French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics)

by Unknown

  This time he passes so close to her, still smiling, that she could almost have touched him.

  Perseus rides side-saddle, his feet crossed coquettishly in their yellow linen sandals; from the pommel of his saddle hangs a mirror; he is beardless, and his pink and smiling mouth might be described as an open pomegranate, the hollow of his chest is lacquered with a rose and his arms are tattooed with a heart pierced by an arrow; a lily adorns the swell of his calves and he sports an emerald monocle and several rings and bracelets; from his gilded cross-belt hangs a little sword with a mother-of-pearl dagger.

  Perseus wears Pluto’s helm, that makes him invisible, he has the wings and ankle-wings of Mercury, the divine shield of Minerva, and from his belt hangs the head of the Gorgon Medusa, who petrified the giant Atlas into a mountain with a single look, as everyone knows, and his griffin is Pegasus, the same Bellerophon rode when he killed the Chimaera.* The young hero is beautifully equipped for the job.

  The young hero halts his griffin in front of Andromeda and, smiling all the while with his pomegranate mouth, he starts fencing movements with his adamantine sword.

  Andromeda doesn’t move, almost crying with uncertainty, and seems only to wait for the sound of this person’s voice to abandon herself to fate.

  The Monster stays coyly at a distance.

  In one graceful movement Perseus turns his mount, and without disturbing the water-mirror, it kneels before Andromeda and presents its flank; the youthful cavalier joins his hands to make a stirrup and, bowing towards the young captive, says with an inveterately affected lisp:

  ‘Let’th be going! Off to Cythera!…’

  Ah well, there’s nothing for it; Andromeda places her rough foot in the delicate stirrup and turns round to wave farewell to the Monster.

  Ah, but the Monster has plunged between them, underneath the hippogriff, and emerges all reared up, with his front paws braced before him and his purplish furnace of a mouth issuing a rapier of flame! The griffin recoils in terror and Perseus withdraws to give himself room, and lets fly a stream of braggadocio. The Monster hears him, Perseus rushes in, and then stops short:

  ‘I shan’t give you the pleasure of killing you in front of her,’ he yells; ‘fortunately the just gods have equipped me with more than one string to my bow. I’m going to… petrify you!’

  The gods’ little darling unbuckles the Gorgon’s head from his belt.

  Severed at the neck, the famous head is still alive, but poisonously and stagnantly so, blackened with apoplexy, the white and bloodshot eyes staring fixedly, the mouth stuck in the rictus of decapitation, nothing moving except the hair of snakes.

  Perseus seizes the head by that mass of snakes, whose writhing gold-studded black bodies are bracelets to his wrist, and shows it to the Dragon, yelling at Andromeda:

  ‘Close your eyes, you!’

  But wonder of wonders, the magic doesn’t work!

  The trick has failed!

  What has happened is that, by some incredible effort, the Gorgon has closed her petrifying eyes.

  The good Gorgon recognized our Monster. She recalled those rich and breezy days when she, with her two sisters, lived hard by the Dragon, who at that time kept watch over the Garden of the Hesperides,* the wonderful Garden situated somewhere near the Pillars of Hercules.* No, no, a thousand times no—she will not petrify her old friend!

  Perseus waits meanwhile, with his arm stuck out, having noticed nothing. Between the masterful bravura of his gesture and its totally ineffectual outcome the contrast is a little too grotesque, so much so that wild little Andromeda cannot suppress a smile—which Perseus notices. Our hero is dumbfounded—what’s wrong with his Medusa’s head? And even though in principle his helmet makes him invisible, he is still a little fearful when he hazards a glance at the Gorgon’s face, to see for himself what’s going on. It’s all too simple: the petrifying power has failed because the Gorgon has closed her eyes.

  Perseus, enraged now, replaces the head and brandishes his sword with a victorious snicker. Clasping the divine shield of Minerva close against his heart, he spurs on his griffin (at the exact moment the moon rises over the Atlantic Mirror!) and charges straight at the Dragon, now a poor wingless huddle. With a vertiginously rapid snicker-snack of sword, he cuts him to the left, he cuts him to the right, and forcing him back against a rock, he plants his sword so wonderfully, square in the Dragon’s forehead, that the poor creature collapses and expires, with this final croak:

  ‘Farewell, noble Andromeda; I loved you, and lastingly, had you wanted me; adieu, you will think of that often.’

