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Kien had graver things to consider and to overcome. The bedroom suite filled him with aversion. It disturbed him by constantly standing there, it wormed its way into his treatises. The amount of space it usurped contrasted with the pettiness of its meaning. He was delivered over to it, to these blockish lumps, what did he care where he washed or where he slept? Soon he would find himself discussing his meals, like nine-tenths of human kind; and the more plentiful they are the more they talk about them.

He had become absorbed in the reconstruction of a damaged text; the words rustled in the undergrowth. Keen as a hunter, his eye alert, eager yet cool, he picked his way from phrase to phrase. He needed a book and got up to fetch it. Even before he had it, that damnable bed crossed his mind. It broke the taut connections, it put miles between him and his quarry. Wash-stands confused the fairest trails. By broad daylight he saw himself asleep. Resuming his seat, he had to start again from the beginning, to find his way once more into the preserve, to recapture the mood. Why this waste of time? Why this despoiling of his energy and concentration?

Little by little he conceived loathing for the hulking bed. He could not change it for the divan; the divan was worse. He could not put it in another room; the other rooms belonged to that woman. She would never have agreed to give up what she had once got into her possession. He felt this, without discussing it with her. He would not even open negotiations with her. For he had gained one priceless advantage over her. For weeks not a word had passed between them. He took care not to break that silence. He would not rashly give her courage for more chattering; rather he would endure bed-table, wash-stand and bed. To give full sanction to the existing situation, he avoided her rooms. Such books as he needed thence, he would gather up at midday or in the evenings, after his meals, since, as he assured himself, he had legitimate business in the dining-room. During meals he looked past her. He was never wholly free of a lurking fear that she might suddenly say something. But distasteful as she was to him, he had to give her her due: she kept to the letter of the contract.

When washing, Kien closed his eyes at the touch of water. This was an old custom of his. He pressed his lids together more tightly than was necessary, to prevent the infiltration of the water. He could not safeguard his eyes too thoroughly. His old custom stood him in good stead with the new wash-stand. On waking in the morning, he rejoiced at the thought of washing. For at what other time was he released from the oppression of the furniture? Bending over the basin, he was blind to every one of these traitor objects. (Whatever diverted his attention from his work was fundamentally traitorous.) Plunging into the basin, his head under water, he liked to dream of earlier years. Then a still and secret emptiness had reigned. Happy conjectures fluttered about his rooms, colliding with no projecting surfaces. A divan, by itself, created little disturbance; it might hardly be there at all, a mirage on a far horizon, appearing only to vanish again.

Naturally enough Kien developed a taste for keeping his eyes shut. His washing concluded, still he did not open them. For a little longer he continued his blissful fantasy of the vanished furniture. Before he reached the wash-stand, as soon as he got out of bed, he closed his eyes, savouring in advance the relief so soon to be his. Like those people who determine to overcome a weakness, who keep careful tally of their doings and are at pains to improve themselves, he told himself that this was no weakness, rather a strength. It must be developed, even to the point of eccentricity. Who would know of it? He lived alone; the service of knowledge was more important than the opinion of the mob. Thérèse was not likely to discover, for how would she dare, contrary to his express prohibition, to surprise him when he was alone?

First of all he prolonged his blindness beyond his getting up. Next he made his way, blind, to his writing desk. When he was at work he could forget the objects standing behind him, all the more quickly if he had not seen them at all. In front of the desk he could give his eyes the run of all there was to see. They rejoiced in being open; their agility increased. Perhaps they gathered strength in the periods of rest he so generously allowed them. He protected them against sudden shocks. He used them only where they could be fruitful: for reading and writing. Books, when he wanted them, he now fetched blind. At first he laughed to himself at these extraordinary tricks. Often he selected the wrong place and came back to his writing desk all unknowing, his eyes still closed. Then he noticed that he had been three volumes too far to the right, one too far to the left, or on occasion had even reached too low, missing his aim by an entire shelf. It worried him not at all — he had patience — and a second time he set out. Often enough he was overcome by the desire to peep at the title, to spy out the back of the book, before lie actually reached the shelves. Then he blinked: in certain conditions he might give a quick look and then turn away. More often he was master of himself and waited until he was back at his writing desk, and there was no more danger in opening his eyes.

