It was the harmony of that deep and pure joy with the fresh serenity of the sky that I savored on the evening when everything was consummated. The absence of my fiancé, who had gone to spend a few days with his sister, the presence at dinner of the young man who had had the greatest responsibility for my past sins, did not cast even the faintest pall on that limpid evening in May.
No cloud in the sky was reflected precisely in my heart. My mother, however, as if a mysterious solidarity existed between us despite her absolute ignorance of my sins, was very nearly cured.
“She must be treated with care for two weeks,” the doctor had said. “After that there’s no chance of a relapse.”
Those words alone were for me the promise of a happy future so rapturous that I burst into tears. That evening, my mother’s gown was more elegant than customary, and for the first time since my father’s death, which, still and all, had occurred ten years ago, she had added a touch of mauve to her habitual black.
Quite embarrassed to be dressed like that, as in her younger days, she was sad and happy to violate her pain and her grief in order to bring me pleasure and celebrate my joy. I approached her waist with a pink carnation, which she initially refused, but which, because it came from me, she then pinned on with a slightly hesitant and sheepish hand.
As the company headed for the table, I drew her over to the window and passionately kissed her face, which had delicately recovered from its past suffering. I was wrong to say that I have never recaptured the sweetness of that kiss at Les Oublis.
The kiss on this evening was as sweet as no other. Or rather, it was the kiss of Les Oublis, which, evoked by the allure of a similar minute, slipped gently from the depths of the past and settled between my mother’s still vaguely pale cheeks and my lips.
We toasted my coming marriage. I never drank anything but water since wine overagitated my nerves. My uncle declared that I could make an exception at a moment like this. I can vividly picture his cheerful face as he uttered those stupid words. . . .
My God! My God! I have confessed everything so calmly—will I be forced to stop here? I can no longer see anything! Now I can. . . . My uncle said that I could certainly make an exception at a moment like this. As he spoke, he looked at me and laughed; I drank quickly before glancing at my mother; I was afraid she might object.
She murmured: “One must never allow evil the tiniest nook.”
But the champagne was so cool that I drank two more flutes. My head grew very heavy; I needed both to rest and to expend my nervous energy. We rose from the table. Jacques came over and, staring at me, he said: “Would you like to join me? I want to show you some of my poems.”
His lovely eyes shone softly over his fresh cheeks; he slowly twisted his moustache. I realized I was doomed and I had no strength to resist. I said, shivering:
“Yes, I’d enjoy that.”
It was when saying those words, perhaps even earlier, when drinking my second glass of champagne, that I committed the truly responsible act, the abominable act. After that, I merely let myself go. We locked both doors, and he embraced me, breathing on my cheeks and fondling my entire body. Then, while pleasure gripped me tighter and tighter, I felt an infinite sadness and desolation awakening at the bottom of my heart; I seemed to be causing my mother’s soul to weep, the soul of my guardian angel, the soul of God.
I had always shuddered in horror when reading those accounts of the tortures that villains inflict on animals, on their own wives, their children; it now confusedly struck me that in every lustful and sinful act there is as much ferocity in the bodily part that is delighting in the pleasure, and that we have as many good intentions and, in us, as many pure angels are martyred and are weeping.
Soon my uncles would be finishing their card game and coming back. We had to anticipate them; I would never stumble again, it was the last time. . . . Then I saw myself in the mirror above the fireplace.
All that hazy anguish of my soul was painted not on my features, but on my entire face, from my sparkling eyes to my blazing cheeks and my parted lips, exhaled a stupid and brutal sensual pleasure.
I then thought of the horror that anyone who had just watched me kissing my mother with melancholy tenderness would now see me transformed into a beast. But in the mirror, Jacques’s mouth, covetous under his moustache, instantly arose against my face.
Shaken in my innermost being, I leaned my head against his, when, in front of me, I saw my mother (yes, I am telling you what happened—listen to me because I can tell you), on the balcony outside the window; I saw my mother gaping at me. I do not know if she cried out, I heard nothing; but she fell back, catching her head between the two bars of the railing.
This is not the last time I am telling you this; I have told you: I almost missed, my aim was good but my shot was clumsy. However, the bullet could not be extracted, and the complications in my heart began.
Still I can remain like this for one more week and I will not be able to stop mulling over the beginning and to see the end. I would rather my mother had seen me commit other crimes, including this one, so long as she had not seen my joyous expression in the mirror. No, she could not have seen it. . . . It was a coincidence. . . . She had suffered a stroke a minute before seeing me. . . . She had not seen my joy. . . . That is out of the question! God, who knew everything, would not have wanted it.
The end
