The Thibaults (90 page)

“Not many women here,” Antoine observed. “The ones there are, are mostly youngish. And relegated to a secondary plane; merely bedmates.”

A discussion had sprung up between two groups of students, who were hurling the firebrand names of Jaurès and Péguy from one table to the other with noisy truculence.

A young, blue-jowled Jew had sat down between the youth reading
The Rights of Man
and the yawning girl; she no longer seemed bored.

With an effort Antoine started reading again. He had lost his place. Turning the pages, he lit on the closing lines of “
La Sorellina
.”

Here life and love are impossible. Goodbye.

Lure of the unknown, lure of a wholly new tomorrow, ecstasy. The past forgotten, take to the open road.

The first train to Rome. Rome, the first train to Genoa. Genoa, the first liner. . . .

No more was needed to rekindle Antoine’s interest. “Slowly now!” he adjured himself. “Jacques’s secret is hidden somewhere in these pages, and I’ve got to find it.” He must go right through the story, paragraph by paragraph, carefully, composedly.

He turned back and, propping his forehead on his hands, setded down to work.

He began with the homecoming of Annetta, Giuseppe’s foster-sister, from the Swiss convent where she was completing her education.

A little changed, Annetta. Before, the servants used to boast of her.
E una vera napoletana
. Plump shoulders. Dusky skin. Fleshy lips. Eyes that flashed into laughter on the least pretext.

Why had he dragged Gise into this story? Moreover, from the first scene between brother and foster-sister, Antoine began to feel a certain discomfort.

Giuseppe had gone to meet Annetta; they were driving back to the Palazzo Seregno.

The sun has dipped behind the summits. The antiquated barouche rocks under the shaky hood. Shadows. Sudden coolth.

Annetta, chatterbox Annetta. She slips her arm through Giuseppe’s. And prattles away. He laughs. How alone he was—till just now! Sybil does not dispel his loneliness. Sybil, a dark, deep, ever-translucent lake, blinding depths of purity.

The landscape tightens round the old barouche. Dusk closing in. Nightfall.

Annetta snuggles up, as in the past. A hurried kiss. Warm, supple, dust-roughened lips. As in the past. In the convent, too, laughter, chatter, kisses. In love with Sybil, what warm, sweet comfort he finds in the
sorellina’s
caresses! He gives her kiss for kiss. Anywhere, on her eyes, on her hair. Noisy, brotherly kisses. The driver laughs. She prattles on. At the convent, you know … oh, those exams! Giuseppe, too; of anything and everything: their father, next autumn, plans for the future. But keeps one thing to himself; not a word about the Powells. Annetta is religious. In her bedroom, six candles burn at the Madonna’s shrine. The Jews crucified Christ; they did not know He was the Son of God. But the heretics knew. They denied the Truth wilfully, through pride.

During their father’s absence, the two young people settle down together at the Palazzo Seregno. Some passages were painful reading for Antoine from the first word to the last.

Next morning Annetta runs in while Giuseppe is still in bed. Yes, now he notices, she has changed a little. Her eyes are still as large and pure as in the past, and full of a vague wonder, but a new glow is in them; the least thing might blur their serenity for ever. Warm, yielding flesh. She has come straight from her bed. Her hair all rumpled; a child she is, no coquetry. As in the past. Already she has fished out of her boxes her “souvenirs” of Switzerland. “Just look at this—and this!” Gleams of white, well-formed teeth behind the fluttering lips. Telling about her fall, out skiing. A spike of rock pierced her knee. Look, the mark’s not gone! Under the dressing-gown, the smooth curve of her leg, her thigh; warm naked flesh. She strokes the scar, a white patch on the warm brown skin. Absentmindedly. She loves fondling herself; dotes on her mirror every morning, every night, smiling to her body. Now she is chattering again. All sorts of memories. Riding-lessons. “I’d like to go out riding with you—in my riding costume; we’d have gallops along the beach.” Still stroking her leg. Crooking, straightening her knee; ripple of silken skin. Giuseppe’s eyelids flutter, he lies back in bed. At last the dressing-gown falls back. She runs to the window. Sunbeams romping on the Bay. “Lazybones, it’s nine! Let’s go for a swim!”

For several days they see each other thus, each morning. Giuseppe shares his time between his
sorellina
and the sphinx-like English girl.

Antoine skimmed the pages rapidly. Then one day when Giuseppe has come to take Sybil for a boating expedition in the Bay, a scene, seemingly decisive, takes place between them. Overcoming his distaste for the insufferable lushness of the writing, Antoine read almost every word of it.

