Old People and the Things that Pass/Chapter XV

by Louis Couperus

CHAPTER XV

LOT had ordered a bedroom in the Hotel de Luxembourg and had written to his sister Ottilie. On arriving, they found a basket of red roses awaiting them in their room. It was October; the windows were open; and the sea shone with a dark metallic gleam in a violent flood of sunlight and rippled under the insolent forward thrusts of a gathering mistral.

They had a bath, lunched in their bedroom, feeling a little tired after the journey; and the scent of the roses, the brightness of the sun, the deepening turquoise of the sky and the more and more foam-flecked steel of the sea intoxicated both of them. The salad of tomatoes and capsicums made a red-and-orange patch around the chicken on the table; and long pearls seemed to melt in their glasses of champagne. The wind rose in mighty gusts and with its arrogant, brutal, male caresses swept away any haze that still hung around. The glowing sun poured forth its flood as from a golden spout in the turquoise sky.

They sat side by side, intoxicated with it all, and ate and drank but did not speak. A sense of peace permeated them, accompanied by a certain slackness, as though in surrender to the forces of life, which were so turbulent and so violent and so radiantly gold and insolently red.

There was a knock; and a woman's head, crowned with a large black hat, appeared through the open door:

"May I come in?"

"Ottilie!" cried Lot, springing up. "Come in, come in!"

She entered:

"Welcome! Welcome to Nice! I haven't seen you for ages, Lot! Elly, my sister, welcome! ... Yes, I sent the roses. I'm glad you wrote to me ... and that you are willing to see me and that your wife is too...."

She sat down, accepted a glass of champagne; cordial greetings passed between Lot and his sister. Ottilie was a couple of years older than Lot; she was Mamma's eldest child and resembled both her father, Pauws, and Mamma, for she was tall, with her father's masterful ways, but had Mamma's features, her clear profile and delicate chin, though not her eyes. But her many years of public appearances had given her movements a graceful assurance, that of a talented and beautiful woman, accustomed to being looked at and applauded, something quite different from any sort of ordinary, domestic attractiveness: the harmonious, almost sculptural gestures, after being somewhat studied at first, had in course of time become natural....

"What a good-looking woman!" thought Elly; and she felt herself to be nobody, small, insignificant, in the simple wrap which she had put on hurriedly after her bath.

Ottilie, who was forty-one, looked no more than thirty and had the youthfulness of an artist who keeps her body young by means of an art and science of beauty unknown to the ordinary woman. A white-cloth gown, which avoided the last extravagances of fashion, gave her figure the perfection of a statue and revealed the natural outlines of arms and bosom beneath the modern dress. The great black hat circled its black ostrich-feather around her copper-glowing fair hair, which was plaited in a heavy coil; a wide grey boa hung in a light cloud of ostrich-feathers around her; and, in those colourless tints—white, black and grey—she remained, notwithstanding her almost too great beauty, attractive at once as a well-bred woman and an artist.

"Well, that's my sister, Elly!" said Lot, proudly. "What do you think of her? "

"I've seen you before, Elly, at the Hague," said Ottilie.

"I don't remember, Ottilie."

"No, you were a little girl of eight, or nine perhaps; and you had a big playroom at Grandpapa Takma's and a lovely doll's-house...."

"So I did."

"I haven't been to the Hague since."

"You went to the Conservatoire at Liège?"

"Yes."

"When did you sing last?" asked Lot.

"In Paris not long ago."

"We hear nothing of you. You never sing in Holland."

"No, I don't ever go to Holland."

"Why not, Ottilie?" asked Elly.

"I have always felt depressed in Holland."

"Because of the country or the people?"

"Because of everything: the country, the people, the houses ... the family ... our circle...."

"I quite understand," said Lot.

"I couldn't breathe," said Ottilie. "It's not that I want to run the country down, or the people or the family. It all has its good side. But, just as the grey skies hindered me from breathing, so the houses hindered me from producing my voice properly; and there was something around me, I don't know what, that struck me as terrible."

"Something that struck you as terrible?" said Elly.

"Yes, an atmosphere of sorts. At home, I could never get on with Mamma, any more than Papa and Mamma could ever get on together. Mamma's impossible little babyish character, with her little fits of temper, used to drive me wild. Lot has a more accommodating nature than I!..."

"You ought to have been a boy and I a girl," said Lot, almost bitterly.

"Mais je suis tres femme, moi" said Ottilie.

Her eyes grew soft and filmy and happiness lurked in her smile.

"Mais je te crois" replied Lot.

"No," continued Ottilie, "I couldn't hit it off with Mamma. Besides, I felt that I must be free. After all, there was life. I felt my voice inside me. I studied hard and seriously, for years on end. And I made a success. All my life is given to singing...."

"Why do you only sing at concerts, Ottilie ? Don't you care about opera? You sing Wagner, I know."

"Yes, but I can't lose myself in a part for more than a few moments, not for more than a single scene, not for a whole evening."

"Yes, I can imagine that," said Lot.

