A STEP TOWARDS GOMORRAH -- by Ingeborg Bachmann

Ingeborg Bachmann

A Step Towards Gomorrah

The last guests had left. Only the girl in the black sweater and red skirt was still sitting there, had not got up with the others. She’s drunk, thought Charlotte, as she came back into the room, she wants to me alone, perhaps she has something to tell me, and I’m dead tired. She shut the door in which she had been hesitantly standing to give the last guest a chance to notice that it was open, and picked up from the sideboard an ashtray over whose edge little films of ash trickled. In the room: the disarranged chairs, a crumpled table napkin on the floor, the hazy air, the devastation, the emptiness after the onslaught. She felt sick. She was still holding a burning cigarette in her hand and tried to stub it out in the pile of stumps and ashes. Now it was smouldering. She blinked across at the armchair in the corner, at the dangling hair wit hits reddish glint, at the red skirt which, spread out like a bullfighter’s cape, fell over the girl’s legs and in a semicircle covered feet, carpet and chair and trailed on the floor. More than the girl herself, she saw all these many clashing red tones in the room: the light that had to pass through a red shade with a flickering pillar of dust in front of it; a row of red book backs behind it on a shelf; the rumpled, wild skirt and the duller red hair. Just for a moment everything was as it could never be again—just for once the world was in red.

The girl's eyes became part of it, two moist, dark, drunken objects that met the woman's eyes.

Charlotte thought to herself: I'll say I feel ill and must go to bed. I have only to bring out this one polite, appropriate sentence to make her go. She must go. Why doesn't she go? I'm tired out. Why do guests never leave? Why didn't she leave with the others?

But the moment was past, she had stood there silent for too long; she walked quietly on into the kitchen, cleaned the ashtrays, quickly washed her face, washed away the long evening, all the smiling, the attentiveness, the strain of having eyes everywhere. Before her eyes there remained the wide skirt with its red death for which the big drums should have been beaten.

She's going to tell me a story. Why me? She is staying because she wants to talk to me. She has no money or can't settle down in Vienna, comes from down south, a Slovene, half Slovene, from the border, anyhow from the south, her name sounds like that too, Mara. There must be something, a request, a story, some story with which she wants to cheat me of my sleep. Of course she must be alone too much in Vienna or she has got mixed up in some affair or other. I must ask Franz about this girl tomorrow.

Tomorrow!

Charlotte started, quickly memorized her duties: meet Franz at the station tomorrow morning, set the alarm, be fresh, rested, give the impression of being pleased. There was no more time to lose. She quickly filled two glasses with mineral water and carried them into the room, handed one to the girl, who drank it in silence and then, as she put away the glass, said brusquely: 'So he's coming back tomorrow.'

'Yes,' said Charlotte. Offended too late, she added: 'Who?' —It was too late.

'He goes away often. So you're alone a lot.'

'Sometimes, not often. You know that.'

'Do you want me to go?'

'No,' said Charlotte.

'I had the feeling that the man who talked such a lot would also have liked to say...'

'No,' said Charlotte.

'I had the feeling...' Mara screwed up her mouth.

Charlotte was angry, but she still answered politely: 'No, definitely not.' She stood up. 'I'll make us some coffee. And then I'll call a taxi.'

Now she had managed to get out the sentence, she had solid ground under her feet again, had indicated to the girl that she would pay for the taxi, and above all she had shown that she objected to her remark.

Mara jumped up and grabbed Charlotte's arm.

'No,' she said, 'I don't want that. You've been into the kitchen often enough tonight. We can have a coffee out. Come on. Let's go away, far away. I know a bar. We'll go, shall we?' Charlotte freed her arm and, without a word, went to fetch their coats. She pushed the girl out through the door. She felt relieved. In the stair-well, which was dark and only faintly lit at every bend by the lamp in the courtyard, Mara's hand came towards her, grasping at her arm again.

She was afraid the girl might fall, and simultaneously pulled and supported her till they were down below and had reached the gate.

The Franziskanerplatz lay quiet like a village square. The splashing of the fountain, quiet. One would have liked to smell woods and meadows nearby, to have looked up at the moon, at the sky that had become dense and midnight-blue again after a noisy day. There was no one about in the Weihburgstrasse. They walked quickly up to the Kärntner Strasse, and suddenly Mara took Charlotte's hand again, like a timid child. They held hands and walked even faster, as though they were being followed. Mara began to run and finally they ran like two schoolgirls, as though there were no other way of moving. Mara's bracelets clinked, and one pressed into Charlotte's wrist and hurt her, drove her on.

