I felt offended and quickly replied:
"My friends are honest people, do you hear, with talent, whereas that idiot and that nasty woman! … "
"I think we have had enough of this," Juliette imperiously said. "Is that your wish? … All right. I shall close my door to them. Only when you insisted on my living with you, you should have told me that you wanted to bury me alive. I would have known what to do then. … "
She rose. I was not even thinking of telling her that, on the contrary, it was she who had wished that we keep house together. Realizing that it was useless to argue any further I took her hand:
"Juliette," I entreated her.
"Well, what do you want?"
"Are you angry?"
"I, on the contrary, I am very much contented. … "
"Juliette!"
"Come, let go of me … quit … you hurt me."
Juliette was sulky all day; when I said something to her she did not answer or contented herself with articulating monosyllables curtly and with irritation. I was unhappy and angry at the same time; I would have liked to embrace her and to beat her, to shower kisses and kicks on her. At dinner she still kept the air of an offended woman, with her lips firmly closed and a disdainful look in her eyes. In vain did I try to appease her by humble conduct and sad repentant looks; her assumed sullenness remained unchanged, on her brow there was still that dark furrow which made me uneasy. At night, in bed, she took a book and turned her back to me. And the back of her perfumed neck to which my lips loved to cling with rapturous joy, now seemed to me harder than a stone wall. … Within me deep resentment was stirring, but I forced myself not to betray it. In the measure that I was filled with rage, my voice sought sweeter accents, it grew gentler and more beseeching.
"Juliette! my Juliette! … Speak to me, please! … Speak to me! Did I offend you, was I too harsh with you? I know I was. … Well, I am sorry and I ask your forgiveness. … But only speak to me."
My impression was that Juliette was not listening to me at all. She was cutting the pages of the book, and the noise of the friction of the knife against the paper annoyed me terribly.
"My Juliette. … Please understand me. … It is because I love you that I said that. … It is because I wish to see you pure, respected, and because it seems to me that all those are unworthy of you. … If I did not love you, would that make any difference to me? … And you think that I don't want you to go out! … Why no. … We shall go out often, every evening. … Ah, please don't be like that! … I was wrong! … Scold me, strike me. … But only speak to me, please speak to me!"
She continued turning the pages of the book. The words were throttled in my throat.
"It is not fair to act the way you do, Juliette. It is not nice at all to be like that. … Since I admitted my guilt! Ah, what pleasure do you get out of torturing me like this? … Didn't I say I was sorry? Come on, Juliette, I admit I was wrong!"
Not a muscle in her body moved in response to my supplication. Her nape exasperated me more than ever. Amidst locks of silky hair I now saw eyes which railed at me and a mouth which mocked me. And I had an impulse to strike her, to belabor her with my fists, to beat her till she bled.
"Juliette!" I shouted.
And my fingers, shriveled, spread apart and hooked like talons of a bird of prey, came close to her, in spite of myself, ready to claw this nape, impatient to tear it to pieces.
"Juliette!"
Juliette slowly turned her head, looked at me with contempt, without fear.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"What do I want? … What do I want?"
I was going to threaten her. … I half arose in bed, I was gesticulating violently. … And suddenly my rage subsided, I came close to Juliette, crouched before her, filled with repentance, and kissing that perfumed and beautiful nape:
"What I want, my dear, is that you should be happy. … That you shall receive your friends. … It was so foolish on my part to demand of you what I did! … Aren't you the best of women? … Don't I love you? … Ah, hereafter I shall have no other wish than yours, I promise you! … And you'll see how nice I am going to be to them! … Wait. … Why should you not invite Gabrielle for dinner? … And Jesselin also?"
"No! No! You say it now, but tomorrow you'll reproach me for it. … No! No! … I don't want to force upon you people whom you despise—nasty women and idiots!"
"I don't know where my head was when I said that. … I don't despise them at all … on the contrary I like them very much. … Invite both of them. … And I'll go and get a box at the Vaudeville."
"No!"
"I implore you!"
Her voice became less harsh, she closed the book.
"Well! We'll see tomorrow."
Really, at that moment I loved Gabrielle, Jesselin, Celestine—I even thought I loved Malterre.
I no longer worked. Not that love of work deserted me, but I no longer had the creative faculty in me. I used to sit down at my desk every day, with blank sheets of paper before me, searching for ideas, and failing to find them, I would again relapse into anxieties of the present, which meant Juliette, into dread of the future, which again meant Juliette! … Just as a drunkard clutches and turns his empty bottle to get the last drop of liquor out of it, so I searched my brains in the hope of squeezing the least bit of an idea out of it. … Alas! My head was empty!
It was empty and weighed upon my shoulders like an enormous ball of lead! … My mentality was always slow in getting started: it required stimulation, it had to be lashed with a whip. Because of my ill-balanced sensibility, my passive nature, I easily yielded to intellectual or moral influences, whether good or bad. And again, Lirat's friendship was quite useful to me in the past. My own ideas melted in the warmth of his spirit; his conversation opened for me new horizons hitherto unsuspected; whatever confused ideas I had were cleared up, they assumed a more definite form which I endeavored to express; he taught me how to see, to understand things and made me delve with him into the mysteries of life.
Now, the clear horizons toward which I was led shrunk and were shut off before me daily, almost hourly, and night was coming, black night, which to me was not only visible but tangible, for I could actually touch this monstrous night, I felt its darkness stuck fast in my hair, glued to my fingers, coiled around my body in clammy rings. …
My study room opened into a yard, or rather a little garden shaded by two large plane-trees and bounded by a wall that had lattice work and was covered with ivy. Behind this wall, in the midst of another garden, the grey and very high façade of a house rose, accosting me with five rows of windows. On the third floor an old man sat near the window opening which encased him like a picture frame. He wore a cap of black velvet, a checkered morning robe, and he never stirred. Shrunk into himself, his head drooping on his chest, he seemed asleep. Of his face I could see only wrinkles of yellowish, wrinkled flesh, dark cavities and locks which looked like tufts of a soiled beard, resembling some strange vegetation sprouting on the trunks of dead trees. Sometimes the profile of a woman would bend over him sinisterly, and this profile had the appearance of an owl perched upon the aged man's shoulder; I could discern its hooked bill and round eyes, cruel, avaricious and bloodthirsty. When the sun shone into the garden, the window opened and I heard a shrill, piercing, angry voice which never ceased screaming reproaches. Then the old man would shrink into himself still farther, his head would begin to oscillate slightly, then he would become motionless again, still more buried in the folds of his morning robe, still deeper sunk in his armchair.
I used to sit for hours and watch the unhappy man, and I fancied terrible tragedies, some fatal love affair,