The Angels of Perversity

by Remy de Gourmont

  Deliriously icy, the kisses of the snow cut through her vestments – going, in spite of her defensive armour, in search of her skin and all the folds and creases of her curled-up body. It was marvellously gentle, and it had a uniquely voluptuous quality which she had most certainly never known before!

  In truth, the Spirit of the Snow ravished and possessed her – and Danaette allowed it to do so, curious to savour this new kind of adultery, delivering herself up to ineffable and almost frightful pleasure. She allowed herself to become the amorous prey of a Divine Caprice: a human lover unexpectedly elevated towards the unimaginable realm of the angels of perversity.

  Ever and anon the snow fell, penetrating so profoundly into the depths of her enraptured being that she had no room in her for any other sensation than that of dying of cold, and being buried beneath the adorable kisses of the snow, and being embalmed by the snow – and, at the last, of being taken up and away by the snow, carried aloft by a wayward breath of turbulent wind, into some distant region of eternal snows, over infinite ranges of fabulous mountains … where all the dear little adulteresses, eternally beloved, were endlessly enraptured by the impatient and imperious caresses of the angels of perversity.

  EVENING CONVERSATION

  One of them was a young girl, the other a young wife, but those who came to the house to pay court to the young girl found the young wife attractive too.

  Ida had married a gentleman who occupied his time in training horses for the racetrack; he delighted in donning a red costume, could sound a horn better than a huntsman, and relished the conversation of ostlers because he found it instructive. His wife was of little use to him, save for matters of decor and of perfume. Sometimes, he was attentive to her, at least with his eyes; he flattered her as if she were a filly and offered her a diamond or a string of pearls in the hollow of his hand, as though they were sugar-lumps for her to eat. Sometimes, too, he breathed in her scent with closed eyes, and having savoured it, compared it to freshly-cut grass – which he insisted on calling, in the English fashion, “new mown hay”. With all this Ida was perfectly satisfied, for he denied her nothing, certainly none of the essential pleasures.

  The essential plesures, for Ida, were: to rise at mid-day; to possess a wardrobe of beautiful dresses; to make music; and, when the evening lamps were lit, to deck her pure torso with more jewellery than Aline, the Queen of Golconda, had worn. She was aware that there exist beings named “lovers”, whom wives are wont to regard with the relish which her husband reserved for horses, but she had never had the desire to attach one to her person. These huge beetles, in her opinion, were agreeable only in a troop, when they circulated discreetly in a packed drawing-room; and whenever it was suggested that such insects were capable of inspiring mad passions in wives, she laughed so loudly that her agitated diamonds reproduced the sound of a wave breaking on a stony shore.

  The particular scarab who courted her sister Mora, however, was neither too bestial nor too ugly, even when seen alone and close up. He was displeasing neither to Mora nor to Ida. Mora’s most fervent wish was to marry him, and Ida was determined to be agreeable, not wishing to discourage the pleasure of the two children, assuming that in the natural course of things they would be glad to marry. His name was Donald and his slightly musical voice was as gentle as the whispering of the wind in a steep mountain gorge. His expansive gestures suggested recklessnes, but one could not believe that of him; reassured by the pale blue of his eyes and the gentle rosiness of his cheeks, women treated him almost as a sister, and if ever he boasted of his skill in handling the oar, they grieved to think of such adolescent grace being devoted to such rude exercise.

  Sitting side by side at the piano, Ida and Mora were light-headed with joy. Encircled by a multicoloured net of harmony which separated them from the rest of the world, they intoxicated themselves shamelessly. They were aroused but unsatisfied; they sought ecstasy, but only arrived at a delicious enervation, undoubtedly the result of the discord of their desires. Mora played for the pleasure of agreeable sounds, for the excess of vibration which music imported into her cerebral cells, for the intensity and the activity which rhythm imparts to the beating of the heart and the circulation of the blood. Ida, on the other hand, played to embroider an accompaniment for her dreams, and while the music designed itelf in vivid arabesques before her dazzled eyes she effectively lost consciousness of her being; lightened and simplified, she came out of herself, she was exalted – but only to descend again, all too soon, surprised and slightly suffocated. This illusion was even more powerful when, instead of playing herself, she listened to her sister play – for Mora had a considerable talent for rhythmic interpretation.

