The juggler

by Rachilde, 1860-1953

  Leon Reille concluded simply: "Poor Eliante!"

  Out of modesty or disgust, she closed the case once again on both faces.

  "Why keep . . . the earlier one?" asked Leon not daring to soften any more.

  "He's the one who gave it to me. He often used to say: 'when I am far away, you'll see me this way, and when I come back I won't seem so ugly.' He never wanted to have any device put on his scar: 'since a false nose is inevitably going to come off, I'd rather stay frightening than be ridiculous, even for a minute. A frightening man isn't ridiculous,' he would repeat to me, and I think he was right."

  "It is, indeed, a profound insight, but you no doubt would have preferred . . . the false nose, you being such a good actress?"

  "I'm not an actress: I'm afraid of love, as I was afraid of my husband, that's all."

  "Heavens! Monsieur Donalger has nothing in common with ... an ordinary lover."

  And Leon Reille stopped himself from adding:

  "How can he be compared to me, dear madam?"

  She smiled, melancholically, a little mysterious in her melancholy, and, going to put away the case, she picked up a little tray on the stair of the pagoda.

  "I'm going to make you drink some very special coffee, which I prepare myself," she said in a very natural tone.

  He made a face:

  "The philtre? Yes, I really need to forget."

  She moved a miniature mosaic table closer to him, and set down on it the little tray, which held two imperceptible cups, thimbles, barely filled with a brown essence, in pellets like putty, in which essence she dropped, from high above, a few drops of boiling water. The aroma of the coffee spread very violently around them.

  "Drink, monsieur my friend, and dream . . . I'll show

  you now the collection of ivories and the one of wax, perhaps my robes, but we won't have time, I'll save them for another occasion."

  "It's terribly bitter, your philtre."

  Eliante arranged white objects on the red carpet, statuettes which she brought down from their shelf or which she took out of the cabinet. Leon anxiously studied her movements, unable to resign himself to his role as mere spectator.

  How gracious and supple she was, this artificial woman, in her high-necked dress, so dressed up that she appeared naked under the white velvet stretched over her without a wrinkle, without any apparent seam! How her body resembled an ivory statue, a somewhat velvety ivory covered with down or snow! And her black helmet, so tight as to cut her delicate ears, her severe features, were lit by the glimmer of her eyes. She was celebrating a sort of religious ceremony, there, in the middle of this temple, where she was truly at home, an idol herself, exultant at the touch of idols.

  "Listen to me, Leon," she sighed as though in prayer, "and don't get angry, love frightens me when it's true, and love is always sincere when it springs from all our instincts. We love uniquely in so many different ways. When the god passes over us, by faking love one loves, and by loving one is exasperated not to love more. One arrives at crime easily, logically. It's a path of roses which is stripped, as you ascend towards the summit, of all its flowers. Soon your feet bleed on the stones, are torn by tangled briars. 5 There is no limit for those who wish to ascend to passion, and whoever does not stop along the way goes mad. I don't know if I am a woman one can respect; however I hope, I dare to hope, that you will love me better than my husband was able, or wanted to love me. It will be the same thing, better, purer, closer to god. Henri Donalger was man par excellence, I want you to be the hero. No, I didn't love my husband, it's only today that I fear

  him for you, for he is no more than what he has left in me. I am, perhaps I will always remain his humble servant, or yours. How shall I go about being your mistress? What shall I offer you that has not already belonged to him?" (Eliante kneeling presented to the young man an ivory statuette, a little naked idol, straight in its lines, the elbows bent, the two hands joined together over its genitals.) "Here is a Psyche of the yellow race, Tchun-mei, she who awaits the monster to be tortured by it, and this monster is a marvelous dragon with wings of carbuncles, and three heads. She will die on her wedding night. Look how the poor girl is pure, thin, childlike, how she naively parts her hands slightly at the threshold of her sanctuary of love, imitating, despite her virginal innocence, the form of the dear object she wishes to steal from the monster! And her fingers, long and tapering, armed however with claws, with nails as long and tapered as her fingers, are no use for anything except to betray her in the most pitiful way in the world. But," continued Eliante, turning the statuette on the tip of her index finger, "she is not a goddess, alas! she's a woman all right, a little girl, a little schoolgirl torn from her convent, judged ripe for the monster; she is sad and pretty, so thin one would think she were a candle, wax scarcely alive with the life given by the mystical flame of her eyes . . . and you can, can't you, give her a halo?" (The young man, more and more interested, leaned over the statue. He had just noticed that she really did seem to be part of an unusual hallucination. Was it the strong aroma of the coffee, or, worse, did she really resemble Eliante? The little idol seemed to change color, if not form, she became waxen, as she turned, of a substance more colorful than ivory. On one side the divinity, on the other the body, the flesh of a mortal. And the little hands, also slightly open in the shape of pink conch shells over the genitals, defending them or imitating their mysterious lines, seemed less long, possessed less claw-like nails, the nails

