21
I WENT BACK TWO YEARS LATER, you know where, she was no longer there.
Her husband had come alone with another woman, and he had left two days before my arrival.
I returned to the shore – how empty it was! From there I could see the grey wall of Maria’s house – what isolation!
So I went back into the same room I have told you about: it was full, but none of the faces was still there, the tables were taken by people that I had never seen, Maria’s was occupied by an old woman who was propped up at that same place where so often her elbow had rested.
I stayed there in this way for a fortnight – there were a few days of bad weather and rain which I spent in my room, where I could hear the rain falling on the slates, the distant sound of the sea and from time to time some sailors’ cries on the quayside. I remembered all those old things that the sight of the same places brought back to life.
I saw the same ocean with the same waves, it was as immense as ever, roaring gloomily against its rocks, that same village with its piles of mud, its shells that you tread underfoot and its tiered houses – but all that I had loved, all that surrounded Maria, the beautiful sun shining through the shutters and making her skin glow gold, the air enfolding her, the people going past her, all of that had gone for good. Oh how I would simply like just one of those days – days without equal – to go in without changing a thing!
Ah, will none of it ever return? I feel how empty my heart is, for all these men around me create a desert in which I am dying.
I remembered those long warm summer afternoons when I would talk to her without her suspecting that I loved her and when her indifferent glance pierced me like a ray of love penetrating right into my heart. And how could she have seen that I loved her, for at that time I did not love her, and all that I have just told you was a lie: it was now that I loved her, that I desired her, that alone on the shore, in the woods or in the fields, I summoned her into being, she walking right there next to me, talking to me, looking at me. When I lay down on the grass, and watched the grass bending in the wind and the wave beating on the sand, I thought of her, and I reconstructed in my heart all the scenes in which she had acted, spoken. These memories were a passion.
If I recalled having seen her walking in a place I would go walking there myself – I wanted to rediscover the timbre of her voice so as to delight my own ears, it was impossible. How many times did I walk past her house and look at her window!
So I spent that fortnight in a lovesick contemplativeness – dreaming of her. I remember heartbreaking things; one day I was coming back, towards dusk, I was walking across pastureland covered with cattle; I walked quickly, I could hear nothing but the sound of my steps swishing through the grass, I was looking down at the ground; this regular movement sent me to sleep, as it were, I thought I could hear Maria walking at my side, she was holding my arm and turning her head to look at me – it was she who was walking through the grass; I was fully aware that it was a hallucination that I myself was bringing to life, but I could not stop myself smiling at it and I felt happy – I looked up, the weather was overcast; before me, on the horizon, the sun was setting in splendour beneath the waves, an upsurge of fire could be seen branching out and disappearing under the thick black clouds billowing laboriously over them, and then a reflection of this setting sun reappeared farther behind me in a clear blue part of the sky.
When I came in sight of the sea the sun had almost disappeared, its disc was half submerged in the water and a delicate pink hue continued to spread out and fade away skywards.
On another occasion I was returning on horseback along the shore. I looked mechanically at the waves, whose foam washed the hooves of my mare, I looked at the pebbles that she kicked up as she walked along and at her hooves sinking in the sand. The sun had just suddenly disappeared. And there was a dark colour on the waves as if something black had been hovering over them. To my right were rocks between which the foam was whipped up by the wind like a sea of snow, the gulls were passing over my head, and I could see their white wings dipping right down towards that dark, gloomy water – nothing will express how beautiful it was, that sea, that shore with its sand scattered with shells, with its rocks covered with damp seaweed, and the white foam curling over them in the breeze.
I could tell you many other things, of even greater beauty and sweetness, if I could relate all that I felt of love, of ecstasy, of nostalgia. Can you express in words the beating of the heart, can you express a tear, and depict its damp crystal that bathes the eye in a languor of love, can you express all that you feel in a single day?
Poor human weakness! With your words, your languages, your sounds, you speak and stammer – you define God, the heaven and the earth, chemistry and philosophy, and you cannot express, with your language, all the joy that you derive from a naked woman – or a plum pudding.
