“Hello, Kathleen,” I said as I walked in.
“Hello,” she answered without turning.
I walked toward the open window. It looked on Central Park, the no-man’s-land which at night, in this enormous city, shelters with equal kindness criminals and lovers. The trees were turning orange. It was humid and hot: the last heat wave before winter. Far below, thousands of cars drove into the foliage and disappeared. The sun grafted its golden rays onto the skyscrapers’ windows.
“Help me,” Kathleen said, her eyes fixed on the dead leaves that covered the park.
Furtively I looked at her left profile. From the curve of her neck I could see that she was still sensitive.
“You will help me, won’t you?” she said.
“Of course,” I answered.
Only then did she turn her face toward me, with a look of gratitude. She was still beautiful, but her beauty had lost its pride.
“I’ve suffered a lot,” she said.
“Don’t say anything,” I answered. “Let me look at you.”
I sat down in an armchair and she began to walk about the room. When she talked, a line of sadness appeared near her upper lip. From time to time her eyes had the hard expression that comes from humiliation. She was smoking more than she used to. I thought: Kathleen the proud, Kathleen the untamable, Kathleen the queen—here she is. A beaten woman. A drowning woman.
She sat in the armchair opposite me. She was breathing heavily.
“I want to talk,” she said.
“Go ahead,” I told her.
“I’m not ashamed to tell you that I want to talk.”
“Go ahead,” I told her.
“I am no longer ashamed to tell you that I suffered a lot.”
“Go ahead, talk.”
She was trying to live up to the image she still had of herself. She used to speak firmly and with harsh words. She never used to speak of her own suffering. Now she did. You just had to listen to her and look at her closely to realize that her beauty had lost its power and its mystery.
She spoke for a long time. Sometimes her eyes would cloud over. But she managed not to cry, and I was grateful.
She had gotten married. He loved her. She didn’t love him. She did not even love the feeling she had inspired in him. She had agreed to marry him precisely because she did not care about him. What she wanted was to suffer, to pay. Finally her husband understood: Kathleen saw in him not a companion but a kind of judge. She didn’t expect happiness from him, however limited, but punishment. That’s why he also began to suffer. Their life became a torture chamber. Each was the tormentor and victim of the other. This went on for three years. Then, one day, her husband had had enough. He asked for a divorce. She came to New York. To rest, to find herself again, to see me.
“You’ll help me, won’t you?”
“Of course,” I answered.
All she asked was to stay beside me. Her life was empty. She was hoping to climb up again. To start living again, intensely, as before. To be moved to tears by a transparent dusk, to laugh aloud in the theater, to protest against ugliness. All she wanted was to become once more what she had been.
I should have refused. I know. Kathleen—the one I had known—deserved more than my consent. To help her was to insult her, to humiliate her. But I accepted. She was unhappy and I was too weak, perhaps too cowardly, to say no to a woman who was hitting her head against a wall, even if this woman was Kathleen.
“Of course,” I repeated. “I’ll help you.”
She moved forward, as if to throw herself into my arms, but held herself back. We looked at each other in silence for a long time.
“WHO IS SARAH?”
I was speechless. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Kathleen watched me with a smile. Her eyes didn’t accuse me, they just looked curious.
“You spoke her name the first day, when you were in a coma. You said nothing else. Sarah.”
“Why did you wait until today to ask me?”
I had been in the hospital for four weeks.
“I was too curious. I wanted to prove to myself that I was able to wait.”
“That’s all I said?”
“That’s all.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. The first few days I was never very far away. You said nothing else. You didn’t unclench your teeth. But once or twice you spoke that name: Sarah.”
An old suffering stirred somewhere. I didn’t know exactly where.
“Sarah,” I said distractedly.
Kathleen kept smiling. Her eyes showed no worry. But anguish was there, around her swollen mouth, waiting for a chance to invade her whole face, her whole being.
“Who is she?” she asked again.
“Sarah was my mother’s name,” I said.
The smile disappeared. Naked suffering was now mixed with the anguish. Kathleen was hardly breathing.
I told her: as a child I lived with the perpetual fear of forgetting my mother’s name after I died. In school my teacher had told me: three days after your funeral, an angel will come and knock three times on your grave. He’ll ask you your name. You will answer. “I am Eliezer, the son of Sarah.” Woe if you forget! A dead soul, you will remain buried for all eternity. You won’t be able to come before the tribunal to know if your place is in paradise or in hell with those who waited too long before repenting. You will be condemned to wander in the sphere of chaos where nothing exists, neither punishment nor pain, neither justice nor injustice, neither past nor future, neither hope nor despair. It is a serious thing to forget your mother’s name. It is like forgetting your own origin. Remember: “Eliezer, the son of Sarah, the son of Sarah, Sarah, Sarah…”
“Sarah was my mother’s name,” I said. “I didn’t forget it.”
