Читать книгу From Sleep Unbound - Andrée Chedid - Страница 11

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The rays of the sun were already less blinding as they fell on the walls of the white house. In the distance an arm of the Nile stretched toward the suppleness of a shadow. Rachida came outside to breathe the freshness and, just as she did every evening, she rested her body against the grayish white wall, waiting for her brother to return. Her bun of gray hair and her drab garments always bore flecks of plaster.

Her brother’s name was Boutros. He supervised the farming of the surrounding lands that belonged to a wealthy man who preferred to live in the city. Three times a year this man, the owner, came to collect the money due him from the rents paid by the fellahin. For these rare visits he had built a stone house for himself. It stood facing the smaller house; its shutters were always closed.

Boutros appeared at the end of the narrow road. Above his face, which seemed to be squeezed tightly between his shoulders, rose his cylinder-shaped fez.

The double wooden door stood open. The brother and sister exchanged greetings, he moving on into the house. Turning, Rachida followed his figure with her eyes as Boutros climbed the first; hollowed-out steps. There came a bend in the stairway and then she could no longer hear the sound of his steps. The storeroom in which the cotton was kept was on the floor above. Rachida listened to the squeaking of the doorknob as Boutros turned it, assuring himself, as he did every evening, that it was locked. The office was located on the same floor. Rachida listened to the sound of the key in the lock, of the door opening. In this way she accompanied her brother on his evening rounds; she knew his movements so well.

Now he was entering the office. The walls and ceilings were covered with flaking plaster that sometimes fell onto the shoulders of the accountant, crumbling down the front of his jacket. Frowning, Boutros would be opening the drawers, peeling off a sheet from the calendar, approaching the large black safe. Rachida could see it all as if she were there. She also saw the huge portrait of a man wearing a fez and a neatly trimmed moustache, a man seated in a dignified posture; he was the man who had created this great fortune in land. Between his legs there stood a cane with a gold handle on which he rested his hands. He resembled the present landowner, who was, in fact, his grandson. When Boutros passed this portrait he always bowed slightly.

The visit to the office was completed now and Boutros began to walk back toward the stairway. Rachida listened as his steps began to grow heavier, for he was moving toward the three rooms on the third floor. It was here that he lived with Rachida and Samya, his wife, the cripple. Helpless in spite of her youth!

What if Rachida should catch a disease like that! This Samya attracted disasters. Her two legs immobilized. For what sin was God punishing her?

Now Rachida couldn’t hear anything. Boutros had entered the large foyer and Rachida told herself that she had earned the right to go for her evening walk.

She passed by the two houses, the one that she had just left, dull, streaked with gray; the other belonging to the absent landlord freshly repainted, the shutters closed. As she walked through the dust Rachida looked down at the darned toes of her stockings that poked through the openings in her slippers.

The narrow road led to a large enclosure, abandoned at this time of day, where the fellahin threshed the corn. She often lingered here for a breath of air before the evening meal. But not this evening. A calf had been born during the night. She would go to the cow shed to admire him.

She needed new slippers, new stockings as well. With their robes down to their ankles and their bare feet, the fellahin had nothing to worry about. But she couldn’t go about as they did; she had to maintain her rank by keeping her distance. Rachida was careful about this. Unlike her sister-in-law, that Samya, who had no pride. Before she became paralyzed, Samya had wanted to pass her time in only one way, wandering about the village, mingling with just anyone. Samya claimed that she was happy doing this. Boutros had reprimanded her many times.

It was the close of a day like all other days. Rachida walked toward the cow shed. Around her head she wore a kerchief edged with small red plush balls.

It was the close of a day like all other days, except that the sun was a little less intense than usual. There was the bleating of a sheep, the barking of a dog, the fluttering of pigeons’ wings.

The end of an afternoon like other afternoons. Rachida could foresee nothing.

She will tell everything, Rachida promises herself. She will tell everything. People have evil thoughts sometimes. She will know how to silence venomous tongues. She will tell everything; she has nothing to hide.

This is the way it was. She was walking down the road. She was going to the cowshed to visit the baby calf. Boutros, her brother, had greeted her as was his habit before entering the house and climbing the stairs. She had listened to his footsteps until he had passed through the door that opened onto the foyer of their three rooms. Everything as usual. After that she had heard nothing at all.

The shed was not far off. A shaky structure held up by half-rotted wooden boards with sackcloth partitions tacked into the boards to separate the animals from one another in makeshift stalls.

