The Wing

by Jean Richepin

  Those forms, in any case, were never extremely precise, drawn with vigorous strokes and cored brightly. They floated in smoke—probably of incense—and behind veils of white mist, as if the veils of her fist communion had vaporized around her and become confused with the fumes of the incense. And it was through those clouds that she saw vaguely appearing to her the light figures with indistinct outlines and faded nuances, on very distant stained-glass windows paled by the dusk.

  The angel Gabriel and the Holy Virgin were, on the window to the left, Abbé Denis and the Comtesse. He was slowly pronouncing words, sugared with unction, which, on emerging from his invariably-smiling mouth, inscribed themselves on long, sinuously folded ribbons—and those words were the questions and responses of the catechism, to which the Comtesse was opening her heart, traversed by seven blades. Those blades were not doing her any harm, however, for her mouth too, although a trifle melancholy, was invariably smiling. She did not allow any words to escape, though; only her eyes spoke, saying by means of their infinitely tender gaze:

  “Love my son as I love him.”

  And on the window to the right, there was the same phrase of adoration that all the gazes were expressing, and the mouths too, from which a broad ribbon flew, expanding into a banner, and bearing capital letters that seemed to shout:

  LOVE HER SON AS SHE LOVES HIM!

  And those gazes and those mouths were the gazes and mouths of the inhabitants of Kairnheûz, all of them: the gardener and his wife, with the blissful faces of insouciant gravediggers; the phantom gamekeeper, guardian of phantoms; the cook and her daughter in nuns’ head-dresses; everyone praying—and Aunt Line kneeling too, her hands joined for prayer, her upper body stiff in her bodice, black and shiny like a scarab beetle, the only silhouette in relief, colored like the others in gray.

  In the center of the triptych, in the largest window, Geneviève herself was crouched at the bottom, as if crushed by ecstasy, her arms limp, her mouth open, her tearful eyes illuminated by joy, her heart bare and flaming red beneath the white ash that the veils of her first communion made—and above her, in a glory of apotheosis, blessing her with the gesture of Our Savior Jesus Christ, the One of whom the Comtesse and all the residents of Kairnheûz were saying that it was necessary that he should be loved as his mother loved him.

  And it really was Christ, in fact, in terms of his gesture and his costume, and even in terms of the essential features of his traditional effigy, since he wore the double-pointed beard and the russet hair separated in the middle of the forehead and crowned with a diadem of thorns. Nevertheless, beneath the traditional effigy, Geneviève saw appearing, and becoming transparent, and sometimes resplendent, none but the face of Joson, so different from the august visage, the characteristic face of the last Ponthual-Plouër, with the forehead bulging with idealism beneath a kind of cowl of flat black hair, hollow cheeks allowing the muscles of the carnivorous jaw to stand out, lips arched like a bow, from which the word of command was about to spring, the nose of an erne and the eyes of a petrel.

  For, in even sharper relief and color than Aunt Line’s scarabean bodice, among the vague grays of the three windows, Joson’s face, especially in certain exalted moments of memory, transported itself, as painters say, emerging from the background and coming forward—particularly those two typical details, to which Joson had drawn attention himself several times, of which he was not very proud: the erne’s nose and the petrel’s eyes.

  With that, and his nickname on the Borda, the little Chouan, Geneviève and Aunt Line had been regaled by him, in intimate confidence, during excursions into the dark woods or across the heath. He had been pleased, happy to be venturing forth and feeling that he was being admired for something other than being good. He had explained to the curious Geneviève and Aunt Line, who was fond of tales, what the erne and the petrel were: the eagle of the seas and the bird of storms, and what Breton legends had sung about them, giving their souls to certain heroes.

  To which Aunt Line, generous with her science, out of gratitude for what she had just learned, had observed sententiously: “It’s the soul that one has in the eyes that always eats the others.”

  “Personally, I try to protect both,” the young man had replied, bravely.

