“Perhaps it’s a miracle,” said someone. “There’s a saint at La Mothe who has been preserved, shrunken, under a glass bell-jar, who also exhaled a sweet odor when she died. But that was in the time of legends, and she was a saint when she was alive.”
I was only informed later, and the placement in the bier had just taken place. All of that is truly exceptional and very difficult to ascertain.
The members of one group, by the door, were wondering whether the wicked man really had been wicked. But there was a great deal of evidence. His wife, while she was alive, had been a punch-bag. He had thrown stones at children. He killed cats and rabbits, and always did so slowly. If anyone reproached him he said: “I’m a scientist, I study pain scientifically.” And then, there was the dorsal spine of the dwarf, which his brother had removed. A wicked man, no doubt about it! It was necessary that the world was upside-down for there to be that delightful perfume of roses.
“There has been a miracle! A great miracle!” said someone near me, two or three times, who was exclaiming in a low voice and did not seem to be entirely serious.
The dead man’s brother, frowning, watched the gestures of the visitors, doubtless fearing that someone might take the book, even though he had hidden it somewhere.
“I’ve come from Auvergne for the burial,” he said.
In a corner, no one knew why, a young boy was holding his nose ostentatiously.
I breathed in with all my strength and I sensed the perfume immediately.
“It’s extraordinary,” said Mathieu Lapeyre, beside me. And he added: “Isn’t it?”
And I saw that the extraordinary character of the thing was partly dependent on my judgment.
I breathed in again, and no longer sensed the odor of roses.
“Someone’s just opened a window,” said a short man, as if he were apologizing for the insufficiency of the miracle. “If only you’d come a little sooner.”
Outside, I heard people exclaiming. Nothing is any longer as it was before. The fault is in all those modern machines. A wicked man dies like a saint. One is even deceived by God.
THE DISAPPEARANCE
OF BROTHER ALPHONSE
“I’ll take you to visit the Camaldolese monastery,” Roseline said to me, “And I’ll say a prayer to Our Lady of Pity, for the realization of my mission and yours.”
In the harsh, arid mountains that overlook the village of Roquebrune-sur-Argens there is a Camaldolese monastery: not a great monastery like an ant-hill of cells and meditations, but a monastery only grouping a few white monks together around the ancient chapel of Our Lady of Pity.
An automobile carried us along the road to Roquebrune.
“The superior is a joyful man,” Roseline told me. “He likes flowers and birds and is able to talk to them. Between us, I think”—Roseline lowered her voice, perhaps in order not to be overheard by the driver—“that he’s received certain instructions from Saint Francis.”
“Saint Francis?”
“The Saint Francis who lived in Assisi, to whom the angels talked,” said Roseline, with a smile full of softness that gave her, for a second, a certain resemblance to one of those angels. “But it’s necessary that I warn you. When we climb the mountain to get to the monastery, be careful to walk exactly in the middle of the path. No road goes to the monastery and it’s a quarter of an hour’s walk on foot. Now, many of the trees one goes past are former humans—irritated humans, perhaps humans who are being punished. I don’t know why so many former humans, with their sorrow and their sins, find themselves on the slope of that mountain, but if you pass too close to them they try to seize you with their branches.”
When we began to walk under the trees, Roseline repeated those recommendations regarding the former humans.
“I believe they’re hardened souls,” she said.
And I saw her walk with great prudence, taking care that her dress did not brush the tree-trunks. For my part, I could not distinguish the slightest abnormal movement of the branches.
Roseline uttered a sigh of relief when the path went through an unwooded area.
“I say prayers for them,” she said, raising her voice, “but they can’t know that. They can’t hear under their bark. Oh, what a separation there is between the worlds!”
Suddenly, she stopped.
“Perhaps you don’t know the story of Brother Alphonse? It wasn’t very long ago. It happened right here. Almost every evening, shortly after sunset, when the monks had had their meal, Brother Alphonse limped down through the pines where we are to the village. He went to collect the scraps that a pious butcher’s wife set aside for the convent. That wasn’t for the monks, of course, but it’s necessary to feed the animals.
