Monsieur De Phocas (Decadence From Dedalus)

by Jean Lorrain

  ‘Not a single one out of all these Oriental animals has ever been known to offer us the terrible and gentle expression of sea-green that Sir Thomas seeks – and which he still pursues, in spite of the fact that he pretends to be fully cured.

  ‘At bottom, he is even sicker than you are! Yes, more even than you, my poor friend.

  ‘Welcome is the worst of the possessed. I have seen to it that you made his acquaintance for the specific purpose of enabling you to get a better feel of your own sickness, and to prove to you to that the cure is not to be found down there, but here, where the very least of these women – or the very best, if you prefer – can yield to you the undiscoverable gaze, under the imposition of a particular sentiment which you have yet to determine … oh, it is neither desire nor love, you are too rich to inspire those.’

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘I will tell you, if you promise me not to leave. If you give me your word that you will not try to join Sir Thomas Welcome – from whom, I suspect, you will receive a telegram tomorrow, dispatched from Nice or Marseilles. But this salmi of woodcock is going cold! You know, dear chap, that woodcock cannot be kept waiting.’

  19 November 1898

  The Lahore departs on Monday; you have time to pack your bags. Pack your trunk and come to join me at the Hotel de Noailles. The Lahore is the fastest ship the company has. We will be in Singapore on 5 January.

  WELCOME.

  Claudius guessed correctly. I found this telegram on returning home. Should I show it to Ethal?

  20 November 1898

  ‘I knew it,’ Claudius said, negligently placing the dispatch between our two place-settings. We dined together this morning, and after the oysters I could not resist the temptation to show him the telegram. He did not greet it with the sardonic smile I anticipated; his triumph was a mere matter of course. He asked the headwaiter for cumin – he seasons eveything he eats with a profusion of exotic and bizarre condiments. He demanded celery and saffron in order to make some fierce-tasting hors-d’oeuvre for himself in a radish-dish; then he mixed in a delicate tongue, and suddenly resumed the conversation.

  ‘So you are not going? Well, so much the better! I would have been sorry to know that you were travelling with Sir Thomas Welcome – some rather disturbing stories have been told about him in London.’

  ‘What stories? You would have let me go without telling me?’

  ‘Of course. I would have influenced your decision if I had communicated the rumours before the decision was taken. We Englishmen have an absolute respect for the liberty of others; you were free to leave if you wished, and it was my duty not to interfere with that freedom in any way.

  ‘I was able to warn you about the uselessness of such a voyage, and to convince you, using Thomas as an example, of the vanity of your hopes, because Thomas had lied to you in boasting of his cure. I had the right to demolish his deception, given that he based his argument on it, but I did not have the right to reveal details of Welcome’s life or past which, if not actually preventing your departure, would at least have given you something to think about.’

  ‘Is there any such detail?’

  ‘Now that your decision is taken,’ Claudius said, ‘I am able to relate to you that which is called in London ‘the unhappy adventure of Sir Thomas Welcome’ – and the dangerous risk you have run.’

  ‘Danger? And you would not have stopped me? With a light heart, you would have let me run into it?’

  ‘Of course. No man can avoid his destiny. In any case, would you not have deserved it fully, by virtue of your lack of confidence in me?’

  ‘But it would have been a betrayal!’

  ‘No worse than yours, given that I have promised you a cure and you would have been changing doctors.’

  ‘And what is this story about Thomas – this ‘unhappy adventure’ as you say it is called in London?’

  ‘Such impatience! Control yourself. I shall not be so naïve as to recount it to you. You would be able to suspect me of having invented it, for the sake of the cause: testis unus, testis nullus. I will make sure that you hear every detail in due course, from one of my compatriots: Sir Harry Moore, the great racehorse trainer of Maisons-Lafitte. We will certainly be able to find him this evening – in Tattersalls, at about five, or at a bar in the Rue Auber around midnight. It is useless to insist; I shall tell you nothing. You would have every right to suspect my narration. But let me congratulate you on having been wise enough to resist the melancholy eloquence of Thomas’s great eyes – they have the reputation of being very persuasive.’

