Nothing in Alexis could now suffer with his uncle’s debility or die at his imminent demise. The joyous buzz of the blood in his veins and the desires in his head prevented him from hearing the sick man’s ever fainter plaints. Alexis had entered on that ardent period when the body labours so energetically to build palaces between itself and the soul that the latter soon seems to have disappeared – until the day when illness or grief have slowly opened a painful fissure, through which the soul again appears. He had grown used to his uncle’s fatal illness, as we become used to everything around us that lasts for a certain time; and even though his uncle was still alive, since he had once made Alexis weep for the same reason that the dead always make us weep, he had behaved towards Baldassare as if he had actually been dead, and had begun to forget him.
When, on that particular day, his uncle had said to him, “Young Alexis, I’m giving you the carriage at the same time as the second horse,” he had realized that his uncle was thinking, “as otherwise you’d risk never having the carriage at all”, and he knew that this was an extremely sad thought. But he did not feel it to be such, as just now he had no more room within himself for any deep sadness.
A few days later, while reading, he was struck by the depiction of a villain who had been left unmoved by the most touching and tender affection of a dying man who adored him.
That evening, he was kept awake by the fear of being the villain in whom he had thought he could recognize himself. But the following day, he had such a lovely ride out on his horse, worked so well, and in addition felt so much affection for his living parents that he fell back into the habit of enjoying life without scruple, and sleeping without remorse.
Meanwhile, the Count of Sylvania, who was starting to lose his ability to walk, barely left his chateau any more. His friends and relatives spent all day with him, and he could confess to the most blameworthy folly or the most absurd extravagance, parade the most shocking paradox or hint at the most shocking failing, without his relatives uttering a word of reproach, or his friends allowing themselves to make a joke or contradict him. It seemed that he had been tacitly relieved of the responsibility for his deeds and words. It seemed in particular that, by swathing his ailments in their kindness, and even vanquishing them with their caresses, they were trying to stop him from hearing the last creaks and groans of his body as life departed from it.
He would spend long, delectable hours lying down and holding intimate conversations with himself, the only guest he had neglected to invite to supper during his lifetime. As he pampered his long-suffering body, and leant in resignation at the window gazing out to sea, he felt a melancholy joy. He decorated the scene of his death with images of this world – images which surged up within him but which distance, already detaching him from them, turned into something hazy and beautiful; and this deathbed scene, long premeditated but endlessly embellished and renewed with ardent melancholy, was like a work of art. Already he had sketched out in his mind’s eye his farewells to the Duchess Oliviane, his great Platonic friend, over whose salon he reigned, even though the greatest lords, the most renowned artists and the most brilliant people in Europe had gathered there. He felt as if he could already read the account of their last conversation:
“…The sun had set, and the sea, visible between the apple trees, was mauve. As light as weightless, withered wreaths, and as persistent as regrets, little blue and pink clouds were floating on the horizon. A melancholy row of poplar trees was immersed in shadow, their resigned heads bathed in a pink glow like that of a church; the last rays of the sun, without touching their trunks, dyed their branches and, from those balustrades of shadow, draped garlands of light. The breeze mingled the three aromas of sea, damp leaves and milk. Never had the Sylvanian countryside tempered the melancholy of evening with a more alluring tenderness.
“‘I loved you so much, but I gave you so little, my poor dear,’ she told him.
“‘What do you mean, Oliviane? You gave me so little, you say? You gave me all the more in that I asked you for less – much more, to be honest, than if sensual pleasure had played any part in our affections. Supernatural as a madonna, gentle as a nurse – I loved you and you rocked me in your arms. I loved you with a tenderness whose delicate forbearance no expectation of carnal pleasure ever came to ruffle. Did you not bring me, in exchange, incomparable friendship, exquisite tea, conversation both natural and ornate, and how many bouquets of fresh roses? You alone were able, with your maternal, expressive hands, to cool my burning, fevered brow, to pour honey into my withered lips, and fill my life with noble images.
“‘My dear friend, give me your hands so I may kiss them…’”
Only the indifference of Pia, a little princess from Syracuse, whom he still loved with all his senses and with his whole heart and who had fallen for Castruccio with a wild and invincible love, occasionally brought him back him to a crueller reality, albeit one which he strove to forget. Right up to the final days, he had still been present at parties where, as he walked along arm in arm with her, he thought he was humiliating his rival; but even then, at her side, he sensed that her deep eyes were distracted by another love that only her pity for a sick man made her try to disguise. And now he could not even manage this. He had so lost control of the movement of his legs that he was now unable to go out. But she would often come to see him, and as if she had entered the great conspiracy of kindness woven by the others, she would talk to him constantly with an ingenious affection that was no longer shown to be feigned, as it once had been, by her exclamations of indifference or the open expression of her anger. And he felt this gentle attentiveness, more than all the others, filling his whole being with its solace and delight.
