I rediscovered that love of poverty in the slightest details of Laurence’s existence. I had wanted, on arriving in Paris, to give my bachelor apartment, which was vast but a trifle old-fashioned, a more modern appearance. She had opposed it, finding everything very good as it was.
My house was kept by a correct old woman, whom Laurence found too correct. The service was provided by a valet de chambre who concealed his timidity beneath an obsequious self-importance. Laurence could not look at him without shrugging her shoulders.
I hired a chambermaid for her, but she seemed too well-trained and she declared that she definitely did not need anyone. All her sympathy went to a nameless creature, a maidservant who came to tidy the bedrooms in the morning. With a red nose and clogs, she was such an extraordinary symbol of poverty that one was initially tempted to believe that she did not belong to quotidian reality but was about to play a role in some fairy tale. Laurence was able to have conversations with that dream-like figure. She gave her presents. She called her “Madame Honorine” with a hint of respect. I was uncertain as to whether she might take her as a confidant.
I established a link between the anomaly of her tastes and the nocturnal walk around the Place Blanche of which I had been the witness one evening. I had not renounced finding out why, exactly, she had gone to visit Kotzebue in the middle of the night, after having prowled around several cafés. I did not want to tell her, of course, that I had followed her. I proceeded by means of allusions. I accused her jokingly of having flirted with Kotzebue, but she reported the conversations she had had with him with an unsimulated frankness. I had noticed that although she sometimes passed certain evenings in silence, she never employed lies.
“Flirting,” she said to me, laughing. “The word is inappropriate for him. He certainly had a hidden agenda in my regard, but he never dared manifest it clearly. He gave me the impression of not having the habit of talking to women. I watched him sometimes from the corner of my eye because I thought he was one of those men who throw themselves on you abruptly and try to tip you over without explanations. Perhaps, with me, he never had a sufficiently favorable opportunity. I think that only one presented itself for him, and he let it pass because I was on my guard. He must have tried magnetism and other similar things, but I’m not a subject, like my sister. A thick layer of matter envelops me. Every time he talked to me, in the Midi, he talked about a certain Helen, whom he also called Ennoia. I didn’t understand at first whether she was an imaginary being or one of his female relatives. He said to me that I had an admirable role to play in incarnating Helen. But of what did that consist? I told him that I didn’t know anything about all those stories, but he replied that that was perfect, and a Helen who didn’t understand anything was better. He made me laugh a good deal, but all the same, I was a little afraid of him.”
I returned to the attack several times, but in vain.
One evening, when several friends had come to find us in order to dine at a restaurant, someone proposed that we go to Alberte’s. Alberte was the proprietress of an establishment that was half-café and half night-club, which was mostly frequented by regulars and was one of those that Laurence had examined on the evening when I had followed her. She did not manifest any emotion at the time, but as soon as the lights of the Place Blanche shone around us in the taxi that was carrying us, I understood by a straightening of her body and a palpitation of her nostrils that Laurence had an inexplicable connection with that particular point of the city, the vulgar Place Blanche.
During dinner Laurence considered everything around us, the counter of the bar, the kitchen door, and the walls, on which a few humorous pictures were hanging, as if it were a particularly interesting place enjoying a historical celebrity.
The usual waiters, random clients and the women that came in and went out after conspiratorial conversations with the proprietress were full of attraction for her. She never took her eyes off them. Inattentive to our conversation, she lived the life of the bar amorously. Alberte, with her puffy face, her eyes like a benevolent fox and her hands heavy with fake rings, appeared to her to have an imposing dignity.
“She must be a charming woman,” she said, several times. And when she left she exchanged a long smile with her.
It was too late to go to the theater and someone suggested that we have a drink somewhere. Laurence accepted joyfully and immediately proposed the Brasserie Romano—which she had seen in passing, she said, and appeared to be very curious.
No distinctive originality characterizes the Brasserie Romano. I had the sensation that the prostitutes hooked there with more impudence than elsewhere. Calm and clean-shaven men were playing cards in a corner. A provincial couple had wandered in.