  Donald came into the room. Although they had neither seen nor heard him, they divined that he was there. Altogether charming in the spontaneity of their resignation, they immediately got up, leaving a passage incomplete, and came forward to welcome him.

  Donald kissed Ida’s hand, and Mora’s forehead.

  He always brought flowers: not conventional bouquets but real and entire flowers with their stems intact. It was his habit to bring only three, choosing them from among the most perfect and the most pure: immaculate white roses the colour of falling snow; or fragile and sumptuous magnolias, imprinted with a single drop of blood at the very heart of their beauty, which made them seem like sacred hearts or – as Mora would have it – proud whiteclad Dominicans who have spattered their virginal breasts with love and crimson while drinking from the chalice of the Passion. He knew how to find simple violets of an azure as profound and as delicate as the eyes of fabulous beasts rapturously uplifted to the heavens; and cyclamens of such carnal and vivacious pinkness that they reminded one of smiling mouths raised to receive kisses.

  On this particular day, he bore in his hand three divine daisies: three heavenly bodies born of a dream; three symbolic golden suns starred with lunar silver; flowers of resurrection. Mora and Ida each took one, placing them, as they always did, in their corsages. The third he deposited in a Venetian glass iridescent with hope, at the feet of the Unknown: at the feet of the one who was yet to be revealed; at the feet of the Woman whom the inevitable course of Love would create and shape from the shadows.

  The conversation was intentionally trivial, in order to reveal with moderation and modesty, little by little, the blushing secrets of one soul to the amorous curiosity of another, attentive and disquieted. As time went by, Ida sought Donald’s opinion as to whether emeralds were appropriate to her colouring, and whether one could mix them with pearls and diamonds, and whether their pastoral greenness was so stark as to be ill-matched with the whiteness of a bare shoulder. It was decided, in the end, that emeralds did not sit well upon skin which was unusually fresh and blue-veined, but they were perfect when set against flesh of a slightly bronzed hue.

  “I’m glad that you think so, Donald. In that case, I shall certainly be able to wear my emerald necklace, for I’m as brazen as an idol”. So saying, Ida rolled up her sleeve, and displayed against her brown skin the delightful smaragds which were her latest present from her husband.

  In due course, Mora asked his opinion as to the embellishments which might suit a violet dress. It was evidently necessary to decorate it, perhaps with sulphur yellow thread – and one must of course wear appropriate jewels, perhaps opals, or perhaps tinted pearls. Mora begged him to “Hold this here” while she tried the match, but when she displayed the colours by the piano the yellow seemed a little over-bright and the violet a little too dark. “It must be the harp,” she said, and searched for a different position, eventually contriving a strange improvisation in broken rhythm which would bring out by comparison and contrast both the delicate shades of the violet and – embroidered in arabesque – all the nuances of the yellow.

  Then she played again, for a long time – perhaps an hour – without stopping, without taking the slightest notice of the falling night, seemingly heedless of the divine disturbance which spread, by means of her finge
rs, into the air.

  Ida and Donald were seated on the divan. At first, lending only one ear to Mora’s fantasia, they continued their conversation, but the exchange soon dwindled away. Mutely, they surrendered to the reverie, and they trembled like the air itself, possessed by capricious melody and swelling rhythm. Only a narrow gap separated them; a slight shift filled it. Donald, excited, leaned to his right; Ida, oppressed, leaned to her left. First their shoulders, then their knees, touched; then their hands found one another and twin currents of carnal electricity moved though them, weakening them and, at the same time, activating subliminal sensations.

