French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics) (28 page)

The blemishes got worse, they looked grievous, pitilessly rendered by the artist’s fingers—he who had been such a clever charlatan, and was now a ruthless practitioner of the art. He showed everything of the woman, her irritation, then her exaltation and her suffering, everything, from the tiniest natural defects, unnoticed until then, to the ravages wrought by childbirth and motherhood. He catalogued her wrinkles, he drew up the inventory of her fleshly existence.

She wanted to stop posing for her husband, and she told him to go back to using models. He refused, and then, after a violent row,
consented; but soon he was back, pleading, making such a fuss that too often she was forced to relent. For it was his wife and no one else the sculptor wished to copy from nature. He had found his inspiration in her subtly ageing, ripening body. As an artist, he was in love with her autumnal plenty.

With a gentle smile, he even said things to her like, ‘well, it was filling out’. He looked at his old anatomical drawings, and pointed out the faults of design and structure in the body of his beloved life companion. He adored these faults, they were ‘so interesting!’, and ‘so amusing!’ Yes, he found his wife to be ‘interesting!’ He would show his drawings, statues, fragments, to his spade-bearded friends; with fervour he explained what he was after, glorying in the sagging and wrinkled flesh that did indeed win approval among the beards, but distressed the poor woman terribly, confronted with the idea of her own decrepitude. The idea started to obsess her, and she felt the piercing, critical gaze of her husband upon her, morning, noon, and night. Walking in front of him, she began to dread the feel of her husband’s heavy gaze upon her back.

The denouement was logical enough. Desiring some violent distraction, some proof from life that would tell her whether or not her youth was finished, and whether she was still desirable—she took a lover. He was a poet, and he reassured her by portraying her in his books, but only through a haze of infinitely decorous language.

‘T
HE
things that can happen in a furnished hotel room on the night of Mardi Gras!
*
—So horrible they beggar the imagination!’ And having filled a large glass, a soda glass, with Chartreuse, de Romer gulped it down in one and began:

‘It was two years ago, at the height of my nervous troubles.
*
I had come off ether, but was not free of its morbid side-effects—trouble hearing, trouble seeing, night-time dreads and nightmares: solfanol and bromide had cured me of most of these, but the dreads persisted. They clung on chiefly in the apartments I had lived in with her, on the rue Saint-Guillaume, the other side of the river, where her presence seemed to have impregnated the walls and the hangings with some indefinable spell. Everywhere else I enjoyed unbroken sleep and quiet nights, but no sooner had I crossed the threshold than the indefinable unease of the old days poisoned the whole atmosphere around me; irrational terrors froze and strangled me by turns. Strange shadows gathered in the corners of the room, and ambiguous folds in the curtains and the doorways were suddenly filled with some terrifying nameless life. At night it became intolerable. Something strange and horrible lived with me in that apartment, some invisible thing that I felt was squatting in the shadow and watching me, some inimical thing whose breath I felt pass over my face, as it almost brushed against me. It was a dreadful feeling, Gentlemen, and if I had to relive that nightmare I think I would rather… but let us not dwell on that…

‘Anyway, I had reached the point when I could no longer sleep in that room, or even live in it, but since there was still a year to run on the lease, I took to living in hotels. But of course I couldn’t stay put, and quit the Continental for the Hôtel du Louvre, then quit the Louvre for smaller establishments, driven on by an exhausting compulsion to keep moving and changing.

‘Why was it that after eight days spent in the lap of luxury at the Terminus, I elected to remove to that seedy hotel on the rue
d’Amsterdam?—The Normandy, the Brest, or the Rouen—or some such name—they’re all called that round the Gare Saint-Lazare!

‘Was it the incessant movement of arrivals and departures that attracted and held me there, rather than elsewhere?… I can’t exactly say… My room was large and light, on the second floor, with two windows looking out onto the main station exit on the Place du Havre. I had been living there for three days, since the Saturday before Mardi Gras, and was very comfortably installed.

