200
PARTISAN REVIEW
The boy's mother and I climbed the "polished marble" slowly.
The staircase slowly led us from landing to landing. At the very top
in front of a big black door-we stopped.
It
was clear there was no
further to go. There were two doors, the left-hand and the right.
Mademoiselle lived behind the right one. In silence, we knocked. In
silence, we knocked again. More silence. More knocking. Our
knocks thinned out. They became few and the intervals further be–
tween. The knocks themselves remained on the surface of the door,
not penetrating to the world on the other side, or, having
penetrated, were swallowed up by what was behind the door, by all
the behind-the-door emptiness (by that in-the-other-worldness). The
door didn't answer. The door kept its silence .
"Let's go to the concierge - we could stand here for an
hour - we can ask, perhaps she knows something" - not whispering
(like anything out of the ordinary, it wakes people) but with that
special half-voice used around sleeping people, and others.)
"Maybe we should knock on this door?"
The door on the left echoed and surrendered itself, revealing at
first a kerosene lamp and then the middle-aged face of a woman.
"Excuse us Madame, but do you know anything about MIle
Jeanne Robert? We knocked, but no one answers.
It
seems there's
no one home. Our children study with her."
"Come in, come in, I'm so glad to talk about her. We've been
neighbors for twenty-eight years."
The lamp yielded, and, turning around itself, led the way. The
lamp, whose duty was
es an den Tag bringen.
The old woman, and the
two of us, followed.
"Please sit down. I don't quite understand, you say-your
children?"
"Yes, our children study with her. We're foreigners. Our
children study French and other subjects with her. We live in
Bellevue."
"Oh, so that's it. Je sais qu'elle prenait toujours Ie petit tram de
Meudon. She was going to you then? A lovely place-Bellevue-we
go there every Sunday."
"That's right. And now it's been a month since we've heard
anything from her. She was supposed to come to our Russian
Christmas tree, because Russian Christmas is after yours, thirteen
days difference.... We have gifts for her. ... (as if trying to con–
jure and conquer the unknown with realities).
