Roseline paused again and, making an inexplicable comparison between me and Henri I, nicknamed the Fat, she asked me, with the same sideways glance: “I hope that you keep your word?”
And I was troubled again by that remark. She had made it with regard to two individuals lost in the shadows of a distant legend, but all the same…might Roseline not have a hidden agenda?
“My ancestor Henri didn’t keep his, and he wanted to know. What great folly! In amour, one should never know. It’s necessary to respect certain feminine mysteries. Have you noticed that one is always punished for a desire to know what ought to be hidden? Especially in the exceptional case of a man who has a wife who changes into a snake once a week. Fundamentally, the human heart is always the same. Would you, for example, be the kind of man to look through the keyhole of a bathroom, to listen anxiously to the rustle that the scales of a wet body make over the mosaics?”
I remarked to Roseline that, as she had just said, the case was exceptional, and I could not have reflected upon it.
“I’m going to tell you a family secret. It’s a matter of a tradition that is perpetuated among the Lusignans. It’s called the mystery of Saturday. Since the epoch of Henri and Melusine there has been, in an irregular manner, a daughter of the Lusignan blood who has received the singular faculty of changing into a snake on Saturday. Sometimes, several generations pass without the phenomenon being manifest. It is thought then that the fabulous epochs are over. Then it’s perceived that they are not. A child is born who has a few scales on her skin in the first few months, which disappear. That’s the fatal sign.
“What must happen can be avoided by condemning the young descendent of Melusine to virginity. My ancestors, who were all pious people, locked the poor creature away in a convent from which she never emerged again. Prayers, the monastic life and faith in God prevented the transformation of the woman into a beast. And still it was necessary that the cell in the convent in which the young woman lived did not overlook a forest. It appears that, in that case, all sorts of hissings and slitherings in the grass were heard by night outside the window of the cell, as if all the snakes in the forest were assembled there. And that gave a character of dubious worth, a trifle diabolical, to the pure virgin who did not know what the cause of those strange assemblies was.
“But that was only possible in olden days. Once can’t lock up a young woman in a convent by force. And try to explain the reason to sensible men nourished on science! I’ll tell you something else. The descendant of Melusine is always born with a passionate temperament, a sort of internal paganism, a flame that she can’t master, and which burns her.”
As she spoke those words, Roseline bent down and picked a poppy that was growing beside the path and appeared to be extending its petals to her. She crumpled it in her hand.
“Look at the color of this flower, still wild, that the cuttings and artifices of gardeners haven’t been able to alter. Its color isn’t the color of blood. It’s a unique rd, that of passion. I know that by night, snakes eat the stems of poppies. It can’t be said that the poppy has an odor, but something special is emitted from that bloody corolla, which contains peace and ardor at the same time. It’s necessary to have its juice on the lips to understand that mixture.”
Roseline held out the poppy to me. Perhaps thinking that I didn’t take it quickly enough, with an abrupt gesture, she crushed it upon my mouth, and for a few seconds I respired an insipid odor, I felt the greasy humidity of the juice of flowers, in which an aftertaste of a feminine hand remained, a hand that prolonged its contact a little too long, intentionally.
THE POND OF THE SOUL
What happened to me presented itself to me like an image, like the décor of a comparison.
I saw a pond, with fresh water of an extraordinary purity, clear luminous water susceptible of reflecting ambient beauties. And the landscape that surrounded the pool was made of delicate trees and well-ordered flowers under a sky full of nuances.
I cannot explain how, but in the water of the pond was my good intention, my desire to be intelligent, more sensible, humbler and purer in heart. Or rather, the water was itself that good intention, mine, and, at the same time, the good intention of a pond that is ready to reflect the surrounding landscape like a well-behaved mirror that renders the forms that pierce it, embellishing them slightly, thanks to the mysterious power of water and the prestige of that which is seen inversely.
The pond offered itself to the flowers, the trees and the sky, to the thousand colors of the air and to their rainbow marriage in the depths of its tranquil crystal.
And then, suddenly, something happened to its purity, as if its innate faculty of reflection had been damaged. No stone had fallen, provoking that circular geometry and radiating ripples. Aquatic inhabitants of the mud had not engaged in combat, striking one another with batrachian tails. No, the interior quality of the water had diminished its potentiality of light. A deformative power had been born, which was only manifest by virtue of unexpected curves, magnifications and oscillations of things reflected. The sky in the pool became gray, the trees became ridiculously thin or accumulated together. The globe of the sun had irregularities and a slight blackening.
The good intention of my soul as not changed into evil intention, but it had been neutralized, it was no longer anything but a vague desire, on which appeared, here and here, certain stains of regret.
How can I describe what I saw, how can I measure the perception of myself by means of the image of a pond become a mirror of nature?
