Pan's Flute

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  He turned round and saw a young woman against the thorny hedge, still showing traces of childhood but with the proud lines of a young statue, a voluptuous contour departing from the shoulders to the round waist and mingling the lyre-shaped hip with the loose folds of her garment.

  She reminded Dionys of the slim Anadyomene worshiped in Syracuse in a little temple of green marble, not unworthy of the golden goddess.

  She was clad in a white woolen stola and coiffed with admirable black tresses, in which violet light ran, a wave of brilliant sensuality like a starlit river. Her eyes contained all the splendor of poems; they were the color of the Tyrrhenian Sea when it reflected daylight; the lashes, half-lowered, rendered them more mysterious and tenderly redoubtable.

  A god had taken pleasure, in that remote village, in sculpting the form of a goddess. Every gesture of the young woman revealed her beauty.

  Dionys considered the delicately curved cheeks, the mouth ornamented by fire and snow, the glistening neck that changed shape amorously, depending on whether her face was raised, lowered or turned sideways, and the young bosom that inflated the stola with every respiration. That magnificent presence enchained the traveler’s movements. His heart groaned, not with lust or amour, but with the turbulence of art. And he knew that none of the subtle and supple hetaerae who had come aboard his father’s ships has been finished by such a proud chisel.

  He finally replied: “Your words bring me joy, young woman, for beauty is propitious. Its wishes are granted. Already, the road seems to me to be less rude, the future more exorable.”

  She smiled, and seemed more child-like. Then familiarly and curiously: she asked “Where have you come from?”

  He hastened to satisfy that curiosity, impatient to appear as he was: “I’ve come from Syracuse. My father had ships at sea, laden with oil, wheat and dark wines. The abyss took everything. I left for Rome, where I hope to find employment for my art. Doubtless the journey seems so harsh to me because I’m accustomed to living without hardship. I shall make it.”

  She replied, with vivacity: “I am Dehva, granddaughter of Tarao, the master-potter of Veila, whose vases are sought all the way to Syracuse. This village is hospitable. If you desire to rest here, go to the house that you see behind the Wall of the Ancestors. With your fine tunes you will charm the soul of Tarao; there is no man more attached to divine things.”

  Dionys’ bosom filled with freshness. His brilliant gaze enveloped Dehva. It appeared to him to be impossible not to pause in the village.

  “I shall obey,” he murmured, very softly.

  “Go,” she said, “and I hope that you will play again, at dinner, what you played to the reeds of the Volturne.”

  Having spoken, she departed. He listened to the flight of little sandals and the rustle of the stola against the olive branches. Then the elegant figure disappeared around a bend in the path.

  And Dionys knew the hope of Jason on the edge of the garden of the Hesperides.

  Dionys traversed a field of grass and blue vines. He found himself before the Wall of the Ancestors, a thousand years old, made of blocks of Carrara marble deposited in the cyclopean manner. From there the village could be seen more clearly. In the amber sunlight, in the long violet shadows, the olive groves, the pines, the rice-fields, the fine orchards, the Campanian cattle dreaming in the pastures and the dwellings of humans depicted the image of happiness.

  The houses and cabins only emerged part way from the fleece of virgin vines or tall sycamores. They were almost all made of volcanic stone, lava and basalt extracted from ground that had trembled with terrible fires for twenty thousand years. Some, in pietra panchina, seemed to be made of shells, and really were, but shells born before all the ages of man.

  In the orchards, before the shady facades, beneath the abundant branches, wheels could be seen turning, chisels fashioning docile clay and brushes poised over black varnish.

  A group of young women on a terrace were tracing the ornamentation of vases. Attentively, they were repeating punctiliously some game of fauns, some rustic scene, or simply harmonious lines. And all of them seemed full of grace in their light stolas, among the clusters of grapes that only left them partially visible. One of them, her bare leg raised on a tripod, her hair dangling somewhat, was showing the bright vases of her bosom in a pose both ingenuous and lascivious.