Practice in walking blind soon made him a master of this art. In three or four weeks he could find, in the shortest possible time, and without any cheating or self-deception, any book he wanted, with his eyes really and truly shut; a bandage would not more effectually have blinded him. Even mounted on the steps, he retained his instinct. He set them up exactly where he needed them. With long, eager fingers he grasped hold of each side and clambered, blind, up the rungs. Even at the top or climbing down, he easily kept his balance. Difficulties which, in the days of unrestricted sight, he had never fully overcome, because they were a matter of indifference to him, were swept aside by the new process. He learnt even to manage his legs like a blind man. Earlier they had hindered his every movement; they were far too thin for their length. Now they moved firmly, with calculated steps. They seemed to have acquired muscles and flesh; he trusted himself to them and they supported him. They saw for the blind; and he, the blind, had given the halt strong new legs.

While he was still uncertain of the new weapon, which his eyes were forging for him, he abandoned some of his peculiarities. He no longer took the brief-case full of books with him on his morning walk. If he stood an hour irresolute before the shelves, how easily might his glance fall on that evil trinity — as he called the three pieces of furniture — which vanished but slowly, alas, from his conscious mind. Later success made him audacious. Bold and blind, he would fill his briefcase. Should its contents suddenly displease him, he would empty it and make a new selection, as if all was as before: himself, his library, his future, and the punctilious, practical subdivision of his hours.

His room at least was in his power. Learning flourished. Theses sprouted from the writing desk like mushrooms. True, in earlier times, he had scorned and despised the blind for positively enjoying life despite this, of all, afflictions. But no sooner had he transformed his prejudice into an advantage, than the necessary philosophy came of itself.

Blindness is a weapon against time and space; our being is one vast blindness, save only for that little circle which our mean intelligence — mean in its nature as in its scope — can illumine. The dominating principle of the universe is blindness. It makes possible juxtapositions which would be impossible if the objects could see each other. It permits the truncation of time when time is unendurable. Time is a continuum whence there is one escape only. By closing the eyes to it from time to time, it is possible to splinter it into those fragments with which alone we arc familiar.

Kien had not discovered blindness, he only made use of it: a natural possibility by which the seeing live. Do we not to-day make use of every source of power of which we become possessed? On what means and possibilities has mankind not already laid hands? Any blockhead to-day can handle electricity and complicated atoms. Shapes to which one man as well as another may well be blind, fill Kien's room, his fingers, his books. This printed page, clear and co-ordinated as any other, is in reality an inferno of furious electrons. If he were perpetually conscious of this, the letters would dance before his eyes. His fingers would feel the pressure of their evil motion like so many needle pricks. In a single day he might manage to achieve one feeble line, no more. It is his right to apply that blindness, which protects him from the excesses of the senses, to every disturbing element in his life. The furniture exists as little for him as the army of atoms within and about him.
Esse percipi
, to be is to be perceived. What I do not perceive, does not exist. Woe to the feeble wretches who go blithely on their own way, whate'er betide.

Whence, with cogent logic, it was proved that Kien was in no wise deceiving himself.

CHAPTER VI

MY DEAR LADY

Thérèse's confidence, too, increased with the weeks. Of her three rooms only one, the dining-room, was furnished. The two others were unfortunately still empty. But it was in these two that she passed her time so as to spare the dining-room furniture. Usually she stood behind the door which led to his writing desk, and listened. For hours at a time, for whole mornings and afternoons, she stayed there, her head against a crack through which she could see nothing at all; arms akimbo and elbows pointing sharply in his direction, without even a chair to lean on, propped up on herself and the starched skirt, she waited, and knew exactly why she was waiting. She never tired. She caught him at it, when he suddenly began talking although he was alone. His wife wasn't good enough for him, there he was talking to thin air, a judgment on him. Before lunch and dinner she withdrew to the kitchen.

