Djuna Barnes - Nightwood

‘Jenny,’ she said.

‘It rots her sleep—Jenny is one of those who nip like a bird and void like an ox—the poor and lightly damned! That can be a torture also. None of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last. Don’t I know that the only way to know evil is through truth? The evil and the good know themselves only by giving up their secret face to face. The true good who meets the true evil (Holy Mother of Mercy! are there any such?) learns for the first time how to accept neither; the face of the one tells the face of the other the half of the story that both forgot.’

‘To be utterly innocent’, he went on, ‘would be to be utterly unknown, particularly to oneself.’

‘Sometimes Robin seemed to return to me’, Nora said unheeding, ‘for sleep and safety, but,’ she added bitterly, ‘she always went out again.’

The doctor lit a cigarette; lifting his chin he blew the smoke high. ‘To treat her lovers to the great passionate indifference. Say,’ he exclaimed, bringing his chin down. ‘Dawn, of course, dawn! That’s when she came back frightened. At that hour the citizen of the night balances on a thread that is running thin.’

‘Only the impossible lasts forever; with time, it is made accessible. Robin’s love and mine was always impossible, and loving each other, we no longer love. Yet we love each other like death.’

‘Um,’ murmured the doctor, ‘beat life like a dinner bell, yet there is one hour that won’t ring—the hour of disentanglement. Oh well,’ he sighed, ‘everyman dies finally of that poison known as the-heart-in-the-mouth. Yours is in your hand. Put it back. The eater of it will get a taste for you; in the end his muzzle will be heard barking among your ribs. I’m no exception, God knows, I’m the last of my line, the fine hair-line of least resistance. It’s a gruesome thing that man learns only by what he has between the one leg and the other! Oh, that short dangle! We corrupt mortality by its industry. You never know which one of your ends it is that is going to be the part you can’t take your mind off.’

‘If only you could take my mind off, Matthew—now, in this house that I took that Robin’s mind and mine might go together. Surprising, isn’t it, I’m happier when I’m alone now, without her, because when she was here with me, in this house, I had to watch her wanting to go and yet to stay. How much of our life do we put into a life that we may be damned? Then she was back stumbling through the house again, listening for a footstep in the court, for a way to leave and not to go, trying to absorb, with the intensity of her ear, any sound that would have made me suspicious, yet hoping I would break my heart in safety; she needed that assurance. Matthew, was it a sin that I believed her?’

‘Of course, it made her life wrong.’

‘But when I didn’t believe her any more, after the night I came to see you; that I have to think of all the time, I don’t dare to stop, for fear of the moment it will come back again.’

‘Remorse,’ said the doctor, ‘sitting heavy, like the arse of a bull—you had the conceit of “honesty” to keep that arse from cracking your heart; but what did she have? Only your faith in her—then you took that faith away! You should have kept it always, seeing that it was a myth; no myth is safely broken. Ah, the weakness of the strong! The trouble with you is, you are not just a myth-maker, you are also a destroyer, you made a beautiful fable, then put Voltaire to bed with it; ah, the Dead March in “Saul"!’

Nora said, as if she had not been interrupted—‘Because after that night, I went to see Jenny. I remember the stairs. They were of brown wood, and the hall was ugly and dark, and her apartment depressing. No one would have known that she had money. The walls had mustard-coloured paper on them as far as the salon, and something hideous in red and green and black in the hall, and away at the end, a bedroom facing the hall-door, with a double-bed. Sitting up against, the pillow was a doll. Robin had given me a doll. I knew then, before I asked, that this was the right house, before I said, “You are Robin’s mistress, aren’t you?” That poor shuddering creature had pelvic bones I could see flying through her dress. I wanted to lean forward and laugh with terror. She was sitting there doubled up with surprise, her raven’s bill coming up saying, “Yes.” Then I looked up and there on the wall was the photograph of Robin when she was a baby (the one that she had told me was lost).

‘She went to pieces; she fell forward on my lap. At her next words I saw that I was not a danger to her, but someone who might understand her torture. In great agitation she said, “I went out this afternoon, I didn’t think she would call me, because you had been away to the country, Robin said, and would be back this evening and so she would have to stay home with you, because you had been so good to her always; though God knows I understand there is nothing between you any longer, that you are ‘just good friends’; she has explained that—still, I nearly went mad when I found that she had been here and I was out. She has told me often enough, ‘Don’t leave the house, because I don’t know exactly when I am going to be able to get away, because I can’t hurt Nora.’ “ Nora’s voice broke. She went on.

‘Then Jenny said, “What are you going to do? What do you want me to do?” I knew all the time that she could do nothing but what she wanted to do, and that whatever it was, she was a liar, no matter what truth she was telling. I was dead. I felt stronger then, and I said, yes I would have a drink. She poured out two, knocking the bottle against the glass and spilling the liquor on the dark ugly carpet. I kept thinking, what else is it that is hurting me; then I knew the doll; the doll in there on the bed.’ Nora sat down, facing the doctor. ‘We give death to a child when we give it a doll—it’s the effigy and the shroud; when a woman gives it to a woman, it is the life they cannot have, it is their child, sacred and profane; so when I saw that other doll—‘ Nora could not go on. She began to cry. ‘What part of monstrosity am I that I am always crying at its side!

‘When I got home Robin had been waiting, knowing, because I was late, that something was wrong. I said, “It is over—I can’t go on. You have always lied to me, and you have denied me to her. I can’t stand it any more."

‘She stood up then, and went into the hall. She jerked her coat off the hook and I said, “Have you nothing to say to me?” She turned her face to me. It was like something once beautiful found in a river—and flung herself out of the door.’

‘And you were crying,’ the doctor said, nodding. ‘You went about the house like someone sunken under lightness. You were ruined and you kept striking your hands together, laughing crazily and singing a little and putting your hands over your face. Stage-tricks have been taken from life, so finding yourself employing them you were confused with a sense of shame. When you went out looking for someone to go mad with, they said, “For God’s sake look at Nora!” For the demolishing of a great ruin is always a fine and terrifying spectacle. Why is it that you want to talk to me? Because I’m the other woman that God forgot.’

‘There’s nothing to go by, Matthew,’ she said. ‘You do not know which way to go. A man is another person—a woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own. If she is taken you cry that you have been robbed of yourself. God laughs at me; but his laughter is my love.’

‘You have died and arisen for love,’ said Matthew. ‘But unlike the ass, returning from the market you are always carrying the same load. Oh, for God’s sweet sake, didn’t she ever disgust you! Weren’t you sometimes pleased that you had the night to yourself, wishing, when she did come home, that it was never?’