11 September
11 September
11 September 1920
Travelling to Menton, France
Mon pauv'mari rolled over and said "Tu as peur. Que tu est bete.Ce sont des rats. Dors encore." I thought after she'd told me these words kept rippling & rippling through my mind. Something had disturbed the long silent forgotten surface. How many of his words were remembered. Did anybody ever quote the living words he'd spoken? Tu as peur - que tu est bête. Words spoken at night in the dark - strangely intimate, reassuring. He turned over & lifted himself in his grave as Marie spoke. Mournful, mournful - - -
What about a cauliflower, I said. A cauliflower with white sauce.
But they are so dear Madame, wailed Marie, so dear - one little cauliflower for 2.50. Its robbery - its - Suddenly through the kitchen window I saw the moon. It was so marvellously beautiful that I walked out of the kitchen door through the garden & leaned over the gate before I knew what I was doing. The cold bars of the gate stopped me. The moon was full, transparent, glittering. It hung over the sighing sea. I looked at it for a long time. Then I turned round & the little house faced me - a little white house quivering with light, a house like a candle shining behind a feather of mimosa tree. I had utterly forgotten these things when I was ordering the dinner. I went back to the kitchen. Let us have the cauliflower at any price, I said firmly. And Marie muttered, bending over a pot (could she have understood), en effet, the times are dangerous! [KM Notebooks, undated]