Louis Couperus
Her name was Fatma and she lived at one of her country houses in the environs of Baghdad. She was Bluebeard's daughter from his first marriage and she was a wondrously beautiful woman; around her moon-pale face her blue hair cascaded like a cloak down her slender
It is not generally known that Bluebeard had a daughter. It is commonly thought that he, childless, was vanquished by the brothers of his last, I believe ninth, wife who was said to have inherited all his riches. When one has searched, as I have, the secret archives of the Lay, one discovers without too much difficulty that Bluebeard, his skull cleft in two, died in his daughter's arms and left her all his possessions.
The young orphan, the bewitching Fatma, had loved her father most dearly, as he had loved her, though she had never been able to come to accept the manner in which he freed himself of his many disobedient wives. She thought this manner to be not mild, not noble, and monotonous in its psychology. She understood too well that, each time, her new stepmother had had to give in to the temptation of her curiosity. She did not gloss over her father's actions, and considered them to be something of an inexcusable expression of sadism.
The azure-tressed Fatma, a youthful orphan, continued lonely among her countless riches and all her servants and slaves who surrounded her like a royal progress as it were. The notable families in Baghdad, at the court of the Caliph, spoke much about the young, rich, blue-haired one but, her immeasurable riches notwithstanding, not one desired her as the bride for a son or a nephew. Her tresses evoked too many memories of terrible things, so the beautiful Fatma remained alone on her onyx terraces which made their progress among date copses and rose gardens to her crystal clear, reflecting ponds ... And she, likewise lonely, wandered back between the onyx pillars of the galleries to her summer palace which, paved with gold and silver tiles, was also clad with gold and silver roofing.
Until she could bear the loneliness no longer and ignited in virgin love for the foreman of her gardeners. He was a very handsome youth, come from the country, and the rusticity of his occupation gave him in Fatma's eyes, which were a little tired through over-refinement, an irresistible power to enchant. Therefore she married him without concerning herself about what would be said about her among the notable Baghdad families or at the Caliph's court.
Fatma seemed very happy. She displayed herself together with her spouse in full splendour and precious elegance, in town and countryside, in tapestry-adorned gondolas on the ponds, in cushion-filled sedan chairs in the streets, with a train of slaves in the bazaars and even at the court feasts which, because of her rank and wealth, she had entry to. Fatma together with her beloved Emin formed an enchantingly beautiful couple: he, sturdy and young, and glorying in his new wealth - the type did not exist then at all yet - she, glittering with love and priceless jewels which glinted on her gauze turban and weighed down the hems of her robes, while her azure tresses had been woven through with wondrously large pearls. And already the notable Baghdad families sadly regretted not having made any effort to win Bluebeard's daughter for their sons or nephews ...
Suddenly, however, the rumour spread that Emin had died ... Only the previous day, all Baghdadians had seen him in the Mosque, and lo: one learnt that ... that he had died! A shudder passed through the city but still there was no cause for the GrandVizir and the Grand Procurator to get involved in the case now that the perfectly credible rumour circulated that Emin, on that warm day, had eaten too much watermelon and had succumbed subsequently to a severe colic.
Eyebrows in Baghdad were raised, however, when it was learned three months later that the young, azure-tressed widow was to remarry, to marry the lieutenant of her bodyguard, to be precise. It seemed that Fatma had too wide a choice from among her staff, servants and subjects even to be bothered with the sons and nephews of the notable families of Baghdad. The wedding took place with magical pomp and Fatma's new spouse gloried, as Emin had done, now he saw himself elevated from such a lowly rank to that of consort of his magically beautiful, magically rich mistress. But the young lieutenant - Fatma had elevated him to General of her life guard - died suddenly, of a fall from his horse, it was said. The message was unclear: had the young lieutenant or the horse taken a fall? Moreover, no one had seen the young lieutenantgeneral of Fatma's bodyguard, neither on a horse nor taking a fall ... indeed, nobody had seen him on the day of his death, and fierce emotion coursed through the Baghdad families and pervaded the Court of the Caliph, for they remembered all too well that Fatma was blue-tressed the way once her father had been blue-bearded.
