Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal (2 page)

Just then Briancourt, who had not seen me, turned round, and recognizing me, nodded in his off-hand way. As he did so, the pianist's eyes brightened, and he whispered something to him, whereupon the General's son, without giving him any answer, turned towards me, and, taking me by the hand, said:

'Camille, allow me to introduce you to my friend Rene. M. Rene Teleny—M. Camille Des Grieux.'

I bowed, blushing. The pianist stretched forth his ungloved hand. In my fit of nervousness I had pulled off both my gloves, so that I now put my bare hand into his.

He had a perfect hand for a man, rather large than small, strong yet soft, and with long, tapering fingers, so that his grasp was firm and steady.

Who has not been sentient of the manifold feelings produced by the touch of a hand? Many persons seem to bear a temperature of their own about them. They are hot and feverish in mid-winter, while others are cold and icy in the dog-days. Some hands are dry and parched, others continually moist, clammy, and slimy. There are fleshy, pulpy, muscular, or thin, skeletal and bony hands. The grasp of some is like that of an iron vise, others feel as limp as a bit of rag. There is the artificial product of our modern civilization, a deformity like a Chinese lady's foot, always enclosed in a glove during the day, often poulticed at night, tended by a manicure; they are as white as snow, if not as chaste as ice. How that little useless hand would shrink from the touch of the gaunt, horny, clay-colored, begrimed workman's hand, which hard, unremitting labor has changed into a kind of hoof. Some hands are coy, others paddle you indecently; the grip of some is hypocritical, and not what it pretends to be; there is the velvety, the unctuous, the priestly, the humbug's hand; the open palm of the spendthrift, the usurer's tight-fisted claw. There is, moreover, the magnetic hand, which seems to have a secret affinity for your own; its simple touch thrills your whole nervous system, and fills you with delight.

How can I express all that I felt from the contact of Teleny's hand? It set me on fire; and, strange to say, it soothed me at the same time. How much sweeter, softer, it was, than any woman's kiss. I felt his grasp steal slowly over all my body, caressing my lips, my throat, my breast; my nerves quivered from head to foot with delight, then it sank downwards into my veins, and Priapus, reawakened, lifted up his head. I actually felt I was being taken possession of, and I was happy to belong to him.

I should have liked to have said something polite in acknowledgment of the pleasure he had given me by his playing, still, what unhackneyed phrase could have expressed all the admiration I felt for him?

'But, gentlemen,' said he, 'I am afraid I am keeping you away from the music'

'I, myself, was just going away,' said I.

'The concert bores you then, does it?'

'No, on the contrary; but after having heard you play, I cannot listen to any more music tonight.'

He smiled and looked pleased.

'In fact, Rene, you have outdone yourself this evening,' said Briancourt. 'I never heard you play like that before.'

'Do you know why?'

'No, unless it is that you had such a full theatre.'

'Oh, no! it is simply because, while I was playing the gavotte, I felt that somebody was listening to me.'

'Oh! somebody!' echoed the young men, laughing.

'Amongst a French public, especially that of a charity concert, do you really think that there are many persons who listen? I mean who listen intently with all their heart and soul. The young men are obliging the ladies, these are scrutinizing each other's toilette; the fathers, who are bored, are either thinking of the rise and fall of the stocks, or else counting the number of gaslights, and reckoning how much the illumination will cost'

'Still, among such a crowd there is surely more than one attentive listener,' said Odillot, the lawyer.

'Oh, yes! I dare say; as for instance the young lady who has been thrumming the piece you have just played, but there is hardly more than one—how can I express it?—well, more than one sympathetic listener.'

'What do you mean by a sympathetic listener?' asked Courtois, the stockbroker.

'A person with whom a current seems to establish itself; someone who feels, while listening, exactly as I do while I am playing, who sees perhaps the same visions as I do—'

'What! do you see visions when you play?' asked one of the bystanders, astonished.

'Not as a rule, but always when I have a sympathetic listener.'

'And do you often have such a listener?' said I, with a sharp pang of jealousy.

'Often? Oh, no! seldom, very seldom, hardly ever in fact, and then—'

'Then what?'

'Never like the one of this evening.'

'And when you have no listener?' asked Courtois.

'Then I play mechanically, and in a humdrum kind of way.'

'Can you guess whom your listener was this evening?' added Briancourt, smiling sardonically, and then with a leer at me.

'One of the many beautiful ladies of course,' sighed Odillot, 'you are a lucky fellow.'

'Yes,' said another, 'I wish I were your neighbor at that table d'hote, so you might pass me the dish after you have helped yourself.'

'Was it some beautiful girl?' said Courtois questioningly. Teleny looked deeply into my eyes, smiled faintly, and replied:

'Perhaps.'

'Do you think you will ever know your listener?' enquired Briancourt.

Teleny again fixed his eyes on mine, and added faintly:

'Perhaps.'

'But what clue have you to lead to this discovery?' asked Odillot.

'His visions must coincide with mine.'

'I know what my vision would be if I had any,' said Odillot.

'What would it be?' enquired Courtois. 'Two lily-white breasts with nipples like two pink rosebuds, and lower down, two moist lips like those pink shells which, opening with awakening lust, reveal a pulpy, luxurious world, only of a deep coralline hue, and then these two pouting lips must be surrounded by a slight golden or black down—'

'Enough, enough, Odillot, my mouth waters at your vision, and my tongue longs to taste the flavor of those lips,' said the stockbroker, his eyes gleaming like those of a satyr, and evidently in a state of priapism. 'Is that not your vision, Teleny?'

The pianist smiled enigmatically:

'Perhaps.'