As Rachida approached, Zeinab came out carrying a child on one shoulder and a bucket of milk in her free hand. She was too busy to notice Rachida. But everyone on the farm knew that Rachida took a walk at the same hour every evening.

Who would even dream of reproaching her? The atmosphere of their three rooms was so confined; she needed to get away for a breath of air. She was not a demanding woman. Ever since she had come here two years earlier, she had not even gone as far away as the town. Rachida did not need entertainment; she was utterly devoted to her brother. But taking the air was different; it was a matter of health. One invalid in the house was enough!

The cowshed was dark, but Rachida knew every corner and she found the new calf at once. Frail legs, silky brown hair, a huge soft tongue with which he kept licking his nose. Repeatedly, Rachida stroked him, murmuring into his ear, pushing his head against her black apron.

Rachida lingered. She knew the names of each of the animals; she herself had chosen the mare’s name. Picking up two nails that had fallen onto the earthen floor, she looked about, searching for a piece of wood which she could use as a hammer to replace them. But the nails were rusty and crooked, and she had difficulty driving them back into the posts. She hammered and hammered until she thought she would deafen herself.

Maybe that was the moment when it happened.

She will tell everything, Rachida vows. Everything that she had done from the moment Boutros had disappeared around the bend in the stairway. All of that, and everything else as well.

The damp straw in the shed stuck to the soles of her slippers. The mangers were mostly deserted, the fodder scattered about the earth. Ammal had not yet returned with her sheep; she was the granddaughter of the shepherd, Abou Mansour.

That Ammal was good for nothing! Rachida had seen the softness with which Ammal treated the cripple. Sniveling over her each time she carried up the cheese. Ammal said that Samya was too good to suffer. Too good!

Still complaining to herself, Rachida began to walk back toward the house. At the entrance, she took off her slippers and rubbed them together to shake off the mud. On the other side of the road the fields stretched out as far as the eye could see, flat and green, crisscrossed by paths of black sand. Set back from the village, a clutter of muddy buildings behind a thin veil of trees, stood the two houses, face to face.

Rachida put her slippers back on, noting how they had faded. As she entered the house, she thought about those other slippers underneath the shawl that covered Samya’s useless legs. They were black and lustrous. What good were they? Why not suggest an exchange of slippers with the cripple? But if she did this Rachida would have to deal, as always, with Samya’s selfishness. As she moved toward the stairway, Rachida recounted her woes.

Without hurrying she climbed the stairs. When she reached the door of the storeroom and that of the office she stopped and examined the locks with a sharp eye. This was her way of helping her brother. But everything was in order; Boutros never overlooked anything.

If only she had known! If only she had been able to guess! She wouldn’t have bothered with locks and doors. She would have rushed upstairs. She would have awakened the entire village!

It was: a day just like all other days. She could not have foreseen anything.

The bannister with its wrought iron flowers was shaky; you didn’t dare lean on it. The stairs were concave, worn by generations of footsteps. The solitary window had lost its panes of glass.

On the third floor the door to the foyer was standing open. Boutros knew that his sister would not be gone long. As he did every evening, he had placed his cane in the copper stand. The hat rack was empty. Boutros never took off his fez until he came to the table for the evening meal. A somber velvet tapestry separated the foyer from the room in which the cripple lay during the days, a room that also served as the dining room. The drapes were always closed; Samya could not bear the slightest ray of light.

Because of her devotion to her brother, Rachida never left the house before evening. The women of the village brought her eggs, milk, meat, and various vegetables. They would arrive, their arms full, their black robes brushing against the white walls, and they would laugh through the folds of their veils, now and then pulling them over their faces. Nostrils quivering slightly, they would laugh and their hesitant merriment would ring out as their eyes moved about the room as swiftly as mice scurrying into their corners. They might say: “There are new chairs in the house of the overseer.” Or, “This evening in the house of the Nazer they will eat stuffed eggplant.”

When the women left, Rachida would take up her work again; she preferred to do everything herself. Whenever anyone else was around, the cripple would manage silently to call attention to herself.

Friday was the day of prayers and on this day Boutros went neither to the fields nor to the office. The holiness of the day did not concern him as he was a Christian, but he observed the customs of his fellow Moslems. “I am a believer,” he would say whenever he talked of his own religion, and he was proud of the fact that his sister Rachida never missed mass on Sunday. “As for myself, work sometimes prevents me from going. But I believe that God will forgive me.”