But one day, as he was rising from his chair to go to table, his servant was amazed to see him walking with much more self-assurance. He summoned the doctor, who said he needed to wait before giving his verdict. The next day he was walking well. After a week, he was allowed to go out. His friends and relatives were then filled with an immense hope. The doctor thought that a simple and curable nervous disease had perhaps been the initial cause of the symptoms of general paralysis – which was now, indeed, starting to disappear. He presented his doubts to Baldassare as a certainty, and told him, “You are saved!”
The man who had been sentenced to death expressed deep joy and emotion on learning that he had been pardoned. But after a while, as his recovery continued to make progress, a persistent note of disquiet started to make itself heard beneath the joy that had already started to fade as he grew used to it. Sheltered from life’s storms, in that propitious atmosphere of all-pervasive gentleness, enforced calm and untrammelled meditation, deep within him the seed of an obscure desire for death had started to grow. He was still far from suspecting its existence, and merely felt a vague panic at the thought of having to start living again, having to suffer the blows which he had lost the habit of enduring, and being forced to lose the caresses that had recently enfolded him. He was also dimly aware that it would be wrong to lose himself in pleasure or action, now that he had learnt to know himself, and become acquainted with the fraternal stranger who, as he watched the boats furrowing the sea, had conversed with him for hours on end, far away, so close, within him. As if now he were sensing an as yet unknown love, newly born, awakening within him, like a young man who has been deceived about his true original homeland, he felt a longing for death, for which he had once felt he was setting out as if into eternal exile.
He ventured an idea, and Jean Galéas, who knew he was cured, contradicted him violently and teased him. His sister-in-law, who for two months had been visiting him every evening and morning, went for two days without coming to see him. It was too much! For too long he had lost the habit of bearing life’s burdens, and he no longer wished to pick them up again. And this was because life had not managed to recapture him with her charms. His strength returned, and with it all his desire to live; he went out, started livi
ng once more, and died to himself a second time. After a month, the symptoms of general paralysis reappeared. Little by little, just as before, walking became difficult and then impossible for him, but gradually enough for him to grow accustomed to his return to death, so that he now had time to avert his gaze from it. His relapse did not even have the advantage of the first attack – then, he had eventually begun to detach himself from life, no longer seeing it in its reality but gazing on it, like a picture. Now, conversely, he was becoming vainer, more irritable, pierced by longing for the pleasures he could no longer enjoy.
His sister-in-law, whom he loved tenderly, was the only one who brought some solace to his final days, coming to see him several times a day, with Alexis.
One afternoon, as she was going to see the Viscount, just as she was drawing up to his house, the horses of her carriage suddenly took fright; she was violently flung out, trampled by a horseman who was galloping by, and brought into Baldassare’s house unconscious, with her skull split open.
The coach driver, who had not been wounded, immediately came to announce the accident to the Viscount, whose face turned waxen with shock and anger. His teeth were clenched, his eyes flashed and bulged and, in a terrible outburst of wrath, he hurled prolonged abuse at the coach driver; but it seemed as if these explosions of violence were an attempt to disguise a cry of pain which, in the intervals, could faintly be heard. It was as if, next to the infuriated Viscount, there was a sick man lamenting. Soon this plaint, at first feeble, stifled his cries of anger, and he fell onto a chair, sobbing.
Then he wanted to have his face washed so that his sister-in-law would not be alarmed by the traces of his grief. His servant shook his head sadly; the wounded woman had not regained consciousness. The Viscount spent two desperate days and nights at his sister-in-law’s side. At any moment she might die. On the second night, a hazardous operation was attempted. On the morning of the third day, her fever had fallen, and the patient smiled as she looked at Baldassare who, unable to hold back his tears any longer, wept uninterruptedly for joy. While death had been approaching him little by little, he had refused to see it; now he had found himself suddenly in its presence. It had terrified him by threatening what he held most dear; he had begged it for mercy, and he had forced death to yield.
He felt strong and free, proudly sensing that his own life was not as precious to him as was that of his sister-in-law, and that he could view it with so much scorn now that she, a different person, had filled him with pity. It was death, now, that he could look in the face, and not the scenes he had imagined would accompany that death. He wanted to remain as he now was right up to the end, and no longer give in to the lie which, by trying to arrange a fine and splendid deathbed agony for him, would have thereby committed the last and worst of its profanations, sullying the mysteries of his death just as it had hidden from him the mysteries of his life.
