The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 2)

by André Couvreur

  “I warned you, my worthy tradesman,” said Monsieur Danator, triumphantly. “But it serves you right, for poisoning the minds of your fellow citizens against us. Why do that? Why, also, get us thrown out of the tennis club? Why have you taken up arms against me? It isn’t necessary—and it’s dangerous. Look, there’s my son, leaving the bank open! He’s going to lose as much as you like. You would have been able to win it all back…but it’s too late!”

  Adam had, indeed, engaged in a series of hands in which he seemed determined to distribute all the money had had previously won to the gleaners. It only took a few minutes. With sparkling eyes and gleaming chops, twenty drunken incense-burners formed a procession for him all the way to the exit.

  When Monsieur Danator reached the auto he said: “Now, Adam, we have to go home. You still have your lesson in morality.”

  “Morality?” I said, surprised.

  “Yes, my daughter-in-law. I’ve striven, since Adam’s birth…notice that I no longer say since his emergence from the waters…to endow him with the noblest sentiments, by means of daily lectures. I want him to be as beautiful morally as physically. Oh, you won’t have any complaints! A stout heart as well as sturdy muscles! And his virility! Better than Hercules, you’ll see! Come on, Adam, say good night to Made. Where? There! Add a mollification! That’s a pun. He only lacks my wit, you see—apart from that, all of my personality is in him. Say goodnight, Adam.”

  It was not, in front of the automobile, coram populo,17 a chaste manifestation of tenderness in conformity with that superior morality, but a veritable possessive grab, in the course of which my fiancé wrapped his arms around me, palpating my bosom in the most indecent manner. Covered with confusion, I tried in vain to extricate myself from that excessive grip, but I had to contend with muscles of steel.

  The idlers laughed, while mothers turned their daughters away from that scandalous sight.

  The cruelest thing of all was that, by an effect of destiny that never fails in such circumstances, Marcel arrived at the precise moment when Adam was subjecting me to those inconceivable accolades. Who would have believed it! His expression manifested neither pain, nor jealousy, nor sadness! He went by, grave and serious. Was I, then, of such little importance?

  “Come on, enough self-indulgence for today,” Monsieur Danator put in, who seemed to be enjoying the spectacle greatly. He shoved his son, already disengaged, into the auto. Left alone, there was nothing I could do but repair the effects of that brutal separation on my attire. At that moment, I would have welcomed Marcel’s company. I tried to catch up with him, but he had changed direction and I went back to my hotel on my own. The daylight was fading, the electric lights were battling with the shadows, and the sea was beating the shore feebly.

  How isolated I felt! And what reflections I made on the afternoon’s events, those anomalies, that tricked-out, deserted villa in which science replaced nature, where one ate chemically, where mechanical arms took the place of human assistance: as many artifices that disconcerted my customs, my decency, my atavism...

  More than that: the eccentricities and outbursts of Monsieur Danator, the flat calm of his son, sometimes contrasting, without transition and without apparent cause, with impetuous surges of physical appetite, immediate realizations—all of that frightened me, warned me that in those unstable characters I would find neither the quietude nor the harmony of the hearth so dear to a young woman with marriage in view. And those scientific observations with which Adam’s affectionate speeches were mingled and extended, the cultivation that he displayed so enthusiastically in adapting everything to considerations of genesis, leaving behind an aftertaste of falsification, even of the unreal, that, in truth, embarrassed me more than it seduced me. And those revolting familiarities, the base animality of his caresses, that I was now astonished at having welcomed!

  Oh, Marcel, Marcel, why did you turn away from the comrade who offered you her life, much healthier, in sum, than its appearance indicated, far more in conformity with your gravity, because a loving heart is always able to melt into the nature of the beloved individual...

  Marcel, why that cold calculation in my favor, that obstinacy in pushing me into a marriage whose enigma I dread? Oh, how sumptuous the offer of your material insufficiency would have seemed, at that moment when the waves were singing so languorously, when Phoebe was dispensing an opal light that was so soft, so soft...