  Dionys went around the wall and became visible to everyone. Heads were raised, Etruscan heads with dreaming eyes, graces that had been accustomed to living in that land a thousand years before the foundation of Rome. Suspicious, full of melancholy traditions, they did not smile at the stranger. They seemed to be remembering the misfortune of the ancestors, still full of traditions in a district where Rome had not, as elsewhere, dispersed the people, insulted the sepulchers and annihilated the customs.

  The large house appeared, shady with virgin vines and centenarian olive trees. It was built in travertine and the white flint of Tarquinia. Sculpted in a single block, the Etruscan god whose name was lost, who had taught the art of baking clay, was visible over the door. Two fountains were flowing quietly. And before the large open bays, young men and young women were trying to fashion brown or blue clay, to discover the form of a lamp, an urn or a bowl, and to trace figures thereon.

  A tall, bald old man was supervising the school. He was passionate, reprimanding or praising ardently. His voice was rough and his gestures nervous. A profound gleam remained in his sunken eyes, the force of life inhabited his wrinkled face and his violet lips; and harsh summers had not curbed his stature.

  Dionys considered him with anxiety, for the hunger had returned, with the desire for a halt, a good meal, and the company of men less primitive than those he had frequented on his route.

  He raised his flute slowly; he played a hymn that he had composed for the cruel sea and glaucous Poseidon.

  At that voice, the old man stopped and cocked his right ear. He did not show any pleasure, or annoyance, but a profound attention. And when the cries of the Syrinx had faded away into the blue-tinted air, he exclaimed: “By the complicit Gods, stranger, you’ve reminded me of the dusty roads of Attica and bright evenings on the Agora. You merit the praise of sages! Tell me where you come from, and who your master was; he must certainly have partaken of an uncommon skill.”

  “My name is Dionys,” he replied, “And I come from Syracuse. My father Archimedes had ships at sea. The sea devoured his wealth, and creditors harsher than the sea. Many masters have taught me the art of sounds. I am going to Rome, where life is vast.”

  “It is vast, but not gentle,” replied the old man. He had come to the doorstep. He smiled, full of memories. It pleased him that Dionys was not a vagabond raised at hazard, for he hoped to be able to dispense a few of the words accumulated within him, which his old age rendered more intolerable not being able to speak. He glimpsed an evening of eloquence, a guest with an attentive ear. He asked with avidity, in the Greek language: “You doubtless knew Hellenic artists, rhetors and sophists in Syracuse?”

  “Archimedes took pleasure in seeing them,” the Sicilian replied, “and I have savored their words since childhood.”

  He was not speaking without cunning, for he was aware of the lust that old men have to pronounce speeches, and that they love, above all, those who can listen to them and understand them. He divined that this one had traveled the world and was provided with many anecdotes.

  “If it depends on me, Dionys, your sojourn in Veila will be agreeable. It is appropriate that hospitality is mild to those who have received the divine gift...and I want you to taste my Capuan wine, a pike from Lake Bolsena and the thrushes from our vineyards. I am Tarao. I descend from the ancient Rasenas whom destiny sacrificed to the fortune of Rome.4 My forefathers fought for several centuries. The blood that flows in my veins is that of the last Lucumon, who perished under the legionaries’ javelins. He died victorious; he had spread terror for ten years, sheltered in this Ciminian forest, where the consuls feared to tempt
the fate of arms.

  He spoke like the old Gerenian horseman,5 full of complaisance in being heard. He adopted a soft voice, very tender, to say: “I’ve traveled Hellas of the hundred cities, and I’ve known the divine sculptors of Corinth and white Athens. I retain a little of their flame; on this earth of clay, I humbly adore imperishable Beauty.”

  While he spoke, young women and children had slipped out of the school. Potters had abandoned their work and women, their hair sown with fine spirals of silver and gold, were arriving, guided by the curious instinct of their sex and followed by large Rasena dogs with short hair, indolent during the day but as redoubtable as wolves by night are for the solitary traveler.

  The men were still suspicious, but the women and girls were not without indulgence for the Sicilian with the large eyes and the lithe figure; and the children regretted not being able, as usual, to throw stones at the traveler. At least the youngest were not deprived of showing the fig, augmented by pantomimes, and slyly exciting the large ferocious dogs.