22
O MARIA, MARIA, BELOVED ANGEL of my youth, you whom I saw when my feelings were still fresh, you whom I loved with such a sweet love, so full of fragrance, of tender daydreams, farewell.
Farewell – other passions will return – I will forget you perhaps – but you will always remain in the depths of my heart, for the heart is a soil on which each passion turns over, stirs and churns up the ruins of the others. Farewell.
Farewell, and yet how deeply I would have loved you, how I would have embraced you – held you tight in my arms. Ah! My soul melts in raptures, at all the follies that my love invents. Farewell.
Farewell, and yet I will always think of you – I will be hurled into the maelstrom of the world – I will die there, perhaps crushed beneath the feet of the crowd, torn to pieces. Where am I going? what will become of me? I would like to be old, have white hair – no, I would like to be as handsome as the angels, to have fame and genius, and lay it all at your feet so that you can walk over it all, but I have none of it – and you looked at me as coldly as at a lackey or a beggar.
And as for me, do you know that I have not spent a night, or a day, or an hour, without thinking of you, without seeing you emerging from beneath the waves, with your black hair on your shoulders – your brown skin with its beads of salt water, your clothes streaming and your white foot with its pink toenails sinking into the sand – and this vision is always present and always murmuring within my heart? – Oh no, everything is empty.
Farewell, and yet when I saw you if only I had been four or five years older, a little bolder… perhaps… oh! no, I blushed every time you looked at me. Farewell.
23
WHEN I HEAR THE BELLS chiming and the knell tolling its dirge, I feel in my soul a vague sadness, something indefinable and dreamy like dying vibrations.
A series of thoughts opens up at the mournful ringing of the death knell, it seems to me that I can see the world on its most splendid festival days with cries of triumph, chariots and crowns, and above it all an eternal silence and an eternal majesty.
My soul soars up towards eternity and infinity and hovers in the ocean of doubt at the sound of this voice announcing death.
A voice as measured and cold as tombs, and which yet rings out at every festival, weeps at every bereavement – I love to let myself be deafened by your harmony, which muffles the hubbub of towns; I love, in the fields, on the hills made golden with ripe wheat, to hear the frail sounds of the village bell singing in the middle of the countryside, while the insect makes a shrill noise under the grass and the bird murmurs amidst the leaves.
I have often remained, in the winter, on those sunless days, when the light gleams wan and gloomy, listening to all the bells ringing for the services – from every side there emerged voices rising towards the sky in a tracery of harmony – and I let my thoughts follow the rhythm of that gigantic instrument – they were vast, infinite; I could feel within myself sounds, melodies, echoes of another world, immense things that were dying too.
O bells, you will ring also for my death, and a minute later for a baptism! So you too are as
derisive as all the rest, and a lie like life – all of whose phases you announce: baptism, marriage, death – poor lonely bronze bell, perched amidst the winds, and which would be so useful as a river of lava on a battlefield, or melted down to make shoes for horses.
Bibliomania
A SHORT WHILE AGO, there lived in a street in Barcelona,* narrow and sunless, one of those men of pale brow and lacklustre, sunken eye, one of those strange and satanic beings, of the kind that Hoffmann* used to dig up in his daydreams.
It was Giacomo the bookseller; he was thirty, and people already considered him old and worn out. He was tall, but he stooped like an old man; his hair was long, but white; his hands were strong and vigorous, but emaciated and covered with wrinkles; his outfit was wretched and tattered; he had a gauche and embarrassed appearance; his physiognomy was pale, sad, ugly and even insignificant. He was rarely seen in the streets except on days when rare and curious books were being auctioned off. Then, he was no longer the same indolent and ridiculous man. His eyes lit up, he ran, he walked, he hopped up and down, he could hardly manage to contain his joy, his anxieties, his anguishes and his doubts; he would come back home panting, winded, out of breath. He would take the cherished book, look longingly at it, gaze at it lovingly, as a miser loves his treasure, a father his daughter, a king his crown.