  of ... a French woman.) "Now I'm going to show you the twin sisters at the right of the god Hi-djin. They are his favorites, but he has many others."

  Leon Reille tried to seize the statuette. Eliante pulled it away.

  "Give me Mademoiselle Tchun-mei," he shouted impatiently. "I want to know why she is double and why I imagine she resembles you."

  "I'll explain it to you in a minute, my dear friend. Mademoiselle Tchun-mei is not the only one of her kind. Here, these are the twin sisters."

  Eliante offered him a pretty reclining woman, who seemed to be preparing an acrobatic exercise. Her body was attached to what served as a resting bed only by the base of her neck and her heels. This little woman, adorned with the marks of the dragon, that is to say decorated with a tiara studded with tiny blue and green turquoise gems, no longer hid anything with her long hands, candidly spread apart, on the contrary, and very indicative. Eliante turned the statue around and, again, Leon found another figure, attached to the bed by only her neck and heels. Only the same jewelled tiara served for both of them, one in ivory, the other in wax, and the idol's tiara covered the woman's hair, rising in tiers over her forehead in curls which followed all the twists of the marks of the victorious dragon.

  "Now look between the two sisters?" said Eliante.

  The outline of the two forms seen back to back, joined only by the neck and heels, produced a shape of awful obscenity.

  The dragon was certainly victorious . . . but at what price!

  Leon burst out laughing.

  "Yours is a very pretty collection, Madame Eliante. Are there any others . . . more incredible?"

  "Yes," she murmured in a grave voice. "There are some who don't turn their back on each other. Look."

  She held out to him an idol seated on a jade throne, holding the crouching dragon on her shoulders and caressing a horrible little man whose physiognomy was much more that of a monkey than a human being.

  "This one is a priestess officiating. You can look at her any way you want, she ... is busy everywhere."

  Leon astounded contemplated the priestess:

  "My dear Eliante, it's unspeakable! To think that elephants, poor devils, have been massacred so that people can torture their defenses like this!" (He added, frowning.) "So why does Mademoiselle Tchun-mei look like you? And also one of the twin sisters?"

  Eliante, without answering him directly, held out to him a statuette rolled into a large ring, a small wax woman not repeated in ivory. The lengthening of all the limbs was so chaste an
d so natural, the little enamel eyes were so lively that you expected to see her jump like an animal, unwind like a spring, and, rapidly, Eliante presented the same small woman relaxed, seated, her arms crossed around her knees, her hands joined, all gathered into a new circle, showing with simplicity everything she could show.

  Three other wax statuettes varied the pose, presenting in the agile hands of Madame Donalger that same little idol with the luminous enamel eyes, beautiful little eyes so black and so brilliant at the same time. They seemed to multiply, to blossom on the red carpet, all white, all pale with pleasure, impassive little madwomen, frozen in their works of love at the precise moment when they could have enjoyed what was happening to them. And these numerous little wax dolls were modelled with charming art, touched up by brush, delicately enlivened with carmine, as though caressed by a feather dipped in blood. They were so pretty that he who contemplated them

  had followed their licentious evolutions, with a somewhat scandalized expression, now smiled, quite moved at finding them so pure of form.

  "But still, why do they look like you," stammered Leon, resting his index finger on the sweet face of the last one, who, both arms bent above her head, was haloed by a fan, letting a blue dragon clasp her around the middle of her body. "I'm dreaming perhaps . . . that they resemble you?"

