by Richard Klaw
His youth was fresh and pure: he was seventeen years old, or rather he was sixty, one hundred years, centuries. He was old and broken, worn and battered by the winds of the heart through all the storms of the soul. Ask the ocean how many wrinkles it wears on its forehead; count the waves in a tempest!
He had lived for a long time, long ago, not by the thought—the meditations of the learned or their dreams had not taken one moment in his life—but he had lived and aged in his soul, and he was already old by the heart.
Still, his affections had turned on no one because there was in him turmoil of the strangest sentiments, confusion of the strangest sensations. Poetry had dethroned logic, and passion had taken the place of science. Sometimes he thought he heard voices speaking to him behind a rose bush and melodies that fell from the heavens; nature possessed him in all its aspects: delight of the soul, burning passion, gluttonous appetite.
It was the sum of a great moral and physical weakness, with a vehemence of the heart but a fragile core that broke before each obstacle, like the senseless lightning bolt that destroys a palace, burns tiaras, cuts down the humble cottages and dies in a puddle.
This was the freak of nature that lived with Paul, who was a monster, too, or rather was a marvel of civilization, a marvel that possessed all the symbols pertaining to greatness of the mind and dryness of the heart. When Paul found little interest in the outpourings of the soul and the sweet talks of the heart, Djalioh loved the dreams of the night and the slumber of reason. His soul attached itself to all things beautiful and sublime: like ivy clings to ruins, flowers to spring, bodies to tombs, woes to men, his soul clung to beautiful things and died with them. Where intelligence found its boundaries, the heart reigned. He was immense and infinite because he understood the world through his love. Therefore he loved Adele. But above everything else, he loved her as he loved Nature, with a gentle and universal sympathy, and then his love for her gradually increased as his tenderness for every other being decreased.
Indeed we are all born with a certain amount of tenderness and love that we throw away merrily on the first things we encounter: horses, places, honors, thrones, women, sensual pleasures, and what else? We throw our love to the winds, to any current. But let us gather all this love, and we will have an immense treasure. Sprinkle tons of gold nuggets on the surface of the desert: the sand will soon swallow them up, but put the chunks of gold all together, in a heap, and you will shape a pyramid. Likewise, Djalioh concentrated all his soul on a single thought, and that thought nourished his life.
IV
The fatal fortnight had passed as a long wait for the girl, and one of cold indifference for her future husband.
The girl saw in the marriage a husband, cashmeres to buy, an opera box, horse racing in the Bois de Boulogne, balls all winter long, oh! as many as she liked! And then again everything a girl of eighteen dreams of in her golden dreams in her closed alcove.
The husband instead saw in the marriage a woman, and cashmeres for which he would have to pay, a little doll to dress, and then again everything a poor husband dreams of as he leads his wife to the ball. That man, however, was conceited enough to believe all women were in love with him.
In fact, he addressed the question to himself whenever he looked at his reflection in the mirror and when he had well combed his black whiskers. He would take a wife because he was bored of being alone and he did not want to keep a mistress, since he had discovered that his butler had one. Also, marriage would force him to stay at home and his health would be better for it: he would have an excuse not to go hunting, since hunting bored him, and finally, he needed a wife for the best of all reasons: he would have love, devotion, domestic happiness, tranquility, children...bah! much better than these, he would have fifty thousand a year in good farms, pretty bank notes that he could place in Spain. He had been to Paris, had bought an opera box for ten thousand francs, sent one hundred and twenty invitations to the ball, and returned to his stepmother’s castle, all in eight days. He was a wonderful man.
It was a Sunday in September when the wedding took place. The day was damp and cold. A thick fog hung over the valley. The sand of the garden clung to the ladies’ new shoes. Mass being said at ten o’clock, few people were attending. Djalioh allowed himself to be pushed inside by the flow of villagers. Incense burned upon the altar. The air was warm and scented. The church was low, old, small, smeared with white; a smart heritage curator had spared the stained-glass windows. Around the choir stood the guests: the mayor, his council, friends, the lawyer, a doctor, and the singers in white surplices. All wore white gloves and a serene air. Each fished out of his purse a five-franc piece. The silvery sound falling on the platter interrupted the monotony of the church songs. The bell rang.
