Monsieur De Phocas (Decadence From Dedalus)

by Jean Lorrain

  It was like jealousy! Jealousy! What miry depths is this Englishman stirring up within me?

  15 September.

  I do not want to see that man again. Ought I to depart for Venice, for the soothing calm of its lagoons, the charm of the grandiose and dead past of its palatial waterways? Oh, the slick flight of gondolas over the heavy oily depths of the canals, the e poppe! thrown into the silence, in the deserted corners of the streets and, in the morning – in the first rosy tint of dawn – my long hours of dreaming and rapt contemplation before the city’s awakening, at the windows of the palace Dario: alone before the solitude of the grand canal, when the domes of Santa Maria della Salute seem to be made of satin, in a Venice of pearl!

  Yes, Venice would cure me. There I would be able to escape the tyranny of my obsession with Ethal; there I could repair my soul, restoring the soul of yesteryear – a sumptuous and beautiful soul – before the Tiepolos of the Palazzo Labia and the Tintorettos of the Academy; there, perhaps, I could cultivate – nay, reanimate – a lost candour before the divine figures of Carpaccio. Exchanging one madness for another, would it not be more worthwhile to lose my heart to Schiavoni’s St George or the Academy’s St Ursula than to dream villainous dreams before some morbid wax effigy wrought by that dreadful Ethal?

  Yes, I must go. Besides, has not Orbin recommended Venice to all neurasthenics? The climate is gently soothing, and there is a kind of narcotic balm in the silence of that watery city, Venice will save me from Ethal. There I will come to life a little more. Venice, what memories it holds!

  20 September.

  Venice! I thought I might encounter once again the imploring expression which obsesses me, that troubled green gaze which has made me an unbalanced wretch, an outcast and a madman.

  I remember now. It was at the Ospedale, in the venereal section, in the tepid and insipid atmosphere of a huge room with whitewashed walls and windows fired by the sunlight of a most beautiful afternoon. She was stretched out amid the dubious whiteness of the hospital sheets, and her mahogany-red hair, spread out on her pillows, made her jaundiced syphilic face seem even more sickly. She was silent, immobile, surrounded by the whispers – scarcely lowered in tone when we entered – of twenty other women: twenty convalescents, or those less sick, huddled together around a table encumbered by glass beads, numbers and cards. Everyone in the ward who was fit enough was playing loteria, with all the animation of voice and gesture typical of their race. Only the sick woman with the pallor of wax did not speak, nor move. Between her half-closed eyelashes, though, there was the gleam of a green eye spangled with gold: an eye that was weary and sad, yet incandescent with light, as if it were the bed of some sheltered spring in the light of noon. Such a dolorous smile played meanwhile upon the poor faded lips, and in the corners of the bruised eyelids, that for an instant I believed I saw the same glistening expression of infinite lassitude and intoxicated ecstasy I had seen in the eyes of the Antinous!

  Curiously, I leant over the bed, but the features had already become slack, and the eyes had closed. ‘A mere spasm – as if she suddenly remembered something,’ said the doctor who accompanied us. ‘She has cancer of the ovaries; she is doomed.’

  The plaintive emerald had flashed in her eyes for the space of a single instant; for a moment, the eye of Astarté had risen to the rim of her eyelids, and my soul had risen likewise to the edge of my lips. It is clear to me now that the moribund woman of the Ospedale displayed, throughout her bloodless face, the same greenish translucence as the bust of Angelotto, the haunting wax figure.

  A strange coincidence: two expressions of the death-agony. Both she and he were already stricken and destined for death!

  Those glaucous and desirous eyes – I have thought of another evening when I encountered them.

  It was in Constantine in Algeria, in the Rue des chelles – the street of street-walkers and other prostitutes, which descends so steeply to the Oued Rhumel.

  In the underworld of Moorish cafes, Spanish inns and Maltese bars one often stumbles across the haunts of smokers of kif, where shrill and monotonous music is barked out by fifes and derboukas. On this occasion, in the centre of a circle of squatting arabs there were two bloodless beings with dead and drawn eyes, swaying abominably and strangely gyrating their loins, with snake-like sinuousity.