  ‘What is it that you want to tell me?’

  ‘Nothing. Harry Moore will explain it to you. In the meantime, shall we pay a call on Jane de Morrelles?’

  ‘Jane de Morrelles?’

  ‘Yes, at 62 Rue Washington. I received a circular this morning. A new consignment has come in from the provinces, absolutely fresh. One of them is a little girl from Bayonne. Basques have a purity of form and a certain elegance which is rare in the Parisian marketplace. The most beautiful Celtic eyes are sometimes to be found among the populations of the Pyrenees: eyes which reflect the water of mountain-streams, the cold green of torrents. In an amber face those sorts of eyes are singularly bright. Then again, little provincial girls new to the trade and not yet broken in sometimes make such pretty startled gestures: the semblances of modesty, the cowering of beaten bitches. They are true keyboards of sensation. When one knows how to dose them with surprise and fear, one can obtain such pretty expressions … terror is such a powerful agent of excitation: the most potent pepper of sensuality!’

  THE SPECTRE OF IZ

  25 November.

  What a vile and horrible day it has been! First, the time we spent in Jane de Morrelles’ brothel; then that gruesome and disgusting session at the Moulin-Rouge; and finally that frightful couple of hours in the English bar, with that apoplectic giant Harry Moore, and his nasty revelations regarding Sir Thomas Welcome …

  Sir Thomas Welcome! one of the few beings ever to have shown me a little sympathy; the only soul, in truth, towards whom I have ever felt drawn.

  One would think that Ethal derives pleasure from suppressing all the energy that is in me, and destroying all my illusions … he leaves me with nothing, after such physical and moral wretchedness!

  That Claudius! When I am with that Englishman, I have the sensation of plunging into dirt and darkness: the tepid, flowing and suffocating mire of my opium nightmare. When I listen to him the air becomes thin, and his atrocious confidences stir up my basest instincts and dirtiest desires.

  He carries the atmosphere of the slums with him wherever he goes. There is something unspeakable in his insinuations and whisperings. And this is the man who should be healing me! He has found the means to increase my moral distress. The moral distress of the Duc de Fréneuse – what a sorry sight! I am as deeply enmired there as I ever was: stuck in a whirlpool of warm and perfumed silt, in the soft but tenacious grip of that man with the stare of a vulture!

  Oh, the disturbing glint of his differently-coloured eyes beneath their membranous lids! One would think that his irises were sneering. And the odiously carressing but nevertheless insistent embrace of his fingers circled by enormous jewelled rings! And the hideousness of his hairy chest: that huge street-porter’s chest which he bared in Jane de Morrelies’ whorehouse, in the cleft of his unbuttoned shirt, as he put himself at ease in order to receive the little girls…

  I am still asking myself how I refrained from strangling him, so pained was my heart by his off-handedness and his foul mannerisms. Today he has infected my few remaining presumptions and my last treasured memories with the pestilence of the swamp. Everything within me has faded and withered beneath that malarial breath. How I hate him for wreaking such total havoc within me! How I detest him for soiling my regard for Sir Thomas Welcome! I shall never forgive him for that.

  Oh, what a day! The whole day was designed and contrived by him in order to pillage th
e last vestiges of hope from my soul. I will never forget it, for it has killed the last trace of innocence which survived within me!

  I have now begun to descend into the great abyss of fear and nausea. From this day forward, I shall slide into the blackness of the unstable and the unknown. I shall have the utmost disgust for everything, including myself.

  2 December 1898

  Yes, the more I reflect upon it, the more certain I am that the day of 20 November was designed, contrived and orchestrated by Ethal. That encounter with Izé Kranile in the rooms of the brothel-keeper was deliberately set up. He knows that I was attracted to that girl three years ago, when she was in her heyday, and that – notwithstanding the fact that she mowed down my desire with all the clumsiness of an unbroken filly – her image has remained captivating in my memory.

