The Angel of Lust

by Maurice Magre

  “The only true crime is against the spirit.”

  “Listen. You do not know anything because you were not in Granada at that time. I lived then in the same manner as my brothers and my passions were even more frenzied. Imagine the worst. A defenseless creature delivered to four fanatics, a creature, whose face only reflected elevated thoughts, serving as a plaything for four drunken men, tortured and violated all night long, and murdered when dawn came. Yes, a slave bought in the market, but so perfect in the soul that emerged in her gaze!

  “It was the most wretched of the four, the most debauched, who struck her in the heart, with no other reason than the sensuality of the crime. That was me. I remember that afterwards, I started to laugh, and I dragged her by the feet into the garden in order to bury her. Her hair was never-ending. It caught on bushes and I pulled it away, laughing. I found a gardener’s spade, I dug a big hole and I threw her into it without ceasing to laugh. Then I filled in the earth, and even replaced the turf.

  “When it was finished, I sat down, holding my knees with my hands, and I stayed there, bewildered, gazing at the sun, which was rising in the middle of a clump of cactus, still suppressing bursts of laughter. But the sun didn’t rise for me. It was never to rise again. In its place, in the midst of the cactus, as inaccessible as moral beauty, as sad as an awakening soul, there was the face of the Prophet, who was looking at me. I recognized the one whose features are not reproduced by any image. He was staring at me, and his sadness was like a twilight. Then I fell to the ground, inanimate, and when I came round, I asked Allah, forcefully, to punish me in this life.

  “That wish has been granted by bodily malady, and I await the other punishment. Perhaps it is imminent. My three brothers went to the doors of the leprosarium today at the hour when the merchants set up their ambulant stalls. Now, Princess Khadidja, the Emir’s niece, also came to distribute alms to the poor lepers. And my brothers came back, prey to a sort of dementia, claiming that Princess Khadidja was exactly similar, in the grace of her face and the slimness of her body, to the young woman they had violated and I had murdered, and of whom they and I retain a different but immortal memory.

  “I thought that a marvelous resemblance between those two creatures, the living and the dead, was going to be the new form of my pain, that it would be necessary henceforth for me to stand at the doors of the leprosarium with the beggars in order to perceive her and savor my remorse with more force. And that is why I was weeping for myself.”

  Darkness had almost fallen and the room was only illuminated by the gleam of nascent stars.

  This is the moment when Isabelle might send someone to fetch me, Almazan thought. And he took a step forward, for Soleiman had grasped his head in both hands and was no longer moving. But Rosenkreutz leaned over him and retained Almazan with a hand gesture.

  “There is one of ours behind you whose soul is tormented, and who is at the beginning of his ordeal. Have you nothing to say to him?”

  Soleiman remained motionless, and Rosenkreutz, thinking that he had not been heard, was about to repeat his question when he murmured:

  “I see a great maritime landscape, a city full of monuments and two beings joined by the diffuse light of desire... He is taking her away... I see other cities and the redness of the desire that envelops the man and the woman paling, becoming the color of ash... Now they have separated... He has abandoned her... There must be a great suffering in the woman, for she is writhing like a beast and the blue of her intelligence is losing its color, washing away, mingling with the brick color of bleak despair. He is very far away, he has forgotten her. There is no dolor in his life. His thought seems to be developing extremely. He must belong to the highest elite. The azure blue of spirituality radiates around him, but deep down, the little blue flame that he had left on the road has taken on a dirty hue and gone out. There is nothing more.”

  Almazan was only listening distractedly. He was measuring the passing time.

  “So much for the former life,” said Rosenkreutz, “but can you see the possibilities of events in the present life?”

  A long time went by, and then Soleiman resumed in the same whisper.

