The Inferno (11 page)

Her laughter broke and stopped.

"It is beginning again."

A groan, which grew louder, a fresh burst of shrieks. Anna, her only friend, remained in the room. She looked and listened, filled with thoughts of motherhood. She was thinking that she, too, held within her such travail and such cries.

This lasted the whole day. For hours, from morning until evening, I heard the heart-rending wail rising and falling from that pitiful double being.

At certain moments I fell back, overcome. I could no longer look or listen. I renounced seeing so much truth. Then once more, with an effort, I stood up against the wall and looked into the Room again.

Anna kissed the woman on her forehead, in brave proximity to the
immense cry.

When the cry was articulate, it was: "No, no! I do not want to!"

Serious, sickened faces, almost grown old in a few hours with fatigue,
passed and repassed.

I heard some one say:

"No need to help it along. Nature must be allowed to take her course. Whatever nature does she does well."

And in surprise my lips repeated this lie, while my eyes were fixed upon the frail, innocent woman who was a prey to stupendous nature, which crushed her, rolled her in her blood, and exacted all the suffering from her that she could yield.

The midwife turned up her sleeves and put on her rubber gloves. She waved her enormous reddish-black, glistening hands like Indian clubs.

And all this turned into a nightmare in which I half believed. My head grew heavy and I was sickened by the smell of blood and carbolic acid poured out by the bottleful.

At a moment when I, feeling too harrowed, was not looking, I heard a cry different from hers, a cry that was scarcely more than the sound of a moving object, a light grating. It was the new being that had unloosened itself, as yet a mere morsel of flesh taken from her flesh-- her heart which had just been torn away from her.

This shook me to the depths of my being. I, who had witnessed everything that human beings undergo, I, at this first signal of human life, felt some paternal and fraternal chord--I do not know what-- vibrating within me.

She laughed. "How quickly it went!" she said.

. . . . .

The day was coming to a close. Complete silence in the room. A plain night lamp was burning, the flame scarcely flickering. The clock, like a poor soul, was ticking faintly. There was hardly a thing near the bed. It was as in a real temple.

She lay stretched out in bed, in ideal quiet, her eyes turned toward the window. Bit by bit, she saw the evening descending upon the most beautiful day in her life.

This ruined mass, this languid face shone with the glory of having created, with a sort of ecstasy which redeemed her suffering, and one saw the new world of thoughts that grew out of her experience.

She thought of the child growing up. She smiled at the joys and sorrows it would cause her. She smiled also at the brother or sister it would have some day.

And I thought of this at the same time that she did, and I saw her martyrdom more clearly than she.

This massacre, this tragedy of flesh is so ordinary and commonplace that every woman carries the memory and imprint of it, and yet nobody really knows it. The doctor, who comes into contact with so much of the same sort of suffering, is not moved by it any more. The woman, who is too tender-hearted, never remembers it. Others who look on at travail have a sentimental interest, which wipes out the agony. But I who saw for the sake of seeing know, in all its horror, the agony of childbirth. I shall never forget the great laceration of life.

The night lamp was placed so that the bed was plunged in shadow. I could no longer see the mother. I no longer knew her. I believed in her.

The woman who had been confined was moved with exquisite care into the next room, which she had occupied previously. It was larger and more comfortable.

They cleaned the room from top to bottom, and I saw Anna and Philip seated in the room again.

"Take care, Philip," Anna was saying, "you do not understand the Christian religion. You really do not know /exactly/ what it is. You speak of it," she added, with a smile, "as women speak of men, or as men when they try to explain women. Its fundamental element is love. It is a covenant of love between human beings who instinctively detest one another. It is also a wealth of love in our hearts to which we respond naturally when we are little children. Later all our tenderness is added to it bit by bit, like treasure to treasure. It is a law of outpouring to which we give ourselves up, and it is the source of that outpouring. It is life, it is almost a work, it is almost a human being."

"But, my dear Anna, that is not the Christian religion. That is you."

