Pan's Flute

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  The door closed again, they waited. In spite of the darkness, Dionys vaguely perceived furniture and pale walls, and a very soft perfume, as if arrived from a distant coast, mingled a voluptuous disturbance with the sentiment of peril.

  Outside, the dogs had just stopped. They were growling.

  “By Neptune!” said the old merchant. “I fear, young man, that the balance is not leaning in our favor.”

  Voices were heard approaching. Dionys, who had received lessons from stoics and fatalistic mariners, replied: “We shall obey the decree, Somnius. I do not see that we can aid ourselves further, except with our weapons.”

  As he spoke, he heard a rustle of fabric. The young man sensed a head close to his own that was spreading, more forcefully, the perfume that had stirred him. A soft voice murmured: “Don’t move!”

  He recognized the voice of the Umbrian woman. He tried to advance his hands, but a bare arm, moved him aside. The door opened swiftly and closed again.

  “Fate has spoken,” said the old man. “Have no fear any longer. That young woman is fecund in resources; her mind is as prompt as it is sure. She will save us.”

  The dogs were no longer growling. The Umbrian woman spoke to them in a low voice and drew them away with her, by winding paths, toward the building that the slaves had quit in order to run across the gardens. She reached the peristyle, and from then on took no further care to hide, for it was natural that she had would have arrived there, attracted by the noise. She began to speak to the mastiffs, in a singing voice that was audible in the distance.

  “Leo, Niger, Robur, what’s the matter?”

  The men, dispersed, no longer knowing what direction to take, turned round at those words and, seeing the dogs running between the columns, they renounced their pursuit.

  “What’s happening?” the young woman demanded.

  The oldest of the slaves replied: “The dogs seemed disturbed, Flavia. We thought that we ought to visit the gardens.”

  “The dogs fear no one,” she retorted. “They would devour anyone who invaded this dwelling, or would perish. What danger can you fear, Lucius?”

  “I don’t know,” the slave replied. “A man might have hidden.”

  “You’ve done well,” replied the Umbrian woman, “but it’s surely nothing. Dogs have their caprices, like men. You can see that they’re tranquil now. Put out those torches and disperse in silence; it’s necessary not to wake the master.”

  They were accustomed to obey her as promptly as Licinius himself, even though she was a slave. The old man intended that she be respected. They obeyed.

  She remained alone with the mastiffs and the two watchmen.

  II. Sensuality

  Half an hour had passed. Dionys was waiting, his nerves increasingly taut. He no longer had the patience to listen to his companion or reply to him. The waiting emptied his soul; and the adventure ended up seeming so distant and imprecise that he scarcely desired it.

  A slight sound made him shudder; almost at the same time, a very soft hand grasped his, while someone murmured: “Come!”

  His being returned, like a firmament of clouds when the wind rises. He no longer had any memory of anxiety or waiting. The woman took him away in a prodigy of joy, scintillating hope and voluptuous agitation.

  They went through a narrow corridor; a door closed behind them, and, lifting a thick veil that hid a niche, the Umbrian woman uncovered a silver lamp, already lit. They were in a rather small room, with walls decorated with dark blue and emerald enamels, furnished with small shelf-units of Mauritanian ivory, tables with lions’ and bulls’ feet, a silver perfume-burner that spread a suave smoke, bucchero nero vases with rhythmic contours, and seats with Syrian cushions.

  The young woman had let go of Dionys’ hand. She showed him a chair, saying: “Don’t move…let me listen to the night.”

  Leaning over, she cocked an ear. Her white garment fell in marble pleats, lightly twisted around her.

  She was anxious, and almost terrible in the gleam in her eyes, the color of which changed with every movement: green in profile and violet-gray in full face. Her hair, partly unfastened, either by the haste or deliberately, was strewn with tiny rosebuds. Something cruel and menacing lifted the shiny corners of her mouth and dilated her nostrils, either because she was proudly braving peril or because she felt the species of bitter sensation that often accompanies beauty, which is like a revenge against the Ephemeral, against old age and death.

