The dinner guests strolled into the hotel dining-room and sat down in their places. The waiters served them slowly at first to allow the late-comers time to arrive so that they wouldn't have to go back for more plates. And the older bathers, the regulars who had already been here for much of the season, watched with interest each time the door opened and closed, anxious to see new faces appear.
This is the one big event in a health resort.
We all wait until dinner to size up the new arrivals, to guess who they are, what they do, what they think. A single desire prowls through our imagination. It is the hope of meeting someone, of becoming friendly with them, even perhaps of falling in love. In a world where you're for ever rubbing shoulders with complete strangers, the people next to you take on an extra importance. Your curiosity is awakened, your fellow-feeling is sharpened and your desire to be friendly is hard at work.
In a health spa you form serious, long-lasting relationships faster than just about anywhere else. You see everyone all day long and get to know them very quickly. And each new friendship comes complete with a sense of ease and informality as if you've known each other for years. It's a wonderful feeling to open your heart to someone who seems to be opening theirs to you.
And the gloominess of a health spa, the boredom of so many days that are all the same, ensures that a new friendship is hatched each and every hour.
That evening, like every evening, we were waiting for the arrival of someone new.
Only two people came and they were very strange, a man and a woman; father and daughter. They reminded me, straight away, of characters from Edgar Allen Poe; and yet there was a sort of charm about them, a feeling of sadness. I thought they might be the victims of a bereavement. The man was very tall and thin, slightly bent. His hair was completely white, too white - for his face was still young. And there was something grave both in the way he carried himself and in his character; a grimness you would usually associate with protestants. His daughter, aged twenty-four or twenty-five, was small, as thin as him, very pale, with an appearance that was empty, tired, weighed down. You may have met people like these: too weak to handle the cares and necessities of life, too weak to get on with things, to go out and do the things that have to be done. She was also pretty, this young girl. She had the pale beauty of a ghost. And she ate with terrible slowness as if she was virtually unable to move her arms.
It had to be her who had come here to take the waters.
The two of them happened to sit opposite me, on the other side of the table, and I noticed immediately that the father had a most peculiar nervous twitch.
Each time he wanted to reach out for something, his hand described a snake's tongue, making a crazy zig-zag movement before it managed to get what it wanted. The movement annoyed me so much that after a few moments I turned my head away so that I wouldn't have to see it.
I also noticed that the young woman kept, even as she ate, one glove on her left hand.
After dinner, I went for a walk round the park that was part of the spa. It was very hot, that evening. I was walking up and down a shadowy path, listening to the casino band as it struck up a tune from the top of a hill that overlooked the park.
And then I saw, coming towards me at a slow pace, the father and daughter. 1 nodded at them, the way you nod at any fellow-guest in a health resort; and the man, suddenly stopping, asked, 'Could you, Monsieur, show us a walk that is as short, easy and as pretty as possible - if you'll excuse my interrupting you.'
I offered to lead them to the little valley where a slender river flows. The valley is deep, a narrow gorge between two rocky and wooded escarpments.
They accepted.
And naturally we talked about the virtue of taking the waters.
'My daughter,' he told me, 'has a strange illness -we don't know the cause. She suffers from incomprehensible nervous disorders. Sometimes they think it's her heart, sometimes her liver, sometimes her spinal marrow. Now they say it's her stomach. That's why we're here. Me, I'm more of the opinion that it's her nerves. In any case, it's very sad.'
Suddenly I remembered the violent twitch of his hand and I asked him, 'Couldn't she have inherited her illness from you? Don't you have a nervous condition?'
He replied quietly. 'Me? No - my nerves have always been fine.'
But then, after a pause, he went on. 'Ah! You're referring to the way my hand twitches every time I want to take something? That's the result of a terrible experience I once had. Believe it or not - this young girl was once buried alive!'
I could find nothing to say except an 'Ah!' of surprise and emotion. He went on:
Here is my story. It is very straightforward. Juliette had suffered heart murmurs for some time. We thought her heart was diseased and we were prepared for the worst.
One cold day we found her unconscious, dead. She had just fallen over in the garden. The doctor said that she was deceased. I stood watch over her for a day and two nights; I placed her myself in her coffin, which I accompanied as far as the cemetery where it was placed in our family tomb. This was in the middle of the countryside, in Lorraine.
I had wanted her to be buried with her jewels, her bracelets, necklaces, rings - all presents she had been given by me - and in her first ball-gown.
You can imagine the state of my heart and soul on returning to my home. I had nothing but her, my wife having died a long time before. I returned alone to my bedroom, half-mad, exhausted, and collapsed into my armchair, my mind empty, without the strength to move. I was nothing more than a framework of misery, trembling, flayed alive. My soul was like an open wound.
My old servant, Prosper, who had helped me place Juliette in her coffin and to prepare her for her last sleep, entered soundlessly and asked, 'Monsieur, do you wish to eat or drink something?'
I shook my head without replying.
'Monsieur is making a mistake,' he tried again. 'Monsieur will make himself ill. Would Monsieur like me to put him to bed?'
I said, 'No. Leave me.'
And he went.
How the hours slid past, I don't know. Oh! What a night! What a night! It was cold; my fire had gone out in the main fireplace and the wind, a winter wind, a frozen wind, a great wind full of ice, knocked against the windows with a sinister, repetitive sound.
How did the hours slide past? I sat there, not sleeping, weighed down, overpowered, my eyes open, my legs stretched out, my body powerless, dead and my spirit filled with despair. Suddenly, the great bell by the front door, the great bell of the entrance hall rang out.
I started so suddenly that the seat cracked beneath me. The sound, slow and heavy, shuddered through the empty house as if through a cave. I turned round to look at the time on the clock. It was two o'clock in the morning. Who would want to visit at that hour?
And then the bell rang out twice more. The servants, no doubt, were too afraid to get up. I took a candle and went down. 'Who is there?' I almost asked.
But then, ashamed of my weakness, I slowly drew back the heavy bolts. My heart was beating. I was afraid. With a sudden movement I opened the door and saw in the shadow a white form standing there a little like a ghost.
I drew back, crippled with fear, stammering, 'Who… who… who are you?'
A voice replied, 'It is me, Father.'
It was my daughter.
Certainly, I thought I'd gone mad. I was reeling backwards as the phantom advanced; I was moving backwards, making the same gesture with my hand to chase it away that you saw a short while ago; that gesture has never left me.
The ghost continued, 'Don't be afraid, Father. I was not dead. Somebody wanted to steal my rings and cut off one of my fingers. My blood began to flow and it was that that woke me up.'