Seized with uncertainty, Charlotte looked round the airless and hot front room of the bar. Mara held open the door to the inner room. Again everything was red. Now the walls were red too, the red of hell, the chairs and the tables, the lights that were waiting like traffic lights to be released from duty by the green light of morning and were now holding up the night and trying to detain people in it, in smoke, in intoxication. But because they had not been arranged by chance, these red tones had a weaker effect than the first set of reds earlier on, they also weakened the memory of those earlier reds, and Mara's hair and her wide skirt were swallowed up in the gaping jaws of red.

People were drinking and dancing without pleasure; nevertheless Charlotte had the feeling that she had found her way into a room of hell, to be burned and made to suffer by tortures as yet unknown to her. The music, the din of voices tormented her, because she had ventured away from her own world without permission and feared to be discovered and seen by someone who knew her. With her head bent, she walked behind Mara to the table to which the waiter ushered them, a long table at which two men in dark suits were already sitting and, farther away, a young couple who did not look up for an instant, who were touching one another with the tips of their fingers. Round about them the dancers flowed and, as though sliding off the planks of a sinking ship, pressed against the table, stamped on the floor, on which the table also seemed to be precariously poised, as though they wanted to descend into the depths. Everything swayed, smoked, fumed in the red light. Everything wanted to descend into the depths, to go down deeper entangled in noise, to sink deeper without pleasure.

Charlotte ordered coffee and wine. When she looked up again Mara had stood up and started to dance a yard away from her. At first she seemed to be alone, but then the man who was dancing with her came into view, a heated, thin boy, an apprentice or student, who jerked his hips and legs, also dancing on his own and only occasionally grasping Mara's hands or taking her briefly in his arms, before pushing her away again and leaving her to her own inventive movements. Mara turned her face to Charlotte, smiled, turned away, threw her hair up with her hand. Once she jigged quite close up to Charlotte and bent down gracefully.

'You don't mind?'

Charlotte nodded stiffly. She turned away, drank in little sips; she didn't want to put the girl off by watching her. A man came up behind her chair and invited her to dance. She shook her head. She stuck to her chair, and her tongue, already dry again, stuck fast in her mouth. She wanted to get up and leave secretly when Mara wasn't looking. But she didn't leave because—though she didn't know this clearly until later—she didn't for a moment have the feeling that Mara was dancing for the sake of dancing, or that she wanted to dance with anybody here or to stay here or to enjoy herself. Because she kept looking across and was obviously performing her dance only so that Charlotte should watch. She drew her arms through the air and her body through space as though through water, she was swimming and displaying herself, and Charlotte, finally compelled to give her gaze an unmistakable direction, followed her every movement.

End of the music. A breathless, radiant Mara who sat down and reached for Charlotte's hand. Enlaced hands. Whispering. 'Are you angry?' Headshake. A great dullness. To be able to get up now and go, to break free from these little burr-like hands. Charlotte freed her left hand with a jerk, reached for the wine glass and drank. The wine didn't come to an end either, no matter how much she drank. Time didn't come to an end; these looks, these hands didn't come to an end. The two men at the table turned to Mara, whispered with her, laughed at her in a friendly way.

'Shall we make a bridge, Fräulein?'

Mara raised her hands, played with the men's hands a brief game that Charlotte did not know.

'No, no bridge, no bridge!' she cried laughingly, turning her back on the men as suddenly as she had started to play with them and, returning home, plunged her hands under Charlotte's hands that were lying white and cold side by side on the table.

'Ah, the ladies want to be left to themselves,' said one of the men smiling good-naturedly at his friend. Charlotte closed her eyes. She felt the pressure of Mara's hard fingers and returned it, without knowing why and without wishing to. Yes, that was how it was. That was it. She came slowly to herself again, kept her eyes fixed unwaveringly on the table top in front of her and did not move. She didn't want ever to move again. She didn't care now whether they left or stayed, whether she would feel rested by morning or not, whether this music went on, anybody spoke to her, anybody recognized her...

'Charlotte, say something! Charlotte... don't you like it here? Don't you ever go dancing, ever go out drinking?... Say something!

Silence.

'Say something. Laugh a bit. Can you stand it up there in your place? I couldn't stand it, wandering round alone, sleeping alone, alone at night and working during the day, always practising... Oh, Charlotte, that's terrible. Nobody can stand that!'

Charlotte said with an effort: 'Let's go.'

She was afraid of bursting into tears.

When they were out in the street she couldn't find the sentence that had saved her once already. Earlier the sentence had been possible: I'll call a taxi for you... But now she would have had to add 'Mara' to the sentence. She couldn't do that. They walked slowly back. Charlotte put her hands in her coat pockets. At least Mara shouldn't have her hand any more.

This time Mara found the stairs in the Franziskanerplatz without help, without question in the darkness. She went in front, as though she had often been up and down these stairs. Charlotte inserted the key in the lock and stopped. It could no longer be 'our apartment' if she really opened the door now, didn't push Mara down the stairs. I ought to push her down the stairs, thought Charlotte, turning the key.

