Miss Mary, her throat gripped by a spasm, her body simultaneously weary and exultant, her legs soft, abandoned herself delightedly to the new enlivening current, and cast herself without dread into the great dangerous furnace.
“Come! Come this way, my beloved! Let’s rest upon the freshness of that moss, under the protection of those admirable cedars...”
She went with him. They paid no attention to a rustle of wings produced above their heads and which ceased where they sat down. So many curious and tame birds were fluttering around them!
“Finally!” he said, lying down on the ground in such a way that he formed a cradle with his arms, of which the young woman’s pink tunic was the lining. “Finally, I have you to myself! But can I be sure of you? What enigma is hiding behind that incomparable beauty? Will your mouth confess this time what the eloquence of your hand and your eyes have declared to me? Tell me, oh, tell me, Miss Mary, that you’re no longer thinking of fleeing this divine land, and that our days will go by here in an illumination that will never end!”
He put his arms around her. He caressed the blonde aureole of her swooning head. He drank from the source of her dark gaze all the juice of tenderness.
Softly she murmured: “Yes, it would be charming to live here…your companion forever...”
But scarcely had she expressed herself thus, affirming the desire for an eternal servitude, than she was suddenly shaken by a series of contractions. One might have thought that the amorous magnetism with which she was charged had fled, almost immediately. Her eyes lost their ecstatic fixity. Abruptly, she pulled away from the young man. However, she continued the conversation as if no transformation has taken place within her, with an appearance of logical succession.
“Yes, I’d like to remain, no longer to be forced by circumstances to go back home—but the war, alas, compels me to do so. Oh, why was it declared, that abominable war? Why are people everywhere not equal and satisfied, dormant in concord, calm and wellbeing, as they are here? That war! Do you know that admirable things are happening therein, Monsieur Marcel? For I haven’t told you everything: Harry, my brother, whose death the Superman has announced to me, is still alive! This morning, I saw him fighting on the screen in my room. He’s alive! He’s fighting! He’s resisting! And I heard my compatriots’ glorious cries! Oh, the brave people! The noble hearts! Defend yourselves, my brothers! Crush the coalition!”
With an entirely different enthusiasm, she had risen to her feet. Without taking the trouble to refasten her tunic, slightly loosened by Marcel’s audacity, she extended a warrior bosom toward the distant battles, and eyes that were shining like flashing blades. All of the primal soul of the fatherland was exultant in her.
Marcel beheld that excessive turnabout without understanding it. He remained amazed by seeing her psychology modified instantaneously, like a chameleon changing color. When he advanced to put his arm around her waist, she looked at him with such scornful surprise that he dare not take his gesture any further.
A loud burst of laughter burst out above their heads. It came from Carabella, who was perched on a branch in the trees, and had been watching them.
CHAPTER XIII
When the philosopher Zéphirin Choumaque woke up in Madame Môme’s arms, after an hour of delicious lassitude, he was able to believe that he had gone back in time thirty years. Set aside the frame of his amorous escapade—the oval room in Marjah’s dwelling, illuminated by a mystical half-light pouring from the curtains; the furniture of various forms, designed, one might have thought, to permit the strangest relaxations; and that great soft, unctuous bed, improbably mattressed and pillowed, in which he was lying, all of which formed an appreciable diversion from his room in the Latin quarter—and he could have sworn that he had beside him the same adorable mistress, and felt running through his own veins a youthful and amorous blood as vigorous as in the year 1920.
In fact, he almost extended his hand, with a gesture dear to his libertine prowess, toward the nearby table in order to pick up a pipe, fill it with tobacco, light it and enjoy the first blue-tinted swirls that accompanied the scattering of gilded sparks.
Madame Môme detected the signs of that privation. Slightly roguishly, contrary to the habits of her professional dignity, but rejoicing in a similar memory, she rubbed her nose with the back of her index finger, propped herself up on her pretty elbow, and looked at him with the old gaze of her young head.
“You’re missing your puffer, eh? I can tell...”
“Indeed,” said Choumaque, “I am missing it. I liked, after dalliance, to read the philosophers and plume my alcove. The mists of metaphysics and the fogs of tobacco hid me from the companion thanks to whom I had just accomplished an ever-disappointing act...”
“You’re not very gallant, Zéphi!”
“I must admit,” Choumaque went on, by way of restriction, “that I’m not demanding any compensation today. You’ve just caused me to pass one of the most intoxicating hours of my life, my Little Panade. Oh, you’ve made progress, you slut.”
He tickled her a little, while she defended herself, laughing, while slapping him on the buttocks, as of old.
Then he went on, more seriously: “Once, even on emerging from your caresses, I had an opinion of women that you’ve just caused to vary today. I told myself that man was, in all creation, the animal least favored with regard to the female of the species. It seemed evident to me that the bull with the cow, the gander with the goose, and the boar with the sow experienced more satisfactions in their natural relations than the human male with the daughters of Eve. What woman, once Venus was satisfied, gave you the pleasure of conversation? What lovers, as soon as their embraces were exchanged, did not become sulky and turn their backs? At least the bull and the cow, the gander and the goose, the boar and the sow, were not obliged to so much circumspection, and quit one another mutually satisfied, without any afterthought...”
