1092
PARTISAN REVIEW
turned upward and he drank from the pure night. At times a big
trolley-car would rush by. A drunkard would croon at a street comer
without managing to disturb the silence.
The mother of the child remained just as silent. Occasionally
someone would ask her, "What are you thinking about?" "Nothing,"
she would answer. And it was quite true. Everything was there,
therefore nothing. Her life, her interests, her children, were simply
there, too natural a presence to be felt. She was frail and had dif–
ficulty thinking. She had a harsh and dominating mother to whose
egotism, like that of a pampered pet, everything had to be sacrificed
and for a long time she had been dominating her daughter's weak
spirit. Though emancipated by her marriage, the daughter docilely
returned home when her husband died. He had died on the field of
honor, as they say. In a prominent place could be seen the
croix de
guerre
and the military medal in a gilded frame. The hospital also sent
the widow a shell splinter that had been found in his flesh. The widow
kept it. Her grief is a thing of the past. She has forgotten her husband
but still speaks of her children's father. She works in order to provide
for them and gives her money to her mother. The latter brings them
up with a whip. When she hits too hard, her daughter says, "Don't hit
on the head." Because they are her children, she is fond of them.
She loves them equally with a love which has never been revealed
to them. At times, such as evenings like this which he remembers,
when she would return from an exhausting day's work (she did
housecleaning), she would find the house empty. The old woman
would be out shopping, the children stilI at school. She would then
sink down in a chair and would sit and stare vacantly at a groove
in the floor. The night would deepen about her, and in the darkness
such silence would be irremediably desolate.
If
the child entered at
such a moment, he would make out the thin outline with the bony
shoulders and would stop: he was frightened. He was beginning to
feel a lot of things. He was just beginning to grow aware of his own
existence. But it hurt to cry before this animal silence. He pitied his
mother. Did that mean that he loved her? She had never caressed
him because she would not have known how to. He would then
remain watching her for endless minutes. Feeling strange, he would
grow aware of his pain. She would not hear him, for she was deaf
with fatigue. The old woman would return shortly thereafter; life
