The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre Page A

are,’ said Mathieu.
    ‘I daresay...’ she said in a drawling voice, which somehow seemed to go with her sallow cheeks.
    ‘And in the end everyone notices how you hide your cheeks, and drop your eyes, as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.’
    ‘Oh well, I suppose you like people to know what sort of person you are,’ she added with a faint contempt. ‘It’s true you aren’t susceptible to that sort of thing. And as for looking people in the face,’ she went on, ‘I just can’t do it. My eyes begin to smart at once.’
    ‘You used often to annoy me in early days,’ said Mathieu. ‘You used to look at me above the forehead, just at the level of the hair, and I’ve always been so nervous of getting bald... I thought you had noticed a thinning patch and couldn’t take your eyes off it.’
    ‘I look at everyone like that.’
    ‘Yes — or sideways: so...’
    He flung a sly, quick glance at her. She laughed, amused and angry: ‘Stop! I won’t be imitated.’
    ‘I wasn’t being rude.’
    ‘No, but it frightened me to see you put on my expressions.’
    ‘I can understand that,’ said Mathieu, with a smile.
    ‘You don’t look as if you did. However handsome you were, the effect on me would be just the same.’ And she added in an altered voice: ‘I do wish my eyes didn’t hurt me so.’
    ‘Look here,’ said Mathieu. ‘I’ll go to a chemist and get you a cachet. But I’m waiting for a telephone call. If anyone asks for me, would you mind telling the commissionaire that I’ll be back in a few minutes, and that the caller is to ring again.’
    ‘No, don’t go,’ she said coldly. ‘Thank you very much, but nothing would do me any good, it’s the sun.’
    They fell silent. ‘I’m getting bored,’ thought Mathieu with a strange, grinding thrill of pleasure. Ivich was smoothing out her skirt with the palms of her hands, lifting her fingers a little as though she were about to strike the keys of a piano. Her hands were always rather red, because she had a poor circulation: she usually held them up and waved them to make them pale. They scarcely served her to take hold of anything: they were two small crude idols at the extremities of her arms: they fluttered over the surfaces of objects, feeling their shapes, instead of picking them up. Mathieu looked at Ivich’s nails, long and tapering and loudly painted, almost in the Chinese manner. Indeed these awkward, fragile adornments made it plain that Ivich could make no use of her ten fingers. One day, one of her nails had dropped off by itself, she kept it in a little casket, inspecting it from time to time with a blend of disgust and satisfaction. Mathieu had seen it: it had retained its varnish, and looked like a dead beetle. ‘I wonder what is on her mind: never have I known her so tiresome. It must be her examination. Well, as long as she doesn’t get bored with me; after all, I’m a grown-up, so to speak.’
    ‘I suppose this isn’t how blindness starts,’ said Ivich suddenly, with a dispassionate air.
    ‘Certainly not,’ said Mathieu smiling. ‘You know what the doctor at Laon told you: you’ve got a touch of conjunctivitis.’
    He spoke gently, he smiled gently: with Ivich it was essential to smile, and use slow, gentle gestures: ‘Like Daniel with his cats.’
    ‘My eyes hurt me so much,’ said Ivich. ‘The merest trifle is enough...’ She hesitated. ‘I... the pain is at the back of my eyes: right at the back. Wasn’t that the beginning of that nonsense you were telling me about?’
    ‘That affair the other day?’ asked Mathieu. ‘Look here, Ivich, last time it was your heart, you were afraid of a heart attack. What an odd little creature you are, you almost seem as if you wanted to torment yourself: and then another time you suddenly announce that you’re as hard as nails: you must make up your mind.’
    His voice left a sugary taste in his mouth.
    Ivich looked darkly at her feet.
    ‘Something must be going to