Abel and Cain

by Gregor von Rezzori

  I learned all this by heart long ago. I knew the consequences: the taste left in my mouth for days, the enjoyment left in my mind for days—

  I have grown accustomed to living with it. It has not recurred that often—perhaps four or five times during the past nineteen years (enough for domestic use). A few days later, the hunt (for big game, so to speak) ends, making room for the everyday snares and traps: the bird-catching of lived moments (sometimes there’s a parti-colored goldfinch; sometimes one begins singing; sometimes one even speaks: if I close my eyes, they whir about in my head—but the cage has holes: the ones I want to keep fly out and the others stay, even when they have died: decay with dusty plumage in the corners, piles of fusty tatters . . .).

  for a while, something archetypal lingers marvelously within me: large, silent, indecipherable, like the stone faces on Easter Island—

  then, diurnal drudgery carries me off.

  •

  Now and then, I tried to track down the origin of this dream in myself. I visualized the time, the days, that preceded it. For instance, a humdrum day one and a half or two years ago here in Paris (in the constellation of Gaia, whom I loved at that time, Venus ascending, Mercury in the first house): we lived sumptuously and with costly joys, spent our days sybaritically; bought our salmon and caviar (as well as vodka) at Petrossian, venison and fowl at Fouchon, cheeses at Marboeuf; the only arguments were about things like whether we preferred the vins des Côtes (Ausone) or the vins des Graves (Cheval Blanc) to Saint-Émilion (and which vintage, needless to say); we agreed about Chablis (Blanchots, Les Clots, Grenouilles, and Vendésis); with trout, we particularly esteemed a Pouilly-Fumé. We drank Burgundy less often (and if so, it was Clos de la Ferrière or Clos de Bèze-Chambertin); our selection of calvados, marc, kirsch, poire, framboise, cassis, as well as cognac and Armagnac, was considerable. In short, the days began with sensual joys, sensual feasts, and ended with sensual intoxications. Our wakening in the blond pear-wood Second Empire bed was a dove-like billing and cooing (which, to be sure, usually degenerated into a wildcat mating). Then we bathed amply, voluptuously. Floris of London supplied us with bath oils, bath salts, soaps, toilet waters, potpourris; otherwise, Madame remained true to the products of the House of Guerlain; I for my part held steadfast to Knize Ten and Knize Polo; in summer, however, I loved the somewhat vulgar freshness of Tilleul from d’Orsay. Eventually, we harnessed up: Madame très chic, très simple, assez sportive in her Balenciaga tailleur, a delightful little hat, long gloves of course (in this respect, one can always rely on Hermès), the pocketbook, however, from Germaine Guérin—everything we owned, everything we used, everything we surrounded ourselves with was exquisite, unique, at least top quality (although we often came across simply enchanting finds at the Prisunic). The Rothschilds served as our model for the soundest, most unimportunately luxurious lifestyle. Madame herself is something unheard of, inimitable, un vrai objet: a Creole (to put it delicately), super-life-sized in every respect, especially in the physical: chocolate colored, over six feet, a live weight of one hundred fifty-two pounds. Dame Africa from the Gobelin cycle The Continents: tropical, fruit-proliferating, leopard-spitting Louis XIV sumptuousness. Yet Madame had the affectionate tenderness, the lily of the valley–delicate intimacy, the entrancingly alert coquetterie of the midinette. At the same time, she was a tremendously capable business-woman (record industry). A lady with an executive’s vitality, the precision brain of a nuclear physicist. Being a Frenchwoman, Madame was naturally a housewife in the best sense of the word, an outstanding maîtresse de