4
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time –
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
– Shakespeare, Macbeth*
The stress and upheaval Baldassare had experienced during his sister-in-law’s illness had accelerated his own malady. He had just heard from his confessor that he had less than a month to live; it was ten o’clock in the morning, and it was pouring with rain. A carriage stopped outside the chateau. It was Duchess Oliviane. When he had been making those artistic arrangements for the scene of his death, he had told himself:
“…it will happen on a clear evening. The sun will have set, and the sea, visible between the apple trees, will be mauve. As light as weightless, withered wreathes, and as persistent as regrets, little blue and pink clouds will be floating on the horizon…”
It was ten in the morning, under a louring, filthy sky, as the rain came pelting down, when Duchess Oliviane arrived; and, worn out by his illness, his mind entirely given over to higher things, and no longer susceptible to the grace of all that had once seemed to constitute the value, the charm, the splendour and refinement of life, he asked them to tell the Duchess that he was not strong enough to see her. She insisted, but he refused to receive her. And this was not even out of a sense of duty: she meant nothing to him any more. Death had made short work of breaking those bonds whose capacity to enslave him he had for some weeks so greatly feared. When he tried to think of her, he saw nothing appear before his mind’s eye, and the eyes of his imagination and his vanity had closed.
However, about one week before his death, the announcement of a ball to be given by the Duchess of Bohemia, at which Pia was to lead the cotillion with Castruccio, who was leaving for Denmark the next day, reawoke his jealousy in all its fury. He asked for Pia to come to him; his sister-in-law resisted his request for a while; he thought that they were preventing him from seeing her, that they were persecuting him; he flew into a rage, and so as not to torment him further, they immediately sent for her.
When she arrived, he was completely calm, but in a deep state of sadness. He drew her over to his bed and immediately started talking to her about the Duchess of Bohemia’s ball. He told her:
“We were not related, you won’t need to go into mourning for me, but I wish to beg one thing of you: promise me you won’t go to that ball.”
They gazed into one another’s eyes, from which their souls seemed to peer out – those melancholy, passionate souls that death had not succeeded in uniting.
He understood her hesitation, pressed his lips together painfully and gently told her:
“Oh! It’s better if you don’t promise! Don’t break a promise made to a dying man. If you’re not sure you can keep your promise, don’t make one.”
“I can’t promise you that, I haven’t seen him for two months and I may never see him again; nothing would ever console me, in all eternity, if I didn’t go to that ball.”
“You’re right, since you love him, and death may happen any minute… and you are still living life to the full… But you will do one little thing for me; during the time you spend at the ball, set aside the period that you’d have been obliged to spend with me so as to divert suspicion from you. Invite my soul to remember for a few moments, together with you – spare some thought for me.”
“I hardly dare promise you that, the ball will last such a short time. Even if I don’t leave his side, I will hardly have time to see him. I’ll set aside some time for you on all the days that follow.”
“You won’t be able to, you’ll forget me; but if, after one year – alas! More than that, perhaps – something sad that you read, someone’s death or a rainy evening make you think of me, what charity you will be doing me! I’ll never, ever see you again… except in spirit, and for that to happen, we’d need to be thinking of each other simultaneously. I will think of you always, so that my soul will always be open to you, if you wish to enter it. But how long the guest will keep me waiting! The November rains will have rotted the flowers on my tomb, June will have withered them, and my soul will still be weeping with impatience. Ah! I hope that one day, the sight of some souvenir, the return of an anniversary, the drift of your thoughts will lead your memory into the neighbourhood of my tenderness; then it will be as if I had heard you and spotted you coming, and some magic spell will have decked everything out with flowers for your arrival. Think of the dead man. But, ah! – can I hope that death, and your own sense of the gravity of things, will accomplish what life, with all its passion, and all our tears, and our moments of gaiety, and our lips, could not?”
5
Now cracks a noble heart; good night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
– Shakespeare, Hamlet*
Meanwhile, a violent fever accompanied by delirium refused to loosen its grip on the Viscount; a bed had been made up for him in the vast rotunda where Alexis had seen him on his thirteenth birthday, when he had still been so cheerful, and from which the sick man could now look out over the sea and the harbour jetty and at the same time, on the other side, the pastures and the woods. Now and then, he would start to speak; but his words no longer bore the trace of those thoughts of higher things that, over the last weeks, had purified him with their visit. In violent imprecations against some invisible person who kept teasing him, he insisted over and over again that he was the finest musician of his century and the greatest lord in the universe. Then, suddenly calming down, he would tell his coach driver to take him to some humble lodge and have his horses saddled up for hunting. He asked for writing paper to invite to dinner all the sovereigns of Europe on the occasion of his marriage with the sister of the Duke of Parma; alarmed that he might not be able to pay off a gambling debt, he would seize the paperknife placed near his bed and point it in front of him like a revolver. He would send out messengers to find out whether the policeman he had beaten up the previous night was dead, and he would utter obscenities to a person whose hand he thought he was holding. Those exterminating angels called Will and Thought were no longer there to thrust back into the shadows the evil spirits of his senses and the foul emanations of his memory. After three days, at around five o’clock, he awoke as you wake from some bad dream for which you are not responsible, but which you indistinctly remember. He asked if any friends or relatives had been near him during those hours in which he had presented only the most negligible, most primitive and most lifeless side of himself, and he begged his servants, if he were again overcome by delirium, to show those acquaintances out and allow them back in only when he had regained consciousness.
Pleasures and Days Page 4