Children of the Albatross Read Free

image the orphans wished to fashion of
him.
    He could pass for the tall man, the
brown-haired man, the blond man; given a little leeway, he answered all the
descriptions of gypsy card readers.
    An added piquancy was attained by the common
knowledge that he was the favorite of the Directress, who was verue role gah
hated. In winning his favor, one struck indirect blows at her authority, and
achieved a subtle revenge for her severity.
    The girls thought of him as possessing an even
greater power than hers, for she who submitted to no one, had often been seen
bowing her head before his reproaches.
    The one he chose felt endowed immediately with
greater beauty, greater charm and power than the other girls. He was appointed
the arbiter, the connoisseur, the bestower of decorations.
    To be chosen by the Watchman was to enter the
realm of protection. No girl could resist this.
    Djuna could distinguish his steps at a great distance.
It seemed to her that he walked more evenly than anyone she knew, evenly and
without stops or change of rhythm. He advanced through the hallways inexorably.
Other people could be stopped, or eluded. But his steps were those of absolute
authority.
    He knew at what time Djuna would be passing
through this particular hallway alone. He always came up to her, not a yard
away, but exactly beside her.
    His glance was always leveled at her breasts,
and two things would happen simultaneously: he would offer her a present
without looking at her face, as if he were offering it to her breasts, and then
he would whisper: “Tonight I will let you out if you are good to me.”
    And Djuna would think of the boy who passed by
under her window, and feel a wild beating of her heart at the possibility of
meeting him outside, of talking to him, and her longing for the boy, for the
warm liquid tenderness of his eyes was so violent that no sacrifice seemed too
great—her longing and her feeling that if he knew of this scene, he would
rescue her, but that there was no other way to reach him, no other way to
defeat authority to reach him than by this concession to authority.
    In this barter there was no question of
rebellion. The way the Watchman stood, demanded, gestured, was all part of a
will she did not even question, a continuation of the will of the father. There
was the man who demanded, and outside was the gentle boy who demanded nothing,
and to whom she wanted to give everything, whose silence even, she trusted,
whose way of walking she trusted with her entire heart, while this man she did
not trust.
    It was the droit du seigneur.
    She slipped the Watchman’s bracelet around the
lusterless cotton of her dress, while he said: “The poorer the dress the more
wonderful your skin looks, Djuna.”
    Years later when Djuna thought the figure of
the Watchman was long since lost she would hear echoes of his heavy step and
she would find herself in the same mood she had experienced so many times in
his presence.
    No longer a child, and yet many times she still
had the feeling that she might be overpowered by a will stronger than her own,
might be trapped, might be somehow unable to free herself, unable to escape the
demands of man upon her.
    Her first defet at the hands of man the father
had caused her such a conviction of helplessness before tyranny that although
she realized that she was now in reality no longer helpless, the echo of this
helplessness was so strong that she still dreaded the possessiveness and
willfulness of older men. They benefited from this regression into her past,
and could override her strength merely because of this conviction of unequal
power.
    It was as if maturity did not develop
altogether and completely, but by little compartments like the airtight
sections of a ship. A part of her being would mature, such as her insight, or
interpretative faculties, but another could retain a childhood conviction that
events, man and authority together were stronger than one’s capacity for
mastering them, and