The Enchanter Read Free Page B

and may even stay here for good, and by that time I’ll be a welcome guest.… But if the woman has less than a year to live (according to the hints I was given), then everything goes down the drain.… I must say she doesn’t look too decrepit to me, but if she does take to her bed and die, then the setting and the circumstances for a potentially jovial relationship will crumble, then it will all be over—how would I find her, under what pretext?… Nevertheless, he felt instinctively that this was the way to proceed: don’t think too much, keep the pressure on the weak corner of the board.
    Therefore, next day he set out for the park with an attractive box of marrons glacés and sugar violets as a going-away present for the girl. Reason told him that it was a silly cliché, that this was a particularly dangerous moment to single her out for overt attention, even from an uninhibited eccentric, especially since so far he had—quite rightly—paid hardly any attention to her (he was a past master at dissimulating lightning bolts)—not like one of your putrid oldsters who always carry some candy to lure the lasses—and still he minced along with his present, in response to a secret impulse that was more accurate than reason.
    He spent a whole hour on the bench, but they did not come. Must have left a day early. And, although one moreencounter with her could in no way have alleviated the very special burden that had accumulated during the past week, he experienced the burning chagrin of a betrayed lover.
    Continuing to ignore the voice of reason that told him he was again doing the wrong thing, he rushed over to the widow’s and bought the lamp. Noticing his odd shortness of breath, she invited him to sit down and offered him a cigarette. In his search for a lighter he came upon the oblong box and said, like a character in a book:
    “It may seem odd to you, since we’ve known each other for such a short time, but still allow me to present you with this trifle—a little candy, not bad candy, I think—if you accept, it will give me great pleasure.”
    She smiled for the first time—apparently she was more flattered than surprised—and explained that all the sweets of life were forbidden to her, and that she would give it to her daughter.
    “Oh—I thought they had already—”
    “No, tomorrow morning,” the widow resumed, fingering the gold ribbon not without regret. “Today, my friend, who spoils her dreadfully, took her to a needlework exhibit.” She sighed, and gingerly, as if it were something fragile, set the gift on a nearby side table, while her exceedingly charming guest inquired what she was and was not allowed, and listened to the epic of her malady, referring to the variants and interpreting with great acuity the most recent distortions of the text.

 
    B Y THE THIRD VISIT (he had dropped by to inform her that the mover could come no earlier than Friday) he had tea with her and, in his turn, told her about himself and about his limpid, elegant profession. They turned out to have a common acquaintance, the brother of an attorney who had died the same year as her husband. Objectively and without insincere regrets she discussed the husband, about whom he already knew certain things: he had been a bon vivant and an expert on notarial matters; he had gotten on well with his wife, but had tried to spend as little time as possible at home.
    On Thursday he bought the couch and two chairs, and on Saturday he called for her as agreed to take her for a quiet stroll in the park. However, she was feeling rotten, was in bed with a hot-water bottle, and spoke to him in a singsong through the door. He asked the gloomy crone who periodically appeared to cook and nurse to let him know at such-and-such a number how the patient had spent the night.
    In this fashion a few more busy weeks elapsed, weeks of murmuring, exploration, persuasion, intensive remolding of another’s pliable solitude. Now he was moving toward a