– Bellona’s death, he continued at last, brought my state of madness to an abrupt end. I still remember the astonishment and consternation that took the city in its grip on that unforgettable February morning when the fishermen returning from the sea found Bellona’s body floating on the waters. I had spent the whole night at the Casino. At dawn, on arriving home, I hadn’t been surprised by Bellona’s absence, being quite familiar with her morning habit of going out to watch the sun rise over the sea. From our house, it was only a short walk down the hill to the shore. There, she would walk out along the rocky point that penetrated the sea like the cutwater of a galley. I recounted all these details to the policemen on that terrible morning while they drove me to the Prefecture to identify Bellona’s body. I hardly know how to express the horror that came over me when I saw her stretched out on an ordinary table, her clothes still dripping wet; redolent of the sea, she was more beautiful than ever! For above and beyond her demise, her body’s defeat, in spite of the devastation already threatening her poor flesh, she was still Bellona, with her bronze hair in the form of a helmet and that warlike expression of hers which not even the ocean had managed to erase. Yes, she was Bellona! And the people with me realized this when I went to her side and kissed her sad eyes embittered by salt. Once the hypothesis of suicide was discarded (since none of our acquaintances doubted that Death, when it mowed Bellona down, had cut short an idyll in flower), the only explanation was an accident. This conclusion was entirely borne out by police investigations on the rocky spur, the indisputable site of the drama.
”Monstrous as it may seem, the following days left me with pleasant memories. Bellona’s death, poeticized in all the eulogies, soon had the effect of bathing me in a prestigious light. Not only had my circle of friends drawn closer around me, but new faces approached me and sought permission to share my grief. In public places I felt myself the target of sweetly compassionate glances. A reverent silence suddenly came over men and women when I addressed them; they would answer me in lowered voices, lest a careless word hurt me. And I, though not exactly aware of what was happening, let myself be lulled by those consoling voices, looks, and deferential gestures. In a word, Bellona’s death brought me what her life had always denied me: the dawn of an inner tranquility that allowed me to sleep once again and gradually restored to me the lost flavour of things. And that’s how things were going when “the first manifestation of the abominable” took place.
”I’ll need to describe in detail what occurred that day at noon (for the abominable made its appearance in broad daylight, as though not wanting to grant me the relief afforded by doubt, as is usually the case when abnormal events occur under conditions conducive to hallucination). And I shall insist, moreover, on the utterly commonplace details of that luncheon, so you may glimpse something of the terror that was to seize me when the supernatural so violently irrupted into a perfectly ordinary and peaceful milieu. That day, my friends and I were having lunch, as usual, in the livingroom-studio. The folding table had been placed beside the picture window overlooking the ocean. I had sat down at the head of the table, facing the sea, whose intense blue seemed to be wilfully coming right through the windowpanes into the room with us. Three of my guests sat to my right, and the other three to my left. One place at the table, then, was left vacant: the one opposite me. I must mention that during the morning I’d been showing signs of great vitality; for the first time since Bellona’s death I’d taken an interest in the set designs filling the room, sketching out a few artistic plans, and even playing with my miniature puppet theatre. After their surprise at my animation, my friends felt joy on seeing the revival of an intelligence they’d considered seriously wounded. And so in this auspicious atmosphere the luncheon began, with glasses clinking in timid toasts and voices still holding back their excitement. Such was the mood in the livingroom-studio, when the abominable appeared before my eyes.
