Mr. Gwyn Read Online Free Page A

in some way, from one of the women who had loved him, and who certainly would be delighted to listen to him. But the truth is that the only person with whom he really would have liked to talk about the matter was the old woman in the clinic: her, her umbrella, and her rain scarf. He was sure she would understand. So in the end Jasper Gwyn had other tests prescribed—it wasn’t hard, on the basis of his symptoms—and he went back to the waiting room where he had met her that day.
    In the hours that he spent there, waiting for her, during the three days of the tests, he carefully considered how he would explain the whole business, and although she didn’t show up, he began to talk to her as if she were there, and to listen to her answers. In doing so, he understood much better what was consuming him, and once he distinctly imagined the old woman taking a little book out of her purse, an old notebook with a lot of crumbs stuck to it, probably cookies—she had opened it to look for a sentence that she hadwritten down, and when she found it she brought her eyes close to the page, really close, and read it aloud.
    â€œ Definitive resolutions are made always and only in a state of mind that is not destined to last .”
    â€œWho said that?”
    â€œMarcel Proust. He was never wrong, that man.”
    And she closed the notebook.
    Jasper Gwyn detested Proust, for reasons that he had never had the desire to examine, but he had saved that sentence years before, sure that someday or other it would be useful to him. Uttered by the voice of the old woman, it sounded incontrovertible. Then what should I do, he wondered.
    â€œBe a copyist, for heaven’s sake,” answered the woman with the rain scarf.
    â€œI’m not sure I know what it means.”
    â€œYou’ll understand. When it’s right, you’ll understand.”
    â€œPromise me.”
    â€œI promise.”
    Coming out of the stress test, the last day, Jasper Gwyn stopped at the reception desk and asked if they had seen a rather old woman who often came there to rest.
    The young woman behind the window studied him a moment before answering.
    â€œShe passed away.”
    She used just that phrase.
    â€œSeveral months ago,” she added.
    Jasper Gwyn stared at the young woman, bewildered.
    â€œDid you know her?” she asked.
    â€œYes, we knew each other.”
    He turned instinctively to see if there was still an umbrella on the floor.
    â€œBut she didn’t say anything to me,” he said.
    The young woman didn’t ask questions, probably she intended to go back to her work.
    â€œMaybe she didn’t know,” said Jasper Gwyn.
    When he came out he spontaneously took the route he had taken with the old woman that day in the rain: because it was all he had of her.
    Maybe he made a wrong turn, it was likely that he hadn’t been very attentive that day, so he found himself on a street he didn’t recognize, and the only thing that was the same was the rain, which had started suddenly, and was beating down hard. He looked for a café to take refuge in but there were none. Finally, trying to return to the clinic, he passed an art gallery. It was the sort of place where he never set foot, but then the rain made him inclined to seek shelter, and so he surprised himself by glancing in the window. There was a wooden floor, and the place seemed large and well lighted. Then Jasper Gwyn looked at the painting in the window. It was a portrait.

12
    They were large portraits, all similar, like the repetition of a single ambition, to infinity. There was always one person, nude, and almost nothing else, an empty room, a corridor. They were not handsome people, they were ordinary bodies. They were simply standing—butthe force with which they did so was particular, as if they were geologic sediments, the result of millennial metamorphoses. Jasper Gwyn thought that they were stone, but soft, and living. He