early spring and the mornings were warm with a touch of the sirocco, so some days I had breakfast set in the garden—my husband had already gone. I breakfasted alone, sipping bitter tea, not feeling hungry.
There were newspapers lying on the table. For lack of anything else to do, I read one of the headlines. A small state had just disappeared off the map. I tried to imagine how the people in that foreign country might feel, waking up at dawn to discover that their lives, their customs, everything they believed or had sworn by, had disappeared from one day to the next, had ceased to matter, and that they were now on the threshold of something entirely new—maybe better, maybe worse, but something that, at any rate, was utterly different from the country they knew, which might just as well have sunk beneath the waves, and that was where they had to live thenceforth, under entirely new conditions, underwater. I thought about it, and also about myself, and what I wanted … What divine commandment had I received, what was the message from heaven? What was the meaning of this continuous excitement in my heart? What was my anxiety, my humiliation, my sorrowcompared to the anxiety and sorrow of those millions upon millions of people who were waking this morning to find they had lost what was most precious to them, that had been the center of their lives, the sweet, secret, familiar order of their homeland? … But I kept leafing distractedly through the papers, unable to give world affairs my full attention. I asked myself what right I had in a world like this to worry so intensely about myself, to be so obsessed by what would happen to me and whether I had any right to care so much about my own life … With so many millions of people living in fear and misery, should I really be worrying about whether I really owned every last little bit of my husband’s heart? What was my husband’s secret, or my personal happiness, compared to the world’s secrets, the world’s misery? What was I doing playing detective in a world that is savage enough, frightening and mysterious enough, already? … But these were pseudo-questions, you know, pretenses … One woman’s feelings don’t amount to an entire world. Then I thought back to what the old priest had said, and wondered if he was right. Maybe I didn’t have enough faith, enough humility … Perhaps there was something arrogant about me, something unworthy of a Christian, a woman, indeed of a human being; something arrogant about this crazy project, this amateur-detective attempt to scrape away the surface of a private world and reveal my husband’s secret; something unworthy about trying to find that certain mysterious person with her lilac ribbon. Perhaps … but I was so overwrought at the time I can no longer explain my feelings clearly.
I sat in the garden, the tea got cold, the sun was shining. The birds were already restless, chattering away. Spring was coming on. I thought how Lázár didn’t like the spring: all that fecundity, all those emissions, he said, affect the gastric juices and upset the balance between feeling and reason … That’s what he said. And then I remembered all we had talked about just a few hours ago at night, with the music in the background, beside the fountain, in that rich, cold, grand house, in the suffocating jungle smells of the conservatory. I remembered, and now it seemed as though it were all just something I’d read.
Do you know the feeling you get when you are beyond pain and despair, beyond the most tragic events, and suddenly become very sober, indifferent, almost cheerful? For example, when the person you loved best is being buried, and you suddenly remember that you haveleft the refrigerator door open back home and the dog is probably eating the cold meat you had saved for the wake? … And the very moment when everyone is singing and standing around the coffin, you start arranging things, whispering, as calm
There were newspapers lying on the table. For lack of anything else to do, I read one of the headlines. A small state had just disappeared off the map. I tried to imagine how the people in that foreign country might feel, waking up at dawn to discover that their lives, their customs, everything they believed or had sworn by, had disappeared from one day to the next, had ceased to matter, and that they were now on the threshold of something entirely new—maybe better, maybe worse, but something that, at any rate, was utterly different from the country they knew, which might just as well have sunk beneath the waves, and that was where they had to live thenceforth, under entirely new conditions, underwater. I thought about it, and also about myself, and what I wanted … What divine commandment had I received, what was the message from heaven? What was the meaning of this continuous excitement in my heart? What was my anxiety, my humiliation, my sorrowcompared to the anxiety and sorrow of those millions upon millions of people who were waking this morning to find they had lost what was most precious to them, that had been the center of their lives, the sweet, secret, familiar order of their homeland? … But I kept leafing distractedly through the papers, unable to give world affairs my full attention. I asked myself what right I had in a world like this to worry so intensely about myself, to be so obsessed by what would happen to me and whether I had any right to care so much about my own life … With so many millions of people living in fear and misery, should I really be worrying about whether I really owned every last little bit of my husband’s heart? What was my husband’s secret, or my personal happiness, compared to the world’s secrets, the world’s misery? What was I doing playing detective in a world that is savage enough, frightening and mysterious enough, already? … But these were pseudo-questions, you know, pretenses … One woman’s feelings don’t amount to an entire world. Then I thought back to what the old priest had said, and wondered if he was right. Maybe I didn’t have enough faith, enough humility … Perhaps there was something arrogant about me, something unworthy of a Christian, a woman, indeed of a human being; something arrogant about this crazy project, this amateur-detective attempt to scrape away the surface of a private world and reveal my husband’s secret; something unworthy about trying to find that certain mysterious person with her lilac ribbon. Perhaps … but I was so overwrought at the time I can no longer explain my feelings clearly.
I sat in the garden, the tea got cold, the sun was shining. The birds were already restless, chattering away. Spring was coming on. I thought how Lázár didn’t like the spring: all that fecundity, all those emissions, he said, affect the gastric juices and upset the balance between feeling and reason … That’s what he said. And then I remembered all we had talked about just a few hours ago at night, with the music in the background, beside the fountain, in that rich, cold, grand house, in the suffocating jungle smells of the conservatory. I remembered, and now it seemed as though it were all just something I’d read.
Do you know the feeling you get when you are beyond pain and despair, beyond the most tragic events, and suddenly become very sober, indifferent, almost cheerful? For example, when the person you loved best is being buried, and you suddenly remember that you haveleft the refrigerator door open back home and the dog is probably eating the cold meat you had saved for the wake? … And the very moment when everyone is singing and standing around the coffin, you start arranging things, whispering, as calm
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