Fermina Marquez (1911) by Valery Larbaud Read Free Book Online Page B

accustom himself to his existence once again. He had no precise reason for feeling sombre; it was as if he had used up all his reserves of joy and found sadness at the bottom.
No, he had no reason for feeling sombre; on the contrary. However, he had been disappointed. Fermina Marquez was not the person he had imagined her to be; girls, as a rule, were not as he had imagined them. He had gone out to meet Fermina Marquez, as one would the enemy, feeling thoroughly terrified as well as overwhelmingly brave. And the enemy had advanced towards him with her hand out; instead of an armed warrior, he had found a good friend, and better still, a good friend who was female. He had been grateful to her for sparing him this combat for which he had gone to such lengths to prepare himself. But the change of attitude which by the same token was imposed upon him was disconcerting at first. He saw all his plans crumble: would he therefore have to be satisfied with a simple friendship? Everything seemed to be called into question.
But the girl had spoken and he had been obliged to answer her. And Joanny, soothed, his nerves unwound, had a foretaste of the great pleasure those conversations give, so childlike and so intense, those serious and innocent secrets which girls and boys of fifteen exchange — and afterwards, nevermore.
The remarkable thing was that she had not made fun of him. Then she had astonished him by saying: "You Frenchmen are so difficult to understand; it takes so little for you to go from high spirits to melancholy. It is impossible ever to guess the motives for your actions. I think you must be the most peculiar of all foreigners."
Joanny felt great pride in exciting the girl's curiosity. "She's going to observe me," he thought. He would have wished to behave in an uncommon fashion on purpose; but was too afraid of being ridiculous.
They had talked, as they strolled in step at each other's sides on the terrace. Their ideas met and they might have described their respective  imaginations as  two birds  flying together along the avenues of the grounds right to the furthest recesses of the foliage. And Joanny savoured this caressing of his mind which he had not envisaged. Fermina Marquez was something more than just a girl who had to be seduced: she had an existence of her .own which could not be disregarded. She had said some other extraordinary things: "Don't your studies lead you away from humility?" This ingenuousness was worthy of a boy. Another thing: she had compared the school buildings to a great liner:
"... A great liner like the ones which provide the service between Europe and America. Even the life you lead here makes one think of it; you eat at set times and say prayers together."
"No," Joanny had replied, "the resemblance lies in the fact that we cannot leave school any more than the passengers can the liner, once it's moving. I too had this idea when I was first here and shut in. If you're in the prep rooms, dormitories, anywhere ultimately where you can't see the grounds or the road running past the entrance gate, you can easily -magine that you are in an enormous ship out on the open sea."
"And the noise of the generator supplying the electricity is the noise of the engines, don't you think?"
"It is a mighty ship which glides, not over a real ocean but progresses across the sea of time."
"Yes, yes, that's it; and what service does it offer on this sea? Does it not make the crossing from one summer holiday to another?"
"We say 'summer holidays', Mademoiselle; forgive me for correcting you but I am only doing what I was told by Mama Dolore; — yes, you are right; and the vacations at Easter, Christmas, Whitsun and All Saints' Day are the great ship's ports of call. We let ourselves be carried along; we go about our business; and day by day throughout the seasons, the liner presses on almost inaudibly; see: the sky is slipping by."
Joanny had been happy to find that he was of the same mind as the girl; she