Letter From an Unknown Woman and Other Stories Page 8

  Slowly, almost rhythmically, her hand is still moving along his arm. He peers up surreptitiously between his eyelids. At first he sees only a crimson mist of restless light, then he can make out the dark, speckled rug, and now, as if it came from far away, the hand caressing him; he sees it very, very dimly, only a narrow glimpse of something white, coming down like a bright cloud and moving away again. The gap between his eyelids is wider and wider now. He sees her fingers clearly, pale and white as porcelain, sees them curving gently to stroke forward and then back again, dallying with him, but full of life. They move on like feelers and then withdraw; and at that moment the hand seems to take on a life of its own, like a cat snuggling close to a dress, a small white cat with its claws retracted, purring affectionately, and he would not be surprised if the cat’s eyes suddenly began to shoot sparks. And sure enough, isn’t something blinking brightly in that white caress? No, it’s only the glint of metal, a golden shimmer. But now, as the hand moves forward again, he sees clearly that it is the medallion dangling from her bracelet, that mysterious, giveaway medallion, octagonal and the size of a penny. It is Margot’s hand caressing his arm, and a longing rises in him to snatch up that soft, white hand—it wears no rings—carry it to his lips and kiss it. But then he feels her breath, senses that Margot’s face is very close to his, and he cannot keep his eyelids pressed together any longer. Happily, radiantly, he turns his gaze on the face now so close, and sees it retreat in alarm.

  And then, as the shadows cast by the face bent down to him disperse and light shows her features, stirred by emotion, he recognizes—it is like an electric shock going through his limbs—he recognizes Elisabeth, Margot’s sister, that strange girl young Elisabeth. Was this a dream? No, he is staring into a face now quickly blushing red, she is turning her eyes away in alarm, and yes, it is Elisabeth. All at once he guesses at the terrible mistake he has made; his eyes gaze avidly at her hand, and the medallion really is there on her bracelet.

  Mists begin swirling before his eyes. He feels exactly as he did when he fainted after his fall, but he grits his teeth; he doesn’t want to lose his ability to think straight. Suddenly it all passes rapidly before his mind’s eye, concentrated into a single second: Margot’s surprise and haughty attitude, Elisabeth’s smile, that strange look of hers touching him like a discreet hand—no, there was no possible mistake about it.

  He feels one last moment of hope, and stares at the medallion; perhaps Margot gave it to her, today or yesterday or earlier.

  But Elisabeth is speaking to him. His fevered thinking must have distorted his features, for she asks him anxiously, “Are you in pain, Bob?”

  How like their voices are, he thinks. And he replies only, without thinking, “Yes, yes… I mean no… I’m perfectly all right!”

  There is silence again. The thought keeps coming back to him in a surge of heat: perhaps Margot has given it to her, and that’s all. He knows it can’t be true, but he has to ask her.

  “What’s that medallion?”

  “Oh, a coin from some American republic or other, I don’t know which. Uncle Robert gave it to us once.”

  “Us?” He holds his breath. She must say it now.

  “Margot and me. Kitty didn’t want one, I don’t know why.”

  He feels something wet flowing into his eyes. Carefully, he turns his head aside so that Elisabeth will not see the tear that must be very close to his eyelids now; it cannot be forced back, it slowly, slowly rolls down his cheek. He wants to say something, but he is afraid that his voice might break under the rising pressure of a sob. They are both silent, watching one another anxiously. Then Elisabeth stands up. “I’ll go now, Bob. Get well soon.” He shuts his eyes, and the door creaks quietly as it closes.

  His thoughts fly up like a startled flock of pigeons. Only now does he understand the enormity of his mistake. Shame and anger at his folly overcome him, and at the same time a fierce pain. He knows now that Margot is lost to him for ever, but he feels that he still loves her, if not yet, perhaps, with a desperate longing for the unattainable. And Elisabeth—as if in anger, he rejects her image, because all her devotion and the now muted fire of her passion cannot mean as much to him as a smile from Margot or the touch of her hand in passing. If Elisabeth had revealed herself to him from the first he would have loved her, for in those early hours he was still childlike in his passion; but now, in his thousand dreams of Margot, he has burnt her name too deeply into his heart for it to be extinguished now.