  He made certain that I would find her again, in that bawdy-house: Izé, her price fallen to two hundred francs and less; the dish of the day at Jane de Morrelles; the everyday convenience of husbands who only have an hour to spare when the Bourse closes; fresh meat for fat foreign visitors to the Rue de Washington! Oh, the claws which pinched my heart – I feel them still! – and the strange sensation of cold which ran up and down my spine when, in the boudoir with closed shutters where the impubescent girls with their grinning made-up faces were miming their insipid caresses, the slightly heavy ripple of Izé’s laughter burst out from the room next door. How brutally I pushed away that fourteen-year-old gamine – advertised, of course, as eighteen – who was lazily straddling my knees, making pressing appeals to my wallet! Oh, the clumsiness of those false innocents, their musky hair curled with little tongs! Madame de Morrelles’ little lambs! And Izé Kranile was there!

  I pressed the electric button; Madame de Morrelles answered it herself, all smiles beneath the complicated scaffolding of her coiffure.

  ‘The lady next door!’ My voice was so hoarse that its timbre was affected.

  ‘The lady next door? She is free. The monsieur is about to depart; nothing else has been arranged. That Izé is so fantastic! … ’ Madame de Morrelles stopped abruptly, as if she had said too much. ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘Yes – an old acquaintance … I’d like to see her, to talk to her.’

  ‘No jealous scenes, mind!’

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘I’ll have to ask her,’ said the bawd.

  ‘Come on! Let him see her!’ Ethal put in, shaking off two of the little ones, who were hanging around him like two goats after a vine left as an offering to the god Terminus.

  ‘But it’s five hundred francs,’ Madame objected nervously, ‘Izé Kranile …’

  Five hundred francs! I gave them to the bawd. Claudius filled the champagne-glasses of the little ones, and we followed Madame’s train of pearl-grey silk.

  Izé Kranile was sitting on a sofa with her legs crossed, leaning back on the cushions smoking Oriental tobacco. She was wearing a corset and an under-petticoat; the shoulder-straps of her chemise had slid down her arms exposing the lustre of her shoulders. Her shoulders, moist and fat, glistened in the half-light of hermetically sealed and curtained windows. The room was oppressively heavy and warm; I stopped short at the threshold, taken in the throat by the wild shrillness I had breathed once before, in Izé’s dressing-room.

  ‘Izé, there are two gentlemen here to see you,’ announced Madame de Morrelles, the words gushing from her painted lips.

  ‘Why, it’s you!’ exclaimed Izé, without getting up. ‘What a coincidence! Small world, isn’t it? Sit down. So you’re out on the town, in search of a little naughtiness. At this hour, too! You’re keen, aren’t you? Not that I should complain. I suppose Morrelles invited you to inspect her little ones – the new kids from down South. They’re only good for walk-on parts at the Gaîté-Rochechouart – the Folies-Bergère wouldn’t take them. You don’t usually come up here, do you? You only come for something special – like the first-timers. Isn’t it always the way? It’s the same with me. See that lot! They want me costumed as Princess Angora, diamonds and all … and then it’s ‘Is all that stuff fake?’ when I’ve shown them my kicks.’

  Izé slapped herself on the thigh as the filth continued to run from her lips. How crapulous she had become! In what hole had she come by that coarse voice and that common manner!

  I had passed up a star of the stage and now I found a street-walker. I was crushed; my radiant vision of that magical evening – Salomé fuming with the powder and sweat of the Folies-Plastiques – had fallen into the gutter.

  ‘Do you still have your beautiful rings?’ she asked, as she took me by the hand.

  ‘Do you still have your assets?’ countered Ethal, mockingly. ‘Let’s see!’ And he took hold of her chin, tilting back her head in order to look at her teeth. Jane de Morrelles got up and lit the candles.

