Down There (Là-Bas)

by Joris-karl Huysmans

"Well," murmured Carhaix, whose militant moustache bristled while his great eyes flamed, "if that abominable priest were here, I swear to you that I would respect his feet, but that I would throw him downstairs head first."

  "And the black mass?" inquired Des Hermies.

  "He celebrates it with foul men and women. He is openly accused of having influenced people to make wills in his favor and of causing inexplicable death. Unfortunately, there are no laws to repress sacrilege, and how can you prosecute a man who sends maladies from a distance and kills slowly in such a way that at the autopsy no traces of poison appear?"

  "The modern Gilles de Rais!" exclaimed Durtal.

  "Yes, less savage, less frank, more hypocritically cruel. He does not cut throats. He probably limits himself to 'sendings' or to causing suicide by suggestion," said Des Hermies, "for he is, I believe, a master hypnotist."

  "Could he insinuate into a victim the idea to drink, regularly, in graduated doses, a toxin which he would designate, and which would simulate the phases of a malady?" asked Durtal.

  "Nothing simpler. 'Open window burglars' that the physicians of the present day are, they recognize perfectly the ability of a more skilful man to pull off such jobs. The experiments of Beaunis, Liégois, Liébaut, and Bernheim are conclusive: you can even get a person assassinated by another to whom you suggest, without his knowledge, the will to the crime."

  "I was thinking of something, myself," said Carhaix, who had been reflecting and not listening to this discussion of hypnotism. "Of the Inquisition. It certainly had its reason for being. It is the only agent that could deal with this fallen priest whom the Church has swept out."

  "And remember," said Des Hermies, with his crooked smile playing around the corner of his mouth, "that the ferocity of the Inquisition has been greatly exaggerated. No doubt the benevolent Bodin speaks of driving long needles between the nails and the flesh of the sorcerers' fingers. 'An excellent gehenna,' says he. He eulogizes equally the torture by fire, which he characterizes as 'an exquisite death.' But he wishes only to turn the magicians away from their detestable practises and save their souls. Then Del Rio declares that 'the question' must not be applied to demoniacs after they have eaten, for fear they will vomit. He worried about their stomachs, this worthy man. Wasn't it also he who decreed that the torture must not be repeated twice in the same day, so as to give fear and pain a chance to calm down? Admit that the good Jesuit was not devoid of delicacy!"

  "Docre," Gévingey went on, not paying any attention to the words of Des Hermies, "is the only individual who has rediscovered the ancient secrets and who obtains results in practise. He is rather more powerful, I would have you believe, than all those fools and quacks of whom we have been speaking. And they know the terrible canon, for he has sent many of them serious attacks of ophthalmia which the oculists cannot cure. So they tremble when the name Docre is pronounced in their presence."

  "But how did a priest fall so low?"

  "I can't say. If you wish ampler information about him," said Gévingey, addressing Des Hermies, "question your friend Chantelouve."

  "Chantelouve!" cried Durtal.

  "Yes, he and his wife used to be quite intimate with Canon Docre, but I hope for their sakes that they have long since ceased to have dealings with the monster."

  Durtal listened no more. Mme. Chantelouve knew Canon Docre! Ah, was she Satanic, too? No, she certainly did not act like a possessed. "Surely this astrologer is cracked," he thought. She! And he called her image before him, and thought that tomorrow night she would probably give herself to him. Ah, those strange eyes of hers, those dark clouds suddenly cloven by radiant light!

  She came now and took complete possession of him, as before he had ascended to the tower. "But if I didn't love you would I have come to you?" That sentence which she had spoken, with a caressing inflection of the voice, he heard again, and again he saw her mocking and tender face.

  "Ah, you are dreaming," said Des Hermies, tapping him on the shoulder. "We have to go. It's striking ten."

  When they were in the street they said good night to Gévingey, who lived on the other side of the river. Then they walked along a little way.

  "Well," said Des Hermies, "are you interested in my astrologer?"

  "He is slightly mad, isn't he?"

  "Slightly? Humph."

  "Well, his stories are incredible."