All week long Rachida waited for Friday.

She would prepare the meal in two copper pots. Toward noon at Boutros’s call, she would come downstairs and together they would walk toward the banks of the canal. Rachida would place the pots one on top of the other, wrap them up in a white towel, knot the ends and pick them up. The pots were heavy, weighing down her shoulders, and she would pant, changing her burden from one hand to the other as she hurried to keep up with her brother. He always walked ahead of her, drawing circles in the air with his bamboo cane. Sometimes he would take off his fez and mop the sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief.

How well they suited one another, the two of them! They would have their meal together under the weeping willow trees, whose branches swooped down into the water, protecting you from the sun by enclosing you in a cradle of greenery.

Boutros would be unusually talkative. Rachida would nod in agreement. Then Rachida would talk and Boutros would say:

“You are an excellent woman!”

“You are a saint!”

“It is good that I brought you here.”

“What would have become of me?”

How well they suited one another, the two of them! The cripple never came outdoors with them. A wheelchair would have been a waste of money. What for? They were happier this way, without her.

But if she had known! If Rachida had known, if she had been able to foresee it! She would never have left the cripple’s side. She would have bought the chair with her own money. She would have wheeled Samya in front of herself always, without taking her eyes off her for a second. She would have pulled the wheelchair with her everywhere, into the kitchen, out onto the balcony. She would have asked for help to carry it up and down the stairs. She would have taken Samya for excursions into the road, to the cowshed, into the barn, along the river banks and over the smooth green paths. At the risk of exhaustion, she would have dragged the cripple with her everywhere, always!

On that particular day Rachida had hesitated before entering the room in which her sister-in-law lay. There were fava beans on the fire. Were they cooked yet? She opened the door to the kitchen. The burner was roaring with a strong blue flame. She raised the cover of the pot, plunged a fork into the beans. No, they were not quite done.

In the entrance hall everything was in place: the chair, the copper stand, the hat rack with its mirror, the threadbare velvet draperies. Samya would have liked a thin cotton hanging; she said that the touch of the velvet on her hands made her shiver!

Rachida shrugged. The eccentricities of a hysteric!

With two hands she seized the velvet drapes and pulled them apart. Then she thrust her head forward so that she could see better into the shadows.

. . .

The worn soles of her blue felt slippers made a dull thudding sound on the floor as she rushed to the shutters which she opened with a clatter, then to the cement balcony and finally to the iron balustrade.

“Help! Help! Come quickly! Quickly! Help!” Rachida grasped the railing and thrust her body forward as she screamed. Her skirt jerked up over her bony shins, exposing the crude darned spots in her cotton stockings. Her head trembled so violently that long pins slipped out of her bun of gray hair. From the wall opposite, her voice ricocheted back to her, distorted: “Help!”

It seemed as though the force of her cries might sweep her to the ground below. She did not see anything. She stood with her back to the room, her back turned toward that other woman. She looked straight ahead. She screamed:

“Someone has killed him! Someone has killed him! Come, come, all of you! Someone has killed the Nazer!”

Names came into her memory. She called them out in any order, without thinking:

“Hussein! Khaled! Abou Mansour! Help! Someone has killed my brother!”

She did not want to turn around. Above all, she did not want to turn around. Behind her was that woman, that Samya, and her stare was piercing Rachida’s back. Above all, she did not want to turn around until the others arrived. When would they come! When would they all come! When would they fill up the room! She called out, concentrating on the sound of her voice:

“Barsoum! Farid! Fatma, you Fatma! Where are you? Someone has killed the Nazer! My brother is dead! Hurry!”

Her voice, imprisoned in the alley which separated the two houses, ricocheted from one to the other, but it did not reach the fields nor the village, buried under a shroud of dust. Her voice crashed against the walls. It rose higher, seeking to overcome the distance and to penetrate the fields and the village.

“Come! Come! Everyone come!” cried the voice.

The railing of the balcony cut into Rachida’s palms. Her hair straggled down her neck. She did not want to turn around, to see Boutros’s fallen body, to meet the stare of that motionless woman.

She wanted to forget everything. Oh, if only they would come quickly! To forget everything, until they finally came!

To be nothing more than this cry:

“Help! Avenge us!”

. . .

Nearly hidden in her armchair, the woman said nothing.

The shutters were open; the light flowed everywhere. She was no longer used to it; she was blinking. A faded shawl concealed her legs.

