Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [40]
After a long time I heard her say as if she were talking to herself, ‘I have said all I want to say. I have tried to make you understand. But nothing has changed.’ She laughed.
‘Don’t laugh like that, Bertha.’
‘My name is not Bertha; why do you call me Bertha?’
‘Because it is a name I’m particularly fond of. I think of you as Bertha.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.
I said, ‘When you went off this morning where did you do?’
‘I went to see Christophine,’ she said. ‘I will tell you anything you wish to know, but in a few words because words are no use, I know that now.’
‘Why did you go to see her?’
‘I went to ask her to do something for me.’
‘And did she do it?’
‘Yes.’ Another long pause.
‘You wanted to ask her advice, was that it?’
She did not answer.
‘What did she say?’
‘She said that I ought to go away – to leave you.’
‘Oh did she?’ I said, surprised.
‘Yes, that was her advice.’
‘I want to do the best for both of us,’ I said. ‘So much of what you tell me is strange, different from what I was led to expect. Don’t you feel that perhaps Christophine is right? That if you went away from this place or I went away – exactly as you wish of course – for a time, it might be the wisest thing we could do?’ Then I said sharply, ‘Bertha, are you asleep, are you ill, why don’t you answer me?’ I got up, went over to her chair and took her cold hands in mine. ‘We’ve been sitting here long enough, it is very late.’
‘You go,’ she said. ‘I wish to stay here in the dark … where I belong,’ she added.
‘Oh nonsense,’ I said. I put arms round her to help her up, I kissed her, but she drew away.
‘Your mouth is colder than my hands,’ she said. I tried to laugh. In the bedroom, I closed the shutters. ‘Sleep now, we will talk things over tomorrow.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course, but will you come in and say goodnight to me?
‘Certainly I will, my dear Bertha.’
‘Not Bertha tonight,’ she said.
‘Of course, on this of all nights, you must be Bertha.’
‘As you wish,’ she said.
As I stepped into her room I noticed the white power strewn on the floor. That was the first thing I asked her – about the power. I asked what it was. She said it was to keep cockroaches away.
‘Haven’t you noticed that there are no cockroaches in this house and no centipedes. If you knew how horrible these things can be.’ She had lit all the candles and the room was full of shadows. There were six on the dressing-table and three on the table near the bed. The light changed her. I had never seen her look so gay or so beautiful. She poured wine into two glasses and handed me one but I swear it was before I drank that I longed to bury my face in her hair as I used to do. I said, ‘We are letting ghosts trouble us. Why shouldn’t we be happy?’ She said, ‘Christophine knows about ghosts too, but that is not what she calls them.’ She need not have done what she did to me. I will always swear that, she need not have done it. When she handed me the glass she was smiling. I remember saying in a voice that was not like my own that it was too light. I remember putting out the candles on the table near the bed and that is all I remember. All I remember of the night.
I woke in the dark after dreaming that I was buried alive, and when I was awake the feeling of suffocation persisted. Something was lying across my mouth; hair with a sweet heavy smell. I threw it off but still I could not breathe. I shut my eyes and lay without moving for a few seconds. When I opened them I saw the candles burnt down on that abominable dressing-table, then I knew where I was. The door on to the veranda was open and the breeze was so cold that I knew it must be very early in the morning, before dawn. I was cold too, deathly cold and sick and in pain. I got out of bed without looking at her, staggered into my dressing-room and saw myself in the glass. I turned away at once. I could not vomit. I only retched painfully.