The juggler

by Rachilde, 1860-1953

  "No," she said in a hard voice. "I can only dance with those who already know how. I'm too old to learn . . . how to not know."

  "Cruel woman! You're hatefully cruel! Let's try . . .

  "Let's eat first, we'll dance later," said Eliante escaping from his arms.

  She pushed the table into the middle of the room.

  "Wait a minute ..." thought Leon, "something's wrong . . . but what? Modesty? Remorse? The idea of getting revenge for her defeat by a new bout of coquetry? I've got her and I'll have her . . . this nervous beauty ... or tonight's the night I'll beat her!"

  The wild cat was beginning to try its claws on the white furs.

  He came and sat on the right of Eliante, and Mademoiselle Frehel placed herself on the left, Missie opposite.

  There was a fine clinking of little spoons on porcelain and

  crystal, lively words falling in swipes on the fruit and greedy bites in the tasty pulps. The Anam apples were a big success. Missie and Leon changed straws without noticing. Leon was quickly becoming intoxicated, for he could feel Eliante s knee near his. Lightly stroke her knee? That night he would have all of her! It cost him little to be respectful. Missie, in passing him a glass of champagne, spilled some on the tablecloth, and Mademoiselle Frehel said gaily:

  "Sign of a wedding!"

  "A promise of love, mademoiselle!" answered Leon sharply.

  "It's more modest," ventured Marie, and the two girls broke out laughing while drinking to his health.

  Leon was looking at Eliante. She was not laughing. An infinite suffering occasionally contracted her beautiful face, decomposed it into a tragic mask, she seemed one minute absent, in a completely different world, then she bent over her guests, cut up the cakes, served the creams and peeled fruit for them. Had she then given all her love and did she have none left to make her quiver with impatience with him?

  After the meal, servants took away the table and, furtively, brought back two huge chests. A curiosity inflamed Leon and the girls. It was the oriental costumes.

  The large chests of camphor wood, studded with copper, seemed to have crossed the seas quite often. . . . One of them, mildewed, its nails rusty, retained a sort of humidity as though emerging from a shipwreck.

  Eliante opened the chests and the girls let out cries of admiration, while the young man, with the awkward satisfaction of a ravaging animal, pulled to himself velvets, silks, multicolored wools spangled with gold and silver, with glass trinkets, with fringes, with decorations of shell or of human teeth. All this, the simple necklaces, the slightly muddy scarves, the headgear with sequins and the gauze veils dotted

  with colored pearls, these were the joys of love stolen from women or altered for one woman. Eliante had worn all that; and his hands becoming feverish, he plunged them sensuously into this torrent of sweet things which caressed his palms. There were skirts of heavy wool and pants of filigreed damask, blouses of silk light as clouds, enormous belts, inlaid and studded with gems. The girls' ecstasy knew no bounds. Missies eyes were popping out of her head, and the Madonna, Mademoiselle Frehel, losing her artist's seriousness, was sitting on the floor so as to better handle and size up the embroideries.

  "Come along, young ladies, unfold the screens and get dressed up. You must try on my robes."

  It was complete delirium. The joyful gamine and the serious Madonna rushed, the former to a brilliant gold and blue Turkish outfit, the latter to an ample Japanese robe with silver floral patterns on a green background. Behind the screens, one could hear the metal hooks clicking and the satins brushing against each other. An odor of fresh coquette mixed with the last sugary vapors of the meal.

  But above that, far above emerged the strong smell of pepper exhaled by the open chests, a smell of piracy.

  Soon Leon had around him, fluttering, whirling, stopping in front of the mirrors or consulting his taste, all the beauties of a harem; the two girls changed costume four times, then returned to the Turkish lady and the Japanese lady who suited them better. Completely pale, completely white, kneeling in front of the chests, ceaselessly plunging her arms in and pulling out her loaded beautiful hands, Madame Donalger was still drawing out new riches. She pulled out a Malaysian costume, a sarong of rough green wool, decorated with black pearls, a scarf of black and yellow material, sounding beneath her nail like dry leaves, and a hat of old straw all full of saffron powder. On the hat hung a terrible madras kerchief, and to the scarf was attached, in a leather sheath, a kriss with a blade

  bent like a sinister teptilian sting, then an Oceanian costume, very scant, a narrow pagne with blue stripes on white cotton, a little case of carved bone containing a set of fish bone pins. Those . . . one could hardly try out.

