Emotionally exhausted, Barral left at last. The candle still burned. “Bah!” said Barral, “probably a mother and her sick child.” But he didn't believe it. He felt certain, on the contrary, that that was their window. He reeled through the streets like a drunkard. His mind was in a turmoil. “I mustn't ever do this again,” he said to himself, “if I were seen, it would be up with me. And after all the precautions I've taken not to be suspected as a spy!”
Yes, behind that curtained soupirail, they lay. The evening's embraces had tired them. They slept.
Suddenly Bertrand awoke. He was frequently a light sleeper. The slightest noise outside would rouse him. He lay, wide awake, hoping for sleep to take him back again.
The room was dark and cool but he could not find any sleep in himself. He tossed about, annoyed. His body was on fire.
She heard him and turned around. “Can't you keep quiet?” she said impatiently. Every cell of her body ached for slumber.
He sighed.
Thereupon her pity was aroused. “You poor child,” she said compassionately, and put her arms around him. They kissed. He nipped her ear playfully. They held each other tightly embraced. “Please⦔ he murmured, and was annoyed at himself for asking. Why had he done that?
“If you must,” she said, resigned. “It's on the table.”
Angered at himself, and at her for acquiescing, but incapable at this point of restraining himself, he rose and lit a candle. The sharp blade of the knife flashed orange.
He uncovered her. There was scarcely a portion of her body that had not one or more cuts on it. The older ones had healed to scars that traversed her dark skin with lines that were visibly lighter than the surrounding area. The newer ones were angry welts of red, or hard ridges of scab. In the candlelight the latter were like old jewelry or polished tortoiseshell.
Suppressing a moment's hesitation, he bent over her body⦠The blood welled up, ruby-red. He put his mouth to it at once and drank greedily. His lips made ugly sucking noises, as he strove to extract all the blood he could.
Her fingers played with his hair, meanwhile. “Poor little baby,” she murmured. Her mind reeled, filled with unsubstantial pictures, with broken threads of unconnected thoughts.
Now they were locked in each other's arms again.
Sleep separated them at last. They lay exhausted, their limbs still entangled, the sweat of their embraces drying in the night breeze. The candle burned unheeded, until the flame expired in a mass of molten wax.
In the morning, when daylight woke them up, he was a different person. He looked with horror upon his deeds. With his fingertips he touched her wounds and wept.
“I'm killing you,” he moaned. “What a fate!” He slapped his brow with the palm of his hand, that hairy palm.
She laughed through her own tears. “Don't be foolish, Bertrand. Besides, I'd gladly die for you.” An inexplicable stab of pleasure accompanied the thought of death.
He would not be consoled. “If I had any humanity, I'd kill myself, before I'd as much as scratch you.”
“Don't, Bertrand! Don't! What would I do if you left me?”
His fingers sought for the latest wound he had made. When he had found it, he shut his eyes lest he be tempted to look at it. “I did that?” he murmured. “I did that. How could you let me? Why did you not kill me at once?”
“Don't be foolish, Bertrand,” she repeated, and erased his dark thoughts with kisses.
The sun was out and it was time for pleasant thoughts. The night was over and the crazy thoughts of the hours of darkness must return to the graves which exude them.
The concierge came running out to them as they were crossing the cobbled courtyard.
“Madame,” she cried, “a letter for you.”
“A letter?” Bertrand wondered.
“Yes, a letter,” said the concierge, and smiled at them.
Sophie recognized the hand at once. It was only Barral's daily letter.
“It's nothing,” she answered the suspicion on his face. “You may read it, or better still, throw it away.”
“Shall I?” he asked, his hands about to tear the letter in half.
“If you don't, I shall, so that's settled.âNow let's have breakfast. I'm famished.” The sound of the paper tearing was pleasant to their ears.
They were both in high spirits at breakfast. He talked of what he would do when the war was over. He would return to the study of medicine. “Uncle has plenty of money,” he said.
