Cocaine

  Pietro Nocera replied:

  “I think that with a mind like yours —”

  Tito interrupted: “ . . . it’s a pity to ruin it with alcohol.”

  The chief sub-editor turned to Tito and said: “You remind me of those who say it’s stupid to believe that seventeen’s an unlucky number, because it’s a number like any other; thirteen is unlucky, of course, they admit, but seventeen isn’t. That’s exactly what you do, Arnaudi. You’re killing yourself with cocaine, and you think it’s stupid of me to be killing myself with alcohol. You don’t see that if the two of us get on well it’s because there’s an affinity of poisons between us which in turn has led to an affinity of ideas.

  “You and I have the same type of mind, and basically Pietro Nocera has it too. The three of us get on well because we are all three attuned. We are simply men of our time, not three exceptional individuals who have come together to form a particular triangle. I may be wrong in saying that it’s our poisons that have made us like this. Perhaps it’s our being like this that makes us drown ourselves heroically in our sweet poisons. However that may be, I’m happy poisoning myself; and, as it give me a little joy, it would be absurd not to do it. If half a liter of alcohol is sufficient to do away with depression and transform the world in my sight, and if all I have to do to get half a liter of alcohol is to press a button, why should I deprive myself of it? If it were painful, I should understand. We could rid ourselves of all the agonies of love by having an operation, but it would be painful, and an operation is always a step in the dark. Instead I regulate my intake of alcohol myself; it’s a tool I use on myself with my own hands. I know very well that it earns me a great deal of disapproval, but I go on drinking all the same, because these five or six glasses give me a sense of well-being and result in insults seeming to be acts of courtesy, in sorrows being transformed, if not into joys, at least into indifference. Being removed from reality, I see it with the changed perspective that forms the basis of irony. What could be better than being near one’s neighbor without recognizing anyone and living in a kind of unconscious intoxication? Fools say I’m ruining myself, but what I say is that the fools are those who cling to the useless and contemptible thing that is life. Even our editor, who has such a clear mind, sometimes makes me sit down in front of him, tries to counteract the bellicosity of those ferocious moustaches of his by the gentleness of his voice and advises me to give up drink. But it’s only when I’ve been drinking that I’m fit for work, flexible, docile. When I’ve been drinking he could order me to polish the floor and I’d do it.”

  A thin, pale lady, dressed completely in black, came in, looked round, and sat at a table.

  “De quoi écrire et un Grand Marnier,” she said.

  The waiter brought her writing materials and her drink.

  That’s Madame Ter-Gregorianz,” said Pietro Nocera, indicating the attractive new arrival. “She’s an Armenian, living at the Porte Maillot, and she’s famous for her white masses.”

  The lady wore a black tulle hat through which you could see the waves of her black hair; a black bird of paradise descended over one temple, caressed her neck and curved under her chin. Her face seemed to be framed in a soft, voluptuous upside-down question mark.

  When she had finished her letter she summoned a small page boy, who was all green and gold, glossy and shining and covered with braid, and handed it to him. The boy raised his right hand vertically with the palm outwards to his green, cylindrical unpeaked cap, which was kept in its crooked position by a black chinstrap. Then he went out on to the boulevard, dodging between the buses.

  Pietro Nocera went over to her, asked if he might introduce his friends, and invited her to join them at their table.

  She looked through the question mark and smiled. Her face was pale and her mouth thin and rectilinear as if it had been cut with a scalpel. When she smiled she lengthened it, stretching it half an inch on either side without curving it.

  The chief sub-editor had been to Armenia in the course of his career as a journalist, and this led to the immediate establishment of cordial relations. She reminded him of the customs of the country, the martyrdom of its people, the color of its mountains, the passionate nature of its women.

  And while the two revived memories Tito murmured to Pietro Nocera in Italian: “What marvelous oblong eyes.”