  “What a mysterious law it is that causes the reincarnation at the same time, for hatred or for amour, those who have hated or loved one another! There they are, side by side. They have encountered one another in the same city. Her desire to be beautiful in her previous life has rendered her beautiful in this one, and she has lost the resignation and the fidelity that caused her misfortune. She is now akin to a natural force that needs to expand. He has collected all the advantages of past efforts and the light that is around him is a blue almost as pure as your own. I see the beings in a mist, like moving lamps, but while the light that you form, Rosenkreutz, is solitary and unalterable in essence, his is dependent on another and might become, in an instant, as scarlet as passion or as brown as the love of evil.”

  “Can you not distinguish,” Rosenkreutz said, “which of those eventualities those causes will inevitably engender?”

  Soleiman swayed to the right and left such for a long time that Almazan thought that he was not going to say another word.

  “No. All is veiled. There are great catastrophes. The human will can always modify what seems inevitable, but is itself a prisoner of causes. There are cities destroyed, and so much blood shed! And it is not only bodies but souls that are perishing! Evil seems triumphant. I see a kind of dark tide that is carrying fanaticism and ignorance. The spirit recoils and seems to be dying. It is the spiritual effort of an entire race that is annihilated. And what unleashes that gigantic event is perhaps the injustice inflicted on a soul, in another existence, by the man who is behind me.”

  Soleiman had let his head fall forward, and he seemed not to want to say any more. Rosenkreutz had stood up silently and he made a sign to Almazan to follow him.

  Outside, the rain had stopped, but the wind was blowing tempestuously. The city of the lepers was deserted. They emerged from it and walked toward Granada. But Almazan was no longer hurrying.

  “Have I misunderstood what Soleiman said?” he asked. “How can an action accomplished by me in another life have such incalculable consequences?”

  “The mystery of causes is impenetrable,” said Rosenkreutz. “A soul that has been depleted because it has been deprived of its portion of amour rolls in the infinity of lives as if it were launched by despair. It is injustice that engenders evil, and the injustice of an intelligent and just man is the most terrible thing that the world can create.”

  Rosenkreutz had taken his companion on a long detour along the ramparts.

  “Except,” he added, “that Soleiman is perhaps only a visionary who has retained old habits of drunkenness and draws incoherent images from his imagination, which he sincerely believes himself to be extracting from the astral light in which the past is inscribed.

  Almazan uttered a sigh of relief.

  “We know very little,” said Rosenkreutz then. “Wisdom often takes the form of folly, and how can we distinguish the portion of truth that there is in the phantasmagoria of dreams?”

  They had reentered Granada and had arrived at Rosenkreutz’s house. The stormy night unfurled with dark clouds in the sky and Almazan calculated that it ought to be sufficiently advanced for the messenger sent by Isabelle to have knocked on his door in vain. He shook the hand that Rosenkreutz held out to him, but he did not head toward the Alhambra. He walked through the streets at random. His thoughts were crowding his brain. He felt a kind of intoxication, and the wind added to the disturbance of his mind. He had gone along the quays of the Darro and was climbing one of the slopes of the Albaycin via the street of the cutlers.

  He suddenly looked up, and saw the great mass of stone that the Alhambra made, with its irregularly erected towers. At the foot of one of them, on a gallery facing the mountains, he saw a drop of red light moving, which must be a lamp. That luminous drop went up and down two or three times, and then vanished
.

  Almazan remembered what Isabelle had said. Irritated by his absence, she was summoning the Almoradi Tarfe.

  Oh, the pleasure lost! The sensuality that one could have held tightly, and which one would never find again! Was the service of truth to which he had devoted himself imperious enough to prevent him from possessing a woman he had desired? Rosenkreutz had certainly divined his trouble and had turned him away expressly; he had stolen his hours of amour!

  He started running into the Albaycin. He went along the streets at random. He went astray. Out of breath, he went back up to the Alhambra and arrived at the Puerta de la Justicia only to see two eunuchs going in from a distance. He recognized them by the magnificent red robes that had been their uniform for some time and whose ample sleeves and crimson belts were copied from those of the Sultan of Constantinople’s eunuchs.