  And at that moment, in fact, he really had the red eyes and soul of a petrel, driven mad with joy by a storm, intoxicated therein by peril, which cries recklessly for adventure, even if it be mortal. But he also had the curved nasal dagger and the soul of a ferocious and rapacious sea-eagle, fond of lacerating its living prey, and it was with a brusque clenching of his masseter muscles, like steel walnuts, that he had uttered bursts of laughter like the clacking of an erne’s beak.

  Aunt Line alone had retained the memory of that redoubtable laughter. Geneviève, no. The words had stayed with her—erne’s nose, petrel’s eyes—with the clear images that she contemplated in Joson’s face, apotheosized in the center of the triptych, but she did not attach any terrible significance to them. Were not all her memories of paradise always bathed in the tender and gentle light suavely filtered through the Comtesse’s eyelashes, the silk-fringed eyelashes, in that soothing light in which nothing could appear other than pleasant?

  Although the decor could change in the three windows, their charm never changed. Whether the scenes of the catechism taught by Abbé Denis, or that of the adoration manifested by the residents of Kairnheûz, or that Joson in the ascension of apotheosis, were taking place in the grounds, or the château, or on the heath, or even in the darkness of the oak-wood hurling itself into the fir-wood, or amid the ruins of the chapel before the sinister sheen of Kawchmôr, the dear evocation always had for its magic word, the Comtesse’s own words, coaxing, slow and musical, in the choice atmosphere of the pretty Louis XV boudoir in which she resided, for preference.

  For, although the lugubrious “Terrible Heap of Stones” had remained the same since the Middle Ages externally, certain parts of the interior, restored and furnished in the 18th century, had taken on a very different character, which made a new habitat for a new soul. The feral den with a somber carapace thus sheltered pleasant and cheerful corners. The Comtesse’s boudoir was one of them, and the most exquisite.

  Her feminine elegance and maternal tenderness had flourished there and perfumed the air. Furnished in a pure style, with pastel fabrics and delightful contours, delicate wooden moldings painted gray, paneling of sober and spiritual design to which a few precious engravings added their grace, and light curtains which seemed powdered by old lace—such as the frame made according to the Comtesse’s wishes, and which her memory transported everywhere, so to speak, at least in Geneviève’s memory and imagination.

  And so, it was as if in the mirror of those colored engravings, and among those delicate surroundings, that she was glad to review—and was incapable of doing otherwise—her entire existence at that time. The sensations experienced during those two months, she only re-experienced in the ambience of that boudoir, in the air flowered and perfumed by the Comtesse’s feminine elegance and maternal tenderness—and the catechism itself, and her first communion, and the widows of her intimate chapel, remained powered by a charm of old lace. And it was the supreme surviving charm of all the charms that had enchanted Geneviève’s eyes, mind and heart during her unforgettable days in paradise.

  XVIII

  “Are you thinking about your windows again, amon?”

  That was what Aunt Line said to her when Geneviève had a certain look in her eyes, which the old woman called “the curly look.”

  One can imagine, in fact, that their intimacy had often been embellished by that confidence regarding the memories transformed into the strange vision of the windows. They had ended up smiling at it, a little—first Aunt Line, who gladly mocked her darling for that kind of love, simultaneously childish, religious and chimerical; then Geneviève, similarly, so bizarre did it seem to her, not so say absurd, to have been able to be something akin to a lover and a mystic.

&
nbsp; And because of that, when she lingered on her dream in reflection, she acquired what Aunt Line described, so aptly, as her “curly look”—so aptly, that is, in her special parlance, with such singular associations of ideas! For her, the word meant that the look in question was simultaneously joyful and mocking, like certain glances darted by little boys with short curls.

  And Geneviève, in fact, while delighting in her memories of her paradise, had nevertheless begun to find them, at length, slightly ridiculous. It is true, too, that the nuance of ridicule itself pleased her—and her sentiment, then, was well-translated by Aunt Line’s phrase, evoking contained little outbursts of mischievous laughter and twinkling eyes, like curly hair.

  “Right now, you’re in the black hole.”