“While this time?”
“This time, I don’t experience that bitterness consecutive to amour, since I’m reduced to the mentality of the bull, the gander and the boar, and there’s no point in thinking, in a country where the brain is becoming a superfluous organ.”
“Render homage to the Superman!” said the High Priestess, putting her hands together devoutly.
“By Seneca, never!” Choumaque protested. “Me, a philosopher…me, the creator of a doctrine that I have intelligently founded on stoicism…me, render homage to that absurd genius who annihilates all evils, who forces us to float in a perpetual Epicureanism, and who has ensured that tomorrow, knowing that I can cherish you, my little Panade, as easily and as often as the whim takes me, I will no longer experience any but a relative pleasure, the mediocre contentment of a possession for which one does not even have to wish in order to obtain it…me, render homage to that leveler of accidents, who suppresses the joy of descent because he has suppressed the difficulty of the climb; to that dull shepherd who leads his flock straight to meadows ever full of fresh grass, without even imposing upon them the winding of the road—a flock whose members are, fundamentally, not even sheep; to that evil warrior of life, who takes away the intoxication of victory by preventing the battle! Get away! You don’t know me any longer. No struggles, no triumphs! No unhappiness, no happiness! That’s what my doctrine of equilibria says, at least...”
“Provided that he hasn’t got the ear of a microphone turned on us at this moment! Provided that he doesn’t hear you!” murmured the frightened High Priestess.
“You don’t know, then, my Môme…I can confess it to you now…that I wasn’t happy in our arms, thirty years ago, when I was conscious of the difficulty of tearing you away from other lovers! It was necessary for me to ensure your nourishment when you came to live with me; it was sometimes necessary for me to manifest my generosity with a silver coin. To procure them, I had to walk the streets of Paris for entire days, go to tap my friends’ fob-pockets, always hermetically sealed, make up the most improbable stories�
�but when I held it in my fingers, that round coin, when I slipped it into your black stocking, what satisfaction! Your teeth had gaps in the front, you might say? Indeed—but know that I loved you more because of that imperfection, in imagining how beautiful you’d be on the day when I could buy you supplementary teeth...”
“You’re exaggerating, Zéphi.”
“Perhaps—but that’s to make you understand that the pleasure of possession doesn’t work without the desire. You’ve just spent an unforgettable hour yourself…do you know why? It’s because I’m the new fruit of your old orchard, the early bloom of your festivals of amour; because I carry, in the flap of my undershirt, the spice of thirty years of separation. In a few days, when my lips have sated you, knowing that you can always taste them again, you’ll only experience a relative pleasure in kissing me...”
“No, Zéphi, I love you!”
“That’s understood. You love me, and you’ll still love me tomorrow, neither more nor less than those who give you sensuality…as much as Marius, for example...”
“No less—what more do you want, my darling?” said a fine deep voice, suddenly speaking from the back of the rom.
The philosopher turned round abruptly. He thought that Marjah had come back without his having heard him—but the man who had just overheard their conversation and replied to it was not the High Priest. He was an individual who looked to be about thirty but whose gaze revealed that he was much older. Under long black hair, coiffed with a Rembrandt-style hat, he had a pleasant face with a pointed beard, a large flat nose, and thick, mocking lips. The rest of his figure was harmoniously elegant, in a violet costume similar in its cut to those that certain inveterate art-students in Montmartre still sported in the middle of the twentieth century, in spite of the caprices of fashion: a velvet waistcoat tightened at the waist and holding the neck in a ruff; bright check trousers broad at the waist and tapering in the legs, in such a way as to leave the ankles almost completely bare; and white deerskin boots on his feet.
“But I know that mug!” exclaimed the philosopher, slightly alarmed by the sudden apparition.
“He knows me, the pauper—he has reason to!” the newcomer replied, performing a few introductory somersaults. Then, winking as he approached the vast bed, he added: “And Môme has her reasons too! Do you remember, Zéphirin, your best friend, the one who cuckolded you? Marius from Marseilles…you earned me two months in prison when you threw my clothes out of the window. What if I were to do the same to you now that I’ve caught you in bed with my wife? Don’t worry, old chap, it’s not the sort of thing I do. And then, she must be very content, the darling, to have found her Zéphi again...”
Dumbfounded, the philosopher did not know how to respond. Fear still dominated him. He thought that the painter, after making fun of him, was about to pay him back for Madame Môme’s infidelity. But the High Priestess smiled tenderly, in a familiar fashion; and Marius, with an entrechat, picked up a seat and came to sit down next to the bed.
“Adieu, eh!” he growled, amiably. “You’re very comfortable there, the two of you, in Marjah’s bed. A strange idea you’ve had, of taking refuge in a eunuch’s sheets!”
“We didn’t have another to hand,” admitted Madame Môme.
“Yes, and you were in a hurry, I understand that. I’m not disturbing you, at least?”
“No, I’ve finished,” said Choumaque, increasingly bewildered and not knowing what he was saying—but what he said had the effect of amused his interlocutors. The painter and the High Priestess started laughing, holding their sides.
