The Great Concert of the Night

by Jonathan Buckley

  •

  Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, in their Journals, referring to Blaise Pascal: “There’s another showman of the abyss!”

  •

  In The Book of Margery Kempe, which has a claim to be the earliest English autobiography, the author records her visions of Christ and the words he spoke to her. He gave her several orders; one such order was a command to take the Eucharist every Sunday. This she did. It seems that her extravagant piety was regarded with some suspicion by the townspeople of Bishop’s Lynn, as were her outbursts of devotional wailing and writhing. For most people in England at this time, communion was an annual devotion, undertaken at Easter. At other times, the Host was something to be seen, not consumed. The monstrance, the instrument of display, was of paramount importance to the cult of Eucharistic piety; spiritual communion was achieved by means of sight.

  •

  A year after becoming a Carmelite novice, Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (1566–1607) was struck by an illness that almost killed her. On her recovery, she began to experience visions, which often took the form of dialogues with Christ, or the Word, as she often denoted Him. During these raptures she disgorged words at such a rate that the nuns had to work in relays to transcribe them. For six years these visions were daily occurrences; the record of them filled five volumes. The self-mortification that Maria Maddalena practised was extreme. At times she wore a crown of thorns, and a corset to which nails had been attached. She would walk barefoot through snow, and burn her skin with molten wax, and put her mouth to the wounds of lepers. Always in poor health, she was bedridden for the last four years of her life. At the end, all her teeth had gone and her body was covered with sores. When her sisters offered to move her she told them to desist, for fear that contact with her flesh might awaken their sexual desires.

  •

  Adeline wrote: “I reject a faith that demands continual reference to one’s self. We should not luxuriate in feeling. Love must look outward.”

  •

  William can’t believe how easy it was to get work. All it took was a few hours, asking around the harbour. “They’ll take anyone with a full set of arms and legs,” he reports. He’s already done one shift, and it was amazing. Calm sea, thick mist. “Nothing visible beyond the boat.” Then he saw something that spooked him: far out from the shore, they passed a submerged rock, on which a huge clump of seaweed was rising and falling. “Like a sea-monster’s hair,” says William. “It totally did my head in.”

  •

  Auguste has come to Vézelay to study the abbey—specifically, the sculpture of the tympanum. The details of the book on which he is working are vague, but it has something to do with the representation of the Crusades in medieval art. The tympanum of the abbey at Vézelay is of particular interest, he tells Roberte, having directed her attention to the lintel, where the ungodly peoples of the world are depicted. The camera moves over the procession of grotesques: the dwarfish, the misshapen, the swinish, the elephantine. These images are a political statement, Auguste explains. Just fifteen years after the tympanum was carved, Bernard of Clairvaux came to this place to preach for a second Crusade. Later in the same century, Richard I of England and Philip II of France met in Vézelay before embarking on the Third Crusade. While Auguste delivers his lecture, the camera observes the face of Roberte, as she studies the sculpture. Thanks to Auguste, as she tells him, she is seeing the building more clearly than ever before.

  The coupling of Auguste and Roberte had been nothing but sexual pleasure, albeit sexual pleasure of quite a different order from anything that Auguste had hitherto enjoyed; now, at the abbey, he senses that a genuine relationship may be developing with the chilly yet intriguing Roberte. We see her as Auguste sees her, standing in the caramel sunlight, looking up at the carvings; she is as beautiful and severe as any stone saint. Later that day, at a café, where Roberte has encountered Auguste as she returns to the hotel, he delivers another disquisition, apropos his book. “A man always believes his eyes better than his ears,” he remarks in conclusion, and smiles to himself; the line is a quotation, it appears. And so it is: Auguste, a comprehensively cultured young man, is making an allusion to the story of Candaules, as recounted by Herodotus. He has his laptop with him; a few keystrokes bring up a picture, which he shows to Roberte: Jean-Léon Gérôme’s King Candaules.