Slender rushes, slightly inclined over the water’s edge, which were pure ideas turned toward the spirit of the sky, lost their rectitude, twisted and inclined in the direction of the earth. Blind tadpoles, emerging from the unconsciousness of the mud, traced circles, and caused an obscure mist to rise. A water-lily, the ideal of the soul, became black. The essence of the mirror, the ineffable virtue of reflecting the image of nature, was extinguished like a lamp whose oil has suddenly become an incombustible substance.
Then I raised my head above the pond. But instead of the ineffable blue of the celestial infinity, I saw a woman’s face, the substance of blood and flesh—and that face was not reflected by anything.
MY FRIEND PORCASTRE
My friend Albert Porcastre came to see me. He was staying in a small inn situated on the road, some distance from my house.
“So I won’t trouble your solitude,” he said to me, with a smile.
He was a professor of philosophy and had scant esteem for my own intellectual faculties.
“Tell yourself that you don’t know anything,” he often said to me.
I understood immediately, as soon as our first conversation, that he was slightly irritated by my attempt at retreat and detachment from the world. In any case, although he often talked about the ideal, I believed that he could not imagine the possibility of human perfection.
“Men are dogs who only seek their nourishment on the dung-heap. And it’s necessary not to try to get them out of it.”
There were two men in him: the one who loved vulgarity, vulgar language, obscene jokes and bar-girls, with a sincere amour; and the other, who was summoned ardently toward things of the spirit and always had Plato’s Timaeus in his pocket or the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
His physique reflected his double nature. He had a heavy build, broad shoulders, and fleshy lips, abnormally red to the point that one could believe that he had drunk wine a few seconds before, but a forehead in the form of a lyre and a blue gleam in his eyes, always fixed a little higher than the heads of his interlocutors, attesting to his love of thought.
Although attached to the pursuit of women of inferior quality, he had no concern for costume. He did not wear braces, and that obliged him to the repetition of the same gesture. He put both hands in his pockets in order to hitch up his trousers. And that gesture ordinarily coincided with a bitter remark that he took pleasure in uttering frequently. He laughed afterwards, and one understo
od then how one can qualify as gross a laughter that is, in itself, devoid of dimension. He had the tranquil certainty of having within him a power of seduction. “I do not know how that can be,” he had said to me once, “but I have a fluid that attracts all women.”
And, in the secrecy of his heart, I am sure that he rejoiced in being vulgar, for the fluid had a certain connection with his vulgarity. In the meantime, he was full of good will.
“You’re very nicely lodged here,” he said, considering my house while we were walking in the garden, “but how bored you must be!”
“Not at all!”
“To remain face-to-face with oneself, not to be bored in solitude, it’s necessary to have attained a certain spiritual development.”
“You think that I haven’t attained it?”
“You know that I always tell the truth. I don’t believe so.”
“That’s quite possible. But I can assure you that I’m not bored.”
He started to laugh—a laughter far more delicate than usual, for that was a characteristic of his two-sided nature; he had several varieties of laughter at his disposal. In this case, the delicacy of his laughter added force to what he was expressing.
“Boredom,” he said, “is like happiness. At the moment, one does not know that one is bored, any more than one knows that one is happy. You don’t know that you’re bored. Then again, there’s something else. For someone who believes in survival and the afterlife, I find this house a little troubling.”
“Why?”
“I’ve told you before that you have no intuition, you who believe in intuitions. I, who don’t believe in them, have them.”
“So?”
“Your little house, which seems entirely inoffensive at first glance, gives me the impression of a house of phantoms.”
“Explain yourself.”
“We’ve only traversed the rooms; I found that everything was very genteel, very well-arranged, but there’s a certain something…something that one can’t render in speech. Strictly speaking, it might be called the sentiment of a presence.”
I was stupefied. I remembered the extraordinary phenomenon produced on the evening of my arrival—so extraordinary that I had thought, on reflection, that I had been the victim of an aberration. My God! Was there not question of a dead woman with furtive footsteps? But was it reasonable to pay any heed to such an implausible communication?
“That, in any case, is of scant importance,” Porcastre went on. “You’ll be so bored that you’ll prefer to talk to a phantom than not talk to anyone. Unless...”
His face took on an expression of base hilarity that was typical of him.
“Unless you return to what you call your former errors. Yes, that’s what will happen. And I’ve just encountered the creature that will bring you back to them. Moreover, she isn’t bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s the first person I saw on arriving here. I immediately thought of you. I’d scarcely deposited my suitcase in my room. She passed along the road with a slightly vulgar dance, which was reminiscent of a procuress. I asked the proprietor of the hotel who she was and he replied: ‘That’s Monsieur de Lusignan’s daughter.”
“I do know her, in fact. We’ve taken several walks together.”
“Of course! I guessed. There are moments when I could believe that I’m a sorcerer.”
My friend started to laugh, but that laughter had taken on the amplitude of men who have just told or heard an obscene joke.
