The whole of Paris was plunged in darkness. Only the car headlights cut through the whirling clouds of snow. They crossed the Seine on a ghostly bridge, whose gigantic steel curves seemed to sway in time with the surging of the snow squalls. In one street, hemmed in between blind houses, a small gathering was gesticulating around a woman who lay on the trodden snow. A little farther on, a bus was unable to get started, the acid air flayed the nostrils and blocked the throat; then a fresh gust of wind swept them clean. It was at this point, trying to escape the asphyxiating cacophony of the cars, that she mistook the road. Instead of emerging onto the avenue that would have led them straight to Li's house, they came upon a monotonous, endless wall. Should they go right? Left? What she wanted most of all was to turn her back on the squalls. From the other side of the enclosure repulsive, sickly sweet effluvia wafted over; in calmer weather, no doubt, these stagnated within the walls of the abattoir… They walked along, often slipping, catching hold of each other's arms. She raised her brow into the snow, as if to drive out the sentence that was absurdly matching the rhythm of her footsteps: "At-this-stage-in-the-game-at-this-stage-in-the-game…"
Suddenly in the darkness lashed with squalls a cry arose quite inhuman in its power, a bellow torn from the entrails of an animal, a maddened and tragic call. She shivered, quickened her step, stumbled. He grasped her elbow, supported her as she almost fell. Their faces came so close that she could see the slight trembling of his lips and heard his voice despite the wind's fury: "Don't be afraid…"
She gazed into his eyes and asked, in total unawareness, simply echoing his voice, "Afraid of what…?"
"Of anything," he replied and they continued walking.
Li went off to sleep in her studio, leaving them in the tiny sitting room crammed not only with furniture but also, a recent addition, cardboard boxes and cases, in preparation for her departure.
They were alone: she, bedded down on the little sofa, whose curve she had to mold herself to in order to sleep; he on the armchairs pushed together, squeezed between the piano and the table… They could not sleep and both sensed this, sensed the discreet wakefulness of the other in the darkness… Finally she recognized breathing that was no longer careful of the other's presence, the inimitable syncopated, touching music of a sleeper's respiration. She turned over onto her back, prepared for long sleepless hours, happy, even, with the strangeness of this place, where conjuring up the impressions that had assailed her could pass for an insomniac's game… By reaching out her arm she could have touched the armchairs in which her son was asleep. This dark apartment in a great dark, deserted city; the two of them, so near to each other, with this unique, unspeakable, monstrous bond between them… The night began to ring in her ears. She moved, reached out with her hand, grasped a box of matches, held the flame close to her watch. It was half past four in the morning. She got up and put on her clothes; this action already felt like a welcome prelude to their escape. The water in the tiny bathroom was icy, like in an abandoned house; the minor domestic disorder in the kitchen also heralded preparations for departure. She opened the door at the back that looked onto the little yard. The snowstorm had abated. The last flakes drifted down slowly, attracted by the light of the candle. The snow was smooth, virgin, even the birds had not yet had time to star it with their footprints. In their garments of white the walls, cornices, and chimney pots had a fluid, downy beauty…
She sensed that someone was coming, then heard his footsteps. She turned, and met his gaze; they understood it was pointless to exchange ritual questions. He stood beside her and watched the spinning of the snowflakes, detaching themselves from the gray sky and falling slowly toward the candle flame… They were already in flight as they drank a cup of quickly cooled tea, nibbled some bread, and wrote a note of thanks to Li. They both sensed, without putting it into words, that they had to be gone from the city in advance of the light, in advance of the crowds in the streets, in advance of the trampled snow… And when they collapsed, breathless, onto the seat of an empty car, in the first train of the morning; when she saw the young face opposite her in the twilight, his eyes closing, already weighed down with sleep, she understood, without wanting to understand, that this escape, this empty train, swaying as it clattered drowsily along, these windows blinded with snowflakes, the two of them with their deep abyss and even his still childlike hands, quivering slightly as he started to dream-all this was another life, the very first moments of which she was just discovering.
From now on it seemed to her that other people could understand her, though not because of the words she spoke. An object, she felt, a gesture, a scent would suffice. Back in January, during that lost time between the old and the new calendars, she had given the nurse at the retirement home a gray angora openwork shawl. The young woman had come to the library looking for accounts of the war, hoping, she said, to find in them some information about the place where her lover had died. Beneath the worn fabric of her woolen dress the shivering of her thin body was perceptible; and on her lips and in her eyes the fierce struggle between pride at having lived through such a beautiful and tragic love affair and humiliating fear at being suspected of lying… She had gone away, with the shawl around her shoulders, quite perplexed, not knowing what to make of this gift; and at that moment Olga had had a dizzying insight into this woman's life: the evenings in a poorly heated room, the tiny scrap of comfort the gray wool might bring to her body…
One day, after their return from Paris, she interrupted the old swordsman who had launched into his usual tale of fighting. She spoke very softly, as if to herself, of a carnival night long ago, in a great mansion at the edge of a forest; of a garden, all foaming with apple blossom. And of the young horseman who had suddenly appeared before a girl overcome with giddiness. It seemed to her that this man who for years had tirelessly been waving his arm about in imitation of saber fighting, this cutter-off of heads, was no different from that young horseman long ago in the midst of the garden at night. And that she needed to say to him very simply, "Forget the wars and the blood. I know you are haunted by the look of a man you killed. The eyes of a man who can already feel the blade cutting into his neck. And that to escape him you are forever calling out your 's-s-shlim' and laughing and frightening other people with your laughter. Forget. For in your own youth there must have been a night, meadows with cool grass, a garden white with flowers that you rode through on your horse…" The only words she actually uttered were: "night," "apple blossom," "white petals in the horse's mane…" It seemed to her that the face of the man listening to her was freed of its grimaces, became simple and serious. He never performed his swordsman act in front of her again.
From now on she perceived herself as being much closer to other people. Closer to the fields, to the nights, the trees, the clouds, the skies these people carried within them, that formed a silent language in which they could understand her without words. One day, with a joy that stung her brow as if peppered with grapeshot, she had this crazy hope: perhaps even what she was living through could one day be admitted?
Among the new messages, whose increasingly clear resonance she was now receiving, there was a night when all one could hear was the drowsy rhythm of rare, heavy drops trickling down from the mass of soft snow on the roof, splashing in a melodious cascade, close to the steps and under the windows. Her body, for several nights past, had learned to give itself, while seeming still, to avoid the brutal break, to preserve the slow settling of bodies that have taken pleasure… That night she found the rhythm of that silent separation. When his body was exhausted she felt his temple laid, for a moment, against her lips. A vein was throbbing, crazily. As she gave this involuntary kiss she sensed the pulsations gradually calming down…