Rachida cried in strange tones that clashed against one another. The woman’s pale hands rested on the arms of her chair. Her elbows were slightly raised as if she were getting ready to stand up. Her dark hair gleamed; her ears were partly concealed by a violet band. Pinned to her unbleached muslin blouse was a safety pin adorned with a blue stone, like a brooch. A necklace of square green beads was loosely knotted around her throat.

The dead man’s head was resting on her feet. She did not seem to feel its weight.

Rachida screamed and leaned even further over the railing of the balcony, revealing her bony shins and darned stockings. Why was she in such a condition? She was in danger of toppling off the balcony.

One day Boutros had killed a crow with a single shot. He had been so pleased to see the bird fall out of the top of the tree! In the sunlight the crow was black, tinged with grayish light and blood-stained. Remembering this made her feel anxious. If she were to tumble into the alley between the houses, she would be black and gray, with blood on her skirt and her hair disheveled.

The other woman was far away. All of this seemed like a tale that one might hear while standing on the railway platform waiting for the train to leave. A story from some distant place.

Rachida screamed. She screamed. Her voice was becoming hoarse. She shook her head; she looked straight ahead. Not once did she turn around.

If Boutros had been there, if he were not already icy, he would have come to his sister’s side. Without hesitating, he would have come to her. He would have gotten up and joined her on the balcony, and they would have stood together with their shoulders touching. They were almost the same height. The two of them would have leaned over together above the balustrade. They would have cried out with one voice.

After a while Boutros would have turned around. He would have asked Rachida to be quiet and he would have turned to face Samya.

He would have taken several steps forward, then, with his arms crossed, he would have looked inside the room, into the armchair and beneath the violet headband. If he had not already been cold, he would have been there facing Samya, harsh, implacable, shaking his head as if scolding a child.

Then he would have returned to the balcony to his sister’s side. Their voices would have risen together again.

This is what he would have done if he had been there with his face animated under the red cap. Now the fez lay in the center of the room, abandoned to the last rays of the sun.

Later, Boutros would have said:

“Did she have anything to worry about? She had everything. It was my sister who was wearing herself out. Did I ever deprive her of anything? Was I unfaithful to her? She had everything!”

These would have been his words if he had been able to stand on his stiffening feet.

“She had everything! A husband, a home, good food! What more could a woman want? I have known for a long time that she would come to a bad end. My religion prevented me from denouncing her. Now I can do nothing more for her! Take her! Do whatever you want with her!”

Motionless, the high back of her chair rising above her head, the woman would have gone right on killing herself.

Today as yesterday, she would have continued to wear herself out until she succeeded in killing herself.

Light was flowing into the corners of the room, catching the flecks of dust, gathering upon the artificial flowers in the earthenware vase. They could live without water, these immortal flowers, rustling like dry leaves when anyone accidentally brushed them in passing. The two green leather chairs were waiting for no one. A halo of sunlight encircled the fez.

Still clinging to the balcony railing, Rachida went on screaming. Everyone seemed to have grown used to her cries.

The mirror gave to each object wrested from the shadows an image both realistic and cruel. The woman saw nothing but these objects. She did not look at herself, nor did she look any longer at the red stain on the chest of the dead man.

. . .

Since dawn she had known that Boutros would be lying in this way in this exact place. After that she had thought no more about it. Between her boredom and the comings and goings of Rachida, the woman had passed this day as she passed all the others. No sooner had Rachida left one corner of the room than she reappeared in another, her lips moving endlessly. When she disappeared into the adjacent room, her grumbling seeped in under the doorsill. Countering the incessant disturbance of Rachida’s motions, the semi-darkness gave the other woman an opportunity to close her eyes for a while and to forget everything.

It was around six o’clock when Rachida went down for her evening walk. Soon after this Boutros would come upstairs. The woman always waited for him. Because of the closed shutters,. she was surrounded by darkness, and she sat tensely in the dark, lying in wait for his footsteps.

She heard him cross the threshold and she raised herself a little in order to hear better. The various objects were barely visible in the half-light of the room. The woman was attentive only to his steps, deliberate and heavy. She counted them step after step as they rose toward the slightly open door.

His face tense, she envisioned Boutros stopping at the door of the storeroom, stopping at the door of the office, his manner suspicious as he tested the keys in the locks. She easily envisioned the manner in which he crossed the landing before entering the foyer. Then the harsh sound of his cane when he dropped it into the umbrella stand.

Boutros never loitered.