Djalioh remembered having heard the bell sing over a coffin one day. He’d also seen people dressed in black pray over a dead body. And then, with his eyes on the bride in white as she bowed over the altar, with flowers on her dress and a triple string of pearls around her bare, arching neck, a horrible thought froze him. He staggered and leant against a niche that once harbored a saint (only the face remained, and it was grotesque and horrible to look upon).
Next to Adele, there he was, he, her beloved, and she looked so indulgently at him, at his big blue eyes underneath black eyebrows. His eyes shone like two diamonds set in ebony. Through tortoise-shell glasses inlaid with gold he peered at all the women as he waddled on his crimson velvet chair.
Djalioh stood motionless and silent. No one noticed the pallor of his face and the bitterness of his smile because they believed him cold and removed as the stone monster grimacing behind him, but in reality a storm reigned in his soul and anger simmered in his heart, like the volcanoes of Iceland under their heads whitened by snow. It was not a sudden violent frenzy: it was an inner turmoil without cries, without tears, without profanities, without effort. He remained silent and his eyes spoke no more than his lips. His eyes were lead, his face stupid.
Young and pretty women have a fresh, smooth, satin-white skin for many years, and then they languish, their eyes lose their brightness, become dull, close forever in the end, and then the lithe and graceful woman who used to run across the salons with flowers in her hair, whose hands were so fair, who smelled like musk and rose, well! One day, a friend, maybe a doctor, tells you that, two inches lower than her cleavage, she had cancer in her lung and she died, that her skin is now as fresh as the skin of a corpse. This is the story of all the intimate passions, of all frozen smiles.
The curse that mars love laughs horribly. Stifling the pain is a greater torture. Do not believe in smiles, joy and mirth. What must we believe?... Believe in tombs: their sanctuary is inviolable and they offer a dreamless slumber.
What an abyss opens under our feet when we hear the word “forever”! Think for a moment about the meaning of these words: life, death, despair, joy, happiness. Ask yourself, the day when you cry over some loved one and moan at night on a pallet strewn with insomnia, ask yourself why we live, why we die, and for what purpose. A wind of misfortune and despair. We are grains of sand that ride the hurricane. What is this hydra that feeds on our tears and delights in our unhappiness? What is this all about?... And then your head spins, and you feel dragged into the boundless abyss, at the bottom of which resounds an enormous, pulsating, mad laughter.
There are things in life and ideas in the soul that draw you inevitably to the satanic worlds, as though your head were made of iron and a magnet for misfortune dragged you there. Oh! a skull! Its hollow and fixed orbits, the yellow color of its surface, its chipped jaw, would death then be reality, and would truth lie in nothingness only?
It is in this bottomless pit of doubt and pain that Djalioh had lost himself. Seeing the festive ambience, these smiling faces, seeing Adele, his love, his life, the charm of her countenance, the sweetness of her gaze, he wondered why he was denied all this: like a person sentenced to death and left to starve while iron bars separated him from the f
ood that could save his life.
He did not know why that feeling was different from any other, because if someone in sunny America had come to ask him to share a palm tree’s shade, or a fruit of his garden, he would gladly have offered everything. Why, he asked himself, is the love I have for her so exclusive and intractable? It must be that love is a world, and unity is indivisible. And then he bowed his head on his chest and wept silently, like a child.
Only once a hoarse cry escaped him, piercing as that of an owl, but it mingled with the soft, melodious voice of the organ playing the Te Deum. The sounds, pure and rich, rose and reverberated across the nave along with the incense...
He realized then that the guests were whispering and moving the chairs, and as they rose, a sunbeam fingered through the windows, gleaming on the golden bow in the bride’s hair, and for a few moments the sun shone on the gilded bars of the cemetery, the only land between the town hall and the church. The grass is very green in cemeteries, high, thick and well fertilized. The guests’ feet were soaked through, their white stockings and shining shoes soiled so that they hurled oaths at the dead.