  "Everything is incredible," said Des Hermies placidly, turning up the collar of his overcoat. "However, I will admit that Gévingey astounds me when he asserts that he was visited by a succubus. His good faith is not to be doubted, for I know him to be a man who means what he says, though he is vain and doctorial. I know, too, that at La Salpêtrière such occurrences are not rare. Women smitten with hystero-epilepsy see phantoms beside them in broad daylight and mate with them in a cataleptic state, and every night couch with visions that must be exactly like the fluid creatures of incubacy. But these women are hystero-epileptics, and Gévingey isn't, for I am his physician. Then, what can be believed and what can be proved? The materialists have taken the trouble to revise the accounts of the sorcery trials of old. They have found in the possession-cases of the Ursulines of Loudun and the nuns of Poitiers, in the history, even, of the convulsionists of Saint Médard, the symptoms of major hysteria, the same contractions of the whole system, the same muscular dissolutions, the same lethargies, even, finally, the famous arc of the circle. And what does this demonstrate, that these demonomaniacs were hystero-epileptics? Certainly. The observations of Dr. Richet, expert in such matters, are conclusive, but wherein do they invalidate possession? From the fact that the patients of La Salpêtrière are not possessed, though they are hysterical, does it follow that others, smitten with the same malady as they, are not possessed? It would have to be demonstrated also that all demonopathics are hysterical, and that is false, for there are women of sound mind and perfectly good sense who are demonopathic without knowing it. And admitting that the last point is controvertible, there remains this unanswerable question: is a woman possessed because she is hysterical, or is she hysterical because she is possessed? Only the Church can answer. Science cannot.

  "No, come to think it over, the effrontery of the positivists is appalling. They decree that Satanism does not exist. They lay everything at the account of major hysteria, and they don't even know what this frightful malady is and what are its causes. No doubt Charcot determines very well the phases of the attack, notes the nonsensical and passional attitudes, the contortionistic movements; he discovers hysterogenic zones and can, by skilfully manipulating the ovaries, arrest or accelerate the crises, but as for foreseeing them and learning the sources and the motives and curing them, that's another thing. Science goes all to pieces on the question of this inexplicable, stupefying malady, which, consequently, is subject to the most diversified interpretations, not one of which can be declared exact. For the soul enters into this, the soul in conflict with the body, the soul overthrown in the demoralization of the nerves. You see, old man, all this is as dark as a bottle of ink. Mystery is everywhere and reason cannot see its way."

  "Mmmm," said Durtal, who was now in front of his door. "Since anything can be maintained and nothing is certain, succubacy has it. Basically it is more literary-and cleaner-than positivism."

  CHAPTER X

  The day was long and hard to kill. Waking at dawn, full of thoughts of Mme. Chantelouve, he could not stay in one place, and kept inventing excuses for going out. He had no cakes, bonbons, and exotic liqueurs, and one must not be without all the little essentials when expecting a visit from a woman. He went by the longest route to the avenue de l'Opéra to buy fine essences of cedar and of that alkermes which makes the person tasting it think he is in an Oriental pharmaceutic laboratory. "The idea is," he said, "not so much to treat Hyacinthe as to astound her by giving her a sip of an unknown elixir."

  He came back laden with packages, then went out again, and in the street was assailed by an immense ennui. After an interminable
tour of the quays he finally tumbled into a beer hall. He fell on a bench and opened a newspaper.

  What was he thinking as he sat, not reading but just looking at the police news? Nothing, not even of her. From having revolved the same matter over and over again and again his mind had reached a deadlock and refused to function. Durtal merely found himself very tired, very drowsy, as one in a warm bath after a night of travel.

  "I must go home pretty soon," he said when he could collect himself a little, "for Père Rateau certainly has not cleaned house in the thorough fashion which I commanded, and of course I don't want the furniture to be covered with dust. Six o'clock. Suppose I dine, after a fashion, in some not too unreliable place."

  He remembered a nearby restaurant where he had eaten before without a great deal of dread. He chewed his way laboriously through an extremely dead fish, then through a piece of meat, flabby and cold; then he found a very few lentils, stiff with insecticide, beneath a great deal of sauce; finally he savoured some ancient prunes, whose juice smelt of mould and was at the same time aquatic and sepulchral.