'As for me,' said one of the young men who had not yet spoken, 'a vision evoked by a Hungarian rhapsody would be either of vast plains, of bands of gipsies, or of men with round hats, wide trousers and short jackets, riding on fiery horses.'

'Or of booted and laced soldiers dancing with black-eyed girls,' added another.

I smiled, thinking how different my vision had been from these. Teleny, who was watching me, noticed the movement of my lips.

'Gentlemen,' said the musician, 'Odillot's vision was provoked not by my playing, but by some good-looking young girl he had been ogling; as for yours, they are simply reminiscences of some pictures or ballet'

'What was your vision, then?' asked Briancourt.

'I was just going to put you the same question,' retorted the pianist.

'My vision was something like Odillot's though not exactly the same.'

'Then it must have been
le revers de la medaille
—the back side,' quoth the lawyer, laughing; 'that is, two snow-clad lovely hillocks and deep in the valley below, a well, a tiny hole with a dark margin, or rather a brown halo around it.'

'Well, let us have your vision now,' insisted Briancourt.

'My visions are so vague and indistinct, they fade away so quickly, that I can hardly remember them,' he answered evasively.

'But they are beautiful, are they not?'

'And horrible withal,' he said enigmatically.

'Like the god-like corpse of Antinous, seen by the silvery light of the opaline moon, floating on the lurid waters of the Nile,' I said.

All the young men looked astonished at me. Briancourt laughed in a jarring way.

'You are a poet or a painter,' said Teleny, gazing at me with half-shut eyes. Then, after a pause: 'Anyhow, you are right to quiz me, but you must not mind my visionary speeches, for there is always so much of the madman in the composition of every artist.' Then, darting a dim ray from his sad eyes deep into mine, 'When you are better acquainted with me, you will know that there is so much more of the madman than of the artist in me.'

Thereupon he took out a strongly-scented fine lawn handkerchief, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

'And now,' he added, 'I must not keep you here a minute longer with my idle talk, otherwise the lady patroness will be angry, and I really cannot afford to displease the ladies,' and with a stealthy glance at Briancourt, 'Can I?' he added.

'No, that would be a crime against the fair sex,' replied one.

'Moreover, the other musicians would say I did it out of spite; for no one is gifted with such strong feelings of jealousy as amateurs, be they actors, singers, or instrumentalists, so
au revoir.'

Then, with a deeper bow than he had vouchsafed to the public, he was about to leave the room, when he stopped again: 'But you, M. Des Grieux, you said you were not going to stay, may I request the pleasure of your company?'

'Most willingly,' said I, eagerly.

Briancourt again smiled ironically—why, I could not understand. Then he hummed a snatch of 'Madame Angot,' which operette was then in fashion, the only words which caught my ears being—

Il est, dit-on, le favori,

and these were marked purposely.

Teleny, who had heard them as well as I had, shrugged his shoulders, and muttered something between his teeth.

'A carriage is waiting for me at the back door,' said he, slipping his arm under mine. 'Still, if you prefer walking—'

'Very much so, for it has been so stiflingly hot in the theatre.'

'Yes, very hot,' he added, repeating my words, and evidently thinking of something else. Then all at once, as if struck by a sudden thought, 'Are you superstitious?' said he.

'Superstitious?' I was struck by the quaint-ness of his question. 'Well—yes, rather, I believe.'

'I am very much so. I suppose it is my nature, for you see the gipsy element is strong in me. They say that educated people are not superstitious. Well, first I have had a wretched education; and then I think that if we really knew the mysteries of nature, we could probably explain all those strange coincidences that are ever happening.' Then, stopping abruptly, 'Do you believe in the transmission of thought, of sensations?'

'Well, I really do not know—I—'

'You must believe,' he added authoritatively. 'You see we have had the same vision at once. The first thing you saw was the Alhambra, blazing in the fiery light of the sun, was it not?'

'It was,' said I, astonished.

'And you thought you would like to feel that powerful withering love that shatters both the body and the soul? You do not answer. Then afterwards came Egypt, Antinous and Adrian. You were the Emperor, I was the slave.'

Then, musingly, he added, almost to himself: 'Who knows, perhaps I shall die for you one day!' And his features assumed that sweet resigned look which is seen on the demi-god's statues.

I looked at him, bewildered.

'Oh! you think I am mad, but I am not, I am only stating facts. You did not feel that you were Adrian, simply because you are not accustomed to such visions; doubtless all this will be clearer to you someday; as for me, there is, you must know, Asiatic blood in my veins, and—'

But he did not finish his phrase, and we walked on for a while in silence, then:

'Did you not see me turn round during the gavotte, and look for you? I began to feel you just then, but I could not find you out; you remember, don't you?'

'Yes, I did see you look towards my side, and—'

'And you were jealous!'

'Yes,' said I, almost inaudibly.

He pressed my arm strongly against his body for all answer, then after a pause, he added hurriedly, and in a whisper:

'You must know that I do not care for a single girl in this world, I never did, I could never love a woman.'

My heart was beating strongly; I felt a choking feeling as if something was gripping my throat.

'Why should he be telling me this?' said I to myself.

'Did you not smell a scent just then?'

'A scent—when?'

'When I was playing the gavotte; you have forgotten perhaps.'

'Let me see, you are right, what scent was it?'

'Lavande ambree.'

'Exactly.'

'Which you do not care for, and which I dislike; tell me, which is your favorite scent?'

'Heliotrope blanc.'

Without giving me an answer, he pulled out his handkerchief and gave it to me to smell.

'All our tastes are exactly the same, are they not?' And saying this, he looked at me with such a passionate and voluptuous longing, that the carnal hunger depicted in his eyes made me feel faint.