  He feels everything darkening before his eyes as his constantly whirling thoughts are gradually washed away by tears. He tries in vain to conjure up Margot’s face in his mind as he has done in all the long, lonely hours and days of his illness; a shadow of Elisabeth always comes in front of it, Elisabeth with her deep, yearning eyes, and then he is in confusion and has to think again, in torment, of how it all happened. He is overcome by shame to think how he stood outside Margot’s window calling her name, and again he feels sorry for quiet, fair-haired Elisabeth, for whom he never had a word or a look to spare in all these days, when his gratitude ought to have been bent on her like fire.

  Next morning Margot comes to visit him for a moment. He trembles at her closeness, and dares not look her in the eye. What is she saying to him? He hardly hears it; the wild buzzing in his temples is louder than her voice. Only when she leaves him does he gaze again, with longing, at her figure. He feels that he has never loved her more.

  Elisabeth visits him in the afternoon. There is a gentle familiarity in her hands, which sometimes brush against his, and her voice is very quiet, slightly sad. She speaks, with a certain anxiety, of indifferent things, as if she were afraid of giving herself away if she talked about the two of them. He does not know quite what he feels for her. Sometimes he feels pity for her, sometimes gratitude for her love, but he cannot tell her so. He hardly dares to look at her for fear of lying to her.

  She comes every day now, and stays longer too. It is as if, since the hour when the nature of their shared secret dawned on them, their uncertainty has disappeared as well. Yet they never dare to talk about those hours in the dark of the garden.

  One day Elisabeth is sitting beside his chaise longue again. The sun is shining brightly outside, a reflection of the green treetops in the wind trembles on the walls. At such moments her hair is as fiery as burning clouds, her skin pale and translucent, her whole being shines and seems airy. From his cushions, which lie in shadow, he sees her face smiling close to him, and yet it looks far away because it is radiant with light that no longer reaches him. He forgets everything that has happened at this sight. And when she bends down to him, so that her eyes seem to be more profound, moving darkly inward, when she leans forward he puts his arm round her, brings her head close to his and kisses her delicate, moist mouth. She trembles like a leaf but does not resist, only caresses his hair with her hand. And then she says, merely breathing the words, with loving sorrow in her voice, “But Margot is the only one you love.” He feels that tone of devotion go straight to his heart, that gentle, unresisting despair, and the name that shakes him with emotion strikes at his very soul. But he dares not lie at that minute. He says nothing in reply.

  She kisses him once more, very lightly, an almost sisterly kiss on the lips, and then she goes out without a word.

  That is the only time they talk about it. A few more days, and then the convalescent is taken down to the garden, where the first faded leaves are already chasing across the path and early evening breathes an autumnal melancholy. Another few days, and he is walking alone with some difficulty, for the last time that year, under the colourful autumn canopy of leaves. The trees speak louder and more angrily now than on those three mild summer nights. The boy, in melancholy mood himself, goes to the place where they were once together. He feels as if an invisible, dark wall were standing here behind which, blurred in twilight already, his childhood lies; and now there is another land before him, strange and dangerous.

  He said goodbye
to the whole party that evening, looked hard once more at Margot’s face, as if he had to drink enough of it in to last for the rest of his life, placed his hand restlessly in Elisabeth’s, which clasped it with warm ardour, almost looked past Kitty, their friends and his sister—his heart was so full of the realization that he loved one of the sisters and the other loved him. He was very pale, with a bitter expression on his face that made him seem more than a boy; for the first time, he looked like a man.

  And yet, when the horses were brought up and he saw Margot turn indifferently away to go back up the steps, and when Elisabeth’s eyes suddenly shone with moisture, and she held the balustrade, the full extent of his new experience overwhelmed him so entirely that he gave himself up to tears of his own like a child.

