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'My God, Dorothy!' Willie said. 'Lewis can't create a real leftist party, nor can any of us.'
'And yet,' I said, 'there are a lot of you who hold the same views. Isn't there any way you can get together?'
'First of all, there are fewer and fewer of us,' Lewis replied. 'And secondly, we're isolated.'
'And above all, you find it a lot more comfortable to snicker than to try to do something,' Dorothy said.
I, too, was sometimes irritated by Lewis's placid irony. He was lucid, critical; he was even often indignant. But he bore the same intimate relationship to the shortcomings and blemishes he objected to in America as a patient bears to his affliction, a tramp to his filfth. It was enough to make him seem to me vaguely a party to them. [...]
He walked away and disappeared into the bathroom. It was always that way: as soon as I tried to approach him, he would run off. Doubtless, he was afraid I might demand warmth from him or lies or promises which he was unable to give me. I began undressing. I had known in advance that that little tete-a-tete would be disappointing; I was, however, no less disappointed for having known it. At least I had one small bit of luck: my body was so precisely attuned to Lewis's that it had no trouble matching his indifference. We slept in our twin beds, separated by an icy crevasse, and I didn't even understand the meaning of the word 'desire' any more.
'Anne!' Lewis cried out. 'Come see! I caught a rainbow.' He was watering the lawn and a rainbow was dancing in the spray. 'Come quick!' I recognized that urgent, friendly voice, that happy face - a face which was like no other. It was Lewis; it was he and no one else. He had stopped loving me, but he was still the same. Why, then, should I have suddenly thought ill of him? No, I couldn't get off that cheaply. The truth was that I understood him. I, too, hated unhappiness and was loath to make sacrifices: I could understand his refusing at one and the same time to suffer because of me and to lose me; I could understand his being too busy deciphering his own heart to bother much about what was going on in mine. And then I remembered his voice that day he had gripped my shoulders and said, 'I'd marry you tomorrow.' At that moment, I had repudiated all rancour, forever. When you really want to stop loving, you stop loving. But you can't want to at will.
I went out, walked down the gravel path; the letter-box flag had disappeared: the postman had come. I took the mail. There was a letter for me: Myriam and Philip (were travelling in Mexico; on their way back, they planned to stop off in Chicago; they were hoping to see me. I hadn't seen them since '46, but Nancy had been in Paris the previous May and I had given her my address in the United States. There was certainly nothing extraordinary about Myriam writing to me, and yet I looked at her letter with stupefaction; it brought back a time when Lewis didn't exist for me. How could his absence have become that gaping, all-devouring emptiness? The garden was dead, and my memories as well. I found it impossible to take an interest for even a second in Myrian, in Philip, in anything. The only thing that mattered was that man for whom I was waiting, and I didn't even know who he was. I didn't know who I myself was. I circled the garden, I paced back and forth in the house, I called out, 'Lewis! Come back! Help me!' I swallowed whisky and benzedrine—in vain. That unbearable emptiness refused to leave me. I sat down at the bay window, and I watched.
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I really couldn't get angry at him. He had hoped to keep me with him forever, and I had refused. If today his moods were capricious and his desires incoherent, I should not have let myself be surprised by this. You inevitably contradict yourself when you're forced to want something other than what you really want.
After that, there was less distance between us. When we would go for walks on the beach, when we would lie in the sun, or in the evening, when we were listening to records, Lewis would talk to me without restraint. Our understanding was coming to life again. He was no longer afraid to take me in his arms, to kiss me; we even made love two or three times. When I felt his mouth find mine again, my heart began beating wildly; a kiss of desire is so much like a kiss of love! But my body would quickly regain its composure. It was only a matter of a brief conjugal coition, an act so insignificant that it's difficult to understand how the great concepts of pleasure and sin could ever be associated with it.
And yet, at dusk, when the red car sped off towards New York, I was reluctant to go back to the apartment; I was afraid of the empty room and of the mourning in my heart. I went to a film, and then I walked along the streets. Never before had I strolled alone at night through Chicago; under its spangled veils, the city had lost its hostile air, but I didn't know what to do with it. I was wandering aimlessly through a party to which I hadn't been invited, and my eyes filled. I bit my lip. No, I didn't want to cry. Really. I wasn't crying, I told myself; it was the night lights that trembled inside of me, and their glitter was condensing in salty drops on the edge of my lashes — because I was there, because I would never return, because the world is too rich, too poor, the past too heavy, too light, because I couldn't turn that too-beautiful hour into happiness, because my love had died and I would survive it.
They ran down to the pond. Nadine swam with her head sticking straight up in the water, majestically, as if she were bearing it on a tray. He liked her face. ‘I’m fond of her,' he said to himself. 'I'm even very fond of her. Why isn't it quite love?' Something in Nadine chilled him; her suspiciousness, her grudges, her deceitfulness, the hostile solitude in which she took refuge. But perhaps if he had loved her more, she would have become more open, more expansive, more agreeable. It was a vicious circle: love can't be served up to order, nor can confidence. Neither one could come first.
[...] Why were they forcing him to get involved in something that was happening in Tananarive? Horrible things are constantly happening on earth; but a person doesn't live all over the world, and dwelling endlessly on distant misfortunes, which you can't do anything about, is nothing but a form of morbid self-indulgence. 'This is where I live, and here there is peace,' he thought. He looked at Nadine. She was quietly relaxed in a way that was quite unusual for her. She, who had so much trouble concentrating on a book, could listen for hours to music she liked, and at those times one could feel a stillness in her that was close to happiness. 'I've got to make her happy,' Henri said to himself. 'There must be a way of breaking that vicious circle.' Making someone happy: that was concrete, that was solid, and if you really put your heart in it, it could keep you pretty well absorbed. Looking after Nadine, raising Maria, writing his books - it wasn't quite the life he had once hoped for. There was a time when he believed that happiness was one way of mastering the world, while actually it was closer to being a way of protecting yourself against it. Nevertheless, it was good to hear that music, to look at the house, at the linden tree, at his manuscript there on the table, saying to himself as he did so, 'I am happy.'
'Maybe,' Dubreuilh said. He smiled. 'I don't know how to explain it to you. After the meeting, we went to a bistro to have some sauerkraut and sausages and drink some beer. There was nothing unusual about the place; I barely knew the men who were with me, and we talked very little. But we had done something together, something with which we were satisfied. It was a good feeling.'
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