The mayor had taken position, standing on top of a square table covered with green cloth. When the moment came to pronounce the fatal “I will,” Paul smiled, Adele turned pale, and Mrs. de Lansac pulled out her smelling salts. Adele then thought about what had just happened—the poor girl could not believe it. She who, only a few moments before, had been so excited, so pensive, running across the meadows, reading novels, poetry, tales, riding her gray mare down the paths of the forest, she who loved to hear the rustling of leaves, the murmur of streams, she had suddenly become a lady, that is to say something that has a large shawl, and goes alone in the streets! All these vague presentiments, these intimate emotions of the heart, this need for poetry, for sensations that made her dream about the future, about herself. Everything would be explained, she thought, as if she had just woken from a dream! Alas! She didn’t know that all the poor children of the heart and of the imagination are fated to be smothered in the cradle between domestic chores and caresses to be provided to a surly creature that has rheumatism and corns, and is called a husband.
When the crowd parted to let the procession pass, Adele felt a sudden pain, as if an iron claw had slit her hand. It was Djalioh who had scratched her with his nails as she passed. Her torn glove soaked red with blood, she wrapped a handkerchief around her hand. As she turned to enter her carriage, she saw Djalioh leaning against the step. A shudder seized her and she rushed into the car.
He was pale as the bride’s dress. His thick lips, chapped and covered with cold sores, had moved as if he’d been speaking quickly. His eyelids twitched and his eyes rolled slowly in their sockets, like an idiot’s eyes.
V
In the evening there was a ball at the castle and lanterns lit behind every window. A procession of carriages, horses and servants turned up at the gate.
From time to time one could see a light appear through the elms, drawing near, following miles of winding lanes until it stopped before the door: it was a carriage drawn by horses dripping sweat. The carriage door opened and a woman stepped down, and she was young or old, ugly or beautiful, dressed in pink or white, whatever you want, and then, after restoring the architecture of her hair by a few hastitly applied strokes, she rushed into the hall. In the light of the lamps, and among the green trees and flowers and grass painted on the walls, she left her coat and boa in the lackeys’ hands, and entered. They opened the double doors for her. She was announced, which produced a great noise of chairs and feet, guests rising, greeting her, and then ensued the thousand and one conversations, those little things, these charming trifles that buzz in salons and flutter from side to side as fog-light in a greenhouse.
The dancing began at ten o’clock, and inside one could hear shoes slide on the floor, the swishing of skirts, the sound of music, the rhythms of dance and, outside, the rustling of leaves, carriage wheels rolling over wet earth, swans flapping their wings on the pond; in the village there barked a dog at noises from the castle, and then arose a few naive and mocking remarks among peasants whose heads poked out through lounge windows.
In one corner of the salon was a group of young men, friends of Paul’s, his former companions in debauchery, in yellow or azure gloves, with spectacles, tailcoats with swallow-tail, medieval heads and such beards as neither Rembrandt nor any painter of the Flemish school had ever dreamed of.
“Tell me, pray,” said one of them, a member of the Jockey Club, “whose is that scowling face, wrinkled as an old saddle, which is behind the sofa where your wife is?”
“That one? That’s Djalioh.”
“Djalioh who?”
“Oh, it’s quite a story.”
“Do tell!” said one of the young men, whose hair was flattened and plastered on both ears, and who also had bad eyesight. “Since we have nothing to amuse us.”
“Some punch at least?” replied a tall, thin, pale man with high cheekbones. “As for me, I won’t have any, and for good reason...It’s too much.”
“Cigars?” said the Jockey Club member.
“Pooh! Cigars! What are you thinking, Ernest? In front of the women?”
“On the contrary, they are crazy about it. I have ten mistresses who smoke like dragons, including two who have seasoned all my pipes.”
“I have one that drinks kirsch delightfully.”
“Drink!” said a guest who liked neither cigars nor punch or dance or music. “No! Paul should tell his story.”
“My dear friends, it’s not a long story. Here it is. I bet with Mr. Petterwell, a friend of mine who is a planter in Brazil. I bet a bundle of Virginia against Mirsa, one of his slaves, that apes...yes, we can raise an ape, that is to say...he challenged me to pass an ape for a man.”
“What? Djalioh is an ape?”
“Fool! No, he’s not!”
“So what?”
