It’s a gloomy season, this one – it is just as if life were about to depart with the sun. A shudder runs not just over your skin but through your heart too; every sound fades away, the horizon grows faint and dim all around, and everything seems on the verge of sleep or death. Sometimes I would see the cows coming home, mooing at the setting sun; the lad driving them ahead of him with a bramble switch shivered in his coarse cotton clothes, and they slipped in the mud as they came down the hillside, trampling a few apples still left in the grass. The sun shed a final farewell from behind the hazy hills, the lights of the houses started to glimmer in the valley, and the moon, that luminary of dewdrops and tears, started to unveil herself from between the clouds, and to show forth her pallid face.
I savoured at length my wasted life; I told myself joyfully that my youth was over and done with – for it is a real joy to sense the chill creep into your heart, and to be able to say, prodding it like a still-smoking hearth: “It’s stopped burning.” I slowly went over everything in my life: ideas, passions, days of anger, days of grief, heartbeats of hope, heart-rending anguish. I saw it all again, like a man visiting the catacombs and gazing his fill at the lines of the dead laid out on either side of him, row upon row. And yet, if you merely count the years, I was born not all that long ago: but I have my own countless memories, and I am as weighed down by them as old men are weighed down by all the days that they have lived; it seems to me at times that I have been around for centuries and that my self contains the debris of a thousand former existences. Why should this be? Have I loved? Have I hated? Have I sought anything in particular? I am still full of doubt; I have lived far from all movement and all activity, and have never bestirred myself either for glory or for pleasure, for knowledge or for riches.
Nobody has known anything of what I am about to relate, not even those people who saw me every day. They were to me like the bed on which I sleep, and that knows nothing of my dreams. In any case, is a man’s heart not a vast solitude where no one else ever ventures? The passions that penetrate it are like travellers in the Sahara Desert: they are stifled and die, and their cries are not heard beyond its confines.
From my schooldays on, I was sad and bored, simmering with desires and filled with burning aspirations for a mindless and tumultuous existence; I dreamt up passions and longed to experience them all. Waiting for me, just beyond my twentieth year, lurked a whole world of bright lights and perfumes; life appeared to me, from afar, filled with radiance and a noise of triumph; as in a fairy tale I imagined great halls opening out one after another, with diamonds shimmering in the gleam of golden chandeliers; a name endowed with magical power is enough to make the enchanted gates swing open on their hinges, and as you step forward, your gaze is overwhelmed with magnificent vistas whose dazzle makes you smile and close your eyes.
Hazily I yearned for something splendid that no words of mine could have expressed, nor any idea in my brain articulated, but for which I felt, nonetheless, a real and unremitting desire. I have always loved life’s glitter. When I was a child, I would push my way through the crowd right up to the carriages of fairground hucksters to see the red braid of their servants and the ribbons on the bridles of their horses; I would linger for ages outside the tents of the jugglers, gazing at their baggy trousers and their embroidered ruffs. Ah, how I loved – more than anyone else – the girl on the tightrope, with her dangling ear pendants swinging to and fro around her head, and her great necklace of precious stones jangling against her breast! How avidly I contemplated her, and how anxiously too, as she swung as high as the lamps that hung between the trees, and her dress, edged with golden spangles, flapped as she leapt, and billowed out in the air! Those were the first women I ever loved. My mind would whip itself into a frenzy thinking about those strange-shaped thighs, clad in pink tights, and those supple arms, swathed in rings that the dancers would clash together behind their backs when they bent over backwards so far that the plumes of their turbans touched the ground. I was already trying to imagine what woman was like (we think of women at every age: while still children, we fondle with a naive sensuality the breasts of those grown-up girls kissing us and cuddling us in their arms; at the age of ten, we dream of love; at fifteen, love comes along; at sixty, it is still with us, and if dead men in their tombs have any thought in their heads, it is how to make their way underground to the nearby grave, lift the shroud of the dear departed woman, and mingle with her in her sleep); thus, woman was an alluring mystery for me, one that troubled my poor childish head. From the feelings that arose in me when a woman happened to fix her gaze on me, I already sensed that there was something fateful in that arousing glance, something that causes men’s willpower to melt – and it filled me simultaneously with fascination and fear.
