The Immoralist — Chapter 3

Chapter 4 of 14 · Review of The Immoralist

I am going to speak at length about my body. I shall speak of it so much that at first it will seem to you I am forgetting the share of the mind. My neglect, in this account, is deliberate; out there it was real. I had not strength enough to keep up a double life; the mind and the rest, I thought, I will attend to later, when I am better.

I was still far from being well. The least thing set me sweating and the least thing gave me a chill; I had, as Rousseau said, "short breath"; sometimes a little fever; often, from morning on, a feeling of frightful lassitude, and then I would stay prostrate in an armchair, indifferent to everything, selfish, occupied solely with trying to breathe properly. I breathed painfully, methodically, with great care; my breath went out in two jerks that my overstrained will could not entirely hold back; long afterward I still avoided them only by dint of attention.

But what I had most to suffer from was my sickly sensitiveness to every change of temperature. I think, when I reflect on it today, that a general nervous disorder was added to the illness; I cannot otherwise explain a series of phenomena that cannot, it seems to me, be reduced to the simple tubercular condition. I was always either too hot or too cold; I would cover myself at once with a ridiculous exaggeration, would stop shivering only to sweat, would uncover myself a little, and shivered the moment I ceased to perspire. Parts of my body turned to ice, became, for all their sweat, as cold to the touch as marble; nothing could warm them again. I was so sensitive to cold that a little water falling on my foot while I washed gave me a chill; sensitive to heat in the same way… I have kept that sensitiveness, I keep it still, but today it is in order to enjoy it voluptuously. Any very keen sensitiveness can, according as the organism is robust or feeble, become, I believe, a cause of delight or of distress. Everything that troubled me not long ago has become delicious to me.

I do not know how I had managed until then to sleep with the windows shut; on T***'s advice I tried, therefore, to open them at night; a little, at first; soon I pushed them wide open; soon it became a habit, and such a need that as soon as the window was closed again I stifled. With what delight shall I later feel the night wind, the moonlight, come in toward me…

I am impatient at last to be done with these first stammerings of health. Thanks in fact to constant care, to the pure air, to the better food, I was not long in getting better. Until then, fearing the breathlessness of the stairs, I had not dared leave the terrace; in the last days of January, at last, I went down and ventured into the garden.

Marceline went with me, carrying a shawl. It was three in the afternoon. The wind, often violent in that country, and which had troubled me a great deal for three days, had dropped. The mildness of the air was charming.

A public garden… A very broad walk cut across it, shaded by two rows of that species of very tall mimosa which they call cassias. Benches, in the shade of these trees. A canalized river, by which I mean deeper than it was wide, roughly straight, running alongside the walk; then other, smaller channels, dividing the water of the river, leading it through the garden, toward the plants; the heavy water is the color of the earth, the color of pink or gray clay. Hardly any foreigners, a few Arabs; they move about, and as soon as they have left the sun their white cloaks take on the color of the shade.

A singular shiver seized me when I entered that strange shade; I wrapped myself in my shawl; yet there was no discomfort; on the contrary… We sat down on a bench. Marceline was silent. Some Arabs passed; then a troop of children came up. Marceline knew several of them and made a sign to them; they came near. She told me their names; there were questions, answers, smiles, poutings, little games. All this irritated me somewhat and my discomfort came back; I felt weary and covered with sweat. But what bothered me, shall I admit it, was not the children; it was she. Yes, however slightly, I was bothered by her presence. If I had risen, she would have followed me; if I had taken off my shawl, she would have wanted to carry it; if I had put it on again afterward, she would have said, "Aren't you cold?" And then, speaking to the children was a thing I did not dare do in front of her: I saw that she had her favorites; in spite of myself, but out of contrariness, I took an interest in the others. "Let us go back," I said to her; and I resolved privately to return to the garden alone.

The next day she had to go out toward ten o'clock: I took advantage of it. Little Bachir, who rarely failed to come in the morning, took my shawl; I felt alert, light of heart. We were almost alone in the walk; I went slowly, sat down for a moment, set off again. Bachir followed, chattering; faithful and supple as a dog. I reached the place on the canal where the washerwomen come to wash; in the middle of the current a flat stone is laid; on it a little girl was lying, her face bent toward the water, her hand in the current, throwing in twigs or catching them again. Her bare feet had been plunged in the water; they kept the damp trace of that bath, and there her skin looked darker. Bachir went up to her and spoke to her; she turned around, smiled at me, answered Bachir in Arabic. "It's my sister," he told me; then he explained that his mother was coming to wash linen, and that his little sister was waiting for her. She was called Rhadra, which means Green in Arabic. He said all this in a voice as charming, as clear, as childlike as the emotion it gave me.

