They will live thus, as people do, until the moment when the successive generations are exhausted, after years of which no one knows the number, and what furtive apparitions of feminine faces with enchanting eyes and hair the color of ebony or burnished gold? But they will succumb by virtue of the absence of light and joy. The man who had found the light was long dead, massacred by the blind crowd. Afterwards, alters had been erected to him, and the sacred fire of the beacon had been jealously guarded. Soon, only a few families still remained in the city that had become too vast, and which wild animals were gradually reconquering. One day, the last woman will die, having sobbed for a long time. With her the possibility of love disappeared. The ultimate survivors will know that they are condemned henceforth to imminent extinction. Perhaps they will weep together. Perhaps madness will take possession of their vacillating souls, and they will fight desperately, to hasten the advent of the final destruction. But for a moment, all the families having vanished, in an outlying district of the city, in the depths of a room full of silence and puerile memories, there had only been one single man, his forehead in his hands: the sole survivor of the shipwreck, the melancholy Adam of the night.
The man came back from the cemetery on the sea shore. He had hollowed out the hard ice, painfully, in order to deposit therein the last body enveloped in a symbolic shroud. The dead city’s walls were arranged in tiers on rocky steps. Up above, the beacon was like a red lantern in the fog. The eternal silence had begun. He dared not trouble it with a final prayer, and slowly returned to his house, darting furtive glances at the street-corners, as if in expectation of some impossible encounter. It was the only one that had not yet fallen in ruins, for the survivors had take refuge there, as in an illusory asylum where death was bound to search them out one after another. When he found himself alone again in the torch-lit room, beside the now-empty bed, a grim despair took possession of him. He thought that it would be better for him to lie down too, in the same place, to await the visitor, the only visitor who could knock on his door henceforth with the handle of a scythe. He no longer had any reason to live. In the solution of the problem, and the normal disappearance of that entire humanity, the permanence of one individual seemed like a refusal, a rebellion against the law. If he were annihilated in his turn, the final consciousness protesting against the night and solitude would be inducted into the silence. The storm winds would carry away the ruin of the houses and the beacon. The black demons would spread out again throughout their unlimited empire. But he experienced something like an impulse of revolt then, like an obscure joy in knowing that he was henceforth alone in fighting against the darkness of the pole. His hand closed the door carefully. He reanimated the fire and the wretched lamps fuelled by seal-oil. Then he prepared the primitive weapons with which he pursued animals over the ice. Their flesh was his nourishment and their furs his garments.
He became accustomed to his new existence, for one adapts or dies. Sometimes, he still felt a pang of regret for his dead companions. But the memory was vague, and the departure of the last man did not leave any determined anguish in his mind. The absence of polar successions, in the middle of that durable day that was only a single night, prevented the return of a date and the depressing anniversary. Besides, words themselves vanish when they are not perpetuated by new speech, and there is little pain in a dolor whose name one has forgotten. Reasonable beings were gradually replaced by commonplace forms. All he things in the house slowly woke up. Inanimate objects have souls. They remain mute in the presence of humans but, by night, they wake up and whisper, and the night here was endless. The presence of an isolated creature, almost motionless and always mute, could no longer frighten them.
The master of the dwelling conversed, via his eyes, with the furniture and the lamps, and that later conversation was the most habitual. All beings go to the light, which is the image of life. It populated his desert. It was, besides, before the weapons his best defense against the attacks of the insolent animals that had invaded the dead city and were enjoying themselves on the ruined walls, covered once again with ice, like the rocks. But the inhabitant of the solitary house had long ago lost any fear of seeing the muzzles of bears leaning over the window-panes.
Except for hunting, he only went out in order to make his way, through the storm winds, with the folds of his back cloak flapping furiously around him, to the citadel overlooking the city and the sea, two rival obscurities. He climbed up the unsteady steps, feeling the tower’s walls with his hands. He went rapidly through the walls and terraces. On the highest terrace, the beacon shone, cutting through the darkness with its red light. The man poured the oil that fueled the fire into the enormous lamp. The flame grew immediately, driving the unfathomable clouds back into the sky and the sea, like defeated enemies. And every time, along the shore, the seals and bears with savage gaping maws welcomed that renaissance of light with their clamors, of terror or enthusiasm.
The guardian of the beacon sat down, and turned toward the fire to warm his body and heart again.
He dreamed.
Without being aware of it, he adored the only divine image that his brain was able to suppose. The warmth gave birth within him to unusual flowers. Distant memories revived and addressed gestures to him that he strove to understand. The nave tales that had cradled his infancy reappeared. Nursery stories must be the same everywhere. Doubtless, under other names, Barbe-Bleue and Peau d’ne passed over the blank wall of his mind, with the adventures of Petit Jour and Aurore,33 killed by a stepmother clad in mourning. But one more marvelous tale pleased him more than all the rest. Through distant lands, chimerical and amorous encounters, the hero always had a handsome lord in golden vestment. And gradually, in his obscure imagination, the legend of the Sun was born and became more precise, like a red corolla opening.