“Brother Alphonse was rather old, short, and like a romantic king’s jester. Outside of any monastic rule, he wore a beard like a necklace, in the fashion of certain mariners. Why had he adopted that form of beard? For it’s necessary to get to the bottom of things. Perhaps because of the inclination and force of the hairs on his chin. Perhaps in order to conform to a certain ideal of beauty that is only realized in the form of beards. At any rate, that is the way it was.
“One evening, because of the density of the shadows and certain animals that are hidden and come out at nightfall, he took a lantern for the return journey and held it up in front of him. From Roquebrune it was easy to follow that light, which veered slightly to the right and the left because he had a limp.
“That evening, the butcher’s wife, who was sad and was gazing into the distance for that reason, and other people who were joyful, and doing the same thing because of their joy, could all see Brother Alphonse’s lantern distinctly as he went through the tall pines. He was also visible from the convent. One monk, a great lover of dogs, who was waiting for the scraps in order to share them out, saw the glow approaching.
“When all of them were interrogated, it was that lantern-glow they talked about; but the monk named Alphonse, the old man hardened to labor, with his necklace beard, his slightly twisted knees and his short arm lifting the lantern, was never seen again, not the following day, or ever, in the sequence of infinite time. He had gone no one knows where, with his bag of scraps.
“In vain, the men of the village, the gendarmes of the commune and the monks of the monastery retraced the route a hundred times. They searched the area, in vain. A monk who resembles a romantic jester does not pass unnoticed. It was the wearing of that beard that made evil tongues and the pagans of the Mairie say that Brother Alphonse was weary of doing nothing but running errands in a convent of monks and that he wanted to drink to life.
“Absolutely nothing was discovered. There was no sandal-print, no revelatory beard-hair hanging like a thread of an old cobweb on some branch of wild laburnum. Absolutely nothing. Evidently, people claimed—there are always evil tongues—that a limping man resembling Brother Alphonse had been seen in Marseille. But we’ve arrived at the tree. Look carefully to your left. There, the path seems to bend and, instead of pines, there’s a row of old willows. I’d swear that at one time, the one that is closest to us didn’t have the same form. All those old willows resemble one another. It’s necessary to remember that, in the language of trees, the willow signifies punishment. And doesn’t that one give the impression of a thickset monk, slightly inclined to one side, with a sort of necklace of bark, whose legs have lost their separation? It’s wiser to go past quickly. Assuredly, the heavens and the earth aren’t regulated with the simplicity one might think.”
YOU DON’T LOOK YOUR AGE
How did that conversation about ages come about? I can’t remember the point of departure. I only remember that I had a desire to deflect it, that I had the sentiment that it was dangerous for me. Why dangerous? Had I anything to hide on the question of my age? Had I not renounced? Has someone who has renounced the concern of having, or having had, or appearing to have any particular age? Ought not someone who has renounced be glad to be at last a hundred years old?
/> A centenarian, if he has not attained wisdom after having pursued it, at least has the appearance of it, and that is already a great deal.
I believe that we began by talking about the age of plants. I said that one can recognize the age of trees by the fine circular lines that are inside the wood, and Roseline stated to laugh, and said that she had learned that at the age of four.
Slightly vexed, I declared that I had only made that affirmation in order to talk about certain very old large trees in California. When they were examined it was still believed that the age of the earth did not surpass six thousand years, but one of them gave evidence of a past of eight thousand years. Did Roseline know that?
She did not know that—fortunately, for I had invented that tree eight thousand years old, so much did I desire to shine, to appear erudite. And I thought I had surpassed such paltriness!
I have retained a remorse or that, but it was much less painful than what was to follow.
Roseline told me that her father knew the ages of all species of creatures. First of all, the age of butterflies. They had lives of great brevity. That was easily understandable. There must be an exception for the old sad king that she had set free. Oh, she would like to find him again! But had he recovered from his wound?
