The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen by Graham Greene

There were eight Japanese gentlemen having a fish dinner at Bentley's. They spoke to each other rarely in their incomprehensible tongue, but always with a courteous smile and often with a small bow. All but one of them wore glasses. Sometimes the pretty girl who sat in the window beyond gave them a passing glance, but her own problem seemed too serious for her to pay real attention to anyone in the world except herself and her companion.
She had thin blonde hair and her face was pretty and petite in a Regency way, oval like a miniature, though she had a harsh way of speaking - perhaps the accent of the school, Roedean or Cheltenham Ladies' College, which she had not long ago left. She wore a man's signet ring on her engagement finger, and as I sat down at my table, with the Japanese gentlemen between us, she said,
"So you see we could marry next week."
"Yes?"
Her companion appeared a little distraught. He refilled their glasses with Chablis and said, "Of course, but Mother..." I missed some of the conversation then, because the eldest Japanese gentleman leant across the table, with a smile and a little bow, and uttered a whole paragraph like the mutter from an aviary, while everyone bent towards him and smiled and listened, and I couldn't help attending to him myself.
The girl's fiancé resembled her physically. I could see them as two miniatures hanging side by side on white wood panels. He should have been a young officer in Nelson's navy in the days when a certain weakness and sensitivity were no bar to promotion.
She said, "They are giving me an advance of five hundred pounds, and they've sold the paperback rights already." The hard commercial declaration came as a shock to me; it was a shock too that she was one of my own profession. She couldn't have been more than twenty. She deserved better of life.
He said, "But my uncle...""You know you don't get on with him. This way we shall be quite independent."
"You will be independent," he said grudgingly.
"The wine-trade wouldn't really suit you, would it? I spoke to my publisher about you and there's a very good chance...if you began with some reading..."
"But I don't know a thing about books." "I would help you at the start."
"My mother says that writing is a good crutch..."
"Five hundred pounds and half the paperback rights is a pretty solid crutch," she said.
"This Chablis is good, isn't it?" "I daresay."
I began to change my opinion of him - he had not the Nelson touch.
He was doomed to defeat. She came alongside and raked him fore and aft. "Do you know what Mr Dwight said?" "Who's Dwight?"
"Darling, you don't listen, do you? My publisher. He said he hadn't read a first novel in the last ten years which showed such powers of observation." "That's wonderful," he said sadly, "wonderful." "Only he wants me to change the title."
"Yes?"
"He doesn't like The Ever-Rolling Stream. He wants to call it The Chelsea Set."
"What did you say?" "I agreed. I do think that with a first novel one should try to keep one's publisher happy. Especially when, really, he's going to pay for our marriage, isn't he?"
"I see what you mean." Absent-mindedly he stirred his Chablis with a fork - perhaps before the engagement he had always bought champagne. The Japanese gentlemen had finished their fish and with very little English but with elaborate courtesy they were ordering from the middle-aged waitress a fresh fruit salad.
The girl looked at them, and then she looked at me, but I think she saw only the future. I wanted very much to warn her against any future based on a first novel called The Chelsea Set. I was on the side of his mother. It was a humiliating thought, but I was probably about her mother's age.
I wanted to say to her, are you certain your publisher is telling you the truth? Publishers are human. They may sometimes exaggerate the virtues of the young and the pretty. Will The Chelsea Set be read in five years? Are you prepared for the years of effort, "the long defeat of doing nothing well"? As the years pass writing will not be-come any easier, the daily effort will grow harder to endure, those "powers of observation" will become enfeebled; you will be judged, when you reach your forties, by performance and not by promise.
"My next novel is going to be about St Tropez." "I didn't know you'd ever been there."
"I haven't. A fresh eye's terribly important. I thought we might settle down there for six months."
"There wouldn't be much left of the advance by that time." "The advance is only an advance. I get fifteen per cent after five thousand copies and twenty per cent after ten. And of course another advance will be due, darling, when the next book's finished.
A bigger one if The Chelsea Set sells well." "Suppose it doesn't."
"Mr Dwight says it will. He ought to know." "My uncle would start me at twelve hundred."
"But, darling, how could you come then to St Tropez?" "Perhaps we'd do better to marry when you come back." She said harshly, "I mightn't come back if The Chelsea Set sells enough." "Oh."
She looked at me and the party of Japanese gentlemen. She finished her wine. She said, "Is this a quarrel?"
"No."
"I've got the title for the next book - The Azure Blue."
"I thought azure was blue."
She looked at him with disappointment. "You don't really want to be married to a novelist, do you?"
"You aren't one yet."
"I was born one - Mr Dwight says. My powers of observation..."
"Yes. You told me that, but, dear, couldn't you observe a bit nearer home? Here in London."
"I've done that in The Chelsea Set. I don't want to repeat myself." The bill had been lying beside them for some time now. He took out his wallet to pay, but she snatched the paper out of his reach. She said, "This is my celebration."
"What of?"
"The Chelsea Set, of course. Darling, you're awfully decorative, but sometimes - well, you simply don't connect."
"I'd rather...if you don't mind..."
"No, darling, this is on me.
And Mr Dwight of course.
"He submitted just as two of the Japanese gentleman gave tongue simultaneously, then stopped abruptly and bowed to each other, as though they were blocked in a doorway.
I had thought the two young people matching miniatures, but what a contrast in fact there was. The same type of prettiness could contain weakness and strength. Her Regency counterpart, I suppose, would have borne a dozen children without the aid of anaesthetics, while he would have fallen an easy victim to the first dark eyes in
Naples.
Would there one day be a dozen books on her shelf? They have to be born without an anaesthetic, too. I found myself hoping that The Chelsea Set would prove to be a disaster and that eventually she would take up photographic modelling while he established himself solidly in the wine-trade in St James's. I didn't like to think of her as the Mrs Humphrey Ward of her generation - not that I would live so long. Old age saves us from the realization of a great many fears. I wondered to which publishing firm Dwight belonged. I could imagine the blurb he would have already written about her abrasive powers of observation. There would be a photo, if he was wise, on the back of the jacket, for reviewers, as well as publishers are human, and she didn't look like Mrs Humphrey Ward.
I could hear them talking while they found their coats at the back of the restaurant. He said, "I wonder what all those Japanese are doing here?"
"Japanese?" she said. "What Japanese, darling? Sometimes you are so evasive I think you don't want to marry me at all."

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The Bucket Rider by Franz Kafka 1921

Coal all spent; the bucket empty; the shovel useless; the stove breathing out cold; the room freezing; the trees outside the window rigid, covered with rime; the sky a silver shield against anyone who looks for help from it. I must have coal; I cannot freeze to death; behind me is the pitiless stove, before me the pitiless sky, so I must ride out between them and on my journey seek aid from the coal-dealer. But he has already grown deaf to ordinary appeals; I must prove irrefutably to him that I have not a single grain of coal left, and that he means to me the very sun in the firmament. I must approach like a beggar, who, with the death rattle already in his throat, insists on dying on the doorstep, and to whom the cook accordingly decides to give the dregs of the coffeepot; just so must the coal-dealer, filled with rage, but acknowledging the command "Thou shalt not kill," fling a shovelful of coal into my bucket.

My mode of arrival must decide the matter; so I ride off on the bucket. Seated on the bucket, my hands on the handle, the simplest kind of bridle, I propel myself with difficulty down the stairs; but once downstairs my bucket ascends, superbly, superbly; camels humbly squatting on the ground do not rise with more dignity, shaking themselves under the sticks of their drivers. Through the hard-frozen streets we go at a regular canter; often I am upraised as high as the first storey of a house; never do I sink as low as the house doors. And at last I float at an extraordinary height above the vaulted cellar of the dealer, whom I see far below crouching over his table, where he is writing; he has opened the door to let out the excessive heat.

"Coal-dealer!" I cry in a voice burned hollow by the frost and muffled in the cloud made by my breath, "please, coal-dealer, give me a little coal. My bucket is so light that I can ride on it. Be kind. When I can I'll pay you."

The dealer puts his hand to his ear. "Do I hear right?" he throws the question over his shoulder to his wife. "Do I hear right? A customer."

"I hear nothing," says his wife, breathing in and out peacefully while she knits on, her back pleasantly warmed by the heat.

"Oh yes, you must hear," I cry. "It's me; an old customer; faithful and true; only without means at the moment."

"Wife," says the dealer, "it's someone, it must be; my ears can't have deceived me so much as that; it must be and old, a very old customer, that can move me so deeply."

"What ails you, man?" says his wife, ceasing from her work for a moment and pressing her knitting to her bosom. "It's nobody, the street is empty, all our customers are provided for; we could close down the shop for several days and take a rest."

"But I am sitting up here on the bucket," I cry, and numb, frozen tears dim my eyes, "please look up here, just once; you'll see me directly; I beg you, just a shovelful; and if you give me more it'll make me so happy that I wont know what to do." All the other customers are provided for. Oh, if I could only hear the coal clattering into the bucket!

"I'm coming," says the coal-dealer, and on his short legs he makes to climb the steps of the cellar, but his wife is already beside him, holds him back by the arm and says: "You stay here; seeing you persist in your fancies I'll go myself. Think of the bad fit of coughing you had during the night. But for a piece of business, even if it's one you've only fancied in your head, you're prepared to forget your wife and child and sacrifice your lungs. I'll go."

"Then be sure to tell him all the kinds of coal we have in stock! I'll shout out the prices after you."

"Right," says the wife, climbing up to the street. Naturally she sees me at once. "Frau Coal-dealer" I cry, "my humblest greetings; just one shovelful of coal; here in my bucket; I'll carry it home myself. One shovelful of the worst you have. I'll pay you in full for it, of course, but not just now, not just now." What a knell-like sound the words "not just now" have, and how bewilderingly they mingle with the evening chimes that fall from the church steeple nearby!

"Well, what does he want?" shouts the dealer. "Nothing," his wife shouts back, "there's nothing here; I see nothing, I hear nothing; only six striking, and now we must shut up the shop. The cold is terrible; tomorrow we'll likely have lots to do again."

She sees nothing and hears nothing; but all the same she loosens her apron strings and waves her apron to waft me away. She succeeds, unluckily. My bucket has all the virtues of a good steed except powers of resistance, which it has not; it is too light; a woman's apron can make it fly through the air.

"You bad woman!" I shout back, while she, turning into the shop, half-contemptuous, half-reassured, flourishes her fist in the air. "You bad woman! I begged you for a shovelful of the worst coal and you would not give it me." And with that I ascend into the regions of the ice mountains and am lost forever.