  When the good woman said that to Geneviève, it was because she saw her eyes troubled, stressed and bleak—eyes that said, like the Thiérachian song:

  Dgerlindez sans derlindindins,

  Pour chés yux qui pleurn’t pau l’dedins.

  And one could easily imagine, in fact, silent carillons guerlindaient within poor Geneviève, without any drelindindin of joy, at the times when she had those sad eyes, weeping inside while she sank into morose contemplation before what she herself had baptized “the black hole.” Oh yes, the black hole into which her life had almost fallen and been interred! The black hole whose blackness always horrified her, by virtue of its absolute blackness and mystery, even today, when all that was no more than a distant and concluded nightmare.

  It was not only her life that had nearly plunged into that “black hole”; it was much more, and although no one had ever told her about it, she had retained an obscure and dolorous sentiment of aftershock—a post-sentiment, one might say—all the more frightful because it remained unexplained. That which had been as if dead and buried, lost forever underground in the four-year black hole immediately succeeding the paradisal vacation, was Geneviève’s genius.

  Abruptly, on returning from Kairnheûz, while enjoying a physical and moral health that had never been more flourishing, the little girl—who had now become a young woman—had awakened as if with a different brain. Such, at least, but terribly exact, had been the impression made on her father, as soon as the first conversation, in which he had cried, effusively, with the great delight of a teacher meeting a favorite pupil again:

  “Oh, how much fun we’ll have working together! How splendid the crops will be, after two months lying fallow! You’ll see, my dear.”

  But the unfortunate fellow had only seen a vague gaze, without any flame for Science, thinking about something else, with which he did not feel any longer in contact. Before a series of exciting problems, which he had prepared expressly to enjoy Geneviève’s inventive faculties, he found her incurious, closed and closed. He had tried in vain to renew her appetite; she seemed henceforth, instead, to find it repugnant. Out of obedience and politeness, she had tried to apply her attention to it, but had not been able to find the slightest interest therein. One might have thought that he was speaking to her in a foreign language.

  Gasguin had thought he was going mad, with rage and chagrin. What! Two months had sufficed to change that intelligence so utterly! For it was not only her taste for the sciences that Geneviève seemed to have forgotten; it was their meaning, even the simplest and most vulgar comprehension. She no longer loved them because she no longer understood them. That was further demonstrated by the difficulty she now had in applying herself to them, always deferentially, as a docile pupil, but always poorly, as a pupil devoid of talent.

  It was then that the despairing Gasguin had had the sinister impression, terribly exact, that his daughter had woken up one day with a different brain; and he had said so to Aunt Line, who could not see it, alas, and thought that Geneviève was exactly the same, or even better—“with a woman’s body”—than she had been before her departure for Kairnheûz.

  He had written to Yvernaux, who had come running immediately, and had found Geneviève very healthy—grown, embellished, and even extraordinarily refined in her sensations and ideas, at least with regard to everything but the sciences. On that particular point however, incompetent as he still was, in spite of his recent studies, he had been forced to recognize, having interrogated his goddaughter, that she was no longer the child prodigy that had previously bowled her father and himself over with admiration.

  “You’re right,” he had concluded. “That’s not the same brain. Your expression is devastatingly accurate.”

  Then had then each sought the causes of that radical transformation, Gasguin with discouragement, certain of the catastrophe and saddened because his daughter might be prey to some incurable malady, Yvernaux with a glimmer of hope nevertheless, and not without a secret selfish desire—it must be confessed—that he might reconquer his goddaughter entirely for himself, thanks to the unexpected reorientation. Indeed, Geneviève seemed to him to be closed to the sciences, properly speaking, but not, according to his expression, to the other blooms of which the infinite compass-rose of the intellectual world was composed. Thus, as she continued to have an open and studious mind, doubtless still curious—provided that one found the new aliment appropriate to nourish that curiosity—there was no reason to complain of the abomination of desolation, because what was henceforth lost to Mesdames les Sciences might be recaptured elsewhere…

  He had pronounced “Mesdames les Sciences” with a comical emphasis, and he continued, in a joking manner intended to cheer the lugubrious Gasguin up a little—which implied that Gasguin was an idiot: “Come on, old chap! Surely, Mesdames les Lettres or Madame la Philosophie are not despicable hussies.”