maison. (Only the footwear left something to be desired: this was where le côté noir revealed itself. The niggers in Madame’s family tree expressed themselves more eloquently here than in her radiant corn-golden mulatto skin.) It was sensual bliss to dress this mountain of smoked flesh in haute couture. Furs, for instance, came to true life on her: when she donned her sporty lynx, the packs of hounds started to bark in Rambouillet, the huntsmen blasted a view-halloo; when she wore her autumnal chinchilla, the leaves of Fontainebleau turned golden yellow; in her sable, she dashed about like a troika team. Certainly I helped Madame with her toilette. I loved this tributary rite of dressing, I loved my adoring lady’s maid service (who else was supposed to do it? The cook went shopping, the chambermaid went to take a few of Madame’s things to the cleaners). With transfigured eyes, I hold out Madame’s lingerie (lemon-yellow frothinesses, with umbra darkening behind them). I gather up hastily scattered brassieres and laddered stockings, tuck them away out of Madame’s sight. I help her into her petticoat (taking great care with the lacquered pagoda of her hair); Madame is impatient—you understand, we stayed in bed too long. As usual, Madame has precise appointments to keep; her time is money, on which I live, with the help of which I will complete my book, write a masterpiece. So we do not tarry over breakfast; I’ll munch a slice of ham from the icebox later on, drink the tea she has left standing. I quickly fill her handbag—compact, lipstick, checkbook, purse, driver’s license, address book, house keys, cigarette case (Fabergé), lighter (Dunhill), a small shopping list (on which I have quickly and secretly scribbled “Je t’adore!”)—Madame is practically out of the house, I run after her, helping her into the ocelot (it’ll bite me any second), I race ahead into the hallway to buzz the elevator, a kiss—“À tout à l’heure, mon ange!”—the scissor gate moves past her Three Magi Moor’s face, closing across it like a coarse-meshed veil, then she sinks to my feet, sinks to the floor, is swallowed up; I peer into the shaft, which deepens before me, then breathing a sigh of relief I return to the apartment (it looks as though a robbery-homicide has taken place), I’m still in my bathrobe, still unshaven, from the bathroom window I can see into the courtyard, where the small fiery-red Morris reverses in an arc and then moves forward again, swings in to the porte cochère, and she looks up to me, waves from the car window, très jeune, très dynamique—ah, ce que je l’aime! (she’ll soon be thirty-four, looks twenty-nine, if not younger). Filled with happiness as never before in my inconstant existence I get down to my day’s work—that is, I get myself in shape for it, the important thing is to keep in the mood. If I wish to write a topical book, I must do so with sovereign composure, ironic distance, lucid insight. The dark passion of the hunger artist is antiquated. Nowadays, great literature is a business for sophisticated people, and Gaia’s sublime sense of art, her connoisseur’s flair, the clarity of her French mind challenge me to peak performance—to which her exotic exterior offers a wonderfully piquant contradiction, for which I dress contrapuntally, choosing the attire of Major Thompson: dark-gray, double-breasted flannel suit with discreet chalk stripes, a tough Horse Guard sit to the necktie, the feather-light hat from Lock Britishly balanced on the eyebrows, the cornflower in the lapel, an umbrella rolled needle-sharp (Rumpelstiltzkin in the dandy: oh, how good that no one can tell I’m carrying a Bibliothèque nationale card in my pocket!). Thus absolved of the profane zeal of a working man, I saunter out into a Paris that fits me as snugly as my dogskin-leather gloves (a Paris teeming with flâneurs as perhaps the dog that supplied my glove leather once teemed with fleas).

