François Mauriac

“ The arc-lights outshone the waning moon, but he knew that its quiet gleam fell upon the sombre uplands between the Pyrenees and the Atlantic. His agony had passed from him and his purity remained; he revelled in his wretched chastity. Sometime he and Noémi would love each other all through an endless summer's day, and he imagined what this exalted union of the flesh would be like. Ah, that bright shining light in which their immortal, their incorruptible bodies would come together! Jean spoke aloud: "There are no masters; we are all born slaves to be emancipated by Thee, Lord." ”

“ How many would she have to live through, sitting at the corner of that fire-place by the dying embers? In the corners of the room the paper was peeling off the damp walls, on which could still be seen the marks of the old pictures which Bernard had taken away to adorn the drawing-room at Saint Clair,—and the desolate rusty nails. On the mantelpiece, in frames with a triple border of tortoiseshell, stood photographs as pallid as if the dead they represented had died a second death. ”

“ A little smile of apology, or perhaps the pouting suggestion of a kiss calmed his brief impatience. Noémi looked at her husband with the eyes of a God-fearing person at the point of death, and the smile that played about her mouth was forced as though to cheer a dying friend. It was Jean, Jean Péloueyre, who had banished the gleam from her eyes, and the colour from her cheeks, her lips, and her ears. His mere presence was cutting at the roots of her life, and he loved her the better for the suffering he caused her. No victim had ever been so adored by its tormentor. ”

“ When the fields of Argelouse came into sight at the turn of the road: ‘Already!’ I cried. [Pg 103] Smoke from burning grass drifted over the surface of the desolate soil now barren of its rye; through a gap in the embankment poured a herd of cattle looking like a stream of dirty milk, and they wandered off over the sandy heath. Jean had to cross the fields, to reach Vilméja, and I said: ‘I’ll come with you: I’ve been so thrilled by all this.’ But we found no more to say to each other. The rye stubble hurt me through my country sandals. ”

“ He saw his body in the mirror, as dry and shrivelled as a piece of scorched heather on the heath, and he stuttered out: "She won't have me!" The astonishing reply caused him to tremble: "She's been sounded and is quite willing." The d'Artiailhs were in the seventh heaven, and could scarcely believe their good fortune. But Jean shook his head, and with outstretched hands seemed to be warding off what surely was a delusion: a young girl in his arms, and of her own free will. Noémi, who walked past him at High Mass; Noémi, into whose dark, flower-like eyes he had never permitted himself to gaze! ”

“ Balionte’s slippers still shuffled about the kitchen; then she brought in the candlesticks. After that, silence: the silence of Argelouse. People who do not know those deserted moors do not know what silence is: it encircles the house as if embodied in that thick mass of forest in which nothing lives, except from time to time a hooting owl (we seem to be listening in the night to the sound of the sob we dare not utter) . ”

“ Even without Noémi, even without any wife, he would have the caresses that were worth more to him than any others, those of the wind at dawn. Pouring with perspiration and sickened by the smell of the sick room, he looked with envious eyes at Cadette's grandson who had brought him the first woodcock of the season. What joy those mornings had been: dull grey pine-tops high in the blue sky, like the meek who will be exalted to glory ”

“ Thérèse realised that she too might have been wiped out of existence, and later on not even her little daughter Marie would have been allowed to find in an album the likeness of one who had brought her into the world. At that moment Marie was already asleep in a room at Argelouse, where Thérèse would arrive late that evening: she would listen in the darkness to the murmur of that childish slumber; she would lean over the bed and her lips would drink in the sweetness of that sleeping life like a draught of clear water. ”

“ One o'clock would strike; an hour less of shuddering disgust in the darkness of the room above, of waiting for the loathsome body beside her to move from the sleep simulated out of pity for her. Often the touch of a leg waked her, and she would creep into the crevice between the bed and the wall where the slightest touch made her tremble with apprehension. Then Jean, believing her to be asleep, would risk a furtive caress, and it was Noémi's turn to pretend, left he should be tempted to go further. ”

“ Through those long September nights when the moonlight fell upon the bed, Jean had probably come to know this body more intimately than if he had been her chosen lover and they had clasped each other in mutual ecstasy. She was always like a corpse in his arms, and his visual possession was therefore complete. Perhaps we know the woman who does not love us better than any other.
At that very moment, Noémi lay in the great cold bedroom, happy, and untroubled by a repulsive presence,—asleep in the bed he had deserted. ”

“ Argelouse is literally one of the ends of the earth,—one of those places beyond which you cannot go; in those parts they call them “Quartiers.” A few farms, with no church or cemetery, scattered round a field of rye, over five miles from the market-town of Saint Clair, with which it is connected by a single road in very bad repair. This road, such as it is, fades away beyond Argelouse into sandy tracks: and thence, until the sea, there is nothing but fifty miles of marshes, lagoons, young pines, and sandy heath; and by the end of winter the very sheep look as grey as that bleak landscape. ”

“ He made his way back to the village with increasingly slower steps; only a few moments more and Noémi would be unpleasantly conscious of his presence in the house. He tip-toed across the hall, but she was waiting for him and came forward carrying a lamp and smiling a welcome. She bent her forehead for a kiss, and felt the weight of the game-bag: the gestures of a wife, happy at the return of her beloved. But the mask was discarded after a few moments, for it had not served its purpose, and during dinner, M. Jêrome took pity on the silent couple. ”

