THE RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION
As you are aware, no matter how embittered, I have not hidden myself away in a corner like a pale solitary flower. Nothing like that. I have lived the best I could, not without other women to console me for the first. Brief affairs, it is true. They would leave me like people do who come to see a retrospective exhibition and either get bored or the lights fail. Only one of these visitors had a carriage at the door, with liveried coachman. The others arrived more modestly, calcante pede, and if it rained it was I who had to fetch a cab and help them in, with profuse farewells and good advice.
‘You’ll be back?’
‘Yes. Till tomorrow.’
‘Till tomorrow.’
They never came back. I would stand by the gate waiting, sometimes going to the corner to look. I would glance at my watch, but I never saw anything or anyone. Then, if another visitor appeared, I would give her my arm, we would walk in, and I would show her the landscapes, the historical or contemporary paintings, a water-colour, a pastel, a gouache, till this one too grew bored and would leave, promising to return …