  City of idlers, city of strollers, traversed by packs of tourists, window-shoppers, suburban scouts, provincial boulevard hedonists—while the streets are boiling, boiling away energy, boiling away action, combustion-engine-driven dynamics, every kind of purposeful efficiency: a need for a higher living standard, a desire to shape the future, an economic commitment, a political commitment, an erotic commitment—every kind of greed, drive, compulsion, madness stepping on the gas, throwing the gearshift, clutching the wheel, expelled from the exhaust . . . The weather is delicious; dove-blue Paris has donned lemon-yellow lights, and I stroll along the avenue Foch as far as the Bois de Boulogne, circle around the pond twinkling with golden scales, study the ducks, the children, the dogs, the loving couples, wander back to the place de l’Étoile and then a bit down the Champs-Élysées (briskly, briskly! you’re getting to the age when you have to
watch your form and figure!). At Faguet, on the rue Washington, I select a jar of apple, sour-cherry, or currant jelly for Gaia’s breakfast table (should she ever—perhaps on a Sunday—arrange the leisure to relish it). At Fouquet, I order an aperitif and read the newspaper (there’s nothing interesting in it). At noon, we meet in a substantial, intimate little restaurant known only to very (but very!) knowledgeable Parisians and not imperiled by touristry (a blanc de veau chez Anna, a sôle aux champignons chez les Fils de Charpentier). If Madame does not have one of her urgent appointments right after, we indulge in a little treat for the eyes (drop in at the Musée Camondot to look at furniture, an exhibit of illusionist designs at the Orangerie) or we run a few errands (a geode of rose quartz at a mineral dealer’s on the rue Guénégaud, curtains for my study at Halard’s), and then we separate—“Allons, mon ours—ferme le pot de confiture—chacun à son boulot!”—for she’s discovered a skiffle group that’s more interesting than Ken Coyler’s, she wants to cut a few demos and sell them to Odéon, perhaps manage the group. I, for my part, return home to my work. It may not be the ideal hour—I work best at night or very early in the morning—but this mustn’t count now, so much depends on this work, Gaia’s waiting for my book, she knows it’s going to be a big, significant novel, she doesn’t however read German, therefore unfortunately can’t follow the emergence of the masterpiece step by step, but she believes in me, she loves me for this book, is prepared to sacrifice anything for it, spoils me in order to make writing possible for me, earns the money for my sovereign equanimity, the ironic distance from myself that I must achieve, she won’t hear of any other work, I only wasted my time with my scriptwriting, and got nothing in return but debts all around, she cheerfully pays them, laughingly talks me into admitting to those I wanted to keep from her, she is my muse and my Maecenas, I’d be a scoundrel to disappoint her, that would be a blow to her, a blow she could never overcome. So I have to force myself to be disciplined, to try to create (difficult as this may be on a full stomach). I rummage about in the notes, sift carefully through the existing material, work on two pages of a chapter I sketched years ago, shift it around, draw a new structural draft, clarify the situation, purify the dialogue, chew amply on my pen, pour a jigger of whiskey to fire the creative (the Dionysian!) element—it’s five o’clock anyway, and what am I supposed to do? I’m no robot, a man’s got days when he’s in no mood for creative writing, this isn’t like baking bread, you know! . . . The whiskey is excellent (Glenmorangie), I pour myself another jigger, realize I’m tired, weary, empty; the incessant enjoyment of every moment wipes me out, saps all my strength; this ought to be depicted—the sweet paralysis of an existence that is lived with all too intense enjoyment (with raised pinky finger, so to speak), unfortunately Huysmans has already done it—and I lie down on the sofa to figure out if and how this can be integrated into the theme of my novel, wake up at seven, thank goodness—I’ve still got a good hour (she never comes home before eight or eight-thirty) . . . I go through my manuscript from the very beginning, cross out a few pages, rewrite a few others, while the hour passes like the blink of an eye and Gaia is already whirling in (vanilla wind of exotic spice shores), freshly lacquered (she dropped in at the coiffeur), her Moor’s cheeks glowing (“Tu sais, mon ours, il