Inside, next instant, Mara twined her arms round her neck, hung on her like a child. A small, touching body hung itself on hers, which all at once seemed to her bigger and stronger than usual. Charlotte freed herself with a quick movement, stretched out her arm and switched on the light.

They sat down in the room, as they had sat before, and smoked.

'That's madness, you're mad,' said Charlotte, 'how can you possibly...?' She stopped, didn't go on speaking, she felt so ridiculous. She smoked and thought that this night would never come to an end, that this night was only just beginning and was perhaps endless.

Perhaps Mara would now stay there for ever and ever and ever, and she herself would now have to ponder for ever what she had done or said to be to blame for Mara being there and staying there.

When she looked helplessly across at the girl she noticed that tears were flowing from Mara's eyes.

'Don't cry. Please don't cry.'

'You don't want me. Nobody wants me.'

'Please don't cry. You're very sweet, very beautiful, but...'

'Why don't you want me? Why?' Fresh tears.

'I can't.'

'You don't want to. Why? Just tell me why you don't like me, then I'll go!' Mara slowly tipped out of the chair, came to rest on her knees and laid her head in Charlotte's lap. 'Then I'll go, then you'll be rid of me.'

Charlotte didn't move, as she smoked she looked down at the girl, studied every feature of her face, every expression that passed over it. She looked at her very long and very closely.

That was madness. She had neve... Once, during her schooldays, when she had to take the exercise books to the history mistress in the staff room and there was no one else in the room, the mistress had stood up, put her arm round her and kissed her on the forehead. 'Dear girl.' Then Charlotte, scared because the mistress was normally so strict, had turned round and run out of the door. Long afterwards she had felt pursued by the two tender words. From that day on she was tested even more stringently than the others and her marks became even worse. But she didn't complain to anybody, she put up with the undeserved cold treatment; she had realized that this tenderness could only be followed by this harshness.

Charlotte thought to herself: but how can I touch Mara? She is made of the same stuff that I am made of. And she thought sadly of Franz, who was on his way to her; his train must already be at the frontier, and no one could now prevent him from travelling on, no one could warn Franz against coming back to a place where 'our apartment' no longer existed. Or did it still exist? Everything was still standing there in its place, the key had opened the door, and if Mara now disappeared by a miracle or simply changed her mind and left after all, then tomorrow everything would seem like a phantasm, it would become as though it had never been.

'Please be sensible. I've got to have some sleep, I have to get up early tomorrow.'

'I'm not sensible. Oh darling, beautiful darling, and you're only lying to me a little, aren't you?'

'Why? What do you mean?' Charlotte, sleepy, dizzy with smoke, empty, could no longer grasp anything. Her thoughts were still tramping to and fro like watchmen in her head, listening to the hostile words, they were on the lookout but couldn't raise the alarm, prepare for defence. 'You're lying! Oh, how you're lying!' 'I don't know what you're talking about. Why should I lie, and what do you take for a lie anyway?'

'You're lying. You called me, you made me come to you, you took me with you again in the night, and now I disgust you, now you don't want to admit that you called me to you!'

'You think I...'

'Didn't you invite me? What did that mean?'

Charlotte wept. She could no longer restrain the tears that came so suddenly. 'I invite lots of people.'

'You're lying.'

Mara's wet face, still wet while she was already starting to laugh, was pressed against Charlotte's, tender, warm, and their two streams of tears mingled. The kisses which the litde mouth gave, the curls that were shaken over Charlotte, the little head that came up against her head—it was all so much smaller, more fragile, more insignificant than any head, any hair, any kisses that had ever come over Charlotte. She searched in her feelings for instructions, in her hands for an instinct, in her head for an announcement. She remained without instructions.

As a child, carried away by emotion, Charlotte had often kissed her cat on its little nose, the damp, cool, tender little object round which everything was so soft and strange—a strange region for kisses. The girl's lips were similarly moist, tender, unfamiliar. Charlotte couldn't help thinking of the cat and had to clench her teeth. And at the same time she tried to note what these unfamiliar lips felt like.

So that was what her own lips were like, this was how they met a man, thin, almost unresisting, almost without muscles—a little muzzle, not to be taken seriously.

'Just kiss me once,' begged Mara. 'Just once.'

Charlotte looked at her wrist-watch; she suddenly felt an urge to look at her watch, and she wanted Mara to notice.

'What time is it?' A new note was in the girl's voice, a kind of malicious, rebellious note such as Charlotte had never heard before.

'Tour o'clock' she said drily.

'I'm staying. Do you hear? I'm staying.' Again the undertone, threatening, vicious. But had she herself not also once said to somebody: I'm staying? She hoped fervently that she had never said it in that tone.