They were ancestral visions, whose imprint went back several generations. He rediscovered now, in the beliefs of his forefathers, the idea of a lost happiness. There was another world, another existence, from which he felt cut off, but which he might perhaps succeed in reconquering. The vast Earth did not end with the monstrous icebergs. On the edge of the horizon an enormous wall of darkness undoubtedly extended, but the other side of that wall was turned toward an ineffable light and eternal warmth. A believer can evoke, in rare moments of ecstasy, the blue paradise that he has never seen. The dreamer had, in the flight of his dream, the confused impression of azure lands, trees, mild Mediterranean seas with ships and birds.
Suddenly leaving behind the tower and the dream, he went through the streets of black snow, accompanied along the facades by the awkward flight of bats, to the threshold of his house. Everything seemed old to him, in the face of a young decision. It was a desperate march toward light, toward warmth, toward other human beings. As the ancient Adam, risen with the dawn, had known, suddenly that he was naked, the new Adam, the nocturnal Adam, had just perceived that he was alone.
The fear was born within him of having made the decision too late. His entire past life appeared to him to be a nightmare from which one wakes up. The sight of familiar objects, on the walls of his house, suddenly made his heart capsize in fabulous melancholy. He was afraid of days elapsed far from the promised land, not even on the frontier of lands where shadow smiled, like a charming demigod born of the marriage of Erebus and Apollo.
Toward what goal would he direct his course? He only knew that he had to go. He wrapped himself up in his cloak, like a second darkness, and closed the door of his dwelling. Perhaps he wanted to protect the shelter where the residue of a human population had taken refuge against the invasion of the polar bears for a little while longer. It was a successive tomb. Every thought and every dead soul, as the people had diminished in numbers, had left its light and it sensations in the souls of the survivors, like a testament. And thus, the last of them had been the ultimate heirs. The whole existence of the ancestors was summarized in that house.
He went through the deserted streets, and came to t
he gates of the city. Once, they had been made of heavy wood, held together by solid bronze bars, but their hinges had been broken, and the ice and squalls had separated the stones of the walls. The storm wind had brought them crashing down one day upon its shoulders, like Samson.
The vast Earth extended. It was a living form graspable beneath its mourning-dress. The man drew away from the city and was submerged in the darkness like a swimmer in the sea. In the distance was the shore, where his bewildered arms might find purchase. He marched, doubtless guided by a vague gleam that he imagined, without seeing it, on the horizon. He went through the solitudes and turned round furtively, with the apprehension of being pursued by the black demons of the pole, which were gripping his shoulders with their hooked fingers. How long did he wander, perhaps turning round his point of departure, stopping at long intervals, exhausted, to lie down and sleep in some cave sheltered from the wind? A moment came when his eyes, hallucinated by virtue of looking out for the future light, believed that they saw it in the distance.
That melancholy gaze wandered over the edge of the world for a few seconds, then disappeared. The man thought that he had been the dupe of an illusion. It had returned to the beautiful land, having brushed the depths of obscurity with a timid wing. But he suddenly suspected that one ought to march toward illusions. And his surprise, finally, was great, on seeing it renewed. As he got under way again after the habitual halt, still barely awake, his eyes saw the same mirage surge forth, and from then on, it showed itself regularly. The traveler could, at intervals, readjust the axis of his course; the arrow of his desire flew henceforth straight toward the unknown goal of which he had the presentiment.
His soul, however, was troubled by the unexpected phenomenon. Why did the horizon brighten at the same place at the same time? Was the hidden god afraid of the cold and darkness of the pole, and was he fleeing before them like an ancient hunter frightened by the monsters of caverns? Did an unsuspected law preside over those returns? But already, without having the name, he imitated in the alternation of fatigue and sleep the apparition of what he did not yet know to be day and night. Hours passed. Suddenly, the temperature was milder. A warm breath caressed the ice and the rocks. It was warmth, almost light. But the next day, the rainbow of dubious whiteness appeared to have grown. It grew without interruption. The man discovered days and nights. The surface of the ground was grey. And every dusk, he lay down to sleep and wait, on the darkened route. The ancient anguish gripped him, of feeling the lugubrious mantle of antiquity extending once again over his weary head.
But the returns were divine. It was a kiss on his forehead, less timid. His heart opened to thoughts of childhood, the possible hearth and flowers. His eyes smiled at every commencement. Little by little, by means of its peaceful struggle, the Sun invaded the entire territory, coming anew to the azure battlefield every time, with new force and new splendor, like a knight exchanging silver armor for gold.
Already the heralds were sounding. Cries were attempting joy. The glaciers opened slightly for a pale corolla. A few birds were flying in the sky.
One morning, it arrived. The day before, the curved horizon had retained its color for longer. Belated clouds resembled hot coals beneath a delicate blue ash.
