“Come, Rolf,” she says, taking my arm.
I try again to escape the hated name. “I am not Rolf,” I explain. “I’m Rudolf.”
“You are not Rudolf.”
“Oh yes, I’m Rudolf. Rudolf, the unicorn.”
She called me that once. But I have no success. She smiles, as one does at a stubborn child. “You’re not Rudolf and you are not Rolf. But neither are you what you think you are. Now come, Rolf!”
I look at her. For a moment I again have the feeling that she is not sick at all and is only pretending. “Don’t be boring,” she says. “Why do you always want to be the same person?”
“Yes, why?” I reply in surprise. “You’re right! Why does one want to be? What is there so precious about a person? And why does one take oneself so seriously?”
She nods. “You and the doctor! But in the end the wind blows over^ everything. Why won’t you two yield to it?”
“The doctor too?” I ask.
“Yes, the man who calls himself that. The things he wants to find out from me! But he knows nothing at all. Not even how the grass looks at night when no one is watching.”
“How can it look? Gray, probably, or black. And silvery when the moon is shining.”
Isabelle shakes her head. “Just as I thought! Just like the doctor!”
“How does it look then?”
She stops. A gust of wind blows over us laden with bees and the smell of flowers. The yellow dress billows like a sail. “It isn’t there at all,” she says.
We walk on. An old woman in asylum clothes comes past us along the allée. Her face is red and glistening with tears. Two helpless relatives walk beside her. “What is there, then, if the grass isn’t?” I ask.
“Nothing. It’s only there while you’re watching. Sometimes if you turn around very fast you can still catch it.”
“What? The grass not being there?”
“No—but the way it scurries back to its place. That’s how they all are—the grass and everything that’s behind you. Like servants who have gone to a dance. You just have to be very quick in turning around. Then you can catch them—otherwise they’re already there, acting as innocent as if they’d never been away.”
“Who, Isabelle?” I ask very cautiously.
“Things. Everything behind you. They’re just waiting for you to turn around so they can disappear!”
I consider that for a moment. It would be like having an abyss behind you all the time. “Am I not there either when you turn around?” I ask.
“You aren’t there either. Nothing is.”
“Really?” I say somewhat bitterly. “But for me I am always there. No matter how fast I turn around.”
“You turn around in the wrong direction.”
“Are there different directions too?”
“For you there are, Rolf.”
I recoil once more at the hated name. “And for you? What about you?”
She looks at me, smiling absently, as though she did not know me. “I? But I’m not here at all!”
“Really? You certainly are for me.” Her expression changes. She knows me again. “Is that true? Why then don’t you say it to me more often?”
“But I say it to you all the time.”
“Not enough.” She leans against me. I feel her breath and her breasts under the thin silk. “Never enough,” she says with a sigh. “Why doesn’t anyone know that? Oh, you statues!”
Statues, I think. What other role is left for me? I look at her. She is beautiful and exciting, I am aware of her, and every time I am with her it is as if a thousand voices were telephoning through my veins; then suddenly all are cut off as though they had a wrong number, and I find myself helpless and confused. One cannot desire a madwoman. Perhaps some can, not I. It is as though you were to desire a clockwork doll. Or someone hypnotized. But that does not alter the fact that you are aware of her.
The green shadows of the allée part, and in front of us beds of tulips and narcissuses lie in the full sun. “You must put your hat on, Isabelle,” I say. “The doctor wants you to.”
She throws her hat among the flowers. “The doctor! What doesn’t he want! He wants to marry me, but his heart is starved. He’s a sweating owl.”
I don’t think that owls can sweat, but the image is convincing nevertheless. Isabelle steps among the tulips like a dancer and crouches there. “Can you hear them?”
“Of course,” I reply in relief. “Anyone can hear them. They’re bells. In F sharp.”
“What is F sharp?”
“A musical note. The sweetest of all.”
She throws her wide skirt over the flowers. “Are they ringing in me now?”
I nod, looking at her slender neck. Everything rings in you, I think. She breaks off a tulip and looks at the open blossom and the fleshy stem from which sap is oozing. “They are not sweet.”
“All right—then they’re bells in C sharp.”
“Must it be sharp?”
“It could be flat.”
“Can’t it be both at the same time?”
“Not in music. There are certain rules. It can be only one or the other. Or one after the other.”
“One after the other!” Isabelle looks at me with mild contempt. “You always use these pretexts, Rolf. Why?”
“I don’t know either. I wish things were otherwise.”
Suddenly she straightens up and throws away the tulip she has picked. With a leap she is out of the bed and is vigorously shaking her dress. Then she pulls it up and looks at her legs. Her face is twisted with disgust. “What happened?” I ask in alarm.
She points at the bed. “Snakes—”
I glance at the beds. “There aren’t any snakes there, Isabelle.”
“Yes there are! Those there!” She points at the tulips. “Don’t you see what they want?”
“They don’t want anything. They are flowers,” I say un-comprehendingly.
“They touched me!” She is trembling with disgust and staring at the tulips.
I take her by the arm and turn her around so that she can no longer see the bed. “Now you’re turned around,” I say. “Now they’re not there any more, Isabelle.”
She is breathing heavily. “Don’t permit it! Stamp on them, Rudolf.”
“They’re not there any more. You have turned around and now they’re gone. Like the grass at night and the things.”
She leans against me. Suddenly I am no longer Rolf. She presses her face against my shoulder. She doesn’t have to explain anything more to me. I am Rudolf and must know. “Are you sure?” she asks, and I feel her heart beating against my hand.
“Perfectly sure. They’re gone. Like servants on Sunday.”
“Don’t permit it, Rudolf.”
“I won’t permit it,” I say, not knowing what she means. But that’s unimportant. She is already growing calmer.
We walk back slowly. Almost without transition she becomes tired. A nurse marches up on flat heels. “You must come and eat, Mademoiselle.”
“Eat,” Isabelle says. “Why must one eat all the time, Rudolf?”
“So that you won’t die.”
“You’re lying again,” she says wearily, like a helpless child.
“Not this time. This time it’s true.”
“Really? Do stones eat?”