  The flowers, the emeralds, the shoulders, the arms nakedly displayed, the sulphur and violet corsage dreamily imprisoning Mora’s beautiful head: all of this, together with the persuasion of the music and the falling night, steered the course of their dreams towards the realm of sensuality. So utterly were they captivated that, without really knowing it, believing that they existed only in the world of fancy, ignorant of their tangible reality, plunged into the uncertainty of a dream, unsuspecting of the actuality of their act, they kissed one another gently upon the mouth.

  The prelude was imperative: Ida collapsed, eyes closed, as though she were couched upon a bed of clouds; and she received Donald into her arms, with an entirely nuptial grace.

  When they returned to themelves, they were unblushing; they did not know what they had done, and they never found out: the only memory which they retained was of a few exquisite minutes devoted to a voyage in the sky, of a pleasure which was at one and the same time sharp and gentle, infinitely pure and utterly supernatural.

  However, when Ida instinctively readjusted her costume, she perceived that the flower secured in her bosom, with its golden head starred with silver, was completely crushed. She promptly got up, and went to fetch the one which had been deposited at the feet of the Unknown, and she set that one at her own: on the breast of the woman who was yet to be revealed; of the Woman whom the inevitable course of Love would create and shape from the shadows.

  At that precise moment Mora, who was still playing, felt a terrible thrill cut through the very marrow of her bones.

  STRATAGEMS

  Bitter dalliances with a succession of women.

  The earliest memory, distant now. She came to me: the gaucheries of a little grown-up in a school smock. On the smock, spots of ink; on the nose, freckles. Eyes the colour of mulberries; teeth like hazelnuts: mulberries eaten together; hazelnuts crunched in the hollow paths along the hedgerows; and in the grass, the dewdrops and the fresh flowers.

  Afterwards … Oh! that one was truly the real thing. In being near to her, speaking to her, laughing, blushing, there was a joy altogether new, the joy of the first flowering. Her hair curled down so prettily over her forehead.

  Chloe sang, a washerwoman at the stream. Oh, daughter of kings! Oh, ancient Homer! I believed that she was Nausicaa.

  He set his hand upon my stomach.

  I told him: set it lower,

  I told him: set it lower!

  Chloe sang, a washerwoman at the stream.

  Afterwards............?

  That is all I now remember.

  The next? The lowered blinds: passing the telegraph-poles, the trees, the little houses. On the turn-tables, the wheels rumble. The dusk is violet. The rolling rolls on, the fleeting interlacement … by the carriage-door, adieu! Never again? Never again. Your name? Your dwelling-place? The lips are taken up with kissing, they have no time to spare for speech. Oh, this train that goes on and on! Oh, my life that goes on and on!

  After that? Encounters. No, no more. Yes! Why not relive such things for a while: the agreeable dreamer on my shoulder mourns her exile. She is afraid, at night, to sleep alone …

  A little shopgirl, very comely in the economical get-up of her class: “No presents,” she said, in a firm and discreet voice. “I’d rather have a new line in my passbook. My husband is perfectly content with that; he calls me his ant. When the thousand is up, it will make up the rent of a decent place, my pussycat.” She was truly charming, in her silences.

  A silent footstep on the bare parquet. The door is pushed, unbolted at the appointed hour. The light is imprudent, but pleasure taken in the dark becomes too languid. But there are eyes of a sort at the tips of the fingers: cat’s eyes made for the shadows … sometimes I blow out the light. I love your heart more than the embroidered wreath you wear upon it – and you do not like distractions. The leaves are falling. To Paris? There, she expected the unexpected.

  I remember that she did not like distractions.

  Truly, was it worth the penalty? The penalty which she paid?

  Adieu, my maidenhead.

  Ha! You are leaving me!

  Said the little maiden … Truly, was it worth the penalty?

  The Swedish one loved me; and we had such lovely chilly rides towards the pale blue of the polar nights. Ah! how she wept, that day, and what unhappiness I visited upon one who was so beautiful!

  That is how it always ends – but I have found nothing since like the chilly blue of those polar rides ….