  The old man, looking at the shadow of the gnomon set up before the large schoolhouse, cried: “The sixteenth hour! We can go to supervise the evening meal young man. I have, in addition to you, three guests whom it is agreeable for me to receive.”

  The dwelling of the master potter Tarao stood four stades from the river, at the top of a gentle slope, in a cheerful atmosphere. It was rectangular, with two gables and shady awnings. Pillars sustained the pitched roof, colonnettes ornamented a pine-wood balcony on which one could savor the pleasure of warm evenings. Air and light entered through a wide low trellised window. A terrace planted with herbs and the odorous flowers of which it was said “that more perfumes come in Campania than from the oils of other countries” separated the house from olive groves, a rose garden and Carthaginian fig-trees.

  Sycamores, immortal pines and virgin vines cast a cool shade over the master-potter’s abode; and the river could be seen extending its silvery scales, along with the pallid meadows, forests and the pure violet mountains lost in the luminous dust of a great space the color of the sea.

  “Here,” said the old man, “lived the five generations that preceded me, and those, alas, that will come after me. It is pleasant for me to think that I will close my eyes here.”

  He opened the arched door, under one of the awnings. A small vestibule led to the atrium. That room was vast, painted in yellow and lazulite, brilliant with the crimsons of Parthenopean carpets, multicolored enamels, vases fired in the kilns of Veila and tables sculpted in Corinth or Neapolis.

  In a niche near the hearth and on pedestals, the little family of the Penates could be seen, young or ruinous, dominated by an obscene idol with scaly arms, tubercular legs and the mouth of a lamprey, so old, so cracked and so naïve that it had to date back to the era of the Villanovan potters.6

  Dionys went to sit down on the ashes and cried: “May the Penates bless you and your generation, dear host, and heap favors on your old age, for having welcomed a traveler generously.”

  Tarao replied: “The blessing of a guest is the most cherished and the surest; all the gods obtain honored in granting it.”

  They went out through a low door. Dionys crossed the atrium slowly; it was like a great voyage over the profound sea of Time. Men of other ages had worn away those familiar things. They had carried those arms in the legions, in voyages, adventures and hunts. They had drunk at the tables of lemon-wood and ivory, reposed at length on the chairs and beds draped with hides or crimson cloth, loved the old naïve cups, the Attic bowls, the sideboards laminated with gold, nacre or electrum, dreaming about the voyages, wild hunts and fabulous gardens panted on the walls.

  Dionys saw the paternal dwelling again, and the treasures dispersed at the whim of sales by auction.

  He sighed, and sensed that yesterday is as far away as a century, and youth full of old things. Oh, odorous fountains, gods of Syenite and Paros, standing among the oleanders, little nymphs scintillating in the light of torches, gold apples embalmed around satyrs…!

  The creaking of the door, and the soft voice of a woman interrupted his melancholy.

  “The water of the bath is hot, traveler.”

  Dionys followed the slave, and savored, for the first time since he had embarked on the Phoenician trireme, the warm bath that reposes the limbs and pours an appeasing sensuality into the heart.

  II. The Banquet

  The guests had finished eating the eggs, and the gustatio was being brought in when Foedus, man in his fifties, raised his head crowned with iris to say: “This empire will perish by virtue of laws and taxes. They will envelop every effort of the citizen, to the extent that no one will be able to make a movement without reflection and without anxiety. It is easier to count the stars than the ordinances, and more comfortable to weigh the wind than the caprices of the public treasury.”

  He was speaking in an ill humor, for he had been able to amass wealth, and feared the voyage of Vespasian to Campania. The vigilant emperor, skillful in extracting tribute even from the bladders of citizens,7 rarely passed through a province without discovering taxable substances.

  Half raised up on the sigma, the master-potter, Dionys, Vimnos the oil-merchant, Aulei, priest of Diana Etrusca,8 and Verus the Taciturn were listening to Foedus in silence, while Dehva smiled at interior voices.