“And me. Haven't I any money?” she returned. “Father will give me millions, if I just say so. Besides, it will all be mine some day anyhow. We'll go and live in my room at home.” She thought of her pretty bed, with the azure canopy. There were times when she missed the polished luxury of her former surroundings, the paintings, the rugs, the colorful marbles, the bronze and gold and grained woods smoothed to the luster of a mirror.
“Perhaps,” he thought aloud, “I could learn to control myself, or find someone else for my bad moments, and keep my love pure for you.”
That hurt her. Hurt her down deep in her intestines. She realized at once, as if she had experienced such a sensation before, that she was jealous of this “someone else” who was to give Bertrand a part of herself.
“Don't say that. Never say that,” she said softly. “You are all mine.”
“Butâ” he began.
“Hush,” she cautioned. She brushed the picture of another girl and Bertrand from her mind and returned to her former thought: That then was jealousy, terrible pain that made all food suddenly distasteful. And she thought of Barral. “Poor soul,” she said. “Is that what he suffers?” At that moment she would have been capable of giving herself to him, of giving herself to everyone who might have needed her. To the whole battalion that looked at her with lusting, hungry eyes. Al1 those bearded and unshaven faces that wanted the smoothness of her cheeks. All those hard arms that craved to crush her soft body. All those calloused, dirty hands that wanted to touch her with intimate caresses.
And all that love for the whole male world that welled up in her rose and bunched itself into her lips. And she leaned across the little table and planted it full on Bertrand's mouth. He sensed the gift. He sensed that her love, which she might have given to anyone, to everyone, that greater love she had chosen to bestow upon him and upon him alone. He was deeply stirred and left speechless amid the maelstrom of his emotions.
“Never, never speak of another to come between us, Bertrand,” she said. “You do not know how that hurts.”
“I know,” he replied, “onlyâ”
“Hush. Was it not I who first offered myself to you? Was it not I, again, who bought the knife, because you were afraid your teeth were too painful? There is nothing I would not do for you.”
In the silence that followed, she thought suddenly of her father and mother. Had they loved each other that way? Had her mother ever offered up her body to her father in this manner? The thought had poignancy to it. Somehow she could not reconcile the picture her mind called up. She could not believe that her father and mother had ever shared a bed. And yet they must have, at least once. But it could not have been such a bed as she and Bertrand shared, down in a cellar, a miserable couch so narrow that their bodies must be intimate all night. Did her father and mother ever wake up to find the candle burned down to the neck of the wine bottle in which it was stuck?
*
Deutsche Mythologie
. Göttingen, 1835.
Chapter Sixteen
T
hey had clasped each other as two children will in the dark when they are oppressed by the fate which they sense must overtake them some day or other. And they continued to cling to each other with all the despair of drowning people. They felt themselves being sucked under, into that eternal night of nothingness which follows the brief day of life. Their souls were too weak to have a tight grasp on their bodies, and it was as if, knowing how soon death was to rob them of this delightful housing of flesh which protected the weak flame of their spirit, it was as if knowing that this life must be brief, no matter how long it lasts, for anything which must come to an end is brief, that they laced their arms about each other and would not let go, that they put their lips together and feared to sunder them lest something slip between, that they desired nothing, night and day, but he to inflict pain and she to feel her body bruised and cut, so as to realize keenly at every moment that they were truly alive, alive at least in this little moment of now, no matter how dead or deprived of humanity they must be in all the future moments to come.
A night of love, a day of companionship, did not satisfy them. Their thoughts played on with each other during their moments of rest. He grew insatiable. Her body was a fountain of blood to him. And it was as if her body responded to his needs. She grew heavy, sultry with blood, like a nursing mother with milk.
When she walked her body swayed. She could not control the movement of her hips. It was as if she still had him in her arms, and indeed in the bruises on her body she still carried the feel of him. And that is why, when she was alone, he being on duty where she could not follow, which was rare for they clung together even at the ramparts, she would bring her arm to her mouth and kiss some place he had hurt.
