This thought cruelly upsets the young man’s soul, plunging him back into his plans for revenge: the cadaver now seems menacing to him. Perhaps it sees, hears, smiles, stirs beneath its shroud…Bouvard rises impulsively and tears away the veil that covers the girl’s face. —God! What irresistible beauty! Can the face of a corpse be so beautiful? An expression of heavenly calm spreads over her features, her cheeks are still slightly pink; the pure white forehead, the half-closed lips and eyes, the fair, transparent skin: there is nothing frightening in her, nothing in life could be more graceful, more sweet, more attractive…She rests—sleeps—as girls sleep at seven years old, when they dream only of clouds, butterflies, angels…things constantly aloft, journeying toward heaven.
Life contains only two momentous events capable of suffusing our faces with a ray of the celestial beauty that eludes manifestation: love and death—two sisters—the ecstasy of the one, the tranquility that follows the other. Those who have and were loved know: the beauty to which I refer is not of the earth and does not endure; it is something airy that alights on our features of a moment and vanishes—it can be seen, but it is inexplicable—it is perhaps a light from above which descends to bless the two most solemn acts in life, the love that renders us worthy of heaven, the death that allows us to reach it.
I have often thought that if all men fell in love at the same time, society would be transformed instantaneously: the golden age would no longer be that charming fable which provokes laughter, like a child’s dreams. Every man who loves is good and noble. Poets are lovers.
Bouvard halts at that sight, overcome by enthusiasm: the spell of that beauty ravishes him, exciting his passionate mind and his fervid imagination. His violent gesture bared part of the girl’s breast: she appears to him like a toppled statue by Phidias, like one of those images of Greek virgins torn from their base by a storm and sometimes encountered half-buried among the corymbs and the dark ivy leaves on the solitary islands of the Aegean. Divine beauty!—Why was he not empowered to revive her? To inspire her with the breath of life that God has reserved for himself alone? But Giulia would hate him if she were alive—had she not mocked him?
The young man remains silent a long time. Then his countenance assumes a grim, resolute expression, and he bends over her, wanting to embrace her…“No woman,” he says, “ever gave herself with greater abandon to a man…” Bouvard smiles at this horrible thought, bows his head, and kisses her death-stiffened lips. Her touch! He shudders, starts back in horror, shivers at that intense cold and falls prostrate before the girl. Then he weeps, entreats, prays. He wants to love her, to adore her like a saint, but the memory of his past checks him; he wants to loathe her, but that sweet angelic image arrests him. Several moments later, he is talking wildly, raving, shouting his beloved Giulia’s name over and over again, surrendering himself to his desperate, savage pain. The asphyxiating odor of the flowers gradually subdues his senses, intoxicates and confounds his reason: his head is spinning, he sees objects moving, hears the whisper of incomprehensible voices, strange figures pace back and forth before his eyes, watching him, sneering…He is agitated, wants to hurl himself against them, attempts to stand again, groping in the void, and falls back down near the girl’s corpse, exhausted…
But Bouvard did not meet a death so sudden or so violent; in the morning, the neighbors reported hearing moans and muffled screams deep into the night. Yet what most struck their imaginations was the sound of a violin, which enchanted and seduced them as if it were a supernatural harmony. And they have never been persuaded, no matter what evidence was put before them, that the music was the work of a man.
Such was Bouvard’s final creation, his soul’s final lament, the sublime agony of his genius. It contained all the voices of nature, the whisper of the wind and the fluttering of the birds, the rustling of the slender stalks and the roar of the huge oak boughs, the rush of the rivulet and the crash of the ocean’s waves—it contained every sound, harsh and sweet, gentle and horrible. Yet how unfortunate are the people who heard that music! For them, the voice of the dearest creatures, the name of the father uttered for the first time by the child’s lips, the first revelation of love to an adored woman have forever lost their gentleness and charm.
The next day, the news of the violated grave spread through the city, and a search was conducted for Giulia’s corpse. The clues left by Bouvard’s accomplices led to his garret. He was called; no one answered. His door was beaten; no one opened it. Then it was knocked down…What a ghastly sight! All the flowers were trampled and scattered, many objects were smashed, the girl’s veils torn, everywhere the traces of a desperate, unequal struggle.
Had not Giulia died? Or did the young man’s prayers have the power to revive her for an instant?…
Splinters and fragments of a violin lay strewn across the floor, and a deformed, inanimate body was locked in a convulsed embrace with the beautiful Giulia’s corpse…Bouvard was dead!
[1867]
A Dead Man’s Bone
I LEAVE TO MY reader the task of assessing the inexplicable incident I am about to relate.
