“He is probably a little ashamed of himself,” she explained in simple terms, “to have let himself go in... in what you might call the violence of his temperament... It is true that, in such moments, he is not a pretty sight... I couldn’t tell you if he wanted to kiss me or bite me!”
“Or bite you?” I repeated, looking straight at her...
“Oh, wait a second,” she said with a smile, “it’s just a figure of speech... I don’t believe in vampires... but, all the same, I am scared of him!”...
“I still find it most extraordinary that you keep coming here, Christine!”
“I have already told you why, Monsieur Masson!”
She hurled this reply at me as if I had insulted her...
She was the one who broke the awkward silence that followed...
“Tell me, my friend: is it true that you have a charming little villa in the countryside?”
This question was the last thing I was expecting to hear. I was overcome.
“Wh... why do you ask me that?”
She looked at me in astonishment:
“But... what’s the matter with you?... there was nothing out of the ordinary about my question...”
“Why do you ask about my villa in the countryside...?”
“My God, if only I’d known... look, you’ve gone all pale! It was the Marquis who told me about it. He said ‘Benedict Masson has a charming little villa out in the countryside... I am surprised that he has not yet invited you there!’”
“How does he know that I have a ‘charming’ villa in the countryside? Christine! Christine... my house in the countryside is not charming at all... it is the saddest, most melancholic, hovel that one could encounter – it stands between the edge of a patch of woodland and a slimy, dark pond with water the colour of lead! I will never invite you there, Christine! And, even if I do, you must never come!”
Once again, she seemed dumbfounded:
“What a strange boy you are!” she said at last... “If only I could have expected such... vehemence! Very well, my friend, I won’t insist...”
“Has the Marquis ever told you how he knew about it?”
“Well, yes... he once had the intention of buying an immense plot of land near Corbillères-les-Eaux... It’s down there, isn’t it?”
“Yes... it’s by the pond... the edge of the pond... the black pond...!”
“Well, the Marquis visited the countryside there; and he must have obtained this information about the ownership of the land that he wanted to buy, in order to combine the properties into a single estate... the Marquis thought your house was charming, that’s all.”
I was so completely agitated that I went to the window and opened it... I needed to breathe... I tried to recover my composure... I was in mortal terror of being unable to contain myself...
At that moment, into the square of light that stretched out before me on the lawn, a pale form floated, as light-footed and silent as a phantom.
I had only enough time to rush to the door, which remained open onto the garden, to catch the poor dying creature, who already seemed to weigh no more than would a shadow, in my arms... Her breath came in gasps upon her exsanguinated lips; the oval of her face was drawn to a fine line; death seemed to have sculpted this fragile image for eternity; and the faint light that flickered in the pits of her hollow eye-sockets, sunken like two craters, no longer appeared to belong to the fires of this world...
She seemed to be looking at things that we were unable to see, we others who were not, like her, on the edge of nothingness, when she said to us (Christine had also come running outside by now):
“So, are you convinced this time? This time he has left me with nothing but my soul!”
With infinite care, we deposited her in an armchair; her head, slumped against the back, was as beautiful as a marble angel on a grave. She seemed to be considering, for the last time (and without horror, for she hoped to escape through the doors of death), the monster in four images who, from high on the wall, tirelessly focussed his sinister grin:
“Today you have seen his fifth face,” she said with a great effort, “at the moment when he was going to drink my life!
Tell me, did he not horrify you? And now he has gone... he has taken all my blood with him... and now I am going to die, but I am not afraid of dying any more!
“Yes, I have come to an understanding with Sangor, who will do anything that I ask as long as it is not forbidden by his religion... when I am dead, he will come to my tomb and cut off my head; when that has been done there will be no more danger that I will come back from the dead, like that monster, to suck the blood of the living... the living may rest assured... quite assured!
“It’s a fact! It’s the only way to save me from life and death...
“Oh, I am so happy! I am sure of Sangor! He will cut off my head in the manner ordained in the book to prevent my resurrection...!
“Monsieur Masson, you have read my books! So you know all-too-well why my head must be cut off!
“I am sure of Sangor... I have given him a collar of magnificent pearls!”
She uttered these fragmentary phrases as if she expected to die after every word...
I really wanted to ask her a question while there was still a little time left...
I profited from a moment when she fell silent, her head thrown back, her eyelids heavy, and her throat stretched as if it was already being offered up to Sangor’s knife...
