Monsieur Venus (Decadence from Dedalus)

by Rachilde;Liz Heron

  7 Rene, a novel by Chateaubriand, published in 1802.

  8 Restif de la Bretonne (1734-1806). Prolific fictional chronicler of Paris low-life. His talent brought him considerable recognition, though he has been demonised for the salacious character of much of his writing.

  In the narrow passage to which the concierge had directed her, Mademoiselle de Venerande groped for a doorway.

  Here, on the seventh floor, there was no lighting at all, and, just as a sudden access of fear had come upon her in the depths of this none too respectable slum, she had remembered her cigarette case, which contained the means of some illumination. By the light of a match, she discerned the number 10 and could read this notice:

  Marie Silvert, florist and designer

  Then, since the key was in the lock, she entered. But, on the threshold, the smell of apples cooking caught in her throat and stopped her short. To her there was no more odious stench than that of apples; so it was with a shudder of disgust that she inspected the garret, her presence as yet undeclared.

  At a table where a lamp smoked, a man was seated with his back to the door, absorbed, it seemed, in very painstaking work.

  A garland of roses spiralled round his body and over his loose-hanging smock; fat satin roses, velvet-skinned and garnet-red, passing between his legs, running up to his shoulders and wound about his neck. On his right sat a spray of wallflowers, and a cluster of violets on his left.

  On a disordered pallet, in one corner of the room, were piled paper lilies.

  Broken-off flower stems and dirty plates, crowned by an empty litre bottle, lay strewn between two rickety, basketweave chairs. A small cracked stove with its pipe shooting up through the glass pane of a hinged skylight kept a single red eye asmoulder, beneath the apples that stood there.

  The man felt the cold that crept in through the open door; he raised the lampshade and turned.

  "Have I come to the wrong place, Monsieur?" the visitor enquired, taken aback. "I wish to see Marie Silvert."

  "This is indeed the place, Madame, and, for the present, I am Marie Silvert."

  Raoule could not but smile. Given in a deep male voice, this answer sounded somewhat ludicrous, and it was made no less so by the awkward posture of the boy with his hands full of roses.

  "You make flowers then? You fashion them as does a real florist?"

  "Of course, and so I must. My sister is sick; look, there in that bed, asleep ... Poor girl! Yes, very sick. A high fever that leaves her hands atremble. She cannot turn out work of any quality ... As for me, I can paint, but I said to myself that, working in her stead, I should earn my living better than by drawing animals or copying photographs. We are hardly deluged with orders," he added in conclusion, "but I make ends meet all the same."

  He craned his neck to see how the girl was sleeping. Beneath the lilies nothing stirred. To the young woman he offered a chair. Raoule gathered her sealskin coat more tightly around her and took a seat with great reluctance. She was no longer smiling.

  "Madame wishes ...?" asked the boy, dropping his garland to fasten his smock, which fell open wide at his chest.

  "Your sister's address was given to me." Raoule replied, "with a recommendation that she was a true artist. I really must arrange things with her regarding my toilette for a ball. Can you not wake her?"

  "For a ball? Oh, Madame, rest assured, there is no need to wake, her. I shall take care of it for you ... Let us see, what do you require? Clusters, rope-twists or single trims ...?"

  Her discomfort made the young woman want to leave. Idly, she lifted a rose and regarded its heart, where the boy-florist had set a crystal droplet for moisture.

  "You are talented, very talented," she repeated, plucking at the satin petals.

  The smell of browning apples was becoming unbearable.

  The artist moved to face his new client, pulling the lamp between them, at the edge of the table. Thus situated, they could survey one another from top to toe. Their eyes met. As if dazzled, Raoule blinked behind her hat-veil.

  Marie Silvert's brother had red hair, a dark red verging on tawny, and was straight-legged and slender-ankled, with a stocky frame on jutting hips.

  His hair hung from low on his brow, in neither waves nor curls, but thick and coarse, and to all appearances never yielding to the teeth of any comb. Under his dark, somewhat fine-drawn brows he had a strange gaze, albeit with a foolish expression.