fait assez froid ce soir”). Glancing over my shoulder at the manuscript (“Voilà! Toujours à la page treize—comme si je ne le savais pas!” with scarcely a very fine shadow of bitterness in her voice), she must be in a good mood (thank the Lord!) and when she’s in a good mood then it’s a festival, it’s paradise on earth: the lamb and the tiger catfighting like brother and sister, laughing, joking, nuzzling (“Je t’ai eu, salaud: tu n’as pas travaillé cet après-midi, tu as bu, tu as dormi et tu as rien foutu—confesse, canaille!”), I love her, she is my sister, I don’t have to lie to her (“Je te le jure, mon amour: j’ai récrit au moins dix pages et j’en ai gagné au moins trois toutes nouvelles!”). She asks over her shoulder how many I crossed out, she’s already on her way to the bathroom, intending to warm up by jumping into hot water (Lord, preserve this house!), I follow her, perch on the edge of the tub, around the twins of her solid little breasts (the designer’s name is Maillol), the hot blue water smokes boreally, an adventurously contradictory geography: an Arctic atoll in the copper light of a desert sunset. In the depths, a sunken continent lies darkly, attempts to rise: Leviathan, from which the waters cascade, telluric birth out of the boiling ocean, growing up into the rain-fecundated Earth Mother, a brown breadfuit tree with honey dripping from its branches, a stream of water runs from her throat, quickly narrowing between her breasts, catching in the pit of the navel, one drop jumps across, races over the smooth curve of her belly and flees into the black bush wedged between her powerful thighs, a rough black chalice. I wrap her in a violet bath towel (from Ernst Jünger’s Paris Diary: “. . . She invited me to have a cup of chocolate—I brought her a bouquet of violets”). I rub her dry, powder her armpits with a pistachio-colored puff, kiss her solid purple-brown nipple almost accidentally (“Ah, non—pas maintenant—arrète! Mais tu es un obsédé!”). We change into our evening attire—lounge dress, of course; we have absolutely no intention of going out, au diable with Lasserre and Tour d’Argent; after all, we’re not Americans, on reste à la maison: what France has to offer us is (beyond the bell-tolling of her great architecture, the lark jubilation of her painters, the radiantly spiritual gravity of her wines, the full artful piety of her cuisine) la douceur du foyer, and we enjoy the sweetness of home solemnly, this is what distinguishes us from the barbarians, from the jetting nomads, the civilized steppe-peoples who are assaulting this venerable continent like a scourge of God—we oppose them with the bulwark of an intimate knowledge, a connoisseurship, known only to the most familiar initiates, a sublime culture of specialty shopping, a trained and picky superiority. Thus culturally and politically tasked, we celebrate our sensory feasts: Madame—in her moss-green wool skirt (with a red underweave, roughly the Menzie hunting tartan), below which shine the silver buckles of her patent-leather pumps (Lobb of Paris); above she wears a lobster-colored silk blouse, a peacock-blue cashmere shawl around the shoulders (why didn’t Renoir ever paint a mulatto?)—sets a low table in front of the fireplace in the salon (the staff are not put upon in the evening; they normally prepare the table in the dining room, but tonight we feel like a petit dîner intime): heavy English silver (late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the bowls by Peter Storr), the Baccarat glasses dug up for us by Baalbeck from the collection of the Duc de Mouchy; because of the evening frost, we use the Russian service, a hard, reflecting, ice-colored porcelain with a blue, delicately bled—all but hoar-furred—Cyrillic pattern, and Madame lights the candles in the Empire girandoles; I (in my bottle-green velvet jacket, white spun-silk turtleneck, velvet pumps with embroidered monograms: Camfora of Capri, 1950) break my fingers on the new plastic ice tray. The choice of wines is taken care of, since there’s not much more than some smoked salmon and half a cold grouse from yesterday’s déjeuner (with Putzi Lambrino, Nicky Ravanelli, Marie-Christine de Brouilles, the last almost a bit too yéyé for her sixty-eight years), the problem isn’t great, and we can down our first cuttingly cold vodka (“à la tienne, ma grosse cocotte!”). It’s a pleasure to watch her toss back her head as she pours the drink down her throat, her full neck tensing, her chubby brown hand putting down the glass and reaching for the fork, and it makes me weak to see with what pleasure she pounces on the food: she skewers a piece on the fork, lifts it to the sumptuous cup-shaped blossom of her carnivorous mouth (the rich, soft flesh of smoked salmon is an especially tempting prey), the purple bulges of her lips, notched like elephant hide, spring open, peeling from the two lecherously glittering rows of teeth, which open like a trap (with the rosy reptile head of the tongue lurking in the cavern behind), the lip bulges (smooth now when stretched) gape so greedily that the gums become visible (a jagged wreath of sheer, bright flesh over the bone palisades of the teeth: the joust
