French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics) (16 page)

They watched the lighted cabs go past. Maximilien hailed one of them down. When Lucienne was safely seated, the young man bowed to her, silently.

‘Goodbye!’ cried Lucienne, blowing him a kiss.

The cab drove off. The Count watched it for a while, as usual. And then, still smoking his cigar, he walked back up the Avenue to his home, which was at the Rond-Point.

Alone in his room, seated at his desk, he took a little file out of a box of toiletries and was soon apparently absorbed in polishing the ends of his fingernails.

Then he wrote a few lines on… a Scottish valley, in response to a memory that had come to him, rather strangely, from some corner of his mind.

Then he cut a few pages of a new book, glanced through them—and threw it down.

A clock chimed two in the morning: he stretched.

‘Really, this heartbeat is unbearable!’ he murmured.

He got up, released the heavy curtains and hangings so they fell to, went to a little desk, opened it, took a small hand-pistol out of a drawer, went to stand by a sofa, put the weapon to his chest, smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and closed his eyes.

A dull shot, muffled by the draperies, rang out; and a little blueish smoke came from the chest of the young man, as he fell among the cushions.

Since that time, when they ask Lucienne why she wears such mourning colours, she answers her lovers gaily:

‘Oh, I don’t know! Black suits me so well!’

But then her dark fan starts to tremble on her breast, like the wing of a moth over a gravestone.

T
HE
scene is the prison of La Roquette,
*
in the cell of a condemned man.

‘Gentlemen, I thank you. You have brought me paper, envelopes, a pen, an inkwell’ (he arranged these objects before him on the table as he spoke), ‘thank you indeed. Thanks also to Monsieur le Directeur, governor of the prison, for allowing me to keep a light burning for a part of this night. I have a letter to write. This will take me a little while; and I believe, yes I believe’ (and here he chuckled, almost mischievously) ‘that I only have a few hours left me. So I bid you good evening, gentlemen. Sleep well, sleep well, while I write. I sense that we shall be woken early tomorrow morning. And so goodnight.’

One of the warders left the cell, followed by a heavy scraping sound as the bolt was shot to in the thick wall. The other warder stretched out on a camp-bed placed directly in front of the door. He was soon snoring away peacefully. The prisoner caused them no concern whatever. He was a sickly, prematurely aged little man, whose fingers continually trembled. He was always cooperative and gentle in manner, notwithstanding the atrocity of his crime. They had never once had to use the straitjacket on him. And he would assuredly be as gentle as a lamb when they led him to the guillotine, a lamb who knew where he was going, but who would offer no resistance. In that whiteish and brownish cell, where the candle flame burned absolutely straight, the little man, with his nose pressed up against the paper, scraped away with his pen, the only sound to be heard between the snores.

In the way of methodical people, he began by adddressing the envelope: ‘For the Attention of the Chaplain, Prison of La Roquette.’ And he underlined an instruction: ‘Not to be opened before my death.’ Excellent. Now for the letter. And he began to write, carefully, but without undue haste—he was used to the slight trembling
in his fingers—like a conscientious clerk calmly copying out a report. His writing was very close and small.

‘Reverend Sir, I must ask you to forgive me for having so long postponed, despite your charitable enquiries, revealing to you the motive behind the abominable murder I have committed. I
could not allow
the cause of my crime to be known before its perpetrator found himself beyond the reach of all absolution or mercy. For my salvation would have been a disobedience. But today—this afternoon, this very evening—I knew by some infallible signs that the decisive moment was near, in the instants when, given the positioning and height of the two narrow windows, my appearance in the shadow projected on the wall seemed to flout every natural law… Just now, for instance, while I was speaking to my warders, seated not behind, but in front of the candlestick, the
trenchant
absence of what I still possess was so clear-cut in the shadow cast, I knew the time was close when all would be resolved, and my appearance corrected. I knew that just before dawn, Monsieur le Directeur, governor of the prison, would come in here, accompanied by others, and tell me that I must resolve to die. Which gives me just time to write this letter of explanation…

‘It is indeed extraordinary that a man like myself, not wicked, not demented, but a straightforward fellow, born of decent folk, well brought-up and respectably employed—I was, you will recall, a haberdasher in Rémy-sur-Oise—that a man like myself, I say, should be guilty, and without any hatred to motivate it, as if I did it for pleasure, of such a dreadful and calculated murder. I can imagine the stupefaction of the members of the jury, of the court, of the doctors appointed to report on my mental health. (I have been careful not to reveal the truth, they would have taken me for a madman! I would have been acquitted, and therefore unable to fulfil my destiny.) I can also well understand your bewilderment before me, Chaplain. Because you know no more than the others.

