Nora said, as if she had not been interrupted—‘Because after that night, I went to see Jenny. I remember the stairs. They were of brown wood, and the hall was ugly and dark, and her apartment depressing. No one would have known that she had money. The walls had mustard-coloured paper on them as far as the salon, and something hideous in red and green and black in the hall, and away at the end, a bedroom facing the hall-door, with a double-bed. Sitting up against, the pillow was a doll. Robin had given me a doll. I knew then, before I asked, that this was the right house, before I said, “You are Robin’s mistress, aren’t you?” That poor shuddering creature had pelvic bones I could see flying through her dress. I wanted to lean forward and laugh with terror. She was sitting there doubled up with surprise, her raven’s bill coming up saying, “Yes.” Then I looked up and there on the wall was the photograph of Robin when she was a baby (the one that she had told me was lost).
‘She went to pieces; she fell forward on my lap. At her next words I saw that I was not a danger to her, but someone who might understand her torture. In great agitation she said, “I went out this afternoon, I didn’t think she would call me, because you had been away to the country, Robin said, and would be back this evening and so she would have to stay home with you, because you had been so good to her always; though God knows I understand there is nothing between you any longer, that you are ‘just good friends’; she has explained that—still, I nearly went mad when I found that she had been here and I was out. She has told me often enough, ‘Don’t leave the house, because I don’t know exactly when I am going to be able to get away, because I can’t hurt Nora.’ “ Nora’s voice broke. She went on.
‘Then Jenny said, “What are you going to do? What do you want me to do?” I knew all the time that she could do nothing but what she wanted to do, and that whatever it was, she was a liar, no matter what truth she was telling. I was dead. I felt stronger then, and I said, yes I would have a drink. She poured out two, knocking the bottle against the glass and spilling the liquor on the dark ugly carpet. I kept thinking, what else is it that is hurting me; then I knew the doll; the doll in there on the bed.’ Nora sat down, facing the doctor. ‘We give death to a child when we give it a doll—it’s the effigy and the shroud; when a woman gives it to a woman, it is the life they cannot have, it is their child, sacred and profane; so when I saw that other doll—‘ Nora could not go on. She began to cry. ‘What part of monstrosity am I that I am always crying at its side!
‘When I got home Robin had been waiting, knowing, because I was late, that something was wrong. I said, “It is over—I can’t go on. You have always lied to me, and you have denied me to her. I can’t stand it any more."
‘She stood up then, and went into the hall. She jerked her coat off the hook and I said, “Have you nothing to say to me?” She turned her face to me. It was like something once beautiful found in a river—and flung herself out of the door.’
‘And you were crying,’ the doctor said, nodding. ‘You went about the house like someone sunken under lightness. You were ruined and you kept striking your hands together, laughing crazily and singing a little and putting your hands over your face. Stage-tricks have been taken from life, so finding yourself employing them you were confused with a sense of shame. When you went out looking for someone to go mad with, they said, “For God’s sake look at Nora!” For the demolishing of a great ruin is always a fine and terrifying spectacle. Why is it that you want to talk to me? Because I’m the other woman that God forgot.’
‘There’s nothing to go by, Matthew,’ she said. ‘You do not know which way to go. A man is another person—a woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own. If she is taken you cry that you have been robbed of yourself. God laughs at me; but his laughter is my love.’
‘You have died and arisen for love,’ said Matthew. ‘But unlike the ass, returning from the market you are always carrying the same load. Oh, for God’s sweet sake, didn’t she ever disgust you! Weren’t you sometimes pleased that you had the night to yourself, wishing, when she did come home, that it was never?’
‘Never, and always; I was frightened she would be gentle again. That,’ she said, ‘that’s an awful fear. Fear of the moment when she would turn her words, making them something between us that nobody else could possibly share—and she would say, “You have got to stay with me or I can’t live.” Yet one night she ran behind me in the Montparnasse quarter, where I had gone looking for her because someone had called me, saying, she was sick and couldn’t get home (I had stopped going out with her because I couldn’t bear to see the “evidence of my eyes”); running behind me for blocks saying, with a furious panting breath, “You are a devil! You make everything dirty!” (I had tried to take someone’s hands off her. They always put hands on her when she was drunk.) “You make me feel dirty and tired and old!"
I turned against the wall. The policemen and the people in the street collected. I was cold and terribly ashamed. I said, “Do you mean that?” And she said she meant it. She put her head down on one of the officers’ shoulders. She was drunk. He had her by her wrist, one hand on her behind. She did not say anything about that, because she did not notice, and kept spitting horrible things at me. Then I walked away very fast. My head seemed to be in a large place. She began running after me. I kept on walking. I was cold, and I was not miserable any more. She caught me by the shoulder and went against me, grinning. She stumbled and I held her, and she said, seeing a poor wretched beggar of a whore, “Give her some money, all of it!” She threw the francs into the street and bent down over the filthy baggage and began stroking her hair, gray with the dust of years, saying, “They are all God-forsaken, and you most of all, because they don’t want you to have your happiness. They don’t want you to drink. Well, here, drink! I give you money and permission! These women—they are all like her,’ she said with fury. “They are all good—they want to save us!” She sat down beside her.
‘It took me and the garçon half an hour to get her up and into the lobby, and when I got her that far she began fighting, so that suddenly, without thinking, but out of weariness and misery I struck her; and at that she started, and smiled, and went up the stairs with me without complaint. She sat up in bed and ate eggs and called me, “Angel! Angel!” and ate my eggs too, and turned over, and went to sleep. Then I kissed her, holding her hands and feet, and I said: “Die now, so you will be quiet, so you will not be touched again by dirty hands; so you will not take my heart and your body and let them be nosed by dogs—die now, then you will be mine forever.” (What right has anyone to that?)’ She stopped. ‘She was mine only when she was drunk, Matthew, and had passed out. That’s the terrible thing, that finally she was mine only when she was dead drunk. All the time I didn’t believe her life was as it was and yet, the fact that I didn’t, proves something is wrong with me. I saw her always like a tall child who had grown up the length of the infant’s gown, walking and needing help and safety; because she was in her own nightmare. I tried to come between and save her, but, I was like a shadow in her dream that could never reach her in time, as the cry of the sleeper has no echo, myself echo struggling to answer; she was like a new shadow walking perilously close to the outer curtain, and I was going mad because I was awake and seeing it, unable to reach it, unable to strike people down from it; and it moving, almost unwalking, with the face saintly and idiotic.