Homo Sapiens by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
XI.
Isa and Falk sat in the same wine restaurant as the previous evening. Only now they were completely alone, in a *chambre séparée*.
Never had she enjoyed being alone with someone so much.
Falk had ordered champagne, counted the bottles, and calculated whether he had enough to pay.
Yes, it was enough—for much more. Strange that he had to think of that.
She lay half-reclined on the sofa, blowing rings of cigarette smoke into the air.
She had completely forgotten Mikita. When she occasionally thought of him, she saw him as a twitching, blustering mass, a sort of goblin.
Yes, how malicious he could be! Those veiled jabs in the sausage story.
Falk watched her.
Sometimes he was surprised that her face flushed with crimson, and that she shuddered violently.
And each time, he saw her sit up hastily and down a glass.
How he loved her! How he wanted to press that slender body into his, to stroke that fine blonde head and hold it to his chest.
Why didn’t he do it? Why?
He felt, he knew, that she loved him; so why not?
Pity for Mikita? Didn’t he suffer just as much, perhaps even more…
He thought of the awkward scene at Mikita’s. How strange that he felt joy in it. What kind of devil in him took pleasure in that? He recalled how he once got a girl’s fiancé completely drunk and felt a diabolical joy when the girl was mortified by her lover’s indecent drunkenness, even began to hate him.
What could that be?
A nervous, pained smile played around the corners of his mouth.
She looked at him. How beautiful he was! She could look at him for hours, yes, look at how his eyes, large, sparkling, feverish, stared at her… and when he occasionally paced back and forth: those supple movements of a panther.
And again, she felt the flush of shame flood her face and a dark hatred rise within her…
That was crude of Mikita—brutal! She drank hastily.
They no longer spoke.
He had already said so much; now he wanted to sink into himself, to drink in what was around him, within him, to savor it, to absorb it into every pore…
And she heard his voice with its soft, hoarse tone… There was something compelling in that voice, lulling her will, hypnotizing her.
She thought of when she heard *Tristan and Isolde* at the opera. It was exactly the same feeling. She saw herself in the box, forgetting where she was… oh, it was glorious, that half-awake state… she heard the music pouring into her with a longing, with… ah…
She sank back into the sofa and closed her eyes. It was so good here with him…
Falk stood up, paced a few times, then sat beside her.
He took her hand. He looked into her eyes. It was like a hot phosphorescence all around. He saw a glow trembling in hers, a hot, alluring glow… yes, that’s how she looked at him the first time.
They smiled at each other.
“Now I’ll speak again.” “But don’t forget.”
“Forget what?”
“The condition…”
“I’ve forgotten the condition.” “You mustn’t.”
“No, no!” He kissed her hand.
How she lured him, how she drew him in with those eyes. Did she know it?
“Where are you from, Isa?”
“Isn’t it more important where I’m going?” She smiled.
“Yes, yes… You shame me, because you’re right… And your hand is so beautiful, so beautiful; I’ve never seen such a wonderful hand…”
She looked at him.
Suddenly, it overcame him. He sank beside her and passionately kissed her hand. He buried his lips in that hand.
Then she gently withdrew her fine, slender, long hand. “Don’t do it, Falk! It hurts so much, so much…”
She spoke softly, hesitantly, with a veiled voice.
Falk sat back. He rubbed his forehead, drank, trembled with excitement, and fell silent.
A long pause.
Then he began, calmly, quietly, with a sad smile.
“It’s been two, three days since I met you… Yes, I can’t comprehend it, there’s nothing to comprehend, it’s a fact… Be kind, let me say everything, it calms me… I have to talk about it… You probably can’t understand, but I’m loving for the first time in my life.”
He drank hastily.
“Yes, you don’t know, but it’s something terrible, to love for the first time at my age. It uproots the whole soul, it creates chaos in the mind… You became my fate, you became my doom…”
He grew agitated.
“I know, yes, I know I shouldn’t speak to you like this, yes…” he choked down Mikita’s name—“I don’t know why I’m talking to you like this. It’s a terrible mystery… I’m a different person today than I was three days ago—I don’t understand what’s happened in me… well, yes… I can talk like this: I want nothing from you, I have you in me… I’ve carried you my whole life as a great, painful longing, and so… Yes, I’ve already told you the same thing a hundred times, but—” it burst out of him—“I’m tormenting myself so unbearably, I’m falling apart, I’m so insanely restless… No, no—I’m not crazy, I know, I know well what I’m doing and saying, I also know I have the strength to tear myself away… Yes, I’ll go and carry you in me, drag this eternal longing with me, and let my soul crumble…”
Again, he sank before her. Everything went black before his eyes. He felt two hearts rubbing against each other.
“Just love me, say, say you love me…”
He embraced her and felt her body yield, he pressed her to him…
“Mine, mine…” She pulled away.
She didn’t know why she resisted; she only felt a sudden wild hatred for Mikita, who had defiled her.
Falk looked at her.
Her eyes were large and filled with tears. She looked away and gripped the sofa’s armrest convulsively.
He controlled himself.
“Yes, you’re right!” He spoke tiredly, a bit coldly… “Yes, that wasn’t nice of me. Forgive me. You’re too tired to love.”
She looked at him for a long time with a quiet, sad reproach.
“And then… it’s really so beautiful to sit side by side like this, without demanding anything… Yes, let’s be comrades… right?”
Falk grew cheerful. But he felt miserable and sick. He couldn’t mask his pain well. Why bother? Yes, why? He grew angry and felt a hard, stubborn defiance. He almost wanted to slam his fist on the table. He never did that otherwise.
Again, he stood, walked around the table, and sat beside Isa on the other side.
“No, it would be too ridiculous to play a comedy with you. I won’t do that. I have to tell you. Yes, I must… You could be my greatest happiness, yes, you… no, you! You! Let me call you that. I have nothing in the world. It’s already an inexpressible happiness for me to feel you as mine with the word ‘you,’ it’s a happiness to scream this ‘you’ from my heart, this one ‘you’… You…”
He felt dizzy. He saw nothing more. And he buried his face in her lap. And she took his head in her hands, and he felt her kiss him… shyly, then fiercely, in short bursts one after another. And he trembled and burrowed into her…
Then suddenly he heard her speak in a choked, breathless, broken voice…
“I followed him, I thought I could love him because he loves me so much…
You don’t know how tired I am… You, you I’ve loved for a long time—long… Since he started talking about you… I made him come here… When I saw you the first time—I trembled as if I’d collapse… But I mustn’t, I mustn’t… I don’t want to go from one to another… Let me go, let—”
But he heard nothing more, he pressed her to him, he burrowed his lips into hers, he clasped her head and pressed and pressed it to his face with frenzied passion.
Finally, she tore herself free and sobbed loudly.
“Let me go. Don’t torment me. I—I can’t!”
He stood up, and an infinite sadness filled his soul.
Then he took both her hands, they looked at each other silently and held on tightly, for a long, long time.
“So we part?” “Yes…”
“And we won’t see each other again?”
She was silent. Tears ran silently down her cheeks.
No more! Falk trembled violently. Now he would hear his death sentence. “No…”
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