  His look was like that of a beseeching dog in pain, with a slight wetness on the pupils of the eyes. Those animal tears so dreadful to behold. His mouth had that firm and healthy outline of lips as yet untouched by the manly, allembracing fragrance of tobacco smoke. His teeth would momentarily flash so white against two lips so damson-red that it was to be wondered why those drops of milk were not consumed between such fiery brands. His chin, dimpled, its flesh smooth as a babe's, was adorable. There was a little crease in his neck, the crease of a new-born growing plump. The somewhat broad hands, the sulky voice and the thickly bristling hair were the sole indications of his sex.

  Raoule forgot about her commission; a singular torpor took hold of her, benumbing her very words.

  Yet she was growing more at ease; the apples wafting their hot steam were no longer bothersome, and from the flowers scattered among the dirty plates there even seemed to emanate a kind of poetry.

  In a trembling voice, she went on:

  "It is like this, Monsieur. It is a costume ball, and the flowers I wear are always designed for me specially. I shall go as a water nymph, in one of Grevin's costume designs, a white cashmere tunic spangled with green and furled reeds. So what I require is a scattering of riverside flora: lotus and arrowhead, duckweed and waterlilies ... Do you think you might contrive to have this done within a week?"

  "I am certain, Madame, it will be a work of art!" the young man answered, a smile on his face now. Then, seizing a pencil, he dashed some sketches on a Bristol board.

  "That's it, that's it ..." said Raoule approvingly, as she watched. "Very subtle and delicate, don't you see? Leave out nothing of the detail ...! Oh! What will it cost me ...! The arrowheads with long arrowshaped pistils, and the lotuses really pink, with a russet-coloured down upon them."

  She had taken up the pencil to adjust certain outlines; when she leaned towards the lamp there flashed in a ray of light the diamond fastening her coat. Silvert saw it, and at once became respectful:

  "The work," he interjected, "will cost me 100 francs; I will give you the workmanship for fifty. I shall profit very little, you must allow Madame."

  Raoule took three banknotes from a wallet that bore a coat of arms.

  "There. I have complete faith in you," was her simple reply.

  So elated was he, that the youth made a sudden gesture causing his smock once more to fall open. In the hollow of his chest Raoule perceived the same tawny shadow that was etched on his lips, like strands of golden thread all tangled together.

  Madame de Venerande thought to herself that she would perhaps eat one of those apples without overmuch revulsion.

  "What is your age?" she quizzed, without taking her eyes off that transparent skin, a skin more satiny than any of the roses in the garland.

  "I am twenty-four, Madame," and, clumsily, he added, "and at your bidding."

  The young woman gave a movement of her head; her eyes were close-lidded, no longer venturing to look.

  "Ali! You have the looks of eighteen ... Strange, is it not, a man who makes flowers. You are in parlous accommodation, here in the attic, with a sister who is sick ... My goodness ...! so little light you must have from the skylight ... No! no! I want no money back from you ... 300 francs is little. By the way, write down my address. You are to deliver them yourself. I am relying on you, of course.

  Her voice cracked, her head felt very heavy.

  Without thinking, Silvert picked up a daisy stem, rolled it in his fingers, and without any effort, and very skilfully, as an expert woman might, he threaded it finely through the
weave of the stuff to make it appear as a blade of grass.

  "Next Tuesday, Madame, it is agreed, I shall be there, you can count on me. I promise you a masterpiece ... you are too generous!"

  Raoule rose, shaken by a nervous trembling that coursed through her whole body. Had she caught a fever from these wretches?

  The boy, however, stood quite still, open-mouthed, lost deep in his happiness, fingering the three scraps of blue, the 300 francs! It no longer entered his head to cover his chest, where the lamp lit up golden spangles.

  "I could have sent my dressmaker with my instructions," murmured Mademoiselle de Venerande, as if in answer to some inward reproach and by way of self-justification. "But, once I had seen your samples, I preferred to come ... By the bye; did you not tell me you were a painter? Is that your work?"

  She nodded in the direction of a panel on the wall, hanging between a grey rag and a felt hat.

  "Yes madame," said the artist, raising the lamp.

  At a glance, Raoule took in a nondescript landscape, where five or six arthritic sheep ill-temperedly grazed on a soft pasture, with such respect for the laws of perspective that two of them seemed to have acquired five legs.

  Naively, Silvert waited for a compliment, a word of encouragement.

  "An odd occupation," Mademoiselle de Venerande went on, taking no further notice of the canvas, "when all is said and done it would be more normal for you to break up stones."