Sybil under the pergola, on the edge of the sunlight. Lost in dreams. Her hand resting on a white pillar, in the light. Waiting for him? “I expected you yesterday.” “I stayed with Annetta.” “Why don’t you bring her here?” Her tone displeased Giuseppe.

A few lines further on.

Giuseppe stops rowing. Round them the air grows still. Winged silence. The bay is all quicksilver. Sheen. Water-music. Ripples lapping against the boat. “What are you thinking about?” “And you?” Silence. A change in their voices. “I’m thinking of you, Sybil.” “And I am thinking of you, Giuseppe.” He is trembling. “For all our lives, Sybil?” Yes, her head droops. He sees her lips part with a painful effort, her hand dasp the gunwale. A silent pledge, almost a regret. The sea ablaze in the. flaming noon. Dazzling effulgence. Heat. Immobility. Time and life halted, in suspense. Unbearable oppression. Then a sudden flight of gulls brings life back to the listless air. They soar and dive and skim the sea, dip their beaks, and soar again. Gleams of sun-bright wings, clash of swords. “We are thinking about the same things, Sybil.”

Actually Jacques had seen a great deal of the Fontanins that summer. Antoine began to wonder if the explanation of his flight might not be the failure of his love-affair with Jenny.

Some pages further on, the action began, it seemed, to move more quickly.

Among descriptions of everyday events that recalled to Antoine the life Jacques and Gise had led at Maisons, he followed the disturbing trend of the affection between Giuseppe and Annetta. Did the young people realize the nature of their intimacy? As for Annetta, all she knew was that the whole set of her being drew her towards Giuseppe; but so simple was her faith, so entire her innocence, that she lent her feelings the colour of a harmless, sisterly devotion. For Giuseppe, the love he confessedly had for Sybil seemed at first to absorb his thoughts, blinding him to the nature of the physical attraction Annetta exercised on him. The question was, how long would he be able to keep up this self-deception?

Late one afternoon Giuseppe made a suggestion to the
sorellina
.

“What do you say to a stroll, now it’s getting cooler, then dinner at a country inn, and a good long tramp afterwards, till it’s dark?” She claps her hands. “Oh, Beppino, I do love you so when you’re cheerful!”

Had Giuseppe laid his plans in advance? After a makeshift meal in a fishing village, he led the girl along paths she did not know.

He is walking quickly. Along the stony paths between the lemon-groves which he had trod a hundred times with Sybil. Annetta grows anxious. “Sure you know the road?” He turns left. The path slopes down. An old well, a low, curved gateway. Giuseppe stops. “Now come and see,” he laughs. She moves forward, unsuspecting. He pushes the door open, a bell tinkles. “What on earth are you doing?” Laughing, he draws her into the black garden. Under the firs. She is frightened, puzzled.

She steps into Villa Lunadoro.

That low, curved gateway, the tinkling bell, the fir-grove; Antoine recognized each detail, unmistakably.

Mrs. Powell and Sybil are in the pergola. “May I introduce my sister Annetta?” They give her a seat, question her, make much of her. Annetta fancies she is dreaming. The white-haired lady’s welcome, her smile. “Come with me, my dear; I want to give you some of our roses.” Vaulted shadows of the rose-garden, drenching the air with heady fragrance.

Sybil and Giuseppe are alone now. Should he take her hand? She would only shrink away. That steely reserve of hers is stronger than her will, than her love. He thinks: How hard it is for her to let herself be loved!

Mrs. Powell has picked the roses for Annetta. Small, close-set crimson roses, without spines; crimson petals with black hearts. “You must come again, dear; Sybil has so few friends, you know.” Annetta fancies she is dreaming. Are these people the “gang of heretics”? Is it possible she once feared them like the plague?

Antoine skipped a page and came to the description of Annetta and Giuseppe’s walk home.

The moon is veiled. The darkness deeper. Annetta feels light, buoyed on wings. She lets the full weight of her young body hang on Giuseppe’s arm; Giuseppe guides her through the darkness, his head high, heart far away, lost in a dream. Shall he tell her his secret? Why not? He bends over her. “It’s not only for Will’s sake, you know, that I go to see them.”

