Читать книгу Woman - Magdeleine Marx - Страница 9

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I have found work....

A fortnight, a hundred hopes, a fortnight.... The unfriendly atmosphere of stiff faces. "The position is filled." Stairs mounted four steps at a time, then descended gravely, catechisms begun with questions that embarrass and so often ending with questions that make you blush. Then one fine day—by what magic?—the position is not filled, and you answer yes to everything required; the sky is clear, you will start to-morrow.

I have not drained to its dregs the joy there is in working at my nondescript job from morning until evening. To work for your bread, to feel dignified and straight. You cannot talk, to be sure, but at least you do not lie, you are in repose, you let the waves of your being pile up, and every evening you return to a docile home, where the silence is always nigh to flowering....

The boarding-house, however, is not hospitable; you never satisfy your hunger, and my narrow room with its threadbare carpet and mouldy ceiling is like a badly kept cage. But it's Sunday morning and I have undertaken to make it inviting.

A handkerchief twisted about my hair, a white blouse and bare arms.... By persisting and rubbing again, by chasing the dust, by trying a place for the books twenty times over, by pushing the chairs about, by scraping away the layers of encrusted filth, I am bound to triumph. To judge of the effect, I stop several times and perch on the tattered arm of the red-flowered armchair; the place looks better already. But to it again!

No pictures, no ornaments. I have taken down the sentimental prints hypocritically concealing the scars of the wall-paper. Nothing but the bare room and the high window with its dim panes.

The bed of a doubtful mahogany burrows into the bashful retreat of the alcove. The wardrobe would wabble if it were not secured by a thick rope tied to the rosette on the front. The rosette is typical of a curious character that the room has for all its dinginess. There was an attempt to decorate with a profusion of flowers. Flowers everywhere, spread broadcast over the walls, cutting off the corners of the wash-boards, and trailing their sallow procession in a border around the top of the walls. They are even woven into the stuff on the back of the armchair, they appear almost effaced in the maroon-colored linoleum, and ravelled out and faded in the cretonne curtains.... In this cemetery, the sweet violets blooming on my table have a sensual, almost insolent splendor; their petals look red.

For all its bareness, my room radiates light; the meagre sunlight shines in through the window and is already transfiguring the place; I feel comfortable in it.

Oftener and oftener I ask myself what is my reason for existence, my true, my sole destiny. Doubtless one must sleep in a room for a long time before encountering the soul that prepares itself there.

I am, I know, like a person who wants to build a big house without having a site or materials, who says nevertheless: "No, not this site, no, not this material." But this is of no importance, I realize. Once you have submitted to the wholesome discipline enjoined by poverty, you receive in return energetic muscles and a patient outlook.

I wait; and no longer having any need to complain or criticize, I wait with a smile. Everything is simpler than one thinks, and everything is easier, and it seems to me that—

Someone is knocking at the door.

"May I come in?"

The landlady, Mme. Noël.

Mme. Noël is more of an imp than a woman. She has the figure, the voice, and the darting roguishness of a slim young thing of twelve.

When I was getting settled the first morning, I suddenly heard her insect-step close by—I had left my door open—and without giving me time to draw back, she besieged me with questions:

"How old do you think I am?"

"I don't know."

"Guess anything."

"Thirty-four ... thirty-three ... thirty."

On looking at her closely a few seconds, it seemed to me she was probably forty.

"Fifty-two, my dear!" To convince me of her age she stuck her finger under a slab of hair waved and dyed red and actually exposed an abundance of fading white hair.

Her face was no bigger than a fist, with cheeks like baked apples. Her shrewd naked eyes pried about. She came farther into the room and perched lightly on one of my rickety pieces of furniture, balancing it with her body. Then she began to unfold the story of her life, rummaging, unpacking, digging it up by huge armfuls: her husband, her lover, and then another, a painter she adored. The first one came back.... Love, adventures.... So it is possible to speak about your love and adventures?

Before leaving me—I was quite dazed; which must have been evident—lowering her voice a little:

"He is so good.... I myself am not crazy about him, but he loves me so...."

"He?"

"The boarding-house—it is not only for what it pays, you understand. It's for the company!"

"The company?"

With the springy elegance of a cat, her tapering elbows breaking the evenness of her outline, Mme. Noël slid on to the bed. The mattress reared up, the coverings billowed, the pillow, struck slantwise, was about to fall. But she needed so little room, and she carefully patted the hollow she made for herself.

"Well, is there nothing you want?... Ah, these young things—a handkerchief round their heads and they still look pretty."

Instinctively I pulled off my handkerchief. I stammered: "To keep off the dust" and—what could I do to make her go?—I smiled awkwardly.

"Oh, by the way, I came near forgetting to tell you. If ... you want to receive in your room ... after all, what of it? You surely have somebody.... It's just between us women. A beautiful girl like you, it would be a shame.... You won't be bashful, will you? To me love is sacred. And you will tell your little secrets to Mme. Noël? I have told you mine. Only of course you will be careful not to make any noise. I say this on account of the Russians in the next room. They used to receive swarms of people up to all hours. The rumpus! I tell you, I put a stop to it. But you, you're different. I liked you from the start."

I had to answer, I was going to answer ... but my tongue was dry with confusion. Besides, how edge a word in? There she was back at her huge pile of love stories. She even tried to pump me, lifting and lowering her powdered little nose; one scrap of information she set aside for use presently. At last she disappeared trippingly with a pointed au revoir which crisped the hide of her cheeks.

An odor of imitation white lilac persists, but so much sunshine streams in through the open window, so many quickening exhalations that the odor will soon be dissipated.

Love ... yes....

Perhaps by listening hard to the inner voice you may get to let it speak out loud. If I give in to this habit, I want to hear myself say: "I do not like love." I even want to add: "Keep it away," because love seems to be an outside force which smites or spares without your having deserved or banished it.

I have seen too many couples in which the man is nothing but a craving for conquest, the woman nothing, absolutely nothing, but a need to be conquered. I have seen too many who have not been visited by grace and have damned themselves to mutual ruin. A veritable attack and a semblance of defence. I have seen what is taken for love.

I have seen women steeped in trickery; the wilier they were the more love surrounded them. I have seen the heavy looks of men set about everywhere like traps.... I am worth nothing as yet, but my sound heart—I refuse it. And I say it quite low to exorcise the invisible danger: I do not like love.

"To me love is sacred...."

I understand fully what those small, naked, prying eyes were glorifying. And in the adventurous life of those eyes I see neither more nor fewer blemishes and lies than in the eyes of the young girls. Neither more nor fewer. At moments there even flashed in those eyes sparks, reflections, gleams....

A cloud is darkening the window; my room is obliterated.

But if by leaning forward and boldly offering my face to the sun and stretching out further, I could take in all his golden bounty and all his light?

I withdraw hastily from the springtime window because when a gentle flame ran over my wrist I became aware of lack of dignity: my untidy hair, the dust on me, the disorderly room.

Since the sun lives, since I long for it, love must exist. I shall find the proof of it. Quickly, my Sunday frock, order about me, flowers....

Keep it far away from me. I do not feel I am ready....