The Four-Chambered Heart (15 page)

She found herself defending Sabina against
Rango’s ruthless mockery. She defended Sabina’s philosophy of the many loves
against the One.

(Rango, your anger should not be directed
against Sabina. Sabina is only behaving as all women do in their dreams, at
night. I feel responsible for her acts, because when we walk together and I
listen to her telling me about her adventures, a part of me is not listening to
her telling me a story but recognizing scenes familiar to a secret part of
myself. I recognize scenes I have dreamed and which therefore I have committed.
What is dreamed is committed. In my dreams I have been Sabina. I have escaped
from your tormenting love, caressed all the interchangeable lovers of the
world. Sabina cannot be made alone responsible for acting the dreams of many
women, just because the others sit back and participate with a secret part of
their selves. Through secret and small vibrations of the flesh they admit being
silent accomplices to Sabina’s acts. At night we have all tossed with fever and
desire for strangers. During the day we deride Sabina, and revile her. You’re
angry at Sabina because she lives out all her wishes overtly as you have done.
To love Sabina’s fever, Sabina’s impatience, Sabina’s evasion of traps in the
games of love, was being Sabina. To be only at night what Sabina dared to be
during the day, to bear the responsibility for one’s secret dream of escape
from the torments of one love into many loves.)

Sabina sat astride a chair, flinging her hair
back with her hands and laughing.

She always gave at this moment the illusion
that she was going to confess. She excelled in this preparation for unveiling,
this setting of a mood for intimate revelations. She excelled equally in
evasion. When she wished it, her life was like a blackboard on which she wrote
swiftly and then erased almost before anyone could read what she had written.
Her words then did not seem like words but like smoke issuing from her mouth
and nostrils, a heavy smoke screen against detection. But at other times, if
she felt secure from judgment, then she opened a story of an incident with
direct, stabbing thoroughness…

“Our affair lasted…lasted for the duration of
an elevator ride! And I don’t mean that symbolically either! We took such a
violent fancy to each other, the kind that will not last, but will not wait
either. It was cannibalistic, and of no importance, but it had to be fulfilled
once. Circumstances were against us. We had no place to go. We wandered through
the streets, we were ravenous for each other. We got into an elevator, and he
began to kiss me… First floor, second floor, and he still kissing me, third
floor, fourth floor, and when the elevator came to a standstill, it was too
late…we could not stop, his hands were everywhere, his mouth… I pressed the
button wildly and went on kissing as the elevator came down… When we got to the
bottom it was worse… He pressed the button and we went up and down, up and
down, madly, while people kept ringing for the elevator…”

She laughed again, with her entire body, even
her feet, marking the rhythm of her gaiety, stamping the ground like a
delighted spectator, while her strong thighs rocked the chair like an Amazon’s
wooden horse.

One evening while Djuna was waiting for Rango
at the barge, she heard a footstep which was not the watchman’s and not
Rango’s.

The shadows of the candles on the tarpapered
walls played a scene from a Balinese theatre as she moved toward the door and
called: “Who’s there?”

There was a complete silence, as if the river,
the barge, and the visitor had connived to be silent at the same moment, put a
tension in the air which she felt like a vibration through her body.

She did not know what to do, whether to stay in
the room and lock the door, awaiting Rango, or to explore the barge. If she
stayed in the room quietly and watched for his coming, she could shout a
warning to him out of the window, and then together they might corner the
intruder.

She waited.

The shadows on the walls were still, but the
reflections of the lights on the river played on the surface like a ghost’s
carnival. The candles flickered more than usual, or was it her anxiety?

When the wood beams ceased to creak, she heard
the footsteps again, moving toward the room, cautiously but not light enough to
prevent the boards from creaking.

Djuna took her revolver from under her pillow,
a small one which had been given to her and which she did not know how to use.

She called out: “Who is there? If you come any
nearer, I’ll shoot.”

She knew there was a safety clasp to open. She
wished Rango would arrive. He had no physical fear. He feared truth, he feared
to confront his motives, feared to face, to understand, to examine in the realm
of feelings and thought, but he did not fear to act, he did not fear physical
danger. Djuna was intrepid in awareness, in painful exposures of the self, and
dared more than most in matter of emotional surgery, but she had a fear of
violence.

She waited another long moment, put again the
silence was complete, suspended.

Rango did not come.

Out of exhaustion, she lay down with her
revolver in hand.

The doors and windows were locked. She waited,
listening for Rango’s uneven footsteps on the deck.

The candles burnt down one by one, gasping out
their last flame, throwing one last long, agonized skeleton on the wall.

The river rocked the barge.

Hours passed and Djuna fell into a half sleep.

The catch of the door was gradually lifted off
the hinge by some instrument or other and Zora stood at the opened door.

Djuna saw her when she was bending over her,
and screamed.

Zora held a long old-fashioned hatpin in her
hand and tried to stab Djuna with it. Djuna at first grasped her hands at the
wrists, but Zora’s anger gave her greater strength. Her face was distorted with
hatred. She pulled her hands free and stabbed at Djuna several times blindly,
striking her at the shoulder, and then once more, with her eyes wide open, she
aimed at the breast and missed. Then Djuna pushed her off, held her.

“What harm have I done you, Zora?”

“You forced Rango to join the party. He’s
trying to become someone now, in politics, and it’s for you. He wants you to be
proud of him. With me he never cared; he wasn’t ashamed of his laziness… It’s
your fault that he is never home… Your fault that he’s in danger every day.”

Djuna looked at Zora’s face and felt again as
she did with Rango, the desperate hopelessness of talking, explaining, clarifying.
Zora and Rango were fanatics.