What did I dream of during the long evenings of private study, when I would sit with my elbow propped on my desk, gazing at the wick of the oil lamp growing ever longer in the midst of the flame, and each drop of oil falling into the cup, while my schoolmates made their pens scrape across the paper, and every now and then came the sound of someone leafing through the pages of a book, or shutting it abruptly? I would make sure I finished my prep early, so I could indulge at leisure in these cherished musings. Indeed, I would hold the prospect before myself as a promise that contained all the allure of a real pleasure, and I would start by forcing myself to think of these visions like a poet intent on creating something and seeking to stimulate his inspiration; I would follow my thoughts as far as they would take me, I would examine them from every angle, I would plumb their depths, I would return to the surface, and then I would start all over again. Soon my unbridled imagination was hurtling forward, leaping with marvellous energy up and away from reality; I would devise adventures and spin out stories for myself, I would build my own palaces and take up residence in them like an emperor, I would dig out the diamonds from every mine and strew them in bucketfuls on the path along which I was to travel.
And when evening had fallen, and we are all lying in our white beds, with our white curtains around them, and there was only the duty master pacing up and down the dormitory, how much more deeply would I fold my thoughts within myself, joyfully hiding within my breast that bird whose wings were beating and whose warmth I could sense! I always took a long time getting to sleep, I would listen to the hours chiming – and the more hours that chimed, the happier I was; they seemed to be pushing me forth into the world as they sang out, and they greeted every moment of my life, telling me as they did so: “Think of the others, the others, the others! Of what is to come! Farewell! Farewell!” And when the last vibration had died away, when my ear was no longer filled with its ringing, I would say to myself, “Until tomorrow; the same hour will chime, but tomorrow it will be one day less, one day more towards that distant prospect, towards that gleaming goal, towards my future, towards that sun whose radiance is flooding through me, and that I will then be able to touch with my own hands,” and I told myself that it would be long in coming, and dozed off almost with tears in my eyes.
Certain words overwhelmed me, woman and mistress in particular; I would look for an explanation of the former in books, engravings and paintings – whose draperies I longed to tear away so I could see whatever lay behind them. The day when I finally guessed at the full reality, I was at first beside myself with rapture, as if I had discovered some supreme harmony, but soon I calmed down and from then on I lived with greater joy, feeling an impulse of pride as I told myself that I was a man, a being formed for the purpose of one day having a woman of my own; the password to life was known to me, and this was almost as good as actually entering into life and tasting its delights; my desire went no further, and I was happy to remain satisfied with what I knew. As for a mistress, this for me was a satanic creature, and the magic of the mere name threw me into prolonged raptures: it was for their mistresses’ sake that kings would ruin or conquer provinces, for them that Indian carpets were woven, gold was fashioned, marble chiselled and the
world set astir; a mistress has slaves, with plumed fans to drive away the flies, when she lies asleep on satin cushions; elephants laden with gifts wait for her to awaken, palanquins bear her softly to the fountain’s edge, she is seated on a throne in a radiant and fragrant atmosphere, far from the crowd, which both execrates and idolizes her.
This mystery of woman seen apart from marriage – and all the more feminine for that – nagged at me and tempted me with the twofold allure of love and riches. There was nothing I loved so much as the theatre, I even loved the buzz of conversation in the intervals, and the very corridors that I strode down, my heart beating with excitement, as I looked for my seat. When the performance had already started, I would run up the stairs; I could hear the sound of the instruments, voices and cries of “Bravo!”, and when I entered, when I sat down, all the air was imbued with the warm odour of a well-dressed woman – a whiff of bouquets of violets, white gloves and embroidered handkerchiefs; the galleries, thronged with people, resembled crowns of flowers and diamonds that seemed to be hanging in suspense as they listened to the singing; there was no one but the actress at the foreground of the stage, and her breast, from whence emerged a rapid cascade of notes, rose and fell with a quiver, as the rhythm whipped her voice into a gallop and dragged it along in a whirlwind of melody, while the roulades rippled through her swelling throat, like a swan’s, under a flurry of aerial kisses; she would hold out her arms, cry aloud, weep, flicker and flame, and summon the mysterious object of some inconceivable love; and when she resumed the main theme, it was as if she were tearing out my heart with the sound of her voice so as to fuse it with her own being in a shudder of love.