In 1855, having taken up residence at Pavia, I devoted myself to the study of drawing at a private school in that city, and several months into my sojourn, I developed a close friendship with a certain Federico M., a professor of pathology and clinical medicine who taught at the university and died of severe apoplexy a few months after I became acquainted with him. He was very fond of the sciences and of his own in particular—he was gifted with extraordinary mental powers—except that, like all anatomists and doctors generally, he was profoundly and incurably skeptical. He was so by conviction, nor could I ever induce him to accept my beliefs, no matter how much I endeavored in the impassioned, heated discussions we had every day on this point. Nevertheless—and it pleases me to do this justice to his memory—he had always shown himself tolerant of convictions he did not hold, and I and all his acquaintances have cherished the dearest remembrance of him. A few days before his death, he had persuaded me to attend his lectures on anatomy, adducing that I would derive from them not a little knowledge beneficial to my art. I consented, although with repugnance; and goaded by vanity to appear less frightened than I was, I asked him for several human bones, which he gave me and which I placed on the mantel of the fireplace in my room. At his death I ceased frequenting the anatomy course; later I discontinued my study of drawing as well. Nonetheless, I kept the bones for many years, so that the habit of seeing them made me almost indifferent. No more than a few months have passed since, seized by sudden fears, I resolved to bury them, keeping only a simple kneecap. From the first moment I possessed it, I had destined this smooth, spherical bone, because of its shape and smallness, to fill the office of a paperweight, since it alone did not conjure up any frightening ideas in me, and it had already rested on my desk for eleven years when I was deprived of it in an inexplicable way I am about to relate.
In Milan last spring, I met a hypnotist who is well known among lovers of spiritualism, and I requested to be admitted to one of his séances. A little later I received an invitation to attend one, and I went, troubled by such grim suspicions that many times along the way I was almost on the point of turning back. The insistence of my amour propre spurred me on, in spite of myself. I shall not pause here to discuss the astonishing invocations I witnessed; suffice it to say that I was so amazed at the responses we heard from several spirits, and my mind was so struck by those prodigies, that overcoming every fear, I felt the desire to summon a person of my own acquaintance and address to him several questions which I had already pondered and debated in my mind. After revealing this desire, I was brought to a secluded study where I was left alone. The impatience and desire to invoke many spirits at once rendered me irresolute regarding the choice, but since it was my design to interrogate the invoked spirit on human destiny and the spirituality of our nature, I remembered Dr. Federico M., with whom, when he was alive, I h
ad had some fascinating discussions on these topics, and I decided to summon him. Having made his choice, I seated myself at a desk, arranged a sheet of paper before me, dipped the pen in ink, settled myself in a writing posture, and concentrating for as long as possible on that thought, gathering all my willpower and directing it to that end, I waited for the doctor’s spirit to arrive.
I did not wait long. After several minutes’ delay I noticed, from new and inexplicable sensations, that I was no longer alone in the room; I heard his presence, so to spea, and before I could regain sufficient composure to formulate a question, my shaken, convulsed hand, moved as by a force external to my will, wrote these words of which I had no prior knowledge:
They are addressed to you. You have called me at a moment when the most exacting invocations prevent me from coming; I can neither remain here now nor respond to the questions you intended to ask me. Nevertheless, I have obeyed your summons to please you, and because I myself am in need of you; I have long sought the means to communicate with your spirit. During my mortal life, I gave you several bones which I removed from the dissecting room in Pavia; among them was a kneecap that belonged to the body of a former employee of the university whose name was Pietro Mariani and whose corpse I chose at random to dissect. For eleven years now, he has tortured my spirit to recover the inconsequential little bone, and he continues to reproach me bitterly for that act, threatening me and insisting on the restitution of his kneecap. I implore you, by the perhaps not unpleasant memory you may cherish of me, if you still have the bone, return it to him, redeem me from this tormenting debt. I shall send Mariani’s spirit to you immediately. Respond.
Terrified by that revelation, I answered that I had the unfortunate kneecap, I would be happy to restore it to its rightful owner, and since there was no other way to make the restitution, he should send Mariani to me. Having said that—or, more accurately, having thought it—I felt as if my person were unburdened, my arm freer, my hand no longer numbed as it had been a short while ago, and I realized, in a word, that the doctor’s spirit had departed.
Then I sat waiting another moment—my mind was in a state of exaltation impossible to describe.
In the space of a few minutes, I again experienced the same phenomena as before, although with less intensity; and my hand, drawn by the spirit’s will, wrote these words:
The spirit of Pietro Mariani, former employee of the University of Pavia, is before you, and he demands the kneecap of his left knee which you have wrongfully held for eleven years. Respond.
This language was more concise and forceful than that of the doctor. I replied to the spirit: “I am most willing to return to Pietro Mariani the kneecap of his left knee, and I beg him, in fact, to forgive me for the unlawful possession; I desire to know, however, how I can effect the restitution that is demanded of me.”
Then my hand started to write again:
Pietro Mariani, former employee of the University of Pavia, will come himself to recover his kneecap.
“When?” I asked, terrified.
And my hand instantly scrawled a single word:
Tonight.
Stupefied by that response, covered with a cadaverous sweat, I hastened to exclaim, immediately changing the tone of my voice: “Please…I beg you…do not trouble yourself…I will send—there are other less bothersome means—” But I had not finished the sentence when I noticed, from the return of the sensations I experienced initially, that Mariani’s spirit had already withdrawn, and there was no longer any way to prevent his coming.