She shook Zora by the shoulders, as if to force
her to listen and said: “Killing me won’t change anything, can’t you understand
that? We’re the two faces of Rango’s character. If you kill me, that side of
him remains unmated and another woman will take my place. He’s divided within
himself, between destruction and construction. While he’s divided there will be
two women, always. I wished you would die, too, once, until I understood this.
I once thought Rango could be saved if you died. And here you are, thinking
that I would drive him into danger. He’s driving himself into danger. He is
ashamed of his futility. He can’t bear the conflict of his split being enacted
in us before his eyes. He is trying a third attempt at wholeness. For his peace
of mind, if you and I could have been friends it would have been easier. He
didn’t consider us, whether or not we could sincerely like each other. We tried
and failed. You were too selfish. You and I stand at opposite poles. I don’t
like you, and you don’t like me either; even if Rango did not exist you and I
could never like each other. Zora, if you harm me you’ll be punished for it and
sent to a place without Rango… And Rango will be angry with you. And if you
died, it would be the same. He would not be mine either, because I can’t
fulfill his love of destruction…”

Words, words, words…all the words Djuna had
turned in her mind at night when alone, she spoke them wildly, blindly, not
hoping for Zora to understand, but they were said with such anxiety and
vehemence that aside from their meaning Zora caught the pleading, the accents
of truth, dissolving her hatred, her violence.

At the sight of each other their antagonism
always dissolved. Zora, faced with the sadness of Djuna’s face, her voice, her
slender body, could never sustain her anger. And Djuna faced with Zora’s
haggard face, limp hair, uncontrolled lips, lost her rebellion.

Whatever scenes took place between them, there was
a sincerity in each one’s sadness which bound them too.

It was at this moment that Rango arrived, and
stared at the two women with dismay.

“What happened? Djuna, you’re bleeding!”

“Zora tried to kill me. The wounds aren’t bad.”

Djuna hoped once more that Rango would say,
“Zora is mad,” and that the nightmare would cease.

“You wanted us to be friends, because that
would have made it easier for you. We tried. But it was impossible. I feel that
Zora destroys all my efforts to create with you, and she thinks I sent you into
a dangerous political life… We can never understand each other.”

Rango found nothing to say. He stared at the
blood showing through Djuna’s clothes. She showed him that the stabs were not
deep and had struck fleshy places without causing harm.

“I’ll take Zora home. I’ll come back.”

When he returned he was still silent, crushed,
bowed. “Zora has moments of madness,” he said. “She’s been threatening people
in the street lately. I’m so afraid the police may catch her and put her in an
institution.”

“You don’t care about the people she might
kill, do you?”

“I do care, Djuna. If she had killed you I
don’t think I could ever have forgiven herBut you aren’t angry, when you have a
right to be. You’re generous and good…”

“No, Rango. I can’t let you believe that. It
isn’t true. I have often wished Zora’s death, but I only had the courage to
wish it… I had a dream one night in which I saw myself killing her with a long
old-fashioned hatpin. Do you realize where she got the idea of the hatpin? From
my own dream, which I told her. She was being more courageous, more honest,
when she attacked me.”

Rango took his head in his hands and swayed
back and forth as if in pain. A dry sob came out of his chest.

“Oh, Rango, I can’t bear this anymore. I will
go away. Then you’ll have peace with Zora.”

“Something else happened today, Djuna,
something which reminded me of some of the things you said. Something so
terrible that I did not want to see you tonight. I don’t know what instinct of
danger made me come, after all. But what happened tonight is worse than Zora’s
fit of madness. You know that once a month the workers of the party belonging
to a certain group meet for what they call auto-criticism. It’s part of the
discipline. It’s done with kindness, great objectivity, and very justly. I have
been at such meetings. A man’s way of working, his character traits, are
analyzed. Last night it was my turn. The men who sat in a circle, they were the
ones I see every day, the butcher, the postman, the grocer, the shoemaker on my
own street. The head of our particular section is the bus driver. At first, you
know, they had been doubtful about signing me in. They knew I was an artist, a
bohemian, an intellectual. But they liked me…and they took me in. I’ve worked
for them two months now. Then last night…”

He stopped as if he would not have the courage
to relive the scene. Djuna’s hand in his calmed him. But he kept his head
bowed. “Last night they talked, very quietly and moderately as the French do…
They analyzed me, how I work. They told me some of the things you used to tell
me. They made an analysis of my character. They observed everything, the good
and the bad. Not only the laziness, the disorder, the lack of discipline, the
placing of personal life before the needs of the party, the nights at the cafe,
the immoderate talking, irresponsibility, but they also mentioned my
capabilities, which made it worse, as they showed how I sabotage myself… They
analyzed my power to influence others, my eloquence, my fervor and enthusiasm,
my contagious enthusiasm and energy, my gift for making an impression on a
crowd, the fact that people are inclined to trust me, to elect me as their
leader. Everything. They knew about my fatalism, too. They talked about
character changing, as you do. They even intimated that Zora should be placed
in an institution, because they knew about her behavior.”

All the time he kept his head bowed.

“When you said these things gently, it didn’t
hurt me. It was our secret and I could get angry with you, or contradict you.
But when they said them before all the other men I knew it was true, and worse
still, I knew that if I had not been able to change with all that you gave me,
years of love and devotion, I wouldn’t change for the party either… Any other
man, taking what you gave, would have accomplished the greatest changes…any
other man but me.”

The barge was sailing nowhere, a moored port of
despair.

Rango stretched himself and said: “I’m tired
out…so tired, so tired…” And fell asleep almost instantly in the pose of a big
child, with his fists tightly closed, his arms over his head.