Andre Malraux - Man's Fate

Since his return from Hankow he was convinced that the reaction was under way; even if Clappique had not warned him, he would have considered the situation, in the case of an attack on the Communists by the army of Chiang Kai-shek, so desperate that any incident, even the assassination of the general (whatever its consequences) would be a favorable one. The Unions, if they were armed, could conceivably attempt to give battle to a disorganized army.

The bell again. Kyo ran to the door: at last, the mail which brought the answer from Hankow. His father and May watched him return, without saying anything.

“Orders to bury the fireanns,” he said.

The message, torn up, had become a ball in the hollow of his hand. He took the pieces of paper, spread them out on the opium table, pieced them together, shrugged his shoulders at his childishness: it was indeed the order to hide or to bury the arms.

“I have to go over there right away.”

“Over there,” was the Central Committee. This meant that he had to leave the concessions. Gisors knew that he could say nothing. Perhaps his son was going to his death; it was not the first time: it was the justification of his life. He had only to suffer and be silent. He took the information given by Clappique very seriously: the latter had saved KOnig’s life-the German who was now directing the police of Chiang Kai-shek-by warning him that the corps of cadets in Peking to which he belonged, was to be massacred. Gisors did not know Shpilevski. As Kyo’s glance met his he tried to smile; Kyo also, and they did not turn their eyes away: both knew they were lying, and that this lie was perhaps their most affectionate communion.

Kyo returned to his room, where he had left his jacket. May was putting on her coat.

“Where are you going?”

“With you, Kyo.”

“What for?”

She did not answer.

“It is easier to recognize us together,” he said.

“I don’t see why. If you’re spotted, it doesn’t matter. ”

“You’ll do no good.”

“What good will I do here, during that time? Men don’t know what it is to wait. ”

He took a few steps, stopped, turned towards her: “Listen, May: when your freedom was in question, I granted it.”

She understood what he alluded to and was afraid: she had forgotten it. Indeed, he added in a duller tone:

“. And you managed to take advantage of it. Now it’s mine that is involved.”

“But, Kyo, what's the connection?”

“To recognize the freedom of another is to acknowledge his right to it, even at the cost of suffering, as I know from experience.”

I ‘another,’ Kyo?”

He was silent once more. Yes, at this moment she was another. Something between them had been changed.

“Then,” she continued, “because. anyway, because of that, we can no longer be in danger together?. Consider, Kyo: it almost looks as though you were taking revenge. ”

“To be able to no longer, and to try when it’s useless amounts to the same thing.”

“But if you held it against me as much as that, all you had to do was to take a mistress. But after all, no! why do I say that? It isn’t true-1 didn’t take a lover, I went to bed with a man. It’s not the same thing, and you know very well you can have anyone you like. ” “You satisfy me,” he answered bitterly.

His look astonished May: it showed a mingling of many emotions. And-most disquieting of all-on his face the fearful expression of a lust which he himself was unaware of.

“At this moment, as well as two weeks ago,” he went on, “I’m not looking for someone to go to bed with. I don’t say you are wrong; I say that I want to go alone. The freedom you allow me is your freedom. The freedom to do what pleases you. Freedom is not an exchange — it is freedom.”

“It’s a desertion.”

Silence.

“Why do people who love each other face death, Kyo, if not to risk it together?”

She guessed that he was going to leave without further discussion, and placed herself in front of the door.

“You should not have given me this freedom,” she said, “if it is going to separate us now.”

“You did not ask for it.”

“You had already recognized it.”

You should not have believed me, he thought. It was true, he had always recognized it. But that she should at this moment be discussing a question of rights separated her from him all the more.

“There are rights that one gives,” she said bitterly, “only so that they shall not be used.”

“If I had given them only in order that you could hang on to them at this moment, it wouldn’t be so bad. ”

This instant separated them more than death: eyelids, mouth, temples, the place of every caress is visible on the face of a dead woman, and those high cheek-bones and those elongated eyelids now belonged to a foreign world. The wounds of the deepest love suffice to create a rather substantial hatred. Was she withdrawing, so near to death, from the threshold of that world of hostility which she was glimpsing? She said:

“I’m hanging on to nothing, Kyo. Let’s say I’m wrong, that I have been wrong, anything you like. But now, at this moment, right away, I want to go with you. I ask it of you.”

He said nothing.

“If you did not love me,” she went on, “it would be all the same to you to let me go with you. Well, then? Why make us both suffer?. As if this were the time for it,” she added with weariness.

Kyo felt some f^amiliar demons stirring within ^m, which rather thoroughly disgusted him. He had an urge to strike her, to strike directly at her love. She was right: if he had not loved her, what would it matter to that she should die? Perhaps it was the fact that she was forcing realization upon at this moment that he resented most.

Did she feel like crying? She had shut her eyes, and the constant, silent trembling of her shoulders, in contrast with her motionless features, seemed the complete expression of human distress. It was no longer his will alone which separated them, but grief. And, since the sight of grief brings together as much as grief itself separates, he was thrown towards her once more by the expression of her face, in which the eyelids were slowly lifting-as when she was struck with surprise. Above her closed eyes, the movement of her brow ended, and that tense face in which the eyelids remained lowered became suddenly a dead woman’s face.

Many of May’s expressions had no effect on him: he knew them, he always had the feeling that she was copying herself. But he had never seen this death mask-pain, and not ' sleep, on closed eyes-and death was so near that this ilusion acquired the force of a sinister prefiguration. She opened her eyes without looking at ^m: her glance remained lost on the blank wall of the room; without a single muscle moving, a tear rolled down her nose, remained suspended at the comer of her mouth, betraying by its inexpressive animation, poignant as pain in animals, a mask which was as inhuman, as dead as it had been a moment ago.

“Open your eyes.”

She looked at ^m.

“They are open.”

“I had the impression you were dead.”

“Well?”

She shrugged her shoulders and went on, in a voice of weary sadness:

“If 1 am to die, I am willing to have you die. ” Now he understood the real feeling that urged him: he wanted to console her. But he could console her only by agreeing to let her go with him. She had shut her eyes again. He took her in his arms, kissed her on the eyelids. When they separated:

“Are we going?” she asked.

“No.”

Too honest to hide her impulses, she returned to her desires with a cat’s stubbornness, which often exasperated Kyo. She had moved away from the door, but he perceived that he had been anxious to pass only as long as he had been sure he wouldn’t pass.