“Oh, my God,” said Melanski, “I’m not reproaching women for being imperfect. I’m reproaching them for spoiling love for me by mixing so many things with it that they prefer, very inappropriately. The woman would be the true half of my being who, not losing sight of the fleeting nature of life, would take nothing seriously therein but amour—the only thing that is worth the trouble of being born—who would count our minutes by kisses, with whom I could say in all the profundity of our intoxication, but also in all certainty that life passes and that annihilation is at the bottom of the jar: amor, morituri to salutant.”
“But you’re not worth that!” I exclaimed. “Once again, you’re not worth that. For every moment when you have a head elevated to that Byronic lyricism, there are a hundred when you will be flat, and you would be the first to let your absolute amour overflow into a hundred wretched preoccupations.”
“Yes, yes, it’s true, that if women are sad donzelles, we’re sad sires. Ah, look, I’ve had enough of you, of me, of the skeleton and women. My head’s burning; I need air. Would you like to go for a walk?”
“At his hour?” I said.
It was dark, and the moon, frequently veiled by clouds, was giving hardly any light.
“Are you afraid of the calm?”
“Me? Not in the least.”
“Well then, get your hat and cane. We’ll go all the way to Harfleur.”
X
We left the house at the same time as Pélagie, who had just concluded her daily labor.
He set off at a rapid walk, and I matched his stride. We were soon outside the town, beating the road with our soles noisily and cradling our sullen silence to that melancholy rhythm. I looked to the right and left of the road. Here there were fields of wheat with yellowing heads, freshly laid, there, buildings surrounded by apple-trees; further away, a clump of beeches; but I was less concerned with the landscape, graciously enveloped with shadows by the night, than the preoccupation into which Melanski had cast me.
The omnibus service that went back and forth from Le Havre had long ceased. The road was deserted. We only encountered one or two private carriages and four joyful companions, arm in arm, singing at the top of their voices and aiding one another charitably to carry a doubtless exaggerated ration of Calvados with aplomb. Meanwhile, on the right-hand edge of the road we soon reached a long row of linden trees forming, by their junction with the thorny hedge that serve as an enclosure, a few arches of the most charming effect. I had already noticed that row in passing when I had come that way by day with Melanski, and I had been sorry to see the beautiful trees dusted by the rolling of carriages; but by night, the blanching of the dust on the foliage produced a silvery reflection that was one more grace.
I stopped, and then, like a curious child, I tried to look over each of the hedges that opened on to the pathway.
“Come on,” Melanski said to me in a low voice. “It’s not late yet and there might be someone on the path.”
“A woman?” I asked, rejoining him on the causeway.
“Perhaps. Shh!” he added. “Mademoiselle Bénin is, indeed there. Don’t look; you’ll force me to greet her.”
There was something so imperious in the manner in which Melanski said that to me, gripping my arm sharply, that I could not help obeying him.
“Who is this Mademoiselle Bénin, then?” I said to him, when we had passed the pathway.
“That’s another one of your naïve questions. She’s Mademoiselle Bénin, of course.”
“I was trying to ask you whether she’s pretty?”
“Very pretty.”
“Whether she belongs to a rich family…?”
“Yes. So what?”
“Whether you think she has a few qualities of heart and mind…?”
“Certainly, but why?”
“Finally, you’ve had occasion to approach her and talk to her?”
“Of course. Her mother has called me a few times to care for one of her domestics, and on those occasions I was able to judge that the young woman has, as they say, everything going for her.”
“And her health?”
“Oh, health you’d credit to her. Impossible to be fresher and more appropriately plump: like a freshly-ripened peach.”
“So she’s a delightful person?”
“As much as a woman can be.”
“And you think that she’ll render her husband happy?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Then it’s necessary to be her husband.”
“Who? You? As much as you wish.”
“No, you, Melanski.”
“My dear friend,” exclaimed Melanski, in a voice slightly afflicted by a sudden anger, “leave me alone, I beg of you. In the mental situation that I’m in, it’s cruelty on your part to make a happiness gleam before my eyes that I can’t realize.”
“And why can’t you realize it?”
“Why? He asks me why, when he knows everything! Present the finest water to a rabid dog, and you’ll see that he won’t drink it, that it’s impossible for him to drink it.”
“That,” I said, “is one of those comparisons that has absolutely no justice. Because you’ve just traversed a period of madness, it doesn’t follow that now, reestablished in the integrity of your reason, you can’t replace an absurd amour with a reasonable amour for a beautiful young woman. Life, Melanski! Think of it: a blossoming of strength, of beauty, of tenderness in your arms; tangible kisses, no longer imaginary; always a return for a loan, and sometimes a more generous return. You’ve exhausted your soul in deviating a substantial part of it toward an inanimate object; you have an opportunity to repair it now by means of the superabundantly animated being that you call Mademoiselle Bénin and you’re not going to take advantage of it?”
“No.”
“But you said just now that she would make the man she marries happy.”
“Certainly: you, another—but not me.”
“You’re imagining that...”
“So be it; but you can’t imagine how insupportable you’re being; so, once and for all, let’s leave it there.”
