She was the daughter of peasants, but today she is a marquise – an authentic marquise, a millionaire four times over, the wedded wife of an ambassador whose name is inscribed in the livre d’or of the Venetian nobles, and entered upon the fortieth page of the Almanack of Gotha.
But this is still the same girl who once lived in the steppes, wild and indomitable. Even when she ceased to play in the falling snow, the snow continued to fall within her soul. She never sought lovers among the wealthy men and the crowned princes who prostrated themselves before her; her heart, like her voice, remained faultless. The reputation, temperament and talent of the woman partook of exactly the same crystalline transparency and icy clarity.
She is married now, though it is a marriage which was not contracted out of love, nor in the cause of ambition. She has enriched her husband more than he has enriched her, and she cares nothing for the fact that he was once a celebrity of the Tuileries in the days of the Empire, or that he became a star of the season at Biarritz as soon as he returned to Paris from the Italian court, following the disaster of Sedan.
Why, then, did she marry that one rather than another?
In fact, it was because she fell in love with his daughter.
The man was a widower, a widower with a very charming child, just fourteen years old. The daughter, Rosaria, was an Italian from Madrid – her mother had been Spanish – with a face like a Murillo archangel: huge dark eyes, moist and radiant, and a wide, laughing mouth. She had all the childish, yet instinctively amorous, gaiety of the most favoured children of the sunny Mediterranean.
Badly brought up by the widower whom she adored, and spoiled by that overgenerous treatment which is reserved for the daughters of the nobility, this child had been seized by an adoring passion for the diva whom she had so often applauded in the theatre. Because she was endowed with a tolerably pleasant voice the child had come to cherish the dream of taking lessons from La Barnarina. That dream, as soon as it was once denied, had quickly become an overpowering desire: an obsession, an idée fixe; and the marquis had been forced to give way. One day he had brought his daughter to the singer’s home, secure in the knowledge that she would be politely received – La Barnarina was accepted as an equal by members of the finest aristocracies in Europe – but fully expecting her request to be refused. But the child, with all the gentleness of a little girl, with the half-grandiose manners of the young aristocrat, with the innocent warmth of the novice in matters of love, had amused, seduced and conquered the diva.
Rosaria had become her pupil.
In time, she had come to regard her almost as a daughter.
Ten months after that first presentation, however, the marquis had been recalled by his government to Milan, where he expected to be asked to accept a position as envoy to some remote region – either Smyrna or Constantinople. He intended, of course, to take his daughter with him.
La Barnarina had not anticipated any such event, and had been unable to foresee what effect it would have on her.
When the time for the little girl’s departure came, La Barnarina had felt a sudden coldness possessing her heart, and suddenly knew that the separation would be intolerable: this child had become part of her, her own soul and her own flesh. La Barnarina, the cold and the dispassionate, had found the rock upon which her wave must break; the claims of love which she had kept at bay for so long now exerted themselves with a vengeance.
La Barnarina was a mother who had never given birth, as immaculate as the divine mothers of the Eastern religions. In the flesh which had never yearned to produce fruit of its own there had been lit a very ardent passion for the child of another’s loins.
Rosaria had also been reduced to tears by the thought of the parting; and the marquis soon became annoyed by the way the two women persistently sobbed in one another’s arms. He quickly lost patience with the business of trying to patch up the situation, but hesitated to suggest the only possible solution.
“Oh papa, what are we to do?” pleaded Rosaria, in a choked whisper.
“Yes, marquis, tell us what to do,” added the singer, as she stood before him embracing the young girl.
So the marquis, spreading his arms wide with the palms open, smiling as sadly as Cassandra, was left to point the way to the obvious conclusion.
“I believe, my dear children, there is one way…”
And with a grand salute, a truly courtly gesture, to the unhappy actress, he said:
“You must leave the stage and become my wife, so that you may take charge of the child!”