ing collar of a cannibal heraldry), the piece of salmon hovers on the fork tines (precarious moment of predator feeding), cautiously approaching the polymorphous beast—the tongue flicks out, glues itself to the crude piece and draws it in, the teeth snap to, the lip bulges close softly and relentlessly upon the fork, which is pulled out empty. What takes place behind the lips now—they hint at it with a kneading, pressing, and stretching—must be blissfully murderous. At this moment I am all salmon: there, in the darkness, I am will-lessly tossed to and fro by the nimble tongue-reptile, minced, slimed, crushed, releasing my juices and shooting down with them into an even deeper, more abysmal darkness. A small cluck, germ of a sob, in the brown column of her throat seals my fate. Thank goodness I can identify with the next and then the following piece; I am entirely flayed, entirely raw flesh (a true-blue masochist would plunge into paroxysms in my place), but only for the duration of the salmon; the cold grouse already has something cadaverous about it—if the Haut-Brion 1923 didn’t provide a flamboyant supply of blood for the pale meat, then the notion of necrophagia could spoil my appetite. A pear compote with a delicate touch of clove and a sharp shot of mango chutney restores purity, à l’indienne, as it were, then for coffee we move to the sofa, while in the two superimposed glass spheres of the Kona machine (freely adapted from Jakob Böhme) the mocha substance is gradually created from the first, incorporeal primal grounds. I quickly clear the table, Madame meanwhile inserts the afternoon’s tape into her portable deck, the newly discovered skiffle group is dynamite, I’ll soon hear how good these guys are, she pours the coffee into our cups (recently brought back from Tunisia, turban-shaped, with delightful apple-green and peach-red stripes), I fill two of our beautiful snifters with honey-hued calvados, we snuggle on the sofa. This is right, I participate physically in her professional experience, as she does (by disappointment) in mine. She presses the start button of the tape player, and the room fills with psychedelic emotion, fills with rhythmic washboard scraping and grooved drops of a vibraharp (first indolently, then alternating faster and faster and swallowed up, but then rain-showering down and drawn out by the beat into swinging wave stripes), in almost breathless syncopes the knitting needle of a flute stabs in and joins them in the ghost of an old, familiar tune—I know that, I’ve heard it some time or other . . . Under Madame’s dark jungle gaze (black moon in white sky) I mull it over, strenuously listening—just what is that? . . . The melody is as ensnarled as an Irish Bible initial—and then the surface splashing brings me the name: Bach, of course, the D-minor fugue from the Art of the same, yes indeed, that’s it; undulated with vibrations, rippled up and driven down by rhythms, Madame is proud of me, not everyone would hit on it so soon (“Bravo, mon ours! Mais tu es malin comme un singe! Ah, ce que j’ai froid aux pieds—prends-les dans tes mains, mon petit!”), her feet really are icy, I blow on them, warm them up, rub them between my palms, bed them on my chest (et tes pieds s’endormaient dans mes mains fraternelles), she still isn’t completely satisfied with the recording, one reason for her (professional as well as personal) success is her relentless perfectionism (mine is the reason for my failure), it is almost impossible to find a sound engineer with an ear, the good people are all under contract elsewhere, the ones left over push the buttons mechanically, they’re deaf, they’re stupid robots, and every minute costs a fortune . . . (that’s right, darling: chat away, unburden yourself in a heart-to-heart in my arms, it’s evening and the fire warms us) if you don’t do everything yourself you end up with nothing at all (nous