There was no point in persisting further at that moment. Having arrived at the pretty little station in Harfleur, we retraced our steps, almost without unclenching our teeth all the way to Montivilliers. I was heart-broken. My poor friend seemed to me to be incurable, or, at least, I did not know what remedy to attempt.
He completed my discouragement when he said to me, shortly before going up to his bedroom, and point blank: “I loved my skeleton because it loved me as much as I wanted; but it will be the most eccentric, the most satisfying and also the last of my passions. Good night!”
I had hoped that our walk, in fatiguing Melanski and putting back the hour of going to bed might free him for that night of his habitual pilgrimage. Harassed by fatigue and drowsiness myself I went to sleep in that hope. Alas, I was mistaken; my poor friend came back again. I woke up just as he turned round, with a start.
This is the place to add an observation to those I have already made about the non-lucid aspect of his nocturnal actions. How is it explicable that he did not recall that his skeleton was no longer in the box, but persisted in coming to look for it there, and thought that he was carrying it away with him?
The following morning, at about six o’clock, I saw Melanski arrive again, but this time awake, fully dressed and holding the box of bones in his arms.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said, “for it’s still early, but before Pélagie arrives I desire to repair a pusillanimous action at which I blush.” At the same time, he opened the box and took out the various bones one by one.
“What are you going to do, then?” I asked him.
“I’m simply going to rearticulate the limbs of my skeleton and place it in the case from which I should never have removed it.”
“Don’t do that, I beg you!” I exclaimed. “Don’t do that, Melanski! You’re right no longer to leave the box buried in the garden, because
it might lead to questions that are always annoying, even when they’re explained, but for God’s sake leave the bones in the box and put it in the attic.”
“What inconvenience do you see in my remounting the skeleton here?” asked Melanski, with a sad little smile. “Do you fear, by chance, that a tenderness might develop between the two of you that would supplant me? Well, I’m not jealous; although, to tell you the truth, your proximity to one another authorizes some jealousy on my part. I’m not jealous, because I know full well that my skeleton’s life is entirely artificial, and without the portrait it can no longer go to your bed any more than it can return to mine.”
I tried to persist, but all my efforts were vain.
“Are you afraid?” he said, finally. “It’s not possible! You wouldn’t be a man.”
“Well, yes, I confess it,” I replied, glad to have found that pretext, however humiliating it might be for me; I’m still subject, like children, to vague fear; and now, after the stories you’ve told me, if it occupies its case two steps from my bed, I wouldn’t be capable of closing an eye.”
“Really?”
“Truly,” I said, with some difficulty, for I don’t like to lie, even about the most insignificant things.”
“So be it. I’ll transport the case and the skeleton to my bedroom—or rather, you can take my room, and I’ll come down here, as I should have done long ago.”
That was even worse, because that way, I would have no means of preventing the unfortunate Melanski from taking possession not any longer of the skeleton’s phantom but of the skeleton itself, and waking up every morning alongside such disagreeable company. It was absolutely necessary to change my mind.
“You understand that I was joking just now,” I told him. “Since you don’t want to leave the bones in their case, which would be wiser, edify your skeleton here; that’s not what will prevent me from sleeping.”
He picked up a small pair of pincers with which to twist the metal wires, and he had soon finished reuniting the tarsals, tibias, fibulas, demurs, iliacs, etc, in a harmonious whole. Once the slender human framework was established from head to toe he suspended it from the peg inside the case. Then he stepped back a few paces to observe his skeleton, as he had been accustomed to do before.
“There we go!” he said. “I was right to believe that without the portrait the skeleton would lose its borrowed life. The flesh with which my imagination clothed it, I can no longer perceive today, no matter how hard I look. The mirage has vanished; thank God, I’m free now of an amour my reason condemned, but which, like all the poisons of mysticism, slid into my heart through my false senses in spite of me.”
Pointing at the skeleton, he added: “You can see the purpose of what I’ve just done. As long as it remained underground I would have retained a certain fear of its supposedly marvelous nature, which is no longer possible now.” Then he closed the door of the case and said to me; “Let’s go! Sleep, idler, while I go into the garden to finish what you started yesterday evening, and when the little patch is dug, I’ll place flower-pots there, as it isn’t the season for planting or sowing.”
But he had no sooner left the study than he came back in. “By the way, the weather’s superb. If you wish, we can go have lunch in Le Havre. Is that all right with you?”
“Very good, very good. I don’t know Le Havre, since I’ve only passed through it. I’d planned to go there someday; perhaps I’d even have gone today in your absence. Your proposal to accompany me there is perfect.”
“Yes, but you need to get up right away.”
“Right away?”
“Yes, certainly, and it won’t be too early, because we’re go on foot, because we’ll be obliged to stop at the home of the man with the polyp, and we’ll take the grand tour over the heights of Graville and Ingouville. So, presto! Get dressed.”
“Yes, yes—go into the garden and I’ll join you there in a minute.”
Instead of following that perfidious advice and giving my sloth time to rejoice, Melanski employed violent means and pulled my bedclothes away.
An hour later, we departed, Pélagie knew that she was not to expect us for lunch, or even dinner.