Laurence was entirely happy. The wines and liqueurs of the dinner gave her a certain animation, but I distinguished an intoxication in her that had another provenance. She was drunk on the ambiance that emerges from the streets of Montmartre, which is reflected in the tinsel of the cafés, and flows with the alcohol one drinks there. The dreary orchestras were only there to provoke embraces. Couples were only dancing or sitting around tables in a provisional fashion; they were soon going to slip into hotel rooms. One sensed that the rouge hastily plastered on lips was soon about to be cracked by the labor of kisses. The women who were seen passing by with vague eyes and a cigarette in their fingers had just undressed and dressed again and were about to recommence. All the houses in the surrounding area were hotels. Bargains were made behind all the counters, over all the marble tables. And there was something bleak, a venal breath, a total absence of joy that propagated a desire for spineless abandonment, caresses beneath dubious sheets.
That night we got home late, after wandering from one nightspot to another, and Laurence had not only not perceived the sinister similitude of all those places but declared that she had found a delectable variety therein.
From that day on it was necessary to renounce dining in apartments or going to the theater. There was no pleasure for Laurence except in second-rate taverns, she only breathed easily in their opaque smoke. I could not do otherwise than give in to her, for every evening, she was like a child deprived of the only plaything that amused her. She fell into a mute reverie, and seemed ready to weep, but as soon as I said: “What if we were to go and get something in Montmartre?” her eyes brightened and she became cheerful and animated. A kind of fever even took possession of her.
She seemed to love everything that commenced in the vicinity of the Place Clichy and ended in the Square d’Anvers. The Place Blanche was like a supernatural star whose light magnetized her.
When, we traversed it I saw her gaze pose on the luminous posters, the newsvendors and the policeman on duty with an affectionate tenderness. And there was then an untiring curiosity in her, which made her consider the faces of all the women with an attention and an amour, the cause of which I thought I had finally discovered.
Reflecting on the questions that Laurence had asked me about the existence of hookers and bar whores, the interest that those women inspired in her and her bizarre passion to be in their midst, a terrible word came to my mind: the word possession.
Laurence was possessed. An occult, magical force was attracting her toward the most inferior forms of life. All the aspects of poverty were seductive to her. She loved the poor, not out of charity, but because society had rejected them and they presented the image of terrestrial damnation.
It was neither hazard nor my caprice, and it was not even common sensual affinities, that had drawn me to Laurence. There was a more powerful bond between us. We were united by a similar love of evil. Forces from below were appealing to us both. They had marked us with I know not what sign to descend simultaneously from degeneration to degeneration.
I thought that I perceived that I had become less intelligent, that I only read rarely, that I was not longer seeking to instruct myself, Laurence had the effect on me of an animal, uniquely animated by base preoccupations, and I was suffering fro
m the influence that she had on me.
I did not discern the part of love that there was in her preference for the poor, in the voluntary choice she made of the unfortunate for the gift of her sympathy. I attributed her penchants to an innate taste for vile things and I feared, above all, imitating her. I tried to react. I imposed on her the presence of certain comrades chosen from among the most stupid, who did not interest me at all, but who might, by the prestige of their important positions and their conventional social life, orientate Laurence in a different direction.
That resulted in arguments, of which I took advantage to make long speeches about the best way of living, the necessity of frequenting people belonging to one’s own milieu, and of an irreproachable morality.
Laurence then became resigned and indifferent. She shook her head, and she made general remarks such as: “We’re very different. We’ve made an experiment and it hasn’t succeeded. Perhaps we were both mistaken.”
Or her gaze ran over me from head to foot, she seemed to be considering a stranger, a being of another race than herself, and was astonished to have been able to remain with him for so long.
“You see,” she said to me once, “wisdom is to live with people of one’s family.” And as I made a gesture of astonishment, she added: “But the problem is discovering that family.”