  To set the spirit in the savour, the soul in the perfume, the sentiment in the touch …

  Desires, grenades filled with captive rubies which a nip of the teeth trickles dazzlingly forth: the nip of a woman’s teeth.

  Well brought up women know how to bite. They should not be mistaken, these guardians of Milesian tradition, but they are very much the same; true artists are rare.

  Are these bitter dalliances with a sucession of women necessary?

  At the Louvre, standing before the Mater Dolorosa whose eyes are two drops of blood (o quam tristis et afflicta!) a woman enraptured (I believed so at the time – but she was simply very bored) who had interested me suddenly, when she had turned her head towards the indiscreet image, by virtue of the enervated coldness of her expression, the vague irony of her frosty smile. The blondeness of her hair assumed a clear rust-red shade beneath her black bonnet, which was secured in front of the pearly amethyst ears (quite equitably matched by the faded violet of her pupils) by strings pinned by an ancient silver brooch.

  I offered some trivial politeness, which she repeated …

  When she walked on, having invited me with a slight – almost gentle – blink of the eye to accompany her, the undulating slowness of her movements displayed a body developed according to the oriental aesthetic, with thin bones, a supple frame and compact flesh, not without a certain slight tendency to disproportion.

  We went out by the Mantegna. We discussed it briefly, as confused in ourselves as we were perplexed by its symbolism. She confessed herself intrigued by such enigmas, and in a voice which matched the indolent allure of her procession, unveiled a little of her inner self. I perceived then that something unacknowledged and imprecise – a secret tendency of which she was unconscious and could not name – was saying to her: “Here is that which you want.”

  While descending the staircase towards Ariadne, she stopped in the middle and went back up a few steps, as if she were bidding farewell to the statue of Victory. But I understood that this was something of a ruse, for she turned again very abruptly: she wanted to study me without appearing to look at me.

  “To tomorrow!” say I, with an appropriate fervour.

  She deigns to laugh a little, lowering her veil in a pantomime which is perhaps not too problematic – and then she goes on.

  I catch up with her again on the staircase. We leave the purple robe to shiver in the glorious winds of the Archipelago and, mutely in accord, we go through the door – friends already, it seems.

  I hear the inevitable catalogue of complaints: no man has attracted her desire more than another … she had a husband who made the usual claims upon her, who initiated her in the customary intimacies … he is dead now … the kind of person dedicated to climbing the rungs of the social ladder proudly and methodically …

  I am not listening. What does it matter to me whether she is a mer
e girl or a marquise, or both? I am thinking: here is a companion for the game of elementary sensations, flesh malleable to intimate experiences, and a soul sufficiently becalmed by ennui to accept navigation towards that isle where fabulous creatures rejoice in fabulous creativity …

  “… rich …”

  At this point in the conversation, I interrupt to say:

  “The simple perfume of a shoot of mignonette can have a powerful effect, and all the actualities of opulence are surpassed by the simple crumpling of a piece of ancient silk. …”

  Having crossed the Seine we reached the desert spaces of the Avenue de Breteuil, where Solitude herself has taken her refuge, by which she has been won over. She interrogates with a desperation which flatters me, in my chosen role of extravagant consoler:

  “To what extent can an unusually perspicacious soul penetrate the darkness of another?”

  “Hardly at all.”

  “What, then, is the use of intimacy?”

  “It is the trading of wilful desires.”

  That is my reply – and why not?

  She dismisses me. We move apart, always unknown. It was imprudent, but by the time I realise that, it is too late. “What is it to me?” I repeat yet again, the baptism of her essence, “and what else do you require of me, provided always that I make you suffer most agreeably, except to become insensate?”

  She came home with me.

  “A scapular monk chants antiphonies to the Virgin, who wept for terror and for love …”

  “Where?”

  “There, on that parchment ruled in red and inscribed in black, don’t you see? – and the other one, who softened the candle-wax of the Abbey seals in the flame of an iron lamp as twisted as a wayfaring tree, don’t you see him? – and another who sprinkles the sacred flames of the garden of dreams, don’t you see him? …”