of the pagan gods, the spirit of nature.

They would shine in the sunlight. They would see nothing around them, blinded by the daylight. They would undergo no struggles except the strife of the sexes and the spying of jealousy; for lovers are enemies rather than friends.

I followed them with my eyes going through life, which would be nothing to them but fields, mountains, or forests. I saw them veiled in a kind of light, sheltered from darkness, protected for a time against the fearful spell of memory and thought.

. . . . .


I sat down and leaned on my elbows. I thought of myself. Where was I now after all this? What was I going to do in life? I did not know. I would look about and would surely find something.

So, sitting there, I quietly indulged in hopes. I must have no more sadness, no more anguish and fever. If the rest of my life was to pass in calm, in peace, I must go far, far away from all those awful serious things, the sight of which was terrible to bear.

Somewhere I would lead a wise, busy life--and earn my living regularly.

And you, you will be beside me, my sister, my child, my wife.

You will be poor so as to be more like all other women. In order for us to be able to live together I shall work all day and so be your servant. You will work affectionately for us both in this room, and in my absence there will be nothing beside you but the pure, simple presence of your sewing machine. You will keep the sort of order by which nothing is forgotten, you will practice patience which is as long as life, and maternity which is as heavy as the world.

I shall come in, I shall open the door in the dark, I shall hear you come from the next room, bringing the lamp. A dawn will announce you. You will tell me the quiet story of your day's work, without any object except to give me your thoughts and your life. You will speak of your childhood memories. I shall not understand them very well because you will be able to give me, perforce, only insufficient details, but I shall love your sweet strange language.

We shall speak of the child we shall have, and you will bend your head and your neck, white as milk, and in our minds we shall hear the rocking of the cradle like a rustling of wings. And when we are tired out, and even after we have grown old, we shall dream afresh along with our child.

After this revery our thoughts will not stray, but linger tenderly. In the evening we shall think of the night. You will be full of a happy thought. Your inner life will be gay and shining, not because of what you see, but because of your heart. You will beam as blind people beam.

We shall sit up facing each other. But little by little, as it gets late, our words will become fewer and less intelligible. Sleep will lay bare your soul. You will fall asleep over the table, you will feel me watching over you more and more.

Tenderness is greater than love. I do not admire carnal love when it is by itself and bare. I do not admire its disorderly selfish paroxysms, so grossly short-lived. And yet without love the attachment of two human beings is always weak. Love must be added to affection. The things it contributes to a union are absolutely needed--exclusiveness, intimacy, and simplicity.


CHAPTER XVI

I went out on the street like an exile, I who am an everyday man, who resemble everybody else so much, too much. I went through the streets and crossed the squares with my eyes fixed upon things without seeing them. I was walking, but I seemed to be falling from dream to dream, from desire to desire. A door ajar, an open window gave me a pang. A woman passing by grazed against me, a woman who told me nothing of what she might have told me. I dreamed of her tragedy and of mine. She entered a house, she disappeared, she was dead.

I stood still, a prey to a thousand thoughts, stifled in the robe of the evening. From a closed window on the ground floor floated a strain of music. I caught the beauty of a sonata as I would catch distinct human words, and for a moment I listened to what the piano was confiding to the people inside.

Then I sat down on a bench. On the opposite side of the avenue lit by the setting sun two men also seated themselves on a bench. I saw them clearly. They seemed overwhelmed by the same destiny, and a mutual sympathy seemed to unite them. You could tell they liked each other. One was speaking, the other was listening.

I read a secret tragedy. As boys they had been immensely fond of each other. They had always been of the same mind and shared their ideas. One of them got married, and it was the married one who was now speaking. He seemed to be feeding their common sorrow.

The bachelor had been in the habit of visiting his home, always keeping his proper distance, though perhaps vaguely loving the young wife. However, he respected her peace and her happiness. The married man was telling him that his wife had ceased to love him, while he still adored her with his whole being. She had lost interest in him, and turned away from him. She did not laugh and did not smile except when there were other people present. He spoke of this grief, this wound to his love, to his right. His right! He had unconsciously believed that he had a right over her, and he lived in this belief. Then he found out that he had no right.

Here the friend thought of certain things she had said to him, of a smile she had given him. Although he was good and modest and still perfectly pure, a warm, irresistible hope insinuated itself into his heart. Listening to the story of despair that his friend confided to him, he raised his face bit by bit and gave the woman a smile. And nothing could keep that evening, now falling grey upon those two men, from being at once an end and a beginning.

A couple, a man and a woman--poor human beings almost always go in pairs--approached, and passed. I saw the empty space between them. In life's tragedy, separation is the only thing one sees. They had been happy, and they were no longer happy. They were almost old already. He did not care for her, although they were growing old together. What were they saying? In a moment of open-heartedness, trusting to the peacefulness reigning between them at that time, he owned up to an old transgression, to a betrayal scrupulously and religiously hidden until then. Alas, his words brought back an irreparable agony. The past, which had gently lain dead, rose to life again for suffering. Their former happiness was destroyed. The days gone by, which they had believed happy, were made sad; and that is the woe in everything.

This couple was effaced by another, a young one, whose conversation I also imagined. They were beginning, they were going to love. Their hearts were so shy in finding each other. "Do you want me to go on that trip?" "Shall I do this and that?" She answered, "No." An intense feeling of modesty gave this first avowal of love so humbly solicited the form of a disavowal. But yet they were already thinking of the full flower of their love.

Other couples passed by, and still others. This one now--he talking, she saying nothing. It was difficult for him to master himself. He begged her to tell him what she was thinking of. She answered. He listened. Then, as if she had said nothing, he begged her again, still harder, to tell him. There he was, uncertain, oscillating between night and day. All he needed was for her to say one word, if he only believed it. You saw him, in the immense city, clinging to that one being. The next instant I was separated from these two lovers who watched and persecuted each other.

Turn where you will, everywhere, the man and the woman ever confronting each other, the man who loves a hundred times, the woman who has the power to love so much and to forget so much. I went on my way again. I came and went in the midst of the naked truth. I am not a man of peculiar and exceptional traits. I recognise myself in everybody. I have the same desires, the same longings as the ordinary human being. Like everybody else I am a copy of the truth spelled out in the Room, which is, "I am alone and I want what I have not and what I shall never have." It is by this need that people live, and by this need that people die.

But now I was tired of having desired too much. I suddenly felt old. I should never recover from the wound in my breast. The dream of peace that I had had a moment before attracted and tempted me only because it was far away. Had I realised it, I should simply have