  Oh, the desperate, almost convulsive appeals which those thin arms made as they moved above the hard-set faces with painted eyes and painted jaws. The twisting dancers were incredibly slender, dressed in rags of gauze and gold lame tulle like those worn by women. They were periodically shaken from top to toe by abrupt tremors, as if electric shocks were passing through their entire bodies. All of a sudden, one of the dancers became still, absolutely rigid, letting loose a piercing cry like that of a hyena; glittering in his suddenly-animated eyes I saw the elusive green gaze. I sprang towards him, and took him by the wrists. He collapsed, foaming at the mouth. The poor man was an epileptic and, to add to his troubles, quite blind. He was just some wretched Kabyle dancer, utterly exhausted by depravity and consumption, destined soon to die.

  The Venetian woman in the Ospedale was similarly damned. Could I have fallen in love with the agony of death itself? This invincible attraction towards all who suffer and all who are dying is a frightful and baffling thing! Never have I seen so clearly into the depths of my own being. Had Ethal already divined this irreparable defect of my sick soul on the evening when he set before me, first that doll, and then that wax figure, in which I found – modelled with love – the same effigy of dolour … of the particular species of dolour which pleases me?

  The Kabyle dancer, the dying woman in Venice and the consumptive little model of Montmartre are elements of the same series. That Englishman has read my deplorable instincts like an open book. How I hate him!

  28 September

  I am no longer going away. I have seen Ethal again, and he has recaptured me. I was standing by the table, just about to buckle the straps of my trunk – I had already rolled up my canes and umbrellas in my travelling rug – when a hand fell upon my shoulder, and a sneering voice from the shadows recited:

  I want to forget the one I love!

  Take me far away from here,

  To Flanders, Norway or Bohemia,

  So far that the road soothes my cares!

  But what will remain of myself,

  When I have succeeded in forgetting?

  It was him. How had he found out that I was leaving? It is easy to believe that the man possesses second sight.

  ‘You will not find it,’ he said, gesturing vaguely towards his little gleaming eyes. ‘The gaze is in yourself, not in others. Go to Sicily, or to Venice, or even to Smyrna, but sick man that you are, you will carry your sickness with you. It is a Museum gaze that you seek, my friend; only the decadent civilization of a great city like Paris or rotten London has anything to offer you. Why are you stealing away in mid-cure? Have you found fault with me? You are no longer haunted by masks now, and even though the murderous lust still seethes within you, at least you no longer suffocate by night as unreal beings swarm around you. I have saved you from dreams and am bringing you back towards instinct – for the murderous instinct is good, solid and natural, every bit as sacred as the instinct to love.

  ‘You are an unwitting victim of the pressure of laws; only wretchedness and the corruptions of prostitution can give you a glimpse of the gaze which tempts you.

  ‘It is the eyes of the tortured that you seek: the fearful, imploring, divine ecstasy and terror-stricken sensuality of the eyes of St Agnes, St Catherine of Sienna and St Sebastian. I give you my word that we will find those eyes – but you must not defy me!

  ‘Don’t go; it’s useless. I have promised that you will be healed. I swear by the grave of my little Angelotto that I will keep my promise!’

  SOME MONSTERS

  8 October 98.

  Keep tomorrow evening free for me and come to enjoy for the first time some green tea which has been sent to
me directly from China. I have a whole set of cosmopolitan eccentrics to show you, including two compatriots I met by an extraordinary stroke of luck yesterday, while taking tea in the Avenue Mar-beuf. They are eager to meet you and I have promised to settle their curiosity; you will find it equally interesting to meet them.

  The tragedienne Maud White – do you know her? – has a peculiar way of reading Baudelaire, without the slightest accent. You will probably like her brother better. They will both be there tomorrow, and others too.

  After midnight, we will see if we can organise a little opium-smoking session. This is not actually part of your cure, but the occasion will serve as a medical consultation. I will heal you; that much is certain.

  Until tomorrow, then; be here about ten o’clock.

  Your accomplice,

  CLAUDIUS ETHAL.