And so she married him, leaving behind the former life which she had loved so ardently and which had made her so rich. At the height of her career, and with her talent still in full bloom, she had left behind the Opera, her public, and all her triumphs. The star became a marquise – all for the love of Rosaria.
It is that same Rosaria for whom she is waiting at this very moment, slightly ruffled by impatience, as she stands before the high window in her white lace and her soft white velvet, in her pose which is just a little theatrical because she cannot help remembering Juliet awaiting the arrival of Romeo!
Romeo! As she silently stammers the name of Romeo, La Barnarina becomes even paler.
In Shakespeare’s play, as she knows only too well, Romeo dies and Juliet cannot survive without his love; the two of them yield up their souls together, the one upon the corpse of the other – a dark wedding amid the shadows of the tomb. La Barnarina – who is, after all, the daughter of Russian peasants – is superstitious, and cannot help but regret her involuntary reverie.
Here, of all places, and now, of all times, she has dreamed of Romeo!
The reason for her distress is that Rosaria, alas, has come to know suffering. Since the departure of her father she has changed, and changed considerably. The poor darling’s features have been transfigured: the lips which were so red are now tinged with violet; dark shadowy circles like blurred splashes of kohl are visible beneath her eyes and they continue to deepen; she has lost that faint ambience, reminiscent of fresh raspberries, which testifies to the health of adolescents. She has never complained, never having been one to seek sympathy, but it did not take long for La Barnarina to become alarmed once she saw that the girl’s complexion had taken on the pallor of wax, save for feverish periods when it would be inflamed by the colour of little red apples.
“It is nothing, my dear!” the child said, so lovingly – but La Barnarina hurried to seek advice.
The results of her consultations had been quite explicit, and La Barnarina felt that she had been touched by Death’s cold hand. “You love that girl too much, madame,” they had said, “and the child in her turn has learned to love you too much; you are killing her with your caresses.”
Rosaria did not understand, but her mother understood only too well; from that day on she had begun to cut the child off from her kisses and embraces; desperately, she had gone from doctor to doctor – seeking out the celebrated and the obscure, the empirically-inclined and the homeopathic – but at every turn she had been met with a sad shake of the head. Only one of them had taken it upon himself to indicate a possible remedy: Rosaria must join the ranks of the consumptives who go at dawn to the abattoirs to drink lukewarm blood freshly taken from the calves which are bled to make veal.
On the first few occasions, the marquise had taken it upon herself to lead the child down into the abattoirs; but the horrid odour of the blood, the warm carcasses, the bellowing of the beasts as they came to be slaughtered, the carnage of the butchering…all that had caused her terrible anguish, and had sickened her heart. She could not stand it.
Rosaria had been less intimidated. She had bravely swallowed the lukewarm blood, saying only: “This red milk is a little thick for my taste.”
Now, it is a governess who has the task of conducting the girl into the depths; every morning they go down, at five or six o’clock, to that devils’ kitchen beneath the rue de Flandre, to an enclosure where the blood is drained f
rom the living calves, to make the white and tender meat.
And while the young girl makes her descent into that place, where bright-burning fires warm the water in porcelain bathtubs to scald the flesh of the slaughtered beasts, La Barnarina stays here, by the window in the great hallway, perfectly tragic in her velvet and her lace, mirroring in her mode of dress the snow-whiteness of the narcissi, the frost-whiteness of the tulips, and the nacreous whiteness of the irises; here, striking a pose with just a hint of theatricality, she watches.
She keeps watch upon the courtyard of the hotel, and the empty avenue beyond the gate, and her anguish reaches into the uttermost depths of her soul while she anticipates the first kiss which the child will place upon her lips, as soon as she returns: a kiss which always carries an insipid trace of the taste of blood and a faint hint of that odour which perpetually defiles the rue de Flandre, but which, strangely enough, she does not detest at all – quite the contrary – when it is upon the warm lips of her beloved Rosaria.
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3.