  When she had listened for a minute, she said: “All is tranquil.”

  And she came to sit down on the ground, her head posed on the young man’s knee. He saw her entire, in an attitude marvelously adapted to exasperate desire. He tried to lean forward, place a kiss on her hair and seize the woman.

  “No!” she said. “First I want to thank you and apologize to you. For if it suited me that you believed that you were in peril, I had anticipated everything, in order that that peril should not be the reality. Hazard defeated my prudence; you nearly paid dearly for your enterprise. I feel a very keen regret.”

  “But I do not!” he exclaimed, vehemently.

  She looked at him smiling, and began slowly to undo a part of her hair. An ironic provocation illuminated her eyes.

  “It’s appropriate that you have no regret,” she said, “and that you don’t regret having run a few of the risks that two peoples once consented to run for a woman. I would have no pleasure, Dionys, in receiving a man who would not be ready to go to war to conquer me. So I wanted to know that you would not recoil. It was a necessary proof, without which the adventure would have been insipid and devoid of beauty. But I trembled for you myself, and that was not useful.”

  She spread her hair over the Syracusan’s knees, and stroked it delicately. Reflections of copper scintillated there on a backcloth of tawny silk. He plunged his hands into it with a sigh; he seemed to sense it palpitating, and his desire was exalted like a warrior beast. The Umbrian woman still contained him with her smile.

  Then, seeing that he was becoming impatient, she said: “Take off that long cloak, I beg you…I’m stifling, seeing it over your shoulders.”

  He took off the cloak, while she put up her hair again. Her marvelous, round, shiny neck, taut, with two childlike pleats, a nape both delicate and fleshy, held the Syracusan’s attention. It sprang from the stola with a kind of amorous boldness; it seemed a complete being, limited by the roots of the hair and the jawbone. Dionys could not recall having seen a contour of flesh ornamented to that degree with the gifts of Aphrodite. He conceived more pleasure in plunging his lips thereon than in possessing a beautiful courtesan.

  And he thought that he would find the night fortunate if the young woman simply realized that wish. He said, passionately: “There is only one Hellenic statue, Umbrian of which the neck is resplendent with that beauty and that grace...”

  She turned toward him; with a singular softness, she said: “I am not unaware of it, Dionys. I honor therein the mysterious work of a god; I experience, on contemplating it in my mirror, a frisson that enables me to understand the desire of men.”

  He moved closer, his eyes humble and supplicant, for he understood that he would obtain nothing except by prayer. He said: “Let me place my lips upon it, and tonight will be blessed!”

  He was very close to her. She recoiled with a shiver.

  “Be careful to do nothing by surprise; you would cause me chagrin and would prevent me from loving you. And I desire to love you. But that is only possible if you respect my body as a holy work. Violence horrifies and disgusts me. Those who are veritably able to discern beauty are not capable of it, when one has taken care to warn them. There is little calculation in my resistance, or, at least, the calculation is only the effect of strong sentiments. It is necessary for me to conquer. I feel the necessity of that for myself, and for the man to whom it would please me to yield. It is a common interest. Dionys. It would be as fatal to you as to me to misunderstand it.”

  “I w
ould not misunderstand it,” he said, “if your amour were to be the prize of my obedience.”

  She placed her head on his shoulder; he saw, obliquely, the emerald eyes and the crimson lip, full of the same cruel expression as before.

  “But I have no idea whether I will love you,” she said. “I only have a desire to love you, because it appears that you can recognize the value of my body. You know, and you shall know better, that to possess me is to possess all women. Beauty is a people. It represents a thousand extraordinary things, the entire mysterious prodigy of life. Those who are astonished that Mark Antony preferred Cleopatra to the Empire have not thought that the Empire is the insipid repetition of ill-made creatures. One woman alone in whom nature has succeeded is worth a myriad. What would she be worth if nature had succeeded perfectly? She might well be more that everything human that exists, beyond peer....”

  She fell silent. He remained pensive. Those words corresponded to the depths of his nature, imbued with the religion of the Beautiful. He enveloped the young woman with a long admiring gaze, while she continued.

