by Jean Lorrain
‘I have already told you, haven’t I, that Thomas is her illegitimate brother? They have the same mother – it’s quite a story. The pregnancy of Georgina Melldon was one of the greatest scandals English society has seen these last thirty years. A young Irish farmer was responsible for it. It is very warm in August in Ireland, and Georgina’s family was spending the summer on their estate. There could be no question of her marrying a farmer: the young girl was sent to Scotland the following spring, in order to give birth. Thomas Welcome is Irish by descent but Scottish by birth. The Marchioness Eddy, on the other hand, is the entirely legitimate daughter of Count Reginald Sussex. That Georgina was so beautiful! It is very necessary that I explain these atavisms to you …’
I was not listening. While he was speaking, lolling back on the cushions of the sofa, Ethal had extended his arms. One hand had come to rest, mechanically, on the painted wax hair of the Italian bust, which was enthroned on a small pedestal some distance away. I could no longer see anything except that hand.
Decorated with metal and mother of pearl, the fingers were clenched like claws, kneading the bulging forehead of Angelotto. It was the talon of a vulture descending upon the effigy of the poor child. In the midst of all those pearls the poisoned emerald gleamed like an eye, and it seemed to me that within the grip of that cruel hand the dolorous face slowly convulsed with suffering.
Ethal was still reciting his catalogue of infamies. What was he saying? I no longer knew … but in the dark shadow of some kind of hallucination, I saw, between those fingers of will and fever, a succession of other familiar faces wither and blanch.
There was the thinned oval and the great forget-me-not eyes of the little duchess; and there was the splendour of the rosy flesh of Lady Beacoscome; and, finally, there was the pallid face and ecstatic eyes of the Marchioness Eddy …
The poisoner’s hand closed yet again on all those bruised and dolorous temples! A ghastly whiteness seemed to flow along the rings, dampened by some uncanny sweat – and when I saw within that armature of livid jewels, coming into view after so many agonised faces, the exhausted face and scarified eyes of Thomas himself, I came abruptly to my feet. Brought upright by a somersault of horror – horror and hatred – and moved by a will foreign to my own, not knowing what I was doing or why, I threw myself on Ethal.
His was now the brow gripped and thrust back by a single hand, his the hair and cranium cruelly kneaded in its turn. With my other hand I seized his horrible hand with the even more horrible rings, and shoved it violently into his mouth: that foul mouth full of the names of Thomas and Eddy. It was my turn to be entranced by the sight of his little eyes magnified by terror.
I brutally rammed the stones of his rings against the enamel of his teeth. It required three blows to shatter the venomous emerald.
Ethal, buttressed behind, strove to lift himself up, and tried to bite. The wretch bit nothing but his own fingers! His free hand seized me by the neck and exerted such force as it could to strangle me, but still I held his head back and forced him to drink …
The broken gem was empty. The grip of Ethal’s hand became feeble; a heavy sweat beaded his face, and his breast rose and fell like bellows. His two vitreous eyeballs rolled up, like two billiard-balls, towards the suddenly-creased temples – then they capsized beneath the eyelids which no longer contained anything but whiteness, and his whole body lost its rigidity, becoming slack.
‘Actum est.’ The deed was done.
The white and funereal night-watch of the flowers was all around me.
The head lay inert on the shoulder, the mouth hideously open. The hand with the rings had slid down on to his breast; I placed it at his side, on a cushion. The Duchess of Searley smiled in her frame, Lady Beacoscome drew herself up haughtily, above the zebra-stripes of fabric. The gaze of Thomas Welcome followed me, through the eyes of the Marchioness Eddy, astounded and complicit at the same time. I regretted nothing.
I smoothed down my shirt, calmly adjusted my cravat, opened the door of the ante-chamber, and descended the flight of stairs.