The audience applauded her and threw her flowers, and in my transport I savoured the crowd’s adoration that rained down on her, the love of all those men and the desire of each and every one of them. She was the woman by whom I longed to be loved, loved with an all-devouring and terrifying passion, the love of a princess or an actress, the kind of love that makes you swell with pride and immediately makes you the equal of the rich and powerful! How beautiful she is, the woman applauded and envied by all, the woman who allows the crowd to indulge its dreams night after night, and fills it with the fever of desire, the woman who appears only by the light of the chandeliers, radiant and singing, and walking straight into a poet’s ideal vision as if it were a life made for her alone! For the man who loves her she must invent another love, even more splendid than the love she pours out in floods on all those panting hearts that drink their fill from it! She must have songs of even greater sweetness, and deeper notes, more passionate and tremulous! If only I could have drawn near those lips whence those melodies emerged so pure, and touch those gleaming locks of hair that shone under their pearls! But the footlights seemed to me a barrier between myself and the world of illusion; beyond it there lay the universe of love and poetry, where passions were more splendid and resonant, forests and palaces faded and vanished like smoke, sylphs descended from the heavens, and everything was alive with song and love.
This is what I dreamt of alone in the evenings, when the wind whistled down the corridors, or during the break, while the others were playing skittles or football, while I wandered along at the foot of the wall, crunching underfoot the leaves that had fallen from the lime trees so I could enjoy the sound of my feet scuffling and kicking through them.
Soon, the desire to love seized me. I yearned for love with a boundless longing, I dreamt of all its torments, I awaited at every instant some heart-rending passion that would fill me with overwhelming joy. Several times I thought I had found it; I would take into my arms the first attractive woman to come along, telling myself, “She’s the one I love!” But the memory of her that I wished to preserve grew pale and indistinct instead of growing stronger; in any case, I sensed that I was forcing myself to love, putting on an act, trying to deceive my own heart – in vain. As I came down to earth, I was overwhelmed by a prolonged sadness; I almost started to feel nostalgic for the loves I had not had, and then I dreamt up new ones in an attempt to fill the void in my soul.
It was the day after I had been to a ball or to the theatre, or on my return from a two- or three-day break, that I would dream up some passionate affair. I would picture the woman I had chosen, exactly as I had seen her, in a white dress, swept along in a waltz on the arms of a dancing partner holding her in his arms and smiling at her, or else leaning on the velvet-topped ledge of a theatre box, serenely showing off her queenly profile. The din of the contredanses, and the dazzle and glitter of the lights, continued for a while to linger in my mind, then everything finally dissolved in the dull, aching monotony of a daydream. In this way I had a thousand little love affairs that lasted a week or a month, and that I would like to have prolonged for centuries; I do not know what bits and pieces I composed them from, nor what was the aim of all these vague desires; it was, I believe, the need for a new feeling, and an aspiration towards some lofty goal, whose summit always lay just out of sight.
The heart enters puberty before the body; I had a greater need to love than to enjoy the pleasures of the senses, and a greater longing for love than for physical satisfaction. These days, I cannot even remember the kind of love that I felt during my early adolescence, in which the senses play no part and which the infinite alone can satisfy; situated between childhood and youth, it is the transitional stage between them, and passes so quickly that it is soon forgotten.
I had read the word love so often in the works of the poets, and I said it over and over again to myself, and filled myself with the magic of its sweetness; as a result, at every star that twinkled in the blue sky of a warm night, at every gentle plash of the wave against the shore, at every sunbeam that glittered in the dewdrops I would tell myself, “I’m in love! Ah, I’m in love!” – and this thought filled me with happiness and pride. I was always on the verge of feeling the most tender devotion, especially when a woman brushed past me or looked me full in the face: then I yearned to love her a thousand times more, suffer even more intensely, so that the beating of my little heart might break my breast.