  My depression was exacerbated to such an extent, and yet became so precious to me, that I had no desire to dissipate it in the company of the people at the hotel. I went to bed without having dinner, and had difficulty going to sleep.

  A serious novel was no help. The episodes of the day interposed themselves before its lines, and their strangeness, stirred a thousand times, drew me far away from slumber. I succumbed to it, however, after the noises and lights outside had died away.

  It must have been about midnight when the chords of a guitar made themselves heard beneath my windows. Then a song rose up, emitted by a remarkable tenor voice. Contrary to my pleasure in being woken up by music, that serenade because painful to me, inasmuch as, to all evidence, it was intended for me, my forename being repeated several times in the chorus, which sometimes called me Made and sometimes Madeleine, rhyming with glad when it was Made18 and shine when it was Madeleine. But what was the point of it? Was it a practical joke on the part of the Laricarière-Frappart couple in retaliation for the Danators’ gambling win, or a leaden homage from the Danators themselves?

  I listened to the song, huddled under my bedclothes in vexation; the music had a crystal purity, but it lacked that certain something that passes though a song and goes straight to the heart.

  By the third verse I couldn’t stand it any longer. I got up, without putting on the light, and went to open my shutters. What I saw then increased my suspicion that I would be ridiculed forever. In the beam of a powerful automobile headlight, there, in the roadway, costumed as toreadors, were Monsieur Danator and his son, come to charm me with their voices. They did not even have the excuse of a masked ball at the Pergola that night.

  The father, clutching the guitar, was sitting on the mudguard, his little cockerel’s legs outlined in the halo, nervously picking out the rhythm of the song; the son, standing in the light, with his left hand on his hip and the other in the air, was showing off his superb anatomy, crammed into the gaudy costume. Soon, all the shutters in the hotel were open; people were joining in with the chorus, which was touching in its banality; laughter and gibes were being exchanged between the windows; it was turning into an enormous comic opera.

  Their jape concluded, my serenaders made off; Monsieur Danator waved his guitar joyfully as the roadster passed through the glare of an electric street light, and then the car disappeared into the shadows…but after it had disappeared, a faint green luminosity persisted, by virtue of some unidentifiable phenomenon.

  Come on! That was the last straw. Tomorrow, I would take back my promise. Better poverty than those oafs. After that performance, I was put off the idea of marriage completely. There was always a demand for governesses and ladies’ companions.

  Having made that resolution, I slept for ten hours without a sigh.

  IV

  The next day, however, the hotel manager presented me with my bill. Oh, the melancholy of seeing the last thousand-franc bills of my paternal inheritance shredded! I settled up, recuperating the sighs that the night had spared me. My beautiful valor disappeared along with my cash. In the balance of wealth, it seemed to me that the capital of beauty was strangely diminished by education, self-respect and pride: all virtues that are mainstays of the mind, but scarcely help to sustain the body.

  Having no desire to go out, I spent all day in my room. I sorted through all my dresses and undergarments and sniffed my soaps and eau de toilette, with the melancholy of a definitive farewell. Certain items of lace, whose delicacy pleased me, and certain ribbons favorable to my complexion, became dolorous to behold.

>   Artificial auxiliaries of beauty, amplifiers of glamour, privileges of the socialite forbidden to the wage-earner, O my luxury, was I, then, obliged to renounce you forever? It would be necessary, then, for me to forget that I was young and pretty, in order to adopt the bleak silhouette of a pawn!

  In what provincial corner, between what walls, to what solemn hearth would I go to extinguish them, those charms of which I was nevertheless proud? Weary of so much sacrifice to virtue, would I not regret one day the decision I was about to make? Would I not decide then to fall a little further from grace, by agreeing to a less brilliant union that was scarcely more desirable? And what about the instinct that Marcel had respected but Adam had awakened? Would it also be necessary for me to suppress and stifle that?

  And why so much renunciation? For the esteem of a despicable cosmopolitan society? For a Laricarière, for a Guy Frappart? Did they pay as much heed to what people might say about them? Would they give in to pride, to respectability, to self-esteem? Did people not applaud the marriage of a poor young woman to an old man, or an invalid? She’s sacrificing herself, people said...