  “Try telling her that, and you’ll see that she’ll start working them immediately. She’s the woman I was telling you about yesterday. She’s the one with the magnificent ebony coffin in her room. It’s padded with feathers and upholstered with old damask.”

  “And is it true that . . .”

  “Ask her.”

  “Ask her straight out?”

  “Yes. She’s a woman who can be asked that question.”

  He turned to her and said: “Is it true, madame, that you have a black wooden coffin and —”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And that —” Tito went on.

  “And that I use it for making love in? Certainly I do. It’s comfortable and delightful. When I die they’ll shut me up in it for ever, and all the happiest memories of my life will be in it.”

  “Oh, if that’s the reason,” said Tito.

  “It’s not the only one,” the lady continued. “It also offers another advantage. When it’s over I’m left alone, all alone; it’s the man who has to go away. Afterwards I find the man disgusting. Forgive me for saying so, but afterwards men are always disgusting. Either they follow the satisfied male’s impulse and get up as quickly as they do from a dentist’s chair, or they stay close to me out of politeness or delicacy of feeling; and that revolts me, because there’s something in them that is no longer male. How shall I put it? Forgive me for saying so, but there’s something wet about them.”

  She turned to the chief sub-editor and resumed their interrupted conversation.

  “Who’s her present lover?” Tito asked.

  “A painter,” Nocera replied. “But a woman like that always has five or six replacements available.”

  Tito Arnaudi and Pietro Nocera were invited next evening to Madame Kalantan Ter-Gregorianz’s villa, shining white between the Étoile and the Porte Maillot, between the Champs Élysées and the Bois, in the fashionable area that is the aristocratic cocaine quarter. In the luxurious villas in which the various tout Paris gather (the political tout Paris, the fashionable tout Paris, the artistic tout Paris) meetings are regularly arranged to enjoy the ecstasy the drug produces. Young followers of the turf and devotees of dress rehearsals, fashionable young gentlemen who have barely reached the age of puberty and believe themselves obliged to have on their desk the latest poem launched on the book market and in their bed the latest female adolescent launched on a life of gallantry; young Parisians who have their pajamas designed by the artists of La Vie Parisienne and feed on preserved tropical birds mention, among the big and small subjects of conversation that pullulent autour de nos tasses de thé, as Sully Prudhomme used to say, the fashionable poisons of the moment, the wild exaltation they produce, the craze for ether and chloroform and the white Bolivian powder that produces hallucinations. And by common accord they decide to try it. Thus dens of cocaine addicts form overnight in ordinary households, and men and women invite one another to cocaine parties as they invite one another to lunch. In some families the contagion spreads from children of fifteen to grandpas of seventy, and addiction à deux, the addiction of man and wife, is frequent; if it did not produce impotence in the male and frigidity in the female, I believe that the newborn babies of such couples would need the white powder immediately, just as the children of morphine addicts have to be given an immediate injection of morphine. The alcoholic retains the ability to condemn his addiction and advise those not subject to it to avoid succumbing to the liquid poison. But the cocaine addict likes proselytizing; thus, instead of constituting a tangible warning, every victim of the drug acts as a source of infection.

  4

  Madame Kalantan
Ter-Gregorianz’s villa was completely white, as white as an ossuary and as round as an ancient Greek temple. At the side there was a small triangular evergreen garden that looked like a leaf attached to a bridal bouquet.

  The villa might have been the garçonnière of a fairy who has not yet made her appearance in current fairy stories, but ought unquestionably to do so: that is, the fairy Libertine.

  Tito Arnaudi and Pietro Nocera arrived there in the evening in an open taxicab. A ribbon-shaped cloud extended from the perfectly round moon, resembling an arm holding a lamp. Clusters of stars twinkled untidily here and there in the sky, looking like wind-scattered platinum filings.

  Between the pergola and the euonymus hedges rectangular shirt fronts framed by evening dress stood out in the darkness of the garden under the moon. The air was full of the fragrance of night, that always young and beautiful cocotte. The two men in evening dress got out of the taxi.