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©Franz Kafka2006

(Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)

Intimacy by Jean-Paul Sartre

I

Lulu slept naked because she liked to feel the sheets caressing her body and also because laundry was expensive. In the beginning Henri protested: you shouldn't go to bed naked like that, it isn't nice, it's dirty. Anyhow, he finally followed his wife's example, though in his case it was merely laziness; he was stiff as a poker when there was company (he admired the Swiss, particularly the Genevans: he thought them high class because they were so wooden), but he was negligent in small matters; for example, he wasn't very clean, he didn't change his underwear often enough; when Lulu put it in the bottoms were yellow from rubbing between his legs. Personally, Lulu did not despise uncleanliness: it was more intimate and made such tender shadows; in the crook of the arm, for instance; she couldn't stand the English with their impersonal bodies, which smelt of nothing. But she couldn't bear her husband's negligence because it was a way of getting himself cuddled. In the morning, when he arose, he was always very tender toward himself, his head full of dreams; the coarse bristles of the brush made him suffer brutal injustices.
Lulu was sleeping on her back; she had thrust the great toe of her left foot into a tear in the sheet: it wasn't a tear; it was only the hem coming apart. It annoyed her; I'll have to fix that tomorrow, still she pushed against the threads so as to feel them break. Henri was not sleeping yet, but he was quiet. He often told Lulu that as soon as he closed his eyes he felt bound by tight, resistant bound; he could not even move his little finger. A great fly caught in a spider web. Lulu loved to feel this gross, captive body against her. If he could only stay like that, paralysed, I would take care of him, clean him like a child and sometimes I'd turn him over on his stomach and give him a spanking, and other times when his mother came to see him, I'd find some reason to uncover him, I'd pull back the sheet and his mother would see him all naked. I think she'd fall flat on her face; it must be fifteen years since she's seen him like that. Lulu passed a hand over her husband's hip and pinched him little in the groin. Henri muttered but did not move. Reduced to impotence. Lulu smile; the word "impotence" always made her smile. When she still loved Henri, and when he slept, thus, she liked to imagine he had been patiently tied up by little men like the ones she had seen in a picture when she was a child and reading Gulliver's Travels. She often called Henri "Gulliver" and Henri liked that because it was English name and it made her seem educated, only he would rather have had her pronounce it with the accent. God, but that annoyed me: if he wanted someone educated all he had to do was marry Jeanne Beder, she's got breasts like hunting horns but she knows five languages. When we were still at Sceaux, on Sundays, I got so annoyed with his family I read books, any book; there was always some body that came and watched that I was reading and his little sister asked me, "Do you understand, Lucie?" The trouble is, he doesn't think I 'm distinguished enough. The Swiss, yet, they're distinguished all right because his older sister married a Swiss who gave her five children and then they impress him with their mountains. I can't have a child because of my constitution, but I never thought it was distinguished, what he does, when he goes out with me, always going into the urinoirs and I have to look at the store windows, waiting for him, what does that make me look like? And he comes out pulling at his pants and bending his legs like an old man.
Lulu took her toe out of the slit in the sheet and wiggled her feet for the pleasure of feeling herself alert next to this soft, captive flesh. She heard rumblings: a talking stomach, I hate it, I can never tell whether it's his stomach or mine. She closed her eyes; liquids do it, bubbling through packs of soft pipes, every body has them. Rirette has them, I have them (I don't like to think about it, it makes my stomach hurt). He loves me, he doesn't love my bowels, if they showed him my appendix in a glass, he wouldn't recognise it, he's always felling me, but if they put the glass in his hands he wouldn't care, he wouldn't think "that's hers," you ought to love all of some body, the esophagus, the liver, the intestines. Maybe we don't love them because we aren't used to them, if we saw them the way we saw our hands and arms maybe we'd love them; the starfish must love each other better then we do. They stretch out on the beach when there's sunlight and they poke out their stomachs to get the air and everybody can see them; I wonder where we could stick ours out, through the navel. she had closed her eyes and blue circles began to turn, like the carnival yesterday, I was shooting at circles with rubber arrows and letters lit up, one at every shot and they made the name of a city, he kept me from finishing Dijon with his mania for pressing himself up behind me, I hate people to touch me from behind, I 'd rather not have a back, I don't like people to do things to me when I can't see them, they grab a handful and they you don't see their hands, you can feel them going up and down but can't tell where they were going, they look at you with all their eyes and you don't see them, he loves that; Henri would never think of it but he, all he thinks about is getting behind me and I know he dose it on purpose to touch my behind because he knows I practically die of shame because I have one, when I'm ashamed it excites him but I don't want to think about him (she was afraid) I want to think about Riretee. She thought about Rirette every evening at the same time, just at moment when Henri began to snuffle and grunt. But there was resistance to thought and other one came in her place, she even caught a glimpse of crisp black hair and she thought here it is and she shuddered because you never knows what's coming, if it's the face it's all right, that can still pass, but there were nights she spent without closing her eyes because of those horrible memories coming to the surface, it's terrible when you know all of a man and especially that. It isn't the same thing with Henri, I can imagine him from head to foot and it touches me because he's soft with flesh that's all Grey except the belly and that's pink, he says when a well built man sits down, his belly makes three folds, but he has six, only he counts by tows and he doesn't want to see the others. She felt annoyed thinking about Rirette: "Lulu, you don't know what the body of a handsome man is like." It's ridiculous, naturally I know, she means a body hard as rock with muscles, I don't like that, Patterson had a body like that and I felt soft as a caterpillar when he hugged me against him; I married Henri because he was soft, because he looked like a priest. The priests are soft as women with their cassocks and I here they were stockings. When I was fifteen I wanted to lift up their skirts quietly and see their men's knees and their drawers, it was so funny to think they had something between their legs.
The crisp hair, the hair of a negro. And anguish in her throat like a ball. But she closed her eyes tightly anhd finally the ear of Rirette appeared, a small ear, all red and golden, looking like a sugar candy. Lulu had not as much pleasure as usual at the sight of it because she heard Riette's voice at the same time. It was a sharp, precise voice which Lulu didn't like. "you must go away with Pierre, Lulu; it's the only intelligent yhing to do." I like Rirette very much, but she annoys me a little when she acts important and gets carried away by what she says. The night before, at the couple, Rirette was bent over her with a reasonable and somewhat haggard look. "You can't stay with Henri, because you don't love him, it would be a crime." She doesn't lose a change to say something bad about him, I don't it's very nice, he's always been perfect with her; maybe I don't love him any more, but it isn't up to Rireete to tell me; everything looks so simple and easy to her: you love or you don't love any more; but I'm not simple. First I'm used to it here and then I do like him, he's my husband. I wanted to beat her, I always want to hurt her because she's fat. "it would be a crime." She raised her arms, I saw her armpit, I always like her better when she has bare arms. The armpit. It was half-open, you might have thought it was a mouth; Lulu saw purple, wrinkled flesh beneath the curly hairs. Pierre calls her "Minerva the Plump" she's doesn't like that at all, Lulu smiled because she thought of her little brother Robert who asked her one day when she had no nothing but her slip, "Why do you have hair under your arms? And she answered, "it's a sickness." She liked to dress in front of her little brother because he made such funny remarks, and you wondered where he picked them up. He always felt her clothes and folded her dress carefully, his hands were so deft: one day he'll be a great dressmaker. If I had been a boy I would have wanted to be an explorer or an actor, but not a dressmaker; but he always was a dreamer, he doesn't talk enough, he sticks to his own ideas; I wanted to be a run and take up collections in beautiful houses. My eyes feel all soft, all soft as flesh, I'm going to sleep. My lovely pale face under the stiff head-dress, I would have looked distinguished. I would have seen hundreds of dark hallways. But the maid would have turned the light on right away; then I'd have seen family portraits, bronze statues on the tables. And closets. The woman comes with a little book and a fifty-franc note. "Here you are, sister." "Thank you Madame, God bless you. Until the next time." But I wouldn't have been a real nun. In the bus, sometimes, I'd have made eyes at some fellow, first he'd be dumbfounded, then he'd follow me, telling me a lot of nonsense and I'd have a policeman lock him up. I would have kept the collection money myself. What would I have bought? Antidote. It's silly. My eyes are getting softer, I like that, you'd think they were soaked in water and my whole body's comfortable. The beautiful green tiara with emeralds and lapis lazuli. The tiara turned and it was a horrible bull's head, but Lulu was not afraid, she said, "Birds of Cantal. Attention". A long red river dragged across arid countryside. Lulu thought of her meat-grinder, then of hair grease.
"It would be a crime." She jumped bolt upright in the blackness, her eyes hard. They're torturing me, don't they see? I know Rirette has good intention, but she who's so reasonable for other people, ought to know I need to think it over. He said "you'll come!" making fiery at me. "You will come into my house, I want you all for myself!" His eyes terrify me when he tries to act like a hypnotist; he kneaded my arms; when I see him with eyes like that I always think of the hair he has on his chest. You will come. I want you all for myself; how can he say things like that? I'm not a dog.
When I set down, I smiled at him. I had changed my powder for him and I made up my eyes because he likes that, but he didn't see a thing, he doesn't look at my face, he looks at my breast and I wish they'd dry up, just to annoy him, even thought I don't have too much, they're so small. You will come to my villa in Nice. He said it was white with a marble staircase, that it looked out on the sea, and we'd live naked all day, it must be funny to go up a stairway when you're naked; I'd make him go up ahead of me so that he wouldn't look at me; or else I wouldn't be able to move a foot, I'd stay motionless, wishing with all my heart he'd go blind; anyhow, that would hardly change anything; when he's there I always think I'm naked. He took me by the arm, he looked wicked, he told me "you've got me under your skin!" and I was afraid and said, "Yes" ; I want to make you happy, we'll go riding in the car, in the boat, we'll go to Italy and I'll give you everything you want. But his villa is almost unfurnished and we'd have to sleep on a mattress on the floor. He wants me to sleep in his arms and I will smell his odour; I'd like his chest because it's brown and wide, but there's a pile of hair on it, I wish men didn't have hair, his is black and soft a moss, some times I stroke it and sometimes I'm horrified by it, I pull back as far as possible but he hugs me against him. He'll want me to sleep in his arms, he'll hug me in his arms and I'll smell odour; and when it's dark we'll hear the noise of the sea and may wake me up in the middle of the night if he wants to do it: I'll never be able to sleep peacefully except when I have my sickness.
Lulu opened her eyes, the curtains were coloured red by a light coming from the street, there was a red reflection in the mirror: Lulu loved this red light and there was an armchair which made funny shadows against the windows. Henri and put his pants on the arm of the chair, and his braces were hanging in emptiness. I have to buy him new braces. Oh I don't want to, I don't want to leave. He'll kiss me all the day and I'll be his, I'll be his pleasure, he'll look at me, he'll think, "this is my pleasure, I touched her there and there and I can do it again if it pleases me." At Port-Royal. Lulu kicked her feet in the sheets, she hated Pierre when she remembered what happened at Port-Royal. She was behind the hedge, she thought he had stayed in the car, looking at the map, and suddenly she saw him, sneaking up behind her. He looked at her. Lulu kicked Henri. He's going to wake up. But Henri said "Humph," and didn't waken. I'd like to know a handsome young man, pure as a girl, and we wouldn't touch each other, we'd walk along the seashore and we'd hold hands, and at night we'd sleep in twin beds, we'd stay like brother and sister and talk till morning. I'd like to live with Rirette, it's so charming, women living together; she has fat, smooth shoulder; I was miserable when she was in love with Fresnel, and it worried me to think he petted her, that he passed his hands slowly over her shoulders and thighs and she sighed. I wonder how her face must look when she's stretched out like that, all naked, under a man, feeling hands on her flesh. I wouldn't touch her for all the money in the world. I wouldn't know what to do with her, even if she wanted, even if she said, "I want it," I wouldn't know how, but if I were invisible I'd like to be there when somebody was doing it to her and watch her face (I'd be surprised if she still looked like Minerva) and stroke her spread knees gently, her pink knees and hear her groan. Dry throated, Lulu gave a short laugh: sometimes you think about things like that. Once she pretended Pierre wanted to rape Rirette. And I helped him, I held Rirette in my arms. Yesterday. She had fire in her cheeks, we were sitting on her sofa, one against the other, her legs were pressed tighter, but we didn't say anything, we'll never say anything. Henri began to snore and Lulu hissed. Here I am, I can't sleep, I'm upset and he snores, the fool. If he told me, "you are all mine, Lulu, I love you, don't go!" I'd make the sacrifice for him, I'd stay, yes; I'd stay with him all my life to make him happy.