The sorrowing widow Fatma, in her black veils and weeds covered in black diamonds, resembled a Queen of the Night, particularly as her blue hair shimmered through the mourning veils so suggestively that, without applying any stage-paint, she would have been able to appear in Mozart's Zauberflote. However, she did not sing such demanding and difficult coloratura and preferred to please herself by taking a third spouse: this time, quite simply, one of her palanquin bearers. That the young Ali was a splendid specimen of a man who, as third spouse, now looked like a young sultan in his damask cymar, this it was not possible to doubt, but what was doubted among the notable families at the Court of the Caliph was whether, after three months of married life, he had indeed died a natural How might such a strong, handsome, healthy man as Fatma's palanquin-bearer-consort have died, of natural causes - following malaria it was said - and been buried quietly, without any ado?! Heads nodded to one another, eyes distorted in horror, mouths contorted with secret suppositions, and the Grand-Vizir and the Grand-Procurator deliberated whether they would not involve themselves with the Fatma-affair, with that dying-and-disappearing-after-three-months-of-marriage of one spouse after the other!
They deliberated so long, however, that Fatma married for the fourth, fifth and sixth times. The fourth time was with a Persian merchant from Teheran for whom a long life had been predicted from the lines in his hand; the fifth was with one of the rowers of her pleasure gondolas; the sixth time with a humble slave who worked in Fatma's emerald mine. Each time, after three months, the ill-fated spouses died. And the widow went about Baghdad like the Queen of the
Then the limit seemed to have been reached. The Grand-Vizir and the Grand-Procurator appeared before Fatma's pleasure dome but it seemed that she had moved to another abode. For she had several: the one with the onyx terraces and then the one with the mother-of-pearl ballroom, the one with the chrysolite turrets, not to mention the one with the agate bathroom, the one with the fountains of quicksilver and the one with the secret libraries full of occult Which meant that having trudged from one pleasure dome to the next and drawing a blank everywhere, the Grand-Vizir and the Grand-Procurator finally found Fatma at home in her pleasure dome of
She received them, a little irked. She was not as the Queen of the Night: the beautiful, azure-tressed widow of six men looked more like a peri from Paradise, in her transparent, white veils, but a slightly irked peri she was,
What is your business?' she asked, haughtily.
'To know the cause of death of your sixth spouse?'
'Do you first begin,' asked Fatma, 'your researches with my sixth spouse7'
'We will ascend to your first!' the grandees threatened.
'I would rather descend to my last,' said Fatma: 'and I have only this to say to you: that I have little to say to you. My sixth spouse has died ... from a tertian
The mighty gentlemen wished to give a nasty reply but at this moment, suddenly, the emerald-worker, Fatma's sixth spouse, appeared, alive and well. He looked healthy, solid and lovely, and under his arm he carried a few folios.
'What is this?' the mighty gentlemen cried.
Fatma shrugged her slender shoulders.
'It is nothing,' Fatma deigned to reply: 'other than that the dear boy is not dead. He is only a little stupid and that is why, in order to give him a little more colour to his conversation, I brought him to this pleasure dome of the Secret Libraries, that he might
read a little at his leisure...'
'But,' - something suddenly dawned on the Grand-Vizir - 'what about your other five spouses, 0 blue-bearded, I mean blue-tressed Fatma?'
Again Fatma shrugged those ever-slender shoulders.
'They're alive,' she confessed: 'the way this emerald-workerspouse is alive. However, I sequestered my gondola-rower-spouse in my pleasure dome of the quicksilver fountains, to teach him to be a little quicker in his occupation as gondolier-husband, for he tarried too often for my taste in rowing the marriage-boat on the ponds of love, and quicksilver, administered in small doses, chases the blood through the veins; my Persian merchant still continues to live out his life, which will be a long one, but in my villa with the agate bathroom, for at times he reeked vilely of his camels; my palanquin-bearer-consort I locked up in my chrysolite tower for he would only play pranks, the miscreant, on my handmaidens and I wished to keep him to myself alone. And then we still have my lieutenant-general; well, gentlemen, with him I dance each night in my mother-of-pearl ballroom; he dances divinely and it is simply not fitting that such an intimate pleasure should unfold in the sight of each and everyone: the dear man therefore waits quietly in the mother-of-pearl ballroom, until I arrive and And actually, you know, my first boy is the dearest to me - remember, my gardener? - and truly he, too, is still alive and he dwells at no greater distance from the onyx terraces than I require to reach him every moment that I long for You regard me most strangely, mighty gentlemen, but it is not otherwise. Look, I am Bluebeard's daughter, and I take after him in soul and tress. He had need of many women, I have need of many men. He, however, killed his wives, on the pretext that they were disobedient to him; I never killed my spouses; I preferred to lock them up, to civilise them and to be mistress over them. If I am hysterical then, at the same time, I am highly feminist, too; in all respects I am a woman. What more do you wish to know?'