THE GODDESS
29 May 1899. Six o’clock in the evening
I have just left Ethal’s studio. There I was confronted with his corpse. I say confronted, but that is too dramatic a word, since not the slightest shadow of suspicion has touched me. I was summoned there as a friend of the dead man, invited by the commissaire of police in the hope that I might shed some light on the case by giving evidence as to the hypothetical causes of this mysterious suicide – for the whole world believes that there has been a suicide. The broken stone of the ring testifies to that effect; the doctors have declared the cause of death to be poisoning by curare. Even the decoration of the studio – that apotheosis of amaryllids and lilies accumulated around the body, as if for a wake – has been taken as an indication of premeditation by the commissaire.
In the eyes of the law today, and in the eyes of all Paris tomorrow, that splenetic Englishman and artist of the bizarre, Claudius Ethal, has voluntarily delivered himself to death by drinking the contents of a poisoned ring. The deliberate piling up of rare flowers and the presence in the studio of three portraits which the painter prized most highly will corroborate in the public mind the verdict of suicide…
As for myself, the murderer, the one and only perpetrator of the crime – I have not even been questioned, although I have taken no steps to establish an alibi. At the least suspicion, at the least equivocation, I would have confessed. I would have proclaimed my act loudly: my act which, since it is not punished, is just. I am an instrument of justice.
Ethal deserves to be dead. He had filled the cup to overflowing; the proof of it is the quasi-somnambulistic cold-bloodedness with which I have accomplished the act, almost without doubting myself.
Same day, eleven o’clock at night.
I have re-read my manuscript. How I exonerate myself in my own eyes! What pains I take to excuse my act: my act which is a crime, seeing that since this morning I have composed my attitude and my gestures like an actor, misleading to the best of my ability the opinion of the law, in the cause of remaining at liberty! As to that verdict of suicide, it is I myself who have established it, by letting it be understood that Ethal had despaired of ever being able to take up his brushes again. To lend credence to the account of a painter who did not wish to survive his talent, have I not shown the commissaire the letter in which Claudius invited me to come to admire his portraits?
It is that foolish letter – let us be perfectly clear about this: foolish from the viewpoint of a commissaire of police, not from that of an artist – which has secured the conclusion of suicide: another folly!
I soon realised how useful that letter might be. When that policeman presented himself at my apartments at ten o’clock, asking me to follow him to the Rue Servandoni, I was very careful to take it with me. I had the intention of furnishing myself with proof. Calmly, I put it in the pocket of my coat – and then, coolly, I followed the man, without questioning him further as to the purpose of his visit or the reason why my presence was required in the Rue Servandoni. It was not until we arrived in front of Claudius’ house that I displayed any emotion.
‘Has something happened to Monsieur Ethal?’ I asked – and when the man remained silent I hurried up into the studio. The door was open. I bumped into a policeman in the ante-chamber, and rushed past him into the studio.
Nothing had been moved. The position of the cadaver had likewise been respected. The mouth, still wide open, was lightly blackened, the mucous membranes had become bluish, and under the heavy, swollen eyelids there was a gleam as of burnished silver. The tautly clenched hand lay inertly upon a cushion, in the place where I had placed it. The commissaire, a group of policemen and two doctors all got up as I entered. The portrait of the Duchess of Searley was behind them.
Then, carefully calculating the effect of my actions, I stopped in my tracks, strangled a cry, and – after quickly greeting the assembled people with a stammered
‘Messieurs, Messieurs,’ – ran to Claudius and took him in my arms. I swiftly searched his hand with my eyes, seized it with my own, and displayed the ring! Then, with a grand gesture of despondency, I let the hand fall again.
‘You were due to pass the evening together, I believe, monsieur?’ the commissaire asked me. ‘Did you not come yesterday, at about six o’clock, to this studio?’
‘But of course, monsieur. Ethal had arrived that same morning from Nice, and had given me notice by letter. I believe that I have it on me.’ (I pretended to search for it.) ‘Ethal was desirous that I should see these portraits: he had just won a lawsuit which made them his property. For a whole year Ethal had painted nothing, because the great troubles he had experienced in London had disheartened him – in brief, it was a great joy for him to recover possession of his works. He attached enormous importance to them. If only I had his letter … Hence the childish decor of flowers; yesterday, a fete was held in this studio.’