  The entrance hall was in Roman style. The walls were adorned with mythological frescoes against a bright red background, like those of Pompeii, which prudish and virginal English misses consider shocking. The temperature was that of a tepidarium.

  The two Italians handed over their top hats and, preceded by a flunkey wearing more braid than a Turkish admiral, advanced down a corridor that was semi-circular like those in a theater and were shown into a big room.

  This was the penguin room. There were big mirrors all round it, and on them were painted polar landscapes, vast expanses of snow, blocks of ice, and huge icebergs that acted as platforms for assemblies of penguins. And since only the lower part of the mirrors was painted, the higher, unpainted part provided an infinity of reflections of the landscapes facing them.

  The penguins looked like gentlemen in evening dress with their hands behind their back.

  A huge carpet covered with white, green and blue hieroglyphics covered the whole floor. Tiger skins and brocade cushions lay on semi-circular divans. There were no lamps and no windows, but a misty light from invisible colored lamps filtered through the light blue glass ceiling.

  “We were admiring the sorceress’s cave,” Tito said, going up to Kalantan, who came in holding out one hand to him and the other to his companion.

  “We’re the first. Are we too early?”

  “Not at all. Someone has to be first.”

  A fur as shaggy as a royal mantle acted as door curtain. No sooner had the flunkey dropped it than he had to raise it again to announce three names, preceded by three titles.

  Three gentlemen came in.

  One of them was tall, thin, clean-shaven and white-haired; his white sidechops gave him the austere appearance of a maître d’hôtel.

  Kalantan introduced him: “Professor Cassiopea, astronomer, in charge of the world’s most powerful telescope.”

  Bows. She then introduced the two Italians. “Dr Chiaro di Luna, Professor Où Fleurit l’Oranger, both journalists on a Paris newspaper.”

  More bows.

  Two other gentlemen had come in with the astronomer.

  “The painter Triple Sec.”

  He was young, blond, thin, and trebly dry. More bows.

  “Dr Pancreas, of the Faculty of Medicine.”

  Bows and handshakes.

  On a sign from the hostess the five gentlemen moved towards a divan; the two Italians were invited to precede the three Frenchmen.

  The divan was so soft and well sprung that once one had sat on it one’s knees were at the height of one’s shoulders. To avoid assuming ungraceful positions there was no alternative to either getting up again or lying flat.

  The flunkey announced more guests.

  A rich industrialist, an antique dealer with several deposed kings among his clientèle, a blonde of indefinable age between thirty and sixty, a cocotte of recent vintage, more men, more women.

  One of the latter announced that M. — was playing in a tragedy of Corneille’s that evening and would be arriving later.

  An old gentleman apologized for the absence of a colleague who had had to go to Marseilles to perform an operation. The painter realized at once what lay behind this excuse. The surgeon, who was the master of an important masonic lodge, was never free on Thursdays.

  More guests arrived, and there were more introductions and more bows; and no one showed surprise at seeing anyone else there.

  Four flunkeys brought in about a hundred multi-colored cushions and piled them round the ladies sitting on the divans. At one end of the big circular room a smaller circle formed: an assembly of men, women, cushions, pink female shoulders, women’s hair-dos, wisps of cigarette smoke; the overhead light tinted everything pink and blue, turning the shadows greenish and violet.

  A great correctness of attitude gave a certain nobility to the promiscuousness of cushions, the huddle of limbs, the close proximity of austere elderly men in tails and women in revealing dresses.

  Kalantan, the beautiful Armenian lady, was sheathed in darkness; her dark gray dress with greenish and bluish reflections clung to her form as if she were wearing tights; it was not trimmings or stitching that held the silk to the curves of her body. She was like a bronze nude or a basalt statue, but touching her would no doubt have revealed the adhesive softness of a vampire. There was not so much as a silk chemise between her dress and her skin; round her waist she had a green girdle, knotted in front, and the tassels at the two ends ended in two big emeralds. Her stockings were green, and so were her satin shoes and her fingernails.