There is a certain age – you must remember it well, reader – where you go around with a dreamy smile on your lips, as if the air were thronged with kisses; your heart swells in the fragrant breeze, and your blood pulses warm in your veins, fizzing through your body like sparkling wine in a crystal goblet. You awaken happier and richer than you were the night before, more aquiver with life and emotion; streams of honey flow round your body and fill you with an intoxicating warmth; trees bend and nod their heads sagely in the wind, the leaves rustle in serried throngs as if in avid conversation, the clouds glide along and, between them, the depths of the sky open up and reveal the smiling moon, gazing down on her reflection in the river. When you go for a walk in the evening, breathing in the odour of the mown hay, listening to the cuckoo calling in the woods and watching the shooting stars, your heart is purer – as I’m sure you’ve felt – and even more suffused with air and light and sky-blue radiance than the serene horizon, where the earth gently and calmly kisses the heavens. Ah, the perfume that arises from women’s hair! How soft is the skin of their hands, and how intense their gaze!
But I had already gone beyond those first dazzling impressions of childhood, those disquieting memories of former dreams. Now, I was entering into a real life in which I had my own place, a vast harmony in which my heart sang a hymn and thrilled in magnificent concord; I joyfully revelled in this blossoming delight, and my awakening senses intensified my pride. Like the first man ever to be created, I was finally stirring from a long slumber, and next to me I found a creature similar to me, but alluringly different enough to induce a dizzying force of attraction between us. Thereupon, I was filled with a new and glorious desire for this new shape, as the sun shone with even greater purity, the flowers wafted their fragrance more sweetly than ever, and the shade became even more intimate and inviting.
At the same time, I sensed that my intelligence was
developing day by day, in harmony with my heart. I do not know whether my ideas were feelings, since they all had the same warmth as passions, and the inner delight I felt in the depths of my being overflowed out into the world and filled it with the sweet smell of my flooding happiness; I was about to experience the most intense of pleasures, and, like a man at his mistress’s door, I took my time, deliberately forcing myself to wait, savouring my sure and certain expectation, and telling myself, “Very soon I will be holding her in my arms, she will be mine, yes, mine – and not just in my dreams!”
What a strange paradox! I fled the society of women, and yet I took the greatest delight in their company; I claimed I did not love them in the least, while in fact I lived in all of them and longed to penetrate the essence of each of them, and melt into their beauty. Their lips, even now, were inviting me to kisses that were more than maternal; in my thoughts I would enfold myself in their hair and lie between their breasts, crushed in a divine and smothering embrace; I longed to be the necklace that caressed their necks, the bodice hook that bit into their shoulders, the garments that covered the rest of their bodies. Beyond their clothes I could see no farther; hidden beneath was an infinitude of love, and I lost myself in contemplation of it.
Those passions that I yearned to experience were things I could study in books. As far as I was concerned, human life circled round two or three ideas, two or three words, and everything else rotated around these like a satellite around its star. In this way, I had peopled my infinite with countless golden suns; love stories lodged in my mind next to great revolutions, and splendid passions rubbed shoulders with great crimes. I would dream simultaneously of the star-filled nights of tropical countries and of sacked cities going up in flames, of the creepers of virgin forests and the pomp of long-dead monarchies, of cradles and of graves; waves murmuring in the rushes, turtle doves cooing in the dovecotes, myrtle woods and the scent of aloes, swords clashing on armour, horses champing at the bit, the gleam of gold, all of life’s glitter, the agony of the dying – I would contemplate it all with the same open-mouthed gaze, as if it had been an anthill seething at my feet. But from this life, so restless on the surface, and echoing with such a hubbub of discordant cries, there arose an immense bitterness that fused all these things ironically together.
Memoirs of a Madman and November Page 10