  The taller of the two exchanged a few pleasantries in passing with the soldiers on guard. The other had his turban pulled down over his eyes, and Almazan recognized Tafre’s silhouette, by the light of the lantern burning against the wall. He had the attractiveness and lightness that happiness gives. Then Almazan, without looking back, went down slowly toward the town. He was no longer thinking about anything. He walked for a long time, taking pleasure in making the large puddles left by the rain splash beneath his feet.

  XIII. The Massacre of the Almoradis

  The town of Zahara was reputed to be impregnable because it only had one gate and was backed up on two sides against high rocky corridors. When the tempest was unleashed there were no watchmen on the towers, and the ramparts were swept by large sheets of rain.

  Abul Hacen and the five hundred elite men he had brought with him approached the walls thanks to the density of the darkness, and placed ladders there without the alarm being raised.

  The Emir could not, as he desired, be the first to penetrate into the town. When he set foot on a ladder it almost broke under his weight. Soaked to the skin, shivering and fall of ardor, he had waited for the gate to be forced. He had then raced into the streets, looking for a fight; but the fortress was already taken, the guards on the towers massacred. Sometimes, in a square, a small group of Spaniards tried to resist. The Emir then stopped the surge of his men in order to launch himself into their midst alone, striking right and left with his scimitar. He felt a youthful folly then, and he knew that the courage of which he gave proof would subsequently be the subject of many stories that would be repeated in the Alhambra and would win Isabelle’s admiration.

  A single house, in which the aged Antonio de Cuerdo was barricaded with his ten children cost more men to take than the rest of the town. They had made holes in the door and fired at close range with their arquebuses.

  It was necessary to burn the house, and they had a great deal of difficulty because the rain incessantly extinguished the firebrands thrown on to the roof. Then a courageous young woman, lurking like a cat behind a door, succeeded in disemboweling two Moorish soldiers with a minuscule knife. It was the occasion for a brawl; it was a matter of punishing her. Her hands had been tied and her clothes torn off. Some wanted to spare her and rape her at their ease; others preferred to put her to death right away.

  But almost all the inhabitants surrendered without resistance. The sound of trumpets assembled them in the main square, where they remained while their houses were pillaged. Those who had the imprudence to stay at home fell under the blows of soldiers drunk on the extraordinary alcohol of combat. The riches that were found were immense and it took three days to heap them on to carts.

  Abul Hacen appointed an Alcaide and placed a garrison in the fortress. On the seventh day he set forth to return to Granada. He felt an extraordinary joy in his victory and the vigor of which he had given proof. He occupied himself with everything: provisions, the order in which the prisoners would file four by four in the middle of his soldiers, and the manner in which a few cannons would be drawn by way of trophies.

  As he was still within sight of Zahara and was climbing a hill he turned round to enjoy the extent of his power, but the long files of cavaliers with their short red jackets floating over their gilded coats of mail were not prancing to either side of the road. He did not see the noblemen under the drapery of their cloaks covered with precious stones, with the colored plumes of their turbans fluttering like fabulous insects, nor the Silahdars carrying spears and adargas. The cortege of prisoners had disappeared. The hoofbeats, the clink of weapons and the murmurs and cries were making the same noise behind him, but he saw nothing but a twilight into which darkness was rushing from all directions.

  “Isabelle!” he repeated, several times.

  There must be a powerful magic in the name of a woman one loves, for the mountains were replaced on the horizon, he saw the cavalry advancing, plumes shining, and, with his brow bathed in sweat, he hastened toward Granada.

  All magic has two directions, every face is magnificent and baleful by turns, every thought lacerates you and enchants you in accordance with the moment that it comes to mind.

  “Isabelle!” he repeated, his head in his hands—and the incantation of those syllables caused inconceivable images to crowd around him.

  Before anything else, he needed to reflect, to weigh the probabilities in the balance of reason, to be prudent, wily and hypocritical.

  The accusation came from Aixa, and in consequence, had every reason to be a lie. Was it not better to laugh at it? But Aixa, who was pious, had sworn on the Koran, which had never happened before. The Hagib had also sworn on the Koran that Isabelle was above suspicion, but the Hagib did not believe in anything and he had also added some sage advice about not paying any heed to anything except the commencing war.