I asked her what she meant, exactly. She explained to me that families were not always composed of those who had the same blood, but of very various individuals, and which formed and dispersed by virtue of a law whose mechanism escaped her.
I began to grasp that she had a secret desire to leave me. Various indications made me think momentarily that she had made that decision. She asked me several times what a modest apartment on the Butte would cost. She stopped once to consider a tiny restaurant in the Avenue de Clichy and she said: “How amusing it would be to come here and eat all alone.”
I replied bitterly that I was not a tyrant and that I would not prevent her from accomplishing that dream if that pleased her. I added that she would be disgusted by one or two experiments and would not have any desire to recommence.
But she started laughing as if it were a matter of a joke and contented herself with saying: “Who knows?”
In any case, my fears were temporary. I had too great a confidence in myself to think that Laurence might leave me.
And gradually, by virtue of the charm that enigmas have, I was attracted by the one that Laurence’s heart concealed. It was in the evening particularly that the idea of possession took hold of me. That possession was common to us, but it was exteriorized more in Laurence and I acquired the habit of observing her without appearing to do so, in order to discover what road the evil was taking in order to develop, what symptoms it displayed, and with what voice it appealed.
Christmas arrived, and as much to satisfy my curiosity as to please Laurence, I decided to celebrate it in the establishment of the charming Alberte, alongside the blessed Place Blanche, which we could contemplate through the windows all night if we pleased. In order that no cloud could cast a shadow over that marvelous evening I invited the sad Falou—Laurence’s elect, because of his holed boots and his ill humor of ashamed poverty—to accompany us.
It was decided that before sitting down in the heart of the star with seven irregular branches that forms the Place Blanche, we would spend an hour at the Bal Wagram, the picturesqueness of which Falou had praised and Laurence wanted to discover. I only report that visit because it was there that the voices began to resound and because the human caricatures began to design the seductive faces of evil.
The boulevards were host to an immense crowd agitated by the jubilation of nourishment. Automobiles were emerging everywhere. The food-shops were sparkling sumptuously. Families were advancing with that satisfied slowness that the certainty of imminent feasting gives. The necks of bottles emerged from the pockets of overcoats.
I was struck by the stature of the municipal guardsmen on the threshold of the Bal Wagram. They were larger than natural, as disproportionate as certain baroque cartoons I had seen at an exhibition of Humorists. They seemed the grotesque guardians of an infernal hullabaloo. The toilets were advertised to the public by enormous luminous letters, as if they were the centerpiece of the establishment, its radiant heart, and a hand painted on the wall designated their entrance as well, in order that they could not pass unperceived even by the most myopic or distracted eyes.
Laurence penetrated first into a vast hall full of dancers and I admired the delicacy of the pastel that her white neck had in the frisson of her fur.
We sat down at a table in the crowd. The air was stifling and transported an odor of human seat. On a placard in front of the orchestra the word Java was written.
“I can’t stand it; I’m taking my coat off,” said Laurence, her face illuminated by joy.
She stood up and appeared in her pink dress, with a scant neckline. I nearly uttered a cry. It seemed to me that she was entirely naked, and as she darted a circular glance around her, a silence fell, and was propagated to the limit of the hall as all eyes her fixed on her young body. I saw sweaty faces grimacing, and such an expression of bestiality appeared therein that I nearly launched myself in front of Laurence in order to protect her from those animal creatures, who were getting ready to pounce on her. That only lasted for a second, during which I had time to be astonished by Falou’s indifference.
The din of the orchestra burst forth, the crowd shifted in order to dance. Laurence sat down again placidly. Her coat had fallen behind her on to her chair, and her pink dress covered her normally from the birth of her breasts to her knees.
I recapitulated what I had drunk that evening: a cocktail before dinner, a glass of liqueur afterwards. I could not be drunk without being aware of it. I drank a gulp of the alcohol I had just ordered and sought to discover whether there was anything in the faces surrounding me to justify what I thought I had seen.
