Monsieur De Phocas (Decadence From Dedalus)

by Jean Lorrain

  For effect, the painter had represented all the suitors as adolescents, hardly more than children, thus giving to all their death-agonies a voluptuous and cruel sensuality. It was a hecatomb of youth worthy of Tiberius or Nero.

  In the centre, a whole group of frightened men jostled one another furiously, around the couches of three more intrepid heroes, who continued to drink while awaiting death. They had not even left their cushions. Nonchalantly lying down, cup in hand, they seemed scornful of the agonised howling and desperation of their companions. I was seized by a great admiration for such calm and such disdain, in the midst of that terror-stricken mob.

  Among all these divine figures clad in silks and jewels, two in particular attracted me, not so much by the purity of their features as by the imperious charm of their expressions. They were faces full of resolution and anguish, whose hallucinatory eyes were intoxicating.

  One, who had brought himself upright with a single bound, had torn open his clothing the better to receive the fatal arrows. With his chest bared, drawing back the bluish draperies to offer up all his young flesh, he seemed to be cursing the gods and inviting death.

  It was adolescence flinging itself into the abyss, with the thirst of the martyr: the offering of a young and heroic soul to death!

  The other, seated in a corner of the hall, leaning against a pillar with capitals of green bronze, was slowly lifting a cup to his lips and, with a superb profundity in his two eyes, calmly drinking death – for the cup was poisoned. A poppy, half-stripped of its petals, floated on the surface of the draught. Defying the serene gravity of the gesture, the tragic illumination of his eyes proclaimed the surpreme determination of that lover to yield nothing but a cadaver to the avenging arrows of the husband.

  What I could not fail to recognise, and what moved me so profoundly, was the expression in the eyes: the inexpressible eyes of those two death-agonies! In what violet had the painter steeped them? In what livid green had he found their surrounding rings? They were living, those eyes: like two phosphorescent gleams, like the corollas of two flowers.

  Ethal had not deceived me. These were most certainly the eyes of my dream, the eyes of my obsession, the eyes of anguish and dread which he had predicted that I would encounter: gazes more beautiful than all expressions of love by virtue of having become decisive, supernatural, and – in the final analysis – themselves in the anguish of the last moment of life. Ethal’s theory appeared to me to be proved at last, by the talent and genius of the painter. I understood, at last, the beauty of murder: the supreme make-up that is dread; the ineffable empire of eyes which desire to die.

  THOU SHALT GO NO FURTHER

  April 1899

  And for the obsession of those eyes, I nearly killed that girl. Yes, it has come to that; I go forth to intoxicate myself, to hypnotise myself with beauty before the work of Gustave Moreau – and I bring back the soul of an assassin! What ignominy! All day, I exalt and hallucinate myself before the terrible phosphorescence of a picture painted by a poet and enameller – and that same evening I find myself yet again in a slum, caught between the horror of an under-age whore and the menacing mockery of her pimp.

  It was the presence of the man which saved me. Without him, without his abrupt intervention, I would have continued to close around that frail neck the hideous hands of a strangler – for they have become hideous, my hands! Now, having at last returned home, I look at them coolly, under the glow of the lamp, they appear to me deformed. I did not suspect that my narrow hands, with their long and slender fingers, had such power in their enveloping suppleness…

  Now that I have felt in their grip an agonising desire to frighten and to demand satisfaction they seem to have turned into claws. How long my thumbs are! I have never noticed it before.

  On due reflection, however, I can only conclude that it was the haunting memory of the inexpressible eyes of the suitors which guided me in my descent. When I took hold of the neck of that frightened litle girl in the hotel room it was certainly the anguish of the last moment of life that I sought in her eyes – but how did she come to have that form and that quality in her eyes?

  I will always remember that moment. I felt myself overcome by such a vertiginous rush of sensations and such emptiness that I believed I was becoming a god – that a second self was emerging within me, and that I had taken hold of the unknowable at last.

  But what a pitiful and banal adventure it was!