. . . . .

In the middle of the night, I heard talking through the partition. I struggled with my sleepiness and got up.

The man was alone, in bed. A lamp was burning dimly. He was asleep and talking in his sleep.

He smiled and said "No!" three times with growing ecstasy. Then his smile at the vision he saw faded away. For a moment his face remained set, as if he were waiting, then he looked terrified, and his mouth opened. "Anna! Ah, ah!--Ah, ah!" he cried through gaping lips. At this he awoke and rolled his eyes. He sighed and quieted down. He sat up in bed, still struck and terrified by what had passed through his mind a few seconds before.

He looked round at everything to calm himself and banish his nightmare completely. The familiar sight of the room, with the lamp, so wise and motionless, enthroned in the middle, reassured him. It was balm to this man who had just seen what does not exist, who had just smiled at phantoms and touched them, who had just been mad.

. . . . .

I rose the next morning, all broken up. I was restless. I had a severe headache. My eyes were bloodshot. When I looked at them in the mirror, it was as if I saw them through a veil of blood.

When I was alone, free from the visions and scenes to which I devoted my life, all kinds of worries assailed me--worry about my position, which I was risking, worry about the steps I ought to be taking and yet was not taking, worry over myself that I was so intent upon casting off all my obligations and postponing them, and repudiating my wage-earning lot, by which I was destined to be held fast in the slow wheelwork of office routine.

I was also worried by all kinds of minutiæ, annoying because they kept cropping up every minute--not make any noise, not light a light when the Room was dark, hide myself, and hide myself all the time. One evening I got a fit of coughing while listening at the hole. I snatched up my pillow and buried my head in it to keep the sound from coming out of my mouth.

Everything seemed to be in a league to avenge itself upon me for I did not know what. I felt as though I should not be able to hold out much longer. Nevertheless, I made up my mind to keep on looking as long as my health and my courage lasted. It might be bad for me, but it was my duty.

. . . . .

The man was sinking. Death was evidently in the house.

It was quite late in the evening. They were sitting at the table
opposite each other.

I knew their marriage had taken place that afternoon, and that its purpose had been only to solemnise their approaching farewell. Some white blossoms, lilies and azaleas, were strewn on the table, the mantelpiece, and one armchair. He was fading away like those cut flowers.

"We are married," he said. "You are my wife. You are my wife, Anna!"

It was for the sweetness of saying, "You are my wife," that he had so longed. Nothing more. But he felt so poor, with his few days of life, that it was complete happiness to him.

He looked at her, and she lifted her eyes to him--to him who adored her sisterly tenderness--she who had become devoted to his adoration. What infinite emotion lay hidden in these two silences, which faced each other in a kind of embrace; in the double silence of these two human beings, who, I had observed, never touched each other, not even with the tips of their fingers.

The girl lifted her head, and said, in an unsteady voice:

"It is late. I am going to sleep."

She got up. The lamp, which she set on the mantelpiece, lit up the
room.

She trembled. She seemed to be in a dream and not to know how to yield to the dream. Then she raised her arm and took the pins out of her hair. It fell down her back and looked, in the night, as if it were lit by the setting sun.

The man made a sudden movement and looked at her in surprise. Not a
word.

She removed a gold brooch from the top of her blouse, and a bit of her
bosom appeared.

"What are you doing, Anna, what are you doing?"

"Why, undressing."

She wanted to say this in a natural voice, but had not succeeded. He replied with an inarticulate exclamation, a cry from his heart, which was touched to the quick. Stupefaction, desperate regret, and also the flash of an inconceivable hope agitated him, oppressed him.

"You are my husband."

"Oh," he said, "you know I am nothing." He spoke feebly in a tragic tone. "Married for form's sake," he went on, stammering out fragmentary, incoherent phrases. "I knew it, I knew it--formality--our conventions--"

She stopped, with her hand hesitating on her blouse like a flower, and
said:

"You are my husband. It is your right."

He made a faint gesture of denial. She quickly corrected herself.