“What I need to explain is that, during my trip to Brazil, I very much amused myself. Petterwell had recently acquired a black slave that had just disembarked from the old Bahamas Channel. I’m damned if I remember her name. Finally, this woman had no husband. The ridicule would befall no one. She was very pretty. I bought her from Petterwell; the fool never wanted to sleep with me. She probably thought I was uglier than a savage!”
All laughed. Paul blushed.
“Finally one day, as I was bored, I bought from a Negro the most beautiful orangutan I’d ever seen. The Academy of Sciences had been trying to solve a mystery for a long time: whether there might be a mongrel of monkey and man. I had to avenge myself on that little fool of a Negress, and so one day, upon my return from hunting, I found my ape, Bell, which I’d locked up in my room with the slave, escaped and gone, the slave in tears and all bloody from Bell’s claws. A few weeks after she felt pains in the abdomen and nausea. Well! Finally, five months later, she vomited for several days. I was almost sure of my case. Once she had an attack of nerves so violent that she had to be bled at the four limbs, because I would have been distressed if she’d died. In short, after seven months, one day she gave birth on the manure. She died within hours, but the baby was doing beautifully. I was, well, glad that the scientific issue was resolved.
“I sent my report to the Institute, and the Minister, at their request, sent me the cross of honor.”
“Never mind, my dear Paul. Everyone has it now.”
“I wear it for a futile reason! Women like it: they look at it with a smile while you talk to them. Finally, I raised the child. I loved him like my own.”
“Ah! ah!” said a gentleman who had white teeth and laughed all the time, “Why didn’t you bring him to France in one of your other trips?”
“I preferred him to stay in his homeland until my final departure, especially since the age set by the bet was sixteen, because it was concluded the first year of my arrival in Janeiro. In short, I won Mirsa, I had the cross of honor when I was twenty and I had a child by unusual mean
s.”
“Infernal! Dantesque!” said a pale friend.
“Laughable! Funny!” said another who had fat cheeks and a ruddy complexion.
“Bravo!” said the horseman.
“I could die laughing!” said a small man, writhing with pleasure on an elastic sofa, leaping and wriggling like a fish. This one had a steep forehead, small eyes, flat nose, thin lips. He was round as an apple and fruiting like a mushroom: the trick Paul had just recounted was quite remarkable and only a master, never an ordinary man, would have pulled it off!
“Well, what does Djalioh do? Does he like cigars?” said the smoker, showing both hands full of cigars and dropping them on purpose on a lady’s lap.
“Not at all, my dear, he abhors them.”
“Does he hunt, then?”
“Even less. Gunshots scare him.”
“Surely he works, he reads, he writes all day?”
“He would, if only he could read and write.”
“Does he like horses?” asked the cripple.
“He does not.”
“He’s a quite inert and dull animal, then. Does he like sex?”
“One day I took him to see the girls, and he fled, after stealing a rose and a mirror.”
“Decidedly, he’s an idiot,” everyone said. And the group went to smile and bow to the simpering ladies who, in the absence of dancers, had been yawning. It was getting late, the hours advancing at the rhythm of the music that bounced on the carpet, and time passed with the dance and the women. The clock struck midnight as everyone galloped. Since the beginning of the ball, Djalioh had been sitting on a chair, near the musicians. Now and then he left his place to change sides. If someone from the party, gay and carefree, happy with the noise, content with the wine—intoxicated by these women with half-bare breasts, smiling lips and soft eyes—glanced at him, he immediately became pale and sad. That’s why his presence embarrassed everyone, as he stood out in the middle of the cheery ball like a ghost or a demon. Finally the dancers, tired, sat down. Everything then became quieter. The waiters served barley water, and the only noise was now the tinkling of glasses on the trays that interrupted the buzz of all the voices talking at the same time. The piano was open, a violin resting on it, and a bow beside. Djalioh grabbed the instrument, turned it in his hands several times like a child holding a toy and then he touched the bow and bent it so hard it nearly broke. Then he put the violin to his chin, and everybody laughed, as the music was wrong, weird, incoherent. Djalioh looked at all these men, these women, sitting, doubled over, spread out on benches, chairs, armchairs—he looked at them with big wondering eyes. He did not understand this sudden laughter and merriment. He continued playing.