A Father’s Confession Page #2

"A Father's Confession" is a poignant short story by Guy de Maupassant that explores the themes of guilt, parental responsibility, and the complexity of human emotions. The narrative unfolds through the reflections of a father who grapples with his feelings of remorse and regret over his relationship with his child. As he recounts his experiences and decisions, the story delves into the deep emotional struggles that come with fatherhood, illustrating the inner turmoil and moral dilemmas faced by the protagonist. Maupassant's keen insight into the human psyche and his masterful storytelling create a compelling narrative that resonates with themes of love and loss.

• Short story

								

   night!

   My companion had just left. I had dined alone in my little
   dining-room and I went gently into the room where the little one was
   asleep.

   I sat down in an armchair before the fire. The wind was blowing,
   making the windows rattle, a dry, frosty wind; and I saw trough the
   window the stars shining with that piercing brightness that they
   have on frosty nights.

   Then the idea that had obsessed me for a month rose again to the
   surface. As soon as I was quiet it came to me and harassed me. It
   ate into my mind like a fixed idea, just as cancers must eat into
   the flesh. It was there, in my head, in my heart, in my whole body,
   it seemed to me; and it swallowed me up as a wild beast might have.
   I endeavored to drive it away, to repulse it, to open my mind to
   other thoughts, as one opens a window to the fresh morning breeze to
   drive out the vitiated air; but I could not drive it from my brain,
   not even for a second. I do not know how to express this torture.
   It gnawed at my soul, and I felt a frightful pain, a real physical
   and moral pain.

   My life was ruined! How could I escape from this situation? How
   could I draw back, and how could I confess?

   And I loved the one who was to become your mother with a mad
   passion, which this insurmountable obstacle only aggravated.

   A terrible rage was taking possession of me, choking me, a rage that
   verged on madness! Surely I was crazy that evening!

   The child was sleeping. I got up and looked at it as it slept. It
   was he, this abortion, this spawn, this nothing, that condemned me
   to irremediable unhappiness!

   He was asleep, his mouth open, wrapped in his bed-clothes in a crib
   beside my bed, where I could not sleep.

   How did I ever do what I did? How do I know? What force urged me
   on? What malevolent power took possession of me? Oh! the
   temptation to crime came to me without any forewarning. All I
   recall is that my heart beat tumultuously. It beat so hard that I
   could hear it, as one hears the strokes of a hammer behind a
   partition. That is all I can recall—the beating of my heart!
   In my head there was a strange confusion, a tumult, a senseless
   disorder, a lack of presence of mind. It was one of those hours of
   bewilderment and hallucination when a man is neither conscious of
   his actions nor able to guide his will.

   I gently raised the coverings from the body of the child; I turned
   them down to the foot of the crib, and he lay there uncovered and
   naked.

   He did not wake. Then I went toward the window, softly, quite
   softly, and I opened it.

   A breath of icy air glided in like an assassin; it was so cold that
   I drew aside, and the two candles flickered. I remained standing
   near the window, not daring to turn round, as if for fear of seeing
   what was doing on behind me, and feeling the icy air continually
   across my forehead, my cheeks, my hands, the deadly air which kept
   streaming in. I stood there a long time.

   I was not thinking, I was not reflecting. All at once a little
   cough caused me to shudder frightfully from head to foot, a shudder
   that I feel still to the roots of my hair. And with a frantic
   movement I abruptly closed both sides of the window and, turning
   round, ran over to the crib.

   He was still asleep, his mouth open, quite naked. I touched his
   legs; they were icy cold and I covered them up.

   My heart was suddenly touched, grieved, filled with pity,
   tenderness, love for this poor innocent being that I had wished to
   kill. I kissed his fine, soft hair long and tenderly; then I went
   and sat down before the fire.

   I reflected with amazement with horror on what I had done, asking
   myself whence come those tempests of the soul in which a man loses
   all perspective of things, all command over himself and acts as in a
   condition of mad intoxication, not knowing whither he is
   going—like a vessel in a hurricane.

   The child coughed again, and it gave my heart a wrench. Suppose it
   should die! O God! O God! What would become of me?

   I rose from my chair to go and look at him, and with a candle in my
   hand I leaned over him. Seeing him breathing quietly I felt
   reassured, when he coughed a third time. It gave me such a shock
   tat I started backward, just as one does at sight of something
   horrible, and let my candle fall.

   As I stood erect after picking it up, I noticed that my temples were
   bathed in perspiration, that cold sweat which is the result of
   anguish of soul. And I remained until daylight bending over my son,
   becoming calm when he remained quiet for some time, and filled with
   atrocious pain when a weak cough came from his mouth.

   He awoke with his eyes red, his throat choked, and with an air of
   suffering.

   When the woman came in to arrange my room I sent her at once for a
   doctor. He came at the end of an hour, and said, after examining
   the child:

   “Did he not catch cold?”

   I began to tremble like a person with palsy, and I faltered:

   “No, I do not think so.”

   And then I said:

   “What is the matter? Is it serious?”

   “I do not know yet,” he replied. “I will come again this evening.”

   He came that evening. My son had remained almost all day in a
   condition of drowsiness, coughing from time to time. During the
   night inflammation of the lungs set in.

   That lasted ten days. I cannot express what I suffered in those
   interminable hours that divide morning from night, right from
   morning.

   He died.

   And since—since that moment, I have not passed one hour, not a
   single hour, without the frightful burning recollection, a gnawing
   recollection, a memory that seems to wring my heart, awaking in me
   like a savage beast imprisoned in the depth of my soul.

   Oh! if I could have gone mad!
M. Poirel de la Voulte raised his spectacles with a motion that was peculiar to him whenever he finished reading a contract; and the three heirs of the defunct looked at one another without speaking, pale and motionless.

At the end of a minute the lawyer resumed:

“That must be destroyed.”

The other two bent their heads in sign of assent. He lighted a candle, carefully separated the pages containing the damaging confession from those relating to the disposition of money, then he held them over the candle and threw them into the fireplace.

And they watched the white sheets as they burned, till they were presently reduced to little crumbling black heaps. And as some words were still visible in white tracing, the daughter, with little strokes of the toe of her shoe, crushed the burning paper, mixing it with the old ashes in the fireplace.

Then all three stood there watching it for some time, as if they feared that the destroyed secret might escape from the fireplace.
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