A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

She almost laughed outright as his meaning, or what she took his meaning to be, struck her. “Surely you don’t mean because of Boniface? Don’t tell me that. Boniface has always known. And you yourself have always known he has. This is no betrayal, no cheap affair behind his back, no jealous husband sort of thing. Boniface and I have our own code for living, our entente; for me, he wants only what brings me the greatest happiness, he is still my husband by that much. He thinks and rightfully so that that designates you; therefore he approves of you, and that is all that matters. Don’t you remember the night he even came in and joined us for a while, and we had such an enjoyable time talking about love and life and sipping little liqueurs, the three of us?”

“What’s the good?” he said grimly. “Everything has to stop sooner or later, doesn’t it?”

“You wish it to, is that what you’re trying to say? Only because you wish it to, that is why it has to stop, not otherwise.”

He pointed to a clock standing behind them in the foyer. “Doesn’t this run down? Isn’t it natural for it to do so? Well—”

“I don’t care for such an illustration,” she said irritably. “A clock is mechanical, love isn’t.”

“A beautiful woman like you, you could have half of Paris. Why me?”

“That’s not the point. I made my choice when I first grew to know you, and my choice remains.”

He said something she didn’t quite hear.

“What?”

“But does your choice necessarily cover the two of us?”

“Ah, now it comes out!”

“You back me into a corner,” he gritted, shoving his hands deep down into his pockets as forcefully as if he were trying to dig up a garden-patch with them through his clothing and all. “You practically drag out of me the very thing you do not wish to hear and that I do not wish to say. And then you’re wounded, angry. Why not leave things unspoken? My esteem for you has not changed since the day we first met.”

“Esteem,” she said scornfully. She began to walk slowly back and forth, holding her hands clasped just below her chin. “What have I done? What is it you don’t like? Tell me and I’ll correct it.”

He shook his head hopelessly. “It isn’t a question of ‘What have I done?’ The thing is over, finished. Let’s just let it go, and not try to hold onto it, drag it out.”

She laughed bleakly. “For you that’s easy, yes. Because evidently you never did love me from the start. But with me it’s different. It’s a part of me, I can’t let it go.”

“I loved you very deeply and very sincerely, Fab. As much as any man ever loved a woman, never doubt that.”

“The past tense,” she whispered, stricken. “He gives it the past tense, as if it were completely gone, as if it were dead.”

“It is, Fab,” he said stonily. “It is.”

She gripped the lapels of his coat with her hands. Then she held his face pressed between her hands gripping that, in an intensity of supplication. “Make believe, then. Pretend. Just lie close, without saying anything. Even that is better than nothing. Just so I know you’re near.”

“Some women can fake love even when they don’t feel it. An honest man can’t. I’m not a gigolo.” He lowered his head, so that his face became an ellipse instead of an oval. “It wouldn’t work. The very muscles that should serve to love you... They don’t know you any more, Fabienne. They don’t want you. They wouldn’t respond.”

She stared at him white with mortal insult. Then she began to slap him back and forth across the mouth, repeatedly, swinging her open hand to and fro in an agony of frustration and hatred, over and over until it seemed she would never stop.

He played his part well, played it just as it should have been played. For he neither flinched nor averted his face nor drew back, nor did he try to trap and control her punishing hand. He stood his ground, utterly motionless, a faint smile of distant pity for futile feminine rage half-forming on his lips. He just played the man’s part, unreachable in his own fastnesses once the door of volition was closed.

She turned aside at last, and with broken breaths that were like sobs, covered her face with both her hands and crept forlornly into some private hiding-place of cosmic loneliness that no one could enter but her. For loneliness is single, cannot be shared by two.

Suddenly, with what one might call neat despatch, he had turned, opened the door, and gone, leaving it unclosed behind him.

She looked around, stunned. The unbelievable had happened. He was finished with her, he had left her. All through the open doorway, like someone pursued by outcome, had never doubted she would win him back in the end; anything else had seemed an impossibility, and now — she had lost him, he wasn’t here any more.

All at once she came to life and ran after him, out through the open doorway, like someone pursued by demons. And she was: the most frightful demons there are, the demons of not being loved when you love. Crying out, careless whether the whole house heard her: “Gilles, I love you! I love you! I love you!”