The nocturnal delay was brief. Invisible trumpets saluted the awakening. The man was in the middle of a great plan of almost-melted snow. Vapors quit the firmament, gliding in vaults over the rounded surface. A paradise developed. The glaciers sparkled. Their surfaces, like a variously decomposed mirror, send back red, violet and yellow. The man was only able to appreciate that unusual sensation by evoking, in the anterior existence, the touch of jewels. The prism expanded the flag of daylight. The man thought, for the softness of his eyes, of the last young woman to die. The polar foxes that had accompanied him until then, cleaving the darkness with their muzzles, hesitated, then suddenly took flight toward their sad native land, howling with fright, pursued by penetrating arrows. In the distance, the night in revolt, dragged by the movement of the Equator, was like a rolled-up shroud that was being carried away. The spectator remained standing, his hands raised, his eyes dilated, like a fanatic before a god abut to appear.
The blaze was still rising. Birds fluttered their wings. Breezes passed through the tender blue. And suddenly, red and vivid, the eternal head of the god appeared on the horizon.
It was Apollo, driving the last monsters back into oblivion. The entire Earth quivered. The man uttered one last cry, of distress and enthusiasm. Then, like a prophet in the presence of the face in the burning bush, he fell dead, arms extended, like a black cross upon the ground, while, behind the wall of darkness, the great volcanoes of the pole that he would never see again continued to hurl monstrous icebergs and blocks of frozen lava into the lugubrious atmosphere.
The Lover of Death
It seems to me that the moment has come to write this confession. If I delayed any longer, I would risk being taken by surprise by time. If I can judge by the progress of my moods and my decline, the hour is nigh. I may doubtless set out to destroy, without any risk, certain false ideas that people have in my regard. All interpretation is error. For ten years I have been, so far as public opinion is concerned, a man trying to kill himself by virtue of disenchantment with life.
People able to comprehend noble sentiments are so few in number. One admits right away, without reflection, as an explanation of some action or other, stupid cowardice. When people learn that their neighbor has jumped from his sixth-floor window into the street, they pity him for his lack of energy.
Certainly, it might have seemed rather difficult to give a definition of my existence and state of mind during the ten years since that bizarre mania made me famous.
Public attention was attracted by my first suicide attempt. By virtue of a touch of snobbery—I was young then, and did not yet understand the naked beauty—I wanted, for my gesture, the most sumptuous surroundings. The story of that fête can be found in all the newspapers of the time. It was classic, with its Platonic banquet and dancing-girls. Roses shed their petals all night. The poison that I drank at dawn, from an authentic gold cup, a mixture cleverly calculated to give me the death of all apprehension, without death, which has become the fashionable remedy for common people in despair. Almost everyone, less fortunate than me, dies of it. They are negligible in quantity.
At the second attempt, the administrative powers got excited. In the circumstances, however, there was nothing revolutionary about it. Still somewhat romantically-inclined, I had my veins opened in the bath by an expert surgeon, who carefully resealed them at the moment when the languorous ecstasy and admirable faintness were about to make me expire with joy. That was, perhaps, the occasion when I truly felt closest to death, and was happiest.
Since that time, moreover, I have taken all measures to ensure the relays of my life, from the viewpoint of comfort and tranquility. Ingenious schemes, payments redeemable on particular dates, under such and such terms and conditions—everything was arranged so that my relatives had a strong interest in not passing me off as a lunatic. Even when its exercise does no harm to anyone, one has so much difficulty, in our barbaric society, in using one’s liberty!
The police, however, opened an investigation, which yielded no result. I was summoned before the commissaire. It amused me to go, arbitrary as the summons as. He was a charming and learned man. We had a courteous discussion about the relationship between metaphysics and common law, and I left him promising that my next suicide would take place outside his jurisdiction. It was, in truth, the least I could do for him.
I shall pass over the comical consequences of these repeated gestures. Prospectuses and offers of the services of funeral directors became more numerous at every new attempt. Journalists came to ask me my opinion of the death penalty. An automobile manufacturer offered me a hundred thousand francs—what would I have done with it?—to kill myself in a car bearing his trademark. At the same time, I became a sort of hero in fiction. I
had my caricature or portrait in all the papers, of modern youthful despair. The causes of my despair were sought. That desire to die, always frustrated, was attributed successively to an unhappy love-affair and the remorse of an unconfessable crime. For everyone, however, I was an Oedipus pursued by an inexorable fatality.
No one suspected the truth. No one accompanied me in my wanderings through the lofty halls of the mysterious palace. The tall, profound mirrors sent back my pale image. How many times I had dreamed of passing into that phantasmal world, the double and reflection of ours, which exists on the other side of mirrors, repeating our gestures. Perhaps that’s what we call death. I drew aside heavy curtains. Vases of iridescent crystal, flowers covered in frost, on the side-tables, symbolizing the frail grace of life. I opened the doors of dream, one after the other, and in every room, successively, I felt the anguish of divine oppression more forcefully, and the approach of the ineffable secret. But I stopped every time at the last funereal door, behind which, surely, was the winged horse of Oriental legend, which would carry me away who knows where. I would open that door when I wanted. Why hurry? I wanted to live for a long time yet, to taste, at every reprise, all the joys of death. I was like a diner who takes in hand the cup of absolute intoxication, but only sips therefrom, just enough to savor the profound and divine taste. My explorations were soon so numerous that I acquired a perfect experience and the surest touch.
The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait Page 15