The Inferno | Page 8

my
eyes, beautiful as a masterpiece in spite of its ugliness. So, back in my
room again, I placed myself against the wall as if to embrace it and
look down into the Room.
There it was at my feet. Even when empty, it was more alive than the
people one meets and associates with, the people who have the vastness
of numbers to lose themselves in and be forgotten in, who have voices
for lying and faces to hide themselves behind.


CHAPTER III
Night, absolute night. Shadows thick as velvet hung all around.

Everything sank into darkness. I sat down and leaned my elbow on the
round table, lighted by the lamp. I meant to work, but as a matter of
fact I only listened.
I had looked into the Room a short time before. No one had been there,
but no doubt some one was going to come.
Some one was going to come, that evening perhaps, or the next day, or
the day after. Some one was bound to come. Then other human beings
would follow in succession. I waited, and it seemed to me as if that was
all I was made for.
I waited a long time, not daring to go to sleep. Then, very late, when
silence had been reigning so long that it paralysed me, I made an effort.
I leaned up against the wall once more and looked prayerfully. The
Room was black, all things blending into one, full of the night, full of
the unknown, of every possible thing. I dropped back into my own
room.
. . . . .
The next day I saw the Room in the simplicity of daylight. I saw the
dawn spread over it. Little by little, it began to come out of its ruins and
to rise.
It was arranged and furnished on the same plan as my own room.
Opposite me was the mantelpiece with the looking-glass above. On the
right was the bed, and on the left, on the same side as the window, a
sofa, chairs, armchairs, table, wardrobe. The rooms were identical, but
the history of mine was finished while the history of the other one had
not yet begun.
After an insipid breakfast, I returned to the spot that attracted me, the
hole in the partition. Nothing. I climbed down again.
It was close. A faint smell from the kitchen lingered even here. I paused
in the infinite vastness of my empty room.

I opened my door a little bit, then all the way. In the hall the door of
each room was painted brown, with numbers carved on brass plates. All
were closed. I took a few steps, which I alone heard--heard echoing too
loudly in that house, huge and immobile.
The passage was very long and narrow. The wall was hung with
imitation tapestry of dark green foliage, against which shone the copper
of a gas fixture. I leaned over the banister. A servant (the one who
waited at the table and was wearing a blue apron now, hardly
recognisable with her hair in disorder) came skipping down from the
floor above with newspapers under her arm. Madame Lemercier's little
girl, with a careful hand on the banister, was coming upstairs, her neck
thrust forward like a bird, and I compared her little footsteps to
fragments of passing seconds. A lady and a gentleman passed in front
of me, breaking off their conversation to keep me from catching what
they were saying, as if they refused me the alms of their thoughts.
These trifling events disappeared like scenes of a comedy on which the
curtain falls.
I passed the whole afternoon disheartened. I felt as if I were alone
against them all, while roaming about inside this house and yet outside
of it.
As I passed through the hallway, a door went shut hastily, cutting off
the laugh of a woman taken by surprise. A senseless noise oozed from
the walls, worse than silence. From under each door a broken ray of
light crept out, worse than darkness.
I went downstairs to the parlour, attracted by the sound of conversation.
A group of men were talking, I no longer remember about what. They
went out, and I was alone. I heard them talking in the hall. Then their
voices died away.
A fashionable lady came in, with a rustle of silk and the smell of
flowers and perfume. She took up a lot of room because of her
fragrance and elegance. She carried her head held slightly forward and

had a beautiful long face set off by an expression of great sweetness.
But I could not see her well, because she did not look at me. She seated
herself, picked up a book, and turned the pages, and