  "Don't you understand?" murmured Eliante softly. "It's nice of you not to dare to guess, so I must tell you: they resemble me because it's me they represent. The double is copied from my own body. The first time my husband saw this idol in a pagoda, in China, he wrote to me, for I hadn't wanted to accompany him yet, that he had just discovered my sister, and, enthusiastic at her discovery, he bought a miniature copy in ivory of the large statue and had a wax one modeled behind her. I must explain that in China the art of sculpting in ivory or any other substance which can be painted in skin tones is at least as widespread as the art of photography here . . : always supposing that it is an art to reproduce nature exactly in full mourning! They, the Chinese, seek to create a nervous sensation. Either they make it horrible or they make it delicious. Thanks to the enthusiastic indications of my husband, for me, they made it delicious. I'm no longer as pretty as that! The twins on the right were cruelly separated, and I replaced the one without the goddess's tiara. The others . . . they came into the world successively, according to Henri's moods, during the long sea-crossings. He modeled the wax himself like a real artist, and, during my absence, his fingers kneaded all these little women in my image. When I travelled with him, he spent hours attending to the heads, giving them my physiognomy, especially my eyes. I didn't always want to go along with his fantasies, because I was far too young to grasp the divine sense. Now, I see that his love went as far as ... "

  "Eroticism," cried Leon Reille, sitting up, revolted. "Your husband was a monomaniac, a dangerous madman, in need of a cold shower!"

  This time the young man was sincerely indignant. To play with obscene little goddesses, he had kept his patience, but a jealous furor seized him in front of these emblems of conjugal prostitution.

  "What? All that, all these filthy little objects, Madame Eliante! And you've had the audacity to show them to me? Take it all away . . . quickly . . . remove everything, do you hear me, or I shall smash, with one single kick, this whole infernal little world. Ah! he was a fine one, your Henri Don-alger. Hide that, you hear me, or it's you I'll smash. I've had enough of this dirt."

  Eliante, with a rapid movement, threw the train of her dress over the innocent little goddesses, then she murmured:

  "There," she said. "Poor things, it's not their fault! Would you have preferred the lie of silence, Leon?"

  He thought for a moment, his forehead in his hands.

  "What do I know? You betray me again, in front of me, and . . . with whom? With the memory of a dead man whose hideous mask would make any woman back away?"

  "Perhaps I'm not a woman, since I have only ever known that mask of a man."

  Suddenly very serious, Eliante looked at him her eyes full of glimmers. She did indeed have the black and pearly eyes, with a luminous fixity, of the little wax figurines.

  Leon fell back, onto the white fur of the couch.

  "You don't love me Eliante! You will not love me! You're trying to martyr me to make me talk nonsense. At the moment, you see, I would die before I would admit to loving you. I'm ashamed of knowing you."

  Imperceptibly, Eliante shrugged, then she began again, very calm, turning towards the Chinese cabinet:

  "And you haven't seen everything, my deaf little lovet, thete is still a heap of extraordinaty things, ftom even futthet away than possible. Hete are animals, the monstet spider, the mygale , who eats the heart of the little Tongchoui, the goddess of darkness, Calm of winter, I say heart so as not to offend you; hete is the red monkey, who clasps the same little goddess with the closed eyelids, for she is alteady dead, it's no longet me not anyone, she belongs to eternity, and finally here is Hoan-hi Koan-mien, the ctown of pleasute. You must look at that, I beg you, it tops evetything." (Kneeling again befote the young man, she ptesented him, on a large plattet of a bluish metal which seemed very heavy, a sort of btaided ctown of pale flowers with multicolored foliage, now green, now violet, now red and pink, the color of the coral pin which adorned Eliante's head.) "You see! They are women and men twisted together with the dragon, the eternal dragon who represents everything, in this country so old and so spiritual. It is at the same time chimera, this god, demon, sun and moon, it is above all passion! He has a mouth of flames, bloody eyes, claws of gold and wings of carbuncle. As for his immense tail, prehensile and ringed, it fulfills all natural, supernatural, or social functions. Man and woman are spangled with its precious gems. The temples are illuminated by its transparency, and, in front of stores, people modestly hang lanterns! . . . This ivory and jade work is not easily found on open European markets. It was necessary to steal this one from a pagoda, if you can call stealing offering an enormous sum of money to a priest to corrupt him? But, my husband insisted on his crown of pleasure?"

