The Inferno | Page 6

misery and the horror, changed the dust into
shadow, like a curse turned into a blessing. All that remained of her
was colour, a mist, an outline; not even that; a thrill and the beating of
her heart. Every trace of her had disappeared save her true self.
That was because she was alone. An extraordinary thing, a dash of the

divine in it, to be actually alone. She was in that perfect innocence, that
purity which is solitude.
I desecrated her solitude with my eyes, but she did not know it, and so
/she/ was not desecrated.
She went over to the window with brightening eyes and swinging
hands in her apron of the colour of the nocturnal sky. Her face and the
upper part of her body were illuminated. She seemed to be in heaven.
She sat down on the sofa, a great low red shadow in the depths of the
room near the window. She leaned her broom beside her. Her dust cloth
fell to the floor and was lost from sight.
She took a letter from her pocket and read it. In the twilight the letter
was the whitest thing in the world. The double sheet trembled between
her fingers, which held it carefully, like a dove in the air. She put the
trembling letter to her lips, and kissed it. From whom was the letter?
Not from her family. A servant girl is not likely to have so much filial
devotion as to kiss a letter from her parents. A lover, her betrothed, yes.
Many, perhaps, knew her lover's name. I did not, but I witnessed her
love as no other person had. And that simple gesture of kissing the
paper, that gesture buried in a room, stripped bare by the dark, had
something sublime and awesome in it.
She rose and went closer to the window, the white letter folded in her
grey hand.
The night thickened--and it seemed to me as if I no longer knew her
age, nor her name, nor the work she happened to be doing down here,
nor anything about her--nothing at all. She gazed at the pale immensity,
which touched her. Her eyes gleamed. You would say she was crying,
but no, her eyes only shed light. She would be an angel if reality
flourished upon the earth.
She sighed and walked to the door slowly. The door closed behind her
like something falling.

She had gone without doing anything but reading her letter and kissing
it.
. . . . .
I returned to my corner lonely, more terribly alone than before. The
simplicity of this meeting stirred me profoundly. Yet there had been no
one there but a human being, a human being like myself. Then there is
nothing sweeter and stronger than to approach a human being, whoever
that human being may be.
This woman entered into my intimate life and took a place in my heart.
How? Why? I did not know. But what importance she assumed! Not of
herself. I did not know her, and I did not care to know her. She
assumed importance by the sole value of the momentary revelation of
her existence, by the example she gave, by the wake of her actual
presence, by the true sound of her steps.
It seemed to me as if the supernatural dream I had had a short while
before had been granted, and that what I called the infinite had come.
What that woman, without knowing it, had given me by showing me
her naked kiss--was it not the crowning beauty the reflection of which
covers you with glory?
. . . . .
The dinner bell rang.
This summons to everyday reality and one's usual occupations changed
the course of my thoughts for the moment. I got ready to go down to
dinner. I put on a gay waistcoat and a dark coat, and I stuck a pearl in
my cravat. Then I stood still and listened, hoping to hear a footstep or a
voice.
While doing these conventional things, I continued to be obsessed by
the great event that had happened--this apparition.
I went downstairs and joined the rest of my fellow-boarders in the

brown and gold dining-room. There was a general stir and bustle and
the usual empty interest before a meal. A number of people seated
themselves with the good manners of polite society. Smiles, the sound
of chairs being drawn up to the table, words thrown out, conversations
started. Then the concert of plates and dishes began and grew steadily
louder.
My neighbours talked to those beside them. I heard their murmur,
which accentuated my aloneness. I lifted my eyes. In front of me a
shining row of foreheads, eyes, collars, shirtfronts, waists, and busy
hands above a table