II

Rirette sat on the terrace of the dome and ordered a glass of port. She felt weary and angry at Lulu: And their port has a taste of cork, Lulu doesn't care because she drink coffee, but still you can't drink coffee at aperitif time; here they drink coffee all day or café-crème because they don't have a franc, God that must annoy them, I couldn't do it, I'd chuck the whole place in the customers' faces, these people don't need to keep up with anybody. I don't know why she always meets me in Montparnasse, it would be just as lose if she met me at the Café de la Paix or the Pam-Pam, and It wouldn't take me so far from my work; impossible to imagine how sad it makes me feel to see these faces all the time, as soon as I have a minute to spare, I have to come here, it's not so bad on the terrace, but inside it smells like dirty underwear and I don't like failures. Even on the terrace I feel out of place because I'm clean, it must surprise everybody that passes to see me in the middle of the people here who don't even shave and women who look like I don't know what. They must wonder "what's she doing there?" I know rich Americans sometimes come in the summer, but it seems they're stopping in England now, what with the Government we've got, that's why the commerce-de-luxe isn't going so well, I sold a half less than last year at this time, and I wonder how the others make out, because I'm best salesgirl, Mme Dubech told me so, I feel sorry for the little Yonnel girl, she doesn't know how to sell, she can't have made a franc commission this month, and when you're on your feet all day you like to relax a little in a nice place, with a little luxury and a little art amd stylish help. You like to close your eyes and let yourself go and then you like to have nice soft music, it wouldn't cost so much to go dancing at the Ambassa-deurs some times; but the waiters here so impudent, you can you can tell they're used to handling a cheap crowed, except the little one with brown hair who serve me, he's nice; I think Lulu must like to be surrounded with all these failures, it would scare hair to go into a chic place, fundamentally, she isn't sure o herself, it frightens her a soon a there's a man with good manners, she didn't like Louis; well she ought to be comfortable here, some of them don't even have collars, with there shoddy appearance and their pipes and the way they look at you, they don't even to hide it, you can see they don't have enough money to pay for a woman, but that isn't what's lacking in the neighborhood, it's disgusting; you'd think they're going to eat you and they couldn't even tell you nicely that they want you, to carry it off in a way that would make you feel good.
The waiter came: "Did you want dry port, mademoiselle?"
"Yes, please."
He spoke again, looking friendly. "nice weather we're having."
"Not too soon for it," Rirette said.
"That's right. You'd have thought winter would never end."
He left and Rirette followed him with her eyes. I like waiter, she thought, he knows his place, he doesn't get familiar, but he always has something to say to me, a little special attention.
A thin, bent young man was watching her steadily; Rirette shrugged her shoulders and turned her back on him; when they want to make eyes at a woman they could at least change their underwear. I' will tell him that if he says anything to me. I wonder why she doesn't leave. She doesn't want to hurt Hneri, I think that's too stupid: a woman doesn't have the right to spoil her life for some impotent. Rirette hated importants, it was physical. She's got to leave, she decided, her happiness is at stake, I'll tell her she can't gamble with her happiness. Lulu, you don't have the right to gamble with your happiness. I won't say anything to her, it's finished, I told her a hundred times, you can't make people happy if they don't want to be. Rirette felt a great emptiness in her head because she was so tried, she looked at the port, all sticky in the glass, like a liquid caramel and a voice in her repeated, "Happiness, happiness," and it was a beautifully grave and tender word.
And she thought that if anybody asked her opinion in the paris-soir contest she would have said it was the most beautiful word in the French language. Did anyone think of it? They said energy, courage, but that's because they were men, there should have been a woman, the woman could find it, there should have been two prizes, one for man woman and the most beautiful name would have been Honour; one for the woman and I'd have said Happiness, Lulu, your happiness. Personally, I think Pierre is very nice, first, he's real man, and besides, he's intelligent and that never spoils anything, he has money, he'd do anything for her. He's one of those men who knows how to smooth out life's little difficulties, that's nice for a women; I kike people who know how to command, it's knack, but he knows how to speak to waiters and maitres-d'hotel; they obey him, I call that a dominant personality. Maybe that's the thing that's most lacking in Henri. And then there's the question of health, with the father she had, she should take care, it's charming to be slender and light and never to be hungry or sleepy, to sleep four hours a night and run all over pairs all day selling material but it's silly, she ought to follow a sensible biet, only eat a little at one time, of course, but more often and regular hours. She'll see when they send her to the sanatorium for ten years.
She stared perplexedly at the clock in the Montpar-nasse intersection, it marked 11.20. I don't understand Lulu, she's got a funny temperament, I could never find out whether she liked men or whether they disgusted her; still, she ought to be a happy with Pierre, that gives her a change, anyhow, from the one she had last year, from her Rabut, Rebut I called him. This memory amused her but she held back her smile because the thin young man was still watching her, she caught him by surprise when she turned her head. Rabut had a face dotted with blackheads and Lulu amused herself by removing them for him, pressing on the skin with her nails: it's sickening, but it's not her fault, Lulu doesn't know what a good looking man is, I love cute men, first, their things are so pretty, their men's shirts, their shoes, their shiny tie, it may be crude, but it's so sweat, so strong, a sweat strength, it's like the smell of English tobacco and eau de cologne and their skin when they've just shaved, it isn't like a woman's skin, you'd think it was Cordova leather, and their strong arms close around you and you put your head o their chest, you smell their sweet strong odour of well-groomed men, they whisper sweet words to you; they have nice things, nice rough cowhide shoes, they whisper, "Darling, dearest darling" and you feel your-self fainting; Rirette thought of Louis who left her last year and her heart tightened; a man in love with himself, with a pile of little mannerisms, a ring and gold cigarette case and full of little mains....but they can be rough sometimes, worse than women. The best thing would be a man about forty, someone who still took care of himself, with grey hair on the sides, brushed back, very dry, with broad shoulders, athletic, but who'd know life and who'd be good because he'd suffered. Lulu is only a kid, she's lucky to have a friend like me, because Pierre's beginning to get tired and some people would take advantage of it if they were in my place; I always tell him to be patient, and when he gets a little sweet on me I act like I'm not paying attention, I begin to talk about Lulu and I always have a good word for her, but she doesn't deserve the luck she has, she doesn't realize; I wish she'd live alone a little the way I did when Louis went away, she'd see what it was like to go back alone to her room every evening, when you've worked all day and find the room empty and dying to put you find the courage to get up the next morning and go back to work and be seductive and gay and make everybody feel good when you'd rather die than keep on with that life.
The clock struck 11:30, Rirette thought of happiness, the bluebird, the bird of happiness the rebel bird of love. She gave a start. Lulu is half an hour late, that's usual. She'll never leave her husband, she doesn't have enough will power for that. At heart, it's mainly because of respectability that she stays with Henri: she cheats on him but so long as they call her "Madame, she doesn't think it matters. She can say anything against him she wants but you can't repeat it to her the next day, she'd flare up. I did everything I could and I've told her, too bad for her.
A taxi stopped in front of the Dome and Lulu stepped out. She was carrying a large valise and her face was solemn.
"I left Henri," she called from a distance.
She came nearer, bent under the weight of the valise. She was smiling.
"What?" Rirette gasped, "You don't mean......"
"Yes," Lulu said. "Finished, I dropped him."
Rirette was still incredulous. "He knows? You told him?"
Lulu's eyes flashed. "And how!" she said.
"Well, well..........my own little Lulu!"
Rirette did not know what to think, but in any case, she supposed Lulu needed encouragement.
"That's good news," she said. "How brave you were."
She felt like adding: you see, it wasn't so hard. But she restrained herself. Lulu let herself be admired: she had roughed her cheeks and her eyes were bright. She sat and put the valise down near her. She was wearing a grey wool with a leather belt, a light yellow sweater with a rolled collar. She was bare-headed. She recognized immediately the blend of guilt and amusement she was plunged in; Lulu always made that impression on her. What I like about her, Rirette thought, is her vitality.
"In two shakes," Lulu said, "I told him what I thought. He was struck dumb."
"I can't get over it," said Rirette. "But what came over you, darling? Yesterday evening I'd have bet my last franc you'd never leave him."
"It's on account of my kid brother, I don't mind him getting stuck up with me but I can't stand it when he stars on my family."
"But how did it happen?"
"Where's the waiter?" Lulu asked, stirring restlessly on the chair. "The Dome waiters aren't ever there when you want them. Is the little brown haired one serving us?"
"Yes," Rirette said, "did you know he's mad about me?"
"Oh? Look out for the woman in the washroom then, he's always mixed up with her. He makes up to her but I think it's just an excuse to see the woman go into the toilets; when they came out he looks hard enough to make you blush. By the way, I've got to leave you for a minute, I have to go down and call Pierre, I'd like to see his face! If you see the waiter, order a café-crème for me: I'll only be a minute and then I'll tell you everything."
She got up, took a few steps and came back towards Rirette. "I'm so happy, Rirette darling."
"Dearest Lulu," said Rirette, taking her by the hands.
Lulu left her and stepped lightly across the terrace. Rirette watched her. I never thought she could do it. How gay she is, she thought, a little scandalised, it's good for her to walk out on her husband. If she had listened to me she'd have done it long ago. Anyhow, it's thanks to me; fundamentally, I have a lot of influence on her.
Lulu was back a few minutes later. "Pierre was bowled over," she said. "He wanted the details but I'll give them to him later, I'm lunching with him. He says maybe we can leave tomorrow night."
"How glad I am, Lulu," Rirette said. "Tell me quickly. Did you decide last night?"
"You know, I didn't decide anything," Lulu said modestly. "It was decided all by itself." She tapped nervously on the table. "Waiter! Waiter! God, he annoys me. I'd like a café-crème."
Rirette was shocked. In Lulu's place and under circumstance s serious as that she wouldn't have lost time running after a café-crème. Lulu was charming, but it was amazing how futile she could be, like a bird.
Lulu burst out laughing. "If you'd seen Henri's face!"
I wonder what your mother will say?" said Rirette seriously.
"My mother? She'll be en-chant-ed," Lulu said with assurance. "He was impolite with her, you know, she was fed up. Always complaining because she didn't bring me up right, that I was this, I was that, that you could see I was brought in a barn. You know, what I did was a little because of her."
"But what happened?"
"Well, he slapped Robert."
"You mean Robert was in your flat?"
"Yes, just passing by this morning, because mother wants to apprentice him to Gompez. I think I told you. So, he stepped in while we were eating breakfast and Henri slapped him."
"But why?" Rirette asked, slightly annoyed. She hated the way Lulu told stories.
"They had an argument," Lulu said vaguely, "and the boy wouldn't let himself be insulted. He stood right up to him. 'Old asshole.' He called him, right to his face. Because Henri said he was poorly raised, naturally, that's all he can say. I thought I'd die laughing. Then Henri got up, we were eating in the kitchenette, and smacked him, I could have killed him!"
"So you left?"
"Left?" Lulu asked, amazed, "where?"
"I thought you left him then. Look, Lulu, you've got to tell me these things in order, otherwise I won't understand. Tell me," she added, suspiciously, "you really did leave him, that's all true?"
"Of course. I've been explaining to you for an hour."
"God. So Henri slapped Robert. Then what?"
"Then," Lulu said, "I locked him on the balcony, it was too funny! He was still in his pyjamas, tapping on the window but he did not dare break the glass because he's as mean as dirt. If I had been in his place, I'd have broken up everything, even if I had to cut my hands to pieces. And the Texiers came in. then he started smiling through the window acting as if it were a joke."
The waiter passed; Lulu seized his arms:
"So there you are, waiter. Would it trouble you too much to get me a café-crème?"
Rirette was annoyed and she smiled knowingly at the waiter but the waiter remained solemn and bowed with guilty obsequiousness. Rirette was a little angry at Lulu; she never knew the right tone to use on inferiors, sometimes she was too familiar, sometimes too dry and demanding.
Lulu began to laugh.
"I'm laughing because I can still see Henri in his pyjamas on the balcony; he was shivering with cold. Do you know how I managed to lock him out? He was in the back of the kitchenette, Robert was crying and he was preaching a sermon. I opened the window and told him, 'look, Henri: there's a taxi that just knocked over the flower woman.' He came right out; he likes the flower woman because she told him she was Swiss and he thinks she's in love with him. 'Where? Where?' he kept saying. I stepped back quietly, into the room, and closed the window. Then I shouted through the glass, 'That'll teach you to act like a brute with my brother.' I felt him on the balcony more than an hour, he kept watching us with big round eyes, he was green with rage. I stuck out my tongue at him and gave Robert candy; after that I brought my things into the kitchenette and got dressed In front of Robert because I know Henri hates that: Robert kissed my arms and neck like a little man, he's so charming, we acted as if Henri weren't there. On top of all that, I forgot to wash."
"And Henri outside the window. It's too funny for words," Rirette said, bursting with laughter.
Lulu stopped laughing. "I'm afraid he'll catch cold," she said seriously. "You don't think when you're mad." She went on gaily, "He shook his fist at us and kept talking all the time but I didn't understand half of what he said. Then Robert left and right after that the Texiers rang and I let them in. when he saw them he was all smiles and bowing at them and I told them, 'look at my husband, my big darling, doesn't he look like a fish in an aquarium?' The Texiers waved at him through the glass, they were a little surprised but they didn't let on."
