Inevitable Read Online Free PDF Page A

I don’t recognise people any more. They swirl about me so. Sometimes I feel a need to sit alone for hours in my birdcage, upstairs, in order to recover. This morning in the Vatican, I can’t remember it, I didn’t retain a thing. Things are always dull and grey around me. Then the people in the
pensione
. The same faces every day. I see them and yet I don’t see them. I see … Mrs Von Rothkirch and her daughter, then the beautiful Urania, Rudyard and the English lady, Miss Taylor, who is always worn out with sightseeing, and finds everything ‘most exquisite’. But my memory is so bad that in my solitude I have to work it out: Mrs Von Rothkirch is tall, stately, with the smile of the German empress, whom she resembles slightly, talkative yet indifferent, as if her words were just falling indifferently from her lips …”
    “You’re very observant …” said Van der Staal.
    “Oh, don’t say that!” said Cornélie, almost annoyed. “I can’t see anything, can’t retain anything. I have no impressions. Everything around me is grey. I don’t really know why I travel … When I’m alone I think of the people I meet … I’ve got Mrs Von Rothkirch now and I’ve got Else. A round witty face with tall eyebrows, and always a witticism or a ‘punch line’: I sometimes find it tiring, it makes me laugh so much. But still, they are nice. Then there’s the beautiful Urania. She tells me everything: she is as communicative as I am at this moment. And Rudyard too, I can see him in front of me.”
    “Rudyard!” smiled Mrs Van der Staal and the girls.
    “What is he?” asked Cornélie, curious. “He’s always so polite, he recommended a wine to me; he’s always able to get tickets.”
    “Don’t you know what Rudyard is?” asked Mrs Van der Staal.
    “No, and neither does Mrs Von Rothkirch.”
    “Then beware,” laughed the girls.
    “Are you Catholic?” asked Mrs Van der Staal.
    “No …”
    “And nor is the beautiful Urania? Or the Von Rothkirchs?”
    “No …”
    “Well, that’s why ‘la Belloni’ put Rudyard on your table. Rudyard is a Jesuit. In every
pensione
in Rome there’s a Jesuit who has free board and lodging, if the owner is on good terms with the church, and with great charm tries to win souls …”
    Cornélie found this hard to believe.
    “Believe me,” Mrs Van der Staal went on. “In a
pensione
like this, an important, reputable
pensione
, a great deal of intrigue goes on …”
    “‘La Belloni’ …?” asked Cornélie.
    “Our
marchesa
is a born intriguer. Last winter three English sisters were converted.”
    “By Rudyard?”
    “No, by another priest. Rudyard came here this winter.”
    “Rudyard walked along with me for quite a way this morning in the street,” said young Van der Staal. “I let him talk, and sounded him out.”
    Cornélie fell back in her chair.
    “I’m tired of people,” she said with the strange honesty that she had in her. “I’d like to sleep for a month without seeing anyone.” And after a little while she got up, said good night and went to bed, with her head swimming …

VI
    S HE STAYED IN for a few days, and ate in her room. One morning, however, she went for a walk in the Borghese gardens and bumped into the young Van der Staal on his bicycle.
    “You don’t cycle?” he asked, jumping off.
    “No …”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s a kind of movement that doesn’t agree with my kind of person,” replied Cornélie, annoyed at meeting someone who disturbed the solitude of her walk.
    “May I walk with you?”
    “Of course.”
    He left his bicycle in the charge of the gateman, and walked along beside her, naturally, without saying much.
    “It’s so beautiful here,” he said.
    His words sounded simple and sincere. She looked at him closely, for the first time.
    “You’re an archaeologist, aren’t you?” she asked.
    “No,” he said defensively.
    “What then?”
    “Nothing. Mama says that to excuse me. I’m nothing and a quite