  The castle retreated farther into the distance, and through the dust raised by the carriage the dark garden looked smaller and smaller. Then came the countryside, and finally all that he had experienced was hidden from his eyes—but his memory was all the more vivid. Two hours of driving took him to the nearest railway station, and next morning he was in London.

  A few more years and he was no longer a boy. But that first experience had left too strong an impression ever to fade. Margot and Elisabeth had both married, but he did not want to see them again, for the memory of those hours sometimes came back to him so forcefully that his entire later life seemed to him merely a dream and an illusion by comparison with its reality. He became one of those men who cannot find a way of relating to women, because in one second of his life the sensation of both loving and being loved had united in him entirely; and now no longing urged him to look for what had fallen into his trembling, anxiously yielding boyish hands so early. He travelled in many countries, one of those correct, silent Englishmen whom many consider unemotional because they are so reserved, and their eyes look coolly away from the faces and smiles of women. For who thinks that they may bear in them, inextricably mingled with their blood, images on which their gaze is always fixed, with an eternal flame burning around them as it does before icons of the Madonna? And now I remember how I heard this story. A card had been left inside the book that I was reading this afternoon, a postcard sent to me by a friend in Canada. He is a young Englishman whom I met once on a journey. We often talked in the long evenings, and in what he said the memory of two women sometimes suddenly and mysteriously flared up, as if they were distant statues, and always in connection with a moment of his youth. It is a long time, a very long time since I spoke to him, and I had probably forgotten those conversations. But today, on receiving that postcard, the memory was revived, mingling dreamily in my mind with experiences of my own; and I felt as if I had read his story in the book that slipped out of my hands, or as if I had found it in a dream.

  But how dark it is now in this room, and how far away you are from me in the deep twilight! I can see only a faint pale light where I think your face is, and I do not know if you are smiling or sad. Are you smiling because I make up strange stories for people whom I knew fleetingly, dream of whole destinies for them, and then calmly let them slip back into their lives and their own world? Or are you sad for that boy who rejected love and found himself all at once cast out of the garden of his sweet dream for ever? There, I didn’t mean my story to be dark and melancholy—I only wanted to tell you about a boy suddenly surprised by love, his own and someone else’s. But stories told in the evening all tread the gentle path of melancholy. Twilight falls with its veils, the sorrow that rests in the evening is a starless vault above them, darkness seeps into their blood, and all the bright, colourful words in them have as full and heavy a sound as if they came from our inmost hearts.

  THE DEBT PAID LATE

  MY DEAR ELLEN,

  I know you will be surprised to receive a letter from me after so long; it must be five or perhaps even six years since I last wrote to you. I believe that then it was a letter of congratulations on your youngest daughter’s marriage. This time the occasion is not so festive, and perhaps my need to confide the details of a strange encounter to you, rather than anyone else, may strike you as odd. But I can’t tell anyone else what happened to me a few days ago. You are the only person who would understand.

  My pen involuntarily hesitates as I write these words, and I have to smile at myself a little. Didn’t we exchange the very same “You are the only person who would understand” a thousand times when we were fifteen or sixteen years old—immature, excitable girls telling each other our childish secrets at school or on the way home? And didn’t we solemnly swear, long ago in our salad days, to tell each other everything, in detail, concerning a certain person? All that is more than a quarter of a century ago; but a promise, once made, must be kept. And as you will see, I am faithfully keeping my word, if rather late in the day.

  This was how it all happened. I have had a difficult and strenuous time of things this year. My husband was appointed medical director of the big hospital in R., so I had all the complications of moving house to deal with; meanwhile my son-in-law went to Brazil on business, taking my daughter with him, and they left their three children in our house. The children promptly contracted scarlet fever one after the other, and I had to nurse them… and that wasn’t all, because then my mother-in-law died. Everything was happening at once. I thought at first that I had survived all these headlong events pretty well, but somehow they must have taken more out of me than I knew, because one day my husband said, after looking at me in silence for some time, “Margaret, I think that now the children, thank goodness, are better again you ought to do something about your own health. You look overtired, you’ve been well and truly overdoing things. Two or three weeks at a sanatorium in the country, and you’ll be your old self again.”

