9
He extinguished the candle, closed his eyes, and sought to recollect the event. The details of it were confused, as in a dream. From the walls of the house a cricket sounded, then stopped, and the silence became twice as intense. His limbs relaxed, and his mind grew tranquil. Once more the cricket chirped. What I want to know, said Hartmann to himself, is how long he’s going to go on chirping. As he framed the question, he began thinking of Toni. He could see her face, and her movements, and also the two white spots where her skin showed through the brown dress…There’s no doubt about it, she isn’t young. Even if her hair hasn’t turned gray, she has many more wrinkles, The worst of them all is that crease in her upper lip. Has she a tooth missing?
He still thought of Toni critically, as he always had, but now he felt that all those shortcomings in no way detracted from her. With a sweet feeling of adoration he summoned up her face, that wonderful face; but then it began to fade away from him, against his will. How thin her shoulders were, but her figure was that of a pretty girl. Hartmann embraced the air with his arm and felt himself blushing. As he was talking to himself he heard a sort of moan. Since he was thinking about his wife, it seemed to him that the sound came from her room. He opened his eyes and, lifting his head, listened intently. Help me, O Lord, help me. Has anything happened? In reality he could have heard nothing, for there was a thick wall between them. Nor was it a moan of distress he had heard. Nevertheless, he sat upright on his bed in case he should hear anything, in case anything of her vital being should reach his ears. Perhaps he might be able to help her.
Once again she appeared before him the way she had looked that day — lifting her veil onto her forehead, raising the asters to her face, digging her parasol into the ground, parting the cigarette smoke with her fingers. Gradually the parasol vanished, the smoke dispersed, and the asters grew more numerous, until they covered the whole mound. Astonished and puzzled, he gazed in front of him. As he did so his eyes closed, his head dropped on the pillow, his soul fell asleep, and his spirit began to hover in the world of dreams, where no partition separated them.
The Face and the Image
Naomi had washed the floor, arranged the furniture, watered the flowers, and wiped the inkwells; and the room was filled with peace. I waited for Naomi to finish all her work, and then I would sit down to do mine. For it was a great work I wanted to do, to write down in a book my thoughts about polished mirrors. This device, which shows you whatever you show it, aroused my wonder even in childhood, perhaps more than the thing itself. And now that I have grown old, and seen the deeds that pass, and some of the deeds that last, I have continued to ponder on the qualities of mirrors. They are flat, and thin, and smooth as ice, and there is nothing inside them. But they store up whatever you put before them, and before them there is no cheating, or partiality, or injustice, or deceit. Whatever you show them, they show you. They do not expunge or amplify, add on or take away — like the truth, which neither adds nor takes away. Therefore I said: I will tell of their virtues and their perfect rectitude.
“Finished,” said Naomi, and a smile of satisfaction seemed to play on her chaste lips. Naomi was really entitled to be satisfied with her work, and I should have been satisfied too, but for a sudden sadness that enfolded my heart.
But I took no notice of this sadness, though it was heavier today than it had been yesterday, for that is how it goes: anything that lives continues to grow. So I took a chair to sit down and begin my work. A paper fell off the chair, and I saw it was a telegram. I looked at Naomi. “When they brought the telegram I was busy wiping the table,” she said, “and I left it on the chair so it wouldn’t get soiled.”
For tidiness’ sake I took the telegram and laid it on the table. Then I took a knife to open it. At that moment there appeared before me the image of my grandfather, my mother’s father, in the year he died, lying in his bed and reading his will all night. His beard was bluish silver and the hair of his beard was not wavy but straight, every single hair hanging by itself and not mingling with the next, but their perfect rectitude uniting them all. I began to calculate how old my grandfather had been when I was born, and how old my mother had been when she bore me and it turned out that her age today was the same as my grandfather’s age at that time, and my age was the same as hers when I was born.
Many other thoughts passed through my mind, but I set them aside and went back to the telegram. I opened the telegram and read: “Mother sick, awaiting you.” Mother sick, waiting for me. Taking the plain sense of the words, they meant: Mother is on the point of death; or perhaps she was already dead and they were waiting for me before burying her.
I quickly took my traveling kit and put it in my valise; I gazed at the room, and at the table where a few moments before I had longed to do my work. I stood there all alone with myself, like a man who is shown a clenched hand and thinks that what he wants is inside, but when the hand is opened it turns out to be empty.
“Naomi,’’ I said to her, “I am going away, and I do not know how long I shall stay. Close up the house behind me, lock it up thoroughly, and take the key with you until I come back.”
Naomi nodded her head with its two plaits and looked at me. I saw from the look in her eyes that she disapproved of a man going to see his mother in the patched trousers in which he was in the habit of doing his work; it was not respectful to his family to come to them like that. What would people say? How many years he has spent in the world, and he has not managed to buy a whole garment!
I closed my eyes to Naomi’s apprehensions. When Mother might be on the point of death, could I worry about my dress? By the time I took off my old clothes and put on new, Mother might have breathed her last. I waved my hand deprecatingly and said, “No, I am going as I am. In any case, I shall take another pair of trousers with me.” But the valise was small and did not hold much. And my other valise was in the attic, and to get up there I needed a ladder, and if I found a ladder and climbed up, the valise might well be locked, and if it was locked, I might not find the key. So, since there were more doubts than certainties, I took my little valise in my hand and went out, dressed as I was in my patched trousers.
Thinking about the way ahead, I said to myself: I am going to my mother and I do not know whether she is alive or dead, for when I last left her she was sick, and she cried and said, “My heart tells me that I shall never see you again.” And it is known that the sick see with a third eye, which the Angel of Death lends them.
I took a short cut through a certain old courtyard, like the one where I used to play hide-and-seek in my childhood. The same sensation I felt in my head during this game came back to me. Picture to yourselves a large, old courtyard, full of many corners, and every corner full of corners, besides various articles and bits and pieces deposited by their owners in case they might need them, the owners are dead, the articles are rusty, and the rust glows with a kind of damp light which terrifies but does not illuminate, And as I am a little child with my little friends, I hide from them and they hide from me. We stand and wait, and none of us knows whether he wants to be found or not. Finally, none of us looks for the others. We run about looking for a secret corner more secluded than the first, and my head goes around and around, and the rust that glimmers from the junk makes my flesh creep.
They were taking a body out of the yard, and a man I knew was carrying the bier, exerting all his strength and pushing his feet into the ground until they were getting flattened with the weight. The very nails of his hands and toes cried: Come and carry with me. His eyes were weary; he seemed to be carrying them on his shoulders, from which they were looking out in entreaty, I began to worry in case he told me with his mouth what his eyes were entreating, when I was hurrying to Mother. I slipped through into a cranny, and from there to another, from there to the street and then to the railroad station, and from the station into a carriage.