Andre Malraux - Man's Fate

“May, are we going to part on a misunderstanding?” “Have I lived like a woman who needs protection?. ”

They stood there facing each other, not knowing what else to say and not accepting silence, both knowing that that moment, one of the gravest of their lives, was ruined by the time which was passing: Kyo’s place was not here, but at the Committee, and impatience lurked under his every thought.

She indicated the door with a motion of her head.

He looked at her, took her head between his two hands, pressed it gently without kissing her, as though he were putting into that caress the mingled tenderness and violence of which all the virile gestures of love are capable. At last he withdrew his hands.

The two doors closed behind him. May continued to listen, as though she were waiting for a third door-

which did not exist-to close in its turn. With her mouth open and quivering, drunk with grief, she was becoming aware that, if she had given him the sign to leave alone, it was because she thought she was making in this way the last, the only move which might have made him decide to take her along.

Kyo had scarcely taken a hundred steps, when he met Katov.

“Isn’t Ch’en there?”

He pointed to Kyo’s house.

“No.”

“You abs’lutely don’t know where he is?”

“No. Why?”

Katov was calm, but his face was contracted and pale as though he were suffering from a violent headache.

“There are several cars like Chiang Kai-shek’s. Ch’en doesn’t know it. Either the police have been tipped off, or they’re s’spicious. If he isn’t warned he’s going to get caught and throw his bombs for nothing. I’ve been chasing him for a long time, you see. The bombs were to have been thrown at one o’clock. Nothing has happened — we would have known.”

“He was to do it near the Avenue of the Two Republics. The best thing to do would be to go to Hemmel- rich’s.”

Katov started off immediately.

“You have your cyanide?” Kyo asked him as he turned to go.

“Yes.”

Both of them, and several other revolutionary leaders, carried cyanide in the flat buckle of their belts, which opened like a box.

The separation had not freed Kyo from his torment. On the contrary: in this deserted street May was even stronger-having yielded-than right before him, opposing him. He entered the Chinese city, not without being aware of it, but with indiference. “Have I lived like a woman who needs protection?. " By what right did he exercise his pitiful protection on the woman who had even consented to his going? In the name of what was he leaving her? Was he sure that there was in his attitude no element of revenge? No doubt May was still sitting on the bed, crushed by a despair that was beyond words and thought.

He retraced his steps on the run.

The phcenix-room was empty: his father had gone out, May was still in the bed-room. Before opening he stopped, overwhelmed by the brotherhood of death, discovering how derisive the flesh appeared before this communion, in spite of its urgent appeal. He understood now that the willingness to lead the being one loves to death itself is perhaps the complete expression of love, that which cannot be surpassed.

He opened the door.

She hurriedly threw her coat over her shoulders, and followed him without a word.

For a long time Hemmelrich had been looking at his records. No customers. Someone knocked according to the signal agreed upon.

He opened. It was Katov.

“Have you seen Ch’en?”

“Walking remorse!” Hemmelrich gambled.

“What?”

“Nothing. Yes, I’ve seen ^m. About one or two o’clock. Does it concern you?”

“I abs’lutely must see him. What did he say?”

From another room one of the child’s cries reached them, followed by the indistinguishable words of the mother trying to calm him.

“He came with two chums. One of them was Suan. Don’t know the other one. A fellow with glasses, looked like anybody else. A noble air. Brief-cases under their arms: you understand?”

“That’s why I've got to find m, you see.”

“He asked me to stay here for three hours.”

“Oh! Good! Where is he?”

“Shut up! Listen to what I’m telling you. He told me to stay here. I haven’t stirred. Do you hear?”

Silence.

“I told you I haven’t stirred.”

“Where can he have gone?”

“He didn’t say. Like you. Silence is spreading today. ”

Hemmelrich was standing in the middle of the room, hunched over, with a look almost of hatred. Katov said calmly, without looking at him:

“You’re damning yourself too much. That way you’re trying to get me to accuse you so you can defend yourself.”

“What do you know about it? And what damn business is it of yours anyway? Don’t stand there looking at me with that lock of hair like a cockscomb and your hands open, like Jesus Christ, waiting for someone to drive nails through them. ”

Without closing his hand, Katov placed it on Hem- melrich’s shoulder.

“Things stil bad, upstairs?”

“Not quite so bad. But bad enough. Poor kid!. With his skinny body and his big head, he looks like a skinned rabbit. Leave me. ”

The Belgian freed himself savagely, stopped, then walked to the other end of the room with a curiously childish movement, as if he were sulking.

“And that’s not the worst of it,” he said. “No, don’t act like a fellow who’s got flea-bites and stands squirming and looking embarrassed: I haven’t tipped off the police about Ch’en. It’s all right. Not yet, at least. ” Katov shrugged his shoulders gloomily.

“You’d better tell me all about it.”

“I wanted to go with ^m.”

“With Ch’en?”

Katov was sure, now, that he would no longer be able to find him. He spoke with the calm, weary voice of someone who has been beaten. Chiang Kai-shek would not return before night-fall, and Ch’en could attempt nothing until then.

Hemmelrich pointed with his thumb, over his shoulder, in the direction from which the child’s cry had come:

“And there you are. There you are. What do you expect me to do?”

“Wait. ”

“Because the kid will die, I suppose? Listen: half the day I wish for it. And if it happens, I shall wish him to remain, not to die, even sick, even an invalid. ” “I know. ”

“What?” said Hemmelrich, as if he were being robbed. “What do you know about it? You’re not even married!” “I’ve been married.”

“I’d like to have seen that. With your looks. No,

they’re not for us, all those cute little strutting cunts we see passing in the street. ”

He felt that Katov was thinking of the woman who was watching the child, upstairs.

“Devotion, yes. And everything she can. The rest- what she hasn’t got-is all for the rich. When I see people who look as if they’re in love, I feel like smashing them in the face.”

“D’votion is a lot. The main thing is not to be alone.”

“And that’s why you’re staying here, isn’t it? To help me?”

“Yes.”

“Through pity?”

“Not through pity. Through. ”

But Katov could not find the word. And perhaps it did not exist. He tried to say what he meant indirectly:

“I’ve felt it-or almost. And also your kind of. rage. How do you expect anyone to understand things, except through mem’ries?. That’s why you don’t irritate me.”

He had drawn near and was speaking, his head between his shoulders, with his voice that swallowed the syllables, looking at him out of the comer of his eye; both of them, their heads lowered, looked as though they were getting ready to fight, right there among the records. But Katov knew he was the stronger, although he did not know in what way. Perhaps it was his voice, his calm, his friendship even, that were telling.