It was all a cunning web of lies, an intricate combination of convincing plausibilities, recited with a coolness which made me marvel at myself. It was as if I were split in two. I seemed to be a helpful witness in a judicial drama whose intrigue—all the scenes and the gestures of the actors – I was also directing. The commissaire and the doctors seemed to be speaking words for which the replies were already scripted. When the interrogator reiterated the question: ‘Were you not due to dine together?’ I immediately responded: ‘Certainly. He is still dressed for it. We were to have spent the evening together but just as we were going out Ethal declared that he was tired. He had spent the night on a train, and perhaps the odour of these flowers … the great emotion of having recovered his pictures at last…in brief, he begged me to excuse him, and to leave him alone. We were due to meet again, this evening.’
‘There was nothing then, which might have enabled you to foresee the action taken by your friend?’
‘Nothing, absolutely nothing. I am astounded, dumbfounded by it.’
‘Did you not speak of a letter?’
‘Indeed, the letter in which Ethal invited me to come to see his pictures. I have left it at home, but I will place it at your disposal.’
‘We would be obliged to you if you could give us sight of it, monsieur. Forgive us for disturbing you, but you alone are able to give us vital information about the dead man. You may go now.’
And that was all.
In the hallway, Ethal’s manservant William, who had arrived that same night from Nice, threw himself in front of me.
‘Ah, monsieur, who could have foreseen this? To think that I found him thus on coming from the station. If only I had taken the same train, none of this would have happened.’
‘Should I send for a nun to sit beside him, William?’
‘No, I will watch over him myself; Madame will doubtless arrive in due course.’
‘Madame?’
‘Yes – Monsieur Ethal’s mother. We sent her a telegram only this morning.’
Madame! Ethal had a mother! He had never mentioned her to me. And I had deprived that mother of her son! That was the day’s one moment of emotion. I said some comforting words to William, and left.
I can no longer recognise myself. My sensibility is utterly annihilated. Never have I been so calm. Is it the murder which has ripened within me this power of cold-bloodedness and this singular energy? As yet I have felt not a pang of regret – on the contrary, my conscience becomes more certain with every passing hour that an act of justice has been done.
30 May, nine o’clock in the morning
Where was I? Whence came those stumps of porticoes and those tall stone columns rising up into infinity? My God, what ruins! And those ancient mutilated statues and those plinths in the sand … it was as if they really existed, as if they were actually there! Where, then, have I seen that ruined city before? And not a blade of grass, not a spring of ivy … just sand and more sand.
It was such a strange solitude. Not a bird in the air. And what silence! And how soft the air was! How I loved that dead moonlit city, and the immaterial purity of that night. The porphyry of its columns had such limpid reflections, and nothing shifted in the shadows. It was such a delicious and enervating calm. The steles, pilasters, pylons and porticos extended into the distance …
By and by, I heard the faint rustle of feathers somewhere close at hand. It astonished me without frightening me. Where could the sound have come from, given that the city was dead and that there were no birds there? At the same time, glaucous gemstones seemed to gleam in the shadows, and I thought they might be stars reflected in pools of water … but there was no more water in that desert than there were stars in the sky …
Scarcely audible, murmurous words were whispered in my ears, spelling out phrases like caresses, in some unknown language. I loved those incomprehensible whispers: the consonants attenuated, the vowels so very gentle …
All of a sudden, the porticos and the steles were alive with people. Were they caryatids coming to life? Never had I seen such gentle female faces. They formed a circle all around me, drawing closer – and suddenly stopped still. They were the colour of ash, and their heads were decked with tapering tiaras like the priestesses of India. I was not afraid, and yet I shivered; it was a voluptuous shiver, piercing but not alarming. I had seen these figures before, somewhere … yes, I had seen those heavy hemmed eyelids and those triangular smiles before. Where? Somnolent and ironic, they were now swaying all around me. What I had taken for the sound of wings was the clicking of long pendants of metal and emeralds brushing their silken tunics. Their half-naked bodies were cuirassed in jewels; rings of enamel encased their ankles, breast-plates of gems their breasts.
