After they had all arrived, and everyone had sat down, filled their pipes and their glasses, after we had gathered in a circle around the fire, one holding the tongs, the other using the bellows, a third stirring the ashes with his walking stick, and everyone was fully occupied – I began.
“My dear friends,” I told them, “you will be able to forgive a little something, an odd word of vanity that will slip into my story.”
Nods of agreement from all those present gave me permission to begin.
“I remember that it was a Thursday towards the month of November, two years ago (I was, I think, in the second form). The first time I saw her, she was having lunch with my mother when I came rushing in, like a schoolboy who has been scenting Thursday’s meal all week; she looked round; I barely greeted her, for I was at the time so silly and childish that I couldn’t see a woman, any of those at least that didn’t call me a child like the ladies, or a friend like the little girls – without blushing or rather without doing anything or saying anything.
“But thank God I have gained since in vanity and in impudence all that I have lost in innocence and candour.
“They were two young girls – sisters, friends of my sister, poor English girls who had been sent out of their boarding house to get some fresh air, in the countryside, to be taken for drives, made to run around in the garden, and finally kept amused under the eyes of a nurse who calms and restrains the frolics of childhood.
“The oldest was fifteen, the second barely twelve – the latter was short and slender, her eyes were livelier, bigger and more beautiful than those of her older sister, but the older one had such a round and graceful head, her skin was so fresh, so rosy, her short teeth so white beneath her rosy lips, and the whole was so nicely framed by coils of pretty brown hair that you couldn’t help giving her the preference. She was short and perhaps a little plump, this was her most visible defect; but what I found most enchanting about her was a childish, unpretentious grace, a fragrance of youth which filled the air around her with perfume – there was so much naivety and candour that even the most irreverent of people could not help admiring her.
“I still imagine I can see her, through the windows of my bedroom, running in the garden with some other friends. I can still see their silk dresses breaking into sudden ripples as they rustled round their heels, and their feet trotting along as they ran down the sanded garden paths, then coming to a stop out of breath, putting their arms round each other’s waists and walking gravely along as they chatted, no doubt, about parties, dances, pleasures and love affairs, the poor girls!
“I soon got to know all of them well; at the end of four months I was kissing her like my sister, we were all on the friendliest terms. I enjoyed talking with her so much! Her foreign accent had something fine and delicate about it that made her voice as fresh as her cheeks.
“In addition there is in English manners a natural casualness and a neglect for all our accepted standards of behaviour that you could easily take for refined coquetry, but which is merely an attractive charm, like those will-o’-the-wisps which ceaselessly flee before you.
“Often we would go for walks together as a family, and I remember that one day in winter we went to see an old lady who lives on a hill overlooking the town; to reach her house you had to cross orchards planted with apple trees where the grass was tall and damp; the town was shrouded in mist and, from the top of our hill, we could see the serried roofs piled up and all covered with snow – and then the silence of the countryside, and in the distance the far-off sound of the tread of a cow or a horse whose hooves sank into the ruts.
“Passing through a gate painted white, her coat got caught in the thorns of the hedge, I went to free it; she said to me, Thank you, with so much grace and ease of manner that I dreamt of it all day long.
“Then they started to run and their coats which the wind blew out behind them floated and rippled like a wave curling over – they stopped, out of breath. I can still remember their breathing panting in my ears as it came from between their white teeth in a hazy smoke.
“Poor girl! She was so kind and kissed me with such naivety…”
*
“The Easter holidays arrived. We went to spend them in the country.
“I remember one day – the weather was warm, her belt was hanging down, her dress was loose-waisted.
“We walked along together, treading underfoot the dew on the grass and the April flowers. She was carrying a book… it was poetry, I think; she dropped it. Our stroll continued.
“She had been running – I kissed her on the neck, my lips remained glued to that satiny skin, wet with a fragrant perspiration.
“I don’t know what we talked about; the first things that came into our heads—”
“‘This is where you’re going to do something silly,” said one of the listeners, interrupting me.
“‘True, my friend, the heart is stupid.”
“In the afternoon, my heart was filled with a sweet vague joy. – I daydreamt rapturously as I thought of her hair in curl papers framing her vivacious eyes, and her already-developed bosom which I would always kiss as low as a scarf pulled high up to preserve the decencies would allow me. I made my way up into the fields; I went into the woods, I sat down in a ditch and I thought of her.
“I was lying on my stomach, pulling out stalks of grass and the April daisies, and when I looked up, the matt white sky formed above me a dome of blue that deepened down to the horizon behind the verdant meadows. As luck would have it, I had a paper and a pencil with me, and I wrote some poetry.”
Everyone started to laugh.
“The only poetry I have ever written in my life. There were perhaps thirty lines; it took me barely half an hour, as I always had an admirable ability to improvise when it came to silly little things of every kind. But this poetry was for the most part as false as a protestation of love. And as shaky as virtue.