And proud Fatma stood tall, upright, confronting the two dignitaries of the Caliph. But these, most unexpectedly, called out for their henchman and ordered:
'Drag this wicked woman along with you, drag her before the Overlord's divan!'
Thus it came to pass. Fatma, Bluebeard's daughter, was dragged along all the streets and across all the squares of Baghdad until she arrived before the divan of the Caliph who condemned her to lay that azure-tressed head on the block.
'It is strange,' Fatma thought while she was being placed into the hands of her executioners: 'my father murdered his wives and people judged him severely for this. I myself objected to his actions ... I, his daughter, never murdered my husbands: I cared for them lovingly, reared them, civilised them and developed their qualities - in a slightly restricted fashion, it is true - in onyx gardens, chrysolite towers, mother-of-pearl ballrooms and what have and this view on marriage, no matter how well considered, is disapproved of too ...'
'It is went on weaving her thoughts: 'but I believe, I am almost sure, that it is not possible to influence public opinion favourably with regard to love and marriage ... when one has a blue beard or azure tresses ...'
And, melancholy for a moment about this incontrovertible philosophy, she bowed the blue-washed head on to the block ...
Attempted a moment yet to solve the problem .. .
But failed, for, in a stream of purple, her last thoughts fled her twain-cleft neck ...
And the azure-tressed head of Bluebeard's daughter lay in blood on the floor of the Court of justice ...
Upon which the six men inherited.
Louis Couperus
Did Bluebeard leave a daughter, then it is likewise a fact that Don Juan left behind a son. You do remember, 0 reader, the history of Don Juan Tenorio, were it only through Mozart's opera in which, however, the son, Don Juanito Tenorio, was given no part to
When Don Juan was dragged by the powers of Hell beneath the floor of his dining room - where there was not the usual cellar but, it turned out, an infernal place of punishment (I refer you once again to the Opera and its mise-en-scene) - Dona Elvira, Don Juan's a touch boring spouse, was left behind with an only son: Don Juanito. She lived, as you know, in Burgos and as she had been through much with her gloriously faithless husband, she indentured her son to a Jesuit monastery, hoping Juanito would learn to tread more virtuous paths than his father had done. Now I really don't want to speak ill of the Jesuits nor of Don Juanito or anyone else, but I cannot keep it from you that, in the monastery school of the Jesuits, Don Juanito took on that proper-posh, chaste, lips-clenched and sickly-sweet smiling quality which, as a young man, did characterise him. Had his father been a dashing cavalier, a magnificent wrongdoer, a sublime seducer, a superb sinner, a royal concupiscent, his son Don Juanito seemed, no matter what, to be turning into what would seem to be an unctuous hypocrite. Would seem, I said, for in fact Don Juanito did not become a hypocrite. Don Juanito, with his pale, fine, Spanish Greco-face, his dark but pious eyes, his black but straight, black hair - what a lovely curly head Don Juan's had been! All women loved to stroke Don Juanito did not become a hypocrite and did not saint it in public and sin it in private at all. He was very pious; he prayed a lot, he prayed boundlessly for his father's soul who, following the banquet with the Stone Guest, had disappeared like that in flames and smoke underneath the floor of the dining room. No, truly: Dona Elvira - now she had always been very dull and we ought also to regard Don Juan's case modern-psychologically for once - did achieve her goal in the last years of her life: Don Juanito seemed to be about to do penance, for the duration of his life, for all the crimes of his father who had been dragged into Hell. Then Dona Elvira's spirit rose to even there her fellow angels do not find her amusing.