She had often heard her father express astonishment at certain strange longevities, like that of the crocodile. After studies of that animal, her father had come to believe that crocodiles were only victims of their own ferocity. They ate one another. But he was convinced that certain animals of that species, having attained a superior degree of strength, and having nothing more to fear from their fellows, could not die of old age. There must be crocodiles as old as the earth itself.
“What experience they must have,” I said, in a bantering tone.
“Age doesn’t give experience—on the contrary. Haven’t you noticed that age gives old men, even intelligent ones, a puerility greater than that of children.”
And it was thus that the conversation was orientated toward the ages of people we knew: the age of her father; the age of Madame Tournadieu.
“One is as old as one appears,” said Roseline, with a bright smile. “For example, you don’t look your age.”
That was equivalent to asking me what it was, and I told her without any hesitation. But what was the obscure force that impelled me to lie, and rejuvenate myself by five years?4
I perceived a hint of surprise on Roseline’s part. And at the same moment, I registered the accuracy of the expression “to look half-fig and half-grape.” I had never understood that assimilation of a facial expression to two different fruits, but I suddenly understood it. Roseline had an expression half-fig and half-grape on learning my age, an age that wasn’t true! She thought that I was older than she had believed. I had lacked audacity. I ought to have rejuvenated myself by ten years.
But why? What did the impression that she might have of my age matter? Was it not perfectly indifferent to me? While I said something or other about ages, an interior conscience reproached me on the subject of lying, not because it is necessary not to lie, but because of the hidden state of the soul that it reveals. What about the resolutions made? What about the absurd past of which I had so gloriously proclaimed the conclusion? Was that self-esteem of lost youth only an obscure reflex or the sign of a vivacious force that as only dormant?
Nothing is more bitter than discontent with oneself, the surprise that one has in catching oneself red-handed in mediocrity. I nearly said to Roseline that I had only wanted to see what she thought, and gave her my true age, but aging myself by ten years.
I was about to do that. But like a drifting boat, the conversation, of which I was not holding the tiller, suddenly took another direction. It seemed to fly off toward subjects a thousand leagues away. It was too late. Roseline looked at me from time to time covertly, perhaps seeking in my intonations or my gestures the manifestations of a fugitive youth.
THE TURTLE
It was in the evening of the day of the conversation about ages that I found a turtle in my garden.
Along the sandy Argens, where paludal rushes grow, numerous secret turtles live, which remain invisible. They are marine in origin and there is no way of knowing why that tribe selected that sand and water one day in order to seek a dwelling there.
But who knows the secret of animal migrations? Where to the locusts go, overwhelmed by the weight of their numbers? Where do the wise birds go that traverse the air on a day fixed by the September moon? What fixes that day? What guides those collective voyages? Which perspicacious bird, which erudite turtle, which studies the moon and the sea, measures the fatigue and hope and gives the signal to its people? No one knows. But the turtles had come to the shore of the Argents, into the midst of the paludal rushes.
Now, along that river, which pours its water into the sea near the city of Fréjus, there was in that fecund spring, without anyone knowing the cause, an abnormal multiplication of that tribe of turtles. Whence came that greater force of the generative faculty? Those turtles reproduce in accordance with a certain rhythm, and suddenly that rhythm was broken. Did that spring transport in its breezes, in its rain or in its sunlight, a particular quality acting on the sexual potency of those little carapace-bearing animals, and on them alone? For nothing abnormal was observed in the birth of dogs or that of crickets, and horses reproduced in a regular proportion—at least, no remark was made by the owners of stud farms.
Or is it necessary to suppose some oral order given by the mysterious leader that directs migrations, a leader with a more beautiful carapace, a longer beak or a keener eye? Or did the order come from higher up, from the power that regulates species, counts individuals, and has a prodigious great book in the form of a world map from which depart, in accordance with the country, the different sorts of creatures, distributed in proportion to terrestrial production, in order that there should be a harmony between grass and sheep, flowers and bees, zebras and lions?