  That hellish excursion into that suburban fairground; the reek of burnt fat, of the sweaty and dirty rags of labourers after work, gathered beneath the already dirty trees of that avenue; the weary dawdling of the gawkers in the alleyways between the booths … the beat walked by that gamine …

  She was scarcely seventeen years old, showing just a glimpse of tender and very pale flesh at the open neck of a loose jacket. The nape of her neck was gilded and her sunburnt cheeks were ripely pink, of a different shade from the throat and neck. She looked like a country girl, still innocent in spite of the livery of prostitution which she wore.

  In an unready manner, as though reluctantly harnessed to the task, she strolled back and forth in the fairground, stubborn and lazy at the same time. Not pretty to start with, she seemed worse by virtue of her surly virgin manner and the awkward way she had of lifting up her dress to expose the red cloth of her underskirt. It stood out a mile that she was a debutante: some poor debauched good girl sent forth into the night, watched over from some near vantage-point by some frightful bully-boy.

  Twice she passed close by me, mumbling some ill-bred obscenities in an indistinct voice, then threw a rapid sideways wink at a policeman before setting forth again on the hunt. She was evidently choked by terror, and sadly inexperienced in the vocation of streetwalking. Her awkwardness interested me, and – more out of pity than depravity – I set out to follow her. I fell into step with her, and she became aware of my intention. At the corner of the street she turned around abruptly, lifting her big eyes towards me at last, and looked me in the face.

  ‘Buy a girl a drink? I ain’t ‘alf thirsty!’ she said, using the vile conventional jargon of such suburban encounters.

  Her eyes? The irises were at the same time blue and violet, iridescent and changing – and their expression was so sad, so utterly timorous … ! She was a mere kid! I was immediately overcome – by pity much more than desire. I took her to dinner – I, the Duc de Fréneuse, took that little prostitute from Vaugirard to dinner at a restaurant near the railway station. She was scared and bewildered, hardly able to believe in her good fortune – dinner in a restaurant with a well-set-up client! The people with whom she normally did business were presumably more expeditious. I talked to her gently, asking what she liked with reference to the menu.

  Until that moment I had not observed that her eyes, with all the charms of their deep and indefinable hue, had already acquired the delicious relish of terror – for it was terror that I inspired in her. My amiability, my little caring gestures and my gentleness only served to redouble her anxieties. The man who lived off her must have followed us, and must have been watching us from outside. Her only replies to my courtesies were starts and recoils; with her large, staring eyes, she gave the impression of a little creature in danger, trembling as she suppressed the impulse to cry out for help. I felt a mounting sexual excitement; her anxieties were bringing out the beast in me.

  Nero must have felt something similar as he delightedly drank the tears of martyrs. It was akin to the sinister voluptuousness of the Augustans delivering up to the Praetorian Guard the modesty and fear of Christian virgins; akin to the frantic and ferocious joy which filled the infamous Circus even before the bloodier games commenced, when young girls were twice delivered to the beasts – first the man, and then the tiger!

  It was the cruel and iconoclastic pleasure of crushing something frail, of breaking a stem: the triumphant ignominy of the power to please oneself in pulverising everything that is fragile! It was all that filth and fever which
was buzzing in my head and causing my fingers to clench when, once we were in the hotel-room, the child with the great sad eyes refused to undress. She had not the time, she said, I had to get it over with quickly; she was staying with her parents; they would have missed her at the evening meal; her father was brutal; she would get into trouble because of me … and all the other excuses which false novices usually make, in similar cases.

  The truth is that she was afraid – afraid of me, and of the expression in my eyes, which was becoming strange and blazing. She had sat down on the bed and had crossed her hands before her bosom, with the instinctive gesture of a victim, as I tried to unbutton her jacket. There was a frightful fever in my fingertips and I became brutally insistent. She got up again, moved by fright and perhaps by rebellion.

  ‘I want the money now!’ she announced, in a harsh voice – and, as slippery as an eel, she slid out of my embrace and took refuge in a corner. Her horror of me was manifest.

  I saw red. I was sorely annoyed by the thought that this little trollop was refusing herself to me – me, the Duc de Fréneuse, the some-time lover of Willie Stephenson and Izé Kranile, whose caprices were appreciated and whose presence was implored in the house of every trafficker in flesh in London and Paris! Her violet eyes, which had now become immense, fascinated me and drew me forward. I was maddened by a furnace-like heat; I was suffocating, strangled by rage and desire. I felt the need to seize that shivering and timorous body, to force it back, to pound it and knead it…

  And my two hands seized the gamine by the throat, stetching her out at full length on the bed; with all my strength I bore down on her, crushing my lips against hers and staring into her eyes.