'In case you haven't grasped it yet, there's no point in your staying. And at six o'clock our home help comes.' She too must be malicious now, pay Mara back for that tone of hers, she said 'our' and moreover she was lying, because she had told the woman to come at nine.

Mara's eyes blazed. 'Don't say that, oh Charlotte, don't say that! You're mean, so mean. If you knew what you're doing to me... Do you think I shall let you go to the station and come back with him! Is he a good lover? Well, is he?'

Charlotte said nothing; she was so exasperated that she couldn't utter a word.

'Do you love him? No? People say... oh, people say all sorts of things...' She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. 'Oh, how I hate all that. How I hate Vienna! Hate this studying, these empty chatterers, these men, these women, the academy, everything. Only you, since I first saw you... You must be different. You must. Or you're lying.'

'Who is saying anything? And what?'

'I wouldn't have come, would never have come... I swear to you.'

'But that's...' Charlotte couldn't go on, she stood up reeling. Mara stood up. They stood facing each other. Quite slowly, and as her excitement already began to recede, Mara swept one glass from the table, then the other. She seized a vase and threw it at the wall, because the glasses had rolled on the carpet without a sound, then a casket, out of which shells and stones flew, landed with a crash and rolled over the furniture.

Charlotte sought strength for a great anger, for a scream, for rage, for insults. Her strength had left her. She simply-watched the girl as she destroyed one object after another. The destruction seemed to go on for a long time like a fire, a flood, a demolition. Mara suddenly bent down, picked up two large fragments of the fruit bowl, held them together and said: 'Such a beautiful plate. Forgive me. I'm sure you were fond of the plate. Please forgive me/

Without regret, without any emotion, Charlotte counted the things that had been smashed or damaged. There were only a few, but she would have liked to have counted in everything in the room, so that she could accurately express the real extent of the destruction, which was so much greater; everything might just as well have lain shattered. For she had watched, hadn't raised a finger, had kept quiet at every crash, every splintering.

She bent down and picked up the shells and stones, she pushed the fragments together, walked about bent so that she didn't have to look up and see Mara; then she dropped a few pieces again, as though there were no point in clearing up here. In the continued silence she cowered on the floor. Her feelings, her thoughts jumped off the normal rails, raced without a track into the open. She let them run wild.

She was free. Nothing seemed to her impossible any more. Why should she not begin to live with a creature just like herself?

But now Mara had knelt down beside her, had started speaking. She kept talking to her. 'My beloved, you must forgive me, Charlotte darling, I'm so sorry, I don't know what got into me, Charlotte be kind to me, I'm crazy, crazy for you, I should like, I believe I could....'

Charlotte thought: I can't make out what she's talking about. The language of men at such moments was such that you could hold on to it. I can't listen to Mara, to her words without muscles, these useless little words.

'Listen, Mara, if you want to know the truth. We must try to talk together, really to talk together. Try it.' (I'm sure she doesn't want to know the truth at all, and then there is also the question of how the truth about us is to be put. There are no words for it yet.) 'I can't make out what you're saying. You're talking too vaguely for me. I can't picture how you think. Something in your head must run in the opposite direction from normal.'

'My poor head! You must take pity on it, must stroke it, tell it what to think.'

Charlotte obediently began to stroke Mara's head. Then she stopped. She had heard that once before—not the words, but the intonation. She had often talked like that herself, particularly during the early time with Franz, even before Milan she had lapsed into this intonation, had drawn her voice into frills; he had had to listen to that sing-song full of ignorance, she had chattered to him with a screwed up mouth, the weaker to the stronger, a helpless, ignorant woman addressing him, the one who knew. She had acted out the same weaknesses that Mara was now acting out to her, and had then suddenly held the man in her arms, had blackmailed tenderness from him when he wanted to think about something else, as she was now being blackmailed by Mara, being forced to caress her, to be kind to her, to be clever.

But this time she possessed insight. It didn't take effect on her. Or did it? Perhaps the fact that she understood and saw through the girl, because she suddenly remembered and caught sight of herself, didn't help at all. She merely felt much older all at once, because this creature in front of her was playing the child, was making herself small and her big for her own purposes. She timidly ran her hand through Mara's hair again, would have liked to promise her something. Something sweet, flowers, a night of love or a necklace. Just so that she would at last keep quiet. So that she, Charlotte, could at last get up and think about something else; so that this little bothersome animal should be shooed away. She thought of Franz and she asked herself whether he had sometimes been similarly bothered by her and would have liked to shoo her away, the little animal, so that there should be peace and quiet.

Charlotte stood up because she noticed that the curtains were not drawn. And yet she would have liked to have left the windows lit up, left them open so people could see in. She had nothing to fear. It was time that what counted was what she thought and felt, and no longer what she had been constrained to think and what she had been allowed to live.