"I can see it all," Rirette said, laughing. "Haha! Your husband on the balcony and the Texiers in the kitchenette." Several times she repeated, "Your husband on the balcony and the Texiers in the kitchenette.........." She wanted to find the right comic and picturesque word to describe the sense to Lulu, she thought Lulu did not have a real sense of humour, but the words did not come.
"I opened the windows," Lulu said, "and Henri came in. he kissed me in front of the Texires and called me a little clown. 'Oh the little clown,' he said, 'she wanted to play a trick on me.' And I smiled and the Texries smiled politely, everybody smiled. But when they left he hint me on the ear. Then I took a brush and hit him in the corner of the mouth with it: I spilt both lips."
"Poor girl," Rirette said with tenderness. But with a gesture Lulu dismissed all compassion. She held herself straight, shaking her brown curls combatively and her eyes flashed lightning.
Then we talked it over: I washed his mouth with a cloth and then I told him I was sick of it, that I didn't love him any more and that I was leaving. He began to cry. He said he'd kill himself. But that didn't work any more: you remember, Rirette, last year, when there was all that trouble in the Rhineland, he sang the same tune every day: 'There's going to be a war, I'm going to insult and I'll be killed and you'll be sorry, you'll regret all the sorrow you've caused me.' 'That's enough,' I told him, 'you're impotent, they wouldn't take you.' Anyhow, I clamed him down because he was talking about locking me up I the kitchenette, I swore I wouldn't leave before a month. After that he went to the office, his eyes were all red and there was a piece of cloth sticking to his lip, he didn't look too good. I did the housework; I put the lentils on the stove and packed my bag. I left him a note on the kitchen table."
"What did you write?"
"I wrote," Lulu said proudly, "the lentils are on the stove. Help yourself and turn off the gas. There's ham in the icebox. I'm fed up and I'm clearing out. Goodbye."
They both laughed and the passers-by turned around. Rirette thought they must present a charming sight and was sorry they weren't sitting on the terrace of the Viel or the Café de la paix. When they finished laughing they were silent a moment and Rirette realized they had nothing more to say to each other. She was a little disappointed.
"I've got to run," Lulu said, rising; "I meet Pierre at noon. What am I going to do with my bag?"
"Leave it with me," Rirette said, "I'll check it with the women in the ladies' room. When will I see you again?"
"I'll pick you up at your place at two; I have a pile of errands to do: I didn't take half my things. Pierre's going to have to give me money."
Lulu left and Rirette called the waiter. She felt grave and sad enough for two. The waiter ran up: Rirette had already noticed that he always hurried when she called him.
"That's five francs," he said. He added a little dryly, "you two were pretty gay, I could hear you laughing all the way back there."
Lulu hurt his feelings, thought Rirette, spitefully. Blushing, she said, "My friends is a little nervous, this morning."
"She's very charming," the waiter said soulfully. "Thank you very much, mademoiselle."
He pocketed the six francs and went off. Rirette was a little amazed but noon struck and she thought it was time for Henri to come back and find Lulu's note: this was a moment full of sweetness for her.
"I'd like all that to be sent before tomorrow evening, to the Hotel du Theatre, Rue Vandamme," Lulu told the cashier, putting on the air of a great lady. She turned to Rirette:
"It's all over. Let's go."
"What name?" the cashier asked.
"Mme Lucienne Crispin."
Lulu threw her coat over her arm and began to run: she ran down the wide staircase of the Samaritaine. Rirette followed her, almost falling several times because she didn't watch her step: she had eyes only for the slender silhouette of blue and canary yellow dancing before her! It's true, she does have an obscene body....... Each time Rirette saw Lulu from behind or in profile, she was struck by the obscenity of her shape though she could not explain why; it was an impression. She's supple and slender, but there's something indecent about her, I don't know what. She does everything she can to display herself that must be it. She says she's ashamed of her behind and still she wears skirts that cling on her rump. Her tail is small, yes, a lot smaller than time, but can see more of it. It's all round, under her thin back, it fills the skirts, you'd think it was poured in, and besides it jiggles.
Lulu turned around and they smiled at each other. Rirette thought of her friend's indiscreet body with a mixture of reprobation and languor: tight little breasts, a polished flesh, all yellow-when you touched it you'd swear it was rubber-long things, a long, common body with longs legs: the body of negress, Rirette thought, she looks like a negress dancing the rhumba. Near the revolving door a mirror gave Rirette the reflection of her own full body. I'm more the athletic type, she thought, taking Lulu,s arm she makes a better impression than I do when we're dressed, but naked, I,m sure I,m better than she is.
They stayed silent for a moment, then Lulu said;
"Pierre was simply charming. You've been charming too, Rirette, and I'm very grateful to both of you."
She said that with constraint but Rirette paid no attention; Lulu never knew how to thank people, she was too timid.
"What a bore," Lulu said suddenly, "I have to buy a brassiere."
"Here?" Rirette asked. They were just passing a lingerie shop.
"No, but I thought of it because of it because I saw them. I go to Fischer's for my brassieres."
"Boulevard du Montparnasse?" Rirette cried.
"Look out, Lulu," she went on gravely, "better not hang around the Boulevard du Montparnasse, especially now; we'd run into Henri and that would be most unpleasant."
"Henri?" "said Lulu shrugging her shoulders. "Of course not. Why?"
Indignation flushed purple on Rirette's cheeks and temples.
"You're still the same, Lulu, when you don't like something, you deny it, pure and simple. You want to go to Fischer's so you insist Henri won't be on the Boulevard du Montparnasse. You know very well the goes by every day at six, it's his way home. You told me that yourself: he goes up the Rue de Rennes and waits for the bus at the corner of the Boulevard Raspail."
"First, it's only five o'clock," Lulu said, "and besides, maybe he didn't go to the office" the note I wrote must have knocked him out."
"But Lulu7," Rirette said suddenly. "You know there's another Fischer's not for from the Opera, on the Rue du Quatre September."
"Yes," Lulu said weakly, "but it's so far to go there."
'Well, I like that; so far to go. It's only two minutes from here; it's a lot closer than Montparnasse."
"I don't like their things."
Rirette thought with amusement that all the Fischer's sold the same things.
But Lulu was incomprehensibly obstinate: Henri was positively the last person on earth she would want to meet now and you'd think she was purposely throwing herself in his way.
"All right," she said indulgently, "let's go to Montparnasse. Besides, Henri so big, we'd see him before he saw us."
"So what," Lulu said, "if we meet him, we meet him, that's all. He isn't going to eat us."
Lulu insisted on going to Montparnasse on foot; she said she needed air. They followed the Rue de seine, then the rue de L'Odeon and the rue de Vaugirard. Rirette praised Pierre and showed Lulu how perfect he had been under the circumstances.
"How I love Paris," Lulu said, "I'm going to miss it!"
"Oh be quiet, Lulu, when I think how lucky you are to go to Nice and then you say how much you'll miss Paris."
"Lulu did not answer; she began looking right and left sadly, searchingly.
When they came out of Fischer's they heard six o'clock strike. Rirette took Lulu's elbow and tried to hurry her along, but Lulu stopped in front of Baumann's florist shop.
"Look at those azaleas, Rirette. If I had a nice living room I'd put them everywhere."
"I don't like potted plants," Rirette said.
She was exasperated. She turned her head towards the rue de Rennes and sure enough, after a minute, she saw Henri's great stupid silhouette appear. He was bare-headed, and wearing a brown tweed sports coat. Rirette hated brown: "There he is, Lulu, there he is." She said hurriedly.
"Where?" Lulu asked. "where is he"?
She was scarcely more calm than Rirette.
"Behind us, on the other side of the street. Run and don't turn around." Lulu turned around anyhow.
"I see him," she said.
Rirette tried to drag her away, but Lulu stiffened and stared at Henri. At last she said, "I think he saw us."
She seemed frightened suddenly yielded to Rirette and let her self be taken away quietly.
"Now for heaven's sake, Lulu don't turn around again," Rirette said breathlessly. "We'll turn down the first street on the right, the away Rue Delambre."
They walked very quickly, jostling the passers-by. At times Lulu held back a little, or sometimes it was she who dragged Rirette. But they had quit reached the corner of the Rue Delambre when Rirette saw a large brown shadow behind Lulu; she knew it was Henri and began shaking with anger. Lulu kept her eyes lowered, she looked sly and determined. She's regretting her mistake, but it's too late. Too bad for her.
They hurried on; Henri followed them without a word. They passed the Rue Delambre and kept walking in the direction of the Observatory. Rirette heard the squeak of Henri's shoes; there was also a sort of light, regular rattle that kept time with there steps: it was his breathing. (Henri always breathing heavily, but never that much; he must have run to catch up with them or else it was emotion.)
We must act as if he weren't there, Rirette thought. Pretend not to notice his existence. But she could not keep from looking out of the corner of her eye. He was white as a sheet and his eyelids were so lowered they seemed shut. Almost looks like a sleepwalker, thought Rirette with a sort of horror, Henri's lips were trembling and little bit of pink gauze trembled on the lower lip. And the breathing, always that hoarse, even breathing, now ending with a sort of nasal music. Rirette felt uncomfortable; she was not afraid of Henri but sickness and passion always frightened her a little. After a moment Henri put his hand out gently and took Lulu's arm. Lulu twisted her mouth as if she were going to cry and pulled away, shuddering.
Henri went "Phew!"
Rirette had a mad desire to stop: she had a stitch in the side and her ears were ringing. But Lulu was almost running; she too looked like a sleepwalker. Rirette had the feeling that if she let go of Lulu's arm and stopped, they would both keep on running side by side, mute, pale as death, their eyes closed.
Henri began to speak. With a strange, hoarse voice he said:
"Come back with me."
Lulu did not answer. Henri said again, in the same raucous, toneless voice:
"You are my wife. Come back with me"
"You can see she doesn't want to go back," Rirette answered between her teeth. "Leave her alone."
He did not seem to hear her. "I am your husband," he repeated. "I want you to come back with me."
"For God's sake let her alone," Rirette said sharply, "bothering her like that won't do any good, so shut up and let her be."
He turned an astonished face towards Rirette.
"She is my wife," he said, "she belongs to me, I want her to come back with me." He had taken Lulu's arm and this time Lulu did not shake him off.
"Go away," Rirette said.
"I won't go away, I'll follow her everywhere, I want her to come back home."
He spoke with efforts. Suddenly he made a grimace which showed his teeth and shouted with all his might:
"You belong to me!"
Some people turned around, laughing. Henri shook Lulu's arm, curled back his lip and growled like an animal. Luckily an empty taxi passed. Rirette waved at it and the taxi stopped. Henri stopped too. Lulu wanted to keep on walking but they held firmly, each by one arm.
"You ought to know," said Rirette, pulling Lulu towards the street, "you'll never get her back with violence."
"Let her alone, let my wife alone," Henri said, pulling in the opposite direction. Lulu was limp as a bag of laundry.
"Are you getting in or not?" the taxi driver called impatiently.
Rirette dropped Lulu's arm had rained blows on Henri's hand. But he did not seem to feel them. After a moment he let go and began to look at Rirette stupidly. Rirette looked at him too. She could barely collect her thoughts, an immense sickness filled her. They stayed eye to eye for a few seconds, both breathing heavily. Then Rirette pulled herself tighter, took Lulu by the waist and drew her to the taxi.
"Where to?" the drive asked.
Henri had followed. He wanted to get in with them. Btu Rirette pushed him back with all her strength and closed the door quickly.
"Drive, drive!" she told the chauffeur. "We'll tell you address later."
The taxi started up and Rirette dropped to the back of the car. How vulgar it all was, she thought. She hated Lulu.
"Where do you want to go, Lulu?" she asked sweetly.
Lulu did not answer. Rirette put her arms around her and become persuasive.
"You must answer me. Do you want me to drop you off at Pierre's?"
Lulu made a moment Rirette took her acquiescence. She leaned forward. "11 Rue de Messine."
When Rirette turned around again, Lulu was watching her strangely.
What the....." Rirette began.
"I hate you," Lulu screamed, "I hate Pierre, I hate Henri. What do you all have against me? You're torturing me."
She stopped short and her features clouded.
"Cry" Rirette said with calm dignity, cry, it'll do you good."
Lulu bent double and began to sob. Rirette took her in her arms and held her close. From time to time she stroked her hair. But inside she felt cold and distrustful. Lulu was calm when the cab stopped. She wiped her eyes and powdered her nose.
"Excuse me," she said gently, "it was nerves. I couldn't bear seeing him like that, it hurt me."
"He looked like an orang-outang," said Rirette, once more serene.
Lulu smiled.
"When will I see you again?" Rirette asked.
"Oh, not before tomorrow. You know Pierre can't put me up because of his mother. I'll be at the hotel du Theatre. You could come early, around nine, if it doesn't put you out, because after that I'm going to see Mama."
She was pale and Rirette thought sadly of the terrible ease with she could break down.
"Don't worry too much tonight," she said.
"I'm awfully tired," Lulu said," I hope Pierre will let me go back early, but he never understands those thing."
Rirette kept the taxi and was driven home. For a moment she thought she'd go to movies but she had no heart for it. She threw her hat on a chair and took a step towards the window. But the bed attracted her, all white, all soft and moist in its shadowy hollows. To throw herself on it, to feel the caress of the pillow against her burring cheeks. I'm strong. I did every thing for Lulu and now I'm all alone and no one does anything for me. She had so much pity for herself that she felt a flood of sobs mounting in her throat. They're going to go to Nice and I won't see them any more. I'm the one who made them happy but they won't think about me. And I'll stay here working eight hours a day selling artificial pearls at Burma's. when the first tears rolled down her cheeks she left herself all softly on the bed. "Nice," she repeated, weeping bitterly, "Nice ...... in the sunlight........ on the Riviera........"

