Act of Passion Read Free Page B

most natural way in the world.
    'Are you staying at a hotel?'
    I had told her that I was from the Vendee but was studying at Nantes.
    'No, at my aunt's, Rue Saint-Jean ...'
    And then: 'I live quite near the Rue Saint-Jean. Only we must not make a noise. My landlady would put us out.'
    We passed in front of my uncle's china shop with its closed shutters, where one sensed a faint glimmer through the glass part of the door, for the room behind the shop was their living-room. My uncle and aunt were waiting up for me. I had no latchkey.
    We passed in front of the fishing-tackle shop and I drew my companion down the quiet dark street as far as the first doorstep. You understand why? But when we got there she said: 'Wait till we get to my place ...'
    That is all, your Honour, and telling it I notice that it is ridiculous. She took a key out of her bag. She put a finger on her lips. She whispered in my ear: 'Careful on the stairs...'
    She led me by the hand along a dark hall. We went up a flight of stairs with creaking boards, and on the first landing we saw a light round the crack of the door.
    'Sh ...'
    It was the landlady's room. Sylvia's was next to it. A sordid and rather unsavoury smell floated through the house. There was no electricity and she lit a gas lamp whose light hurt my eyes.
    Still whispering, she said before going behind a flowered chintz curtain: I'll be back at once...'
    And I can still see the combs on the stand she used as a dressing-table, the cheap mirror, the bed with a couch cover spread over it.
    That's all and it's not all, your Honour. It is all because nothing happened that was not perfectly commonplace. It is not all, because for the first time I was hungry for a life other than my own.
    I had no idea who she was or where she came from. I imagined vaguely what kind of a life she led, and felt sure that I was not the first to climb the creaking stairs on tiptoe.
    But what difference did it make. She was a woman and I was a man. We were two human beings whispering in that room, in that bed, with the landlady asleep on the other side of the thin wall. Outside it was raining. Outside, from time to time, there were footsteps on the wet pavement, nocturnal voices in the watery air.
    My aunt and uncle were waiting for me in the room behind the shop and must have been getting worried.
    There was a moment, your Honour, when, with my head between her breasts, I began to cry.
    I didn't know why. Do I know today? I began to cry from happiness and from despair, both at the same time.
    I held her, simple and relaxed, there in my arms. I remember that she stroked my forehead absently as she stared at the ceiling. I should have liked...
    And that is what I could not express, what I still cannot express now. Caen, at that moment, represented the whole world. It was there behind the window-panes, behind the wall that hid the sleeping landlady.
    All that was the mystery, was the enemy.
    But we were two. Two people who didn't know each other. Who had no common interests. Two people whom chance had hastily brought together for a moment.
    She was perhaps the first woman I ever loved. For a few hours she gave me the sensation of infinity.
    She was commonplace, simple and kind. At the Brasserie Chandivert, I had taken her for a young girl waiting for her parents; then for a young wife waiting for her husband.
    But, there we were in the same bed, flesh to flesh, doors and windows closed, and there was no one else in the world but the two of us.
    I fell asleep. I awoke at dawn and she was breathing peacefully, confidingly, her two breasts uncovered. I was seized with panic on account of my aunt and uncle. I got out of bed without making a sound and I didn't know what I should do, whether to leave money on the dressing-table or not.
    I did it shamefacedly. I had my back to her. When I turned round, she was looking at me, and she said softly: 'You'll come back?'
    Then: 'Be careful not to wake my landlady ..
    Stupid, isn't it? It