If she began to live with Mara.... Then she would enjoy working more, for example. Although she had always liked working, her work had lacked the curse of compulsion, of absolute necessity. Also she needed somebody around her, beside her, beneath her, for whom she not only worked but for whom she was the approach to the world, for whom she set the tone, decided the value of a thing, chose a place.

She looked round the room. The furniture had been chosen by Franz, with the exception of the lamp in the bedroom and a few vases, bagatelles. There wasn't a single piece of her in this flat. It was unthinkable that anything would ever have anything to do with her in a dwelling so long as she was living with a man. After leaving home she had livedfor a year with a student, in a room with dusty silk lampshades, plush chairs and walls plastered all over with posters and cheap reproductions of modern paintings. She would never have dared to change anything in it; it had been his environment. Now she lived in the lucid order that belonged to Franz, and if she were to leave Franz she would go into another order, into old curved chairs or into peasant furniture or into a collection of armour, anyhow into an order that wasn't hers—that wouldn't change. To be exact, she didn't know any longer what she wanted for herself, because there was nothing left to want. Naturally Franz had asked her, every time he bought something: 'Is that all right with you? What do you think? Or would you rather have it in blue?' And she had said what she thought, namely 'Blue'. Or, Td prefer the table lower'. But she could only express a wish when he asked questions. She looked at Mara and smiled. She kicked the table with her toe. It was an act of abuse. She was abusing 'our table'.

She would be able to subjugate Mara, to guide and push her. She would have somebody who would tremble before her concerts, who would hold a warm jacket in readiness when she came out of the concert hall sweating, somebody for whom the only important thing was to take part in her life and for whom she was the measure of all things, somebody for whom it was more important to keep her linen in order, to turn back her bed, than to satisfy another ambition —somebody, above all, for whom it was more important to think with her thoughts than to have a thought of her own.

And she suddenly thought she knew what she had missed all these years and secretly looked for: the long-haired, weak creature on whom one could lean, who would always hold her shoulder ready when one felt disconsolate or exhausted or autocratic, whom one could summon or send away and whom, to be fair, one had to look after, about whom one was anxious and with whom one could be angry. She could never be angry with Franz, could never shout at him the way he sometimes shouted at her. She was never the one who decided. He decided (or they both decided, he would probably have said—but it was he who, without being aware of it, always decided, and she would not have wished it otherwise). Although he loved her independence and her work, her progress delighted him, he consoled her when she couldn't manage both her work and her housework and forgave her a great deal, as much as one could forgive in a partnership, she knew it was not in his nature to allow her the right to an unhappiness of her own, a different loneliness. She shared his unhappiness or pretended to share it; at times they were inseparable in her: hypocrisy, love, friendship. But it wasn't important how much honesty was in her and how much desire to conceal—the important thing was that only she was aware of this problem, that it often preoccupied her but that she had never been able to envisage a solution.

The arrogance to insist on her own unhappiness, her own loneliness, had always been in her, but only now did it venture to emerge; it blossomed, ran wild, smothered her. She was unredeemable and nobody should have the effrontery to redeem her, to know the millennium in which the red-blossoming rods that had grown inseparably entangled would spring apart and leave the path open. Come, sleep, come, thousand years, that I may be awoken by another hand. Come, let me awake when this is no longer valid— man and woman. When this has come to an end!

She mourned Franz like a dead man; he was awake or sleeping now in the train that was bringing him home and he didn't know that he was dead, that everything had been in vain, the subjugation that she herself, rather than he, had carried out, because he couldn't have had any idea what was to be subjugated. He had squandered too much strength on her as it was, had always expended so much consideration and concern on her. Whereas it had always seemed right that she had wanted to live with him, it had always seemed to her sad that he had had to burden himself with her, there was nothing in it for him; she would have wished him a wife who would have cared for and admired him, and he would not have become less on that account, nothing could diminish him—even as it was, her torments could not diminish him, but equally they could not be of any use to him, could not bring him any advantage, because they were of the illegitimate, incorrigible kind. He tackled the situation good-naturedly, he knew that he could have had an easier life, but he enjoyed living with her: she had become just as much of a habit with him as another woman would have done, and, wiser than Charlotte, he had long ago recognized marriage as a state that is stronger than the individuals who enter it, and which therefore also leaves more of a mark upon their partnership than they could have marked or even changed the marriage. However a marriage is conducted—it cannot be conducted arbitrarily, inventively, it cannot tolerate innovation or change, because to enter into marriage already means to enter into its form.

Charlotte was startled by a deep breath which Mara drew and saw that the girl had fallen asleep. She was now alone, watching over that which had become possible. At the moment she had no idea why she had ever been with men and why she had married one. It was too absurd. She laughed to herself and bit her hand to keep herself awake. She had to keep night-watch.