  Izé Kranile still had her assets. She still had her face, broad at the temples and narrow at the chin, like the mask of a satyress. She had her large and splendid eyes with whites like enamel and irises like agates, which radiated gleams of grey and green: those famous eyes which had ‘looked long upon the sea’. But an expression of infinite lassitude had worn down and drawn out her features; her little triangular mouth was slack now, in spite of her effort to turn up the lips into a smile. Izé Kranile was a wreck, broken by the horrible and riotous life into which she had descended. The coarseness of her voice seemed to have spread throughout her being. She was common property now! What anguish that realisation caused me!

  ‘What are these bruises?’ I said, appalled. ‘Have you been beaten up?’

  ‘No, just loved a little too well. I’ve been with a Greek.’

  ‘And a bully!’ Ethal remarked, bursting out laughing. ‘You’re black and blue. You must be charging him at a high rate, to let him do that to you!’

  She laughed in her turn, huskily. ‘What about that?’ she said, proudly showing off three little red blemishes on her left breast. ‘How’s that for a mug’s game?’

  ‘That?’ Ethal riposted, leaning curiously over Izé’s skin. ‘That’s nothing much, my girl – but you ought to have it seen to.’ The monstrous Ethal spoke quite carelessly.

  ‘Bastard!’ said the dancer, ‘It’s five hundred francs a go, that’s what it is, to those who have the fancy. Together with the one I have round the back they come to a mere trifle of two thousand, and from a real gent too. It’s a cigarette burn.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Claudius. ‘You mean that there are men who amuse themselves by burning women for their pleasure? Despoiling a creature like you! What swines you must have to do business with!’

  ‘One must live,’ answered Izé, cynically. ‘And everyone has his little passions – haven’t they, dear?’ And she winked impudently, while looking at me. Her hand slyly slid around my shoulders, trailing caressing and prying fingers over the back of my neck.

  I pulled back, nauseated: ‘Five hundred francs a burn! Is that what you charge for every nasty act?’

  ‘It’s the going rate.’

  The frightful Claudius made as if to light a cigarette. ‘Five hundred francs! I’m tempted to try it – if you’ll permit?’

  I grabbed him and dragged him away forcibly. ‘No, Claudius – not that. I won’t have it. Let’s go; I’ve had enough.’ I threw a hundred francs towards Izé.

  ‘Still cracked!’ concluded the girl, sweeping up the banknotes. ‘Hey – Madame Morrelles! A soda, with a little ether.’

  Outside, it was still raining. The muddy puddles twinkled in the hazy light of overworked gaslights. Ill-tempered pedestrians hurried along the glistening footpaths or lay in wait for girls at the street-corners. It was the hour when Paris lit up. All the dissolving mud of the city ran in the gutters – and I had all that mud in my heart.

  We dined at a restaurant. Later that evening, we undertook a disgusting tour of the musical-boxes of Montmartre: a bitter pill of idiocies a hundred times rehearsed, harking back to the funereal gaities of the Butte; all the listl
essness of a trawl through the usual night-spots. We finished up at the Moulin-Rouge.

  We watched the poor girls eaten away by anaemia and miserable, impecunious vice – wretchedness in silk rags – and we watched the strollers excited by dirty desires prowling uncertainly around the professionals: all the disgrace of a proletariat stirring up its lusts at regular hours, in order to counter the ennui of shopkeepers and little shopgirls. And this is where Ethal proposes to guide me to an encounter with the gaze! Wherever we went, the spectre of Izé preyed on my mind; all the girls we encountered seemed to be weighed down by the same exhausted and dejected lassitude, hawking the same filth in order to ignite the swinishness of passing men, with the same depravity of voice and gesture.

  ‘Calves, mere calves,’ as the painter Forie was wont to say when we had trailed around all evening, only to find ourselves at ten o’clock in some nest of whores or cut-throats!

  When we came out again it was still raining. The deluge flooded the city and flooded my heart. The frightful odour of beastly wetness was everywhere. Outside in the boulevards the wretched whores in mud-spattered petticoats walked their beats, while their pimps idly played cards behind the windows of the wine-merchants’ shops.

  Such is the Paris of lust and pleasure, whose praises the poets of Montmartre are pleased to sing!