This man had never spoken to anyone other than second-hand booksellers and junk-shop owners. He was taciturn and dreamy, sombre and gloomy; he had only one idea, one love, one passion: books. And this love and this passion cindered him within, consumed his days, devoured his whole life.
Often, at night, his neighbours could see, through the bookseller’s windows, a light that flickered, then came nearer, moved away, rose, and then sometimes went out. Then they would hear a knock at their door, and it was Giacomo who had come to relight his candle which the mere turn of a page had extinguished.
Those feverish, ardent nights he would spend in his books; he ran round his shop, he moved along the galleries of his library in ecstasy and ravishment, then he would stop, his hair in disarray, his eyes fixed and sparkling. His hands would tremble as he touched the books on the shelves: they were hot and damp. He would take a book, turn over its leaves, feel its paper, examine its gilding, its cover, its lettering, its ink, its folds and the arrangement of the designs for the word finis. Then he would change its place, putting it on a higher shelf, and he spent entire hours gazing at its title and shape.
Then he would go off to his manuscripts, for they were his beloved children; he would take one, the oldest, the most dog-eared, the dirtiest; he would look at its parchment with love and happiness; he would smell its holy and venerable dust; then his nostrils would flare with joy and pride, and a smile come to his lips.
Oh, he was happy, this man; happy in the middle of all this knowledge, the moral significance and literary value of which he barely comprehended; he was happy in the midst of all these books, letting his eyes rove over the gilded letters, over the dog-eared pages, over the stained parchment. He loved knowledge as a blind man loves daylight.
No! it was not knowledge that he loved, it was the form and expression it took. He loved a book, because it was a book; he loved its odour, its shape, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the Gothic letters, bizarre and strange, the heavy gilding that embellished the drawings; it was those pages covered with dust, a dust whose sweet and tender fragrance he breathed in with rapture. It was that lovely word finis, surrounded by two Cupids set upon a ribbon, or leaning against a fountain, or engraved on a tomb, or resting in a basket between the roses and golden apples and the blue bouquets.
This passion had absorbed him entirely: he hardly ate, he no longer slept; but he dreamt for entire days and nights of his idée fixe: books. He dreamt how completely divine, sublime, and beautiful a royal library must be, and he dreamt of assembling for himself one as big as a king’s. How freely he breathed, how proud and powerful he was when his gaze travelled far down the immense galleries, where it lost itself in books! Did he lift up his head? Books! Did he bend down? Books! To the right, to the left, more books!
In Barcelona he was taken for a strange and infernal man, a scholar or a sorcerer.
He could barely read. Nobody dared speak to him, so severe and pale was his brow; he had a savage, perfidious appearance, and yet he never touched a child with intent to harm him; it is true that he never gave alms.
He kept all his money, all his property, all his emotions for books; he had been a monk and, for them, he had abandoned God. Later on he sacrificed for them that which men hold most dear, after their God: money; then he gave for them what is most dear to men, after money: his soul.
For some time past, in particular, he had been spending longer and longer awake at night. His night-light was seen burning over his books ever later, the reason being that he had a new treasure, a manuscript.
One morning, there came into his shop a young student from Salamanca. He appeared rich, for two footmen were holding his mule at Giacomo’s door. He was wearing a red velvet toque, and there were rings glittering on his fingers.
However, he did not have that self-satisfied, vacant air habitual with people who have valets in braid, fine clothes and an empty head. No, this man was a scholar, but a rich scholar. In other words a man who, in Paris, writes on a mahogany table, has gilt-edged books, embroidered slippers, Chinese curios, a dressing gown, a golden clock, a cat sleeping on his carpet, and two or three women who make him read his poetry, his prose and his short stories, who tell him “you are a man of wit”, and merely find him fatuous. This gentleman’s manners were polite. As he entered he greeted the librarian, bowed deeply and said to him affably:
“Do you not have any manuscripts here, sir?”
