Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Her breath, fanning across the floor-surface each time in quick-spreading circles, had a wooden hollowness to it, came with a snort-like gush.

She found the door-frame across the room and pulled herself up by that, cleaving to it tremblingly as one does to a staff without which one cannot maintain oneself erect. Then rolled over against it, so that she faced toward him once more instead of outward against the blind wood.

He was transfixed with fear, face livid, burning whitely out across the room, not knowing where to find her but trying desperately to encompass her, almost like the light-house-beam back there on the seafront but gone berserk now, with a half-turn to this side, a half-turn to that.

“What have I said? I take it back—”

“It’s too late,” she retched in a soul-vomiting voice. “You’ve undone me. Nothing can put me together again now.”

“Paule, Paule, you’re standing by the door now. I hear your voice against the panel. What are you thinking, what are you doing?”

In torment herself, yet she thought of his pain, thought of making it less for a moment. Saints can do this. And women in love.

“Close your eyes, I’ll be right back.”

“They’re closed already. They’re always closed. How can that help when you’re not here with me?”

“Close your eyes, I’ll be beside you when you open them again.”

“Paule, the door is open now. I hear the emptiness of the stairs in back of your voice. You haven’t turned, and yet you’re going further back and further back, away from me, away—”

“Downstairs — something I forgot to get — something for tomorrow—”

“Paule, my light’s going out again. It’s double darkness for me without you. Don’t take my light away, the only light I have!” And then a scream of agony, of love turned mad. “Panic, don’t leave me in the dark!”

Her fling around to take the stairs swept his face away, burning whitely, burning brightly like something that will go out soon in a draught of darkness; the rushing of her footsteps down them, like noisily tumbling water, drowned out the sound of his cries. But her heart heard them anyway, heard every last expiring whispered word.

“Panic, don’t go! The little clock and I, we want you back—”

“Tikk ... Tikk... Tikk ... ”

Around the turn, and down some more. Down into darkness, down into forever.

A door along the way opened sparingly and someone stuck his head out.

“Will you kindly be more quiet. Who is that shouting up there?”

“Be patient, madame. In a few more moments I won’t make a sound.”

Down the one last flight, then out into the stone-still street. The street whose silence lay over it like a coating of ice. And like someone running over a thin coating of ice, her pick-like footfalls seemed to shiver it, the silence, and crack it into crazy streaks of outshooting sound, glancing hollowly off the fronts of the buildings on the other side of the way, to come back again to the near side, then fall down once more from there into what they had originally risen from: the silence. Through chips of flying sound she ran, like chips of flying ice.

No policeman to stop her now. No policeman could have stopped her now. She was on her way to a higher court.

Down Mazagran, a lonesome thing running, with nothing in pursuit. Then left, toward the seafront. The sea, the tears that God has wept over this world. Past an alley, and a warning commandment: Jeux hitcrdits. Someone had lost a soul in there. Someone had lost a life in there, by not heeding and obeying. Forbidden games, that were being paid for now.

Along the Boulevard des Tamaris, a lightning-flash like a bite at her heel winging her along her way. A lightning-flash that showed the rows on rows of gnarled trees, like weazened acolytes raising their bony arms over her doomed head in supplication. The sea a black growl, low-crouched, beyond and below them on the far side.

Then into the tunnel, brief-lived darkness before a longer darkness, as when a curtain falls imperfectly, to rise again and be adjusted, before it falls for good.

Across the white-armed bridge, so short, so slender, yet that spanned an incalculable distance, the gap from life to death.

She was on the rock now, and curt lightning gave it the appearance of loose snow sidling down its sides, to disappear into the engorging darkness.

Around the guard-rail to the outer side, and under that, and up it halfway to the top, with clawing hands and nibbling feet, until she could stand erect and turn and face the nothingness that never ends.

The statue’s back was turned to her. That was the answer to what life had been for her. That was the warning of what death was to be for her.

God has turned His back on me.

I had no one in life; I will have no one even in death. But at least I will be clean. Even alone, in my nothingness, I will be clean.

Long ago when she was a little girl her mother had said. “Paule, when you take oil your things, fold them, put them one on top the other. Don’t just let them fall.”

The will to be good was still strong. That was why she was dying.

She folded them, each one as she took it off; she put them one on top the other. She didn’t just let them fall.

When the last one was off, though the wind snapped about her like a whip, she didn’t feel it. She felt no cold, she felt no wind, she felt no fear, no anything at all. She only felt she wanted to be clean again.

In her mind she spoke to the statue, who snubbed her, who looked the other way. Not prayed, but spoke.

For myself, nothing. I have no claim, I make none. But for him, mercy. Be kind, Madame. Have pity. Don’t let him hurt too much. Don’t let him call my name too much. Don’t let him be lonely in the dark, too much. And if he must be these things: don’t let him linger too long.

Her fingers traced the stations of the cross upon her brow and breast. She stared down hypnotically at the boiling whitecaps scalloping the base of the rock. They broke and filled the air with showers of jet that sometimes nearly reached to where she was, then dropped back upon the bosom of the water again.

Her eyes dilated, but not with fear, with dedication.

“Madame, I go now!” she cried out wildly.

As her body relaxed and prepared to fall forward, she turned her head and looked behind her one last time.

A flash of lightning, the last light she would ever see in this world, showed her a woman who had just come over the bridge, a woman standing there below, at the rail, at the inner side of the rock. A woman in a spreading white dress, staring up at her amazed.

(In the gambling room at the Casino in Biarritz, seven or eight backs stand shoulder to shoulder, so that they conceal the roulette table they are lined against. The middle one is unclothed, that of a woman in a backless white evening gown. Immediately behind her a maid is seated on a straight-backed gilt chair. She is plainly dressed, wears a pair of old-fashioned rimless glasses and is crocheting a strip of lace. On her lap in addition is a taffeta draw-bag. She pays no attention to the proceedings. A clicking sound is heard, as the little ball spins around and around. It stops with a little snap, like a wooden match-stick being broken, as the ball drops into the slot.)

Croupier: Seventeen, black!

(There is a low murmur of mingled voices like the humming of a swarm of bees, combining resignation, disappointment, annoyance, surprise, and satisfaction.)

Croupier: Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.