Curiously, but comprehensively, this perpetual intimacy allowed them to face the prospect of death with courage. She frequently begged him, now that the Versailles troops were surrounding the city and waging vicious warfare against the Communards, not to expose himself to danger.
But when he asked her, “What will you do if I am shot?” she answered, “Shoot myself, too.” And neither of them quailed. They could die together. Whatever there was beyond the grave, even if it was nothingness, would at least be shared. The thought of outliving or being outlived would have been intolerable.
Such was their mood that they often spoke of committing suicide by jumping off a roof while holding each other in their arms. Such a death would not really have been death, it would only have been a wilder form of caress than any they had hitherto practiced.
She had permanently affiliated herself with the 204th battalion as assistant cantinière, in which function the men were more than ever fond of her. She fitted in well in her new position. She had grown, to a certain measure, coarse. Her lips were heavier and curved in a loose pout as if about to expel a curse. Her abundant hair, on which she had formerly lavished much attention, she now gathered together into a hasty knot. Her complexion was no longer so much tan as swarthy. But these changes had not diminished her beauty, they had only altered it.
There was a kind of desperation in the air. One could sense the approach of the end. At this point many of the Commune began to lose their heads. Courbet had the great bronze Vendôme Column, glorifying Napoleon's victories, torn down. A great munition factory was blown up by a traitor. Many lives were lost. In this atmosphere of violence it is not strange to note that a scientific delegation was appointed whose chief task appears to have been the collection of inflammable materials, petroleum, sulphur, dynamite, resin, along with quantities of rapid fuses, all of which were to serve to burn Paris to the ground in case it was about to be taken.
And worse still. Gas bombs, designed to asphyxiate, or others made to spatter acid, were manufactured, though with little success. Rings, each with a small rubber sac of poison and a tiny hollow needle, were designed to be used by prisoners against their captors, a little scratch being sufficient to slay. Few of these were actually made and none appears to have been used, but if little came of these devices, they remain impressive signs of the desperate condition of the Communards.
And the two in their little basement room could feel the strain more than others. Bertrand especially. The scent of death all about made him want to howl. He would find his throat forming itself to let out a wild cry, but he would catch himself in time. His mind kept repeating, “I'm cured. I'm cured,” but he knew that he wasn't and he knew that it was only at the expense of Sophie that he kept the beast within him at bay.
He would wake up at night and say to himself: “Don't let me weaken! God! Don't let me weaken!” He repeated all the snatches of prayers he knew, and called upon all the saints. At last, despairing, he would seize the knife. Sophie slept on. Of late she did not always wake up when he made demands upon her. In her sleep her body gently pressed itself against his. She moved sluggishly, her muscles relaxed, as if actuated by a dream.
He would find himself dissatisfied almost at once. Then a mad longing would course through him to have done with these little sips and proceed to the central fountain, there in the soft part of the neck, and feel again that sensation of being inundated with a warm flood as the blood comes spurting from the carotid artery.
Then he would shake his head madly. “No, no!” he would cry behind his clenched teeth. “O God! keep me from that!” And all night would be a long struggle to crush a desire that rose again and again, stronger after each fall. Again and again he would attempt to slake his mad thirst, but the amount he could secure was insufficient. “I'm killing her slowly anyhow,” he raged, “why not have done with it!”
Once, indeed, so overpowering was the desire of his teeth to get at that throat that he leaped out of bed, hastily donned his clothing and ran out. “If I must,” he thought, “at least let it be someone else than she.”
Within a few blocks he ran into a man. He found his hands and feet leaving the ground, propelling his body through the air. He found his teeth seeking for a throat. The man fought with a sudden strength summoned up by terror. Guttural cries, choked snarls escaped from Bertrand. His clothes hampered him. He knew he had done wrong to put them on. He found himself floundering on slippery cobblestones, a heavy knee pressed into his stomach, and a fist crashing through the defense of his arms and beating against his head.