III

Phew! Black night. You'd think somebody was walking around the room: a man in slippers. He put one foot out cautiously, then the other, unable to avoid a light cracking of the floor. He stopped, there was a moment of silence, then, suddenly transported to the other end of the room, he began his aimless, idiotic walking again. Lulu was cold; the blankets were much too light. She said Phew aloud and the sound of her voice frightened her.
Phew! I'm sure he's looking at the sky stars now, he's lighting a cigarette, he's outside, he said he liked the purple color of the Paris sky. With little steps, he goes back, with little steps: he feels poetic just after he's done it, he told me, and he doesn't think any more about it-and me, I'm defiled. I heard him whistle under my window when he left; he was down there dry and fresh in his fine clothes and topcoat, you must admit he knows how to dress, a woman would be proud to go out with him, he was under the window and I was naked in the blackness and I was cold and rubbed my belly with my hands because and I thought I was still wet. I'll come up for a minute he said, just to see your room. He stayed two hours and the bed creaked-this rotten little iron bed. I wonder where he found out about this hotel, he told me he spent two weeks here once, that I'd be all right here, these are funny rooms, I saw two of them, I never saw such little rooms cluttered up with furniture, cushions and couches and little tables, it stinks of love, I don't know whether he stayed here two weeks but he surly didn't stay alone; he can't have much respect for me to stick me in here. The bellboy laughed when we went up, an Algerian, I hate those people, they frighten me, he looked at my legs, then he went into the office, he must have thought, that's it, they're going to do it, and imagined all sorts of dirty things, they say it's terrible what they do with women down there; if they ever got hold of one she limps for the rest of her life; and all the time Pierre was bothering me I was thinking about that Algerian who was thinking about what I was doing and thinking a lot of dirtiness worse than it was. Somebody's in this life room!
Lulu held her breath but the creaking stopped immediately. I have a pain between my things, I want to cry and it will be like this every night except tomorrow night because we'll be on the train. Lulu bit her lip and shuddered because she remembered she had groaned. It's not true, I didn't groan, I simply breathed hard a little because he's so heavy, when he's on me he takes my breath away. He said, "You're groaning." I hate people to talk to me when I'm doing that, I wish they'd forget but the he never stops saying a lot of dirty things. I didn't groan, in the first place, I can't have any pleasure, it's a fact, the doctor said so. He won't believe it, they never want to believe it, they all said: "It's because you got off to a bad start, I'll teach you": I let them talk, I knew what the trouble was, It's medical; but that provokes them.
Someone was coming up the stairs. Someone coming back. God, don't let him come back. He's capable of doing it if he feels like it again. It isn't him, those are heavy steps-or else-Lulu's heart jumped in her breast-if it were the Algerian, he knows I'm alone, he's going to knock on the door, I can't, I can't stand that, no, it's the floor below, it's a man going in, he's putting his key in the lock, he's taking his time, he's drunk, I wonder who lives in this hotel, it must be a fine bunch; I met a redhead this afternoon, on the stairs, she had eyes like a dope fiend. I didn't groan. Of course, he knows how; I have a horror of men who know how, I'd rather sleep with a virgin. They take you for an instrument they're proud of knowing how to play. I hate people to bother me, my throat's dry, I'm afraid and I have a bad taste in my mouth and I'm humiliated because they think they dominate me. I'd like to slap Pierre when he puts on his elegant airs and says, "I've got technique." My God, to think that's life that's why you get dressed and wash and make yourself pretty and all the books are written about that and you think about it all the time and finally that's what it is, you go to a room with somebody who half smothers you and ends up by wetting your belly. I want to sleep. Oh, if I could only sleep a little bit, tomorrow I'll travel all night, I'll be all in. Still, I'd like to be a little fresh to walk around Nice; they say it's so lovely, little fresh to walk around Nice; they say it's so lovely, little Italian streets and all coloured clothes drying in the sun, I'll set myself up with my easel and I'll paint and the little girls will come to see what I'm doing. Rot! (she had stretched out a little and her hip touched the damp spot on the sheet). That's all he brought me here for. Nobody, nobody loves me. He walked beside me and I almost fainted and I waited for one tender word, he could have said, "I love you." I wouldn't have gone back to hi of course, but I'd have said something nice, we would have parted good friends. I waited and waited, he took my arm and I let him. Rirette was furious, it's not true he looked like an orang-outang but I knew she was thinking something like that, she was watching him out of the corner of her eye, nastily, it's amazing how nasty she can be, well, in spite of that, when he took my arm I didn't resist but it wasn't me he wanted, he wanted his wife because he married me and he's my husband; he always depreciated me, he said he was more intelligent than I and everything that happened is all his fault, he didn't need to treat me so high and mighty, I'd still be with him. I'm sure he doesn't miss me now, he isn't crying, he's snoring, that's what he's doing and he's glad to have the bed all the himself so he can stretch out his long legs.
I'd like to die. I'm so afraid he'll think badly of me; I couldn't explain anything to him because Rirette was between us, talking, she looked hysterical. Now she's glad, she's complimenting herself on her courage, how rotten that is with Henri who's gentle as a lamp. I'll go. They can't make me leave him like a dong. She jumped out of bed and turned the switch. My stockings and slip are enough. She was in such a hurry that she did not even take the trouble to comb her hair. And the people who see me won't know I'm naked under my heavy grey coat, it comes down to my feet. The Algerian-she stopped, her heart pounding-I'll have to wake him up to open the door. She went down on tiptoe-but the steps creaked one by one; she knocked at the office window.
"What is it?" the Algerian asked. His eyes were red and his hair tousled, he didn't look very frightening.
"Open the door for me," Lulu said dryly.
Fifteen minutes later she rang at Henri's door.
"Who's there?" Henri asked through the door.
"It's me."
He doesn't answer, he doesn't want to let me in my own home. But I'll knock on the door till he opens, He'll give in because of the neighbors. After a minute the door was half opened and Henri appeared, pale, with a pimple on his nose; he was in Pyjamas. He hasn't slept, Lulu thought tenderly.
"I didn't want to leave like that, I wanted to see you again."
Henri still said nothing, Lulu entered, pushing him aside a little. How stupid he is, he's always in you way, he's looking at me with round eyes, with his arms hanging, he doesn't know what to do with his body Shut up, shut up I see you're moved and you can't speak. He made an effort to swallow his saliva and Lulu had to close the door.
"I want us to part good friends," she said.
He opened his mouth as if to speak, turned suddenly and fled. What's he doing? She dared not follow him. Is he crying? Suddenly she heard him cough: he's in the bathroom. When he came back she hung about his neck and pressed her mouth against his : he smelled of vomit. Lulu burst out sobbing.
"I'm cold," Henri said.
"Let's go to bed," she said, weeping, "I can stay till tomorrow morning."
They went to bed and Lulu was shaken with enormous sobs because she found her room and bed clean and the red glow in the window. She thought Henri would take her in his arms but he did nothing : he was lying stretched out full length as if someone had put a poker in the bed. He's as stiff as when he talks to a swiss. She took his head in her two hands and stared at him. "You are pure," He began to cry.
"I'm miserable," he said, "I've never been so miserable."
"I haven't either," Lulu said.
They wept for a long time. After a while she put out the light and laid her head on his shoulder. If we could stay like that forever : pure and sad as two orphans ; but it isn't possible, it doesn't happen in life. Life was an enormous wave breaking on Lulu, tearing her from the arms of Henri. Your hand, your bid hand. He's proud of them because they're big, he says that descendants of old families always have big limbs. He won't take my waist in his hands any more-he tickled me a little but I was proud because he could almost make his fingers meet. It isn't true that he's impotent, he's pure, pure-and a little lazy. She smiled through her tears and kissed him under the chin.
"What am I going to tell my parents?" Henri asked. "My mother'll die when she hears."
Mme Crispin would not die, on the contrary, she would triumph. They'll talk about me, at meals, all five of them, blaming me, like people who know a lot about things but don't want to say everything because of the kid who's sixteen and she's too young to talk about certain things in front of her. She'll laugh inside herself because she knows it all, she always knows it all and she detests me. All this muck. And appearances are against me.
"Don't tell them right away," she pleaded, "tell them I'm at Nice for my health."
"They won't believe me."
She kissed Henri quickly all over his face.
"Henri, you weren't nice enough to me."
"That's true," Henri said. "I wasn't nice enough.
Neither were you," he reflected, "you weren't nice enough."
"I wasn't. Ah !" Lulu said, "how miserable we are !" She cried so loudly she thought she would suffocate : soon it would be day and she would leave.
You never, never do what you want, you're carried away. "You shouldn't have left like that," said Henri.
Lulu sighed. "I loved you a lot, Henri."
"And now you don't?"
"It isn't the same."
"Who are you leaving with?"
"People you don't know."
"How do you know people I don't know? :Henri asked angrily. "Where did you meet them?"
"Never mind, darling, my little Gulliver, you aren't going to act like husband now?"
"You're leaving with a man," Henri said, weeping.
"Listen, Henri I swear I'm not, I sweer, men disgust me now. I'm leaving with a family, with friends of Rirette, old people. I want to live alone, they'll find a job for me; oh Henri, if you knew how much I needed to live alone, how it all disgusts me."
"What?" Henri asked, "what disgusts you?"
"Everything !" She kissed me, "You're the only one that doesn't disgust me. Darling."
"She passed her hands under Henri's pyjamas and caressed his whole body. He shuddered under her icy hands but did not turn away, he only said, "I'm going to get sick."
Surely, something was broken in him.
At seven o'clock, Lulu got up, her eyes swollen with tears. She said wearily, "I have to go back there."
"Back where?"
"Hotel du Theatre, rue Vandamme. A rotten hotel."
"Stay with me."
"No, Henri, please, don't insist. I told you it was impossible."
The flood carries you away; that's life; we can't judge or understand, we can only let ourselves drift. Tomorrow I'll be in nice. She went to the bathroom to wash her eyes with warm water. She put on her coat, shivering. It's like fate. I only hope I can sleep on the train tonight, or else I'll be completely knocked out when I get to Nice. I hope he got first-class tickets; that'll be the first time I ever rode first class. Every, thing is always like that: for years I've wanted to take a long trip first class, and the day it happens it works out so that I can't enjoy it. She was in a hurry to leave now, for these last moments had been unbearable.
"What are you going to do with this Gallois person?" she asked.
Gallois had ordered a poster from Henri, Henri had made it and now Gallois didn't want it any more.
"I don't know," Henri said.
He was crouched under the covers, onlyu his hair and the tip of his ear were visible. Slowly and softly, he said, "I'd like to sleep for a week."
"Goodbye, darling," Lulu said.
"Goodbye."
She bent over him, drawing aside the covers a little, and kissed him on the forehead. She stayed a long while on the landing without deciding to close the door of the apartment. After a moment, she turned her eyes away and pulled the knob violently. She heard a dry noise and thought she was going to faint; she had felt like that when they threw the first shovelful of earth on her father's casket.
Henri hasn't been nice. He could have got up and gone as far as the door with me. I think I would have minded less if he had been the one who closed it.

