In the Absence of Men

You can do nothing, Marcel. You perhaps less than anyone else cannot keep me here.

I carry my dead with me.

I take him on this journey from which I will not return except perhaps in death.

I shall not write to you again. This is my last letter. I am leaving.

I am leaving because I must, because I cannot do otherwise, because I cannot escape the truth.

I am leaving to shake off the deafening silence, the slow death, the terrible mediocrity; to escape the war which is the cause of my grief, the mud, childhood, family, the earth, all the ties that bind, everything that holds one back.

I am leaving because as this foul and rainy autumn takes hold, I need to find sunlight. Clear waters.

I dream of Italy, of Africa, of the Orient. I dream of exile. I dream of scaling mountains, crossing great plains, treacherous lakes, quiet countryside. I dream of walking to the sea, of journeying deep into desert lands, endless landscapes. I dream of coming to the far-flung reaches of a continent, to the ends of the earth, to the point where all bearings are lost. I dream of indecipherable languages, of suffocating heat, of strange vistas, of ominous clamour, of beautiful light.

I dream that I may think of nothing, searching in the emptiness for a kind of peace.

I can guess what troubles await me, not least the need to survive, accepting the vilest occupations simply to live one day more, wandering among beggars in the foul alleys of strange cities, breaking stones to build churches deep in the desert, risking madness. I fear none of these things. I accept all of these things. Better yet, I long for them. I think that hardship and uncertainty are the only things which might save me.

The mother’s eyes fix me still, but her tears have dried. In their place, there is an expression that is both calm and terrible. She has taken her confession to its end. She has said all there is to say. She is relieved. She has done her duty.

She sits there, unmoving, weary. She has finished. She, she has finished. For me it has only begun.

Now I am alone, utterly alone. Stop for a moment and try to measure the enormity of my solitude. All I have for company is a secret which weighs on me, and the pain of loss, the knowledge that what awaits me cannot equal what I have already known. There is his absence like a wound, an amputation, the outward sign of something incomplete which can never be made whole. That is the greatest loss. If I think of this as a game of pitch and toss, I can never win more than I have lost. Why play, then? And yet, I cannot remain indifferent. And yet, to desire another is inconceivable. There is no hope for me with men.

For her, it is finished. For me it has just begun.