  So Ethal greets me in this fashion now! What is this international consignment to which he has promised to exhibit me? On whom does he wish to play his jokes tomorrow – these English persons or me? I do not like this invitation at all, and I mistrust Ethal’s Asian tea and drugs. Am I some exotic beast to be displayed to parties of tourists conveyed by Lubin or Thomas Cook, at a little feast of opium in the course of which the Duc de Fréneuse will undergo an operation?

  I have seen some rather captivating photographs of this Maud White. The costumes of her Shakespearean roles have been reproduced several times in the Studio. I remember her particularly as an enigmatic Cordelia – but her talent is said to be second-rate. She has never been seen in the West End of London.

  I shall not even reply to Ethal. His English guests will have to remain curious.

  10 October

  What a strange and singular soiree! These creatures with their automatic gestures and their too-brilliant eyes have left me with the impression of having spent the night in some kind of abnormal, hallucinatory half-dream state. All of them seemed much more like phantoms than real people, by virtue of their somnambulistic conversations and their ambitious affectations of elegance!

  If I had not touched their hands and brushed against their clothing I could have believed that I had dreamt the whole thing … and yet, I do not regret having attended that tea-party.

  The strange decor of Ethal’s studio was utterly transformed for the evening by the unusual luxury of immense floating tapestries suspended from rings mounted on copper curtain-rods. All the busts from his wax museum, brought out for the occasion from the little room where they were kept and posed on small pedestals, kept solemn vigil. All these images of suffering or sensuality incarnate mingled, in bizarre fashion, with the woven characters of the overhanging tapestries: a throng of noble barons straitened by iron corselets, their ladies in heavy skirts, and their liegemen in doublet and hose. It was as if a huge crowd of olden times were forming a procession about the walls, with the faces of spectres emerging here and there from the shadows in the form of the precisely-modelled features of the wax heads: each one haggard, with empty eyes and a painted smile. In each corner, set in enormous chandeliers like those of a church, twelve long candles burned in groups of three. Their smoky light made Ethal’s studio seem even larger, its alcoves and recesses stepping back into the unknown.

  Strange decor, to be sure – but the company of Maud White and her brother was even stranger. She was lissom, soft and pale, her milky flesh sprouting from a low-cut armless sheath of black velvet which shamelessly exposed her breasts. He wore a suit with watered silk lapels, so tight that he seemed corseted by it, and a black brocade waistcoat. They both had pale blonde, almost silvery, hair – the blond of Spanish Infantes in Velasquez portraits – styled in such a similar fashion that their resemblance to one another seemed to desexualise them both.

  Then, there was the Duchess of Althorneyshare. Her shoulders were shiny with powder, her arms plastered with white lead, and her rouged cheeks seemed to have been lit by the fire of the profuse stream of diamonds which trickled from her ears to her throat. The Duchess of Althorneyshare was mauve from the roots of her tinted hair to the toes of her silk-slippered feet; she was mauve not only by virtue of her mauve dress, but also by virtue of the withering discolouration of her patched-up flesh, marinated for thirty years in balms, unguents and friar’s balsam. The fabulous choker of pearls which she wore seemed to be supporting in a vase of nacre the frightful face of Queen Elizabeth. The Duchess of Althorneyshare had been a dancer long ago, when she married the Duke. Nowadays, widowed and permanently enriched by her inheritance, she tours the world from Florence to the Riviera and from Corfu to the Azores, parading the Lord Burdett’s millions and her own vices. She was not even at the Opera – she was a star of the music-hall.

  Then, there was Mein Herr Frederic Schappman, a tall thin German with an equine head and skipping gait, whose careful gestures were complemented by a rattling of opals, a long string of which he wore about his right wrist. Mein Herr Schappman was dressed in a long black frock-coat, his cravat an enormous knot of white silk. He gave the impression of an opossum encrusted with diamonds, so glittering with jewels was he.

  Then came some London-tailored outfits, buttonholes flourishing with orchids, the accompanying faces painstakingly shaven, with thick fluid tresses and impeccable partings. Then a dark face turbanned in white: a great Hindu, very formal in a dinner-jacket, with Sinhalese sapphires and pearls on all his fingers. I gathered that the splendid Hindu had been brought by either the duchess or the German.

