The Inferno | Page 5

I could then
send some to my old aunt who had brought me up. She always waited
for me in the low-ceilinged room, where her sewing-machine,
afternoons, whirred, monotonous and tiresome as a clock, and where,
evenings, there was a lamp beside her which somehow seemed to look
like herself.
Notes--the notes from which I was to draw up the report that would
show my ability and definitely decide whether I would get a position in
Monsieur Berton's bank--Monsieur Berton, who could do everything
for me, who had but to say a word, the god of my material life.
I started to light the lamp. I scratched a match. It did not catch fire, the
phosphorous end breaking off. I threw it away and waited a moment,
feeling a little tired.
Then I heard a song hummed quite close to my ear.
. . . . .
Some one seemed to be leaning on my shoulder, singing for me, only
for me, in confidence.
Ah, an hallucination! Surely my brain was sick--my punishment for
having thought too hard.
I stood up, and my hand clutched the edge of the table. I was oppressed
by a feeling of the supernatural. I sniffed the air, my eyelids blinking,

alert and suspicious.
The singing kept on. I could not get rid of it. My head was beginning to
go round. The singing came from the room next to mine. Why was it so
pure, so strangely near? Why did it touch me so? I looked at the wall
between the two rooms, and stifled a cry of surprise.
High up, near the ceiling, above the door, always kept locked, there
was a light. The song fell from that star.
There was a crack in the partition at that spot, through which the light
of the next room entered the night of mine.
I climbed up on the bed, and my face was on a level with the crack.
Rotten woodwork, two loose bricks. The plaster gave way and an
opening appeared as large as my hand, but invisible from below,
because of the moulding.
I looked. I beheld. The next room presented itself to my sight freely.
It spread out before me, this room which was not mine. The voice that
had been singing had gone, and in going had left the door open, and it
almost seemed as though the door were still swinging on its hinges.
There was nothing in the room but a lighted candle, which trembled on
the mantelpiece.
At that distance the table looked like an island, the bluish and reddish
pieces of furniture, in their vague outline, like the organs of a body
almost alive.
I looked at the wardrobe. Bright, confused lines going straight up, its
feet in darkness. The ceiling, the reflection of the ceiling in the glass,
and the pale window like a human face against the sky.
I returned to my room--as if I had really left it--stunned at first, my
thoughts in a whirl, almost forgetting who I was.
I sat down on my bed, thinking things over quickly and trembling a

little, oppressed by what was to come.
I dominated, I possessed that room. My eyes entered it. I was in it. All
who would be there would be there with me without knowing it. I
should see them, I should hear them, I should be as much in their
company as though the door were open.
. . . . .
A moment later I raised my face to the hole and looked again.
The candle was out, but some one was there. It was the maid. No doubt
she had come in to put the room in order. Then she paused.
She was alone. She was quite near me. But I did not very well see the
living being who was moving about, perhaps because I was dazzled by
seeing it so truly--a dark blue apron, falling down from her waist like
rays of evening, white wrists, hands darker than her wrists from toil, a
face undecided yet striking, eyes hidden yet shining, cheeks prominent
and clear, a knot on top of her head gleaming like a crown.
A short time before I had seen the girl on the staircase bending over
cleaning the banisters, her reddened face close to her large hands. I had
found her repulsive because of those blackened hands of hers and the
dusty chores that she stooped over. I had also seen her in a hallway
walking ahead of me heavily, her hair hanging loose and her body
giving out an unpleasant odour, so that you felt it was obnoxious and
wrapped in dirty underwear.
. . . . .
And now I looked at her again. The evening gently dispelled the
ugliness, wiped out the