His face is hidden in shadows, but she hears the low intensity of his tone. “Not only for Will’s sake!” Wildfire racing through her veins. She had never dreamt „ . . Sybil, then? Sybil and Giuseppe …? Choking, she breaks loose, tries to escape, stricken, barbed death in her flanks. No strength. A few steps more. Her teeth are chattering. She goes limp, stumbles, drops back onto the grass under the tall lime-trees.

Uncomprehending, he kneels beside her. What is wrong? But then her arms shoot up like tentacles. And now—-he understands. She winds her arms around him, clings desperately, sobs. “Giuseppe! Oh, Giuseppe!”

The love-cry. He has never heard it. Never before. Sybil, cloistered in her secrecy. Her alien blood. And pressed to him now a young, sensuous body, aching with regret, yielding, yearning. Thoughts dance through his brain, memories of childhood, the love they bore each other, the trust and tenderness; how can he not love her? She is of his own kind; he must comfort her, make her well. Flowing round him, clinging, the soft warmth of a living body, fluent limbs. Then a sudden wave sweeping all before it, drowning consciousness. In his nostrils a new, yet familiar fragrance of loosened hair; under his lips a tear-drenched face, throbbing mouth. All love’s accomplices: darkness, perfumes, ungovernable ecstasy, a fever of the blood. On the moist lips he presses his mouth’s kiss; on the half-parted lips, awaiting they know not what, a lover’s kiss. She gives herself to his caress, does not return it yet, but only yields, surrenders, offers her mouth again and again. Floods of longing surge up from their hearts, meet and clash as the wet lips cling together. Bitter yearning … sweetness. Mingled breaths, limbs, desires. Overhead the green darkness eddies, the stars go out. Clothes scattered, disarrayed, all resistance gone, all barriers falling, close, closer, flesh to flesh surrendering, a thrill of sweet pain, consummate, ah, consummate joy… .

Ah! A single sigh, and time stands still.

The silence throbs with echoes, blurred sounds. Elemental fear. Arrested movement. The man’s face, panting, pillowed on the young breast; thud of racing heart-beats, two separate rhythms, unconsonant, irreconcilable.

Then suddenly a questing moonray, a prying, callous eye, flicks them like a whiplash, tears them apart.

Abruptly they stand up. Bewildered, lost. Tormented lips. Shuddering, but not with shame; with joy, with joy and wonder. With joy and new desire. In a litde grassy hollow the bunch of crimson roses sheds its petals under the moon. Annetta makes a romantic gesture, picks up the roses, shakes them. A cloud of petals flutters down over the crushed grass, which bears the imprint of a single body.

Antoine was profoundly shocked, quivering with disgust. Unthinkable that Gise should have acted thus!

And yet—! Everything rang so precisely true—not only such details as the old wall, the rose-garden, the gate-bell. At the moment when they sank onto the grass, locked in an embrace, the mask of fiction fell. That was no stony path in Italy, nor were the shadows those of lemon-trees. No, that was unmistakably the rank grass of Maisons, which Antoine was recalling now only too clearly; and the trees were the centenarian lime-trees of the green avenue. Yes, Jacques must have taken Gisèle to the Fontanins’, and on such a summer night, on the way back … Simpleton—to have lived beside them, so close to Gisèle, and to have guessed nothing or: it all! … And yet—no, Antoine did not believe; in his inmost heart he could not bring himself to admit that that chaste, elusive little Gise could shelter such a secret.

Still, there were so many pointers, the crimson roses for instance. Now he understood Gisèle’s emotion when she received that anoaymous box from a London florist and why, on the strength of what seemed so slender a clue, she had pressed him to have inquiries made immediately in England. Obviously she alone had read the message of those crimson roses sent a year, to the very day perhaps, after the love-scene under the lime-trees.

So Jacques must have stayed in London. Perhaps in Italy, too. And Switzerland. Could he be still in England? He might very easily contribute to a Genevan review, while living there.

Then, of a sudden, other facts that had baffled him grew clear, as if screening shadows were withdrawing from a nucleus of light. Gisèle’s departure, her insistence on being sent to that English convent. Obviously it had been in order to trace Jacques. And now Antoine reproached himself for not having followed up, after his first failure, the clue provided by the London florist.

He tried to set his data in order, but in vain; too many theories— too many memories, as well—kept cropping up. He was coming to see the whole past in a new light. How easy now it was to understand Gise’s despair when Jacques disappeared! He had never suspected all the implications of her grief, though he had done his best to allay it. He remembered how sorry he had been for her then; indeed it was out of his sympathy that another feeling for her had been born.