  ‘Fool!’ I hissed between my teeth. ‘Little fool!’

  And while my fingers dug slowly into her flesh, I watched entranced as the blue of her eyes gradually darkened. I felt her breasts palpitating beneath me.

  ‘Mathias! Mathias!’ she croaked, hoarsely.

  The door was broken in by the blow of a shoulder. A hand grabbed me by the back of the neck, lifted me by the collar of my jacket and brought me to my feet on the carpet.

  ‘Here! What’s going on? What’re you after? What’re you trying to do to the kid?’

  The man was not young, and had not shaved for three days; he was wearing the loose neckerchief of a labourer – probably some wretched zinc-worker. He looked me up and down with his little bulging eyes: the restless and disquieting eyes of a wild beast. Then, the examination complete, he twirled his moustache around one finger and thrust the other hand deep in the pocket of his velvet tunic. ‘Well, Toinette, what’s monsieur up to?’

  Then, favouring me with a knowing wink of the eye, he added: ‘Go on then, get on with it.’

  It was a set-up. I liked nothing better. Within the pocket of my coat I took hold of the revolver which I always carried there. I cocked it, and with my free left hand I plucked a few coins out of my waistcoat.

  ‘The show must go on?’ I replied, using the same jargon. ‘Not with me – I already know the tune. The little one is a minor, isn’t she? But she was soliciting when I picked her up. That game won’t work on me. I could have you both banged up, but it isn’t worth the trouble. Go on, get out! Get back to where you belong or this little darling will be doing the talking.’ I showed him the revolver.

  The man listened to me complaisantly. My argot interested him, and so did the coins I was holding – and the rings on my fingers even more, for his eyes never left my hands. He mimicked a dancer’s bow, and put on a thoroughly obsequious manner: ‘Monsieur is one of the gentry, but we have to work for a living. Yes, the little one is my cooking-pot, but we’re honest tradesmen. Toinette would have done a trick for a five franc piece – maybe ten for you, as you’re so well-heeled – but what were you trying to do to her? She’s only a kid – you frightened her so much that she cried out. Some dirty toff’s trick! Come on, Toinette, show a little life! What was monsieur doing to you? Let’s give her a chance to explain, shall we?’

  The frightened little girl, cowering against her protector, stammered out an account of the encounter and the following scene, illustrated with grand gestures. The man listened; his eyes lit up and his sinister face was shining. He looked upon me with apparent benevolence.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, sweeping up the three twenty-france pieces that I had put on the table, ‘I see what’s what. We understand one another well enough. Go on, greenhorn, hop it. Outside! Clear the deck, spoilsport! You must excuse her, monsieur; she’s young, doesn’t know what it’s all about – there are such funny people around; she was scared. Go on, wait for me in the wine-merchants downstairs – ask for Nénest, the little printer, the apprentice who’s been with Big Marie for ten years, the kid who lodges with her … come on, are you dense, or what?’ He raised his hand to the little girl ‘Big Marie – from the corner at the crossroads on the Rue Lecourbe. Tell her that she has to come with Nénest – bring them both to the wine-merchants. I’ll come down with monsieur. Take this, for a drink!’ He threw five francs at the girl.

  When the unhappy girl had gone he repeated: ‘We understand one another well enough. If monsieur had explained … me, I’m wise to all that. I’m not thick. I see things quickly, me. Monsieur had only to say, and what he requires can easily be found. I can do business with you.’

  He stood aside to let me precede him through the open door.

  ‘If you would be so kind … ‘

  To have come to this! To carry imprinted on my features such a mask that they come forth to whisper to me, in Grenelle and in Vaugirard, the kind of propositions that are murmured in the streets of Cairo and the quays of Naples!

  And it was before the painting of Gustave Moreau that my soul put on this mask. My God, what have I come to? I did not even kill the person who dared to speak to me thus! Has Ethal, then, abolished everything that was within me?

  THE LILIES

  Paris, 15 May

  Nice.

