Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [97]
in the foolish hope of receiving some sign that it was so that I restrained myself from running up to her. Something which Anna and I had often used to do was to go into the Tuileries gardens at night. The Tuileries are impregnable from the quaffs, the Concorde, and the Rue de Rivoli, but if you approach them from the Rue Paul-Deroulede they are guarded only by a grassy moat and a low railing. On ordinary nights there are gendarmes whose task it is to patrol this vulnerable region: a hazard which gives to the Tuileries by night the dangerous charm of an enchanted garden. Tonight, however, it was probable that the ordinary rules would be relaxed. As I saw Anna turning towards the gardens my heart leapt up, as the heart of Aeneas must have done when he saw Dido making for the cave. I quickened my pace. The roadway was glowing with light. On one side the Arc du Carrousel stood like an imagined archway, removed from space by its faultless proportions; and behind it the enormous sweep of the Louvre enclosed the scene, fiercely illuminated and ablaze with detail. On the other side began the unnatural garden, with its metallic green grass under the yellow lamps, and its flowers self-conscious with colour and quiet as dream flowers which can unfold and be still at the same moment. A little distance beyond the railings the garden ran into trees, and beyond the trees an explosion of light announced the Place de la Concorde, above and beyond which was raised upon its hill the floodlit Arc de Triomphe standing against a backdrop of darkness, with an enormous tricolore which reached the whole height of the archway fluttering inside the central arch. Anna was already walking upon the grass, still limping slightly, and passing among the white statues which populate these lawns with laurelled foreheads and marble buttocks in various poses of elegant asymmetry. She came to the railings, just behind the bronze panthers, at the point where we had so often climbed over. She had mounted the grassy bank and hitched up her big skirt, and I was so close to her then that before she was across the railing I saw the flash of her long leg up to the thigh. As I vaulted over she was thirty paces ahead of me, walking between flower beds. Only a little farther and the grass ended and the trees began. I saw her outlined against the forest like a lonely girl in a story. Then she stopped walking. I stopped too. I wanted to prolong the enchantment of these moments. Anna bent down and took off one of her shoes. Then she took off the other one. I stood in the shadow of a bush and pitied her poor feet. Why did the silly child always wear shoes which were too small for her? As I stood still and watched her the perfumes of night were rising from the ground and swirling about me in a cloud. She pawed the cool grass with her white feet. She was wearing no stockings. Then very slowly she began to walk along the grass verge carrying her shoes. As one set in motion by a towrope I followed. In a moment we should be entering the wood. It stretched before us now, very close, its rows and rows of chestnut trees, the leaves clearly showing in the diffused light, those tiny leaves that seem peculiar to the chestnut trees of Paris, etched with clarity and turning golden brown along the edges as early as July. Anna walked into the wood. Here the grass ended and there was a loose sandy soil under foot. Anna stepped on to this surface without any hesitation. I followed her into the darkness. She advanced a short way down one of the avenues and then she stopped again. She looked around at the trees; and going up to one of them she thrust her two small shoes into a cavity at its root. After that she walked on unencumbered. This thing moved me enormously. I smiled to myself in the obscurity, I very nearly laughed and clapped my hands. When I drew level with the place where Anna's shoes were I could not but pause and look at them, where they lay half hidden and curled up together like a pair of little rabbits. I looked at them for a moment and then obeying an irresistible urge I