I said:
“The Marquis has told us that you were taking the air by the window of your boudoir, and that you scratched your arm on a thorn from the climbing roses on the wall... and that it was this that made you let out that terrible scream...”
Her eyelids lifted for a moment, enough to allow a light to flame through her eyes, a light that died out almost immediately on her flickering eyelashes.
“I did not scratch myself on a rose; one does not cry out on the verge of dying when one scratches oneself on a thorn... I screamed when he bit me!”
“Was he there with you in the boudoir?”
“He was not!”
“Was he out in the garden, in that case?”
“Oh, no.... I don’t know for sure where he was!”
“What do you mean? He was not with you, but still he bit you?”
“Certainly... he bites whenever he wants to! Wherever he wants to! I wrap myself up in my furs in vain!”
“But surely, he can’t bite from a distance?”
“He most certainly can...”
There was nothing left to say... the case had been closed...
All three of us were overwhelmed by very different ideas by the time Sangor appeared.
He gathered her up in his powerful arms; the unfortunate woman’s head rolled across his shoulder, her head that I, in dreams of horror and madness, already saw severed from her torso...
I saw all of this in terrible colours... and it was not until I saw the expression on Christine’s face, which was troubled to say the least, after we were left alone, that I asked her again:
“Well... what do you say about that?”
A singular event: that was the first time I did not hear Christine say “she’s mad,” when speaking of the Marchioness!
XV
The Catastrophe
30th June – It’s over! It’s all over! And it’s all my fault! As they say in the penny dreadfuls, ‘I have cried tears of blood!’ I have lost Christine and, once more, I have fled into exile in my sinister little villa in the Corbillères countryside, on the edge of the black water.
Corbillères, funereal landscape... I spend my days in mourning over my final illusions and my mad love...
This last insipid sentence causes my stomach to rise... illusions.... mad love? How can I write about what has happened with rose water for ink..?
I had become no more than a bewitched beast around Christine.
I have to tell you that, for eight days, we were left on our own in the mansion.
All of the servants had gone there with them.
Alone... with Christine!
This is what happened:
It was evening... after dinner... Christine and I found ourselves in a part of the garden where we sometimes went, without having made any plans to be there together...
Since the last scenes that we had witnessed, something mysterious seemed to have passed between us, which brought us closer together (in my imagination, at any rate), for I had never seen Christine so willing to confide in me, nor so uncomplicated, nor so intimate with me...
It was an evening of ineffable stillness that followed the immense heat of the day...I had never been so happy before, as we sat next to one another, apparently connected by the same emotion (which was not the case, alas, it was probably only calmness on Christine’s part!) that held us in silence.
My thoughts turned to romance... around us the grey walls were melting away into repose; a solitary oak tree, which seemed to teeter in drunkenness, cast its shadow over the obscure abyss of our hearts... My hand brushed against her hand – an unconscious gesture, if ever there was one – and then her warm hand nested in mine.
Of course, of course, when I remember that precious moment it is towards you that my thoughts return: O, night: propitious darkness, holy veil behind which my ugliness was forgotten!
When Christine did not withdraw her hand, I came to the conclusion that my touch was not unwelcome – this can be counted as the greatest victory of my life: when she asked me, in a tone that betrayed the utmost confidence – “Is she really mad?”
“Who?” I asked, exasperated to find that, at that moment, her thoughts were so far from mine that I couldn’t quite follow her.
“Why... the Marchioness, of course!”
“I must admit,” I said, lacking a sense of humour, “that I was not thinking of that poor woman... why do you ask me this?”
“Because...”
“What do you mean because...? What can we feel for her other than pity?”
“Yes, yes, pity!” she repeated in a dreamy voice... “She had no way to resist... to resist the atmosphere around her!”
“What on earth are you talking about? Explain, Christine!”
“My dear Benedict, if I tell you something, it is not that I attach any great importance to it; it’s only because of a certain coincidence, but I’m not particularly troubled by it, I must confess...”
“You intrigue me, Christine...” (All the while, her hand was grasped in mine – which inspired thoughts in me that made it difficult for me to follow her train of thought). She said:
“...I was cut as well!”
“Lord God! Explain yourself, Christine, explain yourself!”
“Yes, I was cut by the roses... it was a while ago, now... on the arm, like she was, and in exactly the same place!... Only it was before she was scratched!”