IV

"She did that!" said Rirette, with a far-away look.
"She did that!"
It was evening. About six, Pierre had called Rirette and she had met him at the Dome.
"But you," Pierre said, "weren't you supposed to see her this morning at nine?"
"I saw her."
"She didn't look strange?"
"No indeed," Rirette said, "I didn't notice anyting.
She was a little tired but she told me she hadn't slept after you left because she was so excited about seeing Nice and she was a little afraid of the Algerian bellboy.
Wait . . . she even asked me if I thought you'd bought first-class tickets on the train, she said it was the dream of her life to travel first class. No, :Rirette decided, "I'm sure she didn't have anything like that in mind; at least not while I was there. I stayed with her for two hours and I cann tell me she's very close-mouthed but I've known her for four years and I've seen her in all sorts of situations, I know Lulu through and through."
"Then the Texiers made her mind up. It's funny . . . " He mused a few moments and suddenly began again. "I wonder who gave then Lulu's address. I picked out the hotel and she'd never heard of it before."
He toyed distractedly with Lulu's letter and Rirette was annoyed because she wanted to read it and he hadn't offered it to her.
"When did you get it?" she asked finally.
"The letter . . . ?" He handed it to her with simplicity. "Here, you can read it. She must have given it to the concierge around one o'clock."
It was a thin, violet sheet, the kind sold in cigar stores:
Dearest Darling.
The Texiers came )I don't know who gave them the address) and I'm going to cause you a lot of sorrow, but I'm not going, dearest, darling Pierre; I am staying with Henri because he is too unhappy. They went to see him this morning, he didn't want to open the door and Mme Texier said he didn't look human. They were very nice and they understood my reasons, they said all the wrong was on his side, that he was a bear but he wasn't bad at heart. She said he needed that to make him understand how much he needed me. I don't know who gave them the address, they didn't say, they must have happened to see me when I was leaving the hotel this morning with Rirette. Mme Texier said she knew she was asking me to make an enormous sacrifice but the she knew me well enough to know that I wouldn't sneak out. I'll miss our lovely trip to Nice very much, darling, but I thought you would be less unhappy because I am still yours. I you am yours with all my heart and all my heart and all my body and we shall see each other as often as before. But Henri would kill himself if he didn't have me any more. I am indispensable to him; I hope you won't make your naughty little face which frightens me so, you wouldn't want me to be sorry, would you? I am going back to Henri soon, I'm a little sick when I think that I'm going to see him in such a state but I will have the courage to name my own conditions. First, I want more freedom because I love you and I want him to leave Robert alone and not say anything bad about Mama any more, ever. Dearest, I am so sad, I wish you could be here, I want you, I press myself against you and I feel your caresses in all my body. I will be at the Dome tomorrow at five.
"Poor Pierre."
Rirette took his hand.
"I'll tell you," Pierre said, "I feel for her. She needed air and sunshine. But since she decided that way . . . My mother made a frightful scene," he went on. "The villa belongs to her; she didn't want me to have a woman there."
"Ah?" Rirette said, in a broken voice, "Ah? So everything's all right then, everybody's happy!"
She dropped Pierre's hand: without knowing why, she felt flooded with bitter regret.
­--------------------------------------

(c)pirates publishers2006

The Wall by Jean-Paul Sartre

They pushed us into a big white room and I began to blink because the light hurt my eyes. Then I saw a table and four men behind the table, civilians, looking over the papers. They had bunched another group of prisoners in the back and we had to cross the whole room to join them. There were several I knew and some others who must have been foreigners. The two in front of me were blond with round skulls; they looked alike. I supposed they were French. The smaller one kept hitching up his pants: nerves.

It lasted about three hours; I was dizzy and my head felt empty; but the room was well heated and I found that pleasant enough: for the past twenty-four hours we hadn’t stopped shivering. The guards brought the prisoners up to the table, one after the other. The four men asked each one his name and occupation. Most of the time they didn’t go any further-or they would simply ask a question here and there: “Did you have anything to do with the sabotage of munitions?” Or, “Where you were the morning of the 9th and what were you doing?” They didn’t listen to the answers or at least didn’t seem to. They were quiet for a moment looking straight in front of them, and then began to write. They asked Tom if it were true he was in the International Bridge; tom couldn’t tell them otherwise because of the papers they found in his coat. They didn’t ask Juan anything but they wrote for a long time after he told them his name.

“My brother Jose is the anarchist,” Juan said, “you know he isn’t here any more. I don’t belong to any party; I never had anything to do with politics.”

They didn’t answer. Juan went on, “I haven’t done anything. I don’t want to pay for somebody else.”

His lips trembled. A guard shut him up and took him away. It was my turn.

“Your name is Pablo Ibbieta?”

“Yes.”

The man looked at the papers and asked me, “where is Ramon Gris?”

“I don’t know.”

“You hid him in your house from the 6th to the 19th.”

“No.”

They wrote for a minute and then the guards took me out. In the corridor Tom and Juan were waiting between two guards. We started walking. Tom asked one of the guards, “So?”

“So what?” the guard said.

“Was that the cross-examination or the judgment?”

“Judgment,” the guard said.

“What are they going to do with us?”

The guard answered dryly, “Sentence will be read in your cell.”

As a matter of fact, our cell was one of the hospital cellars. It was terrifically cold there because of the draughts. We shivered all night and it wasn’t much better during the day. I had spent the previous five days in a cell in a monastery, a sort of hole in the wall that must have dated from the middle Ages: since there were a lot of prisoners and not much room, they locked us up anywhere. I didn’t miss my cell; I hadn’t suffered too much from the cold but I Was alone; after a while it gets irritating. In the cellar I had company. Juan hardly ever spoke: he was afraid and he was too young to have anything to say. But Tom was a good talker and he knew Spanish very well.

There was a bench in the cellar and four mats. When they took us back we sat and waited in silence. After a long moment, Tom said, “We’re screwed.”

“I think so too,” I said, “but I don’t think they’ll do anything to the kid.”

“They don’t have a thing against him,” said Tom.

“He’s the brother of a militiaman and that’s all.”

I looked at Juan: he didn’t seem to hear. Tom went on, “You know what they do in Saragossa? They lay the men down on the road and run over them with trucks. A Moroccan deserter told us that. They said it was to save ammunition.”

“It doesn’t save petrol,” I said.

I was annoyed at Tom: he shouldn’t have said that.

“Then there’s officers walking along the road,” he went on, “supervising it all. They stick their hands in their pockets and smoke cigarettes. You think they finish off the guys? Hell no. they Moroccan said he damned near puked the first time.”

“I don’t believe they’ll do that here” I said.

“Unless they’re really short on ammunition.”

The light came in through four air holes and a round opening they had made in the ceiling, on the left, and you could see the sky through it. Through this hole, usually closed by a trap, they unloaded coal into the cellar. Just below the hole there was a big pile of coal dust; it had been used to heat the hospital but since the beginning of the war the patients were evacuated and the coal stayed there, unused; sometimes it even got rained on because they had forgotten to close the trap.

Tom began to shiver. “Good Jesus Christ, I’m cold,” he said. “Here it goes again.”

“He got up and began to do exercises. At each movement his shirt opened on his chest, white and hairy. He lay in his back, raised his legs in the air and bicycled. I saw his great rump trembling. Tom was husky but he had too much fat. I thought how rifle bullets or the sharp points of bayonets would soon be sunk into this mass of tender flesh as in a lump of butter. It wouldn’t have made me feel like that if he’d been thin.

I wasn’t exactly cold, but I couldn’t feel my arms and shoulders any more. Sometimes I had the impression I was missing something and began to look around for my coat and then suddenly remembered they hadn’t given me a coat. It was rather uncomfortable. They took our clothes and gave them to their soldiers, leaving us only our shirt-and those canvas pants that hospital patients wear in the middle of summer. After a while tom got up and sat next to me, breathing heavily.

“Warmer?”

“Good Christ, no. But I’m out of wind.”

Around eight o’clock in the evening a major came in with two falangistas. He had a sheet of paper in his hand. He asked the guard, “What are the names of those three?”

“Stein bock, Ibbieta and Mirbal,” the guard said.

The Major put on his eyeglasses and scanned the list: “Steinbock . . . Stenbock . . . Oh yes . . . You are sentenced to death. You will be shot tomorrow morning.” He went on looking. “The other two as well.”

“That’s not possible,” Juan said. “Not me.”

The major looked at him amazed. “What’s your name?”

“Juan Mirbal,” he said.

“Well, your name is there,” said the major.

“You’re sentenced.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Juan said.

The major shrugged his shoulders and turned to Tom and me.

“You’re Basque?”

“Nobody is Basque.”

He looked annoyed. “They told me there were three Basques. I’m not going to waste my time running after them. Then naturally you don’t want a priest?”

We didn’t even answer.

He said, “A Belgian doctor is coming shortly. He is authorized to spend the night with you.” He made a military salute and left.

“What did I tell you,” tom said, “We get it.”

“Yes,” I said, “It’s a rotten deal for the kid.”

I said that to be decent but I didn’t like the kid. His face was too thin and fear and suffering had disfigured it, twisting all his features. Three days before he had been a smart sort of kid, not too bad; but now he looked like an old fairy and I thought how he’d never be young again, even if they were to let him go. It wouldn’t have been too hard to have a little pity for him but pity disgusts me, or rather it horrifies me. He hadn’t said anything more but he had turned grey; his face and hands were both grey. He sat down again and looked at the ground with rounds eyes. Tom was good hearted; he wanted to take his arm, but the kid tore himself away violently and made a face.

“Let him alone,” I said in a low voice, “you can see he’s going to blubber.”

Tom obeyed regretfully; he would have liked to comfort the kid, it would have passed his time and he wouldn’t have been temped to think about himself. But it annoyed me: I’d never thought about death because I never had any reason to, but now think about it.

Tom began to talk, “Say have you ever knocked any guys off?” he asked me. I didn’t answer. He began explaining to me that he had knocked off six since the beginning of August; he didn’t realize the situation and I could tell he didn’t want to realize it. I hadn’t quit realized it myself, I wondered if it hurt much, it thought of bullets, I imagined their burning hail through my body. All that was beside the real question; but I was calm: we had all night to understand. After a while tom stopped talking and I watched him out of the corner of my eye: I saw he too had turned grey and he looked rotten; I told myself “Now it starts.” It was almost dark, a dim glow filtered through the air holes and the pile of coal and made a big stain beneath the spot of sky; I could already see a star through the hole in the ceiling: the night would be pure and icy.

The door opened and two guards came in, followed by a blond man in a tan uniform. He saluted us. “I am the doctor,” he said. “I have authorization to help you in these trying hours.”

He had an agreeable and distinguished voice. I said, “What do want here?”

“I am at your disposal. I shall do all I can to make your last moments less difficult.”

“What did you come here for? There’s others, the hospital’s full of them.”

“I was sent here,” he answered with a vague look. “Ah! Would you like to smoke?” he added hurriedly, “I have cigarettes and even cigars.”

He offered us English cigarettes and puros, but we refused. I looked him in the eyes and he seemed irritated. I said to him, “you aren’t here on an errand of mercy. Beside, I know you. I saw you with the fascists in the barracks yard the day I was arrested.”