  The Monster is dead. But Perseus is overexcited, despite the comprehensive nature of his victory, for it seems he must butcher the corpse! Till it is striped with gashes, and its eyes pierced through! He massacres it until Andromeda stops him.

  ‘That’s enough, now: you can see that he’s dead.’

  Perseus replaces his sword in his belt, rearranges his blond curls, swallows a pastille, and, dismounting from the griffin as he strokes its neck:

  ‘And now, my little lovely!’ says he in a syrupy voice.

  Andromeda, standing there irreproachably and inflexibly naked, with her black gull’s eyes, asks:

  ‘So you love me, you really love me?’

  ‘Do I love you? But I adore you! Life without you would be unbearable and full of darkness! Of course I love you! Just look at yourself!’

  He offers her his mirror, but Andromeda, looking perfectly amazed, gently refuses it. He pays no attention, adding rapidly:

  ‘We must make sure we look our best!’

  He removes one of his necklaces, made up of gold coins (a memento from his mother’s wedding), and tries to place it around her neck. This too she refuses gently, but he takes advantage of this to take her waist in both hands. The wounded little animal wakes up! Andromeda lets out a cry, the cry of a gull on the worst days, that rings round the darkened island:

  ‘Do not touch me!…—Oh, forgive me, but it’s all a bit sudden! I beg you, let me alone a bit to wander and say a final goodbye…’

  She turns round, and with a sweeping gesture that embraces the island and her favourite cliff, on which night is falling, the serious night, serious for a lifetime! So serious, indeed, that she turns back straightaway towards he who is about to snatch her from the past and towards her future. And she surprises him! He was giving a little yawn! An elegant little yawn, that he tried to transform into that pomegranate smile.

  O night on the island of the past! Monster bestially slaughtered, unsepulchred Monster! O landscapes too refined of the future… Andromeda lets it all out in a single cry:

  ‘Begone! Begone! You are horrible to me! I’d rather die alone! Begone from here, you’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘Well that’s gratitude for you! Listen my little lambkin, no one from where I’m from talks to me like that! You’re not that smoothskinned, you know.’

  With a twirl of his adamantine sword, he remounts and vanishes into the enchantment of the rising moon, without a backward look; with a yodel, he zooms off like a meteor, towards the elegant and easy lands…

  O night on the poor banal island!… What a dream!…

  Andromeda remains, head bowed, bewildered now in front of the horizon, the magic horizon she has just turned down, which she could not but turn down, O gods, having a heart as big as hers.

  She goes to see the Monster, still lying in his corner, violet and limp and wrinkled, and miserable so miserable! It would have been worth it after all, it’s true!…

  As always she goes and curls up under his chin, though now it is a dead weight that she must lift, and she puts her little arms around his neck. He is still warm. Curious, she lifts one of his eyelids with her index finger, to reveal the pierced eyeball, before the lid falls back. She parts the strands of his mane and counts the bleeding gashes made by that wicked diamond sword. And tears for the past and for the future, silent tears, start streaming down. How beautiful life had been with h
im on the island! And as she wiped her eyes with automatic hand, she remembered. She remembered the good friend he had been, the accomplished gentleman, the busy sage, the fluent poet. And she is shaken by heartfelt sobs under the slack chin of the Monster she never appreciated, and hugging him round the neck, she implores him, but too late.

  ‘Oh my poor, poor Monster! Why didn’t you say anything earlier? And then you wouldn’t have been slain by that vile hero out of comic opera. And now I’m all alone in the dark! We had beautiful days ahead of us. You should have seen that for me it was no more than a passing crisis, a case of idle curiosity. O triply damnable curiosity! I’ve killed my friend, my only friend! My nursing father, my mentor! With what lamentations can I now move these insensible shores? Noble monster, his dying words were for me: “—Farewell, Andromeda; I loved you, and lastingly, had you wanted me!” Now how I recognize the sincerity of your great soul! And your long silences, and your afternoons, and everything! But too late, too late! O gods of justice, take one half of my life and restore him to me, so that I might love him and serve him from now on with loyalty and tenderness. O ye gods, do that for me, ye that read in my heart and know how much I loved him, even when blinded by capricious adolescent cravings, I’ve never loved anyone but him, and I’ll love him always!’

