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CHAPTER XIV

PETRIFACTION

Two days passed in silence, and half-consciousness. As soon as he had come to himself again, he dared in secret to think over the immensity of his misfortune. Many blows were necessary to force his mind into submission. But he had received even more. Ten minutes less beating and he would have been ready for any vengeance. Possibly Thérèse had suspected this danger and had for that reason gone on striking to the bitter end. In his weakness he wanted nothing and feared one thing only: more beating. When she came near to his bed, he cowered, a whipped dog.

She put down a plate of food on the chair by the bed and immediately turned away. He needn't think there'd be more food for him. As long as he was ill she would be fool enough to feed him. He dragged himself towards it and with difficulty began to lap up a part of the alms she had bestowed on him. She heard the smacking of his greedy lips and was tempted to ask: 'How do you like it?* But she renounced this pleasure and comforted herself by thinking of a beggar to whom she had once given something fourteen years ago. He had no arms and no legs, excuse me, it's not human. All the same, he had a look of Mr. John. She wouldn't have given him anything; those people are all crooks; first they're cripples; when they get home they're as well as you and me. But then the creature said: 'How's your husband to-day?' That was a clever thing to say! He got a beautiful penny. She threw it into his hat herself. He was such a poor thing. Not that she liked giving money away; she'd never done such a thing before. But she could make an exception. So her husband got his plate of food.

Kien, the beggar, was in great pain, but he took care not to groan. Instead of turning towards the wall, he kept Thérèse in view and followed her actions with dread and suspicion. She was quiet and, in spite of her bulk, flexible. Or was it something to do with the room, that she so suddenly appeared and vanished? Her eyes had an evil glitter; they were cat's eyes. When she wanted to say something, but interrupted herself before she could get it out, it sounded like a cat spitting.

A bloodthirsty tiger lusting for men once disguised itself in the skin and dress of a young maiden. Weeping, it stood at a street corner and was so beautiful that a learned man came along. She lied to him cunningly, and out of pity he took her to his house, as one of his many wives. He was a very brave man and loved to sleep with her. One night she threw ofFher maiden's skin and tore open his breast. She ate his heart and vanished through the window. She left her shining white skin on the floor behind her. Both were found by one of the other wives who screamed her throat sore asking for an elixir of life. She went down to the most powerful man of the country, a madman who lived in the filth of the market-place, and for long hours rolled about at his feet. He spat into her hand for all the world to see, and she had to drink it. She wept and sorrowed day after day, for she loved the dead man though he had no heart. From the shame she had drunk for him, there grew a new heart out of the warm soil of her bosom. She gave it to the man and he came back to her.

In China there are women who know how to love. In Kien's library there was only a tiger. It was not even young and beautiful, and, instead of a shining skin, it wore a starched skirt. It was less concerned with the heart of a Chinese scholar than with his bones. The foulest Chinese spirit had better manners than the corporeal Thérèse. Ah, if only she were a spirit she could not hit him! He would gladly have left his own skin behind for her to beat to her heart's content. His bones needed rest, his bones needed to recover themselves, without bones even learning comes to an end. Had she dealt with her own bed over there as she had dealt with him? The floor had not caved in under her fists. This house had experienced much. It was old, and like all old things, strong and well made. She herself was. another example. He must look at her dispassionately. Being a tiger, her physical force was naturally greater than that of any ordinary woman. She could probably take on the caretaker.

Sometimes in his dreams he beat against her skirt until she fell down. He pulled it off over her feet. Suddenly he had a pair of scissors in his hand and cut it up into tiny pieces. It took him a long time to do it. When he had cut up the skirt, the pieces seemed too big to him; she might sew them all together again. Without lifting his eyes he started all over again: he cut each piece into four. Then he emptied out a whole sack of little blue rags over Thérèse. How had all these rags got into the sack? The wind blew them away from her and on to him; they settled on him, he felt them, blue bruises, all over his body, and moaned out loud.

