His desire, his only aim, was to be alone with a woman. No more than that. But they had to be deliberately, not fortuitously, alone. It was insufficient for them to be left alone in a room because they happened to be the last to leave. It had to be a matter of choice. They had to meet in order to be alone. What then followed was a consequence of being alone, not the achievement of any previous plan.
In the company of others women always appeared to him as more or less out of focus. Not because he was unable to concentrate upon them but because they were continuously changing in their own regard as they adapted themselves to the coercions and expectations of the others around them.
He was alone with Camille, walking back to the north side of the church which was in the shade. He took her arm. He could feel with his fingers that it was warmer on the inside than on the outside. He was overcome by a sense of extraordinary inevitability. The feeling did not surprise him. He knew that it would arrive, but he could not summon it at will. He felt the absoluteness of the impossibility of Camille being, in any detail, in the slightest trace, different from what she was; he felt she was envisaged by everything which preceded her in time and everything which was separate from her in space; the place always reserved for her in the world was nothing less than her exact body, her exact nature; her eyes in tender contrast to her mouth, her small breasts, her thin rakelike hands with their bitten fingernails, her way of walking with unusually stiff legs, the unusual warmth of her hair, the hoarseness of her voice, her favourite lines from Mallarmé, the regularity of her smallness, the paleness of—with this concentration of meaning which he experienced as a sense of inevitability, came the onset of sexual desire.
I want to tell you, she said—
Your voice, he interrupted, is also like a cicada, not only a corn-crake. Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.
I want to tell you, she repeated, that I love my husband dearly. He is the centre of my life and I am the mother of his children. I consider he was wrong to threaten you, and I want you to know that I gave him no grounds, absolutely no grounds, for believing that he needed to threaten you. He discovered the foolish note you wrote to me—
Foolish? We have met, we are alone, we are talking to each other—and that is all I asked of you. Why was it foolish?
It was foolish to use the words you did, it was foolish to write a note at all.
What foolish words?
Camille stared at an impenetrable cypress tree. Everywhere there was still the same abnormal silence. I do not remember, she said in a hoarse whisper. And saying this she remembered a line by Mallarmé:
… vous mentez, ô fleur nue
De mes lèvres.
I called you my most desired one, my corn-crake.
That was foolish.
But you are.
The inscriptions on the tombstones were mostly illegible. The letters which were formed with curved lines (like U or G) appeared to be more quickly effaced than those composed of straight lines (N or T).
Then you must go. Please go.
The heat of the morning made anything which was out of reach or sight seem unusually distant.
It was not wrong of your husband to threaten me, he said, he has every reason to be jealous.
He has no reason! I am his wife and I love him. And I cannot he held responsible for your feelings. You are mistaken, that is all—mistaken in me. You are not base. I believe in the nobility of your feelings. And this is what I wanted to tell you, I did not encourage my husband to protect me from you for I don’t need any protection. I have known you for two days. Do you really suppose that a woman’s affections can be gained in such a short time? In two weeks or two months perhaps. But in two days! You are mistaken. I think you believe life is like that swing you described. It isn’t. Talking here we are already running a risk for nothing. There is nothing to be gained. Please take me back to join my friend in the carriage. My husband and I are leaving for Paris this afternoon.
Camille spoke with difficulty. It was no longer easy for her to say these things. Yet she said them with sincerity. She saw renunciation as the only proper way of putting an end to the present situation and of undoing the injustice and indignity of her husband’s threats. What she was renouncing was still of little importance. But she believed in destiny. Nothing in her life had led her to believe that she was entirely the mistress of her own fate. She did not think of the future as unmysterious, as entirely foreseeable in the light of decisions made today. She wanted to be able to look back at this moment of genuine renunciation because she considered it a necessary one. But she did not feel compelled to answer for the consequences, expected or unexpected, that might follow from that moment. They might be beyond her control and she recognized this with modesty, with hope and with misgivings.
Then I will find you in Paris! he said.
He will shoot you.
Not if you don’t betray me.
Betray!
It was foolish to keep the note. In Paris you must be wiser.
In Paris I will refuse to see you.
If there was nothing conspiring against us, he said, we would never find out what we are each capable of.
You do not know, you cannot know, what I am capable of. Nobody will ever know. Please take me back.
I think I have dreamt of you all my life without knowing that you existed. I can even guess what you are going to say now. You are going to say: you are mistaken.
You are mistaken! she repeated, unable to stop herself, and unable to repress a laugh.
It was you, Camomille.
By the car he explained to her what she must do with the controls in the driving seat whilst he cranked the engine. She was pleased to do what he instructed her to do, for it offered her an opportunity of showing him that she was capable, that her renunciation was in no way a disguise for incapacity.
At the end of the bonnet she could see his powerful head and shoulders lunging from side to side as he turned the crankshaft. His arms were thin. His forehead was shiny with sweat. After several unsuccessful turns, the engine started. The whole motor car began shaking and her gloved hands on the steering wheel shook in time with the engine. He shouted something which she could not hear. She had the impression that if she climbed down from the car she would have to make a small jump from the trembling car into the absolute stillness of the dust on the road and the walls of the church. She jumped. On the other side of the car he offered her his hand as she climbed up into the passenger seat. When she was seated, he lifted up her arm so that it trailed over the door, then he kissed it between glove and sleeve. She stared at his bowed head. She saw ber other hand lay itself upon his hair. He gave no sign of having felt her touch.