Suppose the old covenant were now rent asunder? She feared the consequences which this rending must have. Soon she would get up, wake Mara, go with her into the bedroom. They would take off their clothes; it would be troublesome, but it was part of it, things had to start like that. It would be a new beginning. But how is one to make oneself naked for the very first time? How is that to happen if one cannot rely on skin and smell, on a curiosity fed by many curiosities? How produce a curiosity for the first time, when nothing has yet preceded it?

She had often before stood in front of a woman half-naked or in thin underclothes. She had always found it embarrassing, at least for a moment: in the bathing-cabin with a friend; in the lingerie shop, in the dress shop when a salesgirl was helping her to try on corsets and dresses. But how was she to slip out of her dress in front of Mara, to let it fall, without leaving out the first step. But perhaps—and this suddenly seemed to her wonderful—the two of them wouldn't feel embarrassed at all, because they both wore the same articles of clothing. They would laugh, eye one another, be young, whisper. In the gymnasium, at school, there had always been this whirl of clothes, flimsy pink and blue and white fabric. As girls they had played with it, thrown the linen at each other's heads, laughed and danced like mad, hidden one another's clothes—and if heaven had had a use for the girls at that time it would certainly have placed them by the springs, in the forests, in the grottoes and chosen one of them to be Echo, in order to keep the world young and full of legends that were ageless.

Charlotte bent over Mara who, now that she was asleep, was no longer a danger, kissed her on the eybrows that stood beautifully curved and festive in the pallid face, kissed the hand that hung down from the chair, and then, very furtively, shyly she bent down over the mouth from which the lipstick had disappeared in the course of the night.

If only mankind could once more reach for a fruit, once more arouse wrath, once more decide in favour of its earth! Experience another awakening, another shame! Mankind was never tied down. There were possibilities. The fruit was never consumed, had still not been consumed, not yet. The scent of all fruits, which were of equal value, hung in the air. There might be other knowledge to be grasped. She was free. So free that she could be led into temptation again. She wanted a great temptation and to answer for it and be damned, as it had been answered for once already.

My God, she thought, I'm not living today, I take part in everything, let myself be swept into everything that happens, in order not to be able to grasp an opportunity of my own. Time hangs on me in rags. I am no one's wife. I don't even exist yet. I want to decide who I am, and I also want to create my creature, to create my suffering, guilty, shadowy partner. I don't want Mara because I want her mouth, her sex—my own. Nothing of the sort. I want my creature; and I shall create it for myself. We have always lived on our ideas, and this is my idea.

If she loved Mara everything would change.

She would then have a being whom she could initiate into the world. She alone would bestow every criterion, every secret. Always she had dreamt of being able to transmit the world and had dodged when it was transmitted to her, had maintained a stubborn silence when anyone had tried to make her believe something and thought of the time when she was a girl and had still known how to be fearless and that there was nothing to be afraid of and one could lead the way with a high, piercing shout which others could follow.

If she could love Mara she would no longer be at home in this city, in this country, with a man, in a language, but in herself—and she would arrange the home for the girl. A new home. Then she would have to make the choice regarding the home, regarding the ebb and flow, the language. She would no longer be the chosen one and never again could she be chosen in this language.

Moreover, with all the joys that love of men had brought her, something had remained open. And although now, during the hour in which she watched, she still believed that she loved men, there was an untrodden zone. Charlotte had often been surprised that human beings, who ought to have known better than star, shrub and stone what caresses they could invent for each other, were so ill advised. In earlier times swan and golden laburnum must still have had an inkling of the greater scope for play, and the memory that the scope for play was greater and that the little system of caresses which had been formed and transmitted was not all that was possible could not have entirely vanished from the world. As a child Charlotte had wanted to love everything and be loved by everything, by the whirlpool in front of a rock, by the hot sand, the wood that felt good in the hand, the cry of the hawk—a star had got under her skin and a tree which she embraced had made her giddy. Now she had long since been instructed in love, but at what a price! In any case, most people's association with each other seemed a miserable act of resignation; they apparently considered it necessary because nothing else was available, and then they had to try to believe that it was right, that it was beautiful, that it was what they had wanted. And it occurred to her that only one of all the men she had known was perhaps really dependent on women. She thought of Milan, for whom she had not been enough, for whom nothing had been enough, for that very reason, and who for that same reason had known that nothing was enough for her, and had cursed himself and her because their already mis-trained bodies were an impediment on the departure towards already forgotten or as yet unknown caresses. It had been quite close, for instants actually present: ecstasy, intoxication, depth, surrender, delight. Afterwards she had united with a man again on the basis of kindness, being in love, benevolence, care, dependence, security, protection, of all sorts of admirable things which did not remain mere projects but could actually be lived.