  Seething in my skull, all these arguments stretched my nerves to the point that I often came to rest my head against the window in order to obtain an illusory refreshment, a little appeasement.

  At five o’clock in the evening, in harmony with my thoughts, I had the spectacle of a maritime horizon desolated by black clouds underlined by flashes of lightning. The storm soon burst, emptying its reservoirs, irradiating with millions of strips my delightful view of Ciboure.

  The downpour made a desert of the sea-front. The only person still there was a stubborn prostitute that I had noticed on many an occasion, and for whom I had often felt sorry. Whether the weather was fine or foul, whether it was day or night, she was inseparably clad in a worn raincoat, singularly useful when, after hours of lying in wait, she found herself alone on the strand. Not knowing where to take refuge, she had put up her hood, and awaited the clemency of the heavens and the homage of clients with the same heroism. The water soaked her garments, outlining her hospitable and peripatetic rump; she threw her fatalism into the balance of my hesitations, making me think that I might perhaps be hungry one day, and that the fall of a woman in a silk dress is not so very different from the fall of a woman in a raincoat.

  My chambermaid came in. She brought a bouquet of unknown flowers, with long petals striated with gold on a black background, with the slender form of lilies. They emitted a captivating perfume, although mingled with essences reminiscent of the odor of the human armpit. The soubrette manifested a veritable pleasure as she aspired the aroma; her eyes were shining, her nostrils quivering.

  “From whom?”

  By way of reply she held out a note, which I scanned. The handwriting was untidy, but it was a very well-turned madrigal, in truth, in the manner of the compliments that the swaggering seigneurs of the eighteenth century send to the ladies of their dreams. Appended to the verses was an imperative order to be ready at seven o’clock to go to dinner. It was signed Adam and countersigned Papa.

  “That’s all right. You can go.”

  She separated from the bouquet regretfully, after placing them in a vase, and went out, forgetting to close the door.

  I perceived her then offering her lips to a bewildered flunkey.

  She’s mad! It’s the storm...

  What! Was the storm not going to spare me, either, then? As I got dressed, and sniffed the black petals in passing, a frenzy gripped me, an implacable need to feel flesh against my body, to appease my own. Oh, my proud resolutions foundered at the same time! No—no more celibacy, no more Puritanism, no more prideful servitude; on the contrary: life! Life with gilded reins, in the Danators’ carriage, with Adam as driver: Adam, whom I admired; Adam, whom I summoned to share my delirium…Adam, who arrived, who knocked at my door.

  “Come in!”

  It wasn’t Adam. It was Marcel. On the threshold, he hesitated, breathing with surprise. Then he came in: “What’s become of you, then, my dear Made. I haven’t seen you today.”

  “Nor yesterday,” I said, pointedly.

  “You were so surrounded...”

  “By friends whose home you’ve visited, and whom you could approach. There is, therefore, no explanation for your discretion. We were coming out of the gaming room. You could have complimented my fiancé on the manner in which he held a bank...”

  Marcel started. “He gambled?”

  “And lost—but with chic.”

  “You could have let me know!”

  Vexed, he walked around the room, clicking his fingers. I didn’t interrogate him. What did his disappointment at not having seen Adam gambling matter to me? I was too much a victim of my own train of thought.”

  “Strange flowers!” he remarked, sniffing them in his turn.

  And there was a transformation in him, as there had been in me. Marveling, his eyes ardent, he advanced toward me. I had too often been the object of masculine covetousness not to understand that my spiritual friend was suddenly obedient to a more vulgar impulsion.

  He went pale, and placed his hand on my bare arm. “Made! Dear Made, how beautiful you are this evening!”

  I don’t know what might have happened if a familiar voice had not rung out at that moment in the corridor outside, protesting against the gloom, demanding to know which room was mine and causing us to draw apart. Fortunately, we were sufficiently distant from one another when Monsieur Danator came in, without knocking.

  He thundered: “A plague upon this place! A plague upon everything…my house, with my little Adam, suffering…on the road, with this storm…on that corridor, which isn’t lit!”