  And noble Andromeda moves her adorable mouth gently over the Dragon’s closed eyelids. And suddenly recoils!

  ‘I thank you, noble Andromeda. The time of trial is over. I shall be reborn, and reborn in a form more appropriate for our love. And nothing will be able to describe your happiness. But learn first who I am, and what my destiny. I was born of the cursed race of Cadmus,* condemned to the Furies! I preached the pettiness of being and the grandeur of nothingness in the groves of Arcady. To punish me, the gods of life condemned me to watch over, in my present form, the treasures of the Earth, until a virgin would come to love me, in my monstrous form, for my own sake. As a three-headed dragon, for many years I guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides; Hercules came and cut my throat. To Colchis then I came, where the Golden Fleece was destined to be. Riding on the ram with the golden fleece came Theban Phrixus and his sister Helle.* An oracle had prophesied to me that Helle would be the promised virgin. But she drowned on the way, and gave her name instead to the Hellespont. (I have learned since that she wasn’t very pretty.) And then came those strange Argonauts, whose like we shall see no more!… Heroic times! Jason was their leader, Hercules came after, and his friend Theseus, and Orpheus, who tried so hard to charm me with his lyre (and who was to come to such a sorry end!), and then the two Twins: Castor, breaker of horses, and Pollux the gifted boxer. Such times of yore!… With their tents, and their nightly campfires!—Finally I had my throat cut in front of the Golden Fleece of the Holy Grail, tricked by the potions of Medea, who burned with immodest passion for the sumptuous Jason. And the cycles started over, I knew Eteocles and Polynices, and pious Antigone;* and how improvements in weaponry put an end to the age of the Heroes. And finally there was the strange and fearful Ethiopian, and your father and you, Andromeda, noble Andromeda, beautiful above all others, whom it is my duty to make happier than any word can say.’

  Having uttered these dazzling words, the Dragon, without warning, turned into a highly polished young man. Leaning against the entrance to the cave, the moonlight playing over his human skin, he speaks of the future.

  Andromeda dares not recognize him and, half-turning away, smiles into the void, with one of those stabs of sadness that presages with her those inexplicable follies (her soul being so rapidly overwhelmed).

  But life must be lived, whatever the eye-popping astonishments it has in store for you at every turn.

  The morning after this night essentially devoted to nuptials, a pirogue was hollowed out of a tree-trunk and launched on the sea.

  They drifted, avoiding the coasts dotted with casinos. What a honeymoon, under the sun and the open stars!

  And on the third day they made landfall in Ethiopia, where Andromeda’s inconsolable father was king. (His joy I leave you to imagine.)

  ‘Now really, dear Monsieur Amyot de l’Épinal,* you’ve left us open-mouthed with your story!’ exclaimed the Princess of U… E… (drawing in her shawl a little, for the night was cool). ‘I had set my heart on a quite different acount of Perseus and Andromeda. I shan’t quibble with the way you have travestied poor Perseus. (You are excused that because you have flattered me in a masterly way, classical of course, disguising me under the features of Andromeda.) But the ending! Why all this fuss about the Monster, whom no one even considered before? And dear Monsieur Amyot de l’Épinal, I advise you to lift your eyes to the celestial night-chart. That couple of star-clusters over there, just along from Cassiopeia, are they not known as Perseus and Andromeda? Whereas that twisting tail of stars, all the way down there, do we not call that constellation the Dragon, flickering between the Great Bear and the Lesser Bear, his shaggy familiars?…’

  ‘My dear U…, that proves nothing. The skies are calm and conventional; one might as well say that your eyes are merely brown (you wouldn’t like it). Look elsewhere, down there, near the Lyre, is that not the Swan, which is Lohengrin’s constellation and the form of a cross in memory of Parsifal? And yet you maintain that my Lyre has nothing to do with Lohengrin and Parsifal?’*

  ‘It is true, it is analogically true. But it’s impossible to discuss or learn anything with you. Let’s go in for tea. Oh, and what’s the moral of the tale? I always forget the moral…’

  ‘Here it is:

  Young ladies, look most carefully

  Before scorning a poor Monster.