  “I would be a vain and poor thing, Dionys, if I surrendered myself without resistance. Instead of a profound adventure, you would only have a miserable game. It is appropriate that beauty be dear, in order better to exalt the soul of men, and is it not, in any case, to insult the gods to grant without proof that which ought to cost so much difficulty?”

  She held herself as grave and proud as a Pallas Athene with the grace of Cypris. No perversity shone any longer in her luminous irises. She was pure, by virtue of the honesty and fervor of her belief. And a bitter distress slid into Dionys’ heart, the fear that that woman was not made for amour.

  In a hollow voice he said: “Do you not fear, Flavia, being too similar to a work of art sculpted in stone? It is also necessary that beauty be emotional, or it would be in vein that it was made of palpitating flesh. No divinity could have determined that those who were to trouble the souls of men would be untroubled themselves. They would lack the supreme grace that is in Life.”

  “Ah!” she cried, vehemently. “I don’t want to be a statue, and I have no fear of that. This flesh is not insensible; it aspires to charming intoxication. I am full of secret desires, Syracusan, but they have not been able to blossom. You would not reproach the flower of Libya for being unable to grow in the indigent light of the Bretons, nor the bird of tempests for being unable to find pleasure on calm shores. Do not reproach me for being insensible to the love of brutes, nor for wanting to be the prize of long effort; I shall be more ardent for having been more skillfully elected.”

  He wanted to reply, but she put her hand over his mouth and the softness of that small palm recalled that of the silvery foot on the grass of the Volturne.

  “Don’t reply,” she said. “I have chosen you. You please me. I know that we practice the same worship. But you are still my enemy; that is the law. Try to vanquish me by submission, as you would strive to vanquish the Anadyomene if she sprang from the foam for you.”

  She picked up a silver vase and an electrum cup and held them out with an almost humble movement. He placed his mouth avidly on the place that she had touched.

  “It’s the wine of my homeland,” she said. “It is harsh, and not durable. I wanted you to taste it, as a sign of hospitality. Would you like fruits now, meat, Falernian, or the sweet liquor of Syracuse?”

  She served the things as she named them, on a lemon-wood table encrusted with enamels and tortoiseshell; but his stomach was constricted. He watched her do it, and every gesture created a memory.

  “You’re not eating?” she said.

  “It’s sufficient for me to see you to be sated.”

  She nibbled a little alica, a yellow fig, and took a sip of Syracusan wine. While eating, she had an air of naïve, mischievous, cheerful pleasure. Her cheeks seemed more rounded.

  Then, a melancholy expression passed over her face. She leaned toward Dionys, her eyes plunging into his. The child had disappeared; a somber queen remained, beneath the abundant hair whose height matched that of the entire face. He sensed that he was under an obscure and redoubtable yoke.

  She stopped eating, and spoke in a clear voice that was hollowed out at intervals.

  “My beauty has not been helpful to me. More often than not, I have carried it like a heavy burden or a thorny flower. It seems that I owe ransom for it to some invisible power. Apart from Cneius, who taught me to know it and gave me the joy of it, I have been the captive of jealous brutes. My masters have had a taste for my body but no respect; they kept me far from other men. Three times I was sold; three times I fell into misfortune. Free, I could have made myself rich, for it is scarcely to be hoped to see the beauty recognized by men of Rome, Athens and Phoecia without it being surrounded by lust…and old Licinius is, all things considered, the best of those who have possessed me.”

  She detached her eyes from those of the young man; a magnificent shadow passed over her face.

  “Thus, my fate was to have but one hour of light, and my beauty was like a lost treasure. I would not like to die without having loved.”

  Dionys remained motionless, bathed in a strange melancholy, which seemed inexplicable to him. The brief plaint of that woman evoked all the fugitive history of humankind. The Sicilian relived his exodus, the sea, the resounding cities, the harsh roads: all the décor of Destiny, the space in which the tottering generations lived and died. There was also the impression of a sacrilege that such a woman has been a slave, and he remembered the words of Tarao on the evening of his arrival: “It’s something contrary to divine laws. Beauty is offended by it. Of all offenses, I know of none more sacrilegious.”

