The Dead Woman
I had loved her to distraction. Why do we love? It is a strange thing to see in the whole world only one being, have in one’s mind only a single thought, a single desire in one’s heart, a single name on one’s lips: a name rising there continually, rising, as a river rises from its source, from the depths of our soul, so that we murmur it all day long, everywhere, like a prayer.
I will not set out our story. Love has no more than one story, always the same. I had met her and loved her. That tells all. And for a whole year I had lived in her affection, in her arms, in her caresses, in her glance, in her garments, in her words, wrapped round in them, bound, held fast in all that was part of her, in so utter a fashion that I no longer knew whether it was day or night, whether I died or lived, on this old earth or on some other world.
And then she died. How? I don’t know, I know nothing now.
She came home wet, one rainy evening, and the next day she was coughing. She coughed for about a week and took to her bed.
What happened? I don’t know now.
Doctors came, wrote prescriptions, went away. They brought remedies; a woman gave her them to drink. Her hands were hot, her brow damp and burning, her eyes were brilliant and mournful. I spoke to her, she answered me. What did we say? I don’t know now. I have forgotten all, all, all. She died, I remember vividly her little sigh, so weak a little sigh, the last she gave. The nurse said: “Ah.” I understood, I understood.
I have understood nothing since. Nothing. I saw a priest who spoke of “your mistress.” I felt that he was insulting her. Since she was dead, no one had any right to know that about her. I threw him out. Another came, a very good man, a gentle soul. I wept when he spoke to me about her.
They asked for instructions about a thousand things to do with the burial of her. I don’t know now what they were. But I do remember vividly the coffin, the sound made by the blows of the hammer when they nailed her in it. Oh, my God! She was buried. Buried! She! In that hole! A few people came, friends. I rushed away. I ran. I walked for hours about the streets. Then I went home. The next day I began to travel.
I came back to Paris yesterday.
When I saw my bedroom again, our bedroom, our bed, our furniture, the whole house which still held all those mortal traces that death leaves behind, I was seized by so sharp a return of agony that I had almost opened the window and flung myself into the street. Unable to stay any longer surrounded by these things, between the walls that had held and sheltered her, and must still hide in their imperceptible cracks a thousand atoms of her being, of her flesh and her breath, I seized my hat to rush out. Suddenly, in the very instant of reaching the door, I passed before the large glass in the hall, which she had had placed there so that every day before she went out she could see herself from head to foot, and see whether her toilet had been successful, was just right and charming, from hat to shoes.
I stopped dead in front of this glass which had so many time reflected her, so many times, so many times, that it must then have caught and held the image of her.
I stood there, shuddering, my eyes fixed on the glass, on the smooth depths that were empty now but had held the whole of her, possessed her as wholly as I did, as wholly as did my passionate glances. I thought that I loved this glass—I touched it—it was cold! Oh, memory! memory! woeful, searing, living, frightful glass, the cause of all our agonies. Happy the man whose heart, like a glass across whose surface reflections glide and vanish, forgets all that it has held, all that has passed before it, all that is gazed on and mirrored in its emotions of affection and love. How I suffer!
I went out, and by no will of my own, without knowing what I did, without wishing it, I wandered towards the cemetery. I found her simple grave, a marble cross with these few words: “She loved, was loved and died.”
She was there, under there, a mass of decay! Horrible! I broke into sobs, lying with my forehead pressed against the earth.
I stayed there a long time, a very long time. Then I saw that night was falling. Thereupon a strange wild desire, the desire of a despairing lover, took possession of me. I wanted to spend the night near her, a last night, to weep on her grave. But I should be seen and turned out. What could I do? I was cunning. I got up and began to wander about this city of the lost. I walked and walked. How small a city it is beside the other city, the city of the living. And yet the dead far outnumber the living. We must have tall houses, streets, a deal of space, for the four generations that at one and the same time enjoy the light of day, drink the water of springs, the juice of grapes, and eat the bread grown in the fields.
And for all the
