Tropisms Read Online Free Page B

course I’ve read Vanity Fair. Oh, yes, it’s by him all right.”
    He turned her round a bit, the better to see her: “Vanity Fair? Vanity Fair? Ah! yes, you’re sure of that? Vanity Fair? It’s by him?”
    She continued to wriggle gently, still wearing her polite little smile, her expression of eager expectation. He squeezed harder and harder: “And by which route will you go? Via Dover? Via Calais? Dover? Eh? Via Dover? Is that it? Dover?”
    There was no way to escape. No way to stop him. She who had read so widely . . . who had thought about so many things . . . He could be so charming . . . But it was one of his bad days, he was in one of his strange moods. He would keep on, without pity, without respite; “Dover, Dover, Dover? Eh? Eh? Dover? Thackeray? England? Dickens? Shakespeare? Eh? Eh? Dover?” while she would try to free herself gently, without daring to make any sudden movement that might displease him, and answer respectfully in a faint voice that was just a bit husky: “Yes, Dover, that’s it. You must have traveled that way often . . . I believe it’s more convenient via Dover. Yes, that’s it . . . Dover.”
    Not until he saw her parents arrive, would he come to himself, would he relax his grip, and a bit red, a bit disheveled, her pretty dress a bit mussed, she would finally dare, without fearing to displease him, escape.
    .
    XVI
    Now they were old, they were quite worn out, “like old furniture that has seen long usage, that has served its time and accomplished its task,” and sometimes (this was coyness on their part) they heaved a sort of short sigh, filled with resignation and relief, that was like something crackling.
    On soft spring evenings, they went walking together, “now that youth was finished, now that the passions were spent,” they went walking quietly, “to take a breath of fresh air before going to bed,” sit down in a café, spent a few moments chatting.
    They chose a well protected corner, taking many precautions (“not here, it’s in a draft, nor there, it’s just beside the lavatory”), they sat down—“Ah! these old bones, we’re getting old. Ah! Ah!”—and they let them be heard cracking.
    The place had a cold, dingy glitter, the waiters ran about too fast in a rough, indifferent manner, the mirrors gave back harsh reflections of tired faces and blinking eyes.
    But they asked for nothing more, this was it, they knew it well, you shouldn’t expect anything, you shouldn’t demand anything, that’s how it was, there was nothing more, this was it, “life.”
    Nothing else, nothing more, here or there, now they knew it.
    You should not rebel, dream, hope, make an effort, flee, you had only to choose carefully (the waiter was waiting) whether it was to be a grenadine or a coffee? with milk or black? while accepting unassumingly to live—here or there—and let time go by.
    .
    XVII
    When the weather began to be fine, on holidays they would go walking in the suburban woods.
    The scrubby underbrush was dotted with crossroads onto which straight paths converged symmetrically. The grass was sparse and trampled upon, but on the branches new leaves were beginning to appear; they had succeeded in communicating none of their luster to their surroundings, and looked like the children with slightly sourish smiles that one sees wrinkling their faces to the sun in hospital wards.
    They lunched seated on the side of the road, or else in a bare clearing. They appeared to see nothing, they dominated all that, the thin bird notes, the guilty-looking shoots, the trodden grass: the dense atmosphere in which they usually lived surrounded them here too, rose up from them like a heavy, acrid vapor.
    They had brought with them the companion of their free time, their lonely little child.
    When the child saw them begin to settle in the spot