XI
The morning was radiant. We reached the road by the shortest route and were soon going alongside Mademoiselle Bénin’s property. I darted a glance over the hedge between the linens and saw something very pretty: two blue tits pursuing one another and hopping—but no young woman, alas. The house was situated at the far end of the driveway; two windows were visible from the road. Now, at one of those very windows, in a pose like Polyhymnia, Mademoiselle Bénin was standing.
In order to feel out Melanski and discover whether he was prepared to talk about her, I said with a feigned negligence: “That house must be very damp,”
He replied with a malicious smile: “Yes, very damp. That’s why, among other reasons, you and I would act wisely in not seeking to live in it, even for one day.”
“There’s no question of it for me,” I replied, “but that habitation might be healthier for you than your house in Montivilliers.”
“Here we go, you’re beginning to catechize me again. I tell you, my friend, that I won’t marry at any price, even if you offered me the best, the most beautiful and the richest woman in the world.”
When we had passed Harfleur, whose ancient port has fallen into an abandonment so merited and yet so sad, with two or three poor devils of barges, Melanski made me veer to the right and go up to the Abbaye de Graville by a broad winding path bordered with trees, and then by tombs, at the end of which stands the Église Saint-Honorine, flanked by its old abandoned tower, which gives it an entirely romantic aspect. Having arrived in the courtyard of the abbey, with a double row of linden trees behind us, we leaned on the balustrade of the terrace, from which a magnificent view extends. Afterwards we traversed the abbey, between the lodgings of the curé and the girls’ school kept by the sisters, and, inclining to the left of a lovely avenue planted with apple trees via a grassy slope accommodated in the rocky hillside, we returned to the cemetery whose first tombs we had seen on arriving.
The accidents of the terrain, the abundance of the grass and an entire vegetation, sometimes cleared and sometimes heaped up at the whim of nature, that infallible artist, formed the most desirable refuge that a dead man could desire.
“Turn round,” said Melanski. “You can see over there the panorama that we were enjoying just now from the terrace; and two paces from here is the orchard where the pupils play during their breaks. If the light filtered through the tombs, and if the dead had eyes, what a fine spectacle they’d have, eh? And what satisfaction for the mothers buried here, if exterior noises could reach them, to recognize among others the voice and laughter of their granddaughters.”
“I’d like to die in the commune of Graville,” I said.
“I’ve already made the same reflection,” said Melanski, “the first time I saw this lovely cemetery. The skeleton of a man and that of a woman would go a long way before encountering a more charming locale to celebrate the honeymoon of their fresh espousal.”
Always, as you see, the unfortunate Melanski returned to the object of his lugubrious folly. I made no reply and drew him outside the perimeter of the abbey.
We went through Graville, and then Ingouville, and an hour and a half of walking took us all the way to Le Havre and a comfortable restaurant in the Rue de Paris.
After dinner, he took me to visit the curiosities: the town hall with its beautiful square, the jetty, the citadel, the docks, the dry dock, and finally the various basins filled with ships. In the Eure basin there was a superb American three-master with a fine name that rang tenderly in the ear: the Love.
“Would you like to try to visit it?” Melanski asked me.
“I’d like nothing better.”
“Well, that stout gentleman smoking his pipe on the deck while overseeing the loading of those barrels of wine must be the captain or the first mate. I’ll as
k him for permission in English in order to flatter him.”
“That’s right,” I said, “ask...”
Melanski formulated his request with a grace that was familiar to him.
“Captain, will you please allow us to board your ship?”
To which the stout gentleman replied, with an amiable smile: “Z Naywiçksza przyemnoscia.”
I have rarely seen a man more bewildered than Melanski was to hear a blunt reply in Polish to a question formed in English—for without being able to speak Polish fluently, he knew enough to discern it from another language, and even to comprehend those few words.
“Thank you very much, Monsieur,” said Melanski, in French this time, “for the permission you’ve been kind enough to grant us.”
“And I perceive,” said the captain, also in French, “that I’ve made a error, although not very serious, since you understood my anyway. I replied to you in Polish thinking that was your mother tongue, but you’re French, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Monsieur,” said Melanski, “by birth; but originally, I am indeed Polish. It’s necessary to believe that a few of my facial features revealed that to you. Thank you, therefore, for the pleasure you’ve caused me by reminding me of my poor father’s mother tongue.”
The voluminous American with the awkward manner awoke three admirations in me. I admired the extraordinary tact that he had shown in discovering at first glance, in Melanski, the Polish type that had never seemed very evident to me. I admired that he had grasped my friend’s delicate flattery and responded in kind. And finally, I admired the fact that he knew a single word of Polish, for Polish is not one of those international languages that men in commerce find it advantageous to speak. Melanski did not hold back from expressing that final admiration to him. He replied, simply, that the little Polish he knew he had from his wife, who was Polish. Was it not Byron who remarked that the best grammar from which we men can learn a foreign language is a woman’s lips?
The captain wanted to do us the honors of his ship personally, and took us everywhere. We asked him a few questions about the tonnage of the ship, its crew, the merchandise it transported, etc., etc. Finally, Melanski said to him: “I imagine that you have a surgeon attached to your crew, Captain?”
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