Nearby, an elegant mulatto, his eyes fixed on a cherry liqueur, was sunk in a somber reverie. Two blonde women were rotating together, narrowly entwined. A man of about fifty, with a horseshoe beard, was dancing pleasantly with a female dwarf. He must have been the driving force of a group, and his reputation as a comedian was doubtless well established, for each of his gestures provoked burst of laughter from several people at a table. A woman with drooping cheeks was guffawing, and one sensed that the dwarf was pleased to have such a joyful companion. Further away, a solitary dandy was following chambermaids in their Sunday clothes with a fatal gaze. And there were marine infantrymen, sportive gnomes, blasé chauffeurs: a humanity for whom all notion of beauty seemed abolished and who had no regret in consequence.
And suddenly, I had the impression again that Laurence was the focal point of the room’s attention. The dandy’s eyes had abandoned the chambermaids and were fixed on her. The mulatto alongside me had emerged from his reverie. The quinquagenarian comedian was multiplying his farces for Laurence, and his horseshoe beard gave me the impression of a goat’s beard. Further away, an individual as pink as a pig was licking his lips with a significant expression, and a tall young man with spectacles and a birdlike neck was extending it as if he wanted to attain a point between Laurence’s breasts. There was no doubt that she was the center of desire of all those inferior creatures, enveloped by an obscene conspiracy.
And she knew it. She was radiant under the effluence of those desires. As was her habit, she was gazing untiringly at faces, following the expressions and movements as if she were seeking to recognize one of those beasts among all the beasts. She was full of ease. Leaning back in her chair, she had crossed her legs immodestly and she was not occupied, as all women with short dresses are, in pulling her skirt up over her knees.
Possessed! I thought. That crowd is awaiting its signal. It’s suddenly going to launch forward, howling, snatch that thin pink dress away, and the modern Sabbat to which I have brought her myself will be unleashed.
For I was at the Sabbat
. The secret feasts of the Middle Ages, which were celebrated on the heath, were nothing else. Those whom life deprives of joy experience at certain times the desire for a collective celebration in which all appetites are satisfied. Thus, all these poor lovers of their own pleasures were getting ready to eat and drink to excess in order then to mingle together. Instead of bestriding a broomstick, the worshipers of the Devil had come on foot or in a taxi, but that was the only difference. Lucifer could not be far away; he was about to emerge from those toilets that had been illuminated so magnificently for that, and we would all kiss his backside, in accordance with the age-old ritual.
Lucifer did not appear and Laurence did not tear off her clothes in order to offer herself to him. She was content to uncover her legs, to smile, and sometimes to raise her head as if to listen to a voice that was calling to her. She repeated that movement so often that I began to lend an ear myself.
The flux had become more numerous. Cries and laughter mingled with the din of instruments, and I thought I could perceive behind those noises a low-pitched voice that was coming from everywhere and pronouncing Laurence’s name and mine by turns. I touched Falou’s shoulder lightly with my fingertip and said to him: “Can’t you hear anything?”
He looked at me in an idiotic fashion and he replied: “Yes, there’s a great deal of noise.”
There were sometimes sudden silences, and then the voice fell silent; but then it resumed again, confusedly, and I heard distinct words that were addressed to me:
“The sole verity is material enjoyment. You are not sure of anything but the reality of your body and the faculty it has of giving you pleasure by way of the senses. Look at the varied spectacle of things. Eat and drink for the plenitude of the digestion. Take advantage of the facility of women to lie down beside them and swoon over the satin of their skin. Everything that is desirable is around you. I am the unique God and you are respiring me in the air imbued with tobacco. It is my laughter that is on the painted curve of lips. I stretch myself out with the limbs of your mistress, I shiver in the silk of dresses and the curl of hair, I whirl with the music, I shine with the electric lamps, I am the color of eyes, the odor of armpits, the warmth of breasts, what you call beauty; I am matter.”
Lucifer Page 11