  The Almocaden who commanded the guard at the Puerta de la Justicia believed he had seen a new eunuch passing several days ago whose face he had not seen, but he did not recall with which other eunuch he had passed. The enormity of the fact, and the audacity necessary to accomplish it, proved that it was nothing but calumny. There was no young man in Granada capable of such a crime and such a folly. However, if one thought about it, it was easy to introduce oneself into Isabelle’s bedroom disguised as a eunuch. But was there not a bronze door, a wall of tempered steel, around the creature with the golden eyes, and were that inviolable door and that wall as high as the stars carved in the marble and steel of his amour?

  However, he had been obliged to recall that on the day he had returned from Zahara, she had had strangely weary eyes, and he had remarked bruises on her thighs, as if hands had squeezed them forcefully. He had asked her the cause of that and she had replied that she had bumped them accidentally while walking in her room in the dark. But how to explain the symmetrical character of those bruises? A double collision was impossible. Heaven and earth! There was no doubt about it! It was the fingers of the young Almoradi, Tarfe, that had opened the delicious fruit where he drank the juice of his ultimate youth.

  The old men of the Meschouar and the leaders of the great families were waiting for him in the hall of ambassadors for decisions relating to the conscription of troops. In another room, there were the six provincial Walis and the twenty-four district Wazirs who needed precise orders for the defense of the frontiers. On the Plaza des Aljibes, Daoud, the Emir of the Sea, was pacing back and forth beside his saddled horse. He was counting on departing immediately for Almeria with the mission to embark there and lead the Moorish ships against the Spanish ports. The abrupt attacks whose plan was drawn up on a piece of parchment that he was holding in his hands might have incalculable results, on condition that the plan was executed without delay.

  That was the important thing!

  The Hagib sometimes lifted the door-curtain of the room where the Emir was now pacing back and forth, and at other times it was the mute Ali who showed his faithful face. Abul Hacen dismissed them with an imperious gesture.

  Oh, if he had known! He would have examined the design of those bruises on his beloved’s thighs carefully. He would have b
een able to recognize the undeniable trace of fingers. Now it was too late. Time, with its untiring patience, had rendered the smooth limbs their perfect whiteness.

  Suddenly, Abul Hacen stopped. He fell into the midst of the cushions on his divan. His eyes were exorbitant and he bit the fabric in order not to howl. A thought had just been born in his mind, a thought wakening like a flame, a curiosity that no longer had a limit, one of those amorous curiosities that one never satisfies because they are always lost in the lies of the woman and the silence of the man.

  Perhaps the bruises on the thigh were bites! It was not hands but human teeth that had designed their contours with the tender fury of lust.

  He would never know! There are details that no mouth reports. There is an inviolable secret more silent than the mystery of death. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella could prepare a formidable army entirely at their ease. The Duke of Medina-Sidonia had just been reconciled with the Marquis of Cadiz, but what did it matter? The Sultan of Egypt was demanding a hundred thousand gold mitcals in exchange for his alliance, but so what? There was only one grave, immediate, hallucinatory problem, and that was the origin of those bruises on his beloved’s thighs, those blue bruises that had turned black and then gilded like grapes, to be lost in the lunar ocean of the skin like mysterious boats laden with lust.

  Life is still beautiful as long as there is doubt, but certainty is like a desolate plain where one perceives nothing in the distance but the black tower of vengeance.

  The Almocaden of the Puerta de la Justicia had recognized the eunuch and the eunuch had confessed under torture that he had introduced Tarfe into Isabelle’s apartment. And that fact in itself would have been trivial if it had kept a distant, anonymous, mysterious character—but Abul Hacen knew other things even more frightful.

  That Tarfe, not being very intelligent, had boasted. He had given certain details and those details were circulating from mouth to mouth. The entire Almoradi family was rejoicing in the adventure.