  As this tale of mine should show

  —He was the worthiest of the three.’

  MARCEL SCHWOB

  The Brothel

  IT was a strange house, grey and shuttered, and it seemed to blink from its windows, reclining sleepily as it was on the slope of a long street. Its deep-set door was stained white, and there was no keyhole, bell, or knocker. As if in times gone by it had carried the double stroke of the red cross and the inscription: ‘May The Lord Have Mercy Upon Us’* as a warning that plague was within. It may be that Morgiana had marked it in chalk, to deceive the brigand.* But time had worn away these signs; the nonchalant patches of whitewash on the wood spoke of neither crime nor plague; and the door seemed immured in silence.

  The windows were sealed against sunlight and darkness alike by close-fitting shutters. Even on very hot days, when we put our fingers between the slats we could feel the cold, as if we had felt the shadow oozing from the house. Sometimes, during thunderstorms, when lines of dazzling rain beat on the pavement, two shutters would yawn open as if to breathe in the storm and a red curtain swelled in the deep darkness of a strange bedroom.

  During the day the house was terribly silent. No milk-girl and no postman came knocking at the door. It was so situated that at all times, like that town in Upper Egypt, Syène, where no body, at noon on the summer solstice, sheds any shadow. Its walls never impinged on the sunlight, and at night it was completely smothered in darkness.

  It was said that children, after beating incessantly at the door, had sat down to wait. Suddenly, they had heard a dreadful oath coming from inside. Then silence again. And despite their hammering on the door with boots and sticks, and the sand and mud they flung against the shutters, nothing more was heard.

  The lights in the house came on regularly. Around nine in the evening a reddish light filtered through one of the shutters. At midnight it went out, and an hour after that several yellow lamps shone confusingly. At crack of dawn, on the dot, all lights went out.

  We imagined the house occupied by forgers, and we tried to spy on them. But we never saw a soul coming out or going in. And besides, crucibles would have been needed, and metal and plaster and moulds, as well as accomplices to circulate the new coins.

  So we came to dread the brothel, without knowing why. One night we stopped in front of it. From the edge of the pavement we
could hear some heavy breathing, regular and continuous, which seemed to come rumbling straight out of the façade. As if a heavy sleeper were lying spread out up against the inner wall. We listened to this breathing for more than an hour. And abruptly we took to our heels, imagining that the white door would open and something would leap out at us.

  Rather than casting its shadow on the sunlight, the brothel absorbed it. The house could not have been more silent, or its white-stained door more mute, if lepers had lived there. But bit by bit, the idea came to obsess us. We walked past the shutters in terrible suspense, thinking that some fleshless hand would come thrusting out. Crossing the street we would hold our breath, to avoid inhaling dreadful vapours. We would wake in our beds (for our house was almost adjoining) with the sound of ratchets and bells in our ears. We had read how lepers used to cloister themselves like this, wearing scarlet hoods, and with two joined pieces of wood dangling on a straw from their hands, and we became convinced they tolled their passing-bell in the night.

  One day of torrential rain, falling in a seamless sheet, we finally saw a face behind the swollen red curtain. It was not the face of a leper. It was the pinched face of a little girl, with golden hair. She was crying and shivering in the gusting wind. When she saw us she made a dreadful grimace and shouted insults. But a hand dragged her back inside and pulled the shutters to.

  At night we were wakened in our beds by a squeaking noise. Then there were screams and the crash of furniture falling and mirrors smashing. We got up half-dressed and slipped outside. Now there were several lights in the brothel, and they were moving about. A red lamp seemed in pursuit of a yellow one, at another window a yellow lamp was in flight; behind one shutter a reddish light was circling slowly.

  In the midst of the moving lights, we heard terrified pleas and stifled sobs. We dashed at the white door, full of horror and courage, and beat on it violently. There came two long groans, like the death-rattle. And then silence, the same oppressive silence as before. And then the lights went out, one by one, and not all together at daybreak. And all our calls brought no response.