It is impossible for me to express verbally the anguish I was suffering at that moment. I was prey to a dreadful panic. I left that house as the clocks of the city were striking midnight; the streets were deserted, there were no lights in the windows, the flames in the street lamps were dimmed by a thick, heavy fog—everything seemed to me more sinister than usual. I walked for a piece without knowing where to direct my steps: an instinct more powerful than my will drove me away from my house. Where would I find the mettle to go there? That night I would receive a visit from a ghost—it was a ghastly idea, an expectation too terrible to bear.
Wandering down some strange street, as chance would have it, I found myself in front of a tavern where I saw the words “Domestic Wines” cut into a window hanging illuminated by an interior light, and presently I said to myself, “Let me go in here, this way is better, and it is not a cowardly remedy; I shall seek in wine that boldness which I no longer have the power to ask of my reason.” And having ensconced myself in a corner of a huge cellar room, I called for a few bottles of wine, which I drank greedily, although as a rule I am disgusted by any abuse of that liquor. I obtained the effect I desired. At every glass I drank, my fear vanished appreciably, my thoughts grew lucid, my ideas seemed to reorganize themselves, albeit into a new disorder; and little by little I won back my courage to such a degree that I laughed at my terror, stood up, and resolutely set out for my house.
Having reached the room, staggering slightly from drinking too much, I lit the lamp, stripped to the waist, hurled myself onto the bed, closed one eye, then the other, and tried to fall asleep. But all was in vain. I felt drowsy, stiff, cataleptic, powerless to move; the blankets weighed on my back, enveloped me, fettered me as if they were cast iron; and during that drowsiness, I began to become aware that some singular phenomena were occurring around me.
The wick of the candle, which seemed to have gone out although made of pure stearine, was spewing coils of smoke so dense and black that gathering at the ceiling, they hid it and assumed the appearance of a cloak heavy as lead. The atmosphere of the room, having suddenly become stifling, was infused with an odor similar to the exhalations of burning flesh, my ears were deafened by an incessant rumbling the causes of which I could not divine, and the kneecap, which I saw there among my papers, seemed to move and spin on the surface of the desk, as if subject to strange, violent convulsions.
I do not know how long I remained in that attitude: I could not remove my attention from the kneecap. My senses, faculties, ideas were all concentrated on that object; everything drew me to it. I wanted to sit up, get out of bed, leave, but it was not possible; and my distress reached such a pitch that I was almost not afraid—until the smoke emanating from the candle suddenly dissipated, I saw the curtain over the door rise, and the ghost I was expecting appeared.
I did not bat an eye. Having advanced to the center of the room, it bowed courteously and said to me, “I am Pietro Mariani, and I have come to take back my kneecap, as I have promised you.”
And since my terror made me hesitant to answer him, he continued to speak in the most polite tones: “Pardon me if I must disturb you in the dead of night…at this hour…I realize that this is not a convenient time…but—”
“Oh, it is nothing, nothing at all!” I interrupted, reassured by so much courtesy. “In fact, I ought to thank you for your visit…I shall forever hold myself honored for having welcomed you into my home…”
“I am grateful for your cordiality,” said the ghost, “but I wish, in any case, to explain the insistence with which I have demanded my kneecap, both from you and from the distinguished doctor from whom you received it. Observe.”
And so saying, he lifted the edge of the white sheet in which he was wrapped and showed me that because he was missing the kneecap of his left leg, the shinbone was tied to the femur by a black ribbon passed two or three times through the opening of the fibula. Then he took several paces about the room in order to demonstrate how the absence of that bone prevented him from walking freely.
“Heaven forbid,” I said in a mortified tone, “that the worthy former employee of the University of Pavia should be lame on my account! Your kneecap is over there, on the desk; take it, and mend your leg as best you can.”
The ghost bowed for the second time in a gesture of gratitude, untied the ribbon that joined the femur to the sh
in, placed that make-shift remedy on the desk, and having picked up the kneecap, began to adjust it to the leg.
“What news do you bear from the other world?” I then asked, seeing that the conversation was languishing during his task.
Instead of answering my question, however, he exclaimed with a saddened expression on his face, “This kneecap is rather deteriorated; you have not taken good care of it.”
“I do not believe I have,” I said, “but can it be that your other bones are more sound?”
He fell silent again and bowed a third time to bid me farewell. When he reached the doorway, however, he answered me as he closed the door behind himself, “Feel whether my other bones are not more sound.”
After uttering these words, he stamped the floor so violently that all the walls shook, and at that noise I started and…woke up.
As soon as I was awake, I realized that it was the porter who was knocking on the door, saying, “It’s me, get up, come and let me in.”
“My God!” I exclaimed, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hands. “It was a dream, then, nothing more than a dream! How frightened I was! Thank heaven…But what nonsense! To believe in spiritualism…in ghosts…” Having hurriedly slipped into my trousers, I ran to open the door; and since the cold was counseling me to rush back to the blankets, I approached the desk to put the letter the porter had brought under the paperweight.
Yet how terrified I was when I saw that the kneecap had disappeared, and in its place I found the black ribbon Pietro Mariani had left there!
[1869]
Fantastic Tales Page 7