‘It was, I repeat, a third-class hotel, but perfectly decent, for travellers and provincials, who felt less lost staying near their point of arrival than in the heart of the city; a respectable hotel, deserted from one evening to the next, but in fact always full.

In any case, the faces I met on the stairs or corridors were the least of my preoccupations, until that is, on the evening in question, at about six o’clock, when I returned to the hotel (to change for a dinner in town) and was getting my key from the office, I couldn’t stop myself from staring more curiously than is polite at two travellers who were there too.

‘They had just arrived; a black leather overnight bag was at their feet, and standing in front of the reception desk they were negotiating the price of rooms.

‘ “It’s for one night,” explained the taller of the two, who also seemed the older; “we’re leaving tomorrow—any room will do.”—“With one bed or two?” asked the manager.—“Oh, if we sleep at all—we’re going to a masked ball.” “With two beds,” interrupted the younger.—“Right! Have we got a room with two beds, Eugène?” The manager called one of the waiters who had just come in, and after a brief discussion: “Put these gentlemen in number 13, on the second floor; you’ll be very comfortable there, it’s a big room. Will the gentlemen be going up now?” And when they shook their heads to say no—“Will the gentlemen be dining? We have a
table d’hôte
.”—“No, we’re dining out,” answered the taller of the two, “and we shall come back at around eleven o’clock to change for the ball; but have the suitcase taken up.”—“And a fire in the room?”—“Yes, a fire for eleven o’clock,” and they were already on their way out.

‘I realized then that I had been standing there staring at them, with my candle in my hand; I blushed like a child caught red-handed, and went quickly up to my room. The boy was making up the beds in room 13, which was next to mine, and that too intrigued me.

‘Passing once more through the lobby on my way out, I couldn’t help asking the manager about my new neighbours. “The two men with the overnight bag? Well, they’ve filled in the forms, you can have a look!” And glancing rapidly, I read: “Henri Desnoyels, thirty-two years old, and Edmond Chalegrin, twenty-six”, both of them butchers.

‘Bowler hats and travelling coats aside, they were both very elegantly dressed for butcher-boys, I thought. I recalled the tallest wearing gloves, and having a haughty, aristocratic air about him. There was, moreover, a certain resemblance between them: the same very dark blue eyes, slanted, with long lashes, and the same long, reddish moustaches emphasizing the sharp profile. But the taller man was much paler than the other, with something languid and bored about him.

‘An hour later I had forgotten all about them, it was Mardi Gras, and the streets were in uproar, full of people in masks. I got back around midnight, and went up to my room. I was already half-undressed, and was going to bed, when I heard a voice raised in the room next door; my butchers were back.

‘Why did the curiosity that had seized me before in the hotel lobby return now, irrational and imperious? In spite of myself, I started listening. “So you’re not going to get dressed and come to the ball,” came the cutting voice of the taller man; “and after all that trouble; what’s wrong with you? Are you ill?” And as the other said nothing: “Are you drunk, have you been boozing again?” went on the older man. Then came the other voice, thick and whining: “It’s your fault, why did you let me drink? I’m always ill when I drink that wine.”—“All right, that’s enough, go to bed,” grated the other, strident voice, “get your nightshirt.” I heard a key scrape in the lock of the overnight case. “So you’re not going to go to the ball either?” went on the slurred voice.—“A great night out that will be, wandering the streets alone and all dressed up! I’m going to bed, too.” I heard him plump his pillow and mattress violently with his fist, and then the sound of clothes falling came from the room; the two men were undressing. I held my breath and listened—I was barefoot, listening at our adjoining door; the taller man’s voice broke the silence again: “And such lovely costumes, it’s a shame!” And then I heard the rustle of silks.