  A kind of trapdoor opened, and a pale young man with a girlish face, carrying a violin in one hand and a bow in the other, emerged from below. The hostess signed to him, he disappeared again, and the trapdoor shut.

  Through the floor — and only then did its thinness become apparent — there rose the sound of soft, caressing music that seemed to come from great depths.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve seen you,” the painter Triple Sec said to the man beside him. “At the Grand Palais yesterday morning you said that a painting of mine was full of sublime falsities. The phrase struck me.”

  “Good gracious,” said the gentleman with the austere face of a maitre d’hôtel, “do you mean to say you were standing next to your picture?”

  “Of course he was,” said a woman with metallic blonde hair. The painter’s always near the picture just as the deceased’s close relatives are always near the hearse. If you want to say nasty things about a picture or someone who has just died, it’s better to keep your distance.”

  “And do you like the false in art?” the painter asked.

  The astronomer: Of course; only the false is beautiful. Crazy distortions, maddening contrasts, are the only means by which artists can produce any reaction in me. We’ve had enough of the truth, of life and realism. What I want of an artist is that he should be able to give me the illusion of walking city streets paved with stars with a pair of galoshes on my head, enabling me to splash about with my head in the puddles of the sky while rain and light come up to me from below. Instead of admiring flowers and plants, I want to see them buried, with their roots exposed to the winds; instead of effects I want to see causes, instead of consequences I want to see origins. I’m much more interested in the roots of daisies than in their corollas.

  Surgeon: For an astronomer like you that’s a bit much.

  Astronomer: Astronomers are nothing but poets manqués, because instead of studying qualities and their distortion they concentrate on the exact study of quantities, which is absurd.

  Kalantan, the beautiful Armenian lady: Nevertheless you’re held in high esteem . . .

  Astronomer: Yes, because we use huge telescopes, write numbers thirty digits long, calculate in sextillions and write unintelligible formulas. But what is the actual use of measuring the distance of the stars?

  Kalantan: If only you made mistakes in your measurements and forecasts. The infuriating thing about you is your accuracy.

  A gentleman with the face of a chronic cuckold came in. After the usual exchange of
courtesies, he sat on the floor and went to sleep with a cushion between his legs, just like an emigrant with his bundle.

  Kalantan: He always goes to sleep.

  Retired cocotte: Who is he?

  Kalantan: A big business man.

  Tito Arnaudi: But how does he manage to look after his business?

  Kalantan: He has a partner.

  Surgeon: How he must fleece him.

  Kalantan: No, the partner’s his wife’s lover, and she keeps an eye on the business and sees he doesn’t do any dirty work, at any rate so far as the business is concerned.

  This information raised a laugh, based partly on amusement and partly on malice.

  A flunkey brought in a big silver tray with about twenty champagne glasses full of fruit and offered one to each guest. Another flunkey offered each guest a small golden spoon.

  “Fruit salad,” Pietro Nocera explained to Tito Arnaudi, helping himself to a strawberry that sparkled with tiny crystals of ice and was soaked in champagne and ether.

  By now the smell of ether had spread through the room; the condensed vapor frosted the outside of the glasses.

  A third flunkey went round with a small cubical silver box, one side of which was perforated; from it he shook into each glass some white powder that dissolved in the liquid.

  The invisible violinist played laments as heart-rending as those of a troubadour imprisoned in a dungeon for some crime of love. The weak, tremulous light, the velvety carpets, the soft cushions, the circular walls, the men in black, the almost silent women gave an air of solemnity to the pagan ceremony; the men sat with legs crossed in the Turkish fashion, holding their glasses and sedately and impassively sipping the subtle, alcoholized mixture of sweet and pungent fruit.