She felt a current of air brush the back of her neck, and she knew that he had opened the velvet draperies. His steps entered the room. Soon Boutros would stand before her and he would embrace her, kiss her. This time she knew that it would be too much to bear.

Since dawn when she was placed in her armchair, she had been hiding the gun. Most of the time Boutros carried it in the right pocket of his jacket. He often said: “It is necessary to carry a gun. You never can tell. . . .” But sometimes he left it in the chest of drawers between his shirts.

At first Samya had thought of it as a dangerous object. Then one evening, while her husband and Rachida stood talking on the balcony, she had opened the drawer near her bed, removed the revolver and laid it on the sheet. She had turned it over and over in her hands until its feel became familiar. She had tested the trigger with her finger. Then she had replaced the revolver in the drawer. Rachida and Boutros were always talking together on the balcony. They spoke in such low tones that she was unable to hear what they said. She had slipped the gun back between the shirts. The woman was not yet thinking of using it.

Why this particular day? The night had not been disturbing. Still, it was on this particular morning that she had decided to end everything. She knew that she would use the gun. Boutros would bend over her, his arms dangling, offering his lips. He would be wearing his fez tilted toward the back, exposing his forehead on which a few drops of sweat always glistened. His lips would approach, huge and brown, filled with saliva at the corners. He would bend over her. She would see nothing but his lips and his scarlet fez. This would be unbearable. He would stoop over her once more. He would stoop over her one more time.

. . .

He would never get up again.

The shot had gone off so close to his chest that the noise had been muffled.

The man had lost his balance, his arms waving about grasping for support. He had fallen forward and the fez had tumbled off his head and rolled into the middle of the room like an empty flowerpot.

Samya had fired again.

The man seemed drunk. He mumbled indistinct words. He staggered, then reeled, bringing his hands to his forehead as he fell onto his knees.

The woman had loosened her grip and the gun slid from her hands, making a thud on the floor.

She looked away; she longed to be far away. She yearned to abandon her own body, to leave it to whomever came along, and to think about something else. For the first time she had performed, accomplished, completed an action, and now it was necessary to separate herself from it. Later, there would be time to dream about it. The others would see to that.

The man’s head seemed to become heavy. She bent toward the chest in which life was still struggling. Then, as if all the threads snapped at the same instant, Boutros collapsed against her legs.

. . .

The dead man’s head was not heavy.

The woman breathed more easily. She detached herself from her action; she did not concern herself with it any longer. In order to see the dead man’s head she had to support herself by clasping the arms of her chair while she leaned forward. And what would he then awaken in her? Perhaps nothing at all.

At this moment she thought that she might be able to stand up; her legs would obey her, she felt sure. But where could she go? It was too late; nothing ever begins over again. Buried in her armchair, right now she was farther away from this place than she would ever be able to walk. A weight had fallen from her chest, carrying with it the room itself and this very moment. This story was no longer her story.

Soon the house would be filled with the sounds of Rachida’s return. She would cross the threshold; one would be able to hear her climbing the stairs. In spite of her sixty years, Rachida climbed quickly. She often boasted about what strong legs she had, stating and restating her belief that one never grew old if one had nothing bad on one’s conscience.

Just as she did every evening, Rachida would test all the locks with her heavily veined hands. As suspicious as her brother, she would examine every single door. They had duplicates of all the keys. She would climb the stairs without even leaning on the shaky bannister. The door to the foyer was partly open, she would push against it.

Rachida was hesitating before the velvet draperies, the ones that she refused to replace. She insisted that velvet was “rich looking.” She said that in the white house opposite their house, in the landlord’s house, all the curtains were velvet, as well as the armchairs and the sofas.

One would be able to hear her moving into the kitchen before the roar of the lighted stove would muffle the sound of her steps. She would return, grumbling: “I really go to too much trouble! No one helps me. At my age, to have to wait on a woman who could be my daughter! I do it all for Boutros, may God bless him! What would become of him without me?”

As soon as Boutros arrived, she made a fuss over him. After dinner they would pull their chairs close together and they would whisper:

“We’re talking quietly so we won’t wear you out.”

“In your condition,” they said.

. . .

Soon, Rachida would open the velvet drapes and she would run across the room. She would throw open the shutters, allowing the light to pour into the room. She would lean over the balcony and she would begin to scream.

All of this no longer mattered. Bubbles bursting above the water, that was all.

. . .

Rachida screamed but no one heard her!

