It would be as much as his life is worth, says Camille, please promise me.
I think Harry is the type of man who might under certain conditions shoot himself, but he would never shoot anybody else. What do you think he would do—Mathilde nods in the direction they are going—if he had reason to be jealous?
Jealous of me? asks Camille.
Yes, says Mathilde smiling.
When she thought: Under the threat of being shot, he still wants to speak to me, her vision of his appearance altered. The alteration was also retrospective. What she had noticed but not remembered came to light. Hundreds of details assembled to form the whole man before her. He attracted everything she had seen him do. Her impressions rushed towards him, attached themselves to him, as though magnetized, and, covering him, became his characteristics. His head addressed her. She saw into it. The head was larger than average. It lunged forward when he spoke. Thick curls fell over the back of his neck. The tops of his ears entered other thickets. His hands with which he gesticulated were smaller than average. The veins on them were rather pronounced. The missing teeth, when his mouth was open, made it seem wider than it was. The gaze of his eyes was insistent. His feet, like his hands, were small. His walk was light and fastidious and in contrast to the heavy thrust of his head and shoulders. She found each physical characteristic eloquent of an aspect of his nature, as a mother may find the characteristics of her infant before it can talk or sit up.
I think he would kill me and then himself, says Camille, laughing.
Where does he live? It would be fortunate if it were Paris.
I don’t know. He says he is half English and half Italian.
That might explain a lot, remarks Mathilde.
Please promise me, says Camille.
Has he told you how he lost his teeth?
Mathilde, listen to me, this could be a matter of life and death.
He has an expression that I’ve only seen on one other man.
Who? asks Camille.
He was a friend of my husband’s, an Armenian who fell in love with me.
Exasperation wells up with tears in Camille’s eyes. Mathilde lowers her voice and whispers: Camille, you can trust me. But you are naive about such situations. The danger is Maurice, and there you can depend on me.
Camille rests her head back against the dusty leather upholstery and lays her gloved white hand on Mathilde’s arm.
How hot it is today! says Mathilde. There are days when grand passion is just not possible. The weather is a woman’s best friend!
We shall be there too soon. I don’t want to have to wait for him. Mathilde, ask him to drive more slowly.
Camille touches the fringe of her hair and stares at her own hand. It looks to her extremely small and delicate, likewise her wrists and forearms. She wants to appear as fresh and as intricate as white lace (she remembers a painting she once saw of a girl on a swing in a garden in Montpellier whose petticoats were bordered with white lace). She wants to appear like that in this green, overgrown, remote landscape for a few minutes before her enforced return to Paris where there are more clothes than trees and the streets are like rooms.
The carriage stops by the church. The same Fiat car in which they made the trip to Santa Maria Maggiore is parked in the shade of a plane tree. There is nobody to be seen. They ask the driver to wait. He nods, gets down and lies on the grass by the side of the road. One of the brass lamps on the Fiat is dazzling in the sun. Camille lowers her head and, pointing her parasol towards the ground, opens it; Mathilde points hers at the sky to open it. They walk together round the church.
He is on the north side sitting on a stone bench. He kisses Camille’s hand and then immediately takes Mathilde’s arm and saying: You are her friend, she confesses to you and so I need not explain what has happened to us. He leads her away towards a path bordered by gravestones. Camille makes as though to follow them. He turns. No, he says, please wait. Sit where I was sitting.
It is very quiet. The doors of the church are locked. There is nobody on the road. It is hard to believe that they have driven no further than the outskirts of the town. To Camille the silence sounds abnormal. She believes that on ordinary mornings carts pass along the road, children play near by, the priest prays in his church, peasants work in the fields. In the silence she can hear the beating of her own heart and his voice, but she cannot distinguish his words.
He is telling Mathilde that he and she will surely meet again and that he will always be in her debt, if she agrees to his plan. He loves Camille: he has never been alone with her: he can no longer write to her: all he asks is that Mathilde take the carriage and wait by the Rosmini College—the driver will know it—where he and Camille will join her by motor car in half an hour. He needs that little time to explain his feelings to the woman with whom he has fallen so desperately in love. He speaks lightly, as though he has no need to convince Mathilde, or as though he knows it is hopeless to try to convince her.
Whilst appealing to Mathilde, he is careful to remain in sight of Camille, to speak conspiratorially in Mathilde’s ear, to make Mathilde laugh once or twice, to continue holding her arm and to give their collusion every appearance of intimacy.
The lightness with which he speaks intrigues Mathilde. It does not force her to decide whether he is telling the truth or not. If what he said was too credible, she would be obliged, as Camille’s friend, to find it incredible. If what he said was obviously untrue, she would be obliged to tell him so. As it is, the question of the truth of what he is saying does not arise, because in the way he speaks he assumes that she already knows the truth. Which she doesn’t. And the fact that she doesn’t arouses a very acute curiosity in her. If she cannot discover the truth directly, then Camille must discover it and tell her. The truth, she feels, will not be terrible for, if it were, he would not assume so easily and naturally that she already knows it. She trusts him immediately because he gives her no reason to. It is Maurice that Mathilde does not trust. And in order to convince herself that she is not being reckless on her friend’s behalf, she imagines how it would be possible for her to ask Harry, who is in a position to put considerable professional pressure on Maurice, to persuade Maurice to be more reasonable. She says she will take the carriage to the college if Camille agrees.
Camille watches them walking up and down behind the gravestones which, old and eroded, are the shape of half-eaten biscuits. The anomaly of the situation makes Camille angry and impatient. Why, she asks, must she, after all the risks she has taken, sit here whilst Mathilde jokes with him over there? She decides that she must speak to him by herself.
A few minutes later the driver gets up from the grass, rubbing his knees. Mathilde steps into the carriage and waves to Camille. Don’t be long, she cries, I can’t work miracles. As the carriage, which is crookedly suspended over its back axle, departs down the deserted road, Camille thinks: Mathilde believes that in Paris I may become the mistress of this man with whom I have just agreed to be left alone.
There is a look which can come into the eyes of a woman (and into the eyes of a man, but very rarely) which is without pride or apology, which makes no demand, which promises no adventure. As an expression, signalled by the eyes, it can be intercepted by another; but it is not addressed, in the usual sense of the word, to another: it takes no account of the receiver. It is not a look which can enter into the eyes of a child for children are too ignorant of themselves: nor into the eyes of most men for they are too wary: nor into the eyes of animals because they are unaware of the passing of time. By way of such a look romantic poets thought they saw a path leading straight to a woman’s soul. But this is to treat it as though it were transparent, whereas in fact it is the least transparent thing in the world. It is a look which declares itself to be itself; it is like no other look. If it is comparable with anything, it is comparable with the colour of a flower. It is like heliotrope declaring itself blue. In company such looks are quickly extinguished for they encourage neither discourse nor exchange. They constitute social absence.