  “And upon me, Monsieur Danator?” I continued, laughing, for in his leather coat, shiny with raindrops, he was a truly hilarious sight.

  “You, my child, are sheltered, a refuge…so, I’m distressed to be bringing you bad news. Oh, don’t worry, but Adam is ill…yes, a crayfish ingestion…and I’m caring for him. It’s his little fault…he lets himself go...”

  While speaking, he had picked up the black bouquet. He cradled it momentarily, as if the flowers were the product of his own flesh and blood. Then he threw it out of the window.

  “Get out! Now we can breathe. The idea of shutting yourself up like this! These tantrums of the sea don’t cheer you up, then? O mighty blue, our nurse, one can scorn your breath! Ah, forgive them! And protect my little Adam, Mother of us all!”

  He made the sign of the cross. Only then did he notice Marcel.

  “Why, you’re here, my boy! And your little osmoses, how are they getting on? I really ought to finish acquainting you with mine. How about tomorrow? Come to lunch tomorrow, then, at Immaculate Conception, with our dear Made. The auto will pick you up at the Pergola at noon. That’s agreed? Adieu, my children.”

  He left.

  As much as the end of the storm and the fresh gusts of wind that reached us through the still-open window, that visit had extinguished our mutual ardor. Without saying a word, I slipped a woolen coat over my evening gown, and we went downstairs.

  In the darkness that had suddenly fallen, the sea-front was resuming its customary animation, the lights defying the darkness. The hotel’s large window allowed the silhouettes of the diners to appear on the screen of the blinds. Neither one of us obedient to the summons of hunger, we walked toward the slope of Sainte-Barbe.

  It seemed that that stroll, in which we had so often lingered over pleasant conversations, was bound this time to provoke, as a logical consequence of our recent enthusiasm, a definitive exchange of our lives. Everything suggested it to us, from the celestial fluidity dotted with blue-tinted lights, to the peevish solemnity of the waves expiring close by. Amour reigned universally...

  It even reigned, I was obliged to observe, over the woman in the raincoat. We were about to go past her. In her hands she was clutching the bouquet of black flowers, which she had picked up, and with which she was filling her nostril
s. She became beautiful with desire. She was, then, still capable of desire...

  Yes, for as we went past her, she winked at Marcel, stuck out her tongue, and dared, in front of me, to murmur the magnificent offer: “For free!”

  We continued on our way. I expected that incident to dissipate my companion’s mutism, but he was walking deep in thought.

  “Marcel,” I said, softly. “You must have something to say to me?”

  “That’s true, in fact…when I passed the Mairie just now, I saw that your banns have been posted.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  That was all: total forgetfulness of the impulse toward me that he had had a short while ago. I stood there, at a loss, suspended between pain and anger. We soon turned back, and he abandoned me in front of my hotel.

  “Until noon tomorrow?”

  “Until tomorrow…if I still exist...”

  I could have killed myself! It was, however, necessary for me to be smile, to brave, and not to care about the effect I produced as soon as I appeared in the dining room. Disdainfully, I went to my table, but not to touch the food. I observed, amid my cutlery, a small bottle encapsulated in gold, freshly deposited there.

  As I picked it up and turned it over, examining it, the maître d’hôtel informed me, obsequiously: “It’s a medicament for Mademoiselle, brought by Mademoiselle’s father-in-law. Mademoiselle is to take a spoonful with every meal.”

  I did so. Why not, after all? Might it not finish me off, that medicament? Death! Ah, death! And I tripled the dose. The drug was sweet, and smelled like cat. It directed me toward my bed, and caused me savor, for ten hours, a benevolent stupidity.

  The next morning, however, I rebounded into incoherence. To begin with, at noon, in front of the Pergola, where Marcel was waiting for me, the Danators’ automobile failed to turn up. After half an hour of kicking our heels, we took a cab, which dropped us at the entrance to the villa. The gate was open but no one was there, not even the little negro, to introduce us. We went through the gardens with the murmurous waters anyway. We reached the house: the same emptiness.