  While he joked, however, he was not very tranquil himself, deep down. Once his wretched selfish thought had died away—rapidly, let us say to his credit—his anxiety flared up again. Geneviève did indeed seem to be more refined in her sensations and ideas, and to have progressed in that regard, the general health of her mind having followed that of her body—mens sana in corpore sana—it was nevertheless in the fashion of any young woman, no more. And all things considered, when Geneviève had been adroitly questioned by him, and all her possible curiosities cleverly directed towards other nutriments than the sciences, it had been necessary to admit her present absolute impotence to bowl her father and godfather over, in spite of their willingness.

  Ultimately, that which had been lost for Mesdames les Sciences had been lost to the same degree for Mesdames les Lettres and Madame la Philosophie. There was not even the consolation of thinking that it might be recovered for religion, by which it was briefly feared that Geneviève might have been caught, and via which Yvernaux would have hoped to lead her sooner or later to Metaphysics. No! It was with respect to any ardent intellectual activity that that average adolescent “noggin” was now reluctant, restive in confrontation with the least complicated problems, with no appetite for knowledge regarding the most elementary notions of physics and chemistry, as if it were applying itself to the Sciences for the first time.

  For the strange cerebral anemia—what else can it be called?—had extended that far. Methodically, Gasguin, a good teacher experienced in the routine, had begun Geneviève’s scientific education again at the very beginning, seeing her resistant to the difficult questions that had impassioned her before. And it was precisely in finding herself thus, at the very wellspring of the sciences, where her thirst, only two months earlier, had slaked itself in such deep draughts and caused new streams of water to flow, that Geneviève now had a sort of reflexive impulse of disgust, extending to a veritably horrified retreat.

  How could that wellspring, in which she now tasted only bitterness, be rendered as sweet as before? How could she even be given the desire, regret for the recently-lost savor? Lost forever, alas, Gasguin soon thought, having exhausted himself in futile attempts without obtaining the slightest result. Lost forever, even Yvernaux, more easily duped, finally had to confess, who had tried more ingeniously than Gasguin, in the most various direct
ions, without any more result.

  War-weary, they had renounced all hope of seeing the Geneviève of old again, and. having come to that point of renunciation, told themselves that they had doubtless been deluded before. They tried hard to recall some typical, indisputable detail establishing the formidable promise of genius she had shown; now they imagined that they had invented, or at least exaggerated, the facts on which they had built the chimerical edifice of her promise.

  And how could they not have added faith to that new explanation, which they furnished after the fact? When, to settle their conscience, they interrogated Geneviève herself on the subject, her astonished, often foolish, replies were sufficient proof that all of it had doubtless been merely a beautiful dream born of their enthusiasm and having left no shadow of a trace in her indigent memory, the silly girl!

  “It was you,” Gasguin had said to Yvernaux, “yes you, who put that folly in our heads, with your sacred lyricism and your verbal fireworks.”

  “Not at all,” Yvernaux had riposted. “It was your infatuation with Pascal that worked the trick on us. You saw the genius of the great Auvergnat in your little girl, just as you had earlier seen his sublime mask in your wife’s poor mug.”

  And they were each resentful of the other for being mutually deceived, as if it had been deliberate. The worst thing was, however, was that they blamed the unfortunate girl for their error, as if she had induced the false opinion in them by cunning, calculation or God only knew what damnable precious and malevolent feminine coquetry. Yes, it was at that degree of disenchantment in her regard that they ended up one day, suddenly both becoming misogynists.

  It goes without saying that Aunt Line and Geneviève suffered in consequence, overtly held in scorn from then on. But the two friends suffered no less, without having intended it. Their friendship was corroded by it. Their love for their daughter and goddaughter had been the strongest bond of that amity. That love having faded with their admiration, the bond was soon stretched; and the amity, having ceased to make a bouquet, immediately withered into simple and banal camaraderie.