He felt contented and happy, at his work, far, far away from her. During almost all this time she was not two paces off.

True the thought sometimes occurred to him, that she might be planning a speech against him. But she said nothing and still nothing. He resolved, once a month, to check the contents of the shelves in her rooms. No one was safe from book thefts.

One day at ten o'clock, when she had just comfortably installed herself at her post, he flung open the door, aflame with inspectional zeal. She bounded backwards; she had all but fallen over.

'A nice sort of manners!' she cried, emboldened by the shock. 'Come into a room without knocking. You'd think I'd been listening at doors, and in
my
rooms. Why should I listen? A husband thinks he can take any liberty simply because he's married. Shame, that's what I say, shame! Manners indeed!'

What did she say? He was to knock before he could go to his books? Insolence! Ridiculous! Grotesque! She must be out of her mind. He would as soon slap her face. That might bring her to her senses.

He imagined the marks of his fingers on her gross, overfed, shiny cheeks. It would be unjust to give one cheek preference over the other. He would have to slap both at once. If he aimed badly, the red finger-marks on one side would be higher up than those on the other. That would be unpleasing. His preoccupation with Chinese art had bred in him a passionate feeling for symmetry.

Thérèse noticed that he was examining her cheeks. She forgot about the knocking, turned away and said enticingly: 'Don't.' So he had conquered without slapping her face. His interest in her cheeks was extinguished. With deep satisfaction he turned towards the shelves. She lingered, expectant. Why didn't he say something? Squinting cautiously, she discovered the changed expression of his features. Better go straight to her kitchen. She was in the habit of solving all her problems there.

Why did she have to say that? Now again he wouldn't want to. She was too respectable. Another woman would have thrown herself straight at him. You couldn't do anything with him. That was the way she was. If she were a bit older, she would have jumped at him. What sort of a man was that? Maybe he wasn't a man after all. Trousers have nothing to do with it, they wear them just the same. They aren't women either. There are such things. Who could tell when he'd want to again? It might take years with people like that. Not that she was old, but no chicken either. She knew that herself without being told. She looked thirty, but not twenty. All the men stared at her in the street. What was it the young man in the furniture shop said: 'Yes, around thirty, that's when the best people get married, whether ladies or gentlemen.' As a matter of fact, she'd always thought she looked forty; could you wonder, at fifty-six? But when a young man like that says a thing like that, all of his own, he must know what he's talking about. 'Well I ask you, the things you don't know!' she had answered him. Such a superior young man! He had guessed she was married too, not only her age. And there she was tied to an old man. Anyone would think, he didn't love her.

'Love' in all its parts of speech was a heavy-type word in Therese's vocabulary. In her youth she had grown accustomed to terser expressions. Later, when in her various places she had learnt this word along with many other things, 'love' still remained for her a foreign sound of wondrous import. She rarely took the blessed consolation between her lips. But she lost no other opportunity: wherever she read the word 'love' she would linger, and carefully sift all the surrounding matter. At times the most tempting 'situations vacant' were overshadowed by offers of marriage and love. She read 'good wages' and held out her hand; joyfully her fingen curled up under the weight of the expected money. Then her eye fell on 'love' a few columns further on; here it paused to rest, here it clung for broad moments. She did not of course forget her other plans, she did not open her hand to return the money. She merely covered it over for a brief, tremulous space with love. 

Thérèse repeated aloud: 'He doesn't love me.' She drew out the pivotal word, pursing her mouth, and already she felt a kiss on her lips. This comforted her. She closed her eyes. She put the peeled potatoes on one side, wiped her hands on her apron and opened the door into her little room. Sparks made her close her eyes. Suddenly it was hot. Little globes danced through the air, glow-worms, red ones; it was narrow, the floor gaped in front of her, her feet fell into it; fog, fog, a strange fog, or was it smoke; wherever she turned her eyes, all was empty, cleared out, so much room; she clutched for support, anywhere; deadly sick she was; her trunk, her trousseau, who had taken them away; help !