“ She tried to recapture her imaginings of the night; and, indeed, at Argelouse the day was almost as quiet and as dark as the night. In these days, the shortest in the year, time disappears under the pall of rain, and one hour melts into the next; dusk passes into dusk in unalterable silence. But Thérèse had no desire for sleep, and her dreams became more and more vivid; she searched her past methodically for forgotten faces, lips that she had loved from afar, vague forms that casual encounters, or the chances of the night, had brought into contact with her young body. ”

“ Jean had forbidden Noémi to kiss him, but he gratefully accepted the coolness of her hand upon his forehead. He must have thought that she loved him, for he murmured: "I bless Thee forever, O God, for giving me a woman's love before I die." And, as in the days of his solitary wanderings, he turned the same line over and over again in his mind. Noémi was counting his pulse, and, tired of his rosary, he repeated Pauline's cry in a low voice: Mon Polyeucte touche à son heure dernière. ”

“ Indeed, would Bernard even listen to her? He paced the long, low, damp room, and the flooring, which was rotting here and there, creaked beneath his steps. He did not look at his wife,—he was bursting with a speech he had long since prepared. And Thérèse, too, knew what she was going to say. The simplest solution is always the one we never think of. She would say, ‘I am going to disappear, Bernard. Don’t worry about me. I will go out into the night at once, if you like. I am not afraid of the forest or the darkness. They know me: we know each other. ”

“ She sat and stirred the fire ... but the thick resinous smoke made her eyes smart and irritated her throat, which had already been injured by tobacco. No sooner had Balionte fetched away the remains of a hurried meal, than Thérèse put out the lamp and went to bed. How many hours she lay there before sleep came to her deliverance! The silence of Argelouse prevented her sleeping: she preferred the windy nights,—the confused murmur of the pines is full of human kindness. It soothed the turmoil of her mind. The wild nights of the equinox sent her to sleep better than the nights when all was still. ”

“ One evening Noémi found Doctor Pieuchon and the priest talking in the hall, and she asked bitterly of them the reasons for their silence: why hadn't they told her of Jean's daily visits at the bedside of the consumptive? The doctor bowed his head, pleading ignorance of Jean's condition. He was a man of unbounded kindness himself; why should he have been surprised at devotion like his own in another, and devotion to his own son? The priest defended himself more vigorously: Jean had insisted upon silence, and the rôle of spiritual director necessitated scrupulous discretion. ”

“ The day of the wedding was stifling, and it was on that very day, in the narrow church at Saint Clair, where the women’s whispering drowned the wheezes of the harmonium and their scents overpowered the incense, that Thérèse felt that she was lost. She had been in a trance when she entered the cage, and at the sound of the heavy door, as it shut behind her, the poor child awoke. Nothing was changed, but she felt that never again would she walk and dream alone. ”

“ From his hiding-place behind a pine tree he watched for magpies. If only he could have held back each passing minute; if only evening would never come again! But the shade thickened, and in the pines, twisted by equinoctial gales, there was a faint echo of the rolling surf upon the sands of Mimizan and Biscarosse. Little cabins of heather rose up out of a thick growth of ferns, from which the sportsmen of Les Landes shot ring-doves. The smell of rye-bread came from the farm, and as the sun sank from view, Jean brought down his last lark. ”

“ Noémi had at last descended from her pedestal, and Jean darted furtive glances at her. It seemed to him that he had her under a magnifying glass, and he searched eagerly for faults, for "defects" in this humanly vibrating metal: at either side of her nose there were little black dots; at the base of her neck the skin must have been burnt by stale tincture of iodine. A fleeting smile at something the priest was saying gave Jean a glimpse of the white shining line of teeth, and he noticed one dull one that looked questionable. ”

“ When, with many precautions, Thérèse’s attempt on his life had been disclosed to him in the nursing-home, his self-possession, which had been so highly commended, had cost him but little effort. Nothing seems really serious to those who are incapable of love; because he was without love, Bernard had only felt the sort of tremulous joy that follows an escape from great danger: the sort of sensation a man might have who had been told that he has lived for years, without knowing it, in the company of a homicidal maniac. ”

“ Jean would no doubt have preferred to hide his sufferings in the bedroom upstairs, but he had chosen to die in the garden so that Noémi might run the smallest possible risk of contagion. Injections of morphine made him drowsy. Rest! Rest after those hideous afternoons spent at the bedside of Robert Pieuchon, in agonies of despair at having to abandon his life: lurid evenings at Bordeaux; dancing to the music of barrel-organs in little suburban cafés; cycle rides in the country, with dusty legs and delicious fatigue afterwards; and best of all: amorous adventures with young women. ”

“ A smoky oil lamp lit up the plaster walls of the Nizan station and a carriage outside it: and all about them gathered the encompassing darkness. A train standing in the station whistled and hooted dismally. Gardère took Thérèse’s bag and again stared at her greedily. His wife must have told him to watch carefully how she was looking and behaving. For the benefit of Monsieur Larroque’s coachman Thérèse instinctively assumed that smile that made people say: “Never mind whether she is pretty or plain, you cannot resist her charm.” ”

“ The leaves of the scented lime-tree trembled against the Milky Way, and Noémi bade farewell to the dreams in which she had wandered along this lane of silver in the sky. The crickets chirping in the grass reminded her of her master. One hot airless night as she lay uncovered upon her sheets, she sobbed quietly and then wept aloud as she gazed with pitying eyes at her unsullied body, full of ardent life, but cool with the coolness of forest leaves. What would the cricket do with her? She knew that she could forbid him nothing ”