  The Umbrian woman saw his sadness; she was touched by it.

  “I like your silence better than your speech,” she said. “It’s pleasant for me to be lamented. It’s something that I shall not forget.”

  She put her hands on the young man’s neck; then extending her nape, she said “You can now place your mouth upon it; but then you’ll leave...”

  He plunged his face into the embalmed neck. The admirable flesh was fresh; it had a kind of silky ripple of frissons and slight movements. For an instant, the bosom swelled like that of a dove. The Umbrian woman tilted her head back with a sigh; bewildered, Dionys seized her by the waist. She pushed him away, imperious and gentle, threw his cloak over his shoulder and drew him into the next room.

  “Go!” she said. “You’ll come back.”

  He found himself in the darkness of the gardens, with old Somnius. He carried away the kiss as Endymion, in the forests of Latmos, bore away the dissolving kiss of the nocturnal queen.

  Dionys saw the Umbrian woman again several times, but those meetings were full of uncertainty. The young woman did not surrender herself any more than on the first evening. She escaped all prevision, her tenderness was as capricious as her melancholy; he never knew whether her smile was ironic or tender.

  Armed with all the powers of a woman, all the disconcerting gestures, all the contradictory coquetries and all the instinctive ruses, she was not one being but a multitude. Dionys despaired of seizing her, like the leader of an army in revolt.

  His soul was heavy; he maintained silence; he no longer took pleasure in his art. Dehva was his sole consolation, but he was fearful of her presence, and strove not to encounter her alone. When the work was concluded he remained alone with old Tarao, or fled along the Volturne all the way to the gardens of Licinius.

  He gazed distractedly at things and people living in the approaching autumn. Delicate evenings descended over Campania. The cultivators and the herdsmen quitting the fields and the pastures, the bewildered children in the orchards and farmyards, the drowsy flowers, the great blue, amethyst and coppery satin sky and the shadows of trees gradually fading into the shadow of dusk made him think of Achilles’ beautiful shield, on which the god of forges had depicted the tilled earth, fecund and rich, men turning teams of oxen, crops reaped with scythes, gild
ed vines, silver trellises flexing under black and blue clusters. And when night fell, he thought that Vulcan had also represented, on that glittering armor, the stars, the round moon, the vaporous Pleiades, the strength of Orion, and the cart rolling northwards in an immutable stadium, which never bathed in the indefatigable ocean.

  Then, in the crystalline night, he made speeches, for he understood his thought better when he put it into words.

  He said: “What do you want of me, Aesa? Why have you put into my heart a double amour full of torments? For the redoubtable vow separates me from one, and the other toys with my desire. It seems that you want to reduce me to despair with the very adventure that ought to be the happiest for a son of men. Why has my heart conceived such a violent agitation therein? You are taking pleasure in making me taste death in life, and horror in beauty...”

  Sometimes, too, he blew softly into the Syrinx, and drew laments therefrom. Then his soul sighed, following the magic of sounds. He perceived, obscurely, the profound harmony that links rhythm to joy and suffering. And the kind of scattered soul that art extracts from beautiful beings, as a plant draws its flower from the earth and the daylight.

  One evening, when he was relating the melancholy of his destiny to himself, sitting on the stump of a willow near a pool in which the stars were asleep, he saw the master-potter in front of him, who was listening to him.

  “My son,” said the old man, “you have never made anything heard so sweet. A new life is in the breath of that flute, a voice that I have not heard elsewhere. I followed you in order that we might talk about your trouble, but perhaps it is better that you do not give vent to a suffering from which you draw such music... Only assure me that your existence and that of Dehva—they are now almost equally dear to me—are not in any peril.”

  Dionys, rendered more tender by chagrin, sensed that he loved the old man veritably; he exclaimed, in a halting voice: “I would commit all crimes, my father, rather than risk Dehva’s life.”