I was going to continue, but something surprising suddenly happened to me; the presence of this doctor no longer interested me. Generally when I’m on somebody I don’t let go. But the desire to talk left me completely; I shrugged and turned my eyes away. A little later I raised my head; he was watching me curiously. The guards were sitting on a mat. Pedro, the tall thin one, was twiddling his thumbs; the other shook his head from time to time to keep from falling asleep.

“Do you want a light?” Pedro suddenly asked the doctor. The other nodded “Yes”: I think he was about as smart as a long, but he surely wasn’t bad.

Looking in his cold blue eyes it seemed to me that his only sin was lack of imagination. Pedro went out and came back with an oil lamp which he set o the corner of the bench. It gave a bad light but it was better than nothing: they had left us in the dark the night before. For a long time I watched the circle of light the lamp made on the ceiling. I was fascinated. The suddenly I woke up, the circle of light disappeared and I felt myself crushed under an enormous weight.

It was not the thought of death, or fear; it was nameless. My cheeks burned and my head ached.

It shook myself and looked at my two friends. Tom had hidden his face in his hands. I could only see the fat white nape of his neck. Little Juan was the worst, his mouth was open and his nostrils trembled. The doctor went and put his hand on his shoulder as if to comfort him: but his eyes stayed cold. Then I saw the Belgian’s hand drop stealthily along Juan’s arm, down to the wrist. Juan paid no attention. The Belgian took his wrist between three fingers, distractedly, the same time drawing away a little and turning his back to me. But I leaned backward and saw him take a watch from his pocket and look at it for a moment, never letting go of the wrist. After a minute he let the hand fall inert and went and leaned his back against the wall, then, as if he suddenly remembered something very important which had to be jotted down on the spot, he took a notebook from him pocket and wrote a few lines. “Bastard,” I thought angrily, “let him come and take my pulse. I’ll shove my fist in his rotten face.

He didn’t come but I felt him watching me. I raised my head and returned his look. Impersonally, he said to me, “Doesn’t it seem cold to you here?” He looked cold, he was blue.

“I’m not cold,” I told him.

He never took his hard eyes off me. Suddenly I understood and my hands went to my face: I was drenched in sweat. In this cellar, in the midst of winter, in the midst of draughts, I was sweating. I ran my hands through my hair, gummed together with perspiration; t the same time I saw my shirt was damp and sticking to my skin: I had been dripping for an hour and hadn’t felt it. But that swine of a Belgian hadn’t missed a thing; he had seen the drops rolling down my cheeks and thought: this is the manifestation of an almost pathological state of terror; and he had felt normal and proud of being so because he was cold. I* wanted to stand up and smash his face but no sooner had I made the slightest gesture than my rage and shame were wiped out; I fell back on the bench with indifference.

I satisfied myself by rubbing my neck with my handkerchief because now I felt the sweat dropping from my hair on to my neck and it was unpleasant. I soon gave up rubbing, it was useless; my handkerchief was already soaked and I was still sweating. My buttocks were sweating too and my damp trousers were glued to the bench.

Suddenly Juan spoke, “You’re a doctor?”

“Yes,” the Belgian said.

“Does it hurt . . . very long?”

“Eh? When . . . Oh, no,” the Belgian said paternally. “Not at all. It’s over quickly.” He acted as though he were calming a cash customer.

“But I . . . they told me . . . sometimes they have to fire twice.”

“Sometimes,” the Belgian said, nodding. “It may happen that the first volley reaches no vital organs.”

“Then they have to reload their rifles and aim all over again?” He thought for a moment and then added hoarsely,” That takes time!”

He had a terrible fear of suffering; it was all he thought about: it was his age. I never thought much about it and it wasn’t fear of suffering that made me sweat.

I got up and walked to the pile of coal dust. Tom jumped up and threw me a hateful look:

I had annoyed him because my shoes squeaked. I wondered if my face looked as earthy as his: I saw he was sweating too. The sky was superb, no light filtered into the dark corner and I had only to raise my head to see the Big Dipper. But it wasn’t like it had been: the night before I could see a great piece of sky from my monastery cell and each hour of the day brought me a different memory. Morning, when the sky was a hard, light blue, I thought of beaches on the Atlantic; at noon I saw the sun and I remembered a bar in Seville where I drank manzanilla and ate olives and anchovies; afternoon I was in the shade and I thought of the deep shadow which spreads over half a bull-ring leaving the other half shimmering in sunlight; it was really hard to see the whole world reflected in the sky like that. But now I could watch the sky as much as I pleased, it no longer evoked anything in me. I liked that better. I came back and sat near Tom. A long moment passed.

Tom began speaking in a low voice. He had to talk, without that he wouldn’t have been able to recognize himself in his own mind. I thought he was talking to me but he wasn’t looking at me. He was undoubtedly afraid to see me as I was, grey and sweating: we were alike and worse than mirrors of each other. He watched the Belgian, the living.

“Do you understand?” he said. “I don’t understand.”

I began to speak in a low voice too. I watched the Belgian. “Why? What’s the matter?”

“Something is going to happen to us that I can’t understand.”

There was a strange smell about Tom. It seemed to me I was more sensitive than usual to odours. I Grinned. “You’ll understand in a while.”

“It isn’t clear,” he said obstinately. “I want to be brave but at least I have to know . . . Listen,

They’re going to take us into the courtyard. Good. They’re going to stand up in front of us. How many?”

“I don’t know. Five or eight. Not more.”

“All right, there’ll be eight. Someone’ll holler ‘aim!’ and I’ll see eight rifles looking at me. I’ll

Think how I’d like to get inside the wall, I’ll push against it with my back . . . with my back . . . with every ounce of strength I have, but the wall will stay, like in a nightmare. I can imagine all that. If you only knew how well I can imagine it.”

“All right, all right!” I said, “I can imagine it too.”

“It must hurt like hell. You know, they aim at the eyes and the mouth to disfigure you,” he added maliciously. “I can feel the wounds already; I’ve had pains in my head and in my neck for the past hour. Not real pains. Worse. This is what I’m going to feel tomorrow morning. And then what?”

I well understood what he meant but I didn’t want to act as if I did. I had pains too, pains in my body like a crowd of tiny scars. I attached no importance to it.

“After,” I said, “you’ll be pushing up daisies.”

He began to talk to himself: he never stopped watching the Belgian. The Belgian didn’t seem to be listening. I knew what he had come to do; he wasn’t interested in what we thought; he came to watch our bodies, bodies dying in agony while yet alive.

“It’s like a nightmare,” tom was saying. “You want to think something, you always have the impression that it’s all right, that you’re going to understand and then it slips, it escapes you and fades away. I tell myself there will be nothing afterwards. But I don’t understand what it means. Sometimes I almost can . . . and then it fades away and I start thinking about the pains again, bullets, and explosions. I’m a materialist, I swear it to you; I’m not going crazy. But something’s the matter. I swear my corpse; that’s not hard but I’m the one who sees it, with my eyes. I’ve got to think . . . think that I won’t see anything anymore and the world will go on for the others. We aren’t made to think that, Pablo. Believe me: I’ve already stayed up a whole night waiting for something. But this isn’t the same: this will creep up behind us, Pablo, and we won’t be able to prepare for it.”

“Shut up,” I said, “Do you want me to call a priest?”

He didn’t answer. I had already noticed he had a tendency to act like a prophet and call me Pablo, speaking in a toneless voice. I didn’t like that: but it seems all the Irish are that way. I had the vague impression he smelled of urine. Fundamentally, I hadn’t much sympathy for Tom and I didn’t see why, under the pretext of dying together, I should have any more. It would have been different with some others. With Ramon Gris, for example. But I felt alone between Tom and Juan. I liked that better, anyhow: with Ramon I might have been more deeply moved. But I was terribly hard just then and I wanted to stay hard.

He kept on chewing his words, with something like distraction. He certainly talked to keep himself from thinking. He certainly talked to keep himself from thinking. He smelled of urine like an old prostate case. Naturally, I agreed with him, I could have said everything he said: it isn’t natural to die. And since I was going to die, nothing seemed natural to me, not this pile of coal dust, or the bench, or Pedro’s ugly face. Only it didn’t please me to think the same things as Tom. And I knew that, all through the night, every five minutes, we would keep on thinking thins at the same time. I looked at him sideways and for the first time he seemed strange to me: he wore death on his face. MY pride was wounded: for the past twenty-four hours I had lived next to Tom, I had listened to him, I had spoken to him and I knew we had nothing in common. And now we looked as much alike as twin brothers, simply because we were going to die together. Tom took my hand without looking at me.

“Pablo, I wonder . . . I wonder if it’s really true that everything ends.”

I took my hand away and said, “Look between your feet, you pig.”

There was a big puddle between his feet and drops fell from his pants-let.

“What is it?” he asked, frightened.

“You’re pissing in your pants,” I told him.

“It isn’t true,” he said furiously. “I’m not pissing. I don’t feel anything.”

“The Belgian approached us. He asked with false solicitude, “Do you feel ill?”

Tom did not answer. The Belgian looked at the puddle and said nothing.

“I don’t know what it is,” Tom said ferociously.

“But I’m not afraid. I swear I’m not afraid.”

The Belgian did not answer. Tom got up and went to piss in a corner. He came back buttoning his fly, and sat down without a word. The Belgian was taking notes.

All three of us watched him because he was alive. He had the motions of a living human being, the cares of a living human being; he shivered in the cellar the way the livings are supposed to shiver; he had an obedient, well-fed body. The rest of us hardly felt ours-not in the same way anyhow. I wanted to feel my pants between my legs but I didn’t dare; I watched the Belgian, balancing on his legs, master of his muscles, someone who could think about tomorrow. There we were, three bloodless shadows; we watched him and we sucked his life like vampires.

Finally he went over to little Juan. Did he want to feel his neck for some professional motive or was he obeying an impulse of charity? If he was acting by charity it was the only time during the whole night.

He caressed Juan’s head and neck. The kid let himself be handled, his eyes never leaving him, and then suddenly, he seized the hand and looked at it strangely. He held the Belgian’s hand between his own two hands and there was nothing pleasant about them, two grey pincers gripping this fat and reddish hand. I suspected what was going to happen and Tom must have suspected to too: but the Belgian didn’t see a thing, he smiled paternally. After a moment the kid brought the fat red hand to his mouth and tried to bite it. The Belgian pulled away quickly and stumbled back against the wall. For a second he looked at us with horror, he must have suddenly understood that we were not men like him. I began to laugh and one of the guards jumped up. The other was asleep, his wide-open eyes were blank.

I felt relaxed and over-excited at the same time. I didn’t want to think any more about what would happen at dawn, or death. It made no sense. I only found words or emptiness. But as soon as I tried to think of anything else I saw rifle barrels pointing at me. I lived my execution twenty times perhaps; once I even thought it was for good: I must have slept a minute. They were dragging me to the wall and I was struggling; I was asking for mercy. I was up with a start and looked at the Belgian: I was afraid I might have cried out in my sleep. But he was stroking his moustache, he hadn’t noticed anything. If I had wanted to, I think I could have slept a while; I had been awake for 48 hours. I was at the end of my tether.

But I didn’t want to lose two hours of life: they would come to wake me up at dawn, I would follow them stupefied with sleep and I would have croaked without so much as an “Oof!” : I didn’t want that, I didn’t want to die like an animal, I wanted to understand. Then I was afraid of having nightmares. I got up, walked back and forth, and, to change my ideas, I began to think about my past life. A crowd of memories came back to me pell-mell. There were good and bad ones-or at least I called them that before. There were faces and incidents. I saw the face of a little novillero who was gored in Valencia during the Feria, the face of one of my uncles, the face or Ramon Gris. I remembered my whole life: how I was out of work for three months in 1926, how I almost starved to death. I remembered a night I spent on a bench in Granada: I hadn’t eaten for three days. I was angry, I didn’t want to die. That made me smile. How madly I ran after happiness, after women, after liberty. Why? I wanted to free Spain, I admired Pi y Margall, I joined the anarchist movement, I spoke at public meetings: I took everything as seriously as if I were immortal.

