Thomas The Obscure Read Online Free PDF

a being she possessed without danger. If she took hold of him, it was with the greatest freedom. As for his head, he abandoned it to her. His words, before they were spoken, might as well have been in one mouth as the other, so completely did he let her do as she wished. In this way in which Anne played with his entire person and in the absence of risk which permitted her to treat this strange body as if it belonged to her, there was a frivolousness so perilous that anyone would have been pained at it. But she saw in him only a futile mouth, empty glances, and, rather than feeling uneasy at the realization that a man she could not approach, whom she could not dream of making speak, consented to roll his head in her lap, she enjoyed it. It was, on her part, a way to act which was difficult to justify. From one moment to the next one might anticipate, between these bodies bound so intimately together by such fragile bonds, a contact which would reveal in a terrible way their lack of bonds. The more he withdrew within himself, the more she came frivolously forward. He attracted her, and she buried herself in the face whose contours she still thought she was caressing. Did she act so imprudently because she thought she was dealing with someone inaccessible, or, on the other hand, with someone too easy to approach? Her stare was fixed on him ... was this an impudent game, or a desperate one? Her words became moist, even her weakest movements glued her against him, while within her swelled up the pocket of humors from which she would perhaps, at the proper moment, draw an extreme power of adhesion. She covered herself with suction-cups. Within and without, she was no more than wounds trying to heal, flesh being grafted. And, despite such a change, she continued to play and to laugh. As she held out her hand to him she said: "Really, who could you be?"
    Properly speaking, there was no question in this remark. Distracted as she was, how could she have interrogated a being whose existence was a terrible question posed to herself? But she seemed to find it surprising and slightly shocking, yes, really shocking, not yet to be able, not to understand him (which in itself would have been extremely presumptuous), but (and this time the rashness went beyond all limits) to get information about him. And this boldness was not enough for her, for the regret she felt at not knowing him, rather than trying to justify itself in its bizarre form through the violence and madness of its expression, emerged rather as a relaxed and almost indifferent regret. It was, beneath the benign appearance all such operations have, an actual attempt to tempt God. She looked him right in the face: "But, what are you?"
    Although she did not expect to hear him answer and even if she were sure that he would not answer she would not in fact have questioned him, there was such a presumption in her manner of assuming that he could give an answer (of course, he would not answer, she did not ask him to answer, but, by the question she had posed him personally and relating to his person, she acted as if she might interpret his silence as an accidental refusal to answer, as an attitude which might change one day or another), it was such a crude way to treat the impossible that Anne had suddenly revealed to her the terrible scene she was throwing herself into blindfolded, and in an instant, waking from her sleep, she perceived all the consequences of her act and the madness of her conduct. Her first thought was to prevent him from answering. For the great danger, now that by an inconsiderate and arbitrary act she had just treated him as a being one might question, was that he might in turn act like a being that might answer and make his answer understood. She felt this threat deposited in the depths of her self, in the place of the words she had spoken. He was already grasping the hand held out to him. He seized it cruelly, giving Anne to believe that he understood her