Kronski had told the truth! That’s what I kept repeating to myself as I sat beside the bed and waited for her to return to life. She was not dead, thank God. Merely asleep. She looked as though she were floating in luminol.
It was so unusual for me to play the role of the bereaved one that I became fascinated by the thought of how I would act if she were actually to die now before my eyes. Supposing she were never to open her eyes again? Supposing she passed from this deep trance into death? I tried to concentrate on that thought. I wanted desperately to know how I would feel if she were to die. I tried to imagine that I was a fresh widower, that I had not even called the undertaker.
First of all, however, I got up to put my ear to her mouth. Yes, she was still breathing. I pulled the chair close to the foot of the bed and concentrated as best I could on death—her death. No extraordinary emotions manifested themselves. To be truthful, I forgot about my supposed personal loss and became absorbed in a rather blissful contemplation of the desirability of death. I began to think about my own death, and how I would enjoy it. The prone figure lying there, hardly breathing, floating in the wake of a drug like a small boat attached to the stern of a vessel, was myself. I had wanted to die and now I was dying. I was no longer aware of this world but not yet in the other one. I was passing slowly out to sea, drowning without pain of suffocation. My thoughts were neither of the world I was leaving nor of the one I was approaching. In fact, there was nothing comparable to thought going on. Nor was it dreaming. It was more like a diaspora; the knot was unravelling, the self was dribbling away. There wasn’t even a self any more: I was the smoke from a good cigar, and like smoke I was vanishing in thin air, and what was left of the cigar was crumbling to dust and dissolution.
I gave a start. The wrong tack. I relaxed and gazed at her less fixedly. Why should I think about her death?
Then it came to me: only if she were dead could I love her the way I imagined I loved her!
«Still the actor! You did love her once, but you were so pleased with yourself to think that you could love another beside yourself that you forgot about her almost immediately. You’ve been watching yourself make love. You drove her to this in order to feel again. To lose her would be to find her again.» I pinched myself, as if to convince myself that I was capable of feeling.
«Yes, you are not made of wood. You have feelings—but they’re misdirected. Your heart works spasmodically. You’re grateful to those who make your heart bleed; you don’t suffer for them, you suffer in order to enjoy the luxury of suffering. You haven’t begun to suffer yet; you’re only suffering vicariously.»
There was some truth in what I was telling myself. Ever since I had entered the room I had been preoccupied with how I should act, how I should express my feelings. As for that last minute business with Maude—that was excusable. My feelings had switched, that was all. Fate had tricked me. Maude, pfui! I didn’t give a fuck about her. I couldn’t remember when she had ever stirred any real feeling in me. What a cruel piece of irony it would be if Mona were to discover the truth! How could I ever explain such a dilemma? At the very moment I am betraying her, as she divined, Kronski is telling her how faithful and devoted I am. And Kronski was right! But Kronski must have suspected, when he was telling her the truth, that it was built on a lie.
He was affirming his faith in me because he himself wanted to believe in me. Kronski was no fool. And he was probably a far better friend than I had ever estimated him to be. If only he didn’t show such eagerness to reach into my guts! If only he would quit driving me into the open.
Curley’s remark returned to plague me. Kronski had behaved so wonderfully—as if he were making love to her! Why was it that I always got a thrill when I thought of some one making love to her? Jealous? I was quite willing to be made jealous if only I could witness this power she had of making others love her. My ideal—it gave me quite a shock ‘to formulate it!—was that of a woman who had the world at her feet. If I thought there were men impervious to her charms I would deliberately aid her to ensnare them. The more lovers she garnered the greater my own personal triumph. Because she did love me, that there was no doubt about. Had she not singled me out from all the others, I who had so little to offer her?
I was weak, she had told Curley. Yes, but so was she. I was weak as regards women in general; she was weak as regards the one she loved. She wanted my love to be focused on her exclusively, even in thought.
Oddly enough, I was beginning to focus on her exclusively, in my own weak way. If she had not brought her weakness to my attention I would have discovered for myself, with each new adventure, that there was only one person in the world for me— and that it was her. But now, having placed it before my mind dramatically, I would always be haunted by the thought of the power I exercised over her. I might be tempted to prove it, even against the grain.
I dismissed this train of thought—violently. That wasn’t at all how I wanted things to be. I did love her exclusively, only her, and nothing on earth would make me swerve.
I began to review the evolution of this love. Evolution? There had been no evolution. It had been instantaneous. Why, and I was amazed to think that I should adduce this proof, why, even the fact my first gesture had been one of rejection was proof of the fact that I recognized the attraction. I had said no to her instinctively, because of fear. I went all over that scene in the dance hall the evening I walked out on my old life. She was coming towards me, from the center of the floor. I had cast a quick glance to either side of me, hardly believing it possible that she had singled me out. And then a panic, though I was dying to throw myself into her arms. Had I not shaken my head vigorously? No! No! Almost insultingly. At the same time I was shaken by the fear that even if I were to stand there forever she would never again cast an eye in my direction. Then I knew I wanted her, that I would pursue her relentlessly even if she had no use for me. I left the rail and went over to the corner to smoke. Trembling from head to foot. I kept my back to the dance floor, not daring to look at her. Jealous already, jealous of whomever it might be that she would choose for the next partner…
(It was wonderful to recapture those moments. Now, by God, I was feeling again….)
Yes, after a time I had picked myself up and returned to the rail, pressed on all sides by a pack of hungry wolves. She was dancing. She danced several dances in succession, with the same man. Not close, like the other girls, but airily, looking up into the man’s face, smiling, laughing, talking. It was plain that he meant nothing to her.
Then came my turn. She had deigned to notice me after all! She seemed not at all displeased with me; on the contrary, she behaved as though she were going out of her way to be pleasant. And so, in a swoon, I had let her carry me round the floor. And then again, and again, and again. And even before I ventured to draw her into conversation I knew I would never leave the place without her.
We danced and danced, and when we were tired of dancing we sat in a corner and talked, and for every minute I talked or danced a clock ticked off the dollars and cents. How rich I was that night! What a delicious sensation it was to peel off dollar after dollar recklessly! I acted like a millionaire because I was a millionaire.
For the first time in my life I knew what it was to be wealthy, to be a Mogul, a Rajah, a Maharajah. I was giving my soul away— not bartering it, as did Faust, but pissing it away.
There had been that strange conversation about Strindberg, which was to run through our life like a silver thread. I was always going to reread Miss Julie, because of what she said that night, but I never did—and probably never would.
Then I waited for her in the street, on Broadway, and as she came towards me this second time she took complete possession of