“I remember there was:
“‘…when at evening
She grows weary of playing games and sitting on the swing’
“I struggled in vain to depict an emotional warmth that I had only ever seen in books, then for no particular reason I moved on to a sombre, dignified melancholy worthy of the romantic hero Antony,* although in reality my soul was imbued with innocence, and with a tender feeling composed of a mixture of silly nonsense, alluring memories and fragrances from the heart, and I said for no particular reason:
“‘…My sorrow is bitter, my sadness is profound
And I am buried in it, like a man laid in the ground.’
“The poetry wasn’t even poetry, but I had the sense to burn it, a quirk that should nag the conscience of the majority of poets.
“I returned home and I found her playing on the round lawn. The room where the girls slept was next to mine, I could hear them laughing and chatting for a long time… whereas I… I soon went to sleep like her… in spite of all my efforts to stay awake as long as possible. For you have doubtless done as I did at the age of fifteen, you have once thought you were in love with that burning and frenzied love of the kind you’ve seen in books, whereas all you were suffering from was just a slight scratch on the epidermis of your heart left by that iron claw called passion, and you were blowing with all the strength of your imagination on that modest fire that was barely even alight.
“There is so much love of life in man! At the age of four, it’s a love of horses, the sun, the flowers, shining weapons, soldier’s uniforms. At ten, it’s a love for the little girl who plays with you, at thirteen, love for a grown-up woman with a full bosom, for I recall that what teenage boys are crazy about is a woman’s breasts, white and matt and as Marot says:
“‘Titty like an egg all white
Satin titty fresh and bright.’*
“I almost felt sick the first time I saw a woman’s bare breasts. Finally at fourteen or fifteen, love for a young girl who comes round to your place. A bit more than a sister, less than a lover. Then at
sixteen, love of another woman until you’re twenty-five. Then perhaps you fall in love with the woman you will marry.
“Five years later you love the dancer who makes her gauze dress swirl around her fleshy thighs. Finally, at thirty-six, the love of being elected to parliament, of financial speculation, of honours; at fifty, love of dinner at the home of the mayor or the minister; at sixty, a love of the strumpet with her come-hither summons from behind the window panes, whom you glance at impotently – a moment of nostalgia for the past.
“This is all true, isn’t it? For my part, I have experienced all these kinds of love. Not all of them, however, for I haven’t yet lived all the years of my life, and every year in the life of many men is marked by a new passion – that for women, for gambling, for horses, for smart boots, for a new walking stick, a new pair of glasses, carriages, positions of eminence.
“How many follies in a single man! Oh, there’s no question about it, a harlequin’s outfit isn’t more varied in its hues than is the human mind in its follies, and both of them reach the same end – that of both getting threadbare and arousing laughter: the public pays money for its entertainment, the philosopher pays with his wisdom.
“‘Get back to the story!’ demanded one of the listeners, who, impassive up until then, took his pipe out of his mouth only so that he could direct at my digression, as it went up in smoke, the saliva of his reproach.
“I hardly know what to say after that, for there is a lacuna in the story, a line of verse missing from the elegy. Some time went by in this way. In May the mother of those girls came to France accompanying their brother. He was a charming boy, as blond as she was and sparkling with childish pranks and British pride.
“Their mother was a pale woman, lean and carefree. She was dressed in black, her manners and her words and her behaviour all had a carefree feel, a little indolent it’s true, but resembling the Italian far niente. It was all however given more relish by the sheen of good taste you associate with an aristocratic polish. – She stayed in France for a month.
“I”
*
… then she went back home and we lived just as if we were all members of the same family, always together whenever we went out for a walk or on holiday, or took time off.
We were all brothers and sisters.
There were in our day-to-day relations so much grace and effusiveness, so much easygoing intimacy, that perhaps it degenerated into love – on her part at least – and I had clear and repeated proof of the fact.
Often she would come up to me, put her arms round my waist – she would gaze at me, talk to me – the charming young thing! – she would ask me for books and plays, only a very few of which she ever returned; she would come up into my bedroom. I was quite embarrassed. Could I suppose a woman to have such boldness, or such naivety? One day she lay on my sofa in a perfectly equivocal position; I was sitting next to her, saying nothing.
To be sure, it was a critical moment; I didn’t take advantage of it.
I let her go.
At other times she would kiss me in tears. I couldn’t believe that she really loved me. Ernest was convinced of it, made me aware of it, called me a complete fool.
Whereas I was really at one and the same time shy – and uninvolved.
It was something sweet and childish, untarnished by any idea of possession, but by that very fact deprived of energy. It was however too silly to be really platonic.
After a year their mother came to live in France – then at the end of a month she went back to England.
Her daughters had been taken out of boarding school and were lodging with their mother in a deserted street, on the second floor.
During her journey, I would often see them at the windows. One day as I was going by, Caroline called to me, I went up.
She was alone. She threw herself into my arms and kissed me effusively. This was the last time, as since then she has got married.
Her drawing master had been paying her frequent visits. They planned a wedding, it was all tied up and then abandoned a hundred times. Her mother came back from England. Without her husband whom no one ever heard mentioned.