  He began to laugh idiotically, somewhat discomfitted to hear this stranger disparage him for making use of the means that he had for earning his living. Then, for the sake of an answer:

  "Huh!" he said, "I am no less a man for it!"

  And under his smock, open still, there could be seen the golden floss of curls on his chest.

  Mademoiselle de Venerande felt a dull ache across the back of her neck. In the malodorous atmosphere of the garret her nerves were reaching fever pitch. She was vertiginously drawn to this half-clad youth. She wanted to take a step back, tear herself away from what obsessed her, flee

  a wild sensuality clasped at her wrist ... her arm reached out, she stroked the workman's chest, as she might have stroked a blond head, he a monster of whose flesh and blood reality she was still uncertain.

  "So I can see!" she said, with ironic impudence.

  Jacques gave a start, in confusion. What he had first believed to be a caress he now perceived as a mocking touch.

  This great lady's glove brought him back to his wretchedness.

  He bit his lip, and, contriving as best he could an air of malevolence, he retorted:

  "Indeed! I have them all over you know!"

  At this affront, Raoule de Venerande felt mortal shame. She turned round; then, in the midst of the lilies, there appeared to her a ghastly face from which there gleamed two baleful, glaucous points of light. It was the sister, Marie Silvert.

  For a moment, unflinchingly, Raoule held her eyes upon those of the woman; then, imperious, taking her leave with a barely perceptible nod, she lowered her veil and left unhurriedly, before Jacques, standing there with his lamp in his hand, could think to see her out.

  "What do you say to that?" he said, rousing himself, as Raoule's carriage was already reaching the boulevard and driving on towards the Champs-Elysees.

  "I say," answered Marie, laughing derisively as she sank once more onto the couch, whose dirtiness stood out against the brightness of the lilies, "I say you are no fool, we are in luck. She is hooked, my pretty!"

  It was very cold. Raoule had lowered the blinds and sat huddled in the corner of her Brougham, with her muff pressed hard against her mouth.

  In truth, for all her agitation this was not the first time she had set eyes on a well-formed youth, but the memory of his maleness fresh and pink like that of a girl cruelly haunted her. For Raoule de Venerande, mental activity nearly always took preeminence over actual situations; when she could not live a moment of passion, she imagined it, the result being the same. Now oblivious to the murky staircase in the rue de la Lune, the sick and dirty womanflorist, and the attic with its all-pervading stench of apples, she began to picture Jacques Silvert.

  Scarcely perturbed by the coarseness in the workman's extravagantly assumed vulgarity, Raoule dreamt of a fingertip touch on his flesh, and the hooded eyes of this descendant of the Venerandes drowned in a delicious languor. No longer did her memory supply the means to awaken conscience. The shame she had felt before the male whom her boldness had rendered boorish gave place to a wild admiration for the handsome instrument of pleasure that she desired. This man was already her fleshly delight, already her prey, already maybe plucked by her from his wretched dwelling-place to be idealised in the spasms of total possession. And Raoule, swaying to the rapid trotting motions of her equipage, sat with her head flung back, her arms taut, her breast a-swell as her mouth bit into her furs and now and then released a sigh of lassitude.

  She had neither beauty nor prettiness as convention understood them, but Raoule was tall, well-formed, supple-necked. She had the delicate proportions of the true thoroughbred, the loose-limbed refinement, the somewhat haughty step, undulating movements which, under womanly guise, reveal the svelteness of a cat. At first sight the harsh set of her features lacked charm. Her eyebrows were wonderfully drawn but had a marked inclination to meet in the imperious fold of an unaltering will. The pure line of her mouth was vitiated by the thinness of the lips and their lack of definition at the corners. Her hair was brown, twisted back on the nape and setting off the perfect oval of a face whose complexion was that Italian swarthy hue that pales in the light. Her eyes were very black, their reflection metallic under long curved lashes, and, when passion inflamed them, they became two glowing embers.

  With a jolt, Raoule was abruptly wrenched from the lubricity of her smouldering thoughts; the carriage had just come to a halt in the courtyard of the Venerande mansion.

  "You are late, my child!" It was an old woman who spoke. She was dressed from head to toe in black, and came down the steps to meet her.

  "You think so, Aunt? What is the hour then?"