  "There! that's all! My young friends, I'm giving them to you," declared Eliante in a slow voice. "Share them as sisters. Each of you take a chest to put them in, where they will keep perhaps for a few years, but I notice that these materials smell of mildew. They're getting old, I don't want to keep them here any more. Toys are made to amuse children."

  Missie let out a cry. Mademoiselle Frehel joined her hands:

  "Oh! Madame, what an idea! Why sacrifice them to us when you're still going to the ball? That must be a gold mine for the fancy dress season."

  "I'm not going to the ball again," said Madame Donal-ger, "... at least this winter," she added in a darker tone.

  Leon smiled proudly.

  "The laurels have been cut down," l he murmured, with a gesture which cut across Eliante's fingers in the process of unfolding a great veil of gauze riddled with pearls.

  Missie and Mademoiselle Frehel moved off a little, whispering. He understood. Certainly she had obeyed her summons. She was dividing her fortune between her niece and her brother-in-law, which brother-in-law had gone to his lawyer that very day for some matter of paperwork, and, now, she was distributing the souvenirs of her conjugal life to the two girls. It was good, it was fine! He felt mad. . . . Afterward, they would run away together to love one another!

  And on his knees in the silks, completely black, very supple, dressed in his simple student's jacket, a little rose in his buttonhole, his young head pale with pleasure raised toward her, all proud of his role as exterminating demon, his

  eyes sparkling from the reflection of the stones, Leon Reille crawled up to her:

  "Shall 1 not see you dance for me alone? Will you not dress up also for me to admire you? Why do you perpetually efface yourself in front of me when my eyes seek you out? You don't love me any more then, Eliante."

  He was begging like a jealous child, wanting his share of the toys.

  "You demand it?"

  "Yes, I want it! I want you to be the most beautiful here, the youngest, and she whom I must prefer. If you don't obey me absolutely, I'll beat you, tonight, I'll become the meanest of men!"

  Eliante replied:

  "You're right! I've kept two outfits. I'll put them on . . . when it's time ..."

  Mademoiselle Frehel, at the piano, began a waltz.

  Missie came to invite her fiance. They waltzed very badly, arguing, then it was the Japanese lady's turn, but that did not go any better than with the Turkish lady. Eliante smiled.

  Leon in spite, threw himself on the ground, shouting:

  "No, it's no use, I'll never learn. Moreover man isn't made to dance, he looks stupid. I resign, ladies."

  "He's right," said Eliante solemnly, stopping with a sign the two girls, who were whipping him with a scarf; "dance, which is the very expression of the grace of love, cannot concern man. Inevitably a man must watch dancing . . . then throw in his handkerchief."

  "That's it," cried Leon enthusiastically! "Quick, ladies, spread out the mats, bring the cushions, fan me, for I'm very warm, then let my hookah be prepared, no, my cigarettes, which Mademoiselle Missie still has in her pocket and . . . I'm the king, I'm resting."

  Submissively, the girls spread out burnous, shawls and scarves, piled up cushions, and he was presented with cigarettes on a
tray, while Louise Frehel swayed in harmonious movements a huge multicolored fan.

  "That's better, much better," declared Leon, stretching out on the softness of the silks opposite a big dead tiger. "What a comfortable existence! Now, I permit you to dance before me. I'll distribute rewards. Whose turn is it, ladies?"

  "It's Madame Eliante's turn, if she isn't too tired," said Louise Frehel smoothing the Madonna's bandeaux. "We must ask for her iota, if she deigns . . . it's unheard of. Would you mind, madam, just for the three of us, within the family."

  "Excuse me," interrupted Leon peremptorily, "for me alone, if you please. Let's not forget that I'm the king."

  Missie begged:

  "Oh! dear aunt, since uncle hasn't returned, he won't scold you."

  "Yes, yes," answered the distant voice of Eliante, "I'm getting dressed."