Thus it had become possible for her to marry. She brought with her the precondition for entry into the married state and for settling down in it, in spite of occasional revolts, in spite of her desire to undermine the constitution. But whenever she had tried to undermine this she had quickly become aware that she had nothing to put in its place, that she had no idea of her own and that Franz with his smile, and with the pity he felt for her at such times, was right. She liked living in his indulgence. But she wasn't sure whether he too would have liked to live in her indulgence or what would have happened if he had ever noticed that she too was indulgent towards him. If he had known, for example, that secretly she could never believe that things had to be as they were between them and that above all she couldn't believe that he understood her body. Their good marriage—as they called it—was founded precisely upon the fact that he understood nothing about her body. He had certainly entered and wandered through this strange region, but he had quickly settled down where he found it most comfortable.

From a movement of the girl, who stretched out her hand to her as she dozed, clutched her knee with her fingers, stroked, tested and felt the back of her knee, she felt that this creature knew something about her which nobody had known, not even herself, because she had been dependent upon suggestions. Charlotte leant back trembling and dismayed, and stiffened. She was defending herself against the new suggestion.

'Leave me alone/ she said in an unfriendly tone. 'Stop that. At once.'

Mara opened her eyes. 'Why?'

Yes, why indeed? Why didn't she stop thinking, waking and burying the dead? Why, since it had gone that far, didn't she at last stand up, lift Mara up and go to bed with her?

Mara whispered with a conspiratorial look: 'I only want to take you to your room, put you to bed, watch you fall asleep. Then I'll go. I don't want anything. Just to watch you fall asleep...'

'Please be quiet. Don't talk. Be quiet.'

'You're simply afraid of me, of yourself, of him!' Again the intonation that made everything sink down, that made Charlotte sink down.

And Mara added triumphantly: 'How you lie! What a coward you are!'

As though that were the point! As though it would amount to no more than the breaking of a commandment, a little foolishness, the satisfaction of an additional curiosity!

No, not until she threw everything behind her, burnt everything behind her, could she enter her own. Her kingdom would come and when it came she would no longer be measurable, no longer estimable by an alien measure. In her kingdom a new measure was in force. Then it could no longer be said: she is like this, and like that, attractive, unattractive, sensible, silly, faithful, unfaithful, scrupulous or unscrupulous, unapproachable or consumed by adventures. She knew what it was possible to say and in what categories people thought, who was capable of saying this or that and why. She had always loathed this language, every imprint that was stamped upon her and that she had to stamp upon somebody—the attempted murder of reality. But when her kingdom came this language could no longer be valid, then this language would pass judgment on itself. Then she would have opted out, could laugh at every verdict, and it would no longer matter what anyone took her for. The language of men, insofar as it was applied to women, had been bad enough already and doubtful; but the language of women was even worse, more undignified—she had been shocked by it ever since she had seen through her mother, later through her sisters, girl friends and the wives of her men friends and had discovered that absolutely nothing, no insight, no observation corresponded to this language, to the frivolous or pious maxims, the jumble of judgments and opinions or the sighed lament.

Charlotte liked looking at women; they frequently moved her or they pleased her visually, but so far as possible she avoided talking to them. She felt separated from them, from their language, their suffering, their heart.

But she would teach Mara to speak, slowly, exactly and not to permit any clouding by the common language. She would educate her, hold her to something which very early on, because she had found no better word, she had called loyalty. She insisted on this alien word because she could not yet insist on the most alien of all words. Love. Since no one knew how to translate it.

Charlotte looked down at Mara; she admired in her something unheard of, all the hope she had cast upon this figure. All she had to do now was to know how to carry this unheard of element into every slightest act, into the new day, every day.

'Come. Listen to me,' she said, shaking Mara by the shoulder. 'I must know all about you. I want to know what you want....'

Mara sat up with a surprised expression. She had understood. Could she not derive satisfaction from the very fact that the girl understood at this moment? Let her stand up to the test! Let her understand at last!

'Nothing.' said Mara. 'I don't want anything. I won't fall into the trap.'

'What do you mean, you don't want anything?'

'I mean what I mean. I have to do something. I'm gifted, they say, your husband says so too. But I don't care about that. They've given me this grant. But I shall come to nothing. And anyhow, nothing interests me.' She paused briefly and then asked: 'Does anything interest you?'

'Oh, yes. A great deal.' Charlotte felt that she could not go on talking; the barriers had come down again. She had stammered, not found the courage to constitute herself an authority, to wipe away this stupid chatter and strike her own note again.

'You're lying!'

'Stop talking to me like that this minute,' Charlotte said sharply.

Mara obstinately folded her arms and stared at her impudently. 'Music, your profession, that can't possibly interest you. That's just a delusion. Loving—loving, that's the thing. Loving is everything.' She gazed gloomily and resolutely into space, no longer impudently.

Charlotte murmured awkwardly: 'That doesn't seem to me so important. I wanted to talk about something else.'