”Bathed in an opulent light that made the food on the plates and the wine in the glasses sparkle, and pleasantly attending to the friendly voices and the temptation of a world that was again calling me, I all of a sudden sensed something moving in front of my eyes, something like a green fly, a buzzing fly of metallic sheen. I swatted at it with my fingers, and the fly went away. And then, opposite me, I saw three women dressed in mourning seated at the empty place at the table. Their three pairs of burning eyes pierced me as they laughed like three drunken Bacchantes, their laughter dark, throaty, monotonous, echoless. Stunned by that vision, I pushed away my plate, rubbed my eyes, and looked again: the three women in mourning, the three uninvited commensals, remained where they were, seated on the empty side of the table, piercing me with their gaze and still laughing. Later I found out that my friends had gone painfully silent when they saw me roughly push my plate away and stare stupidly at the sector of the table which for them was empty. But, at that moment, I saw only the sharp faces and frightful attire of the three women. For, as I quickly noticed, they weren’t really dressed in mourning but in black dance costumes, overly elaborate with ribbons and trimmings, but so torn and filthy that the women seemed to have just come from a bacchanal or a crime. The same disorder was apparent in their dishevelled hair; among their locks there still gleamed fragments of diadems, bits of gold leaf, and scarabs of silver. And the same filth could be seen in their throats bubbling with laughter and in their long fingers ending in black-painted nails that stood out against the white tablecoth. Looking back on it now, I recall that it didn’t occur to me to doubt the reality of the women – hard to doubt with the harsh light seeming to expose them! What I did sense, in my distress, was that they were there with some definite purpose, and that I ought to confront them, take heed of the prodigous evil they were no doubt bringing, and put up an invincible resistance against them, a tough shell of disdain. Resolved in this decision, I dared to give them a challenging look; and only then did I notice that the women’s eyes were not inquisitorial but terribly wise; and only then – madman that I am! – did I realize their laughter expressed no evil at all, but rather a knowledge so terrifying that when I sensed it I felt cold drops trickle down my forehead. “No, no!” I suddenly shouted. “Not that!” And, picking up a wineglass, I hurled it at the fateful females. Right away I felt myself surrounded, helped, consoled by friendly voices. But my attention was still on the three women observing me and laughing; now they whispered among themselves; now they turned again to fix meditative eyes upon me and laugh the somber laugh of those in the know. Then I got to my feet and fled the room, leaving six astonished commensals who turned their gaze to the empty sector of the table.
”That whole afternoon I was locked in a hard battle with terror. My mind, in its new state of dread, had to clear a path through the veil of madness pressing down upon me, in order to discern, without the interference of panic, what secret lay beneath that vision. But toward evening, a dazzling insight lit up the chaos: undeniably, the revelation of the three ghastly women had coincided exactly with the hour when I was coming back to life and also forgetting. Not surprisingly, the offended spirits of Bellona had appeared to me at the very table where we were celebrating my betrayal of her memory. The three women, then, had wanted me to know that my destiny and Bellona’s were still linked, that Bellona would continue to stir up within me the strange war presaged in her name, beyond and in spite of death.
”Remembrance of Bellona: that was the heavy, sleepless, penitential toil that entirely occupied my hours in the days following. I had to reconstruct her image line by line, volume by volume, gesture by gesture, and maintain it under the gaze of my soul, night and day, without lapses or distractions. I had to evoke every instant of her life, one by one, with the tremendous precision of the cinema, and then put them all together in a living synchronism, so that my heart might thus contemplate them, even if it were to break in anguish. You can’t imagine to what extremes of detail I went in trying to achieve the impossible reconstruction of Bellona. In my madness, I pursued traces of a col
our or odour that had been hers, in her dresser drawers, in her cold forgotten clothing, in the familiar objects she had touched so many times. What’s more, those favourite objects of hers soon acquired a magical prestige that for days on end had me indulging in the grossest fetishisms: I would adore a comb, venerate a gem, or kiss a satin slipper. Thus passed exactly one week since the unforgettable luncheon. My many acts of contrition and reparation had exhausted my inner resources, but in exchange had brought me the sweet ache or painful pleasure that is the customary fruit of penitence.152