  Back in his apartment, he lighted fires in his bedroom and in his study, then he inspected everything. He was not mistaken. The concierge had upset the place with the same brutality, the same haste, as customarily. However, he must have tried to wash the windows, because the glass was streaked with finger marks.

  Durtal effaced the imprints with a damp cloth, smoothed out the folds in the carpet, drew the curtains, and put the bookcases in order after dusting them with a napkin. Everywhere he found grains of tobacco, trodden cigarette ashes, pencil sharpenings, pen points eaten with rust. He also found cocoons of cat fur and crumpled bits of rough draft manuscript which had been whirled into all corners by the furious sweeping.

  He finally could not help asking himself why he had so long tolerated the fuzzy filth which obscured and incrusted his household. While he dusted, his indignation against Rateau increased mightily. "Look at that," he said, perceiving his wax candles grown as yellow as tallow ones. He changed them. "That's better." He arranged his desk into studied disarray. Notebooks, and books with paper-cutters in them for book-marks, he laid in careful disorder. "Symbol of work," he said, smiling, as he placed an old folio, open, on a chair. Then he passed into his bedroom. With a wet sponge he freshened up the marble of the dresser, then he smoothed the bed cover, straightened his photographs and engravings, and went into the bathroom. Here he paused, disheartened. In a bamboo rack over the wash-bowl there was a chaos of phials. Resolutely he grabbed the perfume bottles, scoured the bottoms and necks with emery, rubbed the labels with gum elastic and bread crumbs, then he soaped the tub, dipped the combs and brushes in an ammoniac solution, got his vapourizer to working and sprayed the room with Persian lilac, washed the linoleum, and scoured the seat and the pipes. Seized with a mania for cleanliness, he polished, scrubbed, scraped, moistened, and dried, with great sweeping strokes of the arm. He was no longer vexed at the concierge; he was even sorry the old villain had not left him more to do.

  Then he shaved, touched up his moustache, and proceeded to make an elaborate toilet, asking himself, as he dressed, whether he had better wear button shoes or slippers. He decided that shoes were less familiar and more dignified but resolved to wear a flowing tie and a blouse, thinking that this artistic negligée would please a woman.

  "All ready," he said, after a last stroke of the brush. He made the turn of the other rooms, poked the fires, and fed the cat, which was running about in alarm, sniffing all the cleaned objects and doubtless thinking that those he rubbed against every day without paying any attention to them had been replaced by new ones.

  "Oh, the 'little essentials' I am forgetting!" Durtal put the teakettle on the hob and placed cups, teapot, sugar bowl, cakes, bonbons, and tiny liqueur glasses on an old lacquered "waiter" so as to have everything on hand when it was time to serve.

  "Now I'm through. I've given the place a thorough cleaning. Let her come," he said to himself, realigning some books whose backs stuck out further than the others on the shelves. "Everything in good shape. Except the chimney of the lamp. Where it bulges, there are caramel specks and blobs of soot, but I can't get the thing out; I don't want to burn my fingers; and anyway, with the shade lowered a bit she won't notice.

  "Well, how shall I proceed when she does come?" he asked himself, sinking into an armchair. "She enters. Good. I take her hands. I kiss them. Then I bring her into this room. I have her sit down beside the fire, in this chair. I station myself, facing her, on this stool. Advancing a little, touching her knees, I can seize her. I make her bend over. I am supporting her whole weight. I bring her lips to mine and I am saved!

  "-Or rather lost. For then the bother begins. I can't bear to think of getting her into the bedroom. Undressing and going to bed! That part is appalling unless you know each other very well. And when you are just becoming acquainted! The nice way is to have a cosy little supper for two. The wine has an ungodly kick to it. She immediately passes out, and when she comes to she is lying in bed under a shower of kisses. As we can't do it that way we shall have to avoid mutual embarrassment by making a show of passion. If I speed up the tempo and pretend to be in a frenzy perhaps we shall not have time to think about the miserable details. So I must possess her here, in this very spot, and she must think I have lost my head when she succumbs.