  ‘You aren’t afraid of the police, I hope? What a fine haul they could net, this evening, if they descended upon us. For a moment I was tempted to tip them off.’

  Such were the words with which Ethal greeted me. Introductions followed.

  Maud White, rolled up in her velvet like a statue in its drapery, deigned to put her arms around me with an almost tender gaze in her large green eyes. She had the most beautiful eyes, leaf-green in colour, unfortunately let down by the somewhat slack oval of her face. Her brother, Sir Reginald, favoured me with a bow and expressed his pleasure at making the acquaintance of the celebrated collector.

  ‘Her head is heavy,’ Ethal said to me, in a low whisper, ‘but her skin is divine. As for the body … but it can’t be helped. Maud is chaste, repelled by contact with men. Is that a vocation or a vice? The truth is that she plays Zohar … yes, certainly, the brother and sister together. That is what is said, and it does not displease me at all to believe it. In the interest of their fame it would be rather imprudent to contradict it. She has built herself quite a reputation here and in London with the aid of Swinburne, Baudelaire and Incest. She loves to perform the work of poetic outsiders; she will read to us this evening from Baudelaire.

  Leading me to the far end of the studio, he said: ‘I shall not present you to the duchess. For one thing, you’re not her type; for another, she only has eyes tonight for the Hindu and Monsieur Schappman: she will certainly gather in one of the two. Why, then, invite the monster? Well, she furnishes a room so horribly, and emphasizes the beauty of other women. What a splendid idol she makes beneath the spolia opima of her diamonds, and how she blackens beneath her powder and paint! I can’t look at her without thinking of the Biblical Esther, who was soaked for six months in myrrh and cinnamon before Mordecai presented her to Ahasuerus. Flesh discoloured by aromatic spices comes to have a special kind of complexion – but Esther was fresh meat, whereas this one has been well-hung by forty years of prostitution. What beautiful putrefaction one detects beneath the armour of that make-up, in the ravines of those wrinkles! I like the impression she gives of one diseased, like some Black Virgin dressed in satin, such as can sometimes be seen in Spanish churches. How well she would serve as a Madonna of the Terror, in a procession of penitents painted by Goya! She is Our Lady of the Seven Deadly Sins, as Forain called her one evening – and you must admit that the name becomes her.

  ‘I shall not introduce you to Schappman, nor to Schappman’s Hindu. Dear Freddie is only interesting when he explains the reasons for his voyages to
Japan. He undertakes such excursions to the lands of Nippon every spring, after leaving Alexandria; he goes there, he says, to see the plum-trees in flower. Deep down, he has the soul of a milliner. He really ought to be named Charlotte, and to be employed buttering the bread of the descendants of Wilhelm Meister.

  ‘I’ll wager that he’ll tell these fellows all about his enthusiasm for plum-trees, or the adventure of his last purchase – that string of opals which he wears coiled about his arm. He collects them – souvenirs of the Orient! They’re the rosaries of Mecca, found throughout Algeria.

  ‘As for my fellow-Englishmen, they’re typical John Bulls. They’re of no importance, although they don’t like to stay any longer in London than your obedient servant. They’re all collectors of some kind or another. One favours Queen Anne belt-buckles, another shoes worn by the king of Rome, or sabretaches of the handsome Prince Murat: they have to do something and because they have no other way to occupy themselves they retreat into little worlds of their own. Anyway, they don’t understand a word of French and insist on speaking nothing but their own lingo – as if it were becoming to foreigners to distinguish themselves by imperfection!

  ‘I shall present you in due course to someone who, although he too is from the British Isles, is well worth the trouble and will interest you. We are also expecting some Russians … but if you will pardon me, I must ask Miss White to read us something.’

  Maud White – who was in the midst of flirting with her brother with regal immodesty, eye to eye and nearly mouth to mouth – indolently rose to her feet as Ethal approached. She greeted his request with liquid eyes peering out from half-lowered lids and feline movements of the spine and hips. Her breasts were almost springing out of her bodice, as if offering up her entire being, to the extent that she ignited the sleeping gaze of the Hindu – and, in consquence, the bloodshot eye of the ancient Althor-neyshare.