1094
PARTISAN REVIEW
air floated the odor of the vinegar which had been used to revive
the sick person. She tossed about, whimpered, at times awoke with a
start. She would tear him out of the short naps from which he would
rise up dripping with sweat, already alert, and into which he would
heavily fall back after a glance at the watch on which, for the third
time, the flame of the night lamp danced about. It was not until
later that he felt how alone they had been that night. Alone against
all. The "others" slept through the hours when they two were
breathing fever. Everything in that old house then seemed hollow.
As
the midnight trolleys rattled off into the distance, they drained away
the hope that comes to us from men, all the certainties we derive from
the noise of cities. The house would resound a while with their passing
and then gradually
all
would grow silent. All that remained was a big
garden of silence in which there shot up the frightened groans of the
invalid. .Never had he felt at such a loss. The world had dissolved
and .along with it the illusion that life begins anew every day. Nothing
existed any more, studies or ambitions, preferences in the restaurant or
favorite colors. Nothing but the illness and death into which he felt
himself plunged. . . . And yet, the very hour that the world was
crumbling, he was living. And he had even fallen asleep finally. Not,
however, without carrying with him the desperate and tender image
of their dual solitude. Later on, much later, he was to remember that
mixed odor of sweat and vinegar, the moment when he had felt the
bonds that linked him to his mother. As if it were the immense pathos
of her heart, spread about him, become tangible, and playing earnest–
ly, heedless of imposture, the role of a poor old woman with a pathetic
destiny.
Now the fire in the hearth
is
covered over with ashes. And always
the same sigh of the earth. A derbouka utters its rippling chant. A
merry woman's voice flattens against it. Lights are moving up the
bay, probably fishing boats returning to the harbor. The triangle of sky
which I see from where I sit is free of the daytime clouds. Crammed
with stars, it quivers in a passing breath of wind and the velvet wings
of night beat slowly about me. How far will the night go, this night
to which I no longer belong? There is a dangerous quality in the
word simplicity. And tonight I understand that one can want to die
because, as regards a certain transparency of life, nothing is im–
portant any more. A man suffers and undergoes one misfortune after
