The Impudent Ones by Marguerite Duras

Author:Marguerite Duras
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

THE WATER WAS SO COLD THAT AFTER A MOMENT MAUD could no longer feel her fingers. She withdrew her hand and put it on the thick grass, which felt warm by comparison. In the silence that reigned near the river, she heard the sound of her own sobbing. An instant later she wanted to draw up her legs, but it hurt too much; she felt the same thing when she tried to get up. Very carefully she brought her limbs in close, into the hollow of her curled-up body, discovering a gentleness in her actions that made her feel as if she had compassion for herself.

Although it was June, it was still very difficult for Maud to warm herself in this flowing rift of the Dior, where the earth softened at night like a humid sponge. Her dress and clothing stuck to her body, but it was only when she was no longer immobile that the cold penetrated her all of a sudden and made her shiver. She wasn’t sad, but weary, with a weariness made painful by the cold.

Soon, the first drops of rain from the storm began to fall. She had to go in. She thought, with a stupid obstinacy, of the bed in which she had found herself after she had fainted. Was her bedroom at Uderan open? Could she go to George Durieux’s place? No, anything except a return like that, which he would misinterpret.

Go to the tenant farm? Wake up the tenant farmer’s daughter by knocking on the shutters? But the domestic help would get up to welcome her in, and inventing an excuse seemed beyond her capabilities.

Thus she concluded there was no other shelter but the night, right up until the morning. She didn’t for a minute think about returning to the Pecresses’. This now seemed so impossible that it didn’t even cross her mind.

The Dior was running beside her, young and virile, against its faithful banks. All she had to do was roll over. She would have been caught up and carried away in a moment. But that was not in her thoughts, and she would have been astonished if someone had spoken to her about suicide, because she didn’t associate her despair with any thoughts of heroism. With difficulty she rose and climbed up the small hillock of the railway tracks. The rain was falling and blinding her. She took huge steps forward, stumbling and bracing herself against the moist clumps of earth; she crossed the tracks and then the road. A bright light caught her for an instant in its beam and went by quickly, as an engine roared. She didn’t straighten up but continued to drag herself toward Uderan. Just as she was headed up the sloped path of the yard, she thought she sensed the presence of someone around the house. She continued, unconcerned, and stopped in front of the closed door. “I knew it—they locked it this afternoon to keep me from going back in.”

She tried in vain to turn the handle.

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