  Cut clumsily to another laptop: Roberte, in bed, beside Pierre, is reading the relevant pages of Herodotus on her laptop. She reads aloud the words spoken by Candaules to Gyges, his bodyguard: “It appears you do not believe me when I tell you how lovely my wife is.” The king’s name, according to Herodotus, meant “dog throttler,” Roberte tells her husband. This is one of the very few enjoyable moments of this generally unenjoyable film: the way Imogen forms the phrase—l’étrangleur de chiens—as if the words had a taste of exquisite sourness; the tiny clenching of her eyelids here, expressive of a perverse frisson, is wonderful. When, soon afterwards, a neighbour’s repulsive dog is found dead, a few days after taking a nip at Roberte’s ankle, not for the first time, we of course suspect Pierre; but wrongly, as it turns out. Vermeiren’s little joke. Yet perhaps things will nonetheless end badly for Pierre, the wife-displayer, as things ended badly for Candaules. Auguste dislikes Pierre and is falling for Roberte, and it’s not impossible that Roberte has some feelings for Auguste, though what Roberte is thinking is no more visible to us than are the frigid depths of the ocean.

  But no, we are being misdirected: it is Auguste who will suffer in the end; the depraved husband and wife will carry on as before, untroubled. The allusions to Aphrodite, the promiscuous and pitiless goddess, were a clue. When mortals couple with deities, the story rarely ends happily for the mortal. Erymanthos, son of Apollo, merely observed Aphrodite making love with Adonis, but that was enough to get him blinded.

  •

  It gratified Thibaut that others could see what a fine woman he now had as his lover. He had never experienced jealousy, he told her. And he had never wanted children, so a wombless woman was not—as it had been for Loïc—something less than a woman should be. He even professed to find the scar attractive. True beauty was found in irregularity, he declared. “Marks of life” excited him, as mere “pretty girls” generally did not, he claimed. Every week, as an art dealer, he encountered so many pretty girls. His world swarmed with eye-­pleasing young women. “So perfect, so tedious,” he sighed. One of his ex-lovers, formerly a war-zone reporter, had lost an eye; she wore a patch, “like a pirate.” Another, once a champion equestrienne, had a “fabulous scar” across her midriff, having been kicked by a horse. He had, however, known some conventional beauties intimately, he admitted. Some varieties of “standard beauty” were irresistible, like some kinds of cheap music. Thibaut’s ex-lovers were plentiful; he was easily bored, too easily, as Imogen was informed at the outset.

  The time she spent with Thibaut was eventful and pleasurable. She learned things from him; his mind contained a vast catalogue of art, and all of its information seemed to be available to him instantly. His eye was good; he had discernment. Every month there was an expedition with Thibaut. He lived for these adventures, he told Imogen. He had a need, a physical need, for new experiences; as an actress, she would understand this. The trips were enjoyable. In a village near Udine she met the last living descendant of an artist who had worked in the studio of Paolo Veronese; this very old man owned a sketch that he believed to be in Paolo Veronese’s hand, as did Thibaut. A fearsome woman in Portugal had a chapel in an unused wing of her villa where the cobwebs were as thick as lace curtains; she owned a still life that her family displayed as the work of Josefa de Óbidos, which it almost certainly was not.

  One evening, Thibaut told her about the maison de maître. He made a proposal, which he expected her to reject. She understood the ploy: he could not bring himself to break with a woman who had endured what Imogen had endured, so it was necessary that she should be the one to leave. To that end he had revealed the secret. Imo
gen had to know everything about who he was, he told her. But, to his well-suppressed astonishment, she agreed to the suggestion. And Thibaut was dismayed by the consequence, by the pleasure that she found in that place, a pleasure that seemed to exceed even his own. “I am not what you need,” he told her afterwards, as though he had been wounded and was asking permission to leave.

  •

  It was not her intention to put me to the test. “I know you love me,” she said. If nothing else, it would be a new experience; instructive, even. From what she had told me, I thought that I could imagine the scene. “I’m not sure I need to see it,” I said. Imagining it and seeing it are quite different things, she answered. “Perhaps I need you to be there,” she said. Then she apologised for using that word. “I would like you to be there,” she clarified. “But if the idea makes you unhappy, I’ll say nothing more about it.” It might be difficult for me, she knew. Nothing between us would be changed if I declined to attend.