  "It's hard to arrange in this room, because there isn't any divan. The best way would be to throw her down on the carpet. She can put her hands over her eyes, as they always do. I shall take good care to turn down the lamp before she rises.

  "Well, I had better prepare a cushion for her head." He found one and slid it under the chair. "And I had better not wear suspenders, for they often cause ridiculous delays." He took them off and put on a belt. "But then there is that damned question of the skirts! I admire the novelists who can get a virgin unharnessed from her corsets and deflowered in the winking of an eye-as if it were possible! How annoying to have to fight one's way through all those starched entanglements! I do hope Mme. Chantelouve will be considerate and avoid those ridiculous difficulties as much as possible-for her own sake."

  He consulted his watch. "Half-past eight. I mustn't expect her for nearly an hour, because, like all women, she will come late. What kind of an excuse will she make to Chantelouve, to get away tonight? Well, that is none of my business. Hmmm. This water heater beside the fire looks like the invitation to the toilet, but no, the tea things handy banish any gross idea."

  And if Hyacinthe did not come?

  "She will come," he said to himself, suddenly moved. "What motive would she have for staying away? She knows that she cannot inflame me more than I am inflamed." Then, jumping from phase to phase of the same old question, "This will turn out badly, of course," he decided. "Once I am satisfied, disenchantment is inevitable. Oh, well, so much the better, for with this romance going on I cannot work."

  "Miserable me! relapsing-only in mind, alas!-to the age of twenty. I am waiting for a woman. I who have scorned the doings of lovers for years and years. I look at my watch every five minutes, and I listen, in spite of myself, thinking it is her step I hear on the stair.

  "No, there is no getting around it. The little blue flower, the perennial of the soul, is difficult to extirpate, and it keeps growing up again. It does not show itself for twenty years, and then all of a sudden, you know not why nor how, it sprouts, and then forth comes a burst of blossoms. My God! I am getting foolish."

  He jumped from his chair. There was a gentle ring. "Not nine o'clock yet. It isn't she," he murmured, opening the door.

  He squeezed her hands and thanked her for being so punctual.

  She said she was not feeling well. "I came only because I didn't want to keep you waiting in vain."

  His heart sank.

  "I have a fearful headache," she said, passing her gloved hands over her forehead.

  He took her furs and motioned her to the armchair. Prepared to follow his plan of attack
, he sat down on the stool, but she refused the armchair and took a seat beside the table. Rising, he bent over her and caught hold of her fingers.

  "Your hand is burning," she said.

  "Yes, a bit of fever, because I get so little sleep. If you knew how much I have thought about you! Now I have you here, all to myself," and he spoke of that persistent odour of cinnamon, faint, distant, expiring amid the less definite odours which her gloves exhaled, "well," and he sniffed her fingers, "you will leave some of yourself here when you go away."

  She rose, sighing. "I see you have a cat. What is his name?"

  "Mouche."

  She called to the cat, which fled precipitately.

  "Mouche! Mouche!" Durtal called, but Mouche took refuge under the bed and refused to come out. "You see he is rather bashful. He has never seen a woman."

  "Oh, would you try to make me think you have never received a woman here?"

  He swore that he never had, that she was the first…

  "And you were not really anxious that this-first-should come?"

  He blushed. "Why do you say that?"

  She made a vague gesture. "I want to tease you," she said, sitting down in the armchair. "To tell you the truth, I do not know why I like to ask you such presumptuous questions."

  He had sat down in front of her. So now, at last, the scene was set as he wished and he must begin the attack. His knee touched hers.

  "You know," he said, "that you cannot presume here. You have claims on-"

  "No, I haven't and I want none."

  "Why?"

  "Because… Listen," and her voice became grave and firm. "The more I reflect, the more inclined I am to ask you, for heaven's sake, not to destroy our dream. And then… Do you want me to be frank, so frank that I shall doubtless seem a monster of selfishness? Well, personally, I do not wish to spoil the-the-what shall I say?-the extreme happiness our relation gives me. I know I explain badly and confusedly, but this is the way it is: I possess you when and how I please, just as, for a long time, I have possessed Byron, Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval, those I love-"