Thérèse sneaked up to him and asked: 'I won't have this moaning; what's the matter?' She was blue again. Some of the bruises must have settled on her. Strange, it seemed to him that he was carrying them all. But he did not moan again. She was satisfied with this answer. Suddenly she remembered the dog in her last place. He shushed before ever you said a word to him. That's how it ought to be.

In the course of a few days Kien was as tired of her care, which consisted in a plate of food to last him from morning to night, as he was of the pains of his bruised body. He scented the distrust of the woman when she came near to him. Already on the fourth day she had no desire to feed him any more. Anyone can lie in bed. She examined his body, for simplicity's sake, through the bed-coverings, and decided that he would soon be well. He did not cringe. People who don't cringe don't feel anything. He could get up, she needn't cook for him any longer. She might simply have ordered 'Get up!' But a certain fear warned her that he might leap up suddenly, tear the coverings and sheets off his body and leave nothing on it but a mass of blue marks, as though it were her fault. To prevent this she was silent, and on the following day brought him his plate only half full. Moreover, she had cooked badly on purpose. Kien noticed, not the difference in the food, but in her. He misinterpreted her searching glances and feared more blows. In bed he was defenceless. Stretched out to his full length, there he lay at her mercy; wherever she struck, higher or lower, there would be something to hit. She mignt make a mistake breadthways, that was all; this gave him no sense of security.

Two full days and nights went by before his fear had strengthened his will to get up; at last he made an attempt to do so. His sense of time had never failed him; he still always knew how late it was, and to re-establish order once and for all at a single stroke, he rose from his bed one morning punctually at six o'clock. His head crackled like dried twigs. His frame seemed to be out of joint, and would not balance properly. By skilfully leaning first in one direction, then in the other, he succeeded in avoiding a fall. Little by little he juggled himself into his clothes, which he dragged out from under the bed. Every new encasement he greeted with joy, an additional armour, an important defence. His movements to preserve his balance were like a mysterious dance. Tormented by pains, small devils, he had yet escaped their chief, death, and he danced his way to the writing table. There, dazed a little by excitement, he took his place, his legs and arms wobbling until, returning to their old obedience, they came to rest.

Since she had no more work to do, Thérèse had taken to sleeping until nine. She was the lady of the house, such people lie even later. Servants have to be up by six. But sleep would not stay with her so long, and as soon as she woke, her yearning for her possessions left her no more peace. She had to get up and dress herself so as to feel the pressure of the hard keys against her flesh. But a happy solution occurred to her since her husband had been beaten and was in bed. She went to bed at nine with the keys between her breasts. Until two in the morning she took good care to remain wide awake. At two o'clock she got up and hid the keys again in her skirt. No one could find them there. Then she went to sleep. She was so tired with her long vigil that she didn't wake up again until nine o'clock, just like a lady. That's the way it should be, and servants can do the rest.

So it was that Kien carried out his plan unnoticed by her. From the writing desk he could see her bed. He watched over her sleep as if it had been his dearest possession, and in the course of three hours was frightened to death a hundred times. She had the fortunate gift of letting herself go when she slept. When she had eaten something good in her dreams, she belched and broke wind. At the same time she said: 'The very idea!' and meant something of which she alone was aware. Kien applied it to himself. Her adventures tossed her from side to side; the bed groaned aloud, Kien groaned with it. Often she grinned with her eyes closed; Kien was near to tears. When she grinned yet more widely, she looked as though she were crying; then Kien nearly laughed. Had he not learnt caution, he would have laughed out loud. With amazement, he heard her calling on Buddha. He doubted his ears, but she repeated it: 'Puda! Puda! just as she burst into tears, and he understood what Puda meant in her language.