At that moment I felt that I had my whole life in front of me and I thought, “It’s a damned lie.” It was worth nothing because it was finished. I wondered how I’d been able to walk, to laugh with the girls: I wouldn’t have moved so such as my little finger if I had only imagined I would die like this. MY life was in front of me, shut, closed, like a bag and yet everything inside of it was unfinished. For an instant I tried to judge it. I wanted to tell myself, this is a beautiful life. But I couldn’t pass judgment on it; it was only a sketch; I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity, I had understood nothing. I had missed nothing: there were so many things I could have missed the taste of Manzanilla or the baths I took in summer in a little creek near Cadiz; but death had disenchanted everything.

The Belgian suddenly had a bright idea. “MY friends,” he told us, “I will undertake if the military administration will allow it-to send a message for you. A souvenir to those who love you…...”

Tom mumbled, “I don’t have anybody.”

I said nothing. Tom waited an instant then looked at me with curiosity. “You don’t have anything to concha?”

“No.”

“I hated this tender complicity: it was my own fault, I had talked about Concha the night before, I should have controlled myself. I was with her for a year. I should have controlled myself. I was with her for a year. Last night I would have given an arm to see her again for five minutes. That was why I talked about her; it was stronger that I was. Now I had no more desire to see her, I had nothing more to say to her. I would not even have wanted to hold her in my arms: my body filled me with horror because it was grey and sweating-and I wasn’t sure that her body didn’t fill me with horror. Concha would cry when she found out I was dead; she would have no taste for life for months afterwards. But I was still the one who was going to die. I thought of her soft, beautiful eyes. When she looked at me something passed from her to me. But I knew it was over: if she looked at me now the look would stay in her eyes, it wouldn’t reach me. I was alone.

Tom was alone too but not in the same way. Sitting cross-legged, he had begun to stare at the bench with a sort of smile, he looked amazed. He put out his hand and touched the wood cautiously as if he were afraid of breaking something, then drew back his hand quickly and shuddered. If I had been Tom I wouldn’t have amused myself by touching the bench; this was some more Irish nonsense, but I too found that objects had a funny look: they were more obliterated, less dense than usual. It was enough for me to look at the bench, the lamp, the pile of coal dust, to feel that I was going to die. Naturally I couldn’t think clearly about my death but I saw it everywhere, on things, in the way things fell back and kept their distance, discreetly, as people who speak quietly at the bedside of a dying man. It was his death which Tom had just touched on the bench.

In the state I was in, if someone had come and told me I could go home quietly, that they would leave me my life whole, it would have left me cold: several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal. I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm-because of my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn’t recognize it any more. I had to touch it and look at it to find out what was happening, as if it were the body of someone else. At times I could still feel it, I felt sinking and fallings, as when you’re in a plane taking a nosedive, or I felt my heart beating. But that didn’t reassure me. Everything that came from my body was all cockeyed. Most of the time it was quiet and I felt no more than a sort of weight, a filthy presence against me; I had the impression of being tied to an enormous vermin. Once I felt my pants and I felt they were damp; I didn’t know whether it was sweat or urine, but I went to piss on the coal pile as a precaution.

The Belgian took out his watch, looked at it. He said, “It is three thirty.”

Bastard! He must have done it on purpose. Tom jumped; we hadn’t noticed time was running out; night surrounded us like a shapeless, somber mass, I couldn’t even remember that it had begun.

Little Juan began to cry. He wrung his hands, pleaded, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”

He ran across the whole cellar waving his arms in the air then fell sobbing on one of the mats. Tom watched him with mournful eyes, without the slightest desire to console him. Because it wasn’t worth the trouble: the kid made more noise than we did, but he was less touched: he was like a sick man who defends himself against his illness by fever. It’s much more serious when there isn’t nay fever.

He wept: I could clearly see he pitied himself; he wasn’t thinking about death. For one second, one single second, I wanted to weep myself, to weep with pity for myself. But the opposite happened: I glanced at the kid, I saw his thin sobbing shoulders and I felt inhuman: I could pity neither the others nor myself. I said to myself, “I want to die cleanly.”

Tom had got up, he placed himself just under the round opening and began to watch for daylight of that. But ever since the doctor told us the hour, I felt time flying, flowing away drop by drop.

It was still dark when I heard Tom’s voice: “Do you hear them?”

“Yes.”

Men were marching in the courtyard.

“What the hell are they doing? They can’t shoot in the dark.”

After a while we heard no more. I said to Tom, “its day.”

Pedro got up, yawning, and came to blow out the lamp. He said to his companion, “Gold as hell.”

The cellar was all grey. We heard shots in the distance.

“It’s staring,” I told Tom. “They must do it in the court in the rear.”

Tom asked the doctor for a cigarette. I didn’t want one: I didn’t want cigarettes or alcohol. From that moment on they never stopped firing.

“Do you realize what’s happening?” Tom said.

He wanted to add something but kept quite, watching the door. The door opened and a lieutenant came in the four soldiers, Tom dropped his cigarette.

“Steinbock?”

Tom didn’t answer. Pedro pointed him out.

“Juan Mirbal?”

“On the mat.”

“Get up”, the lieutenant said.

Juan did not move. Two soldiers took him under the arms and set him on his feet. But he fell as soon as they released him.

The soldiers hesitated.

“He’s not the first sick one,” said the lieutenant. “You two carry him; they’ll fix it up down there.”

He turned to Tom. Let’s go.”

Tom went out between two soldiers. Two others followed, carrying the kid by the armpits and legs. He ran down his cheeks. When I wanted to go out the lieutenant stopped me.

“You lbbieta?”

“Yes.”

“You wait here; they’ll come for you later.”

They left. The Belgian and the two jailers let too, I was alone. I did not understand what was happening to me but I would have liked it better if they had got it over with right away. I heard shots at almost regular intervals; I shook with each one them. I wanted to scream and tear out hair. But I gritted my teeth and pushed my hands in my pockets because I wanted to stay clean.

After an hour they came to get me and led me to the first floor, to a small room that smelt of cigars and where the heat was stifling. There were two officers sitting smoking in the armchair, papers on their knees.

“You’re lbbieta?”

“Yes.”

“Where is Ramón Gris?”

“I don’t know.”

The one questioning me was short and fat. His eyes were hard behind his glasses. He said to me, “Come here.”

I went to him. He got up and looks my arms, staring at me with a look that should have pushed me into the earth. At the same time he pinched my biceps with all his might. It wasn’t to hurt me, it was only a game; he wanted to dominate me. He also thought had to blow his stinking breath square in my face. He stayed for a moment like that, and I almost felt like laughing. It takes a lot to intimidate a man who is going to die; it didn’t work. He pushed me back violently and sat down again. He said, “It’s his life against yours. You can have yours if you tell us where he is.”

These men dolled up with their riding crops and boots were still going to die. A little later then I, but not too much. They busied themselves looking for names in their crumpled papers, they run after other men to imprison or suppress them; they had opinions on the future of Spain and on other subjects. Their little activities seemed shocking and burlesqued to me; I couldn’t put myself in their place, I thought they were insane.

The little man was still looking at me, whipping his boots with the riding crop. All his gestures were calculated to give him the look of a live and ferocious beast.

“So? You understand?”

“I don’t know where Girs is,” I answered. “I thought he was in Madrid.”

The other officer raised his pale hand indolently. This indolence was also calculated. I saw through all their little schemes and I was stupefied to find there were men who amused themselves that way.

“You have a quarter of an hour to think it over,” he said slowly. “Take him to the laundry; bring him back in fifteen minutes. If he still refuses he will be executed on the spot.”

They knew what they were doing: I had passed the night in waiting; then they had made me wait an hour in the cellar while they shot Tom and Juan and now they were locking me up in the laundry; they must have prepared their game the night before. They told themselves that nerves eventually wear out and they hoped to get me that way.

They were badly mistaken. In the laundry I sat on a stool because I felt very weak and I began to think. But not about their proposition. Of course I knew where Gris was; he was hiding with his cousins, four kilometers from the city. I also knew that I would not reveal his hiding place unless they tortured me (but they didn’t seem to be thinking about that). All that was perfectly regulated, definite and in no way interested me. Only I would have liked to understand the reasons for my conduct. I would rather die than give up Gris. Why? I didn’t like Ramon Gris any more. My friendship for him had died a little while before dawn at the same time as my love for Concha, at the same time as my desire to live. Undoubtedly I thought highly of him: he was tough. But it was not for this reason that I consented to die in his place; his life had no more value than mine; no life had value. They were going to slap a man up against a wall and shoot at him till he died, whether it was me or Gris or somebody else made no difference. I knew he was more useful than I to the cause of Spain and anarchy; nothing was important. Yet I was there, I could save my skin and give up Gris and I refused to do it.

I found that somehow comic; it was obstinacy. I thought, “I must be stubborn!” And a droll sort of gaiety spread over me.

They came for me and brought me back to the two officers. A rat ran out from under my feet and that amused me. I turned to one of the falangistas and said, “Did you see the rat?”

He didn’t answer. He was very sober, he took himself seriously. I wanted to laugh but I held myself back because I was afraid that once I got started I wouldn’t be able to stop. They falagistas had a moustache. I said to him again, “You ought to shave off your moustache, idiot.” I thought it funny that he would let the hairs of his living being invade his face. He kicked me without great conviction and I kept quiet.

“Well,” said the fat officer, “have you thought about it?”

I looked at them with curiosity, as insects of a very rare species. I told them, “I know where he is. He is hidden in the cemetery. In a vault or in the grave-diggers’ shack.” It was a farce. I wanted to see them stand up, buckle their belts and give orders busily.

They jumped top their feet. “Let’s go, Moles. Get fifteen men from Lieutenant Lopez. You,” the little fat man said, “I’ll let you off if you’re telling the truth, but it’ll cost you plenty if you’re making monkeys out us.”

They left in a great clatter and I waited peacefully under the guard of falangistas. From time to time I smiled, thinking about the spectacle they would make. I felt stunned and malicious. I imagined them lifting up tombstones, opening the doors of the vaults one by one. I represented this situation to myself as if I had been someone else: this prisoner obstinately playing the hero, these grim falangistas with their moustaches and their men in uniform running among the graves; it was irresistibly funny.

After half an hour the little fat man came back alone. I thought he came to give the orders to execute me. The orders must have stayed in the cemetery.

The officer looked at me. He didn’t look at all sheepish. “Take him into the big courtyard with the others,” he said, “After the military operations a regular court will decide what happiness to him.”

I didn’t think I had understood. I asked:

“Then they’re not…..not going to shoot me?”

“Not now, anyway. What happens afterwards is none of my business.”

I still didn’t understand. I asked, “But why….?”

He shrugged his shoulders without answering and the soldiers took me away. In the big courtyard there were about a hundred prisoners, women, children and a few old men. I began walking around the central grass-plot, I was stupefied. At noon they let us eat in the mess hall. Two or there people questioned me. I must have known them, but I didn’t answer: I didn’t even know where I was.

Around evening they pushed about ten new prisoners into the court. I recognized Garcia, the baker. He said, “What dammed luck you have! I didn’t think I’d see you alive.”

“They sentenced me to death,” I said, “and then they changed their minds. I don’t know why.”

“They arrested me at two o’clock,” Garcia said.

“Why?” Garcia had nothing to do with politics.

“I don’t know,” he said. “They arrest everybody who doesn’t think the way they do.” He lowered his voice. “They got Gris.”

I began to tremble. “When?”

“This morning. He balled it up. He left his cousin’s on Tuesday because they had an argument. There were plenty of people to hide him but he didn’t want to owe anything to anybody. He said, ‘I’d go and hide in Ibbieta’s place, but they got him, so I’ll hide in the cemetery.”

“In the cemetery?”

“Yes. What a fool. Of course they went by there this morning that was sure to happen.

They found him in the gravediggers’ shack. He shot at them and they got him.”

“In the cemetery!”

Everybody began to spin and I found myself sitting on the ground: I laughed so hard, I cried.

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