LANGUOR
by Paul Verlaine
I am the Empire at the end of its decline,
Which awaits the Barbarians fair and tall
While composing acrostics in an idle scrawl
To which sad sunlight lends its golden shine.
The lonely soul is tediously sick at heart.
Down there, they say, the bloody combat wanes.
So faint are the desires, so slow the pains,
No need can ever flourish, nor existence start.
No need, nor facile taste of death at last!
Alas, all gone! Is the laughter of Bathyllus done?
All supped, all eaten, the cause of silence won!
Alone, a newborn poem into the fire to cast,
Alone, to be neglected by dishonest slaves,
Alone, not knowing what the sick heart craves!
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4.
THE GRAPE-GATHERERS OF SODOM
by Rachilde
When the day dawned, the land was fuming like a fermenter filled with the grapes of wrath. The vineyard surrounded by the vast and troubled plain shone redly in the fierce light of the sun – a sun as bright as the hot fires which were used to start the grapes fermenting, and which made the huge pips burst out of them like black eyes popping out of their sockets. The vineyard seemed, for a while, to be set at the bottom of a pit of seething bitumen. While it displayed its own red-and-gold foliage to the sky, a seeming abundance of monstrous riches, the ground all around it gave vent to writhing plumes of grey smoke, which glittered in the sunlight like molten metal.
As the luscious fruits of the vineyard were ripening, so the softened red clay of the carnal earth was yielding its own produce of poisonous volcanic gas. Like an over-fecund beast released from its tethers in order to drop its litter, the land threw out her vaporous garlands: imploring arms held out towards the newly-risen sun, delirious with sinfully ecstatic joy. As the sun-baked surface cracked here and there, hot liquids oozed out of her like thick tears. These irruptions gradually condensed into lustrous brown masses: prodigious fruits of the earth’s womb, distilled by volcanic fire, their dark hue suggestive of satanic sugar. And from some of these clustered and half-rotted fruits there continued to ooze a gentle and abominable liquor whose gaseous exhalation intoxicated the bees which swarmed about the vineyard, tempting them to their deaths.
Between the clouds, so red that one would have thought them all afire, and the plain, so yellow that one might have believed it powdered with saffron, no creature stirred nor bird sang. Only the vineyard was alive, possessed by a dull humming of busy insects like the gentle vibration of a simmering kettle.
In the midst of that forest of golden boughs, on the rim of the primitive fermenting vat – a huge trough of raw granite, crudely hollowed-out, like an altar of human sacrifice – there sat a fabulous lizard clad in sparkling viridian scales, with darting eyes the colour of hyacinths; it stretched itself out enigmatically, occasionally raising its silvery belly as it took a deep breath. It, too, was intoxicated by the drifting vapours, almost to the point of death.
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Little by little, as the day progressed, the incendiary glow reflected in the clouds became fainter; they gradually paled, became opalescent, and slowly dissipated. The sky’s hot light was gradually concentrated into that solitary blaze which was the sun; the clear sky took on the appearance of the blue sheen which metal has when it has been seared by a fierce torch.
The land of the tribes of Israel extended as far as the eye could see, faintly dappled by the shadows of slender fig-trees. Every one of those puny trees trailed its palmate leaves as though dissatisfied with its lot, and their lighter branches, all entwined, were ringed by unnatural excrescences of sap like amber bracelets. Their trunks had been deformed by the unfortunate combination of the fire above and the fire below, their pliant contours twisted and warped.
Far away, beyond the most distant of these clumps of trees, there stood the protective wall of a town. Behind the wall loomed a tall tower made of stone as white as ivory or bleached bone, whose spire stood out sharply against the vivid colour of the sky, like a road into the infinite or a spiralling flock of great white birds in search of a place to roost.
There emerged from the walled town a party of Sodomites, heading for the vineyard.