The bookseller became embarrassed, and replied stammeringly:
“But, my lord, who told you?”
“Nobody, but I just suppose you do.”
And he set down on the bookseller’s counter a bag full of gold, which he jingled with a smile, like any man touching money that belongs to him.
“My lord,” replied Giacomo, “it is true that I do, but I don’t sell them: I keep them.”
“And why is that? What do you do with them?”
“Why, my good lord?” At this point he became red with anger. “What do I do with them? Oh no, you can’t possibly know what a manuscript is!”
“Excuse me, Master Giacomo, I am an expert in the matter, and, just to prove it to you, I will tell you that you have here the Chronicle of Turpin!”*
“Me? Oh, someone has misinformed you, my lord.”
“No, Giacomo,” replied the gentleman, “you can rest assured; I don’t want to steal it from you, but buy it off you.”
“Never!”
“Oh! you will sell it to me,” replied the scholar, “for you do have it here, it was sold at Ricciami’s on the day he died.”
“Very well! Yes, my lord, I do have it: it’s my treasure, it’s my life. Oh, you will never wrest it from me! Listen, I’m going to tell you a secret. Baptisto, you know, Baptisto, the bookseller who lives on the Plaça Reial, my rival and my enemy, well! He doesn’t have it, and I do!”
“How much do you think it’s worth?”
Giacomo hesitated for a long time, and replied proudly:
“Two hundred pistoles, my lord.”
He looked triumphantly at the young man, as if to tell him, “You’ll be off now, it’s too expensive for you, and yet I’m not going to let you have it for any less.” He was wrong, for the young man, showing him the bag, said:
“Here are three hundred.”
Giacomo went pale; he was on the point of fainting.
“Three hundred pistoles?” he repeated, “but I’m a madman, my lord; I wouldn’t sell it for four hundred.”
The student started to laugh and, digging into his pocket, from which he drew two other bags, said:
“Very well! Giacomo, here are five hundred. Oh no, so y
ou don’t want to sell it then, Giacomo? But I’ll have it, I’ll have it today, this very instant, I must have it. Even if I have to sell this ring, given to me in a long loving kiss, even if I have to sell my diamond-encrusted sword, my town houses and my palaces, even if I have to sell my soul! I must have that book. Yes, I must have it, at all costs, at any price! In a week’s time I am defending my thesis at Salamanca. I must have that book so as to be a doctor; I must be a doctor so as to become an archbishop; I must have scarlet on my shoulders so as to have the tiara on my brow!”
Giacomo went up to him and looked at him with admiration and respect as the only man who could ever have understood him.
“Listen, Giacomo,” interrupted the gentleman, “I’m going to tell you a secret that will make your fortune and assure your happiness. Here there is a man, and that man lives in the Moorish quarter; there is a book; it is the Mystery of St Michael.”
“The Mystery of St Michael?” said Giacomo, uttering a cry of joy. “Oh! Thank you! You have saved my life.”
“Quick! Give me the Chronicle of Turpin.”
Giacomo ran over to a shelf; there, he suddenly stopped, forced himself to grow pale, and said with astonishment:
“But, my lord, I don’t have it.”
“Oh! Giacomo, your tricks are really crude, and your eyes belie your words.”
“Oh! my lord, I swear to you; I don’t have it.”
“Come now! You’re an old madman, Giacomo; look, here are six hundred pistoles.”
Giacomo took the manuscript and gave it to this young man:
“Take care of it,” he said, as the latter made his way out laughing and telling his valets as he climbed onto his mule:
“You know that your master is a madman, but he has just swindled a fool. The credulous idiot!” he repeated with a laugh, “he thinks I’m going to be Pope!”
And poor Giacomo was left in sadness and despair, leaning his burning brow against the windowpanes of his shop as he wept with rage, and watching in pain and grief as his manuscript, the object of his care and his affections, was carried off by the gentleman’s coarse valets.
Memoirs of a Madman and November Page 8