  •

  It is rare to find a man who genuinely loves the female body, Imogen said. Certain acts of intimacy tend to be performed out of a sense of duty, or as a means of securing credit. Many men, being limited to a single shot, are intimidated by female potency, or never get round to discovering it, she said. The image of the woman as receptacle was strangely durable. “But was there ever a more stupid idea than penis envy?” she wondered. Balzac had a dread of ejaculation, she told me: it was a waste of his creative energy, he believed. He once lamented that a masterpiece had been lost to French literature in the course of the preceding night—he’d had a wet dream, and had thereby squandered a short story. We looked at Rodin’s statue of Balzac; I’d never noticed before what was happening, or what seemed to be happening, underneath the cloak. “A snowman in a bathrobe,” was how a contemporary had described it, she told me.

  •

  As befitted the meeting place of an esoteric cult, the maison de maître was not a building that one could happen upon by accident: a gravel track, branching from a minor road, descended through woodland that hid the house from view. A kilometre along, we came to a high wall and a gate. Flanking the gate were lanterns that had panels of ruby glass. A password had to be given at the entryphone, then a sequence of numbers typed on a keypad. The timing was melodramatic too: we were instructed to arrive at midnight.

  The house: a large, tall-windowed structure of grey stone, with a short flight of steps leading to the door, at which stood a very tall young man, sub-Saharan African, dressed in the livery of a footman, circa 1800—a long coat of heavy material, red and green trimmed with golden braid, over breeches and white stockings. We stepped into a hall that was lit by a pair of crystal chandeliers; chamber music, eighteenth-century, came from hidden speakers. Arrivals were greeted and directed by a handsome man, fortyish, in tuxedo and bow tie. He was overgroomed: not a strand of the eyebrows disrupted their line; the virile jaw had been shaved to a plastic smoothness; the exquisitely manicured hands gave off a citric perfume. His manner was courteous but unsmiling. I imagined that he imagined himself to be a force of moral liberation; a debonair intellectual roué; a saboteur; a cynic and a poet. The property had been rented for the occasion, as it had been several times before, for the same purpose. It was possible, Imogen told me later, that the man who conducted himself as the master of ceremonies was not in fact the host: the true host, Imogen had heard, was passing himself off as one of the staff—perhaps the saturnine waiter who dispensed the champagne.

  A large room in the basement had been set aside for disrobing. There was little conversation in this ante-room. The atmosphere was not that of a party. With the demeanour of a surgeon preparing for an operation that was not certain to succeed, a woman put on a high-collared gown and long black gloves, all of black satin. Another assiduously checked every zip and buckle of her costume, as if securing armour. Other women were more or less naked, but for a web of gauze and ribbons. A man put on a domino mask and a black cloak; this was the entirety of his attire. His companion too wore only a cloak and mask—but a more elaborate creation, with plumes of thin purple feathers arching out from the eyes. One by one the participants departed, solemnly. Taboos were about to be broken.

  Afterwards, I remarked that the woman with the long black gloves had suggested to me the image of a surgeon. There had indeed been a surgeon in the room, Imogen told me, but the protocols of the gathering forbade identification. One of the men was a writer of crime novels. A high-society lawyer had also been present, and a politician. Whenever the newspapers run stories about such debaucheries, the cast always includes a politician and a lawyer—or a judge, best of all.

  •

  I could try to describe what I saw at the maison de maître. I could describe the light on the bodies, the radiant and delicious flesh, the blood-flushed skin. I have read accounts of gatherings like the one at the maison de maître. “An Adonis sat on the edge of the bed, while a line of women took turns with him,” reports one participant. And: “My friend was being ridden by a honey-skinned goddess, a woman too gorgeous to be envied.” A soundtrack could be supplied, with mingled sighs and cries and moans of surrender, possession, release. Perhaps I could fashion a few elegant sentences from the couplings of the finest bodies. Some of the bodies were indeed magnificent. The scene could be transformed into a tableau that had some quality of art. But the reality, for me, was not an aesthetic experience, nor was it the realisation of any fantasy. There was no revulsion either, and no shock. A degree of fascination, I admit. But most strongly, at first, I believe, what I felt was a kind of anxiety, though everyone, as far as I could tell, was having pleasure—a great deal of pleasure; in a few cases, a pleasure akin to derangement.