  “Is it necessary to believe,” replied Tarao, “that the multitude of laws and taxes will soften men, or that laxity itself creates these laws and taxes? A young people would refuse this excess of shackles, and nothing would serve to constrain them to it; but an old people demands them and draws its security therefrom.”

  “I don’t much like the security of rendering my money to the treasury!” riposted Foedus. “An aureus reassures me more in my coffers than in those of the republic.”

  The priest of Diana Etrusca raised his cheerful face, aglow with the pleasure of eating, and said: “The treasury sows for your peers, Foedus. Your warehouses would not be overflowing with wealth if Vespasian had not organized Campania so well.” He swallowed an anchovy on a slice of turnip in vinegar, and resumed, with a sigh: “Truly, you’re too fond of complaining, Foedus, when it would be fitting for you to praise the gods and render them exorable. What’s the point of quibbling about fattening a pig or a sheep that will render you a hundredfold profit?”

  He looked at both Foedus and Vimnos the oil-merchant. Both lowered their eyes, discontented and troubled.

  “But I sacrificed a white lamb on your altar on the nones of May,” said Foedus, eventually.

  “I brought two doves and a kid,” added the oil-merchant.”

  “Your offerings would be nourished even more,” riposted Aulei, “if you had renewed that slight sacrifice.”

  Desirous of sparing his guests such words, old Tarao intervened. “Venerable priest,” he said, “I would like your judgment on these snails...”

  They were giant snails nourished on bread, hot wine and figs. The master-potter boasted of their merit: “I obtain them from the parks of Tullius Albus, who sends them all the way to Neapolis, and even Rome. Tullius knows the art of removing the bitter taste that is the only thing that can spoil their exquisite flesh.”

  “The entire universe is now on tables,” said Foedus. “No abyss or mountain can shelter a terrestrial or aquatic animal from gluttony.”

  “It would be unjust,” said Tarao, “for one animal to escape rather than another. I praise the art that has made a delicacy of the vulgar need of feeding oneself.”

  Aulei was eating silently, but with such joy that it excited the sensuality of the other guests. He contented himself with saying: “Your snails are incomparable, Tarao. All praise to your vigilance and your taste. Cookery is the art of happiness; it is the only one to provide unalloyed sensuality.”

  And he directed a snail steeped in fish sauce toward his mouth, amorously.

  “Unalloyed sensuality,” said Tarao, “because it is simple, even in refinement. So too is the amour that onl
y aims at generation. The sensualities of beauty and those of grand amour have something sad about them. They surpass the man who conceives them. He can only realize a part of them; he does not perceive their limits.”

  “That is true,” said Dionys, “but the sadness of the beautiful is so delicious that, for having known it, one can no longer conceive of anything better.”

  “From which I conclude that it is divine,” replied the master-potter, “for it is necessary that an eternal force animates us in order for us to love suffering.”

  At that moment the pike was brought in.

  The monstrous creature was lying among aromatic herbs, with a border of limes, on a large red platter painted with conger eels and dolphins. Its mouth was open; its cruel little teeth were visible; its form exhibited strength, violence and voracity. With a tender smile Aulei addressed these words to it:

  “Salutations, guest of Lake Bolena. You have not exterminated carp and monkfish in vain, since it was necessary for you to appear in your glory on this table.”

  He fixed the pale flesh that Tarao was dividing up with a devouring gaze, and Foedus said: “why must it be that odious old age now forbids me to go and cast harpoons into fresh water? How beautiful life is, Tarao, when the agile boat departs on the morning wind, and the limbs quiver with a blood livelier than this Sicilian wine.”

  “Ah!” sighed the master-potter. “You’re not yet fifty-five years old. You’re young, Foedus. You hadn’t yet uttered your lament of life when I was already carrying my twentieth year on the vessels with innumerable sails. I knew the night over the resounding sea, the isles, foreign coasts, in the delightful islands of the Archipelago. But nothing is worth as much as having seen divine Athens, for it alone gives reason to the world, which is to search for Beauty and to devote one’s life to it. Beauty is the mother of the gods and men. It explains evil, injustice and dolor, which, without it, would render every breath we take dolorous.”