  My lawsuit is won. The portrait of Marchioness Eddy and some others left London five days ago; a telegram from Rothner informs me that they arrived yesterday at the railway station. I shall take delivery myself; they will all be unpacked and on show in my studio tomorrow evening. Come, therefore, to make the acquaintance of the exquisite Lady Kerneby, whose divorce will give me back to my brushes. She still continues to die slowly in the blue and gold spring of the Riviera; her agony has given her complexion a new shade … I make haste to return to Paris to make some slight alterations to my canvas. This consumptive little marchioness will have provided me, unawares, with a masterpiece. I began it when she was already ill; by the time I have completed it she will be moribund. It will be something more, I believe, than one more variation on a woman’s face … She and my bust of wax, based on the little Neapolitan model, will represent the two great emotions of my life … purely artistic emotions, you understand – but they are the most poignant and the richest of all complex sensations. You are only a dilettante yourself, my dear Duc, but you will understand my joy and my pride in standing before the portrait of tomorrow.

  You will also see, in the Rue Servandoni, how much the Marchioness Eddy resembles her brother, and you will discover some other works by yours truly. There is my ink-drawing of the Duchess of Searley, the poor little peeress who died so unhappily some days after the completion of her portrait. There is also my pastel of the Marchioness of Beacoscome, the most neurasthenic of those Americans who are wedded to London, who was so exhausted by her sittings that I was never able to finish it … in the end, she was forbidden to visit my studio by order of her doctors. Be reassured – the Marchioness of Beacoscome is not dead, although she ought to be. By this time, she will be in China; the Marquis has been appointed ambassador to Peking. So the affair to which I am inviting you is not entirely a ball of victims.

  Until tomorrow, then. My entire London studio has now been transferrd to my Paris home. Come about seven o’clock: seven o’clock is an admirable time, i
n May.

  Yours

  CLAUDIUS ETHAL

  The letter is dated the 14th. It is this evening, therefore, at seven o’clock, that Claudius invites me to contemplate the morally dubious beauties of languor and death-agony exhibited by these famous cases of murder.

  The Duchess of Searley, the Marchioness of Beacoscome …

  I recalled to mind all that Pierre de Tairamond had told me during the conversation we had when he visited me last August – less than a a year ago.

  ‘He has in his house certain carefully-prepared cigarettes which provoke the worst debauchery. The young Duchess of Searley was dead in six months, in consequence having breathed the scent of certain strange and heady flowers during her sittings.

  ‘As regards the Marchioness of Beacoscome, she has ceased, by order of her doctors, to pose for Ethal. Her neurasthenia was exasperated in the atmosphere of the studio, which was eternally crowded with amaryllids and lilies; she felt that she was dying there.

  ‘These flowers have the peculiar property of giving a pearly lustre to the skin and delectable rings around the eyes of those who breathe their scent, but in awakening the touching rings and the marvellous pallors, such flowers let loose a lethal miasma. For love of beauty – a fervour for deep, drowned expressions and delicate flesh-tints – Claudius Ethal poisons his models; the man cultivates languor and sows mortal agonies.’

  Yes, these were certainly the names Tairamond had mentioned in discussing the redoubtable legend which had grown up around the painter: the clamour of clubland; the echo of London.

  Bluebeard has invited me to come and visit his dead women this evening.

  Paris, 16 May, four o’clock in the morning

  I have killed Ethal!

  There was nothing else I could do! Life had become odious, the air unbreathable. I have killed. I am delivered and I am a deliverer – for, in putting down that man, I am conscious that I have saved others! What I have eliminated is an element of corruption; a germ of death lying in wait; a watchful larva with hands of shadow extended towards all that which is youthful, towards all weakness and all ignorance. I have liberated Welcome – of that much I am certain – and I might perhaps have saved that gentle Marchioness Eddy, whose soul he stole and whose death-agony he imposed. I might possibly have broken the frightful curse which he has put on the Marchioness of Beacoscome. For that man was more than a poisoner: he was also a sorcerer. In poisoning him with his own hand I have been an unconscious and just instrument of fate; I have been the arm lifted by a will more powerful than my own; I have completed the gesture with which he menaced the world at large, and I have secured his destiny.