  Leon Reille examined, horrified. The little men and little women twisted together, no longer able to escape and connected to each other, now by the dragon's mouth, a red mouth, now by the hooked ends of its wings, green claws, now by its long tail, violet or pink, maintained untranslatable expressions of diabolical joy. This little world of painted ivory and

  translucent jade lived, palpitated, clamored with the complete abandon of all modesty. They were not too odious, these figures, for they seemed to all belong to the same human plant, some monstrous btanch blossoming from theit mouths, their genitals, as from their jewelled eyes.

  "What cannibal king could assume that unworthy crown?" cried Leon.

  "But Love alone! My husband! You! Everyone who loves ..." Eliante answered him calmly.

  And as she was about to replace the metal platter in the Chinese cupboard, someone came and knocked on the door of the temple.

  "It's my niece," she whispered. "Missie has just returned. Leon, I beg you not to move, to say nothing. She will go away, thinking I have gone out."

  The young man fell silent with a gesture of discouragement.

  This intrusion of family life was all they needed in such an atmosphere!

  He looked at the ceiling, detaching himself from the rest of the adventure.

  On the ceiling everything was dark. A thick darkness fell from up there, produced either by clouds of light black material, or by a vault. The rays from the enormous cut topazes of the windows did not shine that far.

  Yes, it was indeed night that fell little by little in the brain of the initiate! What to believe? What to conclude? It smelled of wild animal, rice powder, and, in the evening, the shadows took on formidable aspects.

  Was the sleeping lion finally going to raise his eyelids?

  Or the bear growl?

  Or the panthers roar, the tigers pounce?

  Too much exoticism!

  Eliante Donalger now seemed no mor
e than a beautiful

  Thejuggler

  phantom to him, a vampire with a silvery belly, slipping, swaying . . .

  . . . Suddenly she was near him, one of her supple arms surrounded him, and, leaning her face towards his, she kissed him on the lips, and while Missie, imperiously, knocked a second time, he held, pressed against his breast, this woman all fainting with love.

  L am like a little child naked in a strong wind. I have a fever, I shiver, I'm too hot or too cold. My lips retain the unusual fruity taste of your mouth, and the bitter taste of your saliva lingers on my tongue, making me find everything I eat bland, sickening since nothing is as good as your love.

  "I know, I sense that you love me. I would like to deserve the joy and no longer try to steal it. . . . I'll apply myself to following you:

  Madame a sa tour monte . . .

  Madame a sa tour monte . . . l

  "As high as I can go, only . . . you see, I'm ill. I have . . . yellow fever. I'm jealous, I have nightmares, I have ridiculous visions.

  (You have, madam, a strange way of making coffee!)

  "I dreamed, last night, that you were like a column of smoke. You started at the center of the globe and touched the clouds. I could see the whole world in its spherical form. You, you kept your face above the column, a waxen face illuminated by pupils of precious stones, and you swayed from left to right,

  right to left, in an absolutely intolerable rhythmical motion. And I struggled to reach you the way one struggles, alas! in dreams, remaining immobile. The column you were, always swaying, ended up turning, the folds long veils, those of black dresses, blended into even blacker, thicker smoke, the night of the whole world turned with you in whirlwind gyrations, and it sucked in the clouds, diluted the earth. I was thinking: 'If I fired a revolver into the base of that column, just a powder shot, from a child's pistol, she would collapse because it's well known in sea voyages that a canon shot fired at the base of a whirlwind makes it dissolve into a salutary little rain.' Only I didn't have to hand any revolver or child's pistol suitable for reducing feminine importance. I had to suffer to the point of nausea, to the point of vomiting my soul and its superfluity, to see you playing this trick of the column. . . . My god, madam, how I suffered unnecessarily! and now, tired of turning, your waxen face looked more human, your eyes had charming looks of pity, but you were very distant, for you seemed to diminish in a huge regression. And in an instant you were a woman, of normal height, as big as a doll. However, you seemed to leave me, to leave the world, for your little feet were distinctly placed on the declivity of the globe. I held out my arms, calling. Your face, a distant little face of agony, was transparently pale, all illuminated by two stars . . . then, the stars went out, the face was dead, eyelids closed and mouth twisted, your feet left the declivity of the globe, and you disappeared . . . completely. There remained the thick night, smoky, a globe that looked like the vulgar globe of a lamp of black crystal. And the stars, through space, to me looked like applique on tulle. Something even more false than your smoky dresses.