"Yes," said Elly, with quick understanding, "you're a sister of Lot's in that. He can't work either for longer than his essay or his article lasts."

"A family weakness, Ottilie," said Lot. "Inherited."

Ottilie reflected, with a smile: the Gioconda smile, Elly thought.

"That may be true," said Ottilie. "It was a shrewd observation of your little Elly's."

"Yes," said Lot, proudly. "She's very observant. Not one of our three natures is what you would call commonplace."

"Ah," murmured Ottilie, "Holland ... those houses ... those people! ... Mamma and 'Mr.' Trevelley at home: it was terrible. One scene after the other. Trevelley reproaching Mamma with Papa, Mamma reproaching Trevelley with a hundred infidelities! Mamma was jealousy incarnate. She used to keep her hat and cloak hanging in the hall. If 'Mr.' Trevelley went out, Mamma would say, 'Hugh, where are you going?' 'Doesn't matter to you,' said Trevelley. 'I'm coming with you,' said Mamma, putting on her hat all askew and flinging on her cloak; and go with him she did. Trevelley cursed and swore; there was a scene; but Mamma went with him: he walking along the street two yards in front of her, Mamma following, mad with rage.... She was very, very pretty in those days, a little doll, with a fair-haired Madonna face, but badly dressed.... Lot was always quiet, with calm, tired-looking eyes: how well I remember it all! He was never out of temper, always polite to 'Mr.' Travelley...."

"I have managed to get on with all my three papas."

"When Mamma and Trevelley had had enough of each other and Mamma fell in love with Steyn, I cleared out. I went first to Papa and then to the Conservatoire. And I haven't been back in Holland since.... Oh, those houses! ... Your house, Elly—Grandpapa Takma's house—everything very neatly kept by Aunt Adèle, but it seemed to me as if something stood waiting behind every door.... Grandmamma's house and Grandmamma's figure, as she sat at the window there staring ... and waiting, she too. Waiting what for? I don't know. But it did depress me so. I longed for air, for blue sky, for freedom; I had to expand my lungs."

"I have felt like that too sometimes," said Lot, half to himself.

Elly said nothing, but she thought of her childhood, spent with the old man, and of her doll's-house, which she ruled so very seriously, as if it had been a little world.

"Yes, Lot," said Ottilie, "you felt it too: you went off to Italy to breathe again, to live, to live. ... In our family, they had lived. Mamma still lived, but her own past clung to her.... I don't know, Elly; I don't think I'm very sensitive; and yet ... and yet I did feel it so: an oppression of things of the past all over one. I couldn't go on like that. I longed for my own life."

"That's true," said Lot, "you released yourself altogether. More so than I did. I was never able to leave Mamma for good. I'm fond of her. I don't know why: she has not been much of a mother to me. Still I'm fond of her, I often feel sorry for her. She is a child, a spoilt child. She was overwhelmed, in her youth, with one long adoration. The men were mad on her. Now she is old and what has she left? Nothing and nobody. Steyn and she lead a cat-and-dog life. I pity Steyn, but I sometimes feel for Mamma. It's a dreadful thing to grow old, especially for the sort of woman that she was, a woman—one may as well speak plainly—who lived for her passions. Mamma has never had anything in her but love. She is an elementary woman; she needs love and caresses, so much so that she has not been able to observe the conventions. She respected them only to a certain point. When she fell in love, everything else went by the board."

"But why did she marry? I didn't marry! And I am in love too."

"Ottilie, Mamma lived in a different social period. People used to marry then. They marry still, for the most part. Elly and I got married."

"I have nothing to say against it, if you know that you have found each other for life. Did Mamma know that with any of her husbands? She was mad on all the three of them."

"She now hates them all."

"Therefore she ought not to have married."

"No, but she lived in a different social period. And, as I say, Ottilie, people still get married."

"You disapprove of my not marrying."

"I don't disapprove. It's not my nature to disapprove of what other people think best in their own judgment."

"Let us talk openly and frankly. You call Mamma a woman who lives for her passions. Perhaps you call me the same."

"I don't know much about your life."

"I have lived with men. If I had had Mamma's ideas, or rather her unconscious conventions, I should have married them. I loved and was loved. Twice I could have married, as Mamma did; but I didn't do it."

"You were disheartened by what you had seen."

"Yes; and I didn't know, I never knew. Perhaps now, Lot, perhaps now I feel certain for the first time."

"Do you feel certain, Ottilie?" said Elly.

She took Ottilie's hand. She thought Ottilie so beautiful, so very beautiful and so genuine that she was greatly affected by her.

"Perhaps, Elly, I now know for certain that I shall never love any one else as I love Aldo......; He loves me ..."

"And you will get married?" asked Lot.

"No, we shall not get married."

"Why not?..."

"Is he certain?"

"But you say he's fond of you."

