Читать книгу Woman and Puppet, Etc - Pierre Louys - Страница 9

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She admitted this with such a directness, such an air, that I quite flushed and felt ill at ease. Whatever was passing in that childish-looking head, behind that face so provoking, so rebellious? What signified her decided moral attitude, her frank and, possibly, honest eye, her sensuous mouth that seemed to tempt and yet defy. All that I really knew was that she pleased me vastly, that I was enchanted to have found her again, and looked forward to finding other chances of being with her. We reached her home. Down-stairs at the doorway I bought her some mandarines. At the top floor she gave three little knocks at a door and I stood before her mother, a dark woman, who had once been beautiful.

Then began confidences; they seemed endless. The mother said she was the widow of an engineer, and told me a story I had heard elsewhere twenty times.

“Ah, Caballero, we should have been rich, we two, had we but followed evil ways. But sin has never passed the evening here!”

Conchita during this discourse was putting powder on her cheeks. She turned to me with a smile transfiguring her mouth.

Finally I laid down four banknotes and arranged that Conchita was not to return to the factory. I called again the next day. She was alone. That day she came and sat upon my knees and kissed me with her burning mouth. I left but to return, alas! not once, but twenty times more. I was in love like the youngest, the most foolish of men. You must have known such madness yourself and will understand me. Each time I left her rooms I counted the hours until the next meeting, and those hours never seemed to go. Little by little I got to pass the whole day with them, paying all the expenses and the debts too. This cost me a good deal of money. How Conchita and I talked!

But she was impenetrable, mysterious. She seemed to love me; possibly I really loved her. To-day I do not know what to think. To all my pleadings she answered merely, “Later.” That resolution I could not break. I swore to leave her and she told me to go. I threatened her, even with my violence: it left her unconcerned. When loaded with presents she accepted them upon her own terms. Nevertheless, when I entered her place, I saw a light in her eyes that was not, I believe, a feigned one.

She slept nine hours at night and had a siesta of three hours. She did nothing else. The work of the place was her mother’s affair. During one whole week she refused to get up at all. Her conception of the duties of the day was very Spanish. But I do not know from what country came her conception of love. After twelve weeks of wooing I saw in her maddening smile the same promises and certainly the same resistance.

At last, one day, I took her mother into my confidence, and confessing my love invoked her aid. After a night and a morning that were insupportable through suspense, I received a four-line letter—

“If you had loved me you would have waited. I wished to give myself to you. You have asked that I shall be sold to you. Never again shall you see me.

“Conchita.”

When I reached their rooms in Seville they had left with all their belongings.