Two years ago, I knew an old woman. She suffered from a malady from which she thought she would die. Her entire right side had been paralyzed. She had only one half of herself in this world while the other half was already a stranger. A garrulous, energetic, little old woman, she had been reduced to silence and immobility. Long days alone, illiterate, insensitive, her entire life came down to God. She believed in him. And the evidence is that she had a rosary, a lead Christ, and, in stucco, Saint-Joseph portant l'enfant Jésus. She doubted that her malady was incurable, but asserted it so that people would be interested in her, entrusting the rest to the God she loved so badly.
That day, someone took an interest in her. It was a young man. (He believed that there was truth and knew, furthermore, that this woman would die, without concerning himself to resolve this contradiction.) He had taken a veritable interest in the old woman’s ennui. She had felt this well. And this interest was an unexpected godsend for the sick woman. She told him of her sorrows with liveliness: she was at the end of her rope, and it is important to give way to the youth. Was she bored? That was certain. Nobody talked to her. She was in her corner, like a dog. It was better to get it over with. Because she would rather die than be a burden on someone.
Her voice was becoming quarrelsome. It was a marketplace voice, a bargaining voice. However, this young man understood. He was of the opinion, nevertheless, that it was better to be a burden on others than to die. But this proved only one thing: that, doubtlessly, he had never been dependent on anyone. And precisely he said to the old woman — because he had seen the rosary: “You have the good God.” It was true. But even in this respect, this still bored her. If she happened to remain a long moment in prayer, if her gaze was lost in pattern of the tapestry, her daughter would say: “There she goes praying again!” - “What does it matter to you?” said the sick woman. - “It’s nothing to me, but it irritates me in the end.” And the old woman was silent, fixing on her daughter a long, reproachful gaze.
The young man listened to everything with an immense, unknown sorrow that bothered him in his chest. And the old woman said still: “She will see when she is old. She, too, will need it.”
One felt that this old woman was liberated from everything, except from God, yielded over entirely to this last evil, virtuous by necessity, too easily persuaded by that which remained to her was the only good worthy of love, plunged finally and irrevocably into the misery of man in God. But let the hope of life be reborn and God is not the force against the interest of man.
We sat at the table. The young man had been invited to dinner. The old woman did not eat, because food is heavy in the evening. She remained in her corner, behind the back of the one who listened to her. And feeling observed, he ate badly. Nevertheless, dinner progressed. To prolong this meeting, we decided to go to the cinema. A cheerful film was playing. The young man had thoughtlessly accepted, without thinking about who continued to exist behind his back.
The guests had risen to go wash their hands before leaving. There was no question, evidently, that the old woman would come too. When she would not have been impotent, her ignorance would have prevented her from comprehending the film. She said she did not like movies. In truth, she did not understand them. She was in her corner, moreover, and took a great empty interest to the beads of her rosary. She put all her trust in him. The three objects she kept marked for her the material point where the divine began. From the rosary, Christ, or Saint Joseph, beyond them, opened a deep black void where she placed all her hope.
Everyone was ready. We approached the old woman to embrace her and wish her a good evening. She had already understood and clamped her rosary with force. Although it seemed that the gesture could as be as much out of despair than fervor. We kissed her. Only the young man remained. He squeezed the woman’s hand with affection and started to turn around to leave. But the woman saw leave that who was interested in her. She did not want to be alone. She already felt the horror of her solitude, the prolonged insomnia, the disappointing tête-à-tête with God. She was afraid, now relying only on man, and attaching to the only being who would have shown interest in her, did not release his hand, squeezed it, awkwardly thanking him to justify this insistence. The young man was embarrassed. Already, the others turned to urge him to hurry. The show began at 2100 and it was better to arrive a little early so as not to wait at the counter.
He felt confronted with the most dreadful misfortune that he had ever known: that of an old, sick woman abandoned so others could go to the cinema. He wanted to leave and hide, not wanting to know, and tried to withdraw his hand. For a second, he had a ferocious hatred for this old woman and thought to slap her violently.
He was finally able to withdraw and leave while the sick woman, half-raised in her fauteuil, saw with horror the only certainty in which she relied on vanished. Nothing protected her now. Yielding entirely to the thought of her death, she did not know exactly what frightened her, but felt that she did not want to be alone. God was useless to her, except only to remove her from people and render her alone. She did not want to leave them. That’s why she started to cry.
The others were already in the street. A tenacious remorse plagued the young man. He lifted his eyes toward the illuminated window, a big dead eye in the silent house. The eye closed. The old, sick woman’s daughter said to the young man: “She always turns off the light when she is alone. She loves to stay in the dark.”