Don Juanito, in mourning for his mother, doing penance for his father, walked with measured tread through the streets of Burgos and down his path in life, and then, still young, he married the niece of the Commendatore - you know, the papa of Dona Anna, almost seduced by Don Juan as well: I mean Dona Anna, not the Commendatore. This marriage was fixed up by relatives and friends to reconcile the two warring differing interests were involved in took place with quiet grandeur in Burgos. Don Juanito's wife was called Dona Sol even though she was no relative of Hernani whose beloved spouse was also called Dona Sol. Dona Sol was an imaginative young woman and her name seemed aptly chosen: her eyes glinted like little black suns, her blonde hair glittered like sunshine, a sunny gleam filled her sweet soul and a sunny glow coursed through her veins. She had heard tell many tales about Don Juan and, though she had never betrayed this, she in fact cherished a kind of secret love for her husband's father and this was why she had not made any objection at all when she had had to wed Don Juanito. Now, together with her spouse, she dwelt in Don Juan's palace in Seville and they sat opposite one another at that same table to which Don Juan once had invited the Stone Don Juanito unctuously said the benedicite but Dona Sol looked with curious glances at the parquet floor, the same which on that terrible night - now some twenty years ago - had opened up to devour Don Juan ... But she said nothing and after supper Don Juanito and Dona Sol soon went to bed.
Dona Sol had actually imagined the nights to be rather different in this sombre room which Don Juanito had caused to be upholstered in black velvet: his was the most sober of tastes. When Dona Sol, in the big, catafalque-like bed, would surreptitiously half-tum her sun-blonde head toward the round back of Don Juanito, peacefully sleeping the sleep of the just, she would continue to muse for an hour at least on the mysteries of married life, before drowsily dropping off, with a sigh. The little light in front of the crucifix and the image of the Mother of God in the black velvet room-night faintly lit the unmoved contour of Don Juanito's back and the other, momentarily distinguishable contour of that of Dona Sol, turned towards him under the covers in the ink-gloomy shadows. Such, that in the daytime, Dona Sol would frequently shake her blonde little head and wonder about thousands of things...
She began to worry fretfully about those thousands of things. She had realised that her spouse, Don Jua
nito, was a most proper and virtuous human being, man and son, doing penance for his father's sins; he was blameless and faithful as no other. Faithful? Most certainly: every night Don Juanito's conjugal back would curve next to hers in the dark velvet half-light. Until Dona Sol's thoughts and feelings became confused, confounded-confused, and one fine day, kneeling on her prie-Dieu, she directed her morning prayer not to the Mother of God to Don Juan, whom, in secret, she bore such a great devotion.
This was a sacrilege of which this sweetest, now rather fretful little woman did not become aware. But the one who did become aware of it was Don Juan himself - his soul, I believe - who after a time of punishment in Hell, through heavenly compassion had been given entrance to Purgatory in order to have the chance to be purified. Don Juan, still by no means turned into a saint in the no longer bright-scarlet but sulphurous yellow flames of Purgatory, heard Dona Sol's prayer and quiet lament, and decided, having consulted the purgatorial authorities, to help his daughter-in-law. Don Juan had probably been too sinful: Don Juanito was probably too virtuous. It's curious, this issue of sin and virtue: on earth, nobody seems to have cracked it; earth, heaven and hell between them don't quite seem to have cracked it either. In any case, that sinful Don Juan was given permission by his purgatorial superiors to go and debauch that virtuous Don Juanito, his son, just a little bit. And one fine evening, when Don Juanito was returning home along the dark streets of Seville after his game of dark very early in the virtuous intention of laying down his back to rest beside that purest contoured little back of Dona Sol, there emerged from the paving supernatural seemed to shelter quite frequently below ground in those days - the ruddy-red spirit of Don Juan.
Son took severe fright from father. Father did look rather scorched and Bengal-fire-surrounded yet he was still the same dashing cavalier, though no longer such a superb Don Juan truly had purged much of his sublime ill-doing already, in order to prepare himself to be received by Saint Peter - some day. Even so, son took severe fright from father, but Don Juan calmed Don Juanito down. After the first, ruddy appearance, he made himself invisible and walked on alongside his son. His phantom arm, however, was curved across Juanito's shoulder. And he was whispering in Juanito's ear ...
The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy Page 12