What he found moving was her way of hanging on to his clothes, of squeezing his arm when walking along with him, the complete trust with which she gave herself and which appealed to the man in him. There was also her silence, which made her coincide exactly with what she happened to be doing, and completed her resemblance to a cat, which was linked with the gravity she put into her kisses....

At night, he ran his fingers over her high and ice-cold cheekbones, and felt them sink into the soft warmth of her lips. Then he felt as if, somewhere within himself, a great, impersonal, and burning cry had been uttered. And as he stood watching both the night, laden to a bursting point with stars, and the town, like an upturned sky, swollen with human lights, the deep warm breath that rose from the port brought him a thirst for that lukewarm stream, a limitless desire to carry off from those living lips the whole meaning of the inhuman and sleeping world, as if it were a silence locked away within her mouth. He bent down, and it was as if he had placed his lips upon a bird. Marthe groaned. He bit into her lips, and, as their mouthes clung together for minutes on end, breathed in that gentle warmth which carried him into ecstasy as if he were clasping the whole world in his arms. She, in the meantime, clinging to him like a drowning woman, flashed out from time to time from the great depths into which she had been thrown, thrust his lips away and then drew them to her again, falling back into the black and icy waters which burned her like a people of gods.

It is to Jeanne that some of my purest joys are linked. She often used to say to me:"You're silly." It was her expression, the one she used when she laughed, but she always said it when she loved me most. We both came from poor families. She lived a few streets away from me, in the rue du centre. Neither of us ever went out of our own neighborhood, for everything brought us back to it. And in both our homes we found the same sadness and the same sordid life. Meeting each other was a way of escaping from all this. Yet today, when I look back over so many years and see her face, like a tired child's, I realize that we were not really escaping from it, and that what is now priceless in our love stemmed from the very shadow which this poverty cast over us.

I think that I really did suffer when I lost her, but I had no feelings of rebellion. This is because I have never really felt at ease in ownership. Regret has always seemed much more natural to me. And although I can see my feelings quite clearly, I have never been able to stop thinking that Jeanne is much more a part of me at a moment like today than she was when she stood a little on tiptoe to put her arms around my neck. I can't remember how I met her. But I know that I used to go to visit her at her home. And that her father and mother laughed when they saw us. Her father worked on the railroad, and when he was at home he always sat in a corner, looking thoughtfully out of the window, his enormous hands flat on his thighs. Her mother was always doing housework. So was Jeanne, but in such a light and carefree manner that she never looked as if she was really working. She wasn't very small, but always looked so to me. And I felt she was so light and tiny that I always had a twinge of sadness when I saw her dart across the road in front of the trucks. I can see now that she was probably not very intelligent. But at the time, I never thought about it. She had her own particular way of playing at being cross that almost made me cry with delight. And this heart, now closed to so much, can still be touched by the memory of the secret gesture she would make when she turned around and threw herself into my arms when I begged her to forgive me. I can’t remember now whether I wanted her physically or not. I know that everything was mixed up, and that all my feelings melted into tenderness. If I did want her, I forgot about it the first day that, in the corridor of her flat, she kissed me to thank me for a little brooch that I had given her. With her hair drawn back, her uneven mouth with its rather large teeth, her clear eyes and straight nose, she looked that evening like a child that I had brought into the world for the sake of its love and tenderness. Helped by Jeanne herself, who always called me her Big friend," I kept that impression for a long time.

There was a strange quality to the joys we shared together. When we got engaged, she was eighteen and I twenty-two. But what filled our hearts with grave and joyful love was the official character that it now had. And for Jeanne to come home with me, for mother to kiss her and call her "my girl”, were all opportunities for rather ridiculous moments of joy that we made no attempts to hide. But Jeanne's memory is linked in my mind with an impression that I shall never be able to express. I can still feel it, however, and I only need to be sad, see a woman whose face touches me, and then come across a brilliantly lit shop front, to find Jeanne with me again, her face turned toward me as she says: "How lovely," and be hurt by the truth of the memory. It was at Christmas time, and the local shops made a great show with lights and decoration. We would stop in front of the confectioners' windows. The chocolate models, the imitation rockwork of gold and silver paper, the snowflakes of cotton wool, the gilded plates and rainbow cakes, all sent us into raptures. I felt a little ashamed, but I could not hold back the upsurge of joy that filled my whole being and brought tears to Jeanne’s eyes.