  "It is nearly eight. You are not dressed, you cannot have dined, yet Monsieur de Raittolbe is coming to take you to the opera this evening."

  "I will not go, I have changed my mind."

  "Are you ill?"

  "Good heavens, no. Merely upset. I saw a child fall under an omnibus in rue de Rivoli. I assure you I could not dine ... can there be no end to these omnibus accidents in the street!"

  Madame Elisabeth made the sign of the cross.

  "Ah! I was forgetting ... Aunt. Come with me. See to it that no one disturbs us, I must speak to you on a subject that will please you besides: a good work. I have chanced upon a good work."

  The two of them traversed the vast apartments of the mansion.

  There were salons of such a sombre aspect that one could not but enter them with some slight trepidation. The old building had two wings, flanked by curved staircases like those at the chateau in Versailles. All the narrowtransomed windows fell the length of the floor, revealing, behind the flimsiness of muslin and point-laced drapes, great wrought iron balconies ornamented with extravagant arabesques. In front of these balconies there was laid out, as far as the iron gate, a mosaic of quintessentially Parisian plants, those soft green winter-hardy plants which shape borders so precise that the sharpest eye could not detect the trespass of a single blade of grass. The grey walls seemed each to feel the tedium of the others, and yet, an enchanter, bent on vexing saintliness, were he to open up these blazoned exteriors, would have occasioned more than one surprise to the common folk who had stumbled on this noble avenue. Thus in the right wing, the niece's bed chamber, and in the left one that of the aunt, once laid open to the skies, would have been a rapturous boon to the lover of pictorial contrasts.

  Raoule's chamber was upholstered in red damask and had all around a wainscot of wood of the Indies inlaid with mouldings of silk. A panoply of arms of every kind and every
land, occupied the central panel, their exquisite dimensions adapting them to ease of feminine grasp. The ceiling had buckled cornices and old rococo motifs painted on an azure green background.

  From its centre hung a Karlsruhe crystal chandelier, a girandole of bindweed blooms, their spear-shaped leaves iridescent with natural colours. A soft couch was set across the broad vison carpet which stretched out beneath the chandelier, and on the sculpted ebony nest of this bed were laid two cushions whose feathery interior had been impregnated with an oriental perfume that scented the whole room.

  Some glass-framed paintings of unbridled aspect were appended to the quilting of the walls. Opposite the work table piled with papers and open letters stood a male nude study with no trace of shadow all along its flank. An easel in one corner and a piano near the table completed these profane appointments.

  The chamber of Madame Elisabeth, a canoness in diverse orders, was entirely of a steely grey that was bleak to look upon.

  Uncarpeted, the well-waxed floor turned your heels to ice, and the emaciated Christ hanging next to a pillowless bed-head gazed upon a ceiling tinted with the fogs of a northern sky.

  Madame Elisabeth had lived for twenty years in the Venerande mansion, together with her niece, who had been orphaned at the age of five. On leaving this world, Jean de Venerande, the last scion of his line, had expressed the wish that the child, born of death, whom he was leaving behind him, should be brought up by his sister, whose qualities had ever inspired in him a profound esteem. Elisabeth was then a virgin of forty summers, full of virtues, steeped in piety, moving through life as though beneath the arches of a cloister, lost in perpetual meditation and wearing down her index fingertips in repeated signs of the cross whereby she could draw deeply on the treasurehouse of plenary indulgences, and little troubling herself over the welfare of her neighbours, a quality rare in a pious woman. Hers was a simple story. She would tell it on solemn days, in that unctuous style which inveterate mysticism bestows on passive natures. She had had a chaste passion, a godly passion; she had loved in all innocence a poor consumptive, the Count de Moras, a man at death's door every morning. She had perhaps envisaged nuptual felicities and maternal joys, but at the last moment all had been shattered by a calamity never to be forgotten: fortified by the sacraments of the Church, the Count de Moras had gone to join his ancestors. In the desperation of her sorrow the fiancee neither tore the petals of her wedding roses nor rent her white veil; at the foot of the redeeming cross she went in search of an immortal spouse. Her sweet religiosity asked nothing more ...! The convent gates were about to open for her when the death of jean de Venerande took place. Madame Elisabeth bid her heart be silent and from then on gave herself up to the tutelage of Raoule.