Suddenly, unexpected phosphorescences were lit within their eyes; each face was transfigured by sublime profundity; each tiara illuminated – and then they vanished, each and every one! But I knew now who they resembled. They were a host of ‘dancing Salomés’ – the Salomé of the famous water colour by Gustave Moreau. As for their luminous gazes, their phosphorescent irises, they were the emerald eyes of the idol of onyx: the little Astarte from the house in Woolwich, now lodged in my apartments.
Never had I had such a lovely dream.
Paris, 5 June 1899
For three days I have been subjected to the ignominy of articles and leaders on the subject of Ethal. All the dirt has been stirred up, all the wretchedness of his life exhumed, exposed to the light of day like so much jetsam: the entire stock of anecdotes, true and false, and all the legends hawked around these last five years concerning the painter and the man. Even his talent has been called into question – and there I detect the hand of his contemporaries. Women are included in these stories, with only the merest gesture towards the perservation of their incognito; initials serve to denounce those who sat for portraits whose fashionability is unpardoned. In some of these articles my own name is mentioned; I am cited as a friend of the deceased – and all the scandals brought back to life about the dead man also rebound on me.
What a pack of human hyenas! He had every reason to despise them, to scourge them with his sarcasms and to defy them with all his eccentric follies – these starveling prowlers of cemeteries who, with the coffin scarcely closed, come to sniff out and devour the still-fresh bodies.
This has been, as one imbecile described it, a ‘very Parisian’ suicide.
They are imbeciles all, cowardly scandal-mongers and miserable wretches. What necrological articles have they in reserve for me? They will not have the pleasure of writing them. I have had enough of the Paris of snobs and the whole of Europe: ancient, corrupt and stuck in a rut. The murder of Ethal has liberated me and cleared my sight. I am in control of myself again, and I am wholly myself. Welcome was right: I must become a voyager, in order to live with fervour a life of passion and of adventure, to vanish into the thin air of the unknown, to lose myself in the infinite, in the energy of virile peoples, the beauty of unalterable races and the sublimity of instincts …
I shall meet my business agents and instruct them to liquidate everything. I shall quit Paris. I shall leave it all behind!
Paris, 9 June
There is no denying that what I experienced last night was nothing less than a vision: some unknown entity, from the invisible and the intangible, manifested itself to me.
I was in bed, but definitely not asleep. I had gone to bed early, having following the recommendations of Corbin by taking a long walk, testing my muscles to the limit in order to cultivate a healthy fatigue. The lamp on my bedside table was lit, I had a book open before me; therefore, I was not asleep.
She has appeared to me.
She took the form of a nude figure, not large – rather small by human standards, but of an incomparable purity of line. She was at the foot of my bed, her head slightly tilted back, as if she were floating in mid-air; her toes were not touching the ground. She appeared to be asleep.
Her eyelids were lowered, her lips were half-open, her naked body was offered up, abandoned and chaste. Her bare arms, joined at the back of her neck, supported her ecstatic head. She was slim at the waist, and her armpits were dotted as if with rust.
It was a delirious vision. Her flesh had the transparency of jade, but from the diadem of emeralds about her forehead ran a flowing veil of black gauze: a vapour of crepe, which coiled around her hips, hiding the sexual organs, and terminated in a fetter-like knot about her two ankles, embellishing the pale apparition with mystery.
I would have loved to be able to see the gaze hidden beneath her closed eyelids. Some secret presentiment informed me that this lethargic naked form held the key to my cure. The ecstatic figure of that succubus was the living incarnation of my secret.
These words sighed in my ear: ‘Astarté, Acté, Alexandria.’