If, today I try to analyze this feeling, I can find many different things in it. Certainly, this joy came first and foremost from Jeanne-from her scent and the way she used to hold tightly on to my wrist, or pout her lips. But there was also the sudden brightness of the shops in a neighborhood that was normally so dark, the hurried air of the passers-by, laden with parcels, the delight of the children in the streets, which all helped to tear us from our world of loneliness. The silver paper around the chocolates was the sign that a confused but noisy and golden period was beginning for the simple-hearted, and Jeanne and I snuggled closer together. Perhaps we were vaguely aware of the particular happiness that a man feels when his life falls into harmony with what he is himself. Normally, we carried the magic desert of our love through a world from which love had disappeared. And on days like these, it seemed that the flame which rose in us when we held hands was the same one which we saw dancing in the shop windows, in the hearts of the workmen who had turned around to look at their children, and in the depths of the pure and icy December sky.

Novel.

This story begun on a blue, burning hot beach, in the sunburned bodies of two young creatures-swimming, games in the sun and water— summer evenings on the roads leading to the beaches, with the scent of fruit and smoke in the empty shadows— the body relaxing in light clothes. The attraction between two beings, and the secret, tender bliss in a heart of seventeen.

—Ended up in Paris, With the cold or the gray sky, the pigeons among the black stones the Palais Royal, the city and its lights, rapid kisses, tiring and uneasy tenderness, wisdom and desire rising in the heart of a man of twenty-four— the "let's stay friends."

Id.
This other story, begun on a cold and stormy night, lying with my back on the earth under a sky crossed by stars and clouds:
— continued on the hills around Algiers or in front of the wide and mysterious port.
— Poverty-stricken and magnificent Kasbah, the cemetery of El Kettar emptying out all its tombstones toward the sea, warm soft lips among the pomegranate flowers, and a tomb— trees, hills, the climb to the pure and dried-out Bouzareah, and, turning back to the sea, the taste of lips and our eyes full of sunlight.

It begins not in love but in the desire to live. But is love so far off when, after climbing up through the wind to the great square house above the sea, two bodies cling close together, while from the far horizon the soft breathing of the sea rises to this room cut off from the rest of the world? The marvel of night, when the hope of love is one with the rain, the sky, and the earth's silences. Exact balance of two beings joined together by their bodies, and made alike by a common indifference to everything which is not this moment in the world.

This other moment which is like a dance, she in a period dress and he in a dancer's costume.

What is hateful in Paris: tenderness, feelings, a hideous, sentimentality that sees everything beautiful as pretty, and everything pretty as beautiful. The tenderness and despair that accompany the murky skies, the shining roofs, and endless rain.
What is inspiring: the terrible loneliness. As a remedy to life in society, I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only dessert within our means. Here, the body has lost its magic. It is covered over, and hidden under shapeless skins. The only thing left is the soul. The soul with all its sloppy overflow of drunken sentimentality, its whining emotions and everything else. But the soul also offers us one source of greatness: silent solitude. When you look at Paris from the Butte Montmartre, seeing it like a monstrous cloud of steam beneath the rain, a gray and shapeless swelling on the surface of the earth, and then turn to look at the Calvary of Saint- Pierre de Montmartre, you can feel the kinship between a country, an art, and a religion. Every line of these stones, and every one of these scourged or crucified bodies is quivering with the same wanton and defiled emotion as the town itself, and is pouring it into men's hearts.