For a Night of Love Read Online Free Page B

he caught a glimpse of her only at night, when she was swallowed up in the grey shadows. One morning, as he was closing one of his shutters to keep the sun out, he caught sight of Thérèse standing in themiddle of her room. He remained rooted to the spot, not daring to move a muscle. She seemed to be thinking something over, she was very tall, very pale, her face classically beautiful. And he felt almost intimidated by her, she was so different from the light-hearted image he had formed of her. Especially noticeable was her mouth, rather large with bright-red lips, and deep eyes, dark and lustreless, which gave her the appearance of a cruel queen. Slowly, she came over to the window; but she didn’t seem to see him, as if he were too far off, too indistinct. She moved away, and the swing of her head was so powerful in its grace that he felt weaker than a child in comparison with her, for all his broad shoulders. When he got to know her, he feared her all the more.
    Thus began for the young man a wretched existence. This beautiful young lady, so grave and noble, who lived near him, drove him to despair. She never looked at him, she was unaware of his existence. But this did not stop his heart quailing at the thought that she might notice him and find him ridiculous. His pathological shyness made him think that she was spying on his every move so as to make fun of him. He would scurry home with his tail between his legs, and in his room he avoided moving about. Then, after a month, he started to suffer from the girl’s disdain. Why didn’t she ever look at him? She would come over to the window, let her dark eyes wander across the deserted cobbles, and then withdraw, without guessing that he was there, filled with anxiety, on the other side of the square. And just as he had trembled at the idea of being seen by her, now he quivered with the need to feel her fix her gaze on him. She was at the forefront of his thoughts every hour of his life.
    When Thérèse got up in the morning, he, who had once been so punctual, forgot all about his office. He was still afraid of that white face with its red lips, but his fear gave him anexquisite, sensual thrill. Concealed behind a curtain, he let the terror she filled him with pour through his body, until it made him feel ill, his legs shaking as if he had been walking for hours. He would dream that she suddenly caught sight of him and smiled at him, and that his fear would vanish.
    And then he had the idea of seducing her with the help of his flute. On warm evenings, he started to play once more. He left the two casements open, and in the darkness he played his oldest tunes, pastorales as sweet and innocent as little girls dancing in a ring. He played notes that were sustained and tremulous, fading away one after the other in simple cadences, like lovelorn ladies of olden days, twirling their skirts. He would choose moonless nights; the square was pitch black, no one knew where such a sweet melody was coming from as it floated past the sleeping houses on the gentle wings of a nocturnal bird. And, on the very first evening, he was startled to see Thérèse as she prepared for bed coming to the window all in white, and leaning there, surprised to recognise this music she had already heard the day she arrived.
    ‘Just listen, Françoise,’ she said in her grave voice, turning to the interior of the room. ‘It’s not a bird.’
    ‘Oh!’ replied an old woman, of whom Julien could make out only the shadow, ‘it must be a travelling player having a good time on the outskirts of town – he sounds a long way off.’
    ‘Yes, a long way off,’ repeated the girl, after a silence, as she bathed her bare arms in the freshness of the night air.
    From then on, every evening, Julien started to play louder. His lips swelled the sound, his feverish desire passed into the old flute of yellow wood. And Thérèse, who listened every evening, was astonished to hear this living music, whose phrases,