My great-grandmother sits in the room we have grudgingly given her and looks out of the window at the night. The shadows of the room are by Rembrandt. My great-grandmother is the work of Rops.
My mother and my grandmother sit in a room below and talk softly and eagerly of my great-grandmother's health. They think she will die soon. She is one hundred and one years old today. My father is reading a paper and scowling. He isa thin, short man with a temper. In his youth he was a brilliant writer of queer fictions. I know what he is thinking of now. I feel we are thinking of the same thing.
Neither of us can bear to eat at the table with my great-grandmother. There is an indecency about her.
A few minutes ago she raised herself to her feet with a cramped, bony gesture that was almost a cackle, and crawled out of the room. I stared at her shrunken, twisted body and at her face. One of her cheeks is yellow, the other is grey. Her features are gnarled and spotted. The skin in places is glossy. She has no hair and refuses to put on a wig. She wears a thin knitted brown shawl over her bare head.
Her emaciation is like some distasteful caricature. I am always thinking adjectives in her presence. So is my father.
As she passed my father and me when she was crawling out of the room a few minutes ago she turned her little gelatinous eyes on us and smiled.
My father and I, who know her history very well, thought, "She will never die. She is living for spite."
"Poor thing," whispered my mother. "Won't you help her upstairs?"
I helped her climb the stairs to her room. It was my grandmother Ruth's idea, giving her a room on the second floor.
"You will be away from noises, dear Eva," she said.
And now my great-grandmother has to climb up and down.
I was solicitous with her in helping her up the stairs, despite the repugnance I felt at the touch of her stiff arm on my hand. I avoided her fingers. When we reached her door she desired to kiss me. I have a feeling she does these things maliciously.
I left her sitting at the window. I do not like to undress her for bed. Neither does my father. My grandmother insists on doing it herself. She is seventy-four years old. She assumes a certain ridiculous briskness in the presence of her mother. In youth she was tyrannized over by her. Among many things she was forced into marriage with a man who deserted her at the age of fifty. My great-grandmother sought to force her to marry again. My father wrote a morbid story about this which he has promised not to show to anyone until after Eva dies.
It was his idea, by the way, of celebrating Eva's hundred and first birthday at the dinner table tonight with a cake on which one candle burned.
"You are starting over again," he said to her.
In a thin, watery voice, my great-grandmother answered: "Thank you. I should like to live to be two hundred."
I shivered. My grandmother Ruth scowled.
My father raised his glass of wine and said: "May we all live long and prosper!"
When I came downstairs from my great-grandmother's room my mother was saying to her mother, Ruth: "It won't be long now. We should really try to make her last days happier. She will be taken from us soon."
My grandmother answered: "I'll go before her, mark my words. You don't know her as I do. She'll live forever."
My father raised his head and said to me, "Zola."
"Anatole France," I answered.
He was thoughtful for a moment. It is a way we have of giving our opinions to each other when not alone.
"The early Huysmans," my father said at last.
"Wedekind," I objected.
He laughed.
My grandmother looked at us suspiciously.
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
My mother began to cry. Eva has been with us for two years now. My mother's nerves are in a bad state.
"Oh," she remarked suddenly while I was thinking of what to say to Ruth, "I don't know what to do."
It is apparent to me that all of us hate my great-grandmother.
My grandmother hates her because of the past. In the past Eva terrorized her, beat her into submission, and broke her will. In addition to this she hates her because she is impotent to avenge herself. Of late, in fact, she has developed a fear that she will die before Eva. When she was ill two months ago Eva sat at her bed and pretended to nurse her. My grandmother's eyes blazed with hate. My father and I discussed the situation at the time.