Kathleen’s body twisted as if she were tied to an invisible stake. She was afraid not to suffer enough. But then she shouldn’t have used the state I was in to interpret my silences, to gather names that I had kept secret. My mother’s name was Sarah. I never talked about it. I loved her but I had never told her. I loved her with such violence that I had to seem hard toward her so she wouldn’t guess. Yes. She is dead. She went to heaven at the side of my grandmother.
“Sarah,” Kathleen said in a broken voice. “I like that name. It sounds like biblical times.”
“My mother’s name was Sarah,” I said again. “She is dead.”
Kathleen’s face was twisted with pain. She looked like a sorceress who has lost her true face from having put on too many masks. A great fire burned around her. Suddenly she cried out and began to sob. My mother, I had never seen my mother cry.
SARAH.
It was also the name of a girl with blue eyes and golden hair whom I had met in Paris long before I knew Kathleen.
I was reading a newspaper in front of a café near Montparnasse. She was drinking lemonade at the table next to mine. She was trying to attract my attention and this made me blush. She noticed it and smiled.
Embarrassed, I didn’t know what attitude to adopt. Where to hide my head, my hands, where to hide my confusion. Finally, unable to stand it anymore, I spoke to her.
“You know me?”
“No,” she said shaking her head.
“Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so,” she said teasingly.
I couldn’t help stuttering. “Then…why? Why…why are you staring at me like that?”
She seemed about to shudder, to laugh, or to sigh. “Just like that,” she answered.
While cursing my own bashfulness, I buried myself in the newspaper, trying to forget the blond girl and to avoid her straightforward, innocent eyes and the sadness of her smile. The print danced before my eyes. The words didn’t stay still long enough for me to catch them. I was going to call the waiter in order to pay and leave, when the girl with the strange smile began to talk to me.
“You’re waiting for someone?”
“No,” I said.
“I’m not either.
”
And as she said this, she came over to my table with her glass of lemonade.
“You’re alone?” she asked me.
“No,” I said blushing still more.
“You don’t feel alone?”
“Not at all.”
“Really?”
She did not seem to believe me. And her smile was there, like a third presence, somewhere on her face. In her eyes? No. Her eyes were cold, frightened. On her lips? Not there either. They were sensuous, bitter, tired. Where was it then? There, between her forehead and her chin, but I couldn’t tell exactly where.
“Really?” she repeated. “You don’t feel alone?”
“No.”
“How do you manage?”
I was losing face.
“I don’t know,” I blurted out. “I don’t know. I read a lot.”
She took a sip, raised her head, and began to laugh at me openly. I had noticed that in the meantime her real smile had vanished. Maybe she had swallowed it.
“Do you want to make love?” she asked in the same tone of voice.
“Now?” I exclaimed with surprise. “In the afternoon?”
In my mind, lovemaking was a thing of the night. To make love during the day seemed to me like getting undressed in the middle of the street.
“Right away,” she answered. “Do you want to?”
“No,” I said quickly.
“Why not?”
“I…I don’t have any money.”
She stared at me a minute with the mocking and forgiving attitude of someone who knows and forgives all.
“That doesn’t matter,” she said after a pause. “You’ll pay me some other time.”
I was ashamed. I was afraid. I was young, without any experience. I was afraid not to know what to do. And mostly, I was afraid of afterward: I would never be the same anymore.
“Well? You want to?”
A lock of hair was falling on her forehead. Again the smile appeared. Now I no longer knew if it was the first smile or the one it replaced, the true or the false one.
“Yes,” I answered. “I want to.”
I thought: this girl has, without knowing it, perhaps, the most elusive smile I have ever seen. I might be able to capture it while making love to her.
“Call the waiter,” she said.
I called him. I paid for my coffee; she paid for her lemonade. We got up and began to walk. I felt awkward, ill at ease. Smaller than I, she walked on my right; her head only came a little above my shoulders. I didn’t dare look at her.
She lived not far away. The hotel doorman seemed to be sleeping. The girl took her key and told me it was on the third floor. I followed her. From the back she looked less young.
When we got to the third floor, we turned right and went into her room. She told me to close the door. I closed it softly; I didn’t want it to make any noise.
“Not like that,” the girl said. “Lock it.”
I turned the key. I was filled with a new kind of anxiety. I didn’t talk as I was sure my voice would tremble. Alone with a woman. Alone in a hotel room with a woman. With a prostitute. And soon we would make love. For I was sure of it: she was a prostitute. Otherwise she would have acted differently.
I was alone with her in her neat and clean room, most of which was painted gray. My first woman would be a prostitute. A prostitute whose strange smile was the smile of a saint.
She had drawn the shades, taken off her shoes, and was waiting. Standing near the bed, she was waiting. I felt very stupid, not knowing what to do. Get undressed? Just like that? I thought: first I should kiss her. In the movies the man always kisses the woman before making love to her. I stepped toward her, looked at her intensely, then harshly pulled her toward me and kissed her on the mouth for a long time. Instinctively I had closed my eyes. When I opened them I saw hers, and in them an animal-like terror. This made me draw back a step.
