...of reserve

Because for me to feel relaxed and reassured, I absolutely must find, no matter where... I feel this very clearly, but I don't know how to express it... the only words I have at my disposal being poor ones that are completely worn out from having been used by everybody for everything... I should need to possess the perfected vocabulary of those learned Doctors. I know they would think me ridiculous, if they heard me. Fortunately they never hear. So then... what I mean to say is that for me to feel contented and in a safe spot, like them, just anywhere... even in a vast fresco, why not? I have no prejudices... I must sense... I don't know quite well what it is... it's something like what you feel in the presence of the first blade of grass that timidly sends up a shoot... a crocus not yet open... it's that perfume they smell of, but it's not yet a perfume, not even an odour, it has no name, it's the odour of before odours... It seems to me that it's that... It's something that takes me gently and holds me without letting me go... something untouched, innocent... like a child's slender fingers clinging to me, a child's hand nestling in the hollow of my own. A confident ingenuousness spreads out everywhere inside me... every particle of me is imbued with it...
At all cost I want to show myself worthy of it... not betray you... that's what sometimes makes me feel I should like to forget all prudence and utter my appeal when I should not do so, when it would be better for you and for me to let people forget us... And The Golden Fruits? I feel like saying that... Do you remember it?... One only enters by the straight gate... Of what importance are those vessels and constructions with world dimensions if they don't contain still the closed crocus, the child's hand... Is it there or not? That's the entire question. Believe me, that's all that counts... How, I wonder, when the time comes for them too, today so powerful, to cling to people like me to make the long crossing, how will they go about it, by what will they catch hold of them... But I restrain myself. I remain silent. Ridicule would crush us. They use it so well. We are so frail and they so strong. Or perhaps, I feel that too, at times, perhaps, without realising it, I am certain that we, you and I, are the stronger, even now. Perhaps I feel a bit sorry for them... I don't know... Let us say quite simply, like anybody else, that it's out of politeness, delicacy of heart, that I remain silent. Therefore, I say nothing.

[The Golden Fruits, Sarraute, N.]