The Outward Room (New York Review Books Classics) by Millen Brand

Author:Millen Brand [Brand, Millen]
Language: swe
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Literary, United States, Literary Fiction, Classics
Amazon: B003WUYP9W
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Published: 2010-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

11

At nightfall they went to bed together. In the morning she was still in bed when he left. He kissed her; she heard his steps go down the stairs and across the courtyard. As they faded, she closed her eyes and lay without thought, her veins drumming with sleep. An hour went by and she heard the sound of the city, that she had never stopped hearing since she came up into it from the tunnel under the river. Size, measureless size around her, breath rising from millions of men, from all their motions, desires. An automobile, a block or two away as she could tell by the sound, crossed a manhole cover, giving it a metallic clang. The sound entered her: fear in the rooming house, the keys, cries screaming “I want I want—” words voices whisper.

She had accepted life.

She got up and slowly dressed. As she made the awkward mechanical movements of dressing, she thought of what had happened. She thought, I have taken him, his life into my own. Yet not life, she was born out of death and soon to return again to death. He must know it, tonight he must know it.

She went into the kitchen and ate, but hardly feeling hunger. His life in her had touched her death; it could not quicken it. A spasm of darkness, of faintness passed over her. If with life— No. She went back into the other room and began to make the bed. The imprint of his body was still beside her own; she looked at it and touched it. She saw a small blood stain; the faintness increased, she lowered her head.

A little before five, she noticed the sound of horses being driven into the stable. Horses and men coming to eat, to sleep. Not long after it, she heard the first clang of the gate. The men of the building were coming, soon he would come. The inscription in the book, “To my son John.” She went to the kitchen and began to cook dinner. As she was busy, or as some grease was hissing, she failed to hear him, either at the door or crossing the outer room. She looked up and saw him in the kitchen door, hungry and tired-looking.

“John,” she said, going to him.

He took her in his arms and kissed her.

They ate as they had eaten before but she felt a certain restraint in him. The light burned on the white table top, gradually the light of the outer room faded in the door and she knew the other room was getting dark. Darkness, the coming of night. Night and sleep, and beyond sleep, death. Suddenly he said, “Harriet, I love you.”

“I love you,” she said.

“I want you to marry me.”

Now she must tell him. “I can’t,” she said.

“Why not? Why can’t you?”

“Because I’m insane.”

She saw the exploding darkness in his eyes, the terror. If there had been pity, she could not have looked at him again. But in terror she found strength.

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