VIII
There were no lovers’ quarrels; they had already wounded each other too deeply for that, and the smallest transgression would have meant the end. Each one was careful not to hurt the other’s feelings—their lives were planned carefully to this purpose. While Noémi was undressing, Jean looked away, and he was careful never to be present while she was washing. He was more particular about his toilet, ordered some eau de Lubin with which he drenched himself, and every morning went shivering to his tub. Jean believed himself to be entirely to blame for the catastrophe, and Noémi hated herself for not being a wife pleasing to God. They never exchanged reproachful glances, but there was always a mute yearning for pardon in the eyes of each. They decided to say their prayers together; though enemies in the flesh they could unite in their nightly prostrations before their Creator. Their two voices at least might mingle and rise together into the Infinite.
One morning they met quite by chance at the bedside of an old cripple, and this common interest was eagerly made use of. It was the first bond between them, and thenceforth every week they visited the sick together, each giving the other the credit for the idea. During the other six days, Noémi avoided Jean, or rather her body sought to escape his, and Jean sought to escape the disgust that Noémi tried in vain to conquer. One mournful November morning, though she hated walking, Noémi forced herself to follow Jean across the sandy heathland to the edge of the marshes where, in the silence that precedes a tempest, one could hear the dull thunder of the Atlantic on the shore. Noémi saw that there were no more blue-eyed gentians in the heather; she ran ahead as though trying to lose Jean, and left him to follow after her.
The shepherds of Béarn, from whom Jean was descended, had possessed the right of pasture over these waste lands, and, at the muddy opening of a well they had dug for their flocks centuries before, he came up with her and stood thinking of the old shepherds who were afflicted with pellagra, that mysterious disease of Les Landes, and were found at the bottom of a well or with their heads plunged in the mire at the edge of a pond. Ah, if only he too might embrace this greedy soil that had moulded him in its likeness, and breathe out his last breath in a long stifling kiss.