"She asks you to give her two sous," he added.

I gave her ten and was preparing to set off again when the mother arrived, the washerwoman. She was an admirable woman, heavy, with a broad forehead tattooed in blue, carrying a basket of linen on her head like the canephorae of antiquity, and like them simply veiled in a wide dark blue cloth caught up at the waist and falling in one sweep to her feet. As soon as she saw Bachir she called out at him roughly. He answered violently; the little girl joined in; among the three of them a most lively dispute broke out. At last Bachir, as though beaten, made me understand that his mother needed him that morning; he held out my shawl to me sadly, and I had to set off all alone.

I had not gone twenty paces before my shawl seemed to me of an unbearable weight; bathed in sweat, I sat down on the first bench I found. I hoped some child would turn up to relieve me of this burden. The one who soon came was a big boy of fourteen, black as a Sudanese, not shy in the least, who offered himself of his own accord. His name was Ashour. He would have seemed handsome to me had he not been blind in one eye. He liked to talk, told me where the river came from, and that beyond the public garden it escaped into the oasis and crossed it from end to end. I listened to him, forgetting my fatigue. Exquisite as Bachir seemed to me, I knew him too well by now, and I was glad of a change. I even promised myself that on another day I would go down to the garden quite alone and wait, sitting on a bench, for the chance of a happy encounter…

After stopping a few moments more, Ashour and I arrived at my door. I wanted to invite him up, but did not dare, not knowing what Marceline would have said to it.

I found her in the dining room, busy with a very young child, so puny and so sickly in appearance that at first I felt more disgust for him than pity. A little timidly, Marceline said to me:

"The poor little thing is ill."

"It isn't catching, at least? What is the matter with him?"

"I don't quite know yet. He complains of a little of everything. He speaks French rather badly; when Bachir is here tomorrow, he will act as interpreter… I am giving him a little tea…"

Then, as though to excuse herself, and because I stood there without saying anything:

"I have known him a long time," she added; "I had not yet dared to have him come; I was afraid of tiring you, or perhaps of displeasing you."

"Why on earth," I cried, "bring here all the children you like, if it amuses you!" And I thought, rather vexed at not having done it, that I might very well have had Ashour come up.

Meanwhile I was watching my wife; she was maternal and caressing. Her tenderness was so touching that the little one soon went away quite warmed. I spoke of my walk and made Marceline understand, without harshness, why I preferred to go out alone.

My nights, as a rule, were still broken by starts that woke me frozen or drenched with sweat. That night was a very good one and almost without waking. The next morning I was ready to go out by nine o'clock. The weather was fine; I felt well rested, not at all weak, joyful, or rather amused. The air was calm and mild, but I took my shawl all the same, as a pretext for striking up acquaintance with whoever should carry it for me. I have said that the garden adjoined our terrace; I was in it at once. I entered its shade with delight. The air was luminous. The cassias, whose flowers come very early, before the leaves, were fragrant; unless it was that there came from everywhere that sort of light unknown odor which seemed to enter into me by several senses at once and exalted me. I breathed more easily, besides; my step was the lighter for it: yet at the first bench I sat down, but more intoxicated, more dizzy than tired. I looked. The shade was moving and light; it did not fall on the ground, and seemed hardly to rest there. O light! I listened. What did I hear? Nothing; everything; every sound delighted me. I remember a shrub whose bark, from a distance, seemed to me of so strange a texture that I had to get up and go and feel it. I touched it as one caresses; I found a rapture in it. I remember… Was it that morning, at last, that I was to be born?

I had forgotten that I was alone, was expecting nothing, forgot the hour. It seemed to me that until that day I had felt so little for all my thinking, that I marveled at last at this: my sensation was becoming as strong as a thought.

I say: it seemed to me — for out of the depths of the past of my earliest childhood there awoke at last a thousand gleams, of a thousand stray sensations. The consciousness I was taking anew of my senses allowed me to recognize them, uneasily. Yes, my senses, awakened henceforth, found a whole history for themselves, put together a past again. They were alive! they were alive! had never ceased to be alive, and discovered that even through my years of study they had led a latent and cunning life.

I met no one that day, and I was glad of it; I took from my pocket a little Homer that I had not opened since leaving Marseille, reread three sentences of the Odyssey, learned them by heart, then, finding nourishment enough in their rhythm and savoring it at leisure, closed the book and remained there, trembling, more alive than I should have believed one could be, my mind numb with happiness…