Oh, that was a good one; they rarely had the opportunity to hear such eccentricities. And that echo of the past, that silliness emerging in the midst of their regular and monotonous enjoyment, was like a ray of sunshine parting the gray tints of a cloudy sky,
They stayed there for a long time, reviving baroque memories of the old Latin quarter: three friends, united, feeling entirely sheltered from all rivalry.
“Well, you hole in the air,” said Marius, finally, rising to his feet, “since you’re satisfied, get dressed, and let’s go for a walk. I’ll take you back to the Caravanserai. And then, you know, old chap, in future, don’t hesitate…as often as you wish. Môme and I will be glad to be agreeable to you...”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It’s only natural, what! Our laws demand that meek sharing. Oh, if they only knew in other lands—in France, above all—how convenient the abandonment of the right to sole possession of a woman is, and how many complications of existence it avoids never to be shackled to a single individual…to get rid of jealousy...”
Choumaque hastened to get dressed. After having slipped on his violet tights, he put on a doublet with yellow topaz buttons, of an Oriental magnificence. It hugged his freshly-reduce figure marvelously. Marius had rendered him the service of pressing the tile in the floor permitting the walls to brighten and reflect images of the room infinitely.
On hearing the painter pass judgment thus on the theories recently applied by him to Madame Môme, he smiled slightly pityingly, but thought it futile to refute that doctrine of adorable communism. The High Priestess had retired, without bothering to bid farewell to either one of them.
“You’ve always been paradoxical, my friend,” Choumaque said to Marius, “and I see that thirty years spent in this land has scarcely modified you. I recall anecdotes related about you—in particular, about an umbrella for which your poverty had been ambitious for ten years, and which you refused to open in order to protect yourself from a frightful downpour on the day that you took possession of it. If my memory serves me right, I believe that you even hid the umbrella under your clothes, in order that it wouldn’t get wet...”
“I did that!” said Marius.
They laughed; they were inseparably united. They went out. Marius squeezed Choumaque’s arm energetically, delighted to have found that companion of youthful exuberances so vibrant and so hilarious. And the philosopher experienced a joy no less vivid in hearing that thick southern accent resound once again, strewn with coarse exclamations, so indelibly inherent to his organism, of which the painter had not been able to rid himself in thirty years.
A flock of young women flew past at that moment in the air. They were courtesans coming back after bathing in the sea, racing one another. Still dripping with water beneath their veils, whose train, displayed by the race formed a gracious plume-like tail, they seemed, in the movements of their winged arms, to be admirable realizations of the dream of Valkyries.
“Look! What a beautiful flock!” Choumaque exclaimed, pointing at them.
“Oh, I no longer look. They’re boring.”
“That’s true: they’re boring,” murmured the philosopher, swelling up, proud of the doctrinal confirmation that the abundance of goods is harmful, and that ugliness is therefore indispensable to beauty.
Then they exchanged confidences. Choumaque recounted his life, his past black times and good moments, and how he had finally decided to accompany his pupil Marcel to the marvelous island. “And you, what are you doing here?” he asked, when he had finished.
Then Marius related in his turn the providential hazard that had put him in Caresco’s path when he came out of prison, and when, a painter of great talent, having rediscovered the method of ancient frescos, he was on the brink of dying of starvation. One day, in the street, he had been selling his last painting, hoping to get a cheap meal out of it, when a small man with a hooked nose had approached the exhibited work and inspected it for a long time, like a connoisseur. Then, after having bought the canvas for the asking price of twenty-eight sous, he had, in a sense—so mysterious was his voice—ordered Marius to follow him and had taken him to Caresco, introducing him with the words: “I’ve brought you a genius.”
That introducer was none other than, Zadochbach, a genius himself of serendipity, an unearther of good opportunities. And that was what had happened: Marius had been parceled up, as a good opportuni
ty, after having promised all his painting to the new venture. And for thirty years he had collaborated in the edification of the ideal state, part of the cohort of engineers, artists and creators who, living outside the people, added to the benefits from which everyone profited—the extraordinary maintenance of health and youth—the more real satisfactions of effort and endeavor.
“You’re happy, then?” asked Choumaque.
“I’m not unhappy.”
“Not being unhappy isn’t being happy.”
“Pardon me! I’m very happy, exceedingly happy,” the artist protested, loudly, as if he feared that someone might have overheard the lukewarm quality of his first response.
Choumaque, however, was not duped by that explanation. Once again, he had just confirmed his opinion that the slaves of these benefits did not enjoy absolute felicity. Some—those who were born on the island—indolently abused enjoyments. Others—those who, before being adopted by Caresco, had known misery—were subject without attraction to the custom of no longer having anything to desire. Again, the personality of the surgeon, the creator of the social system, surged forth in the philosopher’s mind. He discovered a great incoherence herein.
How could that man, who had given, throughout his life, the most prodigious example of labor, research and struggle, have imagined for others, and carried out, a project of perfect existence that as exempt from fatigues, difficulties and embarrassments? How had he been able to believe that his people were happy vegetating in that religion of pleasure, dissolving energy, paralyzing all pressure toward betterment?
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