“Why are you laughing? There isn’t anything funny about it. I haven’t made a vow not to talk to anyone. It’s a matter of a very intelligent young woman, slightly eccentric, simultaneously very modern and reminiscent by her education of the young women of an earlier era.”
Pocastre fell into a wicker armchair that was at the foot of the only pine tree in my garden and made the gesture of holding his sides to mark how comical my words seemed to him.
“There’s a canine quality in men that never perishes. What’s the point of trying to deceive yourself? I’m sure you’ve found the remedy against ennui.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I’ve entered without regret into the last part of life. I have a goal. It’s not to launch myself into stories. Anyway, the question doesn’t arise. I know full well that nowadays all young women…but this one is an exception.”
“It’s a pity that I can’t stay longer. I would have asked you to introduce me, and I would have made a bet with you. In fact, perhaps I have the time.”
Porcastre had told me that he was only going to spend three days with me.
“If the canine quality of men is powerful, that of women is even more so. Yes, in sum, I have the time. Introduce me, and you’ll see.”
THE POSTMAN
But no, I’m not bored. I’m only waiting for news. That’s perfectly legitimate.
Is that the postman’s footsteps resonating at the end of the road? It’s too early. What impatience! Here I am, leaning on the fence in the attitude of someone waiting. I am waiting. In any case, I’m not impatient. But what am I waiting for? What might the postman bring me? Among my friends, some don’t have my address and the others have nothing to say to me. No, I’m not expecting anything from anyone.
Is that straw hat really his? Doesn’t he wear a kepi? He’s stopping at every villa. So, everybody gets letters. What characterizes the postman is that he never hurries. Is it possible to accept a glass of wine at such an early hour? If I put Bordeaux at his disposal, would he bring me more letters? Perhaps. There are such inexplicable correspondences between things. I ought perhaps to get some Bordeaux.
Now the sun’s getting hotter. There’s no point in staying here, since no one can have written to me. Isn’t that a great benefit, in any case? One waits for letters and they only ever bring bad news. And then, afterwards it’s necessary to reply. For a single amicable letter there are twenty that demand tedious explanations. The fortunate man is one who never sees the face of the postman. Let’s go back in quickly before he gets here.
But I can hear a bicycle. I’d forgotten that the postman has a bicycle. In an enormous leather bag he’s carrying a gigantic correspondence. I can glimpse packages of attractive books. It’s impossible that, given the number, some of them aren’t for me.
He’s going to stop, for sure. How preoccupied he seems! One would think that he’s a profound thinker. He touches his kepi as he passes by. He’s passing by. It’s a mistake. He has a light mind, in spite of appearances. And then, all those glasses of wine! He’ll come back.
But no. He continues his route. What if I run after him and catch him up?
I can see him now in the distance giving to others with full hands. Here’s someone in a driveway coming to meet him. He’s handing out newspapers and brochures. I’m the only one this morning, absolutely alone, not to have any mail.
Oh, ingrate hearts! I would never have believed…
Come on! On the contrary, I’m glad to be forgotten by everyone. I’m delighted. No letters! No news! So much the better! So much the better! Oh, the joy of solitude!
A CONVERSATION WITH
MONSIEUR DE LUSIGNAN
I have made the acquaintance of Monsieur de Lusignan.
“I’m very content,” he told me, “that for once, by chance, my daughter is taking pleasure in the company of an older man. She has such a liking for bad company. And that’s not saying enough. She has a liking for hooligans. She gets it from her mother. It’s an unimaginable thing. For her mother, it was a badge of honor to have been in prison. But for all that, she was a delightful woman.
“Oh, women! I’ve begun to wonder, in growing older, why the creator made two different sexes. I know what you’re going to tell me: two sexes are necessary for reproduction. But not at all! That’s an error. Primitive cells reproduce and even multiply in a surprising fashion by simple separation. If God had made a little more effort, he would have been able to enable humans to live without the f
rightful drama of sexuality. But perhaps God did it deliberately. Division is necessary in order for one to have the merit of union. It’s necessary that there should be women to bring us back to evil by hiding under pure faces and angelic forms.”
In order to take advantage of the mildness of dusk, Monsieur de Lusignan had received me in his park, which was vast, and tended by careless gardeners. Grass was growing in the pathways; the trees were full of birds.
Monsieur de Lusignan was holding his double-pointed beard in his hand and sometimes tugging the shorter part. He was much taller than me, which augmented his authority.
Suddenly, he stopped, and looked at me intently.
“You’re doubtless in this region for the same reason as me? What is there not to learn? But we’re not the only ones, unfortunately. The region has attracted the good, and also the wicked. It appears that a man died recently who had in his possession the Agrippa, also known as the Egromus. I’ve questioned people to the right and the left on his subject. No one was able to tell me why that man had come to establish himself in the area. It certainly wasn’t for the same reason as us.”
Melusine Page 5