‘I bent my eye to the keyhole. My candle prevented me from obtaining the darkness around me necessary for seeing into the
next-door room, so I blew it out. The younger man’s bed was right opposite my door. Collapsed on a chair next to the bed, he was immobile, extremely pale and with a vague expression; his head had slid from the back of the chair onto the pillow; his hat was on the floor, and with his waistcoat unbuttoned, his tie removed, and his shirt open, he looked as though he had been asphyxiated. The elder man, whom I could make out only with difficulty, was in his undershorts and socks, pacing round the table which was piled with light materials and spangled satins. “Be damned! I must try it on!” he exclaimed aloud, without taking the slightest notice of his companion. And standing in all his svelte and muscular elegance in front of the looking-glass, he slipped on a long, green, hooded cape lined with velvet. The effect was so sudden, so horrible and bizarre, that I only just stopped myself from crying out in shock.

‘I no longer recognized the man, who seemed to be taller, swathed in the light green cloak which made him even thinner. His face was now covered by the metallic mask, and half-hidden under the dark velvet hood. It was no longer anything human that swayed about, but the horrible nameless thing whose invisible presence had poisoned my nights at the rue Saint-Guillaume, and that had now taken form and was alive.

‘Slumped in a corner by his bed, the drunken man had been witness to this metamorphosis and was staring aghast; he had been seized with a trembling-fit, his knees knocked together with terror, his teeth chattered, and he had brought his hands together in an imploring gesture. He was shivering from head to foot. The thing in green revolved in the middle of the room in a slow and spectral way, lit up by two candles, and beneath the mask I could sense two fearfully watchful eyes. Then it went and stood right over the other, its arms crossed over its chest, and from beneath the mask it gave him an unspeakable, suggestive look. It was then that the other, apparently seized by a fit of madness, fell from his chair and, lying belly-down on the parquet, tried to gather in and embrace the cape in both arms. He buried his head in its folds, stammering out incomprehensible words; he was foaming at the mouth and rolling his eyes.

‘What was the mystery that joined these two men, and what irreparable event in his past had the spectre in cape and icy mask conjured up in the eyes of the mad wretch? O ye gods, the pallor of those imploring hands, rolling about in ecstasy in the folds of that larval
cape! What kind of Sabbath was this, taking place in a drab and dreary furnished room? And as the strangled crying went on, issuing from the black hole of the drunkard’s wide-open mouth, the thing stepped back, drawing the hypnotized creature that lay crawling on its belly along after it.

‘How many minutes, hours, did this scene go on? Then the Ghoul stopped moving, placed a hand on the forehead and on the heart of the man who had fainted at its feet; then, gathering him up in its arms, propped the body upright back on its chair by the bed. The man was slumped there motionless, eyes closed and head hanging. The thing in green now bent over the suitcase. What was it searching for so avidly, by the dancing light of the fire? Even though I could no longer see, I knew it had found what it was seeking, for I could hear the clinking of glass phials above the sink, and then there was a familiar smell, which invaded my head and sent my brain into a swoon: the smell of ether. The shape in green reappeared, and moved silently towards the unconscious man. And what was it he was carrying so carefully in both hands?… Oh, horror! He was carrying a hermetically sealed glass mask, without eye- or mouth-holes, and the mask was filled to the brim with ether, with liquid poison. And then the thing in green leaned over the defenceless, inanimate creature and clamped the mask over his face, fixing it tightly with a red scarf knotted behind. Some kind of laughter seemed to convulse the dark velvet hood: “That’s shut you up for good,” I thought I heard it murmur.

‘The butcher boy now slipped out of mask and cape, and wandered around the room, a vague form in his undershorts. He put his city clothes back on, his overcoat, his clubman’s dog-skin leather gloves, his hat on his head—and then, in silence, packed away, in slightly feverish haste perhaps, the carnival costumes and the glass phials into the suitcase, clicked the nickel fasteners to, lit a cigar, took the case and his umbrella, opened the door, and went out… And I didn’t utter a sound, I didn’t ring, I didn’t call.’