avons dit souvent d’impérissables choses les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon) . . . incidentally the chieftain of the skiffle group is an attractive young Englishman who looks fabulous with his Viking beard and Bulgarian lambskin jacket . . . I feel a pang of jealousy: I know the quarter tones in the range of Madame’s voice, the syncopes in her speech rhythm: “Si tu me cocufies, carogne, je vais te tuer!” Her laughter is defiantly uterine, it drives me crazy, the colored slut, let’s reverse the classical model and make it negative, with a white Othello strangling a black Desdemona . . . she’s as strong as a beer-wagon horse, but I’ve got my tricks, she’s already panting under me (“Attention, ours! Le verre—tu casses le verre, imbécile!”), I give her enough time to drink up, but then . . . the great affection makes me indolent, I sit on her lap, she cradles me gently in her powerful arms (c’est là que j’ai vécu dans les voluptés calmes / au milieu de l’azur, des vagues, des splendeurs / et des esclaves nus, tout imprégnés d’odeurs), I love her, I kiss her with ardently closed eyes: baby blisses, primordial home of mucous membranes, wonderworld of warm body fragrances (et je buvais ton souffle, ô douceur, ô poison . . . how does it go after that? . . . Qui me rafraîchissaient le front avec les palmes—that’s a different part, but it fits: qui me faisaient languir—it doesn’t rhyme, but it’s poetic) . . . the fire in the hearth burns slowly down, I stare into the glow, which starts to blink at me with black eyes, I’m snugly exhausted, the implacable experience of the singular, the extraordinary, the exquisite, fills me with steady, intense sleepiness, Madame leafs through the latest fashion magazines, I slowly sip my calvados, even this is a strain: every exquisite move made becomes a cultic gesture, I am too sloppy for such priesthood, I cannot celebrate myself in every moment of life, one really needs the energy of a Rastignac to be a full-fledged citizen of Paris, I don’t have it, I’m a lazy barbarian brooding about the ephemerality of things . . . in the fireplace, the black eyes splinter off in the fiery glow and turn ashen-gray, a final log is consumed, a lonesome salamander, I place the fire screen before its flame-darting rump (the reptile hisses softly), I yawn so hard my cheeks crack (good heavens: another day is done, and my book? . . .), she’s reading an endless article in Vogue, it must be very interesting, I wish I could read, anything, I haven’t been able to read for months, at best my weekly horoscope in Elle, why bother with anything else? Now, for instance, we could have been in bed for an hour already, sleeping (D’accord, mon ours—tu penses à ton travail très tôt le matin, n’est-ce pas?—naturally, what else?), we go to the bedroom, undress—and then comes the big moment (secretly feared): “Ours! Tu sais ce que tu dois faire—allez hopp!” and taking an enormous leap, she jumps on my back, it’s the nicest thing in the world for her, there’s nothing she enjoys more, nothing more intimate (a childhood dream, she’s confessed to me: being carried by a lover—no man has ever been prepared to do so)—so I allow one hundred fifty-two pounds of live weight to heave up onto my shoulders, under her impact my ribs crack from the vertebrae, my ears roar, I see red curlicues, but I bravely trot through the entire apartment with her: bedroom, dining room, salon, her study, my study, the vestibule, the guest rooms, three times all around, then I unload her in the bathroom (“Bravo, ours! Tu as été très fort ce soir—presque aussi fort que le père Bouglion—et Dieu! ce qu’il était fort!”). I love her, I stand at the bathroom mirror, brushing my disheveled hair, she stands behind me and says, “Tiens! C’est comme ça que tu te vois . . .” What? How so? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? “Rien. Je t’ai seulement vu comme tu te vois toi-même.” So what? What’s so special about how I see myself? “Tu ne te vois que dans le miroir, n’estce pas?” Of course not, where else could I? “Et je te vois différemment.” One hopes. So what? “Rien de spécial. Pour une fois je t’ai vu comme tu te vois?” “Viens, ne dis pas de bêtises—allons au lit!” And lights out, shuddering with bliss under the fur cover, snuggling together, flesh entangled with flesh, flesh galore, flesh in masses, in mountains, pulsating blood-warm, spice-scented, coffee-brown female flesh . . . I think of the salmon in her mouth and, suicidally, sink the defective teeth of the Caucasian race into her.