"Yes, but is he certain? No, he is not. We are happy together, ever so happy. He wants to marry me. But is he certain? No, he is not. He is not certain: I know for certain that he does not know for certain.... Why should we bind ourselves with legal ties? If I have a child by him, I shall be very happy and shall be a good mother to my child. But why those legal ties? ... Aldo isn't certain, happy though he may be. He is two years older than I. Who knows what may be waiting for him to-morrow, what emotion, what passion, what love? ... I myself know that I have found, but I know that he does not know.... If he leaves me to-morrow, he is free. Then he can find another happiness, perhaps the lasting one. ... What do we poor creatures know? ... We seek and seek until suddenly we find certainty. / have found it. But he has not.... No, Lot, we shall not get married. I want Aldo to be free and to do as he pleases. I am no longer young and I want to leave him free. Our love, our bodies, our souls are free, absolutely free, in our happiness. And, if I am old to-morrow, an old woman, with no voice left ..."

"Then you will pay the penalty, Ottilie," said Lot.

"Then I shall pay no penalty, Lot. Then I shall have been happy. Then I shall have had my portion. I don't ask for eternity here below. I shall be satisfied and I shall grow old, quietly, quietly old...."

"Oh, Ottilie, and I ... I suffer from growing old, from growing older."

"Lot, that's a disease. You're happy now, you have Elly, life is beautiful, there is sunshine, there is happiness. Take all that, enjoy it and be happy and don't think of what is to come."

"Don't you then ever think of growing old and of the horror of it?"

"I do think of growing old, but I don't see anything horrible in it."

"If Aldo were to leave you to-morrow, you would be alone ... and you would grow old."

"If Aldo left me to-morrow, for his own happiness, I should think it right and I should grow old, but I should not be alone, for I should have all my memories of his love and of our happiness, which is actual now and so real that there can be nothing else after it."

She got up.

"Are you going?"

"I have to. Come and lunch with us to-morrow. Will you come, Elly?"

"Thanks, Ottilie."

Ottilie looked out of the window. The sun beamed as it died away, from behind mauve and rose clouds, and the wind had subsided on the waves: the sea just rocked it softly on her rolling, deep-blue bosom, like a gigantic lover who lay resting in her lap after his spell of blazing ardour.

"How splendid those clouds are!" said Elly. "The wind has gone down."

"Always does, at this time," said Ottilie. "Look, Lot, there he is!"

"Who?"

"Aldo. He's waiting for me."

They saw a man sitting on the Promenade des Anglais—there were not many people about—and looking at the sea.

"I can only see his back," said Lot.

"You shall see him to-morrow. I'm delighted that you're coming."

Her voice sounded grateful, as though she were touched. She kissed them both and went away.

"Heavens, what a beautiful woman!" said Lot. "She is anything but young, but years don't count with a woman accustomed to appear in public and as handsome as she is...."

Elly had gone out on the balcony:

"Oh, Lot, what a glorious sunset! ... It's like a fairy-picture in the sky. That's how I imagine the atmosphere of the Arabian Nights. Look, it's just like the tail of a gigantic phoenix vanishing behind the mountains in flames.... There's Ottilie, on the promenade; she's waving her handkerchief."

"And there's Aldo, with her, bowing.... A fine good-looking fellow, that Italian officer of hers. ... What a handsome couple! ... Look, Elly, as they're walking together: what a handsome couple! I declare I'm jealous of him. I should like to be as tall as that, with such a pair of shoulders and such a figure."

"But aren't you content that I like you as you are?"

"Yes, I'm quite content. I'm more than content, Elly.... I believe that I have come to my divine moment, my moment of happiness...."

"It will be more than a moment."

"Are you certain of it?"

"Yes, I feel it within me ... just as Ottilie felt it within her. And you?"

He looked at her gravely and did not tell her that she was much younger than Ottilie, too young to know so much. And he merely answered:

"I too believe that I know for certain. But we must not force the future.... Oh, what a wonderful evening! Look at those mountains beginning to turn violet.... The fairy-picture is changing every moment. The sea is rocking the wind in her lap and the phoenix is dying away in ashes. Let's stay here, let's stay and look. There are the first stars. It's as though the sea were becoming very calm and the wind sleeping peacefully on her blue breast. You can just feel its breath still, but it's asleep.... This is the land of life and love. We are too early for the season; but what do we care for smart people? ... This is gorgeous, Elly, this wealth of life, of love, of living colour, fading away so purple in the darkness of the night. The cool breath of that mighty wind, which is now asleep: how very different from the howling wind of our north, which whistles so dismally! This mad merry wind here, now sleeping, like a giant, in the blue lap of that giantess, the sea! That's freedom, life, love and glory and pomp and gaiety. Oh, I'm not running down my country; but I do feel once more, after all these months, that I can breathe freely and that there's a glow in life ... and youth, youth, youth! It makes you feel drunk at first, but I'm already getting used to the intoxication...."

They remained on the balcony. When the wind woke in the lap of the sea and got up again, with an unexpected leap of its giant gaiety, blowing the first stars clear of the last purple clouds with a single sweep, they went inside, with their arms around each other's waist.

Over the joyously-quivering sea the fierce mistral came rushing.