'Other things aren't important.'

'Are you trying to tell me that you know better than I what is important?'

Mara slid off the chair, sat down on the floor with her legs crossed and remained gloomily silent. Then she began again, like someone who has but few words at her disposal and must therefore throw these words into the fray all the more stubbornly, must help them to take effect. 'Absolutely nothing interests me. I think of nothing but loving. And therefore I don't believe you.'

Perhaps Mara really wanted nothing else, and at least she didn't pretend to be interested in anything, she was honest enough to admit it; and perhaps she was right and all the others who didn't admit it were lying to themselves and diligently hiding the truth from themselves in offices, factories and universities.

Something seemed to have occurred to Mara; she added shyly: 'I heard you on the radio last week. In that concert. You were very good, I think.'

Charlotte shrugged her shoulders defensively.

'Very good,' said Mara, nodding. 'Perhaps you can really do something and perhaps you're ambitious...'

Charlotte replied helplessly: 'I don't know. That's one way of putting it...'

'Don't be angry!' Mara sat up and threw her arms round Charlotte's neck. 'You're wonderful. I want to do everything, believe everything, that you want me to. Only love me! Love me! But I shall hate everything out of jealousy, music, the piano, people, everything. And at the same time I shall be proud of you. But let me stay with you.' She recollected herself and let her arms fall. 'Yes, do as you like. Only don't send me away. I shall do everything for you, I'll wake you in the mornings, bring you your tea, the post, answer the telephone, I can cook for you, run all your errands, see that no one bothers you. So that you can do what you want to do better. Only love me. And love only me.'

Charlotte seized Mara by the wrists. Now she had her where she wanted her. She assessed her prey and it was usable, was good. She had found her victim.

It was time for the change of shift, and now she could take over the world, name her companions, establish rights and duties, invalidate the old pictures and design the first new ones. For it was the world of pictures that remained when everything had been swept away that had been condemned by the sexes and said of the sexes. The pictures remained when equality and inequality and all attempts to define their nature and their legal relationship had long ago become empty words and been replaced by new empty words. Those pictures which, even when the colours faded away and mildew broke out, lasted longer and begot new pictures. The picture of the huntress, the great mother and the great whore, the good Samaritan, the decoy-bird, the will o' the wisp and the woman placed under the stars....

I wasn't born into any picture, thought Charlotte. That is why I feel like breaking off. That is why I want a counter-picture, and I want to construct it myself. No name yet. Not yet. First make the leap, leap over everything, carry out the withdrawal when the drum is beaten; when the red cloth trails on the ground and no one knows how it will end. To hope for the kingdom. Not the kingdom of men and not that of women.

Not this, not that.

She could no longer see anything; her eyelids were drooping, heavy and tired. She did not see Mara and the room in which she was, but her last secret room which she must now lock up for ever. In this room, the lily banner waved, the walls were white and the banner was set up. Dead was the man Franz and dead the man Milan, dead a Luis, dead all seven whom she had felt breathing over her. They had breathed their last, those who had sought her lips and been drawn into her body. They were dead and all the flowers that had been given as gifts rustled drily in their folded hands; they had been given back. Mara would never learn, must never learn, what a room filled with dead was and under what sign they had been killed. In this room she walked round alone, a ghost, haunting her ghosts. She loved her dead and came to see them again in secret. There was a crackling in the rafters, the ceiling threatened to collapse in the howling morning wind that whirled the roof to pieces. The key to the room, she still remembered this, she was carrying under her vest.... She was dreaming but she was not asleep yet. Mara must never ask about it, or she too would be among the dead.

'I'm dead,' said Mara. T can't go on any longer. Dead, I'm so dead.'

'You've been wanting me to go for a long time,' complained Mara.

'No,' said Charlotte hoarsely. 'Stay. Drink with me. I'm dying of thirst. Go on, stay.'

‘No, no more,' said Mara. 'I can't drink any more, can't walk any more, or stand. I'm dead.

'Go on, send me away!'

Charlotte stood up; her paralysed, over-tired body scarcely obeyed her. She didn't know how she was going to get to the door or to her bed. Nor did she any longer want Mara to stay here. Nor that they should take time to think it over.

Time is no time to think it over. Morning was in the windows, with the first, not yet rosy light. A first sound could be heard, of a passing car, afterwards of footsteps— echoing, firm steps that moved away.

When they were both in the bedroom Charlotte knew that

it was too late for everything. They undressed and lay down side by side—two beautiful sleepers with white shoulder-straps and close-fitting white slips. They were both dead and had killed something. With their hands they stroked one another's shoulders, breasts. Charlotte wept, turned over, reached for the alarm clock and wound it up. Mara looked at her indifferently. Then they tumbled down into sleep and into a stormy dream.

The red skirt lay crumpled and insignificant by the bed.