  Between two puffs of cigarette, Leon had time to pinch Missies ankle and to kiss in passing a white arm which might well have belonged to Louise Frehel. Missie pulled his hair by the handful, and Louise blushed slightly.

  "You understand, my dear little things," replied the student completely intoxicated because the smoke, the peppery smells of the fabrics and the fumes of the champagne were combining terribly in his brain, "since I'm the king, you're my slaves . . . and I forbid you to shout!"

  As well brought-up girls, they did not shout, very obliging toward this handsome boy all quivering with pleasure and who, moreover, was thinking of another as he caressed them . . .

  "Mademoiselle Louise," said a muffled voice behind a screen, "would you go to the piano, I'm ready; and you, Mis-

  The Juggler J 93

  sie, arrange some light. Evenings falling, and one can no longer see in my room."

  With a leap, Mademoiselle Frehel was in her place, and with another leap Missie went to press an electric button.

  The room was set ablaze. The smoke, the fumes seemed to go back up to the ceiling, under the black vault, in light wreaths. On the panels of gold cloth, the wild animals polished their silky fur, the lacquer furniture threw off flares of bluish stars, and the big Venetian bowl full of roses, in the middle of the temple, set up the simple grace of life in the innocent and blessed person of the flower.

  "They're well trained, the girls!" thought Leon, smoking, his forehead in the clouds. "Ah, the temple's being lit up! If Madame Eliante could blaze a little . . . that would be something else."

  Then it sounded like the thunder of a storm, the dull and hammering sound of the tambourines that Mademoiselle Frehel, who made the piano-monster into everything she wanted, imitated to a marvel, then like the grinding of mandolins, tuning up or clashing with each other.

  The screen parted.

  "Eh, Spain!" cried Leon, raising himself on one elbow, and putting his hand above his eyes to protect them.

  "Ole! Ole!" replied the girls in echo.

  And the thundering of the Spanish dance accelerated, humming and violent with notes, vibrating suddenly, in a burst of splintering crystal.

  In the cold daylight of the electricity, on the smooth green cloth, having as sole decoration a topaz sun, a woman appeared dressed in a skirt of yellow satin, midlength and almost clinging, a skirt without the traditional underskirts of the theatre. One sensed that the woman was wretched and could not offer herself, nor offer the luxury of laces. The dress was covered with a high flounce of black chenille forming a

  net. A toreador's belt of red silk bent the waist without squeezing it, and the bolero of yellow satin covered with black chenille, fringed with velvet pompoms, opened liberally on a naked bust. The belt did not come up to the breasts, perfectly unrestrained upright breasts in their normal place, holding out their hard little tips with the fierce aspect of two reliefs in a breastplate.

  Made up in a coarse manner, this woman, whose body could belong to a girl, had a face strangely beautiful and old. The eyes blackened with kohl were too big, too dark, throwing a shadow over all the rest, and the mouth, slashed with red, evoked a painful sensation such as one might feel before a surgical operation. The black hair, held up by a shell comb to shock the gallery, flowered with one single red carnation fixed above the ear, posing there like a reminder of that vermilioned mouth, the apposition of a recent kiss the color of blood. The dancer, whose naked little arms, a child's arms, were extended, whose hands were clenched nervously on castanets, bent over, slowly, and her frail leg, her tiny feet enclosed in black satin, had a kind of shudder, an undulation of the skin, resembling the first tremble of fever.

  Missie had come to sit on the floor next to Leon; she was arranging the folds of her Turkish pants, her eyelids lowered.

  "You don't recognize her?" she breathed pulling the young man by the sleeve. Hypnotized, the young man was still watching.

  "There, it has the same effect, on me too. . . . Yet, it's no mistake, you know, it's Eliante Donalger. that"

  "Oh!" murmured the young man, "it's not possible."

  "She's worth a few cents, eh?"

  "Oh, be quiet!" begged Leon Reille.

  The woman danced.