In the village the women were entirely taken up with their children. They were tending to the little ones and they had ears for no one else. They were giving orders in order to make themselves feel important before their husbands came in from the fields.

“Ahmed, come here. Your father will soon come back home.”

“Saïd, go and bring me water.”

“Tahia? Where is Tahia?”

“Amin, put down those pebbles. You know your father likes to find you here when he returns.”

“May your soul be damned, Tahia! Next year you’ll see! I’ll send you off to the fields!”

Rachida would have to go on waiting; soon her voice would be little more than a murmur. Night would fall, and she would still be here, clinging to the balustrade. Alone with Samya, who would stare at Rachida until she reduced her to a shadow.

On the way home from the cotton fields the men walked after one another in a file. They were tired and walked without talking. Suddenly, one of Rachida’s cries fell among them like a stone, and some of the men heard it. Hussein, who always walked at the head of the line, stopped and said, “Listen, someone’s calling for help.”

“Nothing but a fight among the women,” remarked Khaled, shrugging. His two wives were always yelling at each other.

Rachida’s voice rose higher, like the whine of a dog baying at the moon.

“Something’s going on,” insisted Hussein.

The others, too, began to listen; they forgot their weariness. One of them suggested: “Let’s go see what’s happened.”

“Yes, something’s happening,” repeated Hussein.

He began to run and the others followed him. Now they were all running. And when they saw other men far off in the fields, they called to them either to join them or to alert the people in the village.

As soon as the women heard cries for help, they too dropped everything. Nefissa, who was too old to go with the others but could read the future in the sand, repeated: “I knew it! I knew that this day had the feel of misfortune!”

With their children the women abandoned the village to Nefissa and the new-born babies. The men ran along the path; they were coming from every direction: from their small houses, from the river banks, from the rice fields, from the cemetery, from the garden, from the mosque.

Rachida saw them coming. Still leaning over the railing, she lost awareness that she was screaming.

Everyone seemed to arrive at the same time, packed into the narrow passage between the two houses. Their robes brushed against the walls. A dull anger that they could not yet explain thudded in their chests. Together, they seemed to form a single body, and one could hear them cry out as if with a single voice.

The room above seemed to lurch, tossed by this shout as a rowboat is tossed by a wild sea.

. . .

The past burst into a foam of images that grew and threatened to swallow up everything.

The outcry of the crowd reverberated against the walls, sounds sticking as tightly as the knots in a piece of string. Ammal, who had left her flock of sheep, was squeezed in among the others. She was small for her thirteen years. She was wearing the yellow dress that Samya had made for her. What was this uproar all about? Ammal was worried. What had happened to Sit Samya? She battled her way through the crowd; she wanted to be the first one to get to Sit Samya.

The old woman Om el Kher followed the crowd. Something was going on, something must have happened to Sit Samya. Troubled, she wanted to go to the house to see but not to ask questions of the others.

Farther off, resting against a tree, the blind man was worried, too. He wondered what had happened to Sit Samya. Why was Sit Rachida shouting? It was impossible to make out what she was yelling over and over again.

The people were crowding into the house now while Rachida bent even further over the balcony to watch them push inside. She heard them coming up the stairs, shoving against one another as they climbed.

As soon as they reach the room Rachida will be able to collapse.

“If I had known! If I had known!” she will repeat over and over again. “I would have given up my walk. I would have given up petting the calf! I wouldn’t have bothered checking the locks!”

The steps were narrow. The men and women were jostling and pushing one another.

Her hands pressed against her breast, Ammal came forward, murmuring, I only hope nothing has happened to Sit Samya!:She tried to push through the people. She wanted to get to Sit Samya before the others, to save her. But to save her from what?

The clamor was becoming louder and more brutal. Maybe they would forget that the bannister was rickety. Maybe the stairs would collapse, and they would all fall. Maybe, too, there would be no stairway any longer. Rachida will stop screaming, and a person will finally be able to get some sleep.

But if they do reach the room, she will seize the past and hold it up between them and herself, creating of the past a watertight compartment. She will summon up the past and watch it unroll behind her as one follows a vanishing landscape through the window of a moving train. The past, she must recapture it, to hide herself in it!

But suddenly it seems so far away!

“Once I was a child, one day. . . . But I do not remember. Where is my childhood? And the face of my mother? Where is it? I can see nothing. I am in a very dark corridor, and I can’t see anything. But much later. Yes, now I remember. I remember certain evenings. . . .”

. . .