Cocaine (8 page)

Madame Kalantan Ter-Gregorianz’s villa was completely white, as white as an ossuary and as round as an ancient Greek temple. At the side there was a small triangular evergreen garden that looked like a leaf attached to a bridal bouquet.

The villa might have been the
garçonnière
of a fairy who has not yet made her appearance in current fairy stories, but ought unquestionably to do so: that is, the fairy Libertine.

Tito Arnaudi and Pietro Nocera arrived there in the evening in an open taxicab. A ribbon-shaped cloud extended from the perfectly round moon, resembling an arm holding a lamp. Clusters of stars twinkled untidily here and there in the sky, looking like wind-scattered platinum filings.

Between the pergola and the euonymus hedges rectangular shirt fronts framed by evening dress stood out in the darkness of the garden under the moon. The air was full of the fragrance of night, that always young and beautiful cocotte. The two men in evening dress got out of the taxi.

The entrance hall was in Roman style. The walls were adorned with mythological frescoes against a bright red background, like those of Pompeii, which prudish and virginal English misses consider shocking. The temperature was that of a
tepidarium.

The two Italians handed over their top hats and, preceded by a flunkey wearing more braid than a Turkish admiral, advanced down a corridor that was semi-circular like those in a theater and were shown into a big room.

This was the penguin room. There were big mirrors all round it, and on them were painted polar landscapes, vast expanses of snow, blocks of ice, and huge icebergs that acted as platforms for assemblies of penguins. And since only the lower part of the mirrors was painted, the higher, unpainted part provided an infinity of reflections of the landscapes facing them.

The penguins looked like gentlemen in evening dress with their hands behind their back.

A huge carpet covered with white, green and blue hieroglyphics covered the whole floor. Tiger skins and brocade cushions lay on semi-circular divans. There were no lamps and no windows, but a misty light from invisible colored lamps filtered through the light blue glass ceiling.

“We were admiring the sorceress’s cave,” Tito said, going up to Kalantan, who came in holding out one hand to him and the other to his companion.

“We’re the first. Are we too early?”

“Not at all. Someone has to be first.”

A fur as shaggy as a royal mantle acted as door curtain. No sooner had the flunkey dropped it than he had to raise it again to announce three names, preceded by three titles.

Three gentlemen came in.

One of them was tall, thin, clean-shaven and white-haired; his white sidechops gave him the austere appearance of a
maître d’hôtel.

Kalantan introduced him: “Professor Cassiopea, astronomer, in charge of the world’s most powerful telescope.”

Bows. She then introduced the two Italians. “Dr Chiaro di Luna, Professor Où Fleurit l’Oranger, both journalists on a Paris newspaper.”

More bows.

Two other gentlemen had come in with the astronomer.

“The painter Triple Sec.”

He was young, blond, thin, and trebly dry. More bows.

“Dr Pancreas, of the Faculty of Medicine.”

Bows and handshakes.

On a sign from the hostess the five gentlemen moved towards a divan; the two Italians were invited to precede the three Frenchmen.

The divan was so soft and well sprung that once one had sat on it one’s knees were at the height of one’s shoulders. To avoid assuming ungraceful positions there was no alternative to either getting up again or lying flat.

The flunkey announced more guests.

A rich industrialist, an antique dealer with several deposed kings among his clientèle, a blonde of indefinable age between thirty and sixty, a cocotte of recent vintage, more men, more women.

One of the latter announced that M. — was playing in a tragedy of Corneille’s that evening and would be arriving later.

An old gentleman apologized for the absence of a colleague who had had to go to Marseilles to perform an operation. The painter realized at once what lay behind this excuse. The surgeon, who was the master of an important masonic lodge, was never free on Thursdays.

More guests arrived, and there were more introductions and more bows; and no one showed surprise at seeing anyone else there.

Four flunkeys brought in about a hundred multi-colored cushions and piled them round the ladies sitting on the divans. At one end of the big circular room a smaller circle formed: an assembly of men, women, cushions, pink female shoulders, women’s hair-dos, wisps of cigarette smoke; the overhead light tinted everything pink and blue, turning the shadows greenish and violet.