“That afternoon I at last broke my voluntary imprisonment and went outside to walk along the seashore, along the deserted beach stretching beyond the Lighthouse, amid the warm sand dunes and the cool spray from the waves. Tough marine birds pecked at the cresting swells. A black bull that had waded into the sea up to his knees was sniffing the salt spume and lowing softly. A few dead sharks lay here and there, half-buried in the sand, and their rotting stench, mingled with the bitter saltpetre smell of the marsh, assailed my nostrils but fortified my spirit with a certain healthy rigour. The immense peace coming down from on high was met by the peace of the earth in repose; and a desire for union with the peace of earth and sky filled my tranquil and triumphant soul, which, redeemed and consoled by its possession of an eternal Bellona, wandered without fear along the shore, sighing with relief, and daring once again to look at things calmly. And just as these emotions were beginning to soar within me like a grateful prayer, I suddenly sensed the green fly buzzing in front of my eyes. When I shooed it away, I saw the three fateful women come forward, stand in a line ahead of me, stare at me with their hard, knowing eyes, and laugh, and laugh, and slyly laugh. For a moment I stood petrified: all the constructions built up by my madness collapsed inwardly in a dreadful heap. And again I felt naked before the three implacable women who stood there observing me and laughing, their luxurious rags and snarled locks blowing in the wind. I attempted to face them down, tried taking a few steps toward them, but they didn’t back away. I threw fistfuls of sand in their faces, but could not make them swallow their abominable laughter. Then, just as night was falling, I took flight, my feet sinking into the soft clinging sand and my ankles getting entangled in treacherous seaweed. But this time the females gave chase: they flew after me, hooting like obscene banshees, laughing offensively, panting like repugnant beasts. I can’t tell you now how long my flight lasted among the darkened dunes, but my memory retains the impression of an infinite fugue.
”Henceforth, and until the happy day of my liberation, I led an existence that, unhinged though it may have seemed, had a meaning and a plan: to destroy in myself every last vestige of intelligence, to drown out all claims of memory, and to bend my will, consciously and in solitude, to the operation of the inner hardening I wanted for my being. So I sought out not friends, exactly, but the company of strangers who often saw me drinking at orgies as an absent guest of stone,153 or whirling at their wild dance parties with the automatism of a dead star. Truth be told, that period is an obscure blur in my memory. Which lights up violently when evoking and assembling the details of the scene that put an end to so much pain.
”The case of Bellona’s death was pretty well settled, and had only to be judicially closed. I recall the boring preliminaries of the legal proceedings: the courtroom, with its dais for the judges and its big bronze crucifix on high; the hard wooden benches, the curtains of worn velvet and the carpets ruined by ten generations of litigants. And then all those official hands shuffling papers, the magistrates and witnesses filing by, the procession of familiar and unknown faces looking at me with compassion and curiosity. Okay! Fine! Nothing would matter after that. Bellona’s body was already just a fistful of disintegrating matter, far away, deep in the ground. Her lamentable story, too, would soon die, along with those papers which, being pawed over now, would eventually turn as yellow as dead leaves and fall prey to the gnawing teeth of big, furtive, silent rats . . . So much the better! Then oblivion would fall upon me, layer upon layer, like an interminable rain of ash. As I was ruminating on these thoughts, the inquest had begun. I vaguely heard mumbling voices reading from documents, and the monotonous testimony of witnesses. Then, as if in a dream, I heard myself recounting the same old story I’d repeated so many times before. Get it over with! Yes, quickly! And just as the pace of my declaration was accelerating, I sensed again for the third time the buzz of the green fly. When I batted it from before my eyes, I saw the three females sprawling like Bacchantes on the benches in the front row; I saw the three fateful women contemplating me and laughing more than ever, pointing grubby index fingers at me, gesturing and winking with terrible sarcasm. Some hidden spring snapped at last within me, perhaps some inner wire wound too tight: I got to my feet, and before the astonished gathering, I waved my hand at a pile of idiotic papers lying on the dais and sent them flying. Then, freed from the chains and walls in which I’d kept it prisoner, my soul cried out: “I killed her! I killed her!”
”Then I told all, before gloomy faces and the scratch of pens noting the horrors vomited up by my conscience. I told the story of the tragic night: how I’d slipped stealthily out of the Casino, sought and found Bellona on the rocky spur, how in our final quarrel I’d treacherously shoved her down onto the rocks below, how her last cry had been drowned out by the clamour of the waves; then my return to the Casino, under cover of the crowds streaming in and out; and finally the hours of darkness ticking by, and how I’d wished to stop them bearing me forward to the dawn.
The Man with Intellectual Eyes bowed his head and went silent.