When she drew her hand from under the coverlet, he winced. But she did not hit out, only clenched her fist. Why, what have I done, he asked himself, and gave his own answer: she must know. He had respect for her fine judgment. His crime, for which she had so cruelly punished him, was atoned for, but not forgotten. Thérèse clutched at the place where the keys were usually hidden. She took the thick coverlet for her skirt ana found the keys although they were not there. She let her hand fall heavily on them, tickled them, played with them, took them one by one in her fingers, and in the excess of her pleasure covered them with great, shining drops of sweat. Kicn blushed, he did not know why. Her thick arm was stuck into a narrow, tightly-stretched sleeve. The lace with which it was trimmed in front was directed at her husband, who slept in the same room. It looked crushed to Kien. Very softly he said this word which lay heavy on his heart. He heard — 'Crushed'. Who had spoken? Quick as lightning he lifted his head and turned his eyes on Thérèse. Who else could know how crushed he was? She was asleep. He mistrusted her closed eyes and waited, holding his breath, for a second remark. 'How can I be so foolhardy?' he thought, 'she is awake and I am looking her boldly in the face.' He forbade himself the only means of discovering the proximity of his danger and, lowered his eyes, a shame-faced child. With ears wide open — so it seemed to him — he waited a fearful scolding. Instead, he heard only regular breathing. So she was asleep again. After a quarter of an hour he spied out the ground again all round her with his eyes, ready to take flight at any moment. He thought himself wily enough, and allowed himself one proud idea. He was David watching the sleeping Goliath; on the whole Goliath was a fool. In the first round David did not win: but he had escaped Goliath's deadly designs and who could tell what lay in the future?

Kien knelt down in his thoughts and prayed in his distress to the God of the future — the Past. He had long forgotten how to pray, but before this God he found the way again. At the end he asked for forgiveness for not having really knelt down. But God must know — 
à
 la guerre comme à la guerre
— he did not need to tell him twice. This was the ineffable and truly divine in Him, that he understood everything at once. The God of the Bible was fundamentally a miserable illiterate. Many of the minor Chinese gods were far better read. He could say things about the Ten Commandments which would make the Past's hair stand on end. But then the Past knew better, anyway. He would however permit himself to relieve the Past of the absurd feminine gender with which the Germans have credited it. That the Germans should provide their finest achievements, those abstract ideas, with feminine articles is one of those incomprehensible barbarisms by which they nullify their own merits. He would in future sanctify everything connected with God with a masculine affix. The neuter gender is too childish for God. As a philologist he was fully aware of the odium he might bring upon himself by the act. But when all was said, speech was made for man, not man for speech. He therefore asked the (masculine) Past, to approve of the alteration.

All the time he was negotiating with God he was gradually coming back to his observation post. Thérèse was unforgettable, not even while he was praying was he altogether free of her. She snored in spasms which regulated the rhythm of his prayer. Little by little her movements grew more violent; there was not a doubt of it, she would soon wake up. He compared her to God, and found her wanting. It was just precisely in the Past where she was wanting. She was descended from no one, nor did she know whence she came. Pitiful godless carcass ! And Kien considered whether it might not be wisest to go to sleep again. She might then wait until he woke up, and her initialfury at his arbitrary reappearance at his writing desk would have evaporated in the meantime.

At that moment Thérèse with a powerful movement threw her whole body off the bed and on to the floor. There was a loud crash. Kien trembled in every bone. Whither now? She has seen him! She is coming for him! She will kill him! He searches all time for a hiding place. He tears through history, up and down the centuries. The strongest castles fall before gunpowder. Knights in armour? Absurd — Swiss morning-stars — English muskets — burst armour and skulls asunder. The Swiss are wiped out at Marignane Not Landsknechts at any price — not mercenaries — the first army of fanatics — Gustavus Adolphus — Cromwell — will mow us all down. Back from the Renaissance, back from the Middle Ages — back to the Greek Phalanx — the Romans break it open — Indian elephants — fiery javelins — the chivalry panics — whither — on ship-board — Greek fire — to America — Mexico — human sacrifice — they will slaughter us — China, China — Mongols — pyramids of skulls: in half a second he has exhausted his entire treasury of history. Nothing is safe, everything collapses, wherever you creep to, the enemy will drag you out, houses of cards, beloved civilizations fall, prey to barbaric robbers, empty-headed, wooden-headed.