‘But I know…

‘One thing that surprises even me, however, is that I was not aware of this thing immediately, I mean even after I had attained the age of reason. Was it because, as a child, with undisciplined mind and eyes, I simply didn’t notice the strangeness of my condition, or possibly I believed that everyone shared it? No, instinct alone would have informed me that I was somehow afflicted. Could it be, then, that the
places where I worked and played—the schoolroom, the little vegetable garden behind my parents’ neat house—simply prevented my noticing the anomaly? No again, because light plays through the bars of a schoolroom window as freely as it does elsewhere; and the garden wall was a good deal taller than I was at shoulder-height. Having pondered the question for a long time, I have come to the conclusion that in my boyhood and early adolescence I was—as far as conformity to natural laws goes, and especially as concerns the one whose eventual disfunction compelled me to murder by way of expiation—I was, I repeat, in every particular constituted like the other boys. The thing that was to alter the direction of my life developed only later, with the onset of manhood proper. And in a way, is it not normal, is it not in fact logical, that given the most unbelievable involution of eternal rules, an irregularity that implied for the person concerned—such was my case—some fatal demand, some ineluctable duty—should make itself manifest at a time in life when a person finds himself able to act on this demand, to fulfil this duty?

‘Let me now outline for you, Reverend Father, how and when I first understood the nature of the necessity that I have obeyed with horror, but also with resignation, and even, perhaps, with pride! For is a man that, even through crime, has assuredly rescued both humankind and nature from unimaginable disorder and disaster—is such a man, I repeat, not entitled to feel a little pride in himself?

‘Since my father deemed unsatisfactory the education I was receiving at the school of Saint-Rémy-sur-Oise (the teacher, who was a very pale young man, down from Paris, cared little for teaching the scriptures or arithmetic, but spent most classes reading aloud texts concerning death and eternity, texts I didn’t understand, and that terrified me); and since the trade of hatmaker does not require any great erudition, my father, who intended to pass the business on to me, decided, after my fourteenth birthday, to keep me with him. I never saw the schoolmaster again, and if I remember rightly, he was asked to resign, the authorities deeming him a little mad. I made a very docile and contented apprentice. I grew, though not much, but I enjoyed good health, despite my slightly stunted appearance. I thought no more of the dark and disturbing hocus pocus fed to us by the wild-eyed young teacher, with his hair standing up on end. My parents were very good to me. In my hours off work they would let me play as I liked in the garden or the street. I ate well, I slept well.
I already had a taste of what my life would always be, a calm vista stretching ahead. Even at fifteen, I scarcely felt the disturbances associated with the onset of puberty. My mother rejoiced at my placidity. And yet I have to confess that, from sixteen on, I would steal more glances than were strictly appropriate at the new apprentice, a young girl, still a child almost, who came daily and worked in the back of the shop, sowing on hatbands and the peaks for caps. She would end up with scores of little black pinpricks on her fingertips. But she had such pretty eyes, glowing with life, under her mop of unruly red curls! And between her freckles, her skin was so white.

‘She was the daughter of our neighbour, the village druggist. She was a bit skinny, and had long arms that she didn’t quite know what to do with—they would hang down awkwardly when she had stopped working. I found her charming, just as she was. When I gazed at her, seated on the other side of the table, she would laugh, or else she would cry; and when she cried she was prettier still. You must forgive me, Reverend Father, for recounting these follies, perhaps not entirely untainted by sin. My excuse is that I did intend to marry her, when I came of age and got established.

‘We used to meet on spring mornings, in the clump of willows by the river. We would hold hands, but not stand too close; we didn’t say anything and we didn’t look at each other. But I could hear her breathing, which like my own came strong and rapid, as though we were out of breath. Then it was summer. I was seventeen. Now, when we walked, I drew closer to her. I didn’t dare declare myself yet, but I would draw her close, as if to whisper something in her ear. She turned her head to look at the trees, or lowered it to the sandy path. And then, on one occasion—the air was on fire and the bees were loud and dragonflies darted about us—I drew her brusquely towards me, and hugged her close, and scarcely knowing what I was doing, I pressed my lips to hers. We stopped, astonished, delighted, lost! And I kissed and kept kissing her beautiful hot mouth which she could not close.

‘Why was it, at the very instant my child’s heart was flowering into that of a man’s—and while I kissed her still—I drew slightly to one side to examine our two shadows, our two slender and lengthened shadows, clearly outlined on the pale narrow path?