– And afterward? Schultz asked him.
– The green fly has not come back to buzz before my eyes, answered the man.
– It hasn’t come back?
– It couldn’t come back any more. Nor have the three ghastly females returned.154
– It is just.
– You said it, affirmed the man. Now there reigns within me a peace as of an evenly balanced scale. Yes, some invisible weigh-scale has come to rest, its two pans at the same level.
He turned his disquieting eyes toward me:
– Does the gentleman not know the story? he asked me, as if in a daze. Well then, let me tell you about Bellona!
I backed away in horror, for I realized the Man with Intellectual Eyes was condemned eternally to repeat the story of his love and his crime.
XII
The eighth circle of hell corresponded to Pride; naturally, for Schultz was aware that Pride, being both cause and sum of the other passions, holds first place in the hierarchy of evil. As we headed for this new stronghold of human folly, I was admittedly feeling an inexpressible lassitude, only slightly mitigated by the thought that the end was nigh. Half-asleep, eyelids drooping, feet dragging, I was vaguely aware of the astrologer’s censorious perorations against that greedy impulse, which can afflict even the angelic hosts.
As I drifted along in this state of twilight awareness, we came to a halt in front of the portal to the eighth spiral. Contrary to what one might logically expect in such an eminent circle of hell, my eyes beheld no solemn gate, no frowning tribunal, no pompous entrance; instead, there was a big, grey-velvet curtain falling to the ground in rigid perpendicular folds. The hellish vestibule was bathed in a silvery, moon-cold light. At first, the spiritless luminosity made me even sleepier, but gradually it possessed my eyes and forced them awake, cleared my mind of mist, and shook every vestige of lethargy from my will.
More lucid than I’d ever been, body alert and soul tense, I was just reflecting on the effects of this light, fancying it to be the glimmer of intelligibility itself, when I saw something stir behind the curtain. From among its folds, a head protruded, then a pair of cautious arms, and finally the entire person emerged, clad in ostentatious garb full of numbers and allegories, in the manner of a magical robe. Great was my dismay when I recognized Samuel Tesler’s kimono, and greater still when I identified the philosopher of Monte Egmont Street himself in t
he man’s austere countenance. Samuel Tesler came toward us, head held high, hair a-glitter with golden bees, the dual horns of the initiate poking out from his locks.
– Thank God I’ve found you here! I cried jubilantly, stepping forward with my hand outstretched.
The philosopher’s hand stayed where it was:
– Sir, he told me with pompous dignity, such familiarity was acceptable in the physical world above. But here more formal protocols of address must be observed.
– Eye of Baal! I rejoined in a pained voice.
A pleased smile came over Samuel Tesler’s face:
– That’s better, even if that isn’t my real name, he said at last, recovering his ceremonious demeanour. I have climbed Mount Carmel and contemplated the truth facie a facie. My current address is number 50 Via Unitiva, Apartment 3. The light in this vestibule doesn’t do much for me; otherwise, you two would have noticed the mystical radiance surrounding my cranium, especially in the frontal and occipital zones. Nevertheless, I hope your noses haven’t missed the odour of myrrh emanating from my person.
He looked around him warily. Then he brought his enormous head close to our noses and said:
– Smell this perfume. It’ll knock your socks off!
We sniffed Samuel’s head. It really did smell, I had to admit, but not of sacred lotus or mystic rose. It reeked of a lotion they used to sell on Triunvirato Street, fancifully labelled Nuit d’amour.
– What do you think? the philosopher asked us, raising his hornèd forehead again.
Noticing we weren’t as entranced as he must have expected, he smiled, half scornful, half indulgent:
– I see the olfactory test hasn’t worked for you. What a pair of mulattos! We’ll try the visual test. You ought to know that through intensive practice of the most gruelling austerities I’ve inwardly achieved the reintegration of the Primitive Androgyne. Having restored the harmonious balance between the male and female principles of the manifest universe, I’ve abolished within myself all contradictions and have come to a comfortably paradisiac situation. My true name is Adameva.
Adam Buenosayres: A Novel Page 71