“What’s the matter?” I asked her, my heart beating.
“Nothing,” she answered; her voice came from another world. “Nothing. Come. Let’s make love.”
All of a sudden she brought her hand to her mouth. Her face became white as if all life had left it.
“What’s the matter with you? Say something!”
She didn’t answer. Her hand on her mouth, she was looking through me as if I were transparent. Her eyes were dry, like a blind child’s.
“Have I offended you?” I asked.
She didn’t hear me.
“Do you want me to leave you?”
She was far away, taking refuge where no stranger was allowed. I could only be present outside. I understood that by kissing her I had set in motion an unknown mechanism.
“Say something,” I begged her.
My plea didn’t reach her. She looked mad, possessed. Maybe I had only lived for this meeting, I thought. For this meeting with a prostitute who preserved within her a trace of innocence, like madmen who in the midst of their madness hold on to a trace of lucidity.
This lasted a few minutes. Then she seemed to wake up; her hand fell from her face. A tired and infinitely sad smile lit up her features.
“You must forgive me,” she said softly. “I spoiled everything. Excuse me. It was stupid of me.”
She began to undress, but I no longer felt like making love to her. Now I only wanted to understand.
“Wait,” I told her. “Let’s talk a little.”
“You no longer want to make love?” she asked, worried.
“Later,” I reassured her. “First let’s talk a little.”
“What would you like to talk about?”
“About you.”
“What do you want to know?”
Mechanically she unhooked her skirt.
“Who are you?”
“A girl. A girl like many others.”
“No,” I protested. “You’re not like the others.”
She let her skirt fall to the floor. Now she was unbuttoning her blouse.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Intuition probably,” I answered awkwardly.
Now she was only wearing a black bra and pants. Slowly she stretched out on the bed. I sat down next to her.
“Who are you?” I asked again.
“I told you. A girl, a girl like many others.”
Unconsciously I was stroking her hair.
“What is your name?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What is your name?”
“Sarah.”
A familiar sadness took hold of me.
“Sarah,” I said. “A beautiful name.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“Sometimes it frightens me.”
“I like it,” I said. “It was my mother’s name.”
“Where is she?”
I was still stroking her hair. My heart felt heavy. Should I tell her? I couldn’t pronounce such simple, such very simple words: “My mother is dead.”
“My mother is dead,” I said finally.
“Mine too.”
Silence. I was thinking of my mother. If she saw me now…She would ask me:
Who is this girl?
My wife, I would say.
And what is her name?
Sarah, Mother.
Sarah?
Yes, Mother. Sarah.
Have you gone mad? Have you forgotten that I too am called Sarah?
No, Mother. I haven’t forgotten.
Then, have you forgotten that a man has no right to marry a woman who bears his own mother’s name? Have you forgotten that this brings bad luck? That a mother dies from this?
No, Mother. I haven’t forgotten. But you can no longer die. You are already dead.
That’s true…I am dead…
“Do you really want to know?”
Sarah’s voice brought me back to earth. She was looking straight ahead, as if she were looking through walls, years, and memories, in order to reach the source, where the
sky touches the earth, where life calls for love. Sarah put this question to me as if I, by myself, had created the universe.
“You really want to know who I am?”
Her voice had become hard, pitiless.
“Of course,” I answered, hiding my fear.
“In that case…”
THERE ARE TIMES when I curse myself. I shouldn’t have listened. I should have fled. To listen to a story under such circumstances is to play a part in it, to take sides, to say yes or no, to move one way or the other. From then on there is a before and an after. And even to forget becomes a cowardly acceptance.
I should have run away. Or put my hands over my ears. Or thought about something else. I should have screamed, or sung, or kissed her, kissed her on the mouth so she would have stopped talking. Made love to her. Told her that I loved her. Anything, just so she would have stopped talking. So she would have stopped talking.
I did nothing. I listened. Attentively. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, next to her half-undressed body, listening to her story. My clenched fingers were like a vise around my throat.
Now, every time I think of her, I curse myself, as I curse those who do not think of her, who did not think of her at the time of her undoing. Her inscrutable face was like a sick child’s. She looked straight ahead without fear, piercing the walls as if she could see the chaos that preceded the creation of the world.
I think of her and I curse myself, as I curse history which has made us what we are: a source of malediction. History which deserves death, destruction. Whoever listens to Sarah and doesn’t change, whoever enters Sarah’s world and doesn’t invent new gods and new religions, deserves death and destruction. Sarah alone had the right to decide what is good and what is evil, the right to differentiate what is true from what usurps the appearance of truth.
And I was sitting next to her half-naked body, and listening. Each word tightened the vise. I was going to strangle myself.
I should have left. Fast. Fast. I should have fled when she opened her mouth, as soon as I noticed the first sign.
I stayed. Something was holding me back. I wanted to suffer with her. To suffer the way she was suffering. I also felt that she was going to humiliate herself. Maybe that prevented me from leaving. I wanted to take part in her humiliation. I was hoping her humiliation would fall back on me too.