A great correctness of attitude gave a certain nobility to the promiscuousness of cushions, the huddle of limbs, the close proximity of austere elderly men in tails and women in revealing dresses.

Kalantan, the beautiful Armenian lady, was sheathed in darkness; her dark gray dress with greenish and bluish reflections clung to her form as if she were wearing tights; it was not trimmings or stitching that held the silk to the curves of her body. She was like a bronze nude or a basalt statue, but touching her would no doubt have revealed the adhesive softness of a vampire. There was not so much as a silk chemise between her dress and her skin; round her waist she had a green girdle, knotted in front, and the tassels at the two ends ended in two big emeralds. Her stockings were green, and so were her satin shoes and her fingernails.

A kind of trapdoor opened, and a pale young man with a girlish face, carrying a violin in one hand and a bow in the other, emerged from below. The hostess signed to him, he disappeared again, and the trapdoor shut.

Through the floor — and only then did its thinness become apparent — there rose the sound of soft, caressing music that seemed to come from great depths.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen you,” the painter Triple Sec said to the man beside him. “At the Grand Palais yesterday morning you said that a painting of mine was full of sublime falsities. The phrase struck me.”

“Good gracious,” said the gentleman with the austere face of a
maitre d’hôtel,
“do you mean to say you were standing next to your picture?”

“Of course he was,” said a woman with metallic blonde hair. The painter’s always near the picture just as the deceased’s close relatives are always near the hearse. If you want to say nasty things about a picture or someone who has just died, it’s better to keep your distance.”

“And do you like the false in art?” the painter asked.

The astronomer: Of course; only the false is beautiful. Crazy distortions, maddening contrasts, are the only means by which artists can produce any reaction in me. We’ve had enough of the truth, of life and realism. What I want of an artist is that he should be able to give me the illusion of walking city streets paved with stars with a pair of galoshes on my head, enabling me to splash about with my head in the puddles of the sky while rain and light come up to me from below. Instead of admiring flowers and plants, I want to see them buried, with their roots exposed to the winds; instead of effects I want to see causes, instead of consequences I want to see origins. I’m much more interested in the roots of daisies than in their corollas.

Surgeon: For an astronomer like you that’s a bit much.

Astronomer: Astronomers are nothing but poets
manqués,
because instead of studying qualities and their distortion they concentrate on the exact study of quantities, which is absurd.

Kalantan, the beautiful Armenian lady: Nevertheless you’re held in high esteem . . .

Astronomer: Yes, because we use huge telescopes, write numbers thirty digits long, calculate in sextillions and write unintelligible formulas. But what is the actual use of measuring the distance of the stars?

Kalantan: If only you made mistakes in your measurements and forecasts. The infuriating thing about you is your accuracy.

A gentleman with the face of a chronic cuckold came in. After the usual exchange of courtesies, he sat on the floor and went to sleep with a cushion between his legs, just like an emigrant with his bundle.

Kalantan: He always goes to sleep.

Retired cocotte: Who is he?

Kalantan: A big business man.

Tito Arnaudi: But how does he manage to look after his business?

Kalantan: He has a partner.

Surgeon: How he must fleece him.

Kalantan: No, the partner’s his wife’s lover, and she keeps an eye on the business and sees he doesn’t do any dirty work, at any rate so far as the business is concerned.

This information raised a laugh, based partly on amusement and partly on malice.

A flunkey brought in a big silver tray with about twenty champagne glasses full of fruit and offered one to each guest. Another flunkey offered each guest a small golden spoon.

“Fruit salad,” Pietro Nocera explained to Tito Arnaudi, helping himself to a strawberry that sparkled with tiny crystals of ice and was soaked in champagne and ether.

By now the smell of ether had spread through the room; the condensed vapor frosted the outside of the glasses.

A third flunkey went round with a small cubical silver box, one side of which was perforated; from it he shook into each glass some white powder that dissolved in the liquid.