Caroline got married in January. One day I met her with her husband – she barely acknowledged me.
Her mother has changed her lodgings and her way of life. – Now she receives at home tailors’ assistants and students – she goes to masked balls and takes her young daughter there.
It’s been eighteen months since we saw them.
So ended that liaison, which perhaps promised a passion with time, but which ended all by itself.
*
Do I need to say that all this was to love what dusk is to broad daylight – and that Maria’s eyes made the memory of that pale girl fade into nothing?
It was a low fire, and it has left only cold ashes.
16
THIS PAGE IS SHORT; I wish it were even shorter; here is what happened.
Vanity pushed me into love; no: into pleasure – not even into that: into carnality.
I was mocked for my chastity – I would blush at the fact – I was ashamed of it, it weighed on me as if it had been a kind of corruption.
A woman presented herself to me. I took her – and I left her arms full of disgust and bitterness – but thereafter I could act like the Lovelace* of seedy cafés, spout as many obscenities as anyone else round a bowl of punch; I was a man now, I had gone off to indulge in a vice as if it were a duty – and then I had boasted about it. I was fifteen – I could talk about women and mistresses.
That woman – I conceived a real hatred for her; she would come to me – I would leave her; she would put on smiles which disgusted me as if they were a hideous grimace.
I felt remorse – as if Maria’s love had been a religion I had profaned.
17
I WONDERED WHETHER THESE WERE indeed the delights I had dreamt of, those fiery transports I had imagined in the virginity of my tender and childish heart. Is that all it is? Surely after that frigid enjoyment there should come another, more sublime, more immense, something divine – which makes you writhe in ecstasy? Oh no, it was all over: I had gone and extinguished in the mire the sacred flame in my heart. – O Maria, I had gone and dragged through the mud the love your gaze had created, I had squandered it wilfully, on the first woman to come along, without love, without desire, impelled by a childish vanity – out of a calculating pride, so as not to blush at licentious talk, so as not to lose face at an orgy! Poor Maria.
I was weary, a profound loathing overcame my soul. And I considered those momentary joys and those convulsions of the flesh pitiful.
I must have been perfectly wretched – I who was so proud of that love so elevated, of that sublime passion, I who regarded my heart as bigger and finer than those of other men, I – going off like them… Oh no, not one of them perhaps did it for the same reasons: almost all of them were driven to it by their senses, they obeyed the instinct of nature in the same way a dog does; but there was much greater degradation involved in turning it into something calculated, in getting aroused by corruption, going off to throw yourself into the arms of a woman, handling her flesh, wallowing in the gutter so as to get up again and show off your stains.
And then I felt ashamed as at a cowardly profanation, I would like to have hidden from my own eyes the ignominy I had boasted of.
I took myself back to the time when there was nothing dirty about the flesh for me, and when the prospect of desire showed me vague shapes and pleasures that my heart created.
No, no one will ever be able to describe all the mysteries of the virgin heart, all the things it feels, all the worlds to which it gives birth – how delightful its dreams are – how hazy and tender its thoughts – how bitter and cruel its disappointment.
To have loved, to have dreamt of heaven – to have seen everything that is most pure and sublime in the soul, and then to shackle oneself to all the heaviness of the flesh, all the languor of the body! To have dreamt of heave
n and to fall back down into the mud!
Who now will give me back all the things I have lost? my virginity, my dreams, my illusions, they are all things that have withered, poor flowers that the frost killed before they could blossom.
18
IF I HAVE FELT MOMENTS OF ENTHUSIASM, it was to art that I owe them. And yet, what a vanity is art! To want to depict man in a block of stone, or the soul in words, feelings by sounds and nature on a varnished canvas!
A certain indefinable magical power is possessed by music. I have dreamt for weeks on end of the rhythmic beat of a melody or the broad outlines of a majestic chorus – there are sounds that pierce me to the quick and voices that have me melting in rapture.
I loved the orchestra with the rumble of its floods of harmony, its resounding vibrations and that immense vigour that seems endowed with muscles and dies at the end of the instrument’s bow. My soul would follow the melody stretching out its wings to the infinite and rising up in a pure slow spiral like a fragrance towards heaven.
I loved the noise, the diamonds glittering in the lights, all those gloved women’s hands holding flowers and applauding; I would watch the ballet dancers skipping about, their pink dresses floating, I heard their rhythmic footfalls – I watched their dimpling knees outlined as they bent forward.
At other times, meditating in front of works of genius, held by the chains with which they bind you, and then hearing the murmur of those voices with their flattering yelp, and that enchanting buzz of approval, I aspired to the destiny of those strong men who handle the crowd like lead, who can make it weep, groan, stamp its feet with enthusiasm. How immense must be their hearts for them to find room for the whole world there, and how abortive everything is in my nature! Convinced of my impotence and my sterility, I was overwhelmed by a jealous hatred, I told myself that it was nothing, that mere chance had dictated those words. I hurled mud at the highest things I envied.
Memoirs of a Madman and November Page 6