That, one cannot know, but the turtles in the vicinity of the Argens became, that year, more concupiscent, more procreative of new turtles, more productive of minuscule eggs. And there were so many births, so many little turtles avid for nourishment, that the banks of the Argens could not nourish them, and they spread out through the neighboring terrains. They were seen on the beach at Saint-Aygulf, they passed under the Roman aqueducts of Fréjus, they traveled beneath the white laurels of the Valescure and through the shady hollows of the Armitelle.
And it was thus that one of them came into my garden: the turtle that was there under a branch of rosemary.
It stretched out its neck and scrutinized the profundities of the sky. And suddenly, I established a relationship between it and me. Perhaps it had knowledge of divine things and a despair of not being able to attain them sufficiently was manifest in that elongation of the neck.
Was it not folly to attribute human motives to it? But perhaps it had them, in an animal proportion, quite obscure and quite unconscious.
It was possible that it only aspired to deposit that heavy carapace on the ground and to be a vagabond, light and dancing. But through the ages, its desire for protection, and its terror of the monsters that might devour it, had materialized on its back a house that was simultaneously a fortress. That was how we resembled one another. My appetite for pleasure had ended up producing, at length, a carapace of desires by which I was covered. I would dearly have liked to get rid of it; but one is bound to the past that one has created.
When would the turtle be able to dance without a carapace? When would I have set down the heavy burden of desire?
THE MYSTERY OF SATURDAY
Behind the little fence that encloses my garden, I perceived Roseline, who was making signs to me. She was even waving an umbrella. She evidently had something to say to me. She did not wait until I had opened the gate and shouted to me, joyfully:
“I forgot to tell you that my ancestor Henri was fat. No portrait of him has been conserved, any
more than for Melusine, with the consequence that no one knows the proportion of that obesity, but he was fat, since he is mentioned in the genealogies as Henri I, nicknamed the Fat.
Possessed by an idea, Roseline neglected the formality of salutations. With a gesture, she invited me to accompany her on the road, and she continued:
“He was fat, which explains everything. Could a woman like Melusine love a fat man? And note that he had been a prisoner of the Saracens, which had not made him thin. He therefore had a natural paunch, which did not lend itself to attenuation. When one sees engravings or paintings depicting ancient times, one never finds fat men therein. Why? There were some, however. In order to have been dubbed the Fat, my ancestor Henri might perhaps have had an obesity that went as far as deformity. Did Melusine love him? It’s a problem of knowing whether one can love a very fat man.”
Roseline stopped then, she moved her head up and down, and, looking at me out of the corner of her eye, she murmured, as if it were an observation to herself: “In sum, you have the good fortune to be slim.”
Why did that remark fill me with disturbance? Roseline considered it a possibility, then, that I might still inspire amour? I felt an internal wave of satisfaction. And immediately, I said to myself: What importance has that? It’s a general reflection that signifies nothing. But the tone in which she said it! And why attach that tone to me?
Meanwhile, Roseline continued:
“A woman who changes into a snake once a week has a particular mentality, and ideas of her own about thinness and fatness. I wonder first of all why she consented to come to Poitou. To be Queen of Cyprus is already an enviable status. Henri I, nicknamed the Fat, who came to marry her, had emerged from the hands of the Saracens after having paid a ransom, and must have been very glad to find himself back in his fortified town in his comfortable palace. My father, who has studied these ancient questions, assures me that luxury was then highly developed, and that people in Cyprus enjoyed all the improved means that had been in usage in the Roman Empire. The central heating, for example, was better than ours, for there was a system of hot water pipes passing under the floors; the bathrooms were extraordinary, with a steam bath and mosaics, which was very important for Melusine on Saturday. It was in the bathroom that she locked herself, and on the day of her marriage it had been expressly agreed that her husband would never make any attempt to know what she was doing in there. The misfortune of those who love too much, most of the time, comes from the fact that one of the two does not keep their word.”
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