The invisible violinist played laments as heart-rending as those of a troubadour imprisoned in a dungeon for some crime of love. The weak, tremulous light, the velvety carpets, the soft cushions, the circular walls, the men in black, the almost silent women gave an air of solemnity to the pagan ceremony; the men sat with legs crossed in the Turkish fashion, holding their glasses and sedately and impassively sipping the subtle, alcoholized mixture of sweet and pungent fruit.

On a tripod taller than a man’s height there was a Chinese jade vase with a big bunch of violet carnations and black roses (they looked as if they had been skillfully made of wrought iron) carnally perfumed with ambergris; they let out a cry of picturesque immodesty.

The notes of the invisible violin were like drops of dew slipping along a silk spider’s web in the sun.

Tito Arnaudi: And who’s the man that looks like a convalescent cuckold?

Pietro Nocera: He’s an antique dealer. He and the other two who look like incurable sentimentalists are three ex-lovers of the lady of the house. They’re called the mummies’ gallery, because their volcanic lover has made them literally useless from the love-making point of view. It seems that in that connection the lady once said: What does it matter to me if a man is of no use to other women after he has been useful to me?

Tito Arnaudi: What rubbish. Do you believe that excess can lead to —

Surgeon: And why shouldn’t it? Look at the tortoise. It lives for a hundred years, but makes love only once a year.

Painter: I don’t envy it. So far as I’m concerned, there’s only one thing that’s worse than excess.

Surgeon: And what’s that?

Painter: Abstinence.

The man who was always asleep, waking up: I heard you talking about me; you said I was a cuckold. Cuckold, tart — they’re just words. The cuckold is ridiculous because of the existence of the word. A deceived woman would be just as ridiculous if there were a corresponding word for her. An unfaithful woman is a tart. An unfaithful man is merely an unfaithful man, only because a term for a male tart has not yet been coined. But what does it matter? I spend my time in dream or sleep. When there’s morphine in my veins I dream; when there isn’t I sleep.

And he dropped off to sleep again.

Tito Arnaudi: But why does he sleep all the time?

Surgeon: Morphine.

Two flunkeys came in and raised both parts of the curtain door to allow two dancers to appear.

“
Danse polynésienne
,” the male dancer announced, putting his arm round his partner’s waist.

The violinist struck up a wild tune.

But no one took any notice. The surgeon had taken a small gold box from the pocket of his white waistcoat and inhaled a big pinch of cocaine, and at Kalantan’s instigation a flunkey had filled the glasses with more ether and more champagne.

Kalantan went down on her knees in front of a glass that had been put on the floor and drank as if she were drinking the clear water of a lake.

While she drank, Tito Arnaudi put his face near her black hair, which had an exciting odor of musk, like India ink.

The dancers withdrew, and the flunkies reappeared with small white cups like those in which Arabs take coffee.

“Strawberries with chloroform,” a thin lady with a green wig explained.

“Who’s she? Tito asked.

“A recently launched hetaira. You’d have said she was born and had spent her life at an imperial court, though last year she was still a waitress at a divisional police station. These women provide the most remarkable examples of mimicry in the animal kingdom. One year they still have dirty feet, and the next they graciously offer you their hand and take offence if you don’t kiss it. One year they don’t know whether numbers are read from left to right or from right to left, and the next you find them talking about shares in the railway from Senegal to Zanzibar by way of Lake Tanganyika and discussing the latest Goncourt Prize and the paintings of Cézanne.”

The room was suddenly invaded by a swarm of butterflies. Some of the terrified creatures crashed into the mirrors in their dash for freedom, and others performed the most absurd evolutions among the guests. They glittered like pieces of cloth shot with metal, purple, gold and glass, silver and ice, air and brass. They flew desperately this way and that, landing upside down on the luminous ceiling or fluttering on the floor. One came to rest on the moiré silk lapel of an evening dress jacket, with its wings spread and its huge stupefied eyes.

Then it took off again, hovered undecidedly between a woman’s red hair and a glass, and then, asphyxiated by the fumes of ether and chloroform, fell into a glass of champagne, covering it with its spread wings like a paten on a chalice.