  •

  At the maison de maître I had this thought: a cinematographer would be able to make an erotic scene of this, but if one were to watch it on a TV screen, as images generated by the undirected eye and circuitry of a CCTV camera, the squalor would prevail. Intoxicated by the flesh, these people do not see what the machine would see. Were they to observe it from the distance of the mechanical camera, purely as images, they might find these contortions ridiculous. This is what I thought: detachment would reveal the reality of it. The image would be evidence. But I also thought: the images would not be true to the experience; the desiring eye sees more than the machine.

  •

  As though opening a locket, I often return to the sight of Imogen in the garden of the museum, after we had spoken, before the guided tour. She sat on a bench, reading the leaflet. She seemed to be reading every word of the text. Having finished it, she looked around; her half-smile appeared simply to be indicative of her pleasure in what she was seeing. She went down to the pond. At the edge of the water she stooped; the carp must have been at the surface. Something in the sky caught her attention: she turned her head, raising a hand to her brow, against the sunlight. She could not have been aware that she was being observed, I am certain. What I was seeing was Imogen alone, Imogen herself. When I talked to her, she became someone else: she became who she was for me, as I became who I was for her. She looked at her watch. I can see her now, the innocent Imogen, looking up at the sky again, smiling at something only she could see.

  •

  I woke up one night to see Imogen looking out of the window, at the bright and enormous moon: “Let’s go out,” she said, as if it were the start of the day. There was something actorly about the impulsiveness, but I was easily persuaded. We dressed and went out, to the park, and what we saw seemed unforgettable, as it has proved to be: the zinc-coloured grass, the trees with leaves of writing paper, the delicate shadows. There were times at which I thought that I was fully myself only with Imogen, and others—sometimes in the course of the same day, the same hour, the same minute—at which it seemed that I had become, temporarily, someone who was not truly himself, but whom it was more satisfying to be.

  •

  Despite the terrible sufferings of his final weeks, Philip II of Spain died a
n exemplary death, in uncomplaining submission to the will of God. In the final days, relics from the Escorial’s collection of several thousand items were placed on the death bed, for the king’s contemplation and comfort. The knee of Saint Sebastian was brought to him, and a rib from the body of Saint Alban. The latter was of particular potency—through its power, the pope had declared, the soul of the king would be liberated from Purgatory.

  •

  A wedding party. The arrival of a bride was imminent. Around the front door of the hotel, half a dozen young women waited, each in a peach-coloured satin dress, strapless. One of them was flirting with the doorman; she angled her back towards him, so that he could admire the head of the tattooed dragon that lay on the nape of her neck. When the bridal car came into view she hooked a finger into her dress and extracted a smartphone. The car was a low-slung vintage Citroën, black, immaculate, with pink and white ribbons stretched across the bonnet and a bouquet lashed to the radiator grille. Suddenly, every bridesmaid was armed with a smartphone or camera. The driver, in full chauffeur rig, disembarked swiftly, to open the door for the bride. As she was being assisted from the vehicle, her father exited from the opposite side. A small girl in a bright pink dress was ushered towards the car, to take up the train of the dress. But the train had become caught on some part of the door. The chauffeur took action: kneeling on the tarmac, he started to disentangle the fabric. The father intervened. Becoming angry, the bride protested that damage was being done. The bridesmaids lowered their phones. At last the dress was free. A bridesmaid descended, to restore the train to its optimum shape. The father of the bride took the arm of his daughter, but the bride would not move. After a brief exchange of words, she withdrew into the car. Her father spoke to the chauffeur, who in turn explained to the assembly: the arrival would have to be restaged. The car drove away; two minutes later it returned. This time the dress flowed smoothly out of the vehicle. One of the bridesmaids turned her back and raised a hand, to take a photograph of herself with her friend, the bride, coming up the steps behind her.