  My husband was right. I was exhausted, more so than I admitted to myself. I became aware of it when I realized that in company—and since my husband took up his post here, there have been many functions to host and many calls to be paid—after an hour I couldn’t concentrate properly on what people were saying, while I forgot the simplest things more and more often in the daily running of the household, and had to force myself to get up in the morning. With his observant and medically trained eye, my husband had diagnosed my physical and mental weariness correctly. All I really needed was two weeks to recover. Fourteen days without thinking about the meals, the laundry, paying calls, doing all the everyday business—fourteen days on my own to be myself, not a mother, grandmother, housekeeper and wife of the medical director of a hospital all the time. It so happened that my widowed sister was available to come and stay, so everything was prepared for my absence; and I had no further scruples in following my husband’s advice and going away by myself for the first time in twenty-five years. Indeed, I was actually looking forward quite impatiently to being invigorated by my holiday. I rejected my husband’s suggestion only in one point: his idea that I should spend it at a sanatorium, although he had thoughtfully found one whose owner had been a friend of his from their youth. But there would have been other people whom I knew there, and I would have had to go on being sociable and mixing in company. All I really wanted was to be on my own for fourteen days with books, walks, time to dream and sleep undisturbed, fourteen days without the telephone and the radio, fourteen days of silence at peace with myself, if I may put it like that. Unconsciously, I hadn’t wanted anything so much for years as this time set aside for silence and rest.

  And then I remembered that in the first years of my marriage, when my husband was practising as an assistant doctor in Bolzano, I had once spent three hours walking up to an isolated little village high in the mountains. In its tiny marketplace, opposite the church, stood one of those rural inns of the kind so often to be found in the Tyrol, its ground floor built of massive stones, the first floor under the wide, overhanging wooden roof opening on to a spacious veranda, and the whole place surrounded by vine leaves that in autumn, the season when I saw it, glowed around the whole house like a red fire gradually cooling. Small ou
tbuildings and big barns huddled to the right and left of it, but the house itself stood on its own under soft autumnal clouds drifting across the sky, and looked down at the endless panorama of the mountains.

  At the time I had felt almost spellbound outside that little inn, and I wanted to go in. I’m sure you know what it’s like to see a house from the train or on a walk, and think all of a sudden: oh, why don’t I live here? I could be happy in this place. I think such an idea occurs to everyone sometimes, and when you have looked at a house for a long time secretly wishing to live happily in it, everything about it is imprinted on your memory. For years I remembered the red and yellow flowers growing in window boxes, the wooden first-floor gallery, where laundry was fluttering like colourful banners the day I saw it, the painted shutters at the windows, yellow on a blue background with little heart-shapes cut out of the middle of them, and the roof ridge with a stork’s nest on the gable. When my heart felt restless I sometimes thought of that house. How nice it would be to go there for a day, I would think, in the dreamy, half-unconscious way that you think of something impossible. And now wasn’t this my best chance to make my old, and by this time almost forgotten, wish come true? Wasn’t the prettily painted house on the mountainside, an inn without the tiresome amenities of our modern world, with no telephone or radio, the very thing for overtired nerves? I would have no visitors there, and there would be no formalities. As I called it to mind again, I thought I was breathing in the strong, aromatic mountain air, and hearing the far-off ringing of rustic cowbells. Even remembering it gave me fresh courage and made me feel better. It was one of those ideas that take us by surprise apparently for no reason at all, although in reality they express wishes that we have cherished for a long time, waiting in the unconscious mind. My husband, who didn’t know how often I had dreamt of that little house, seen only once years ago, smiled a little at first but promised to make enquiries. The proprietors replied that all of their three guest rooms were vacant at the moment, and I could choose whichever I liked. All the better, I thought, no neighbours, no conversations; and I went on the night train. Next morning, a little country one-horse trap took me and my small suitcase up the mountain at a slow trot.