I tried to look at her face, but she kept it leant upon her shoulder and turned way from me...
“Truly! Truly... there we have an enormous adventure!” I declared in a cold tone, “she was leaning out of the same window as you, and then she was scratched by the same rose! That’s truly extraordinary!”
“No!” she said softly, still in that distant voice, “no, I know there’s nothing extraordinary about it... but can you imagine that, after I was cut, I felt numbed... as if I had been poisoned... or, at least, as if I was in such a state of mental weakness that I was unable to return to the library... I had to lie down on a divan, just to rest my eyes, and I had the most awful nightmare...”
“What did you dream?”
“...That I saw the Marquis, with the same atrocious expression that you noticed on his face the other night, when you went into the Marchioness’ bedroom after her accident... He came towards me... and in spite of all my efforts to get away from him, he grabbed my arm and, pressing his lips to the wound, he sucked out all my blood... my lifeblood!”
“You really had that dream?”
“Yes, really!”
“Had the Marchioness already told you all her stories about brucolacs?”
“She had...”
“And then you went to sleep on the divan, the one underneath the four portraits of the Coulterays?”
“That was the one...”
“So, draw your own conclusions, Christine!”
“Conclusions? Conclusions? Oh... oh... I’ve come to my own conclusions, all right! But then, of course, I had not seen the Marchioness scratched on the arm, in the same place that I was, leaning out of the same window; and had not afterwards seen her return to us like a phantom, screaming: so, are you convinced this time? This time he has only left me with my soul!”
“Oh, that... but, Christine!”
“Truly... oh, that... but Christine! ... that’s exactly what I try to tell myself...”
“After all that, how did the dream end for you?” I found myself asking, a little impatient with the plaintive and slightly disturbing tone that she had adopted while speaking of her nightmare...
“Well, it ended when I woke up...”
“Carry on... and was the Marquis still there?”
“No. The first things that my eyes met were the four images of the Coulterays, hanging above me in their frames.”
“And how did you feel?”
“Shattered!”
“Then what did you do?”
“I went to see the Marquis, to tell him that the air in his house was no good for me... and that I was feeling unwell, and that I would not be returning for a while...”
“Did you tell him about your dream?”
“Yes...!”
“And what did he say?”
“That his wife is driving everyone mad in here!... And then he advised me to go somewhere in the countryside to rest for a week or two... that was when he first spoke to me of Corbillères-les-Eaux!”
I suppressed a shudder, but she did not even notice it...
“So, you didn’t go to the countryside...?”
“No, I couldn’t allow myself to leave Papa and Jacques...” (Nor Gabriel, I thought).
A silence followed, then she said:
“You will probably take me for a fool... and maybe I was wrong to show you this house, with all its singular inhabitants and their mysterious ways, which have transported me into a strange feeling of anguish... especially since the accident the other day...”
“However, you didn’t come here so often before,” I murmured, moving myself closer to her... (our hands were still joined)... “Ah, Christine! Christine! My poor dear soul... every house, like every heart, has its own mystery,” (it was her turn to shudder) “I promise you, Christine, that the cut from the rosebush, that made your arm bleed, is nothing next to certain other open wounds from which the last drops of lifeblood are draining from someone’s heart. Why give vampires the faces of the dead? The greatest brucolac in the world is no more than a little boy, with rosy cheeks and a quiver full of arrows... his name is Love!”
“You’re right, my friend,” whispered Christine, hanging her head low...
What silence followed these last words...! At last I mustered the courage to whisper in her ear as she sat so quietly beside me... I dared to murmur the first lines of a lament, one of my own compositions, which had pleased her so much that she had learned it by heart:
“O, sweet lady! From where did you come? – strange are your eyes – strange your garments – and strange the glorious length of your tresses!”
She did not allow me to continue and, tightening her hand nervously on mine, with a pressure that sent my pulse racing so quickly that it felt like suffocation...
“Calm yourself, my dear Benedict,” she said, as she rose and let my hand fall. “You are wrong to say all those beautiful things to me! My garments are not strange, you have never seen me wit
h my hair down: I am neither eccentric, nor a coquette, and if I do come here more often than usual at the moment, it is because the Marquis is not here!”
With these words she returned to the library and slumped on a bench as if crushed.
A few moments later, I got to my feet, trembling and almost sick from such insults. I found her in our little workshop.
The Bloody Doll Page 12