"No, no, it is not your right. I want to do it."

I began to understand how kind she was trying to be. She wished to give this man, this poor man who was sinking at her feet, a reward that was worthy of her. She wanted to bestow upon him the gift of the sight of her body.

But the thing was harder than the mere bestowal of a gift. It must not look like the mere payment of a debt. He would not have consented to that. She must make him believe it was a voluntary wifely act, a willing caress. She must conceal her suffering and repugnance like a vice. Feeling the difficulty of giving this delicate shade to her sacrifice, she was afraid of herself.

"No, Anna--dear Anna--think--" He was going to say, "Think of Michel," but he did not have the strength at that moment to use this one decisive argument, and only murmured, "You, you!"

"I want to do it," she repeated.

"But I do not want you to. No, no."

He said this in a weaker voice now, overcome by love. Through instinctive nobility, he covered his eyes with his hand, but gradually his hand surrendered and dropped.

She continued to undress, with uncertain movements that showed she hardly knew what she was doing. She took off her black waist, and her bust emerged like the day. When the light shone on her she quivered and crossed her shining arms over her chest. Then she started to unhook the belt of her skirt, her arms curved, her reddened face bent down and her lips tightly compressed, as if she had nothing in mind but the unhooking of her skirt. It dropped to the ground and she stepped out of it with a soft rustle, like the sound the wind makes in a leafy garden.

She leaned against the mantelpiece. Her movements were large, majestic, beautiful, yet dainty and feminine. She pulled off her stockings. Her legs were round and large and smooth as in a statue of Michael Angelo's.

She shivered and stopped, overcome by repugnance.

"I feel a little cold," she said in explanation and went on undressing, revealing her great modesty in violating it.

"Holy Virgin!" the man breathed in a whisper, so as not to frighten
her.

. . . . .

I have never seen a woman so radiantly beautiful. I had never dreamed of beauty like it. The very first day, her face had struck me by its regularity and unusual charm, and her tall figure--taller than myself-- had seemed opulent, yet delicate, but I had never believed in such splendid perfection of form.

In her superhuman proportions she was like some Eve in grand religious frescoes. Big, soft and supple, broad-shouldered, with a full beautiful bosom, small feet, and tapering limbs.

In a dreamy voice, going still further in the bestowal of her supreme
gift, she said:

"No one"--she stressed these words with an emphasis amounting to the mention of a certain name--"/no one/--listen--no one, no matter what happens, will ever know what I have just done."

And now she, the giver of a gift, knelt--knelt to her adorer who was prostrated before her like a victim. Her shining knees touched the cheap common carpet. Her chastity clothed her like a beautiful garment. She murmured broken words of gratitude, as though she felt that what she was doing was higher than her duty and more beautiful, and that it glorified her.

. . . . .

After she dressed and left the room without their having dared to say anything to each other, I wavered between two doubts. Was she right, or was she wrong? I saw the man cry and I heard him mutter:

"Now I shall not be able to die."

The man was lying in bed. They moved about him carefully. He stirred faintly, said a few words, asked for a drink, smiled and then became silent under the rush of thoughts.

That morning they had seen him fold his hands, and they had asked him whether he wanted them to send for a priest.

"Yes--no," he said.

They went out, and a few minutes later, as if he had been waiting outside the door, a dark-robed priest entered. The two were left alone together.

The dying man turned his face toward the newcomer.

"I am going to die," he said.

"What is your religion?" asked the priest.

"The religion of my own country, the Greek Orthodox Church."

"That is a heresy which you must instantly abjure. There is only one true religion, the Roman Catholic religion. Confess now. I will absolve you and baptise you."

The other did not reply.

"Tell me what sins you have committed. You will repent and everything will be forgiven you."

"My sins?"

"Try to remember. Shall I help you?" He nodded toward the door. "Who
is that person?"

"My--wife," said the man with slight hesitation, which did not escape the priest, who was leaning over him with ears pricked. He smelt a rat.