  But this dance did not resemble anything familiar either,

  anything already seen in the theatre or on the carpets of a salon. It was the living and suffering poem of a body tormented by strange passions. First, the bolero through a continuous and unusual movement of the hips, the lower back and shoulders began to ride up, to descend along the back, it followed the folds of the skin, and these little invisible gestures which made it open, or close over the breasts like the panel of one of those little diptych cupboards, one of those closed paintings where one keeps icons, were curious, if not terrifying, it did not seem natural, and it remained quite simple, but one could not explain why it was abominably troubling. There are some insects who do that a very long time before flying away; they open and close their wings, one sees below transparent elytrons or the very organs of their little life laid bare, and it is all of a sudden charming, light, moving, all of a sudden terrible, it reveals things which must never be known.

  Eliante leaned over backwards, and a smile lit up her white face where her eyes put two pits of darkness. One could see her white teeth, beautiful even teeth which seemed to be the teeth of a dead woman. She smiled sadly. The smile became more pronounced while the piano thundered more loudly, a roll of the tambourine caused to shatter, higher up, to scatter in a thousand splinters of glass the notes of the mandolins. It sounded like the immense trampling of panting men, penned into too restricted a space and seeking to escape in order to flee or advance nearer to what they were seeing.

  At one point Eliante's bolero nearly jumped off, ripped down the back, and, as she turned, they saw that it was already split and that one could make out the flesh of the shoulders.

  "How can she do that?" questioned Leon, crawling on the carpet to get closer, to try to understand.

  "Ah! well, it's an invention of the girls from down there . . . street girls, that wouldn't be acceptable in the theatre

  and ... it can't be taught, fortunately! Look at net teeth, isn't it funny? You'd think she's going to bite."

  "She has admitable teeth!"

  "Yes . . . one would think they were false!" concluded Missie.

  And the castanets made the dry sound of hail on the windows. Eliante threw herself forward with a supple, enormous leap, and turned, the skirt lifted up to her eyes, all her black body beneath appeared in a leotard, but the leotard let the flesh show through, watershot, one would have said, with a kind of milky sweat, and one ended up seeing, very distinctly, the white flesh of the entire body the way one sees naked legs beneath stockings.

  Sometimes, while turning, she would stamp her little right heel and at the same time her elbow on her left knee, dislocating in a strange revolution of lines all the harmony of her person, and more quickly, having turned, placed in profile, her neck stretched out, her eyes calling someone, she would stand up, completely pulled upward by a force, a string which seemed to hold her suspended, her little
feet prancing on the spot, trampling mad and frail the St. John's herb, which one sensed burning her soles. 2

  In bigger and bigger leaps, taking off like an uncoiled spring, she moved beyond the green cloth placed on the carpet.

  "Aunt," cried Missie, revolted inside because Madame Donalger's breasts were really a bit too much on display, and because Leon, instead of being scandalized, remained decidedly in ecstasy, sobered up or more intoxicated than ever; "Aunt, you're going to sprain something!"

  Eliante was smiling, no longer concerned with earth. She was dancing for herself, in a hell she knew well, and did not fear the obstacles.

  Louise Frehel, playing, standing up, in front of her

  piano, was looking at her with the awe of an artist who sees a rare thing.

  On a last chord, she made an imperceptible sign to Leon; he got up and came to her, very worried.

  "Throw her the shawl on which you're spread out. It's going to be over soon, and she must not mess up that tableau. Missie has forgotten the shawl."

  Passively, Leon picked up at random a big black burnous spangled with gold.

  "What do I have to do?" he asked Missie in a very low voice.

  "Throw it ... it doesn't matter how! It's really time she cover up, she's too much like a clown."

  Leon approached, but he was very afraid.

  Eliante seized the end of the burnous and, with a single turn, enveloped herself in it, her fist placed on her hip, causing to jut out under the black veil a straight line, rigid, an iron bar.

  "Ah! my dear! my dear!" cried Mademoiselle Frehel. And she came and threw herself madly upon her neck. "It's Spain . . . the real thing! ..."

  "Yes . . . Spain!" repeated Leon, with the air of a beaten dog.

  "Aunt, it's horrible! Dancers like that, they should be shot."

  Eliante fled into the wings of the screens, bursting with a sickly laughter.

  "Madame Donalger," cried Louise Frehel, "don't listen to her . . . she's a child who doesn't know what it's all about."