The party was headed by a gloomy old man, perhaps a centenarian twice over, whose bony and tremulous head was devoid of hair and who had long since lost all his teeth. He was dressed in a linen tunic which was loosely gathered about his rickety limbs, hanging upon him like a shroud. He was the father, chief and patriarch of the party which he led, and as he marched before them his stern forehead shone with reflected sunlight like a rectangular star as bright as the moon. He directed his charges by signalling to them with his staff, having long since given up speech.
On either side of the patriarch marched his eldest sons: huge and robustly healthy men with luxuriant black beards. One of them, whose name was Horeb, carried suspended from his leathern belt several shining metal cups, which struck one another melodiously as he strode along.
Behind this leading group there came a group of younger sons, headed by one Phaleg, a nearly-naked giant whose smooth flesh was like veined marble, whose beard was rust-red, and who carried on his head a stack of wicker baskets, some of which contained wheat-cakes.
Further behind, keeping a respectable distance, came playful adolescents who were clad in short robes girdled with ornately-embroidered sashes; their fair girlish tresses streamed behind them as they capered about. The most handsome of these was a child with lips the colour of ripe plums or the blurred violet of the distant horizon; his name was Sinéus, and he had innocently dressed his half-open goatskin tunic with plucked flowers. When Sinéus entered the graveyard, the bees swarmed about him, taking him for some mysterious honey-bearer because of his golden appearance, but they did him no harm.
After singing a celebratory hymn the grape-gatherers began to work, using baskets to carry the grapes from the vines to the fermenting-vat. The older ones, as measured and efficient in their movements as they always were, reached up to take the best grapes; the younger ones hurriedly grabbed those which came most easily to hand, crying out with excitement all the while. After a time the old man, who had set himself down on the rim of the stone trough, stood up and raised his staff to signal that everyone should gather round to admire the full baskets; then he sat down again and the work of emptying the baskets into the stone vat began.
As they worked, some of them were accidentally splashed about the legs by the ruddy juice, others smeared it haphazardly upon their clothing. Sinéus fervently set about treading the grape-harvest, occasionally mixing in with it a handful of wild roses. Beneath the hot sun their labour was very tiring, and when they had filled the stone trough they lay down around it to sleep. The old patriarch remained on the rim of the vat, still sitting up but quite immobi
le, looming over the liquefied mass of the trampled grapes like an image of some long-dead king preserved in stone.
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After a while, there emerged furtively from the shade of the nearest clump of fig-trees a very strange creature: a girl.
She was thin and wan, and naked – but she was burnished by the sun, and covered with a light down of fair hair, so that it seemed as if she were clothed in linen embroidered with filamentous threads of gold. Her forehead struck such a contrast with the blue of the sky that it gleamed like a polished spear-head. Her long yellow hair was gathered up into a sheaf; her heels were as round as peaches, bouncing off the ground as she danced forward like a delighted animal; but the two nipples upon her breasts were very dark, almost black – as if they had been badly burned.
The girl approached the sleeping Sinéus, who slept very soundly, having eaten abundantly of those grapes which he had gathered and trodden. She too ate greedily, and having done so she lay down beside the boy, entwining herself about him in a serpentine fashion. It was not long before her writhing caused the boy to wake, and he awoke groaning lamentably because he felt that some impure sensation was working within his flesh. He got up expeditiously, crying out to wake his brothers; they responded with roars of their own.
The old man awoke too, stretching forth his staff against the intruder with a deathly gleam in his eye. The girl was quickly surrounded by the entire company.
The girl was one of many who had been condemned as temptresses, and driven out of Sodom at the behest of the priests. In a mad fit of righteous wrath, the assembly of the men of God had decreed that the town must be relieved of the evil passions which haunted it from twilight until dawn. The girls of Sodom, they had decided, had been so badly guided by their lax mothers that they had become voluptuous vessels of iniquity which sapped the strength of the men of the town – strength which would be needed for the harvest, and must be conserved by rigid chastity.
The Dedalus Book of Decadence: (Moral Ruins) Page 9