‘I could make out her body next to mine, I could see our arms entwined, and a little higher than her shoulder I could see my own,
slightly inclined, and higher still, there was her forehead, and the pretty tousle of her hair… but as I was breathing in her own breath, I did not see… no, no, I did not see, on the pale path, my own face, I did not see my forehead, I did not see my hair. My own lips were upon her lips! But, from the neck upwards, my own shadow had no mouth, no forehead, no hair!… My shadow was without a head.

‘It would be difficult indeed, Sir, to express my agitation on discovering that my shadow had no head! A little later on, I rushed back to the spot in the track where my image had been cut off, supposing there must be some abrupt hollow or hole into which my head had fallen, cut off by the edge. But there was no such hollow. The ground was smooth and unbroken. And there, in front of me, stretched my decapitated shadow! Out of some instinctive terror, I brought my hands up to my cheeks and my temples: I touched, and touched again my fleshy, downy, living skin: and on the road I saw the black shadows of my palms sketching the contour of the nothing that was between them.

‘I succumbed to a fever that confined me to my bed for fifty days. Once in convalescence, my eyes looked wildly, and I said not a word; people started to wonder whether my illness—it was typhoid fever—had not left me mad or simple. Neither was true. My reasoning was entirely intact. But I could not help thinking of my unfinished shadow. And I thought about it obsessively, with fear and with rage. I was both terrified and consumed by the desire to know whether, after my illness, the thing was as before. Today, perhaps, my shadow had a head! How I wished it were so! In the end, my curiosity triumphed over my apprehension. One morning when I was alone in my bedroom, sunk deep in my valetudinarian’s armchair, I rose up slowly between the window and the wall, I turned around slowly… above the chair-back rose my shoulders, my neck—and nothing else! I fell back in a dead faint.

‘For days, weeks, months I was morose, and sat with staring eyes, which alarmed my mother. It is very hard to give an idea—unless one has experienced it oneself—of the anxiety that borders on terror, of the shame that turns into torture, which in the early days afflict a man who is in any way sensitive and who is persuaded—a conviction confirmed at every moment—that his shadow lacks a head. It might even be easier to get used to not having a head oneself; in that case, to keep the mind calm, it would simply mean not touching the face or the
skull, and carefully avoiding mirrors. Perhaps one might even forget that one was headless. But how is it possible, without living in unbroken darkness, to prevent one’s shadow appearing on the wall, on the parquet, on the pavement? My suffering was all the more acute, in that I dared tell no one of my trouble. If I had been able to confess to my parents or my friends, I might have lessened the torment. But some instinct—and since then I have come to understand the wisdom of this instinct—warned me to remain silent, and that I should keep secret the deviance from natural law that was embodied in my person, or at least in the apparent incompleteness of my person. What proved to me that I
had
to keep it secret, is that, thanks to the operation of some mysterious and higher will, I was the only one to notice it. No one ever evinced the least surprise at seeing, next to his shadow complete with a head, my own that was not. The fact is that everybody else—through a
necessary
illusion—saw a head there. But this remained something between me and… someone. In addition to this, I was helped because time, which accustoms us to most things, and repetition of the fact, ended by taking the edge off my anguish. First my astonishment and then my fear became less acute, confronted with this neck that supported nothing. My father died the year after my mother, and I had to busy myself—after the shock of the double loss—with putting some order into our business affairs, which had become somewhat chaotic. To keep my clientèle, I had to make visits and advertise in the local newspaper of Saint-Rémy-sur-Oise. Then I got married, to the little apprentice, daughter of our neighbour the druggist, who had turned out tall and beautiful; I had children, two boys and a girl, and all of this took my mind off my troubles. There remained just the slight hesitation in my speech, and a slight constraint in my movements, which fitted with the amiable reserve of my character. I nearly stopped noticing my anomaly, or at least I acknowledged it without pain; sometimes I even treated it with familiarity and good humour. On one occasion—it was so comic, I shall never forget it—I was showing our range of silk top-hats to the owner of the Hôtel des Trois Empereurs; not knowing where to put one which was much too small for my client, the tables and chairs being cluttered, I put it on my own head—and I doubled up, I literally doubled up laughing! Why? Because on the wall I saw the shadow of the hat, which was so narrow that a child’s head could scarcely have fitted it, with its rim, resting rather shakily, right on the shadow
of my shoulders! I can assure you, my dear Sir, it was really very droll; even you would have split your sides, despite your grave and saintly character. And on occasion my “infirmity” actually afforded me some joy. It was when I used to take my children for a walk in the countryside, on Sundays in summer, after closing the shop. As they were already quite tall, and I was fairly small, the shadows we cast in front of us were almost the same size, because I was shorter by a head. I derived some pleasure from that.