Melusine

by Maurice Magre

  “Let’s suppose,” I replied, while we were walking through the garden, “that the legend reposes on a basis of truth. Let’s suppose that Eleutherius lived with a crow and that he died before that crow. How long might the crow have lived, after the death of its master?”

  Monsieur Spéluque looked at me, surprised by the unexpectedness of my question.

  “Perhaps for a very long time. I believe that crows form an exception in nature and can attain an extraordinary longevity. But no one is sure of that. People go to a great deal of trouble to make complicated machines in order to destroy one another, but have not yet studied the simplest things of nature.”

  “Might Eleutherius’ crow have been able to survive until our own day?”

  “My God, anything’s possible.”

  We were on the road and I had just shaken Monsieur Spéluque’s hand. As I was about to draw away, an idea occurred to me and, at hazard, I said: “Well, I can admit it to you. I’m here for the same reason as you.”

  Monsieur Spéluque’s face brightened. “That doesn’t surprise me. I can even say that I was sure of it. I saw that at the first glance. Come back and see me, and we’ll try to clarify the mystery.”

  THE MESSAGE OF THE AMARYLLIS

  So there was a mystery—but what? I asked myself that question the following morning as I was pacing back and forth, on a small scale, in the microscopic garden that surrounded my house.

  I had examined all the plants that grew in that fragment of ground, rejoicing in the proximity and the amicable influence of a certain number of tress grouped respectfully around the central pine. I had noted the ones that were the receptacle of a vegetal personality and were susceptible of conversing, when there was no wind, with the religious soul of the old pine. For trees only have exchanges in immobility and silence, and they fall silent, by contrast, and only exhale vulgar plaints when their branches are agitated and we think we hear them speaking.

  There were young innocents that were not yet animated by the descent of any soul, which were only thinking about games, which are for them the passages of birds from one branch to another. On one side of the wooden fence there was an egotistical acacia, and on the other a cork-oak radiant with bounty and the pleasure of giving. They were facing one another, affirming the diversity of arboreal natures. A rosemary hedge, with the mysterious depth of its meditation on the beyond, almost separated the garden into two. There were two or three bizarre yuccas, an aloe avid for a quarrel, and a white laurel that launched its joy of life in all directions.

  Nothing had escaped me in that narrow parcel of land, over which I exercised a sort of right of possession, and from which I received, by way of imperceptible breaths, delicate little blessings, such as only vegetables are able to give you, by means of their imponderable sympathy. And I had noticed a narrow strip that was completely sterile.

  That marred a corner of the garden slightly. Why had the soil produced nothing in that place? Perhaps it had been forgotten in a distant time when someone interested in the garden had raked and planted. Perhaps the cause was in the quality of the soil, for weeds seemed to be making a painful effort to grow there.

  Now, in going past the disinherited strip, I saw that there was a large amaryllis flower in the middle.

  I considered it with admiration. An amaryllis is formed by several marvelously roseate lilies arranged in a circular spray at the end of a woody stem. Books say that the amaryllis comes from Mexico, which is important to know, Mexico being full of maleficent plants. That amaryllis had seven calices, very regularly blossoming, and the woody stem sustaining it, doubtless owing its thickness to its Mexican nature, was straight and came up to my knee.

  “Mathieu Lapeyre!” I shouted.

  By raising my voice, I could be heard by Mathieu Lapeyre, whose house, hidden by shrubbery, was not far away. In the morning, he devoted himself to small domestic tasks outside his door.

  I had no doubt that Mathieu Lapeyre, by way of a joke, had stuck the amaryllis stem in the sterile strip.

  He appeared almost immediately at the fence and I asked him the provenance of such a beautiful amaryllis. At the same time I tugged the stem, which I supposed to be simply embedded. But it resisted strongly. I pulled harder and understood that in order to oppose that resistance it must have profound roots, ramified in radicals, with the complication and tenacity that plants employ in order to hold firmly to the ground and aspire water and juices.

  But how had those roots and radicals been able to plunge down so rapidly? Mathieu Lapeyre’s face reflected a slightly stupid astonishment that left no doubt as to its sincerity, for sincerity is always accompanied by a slight expression of stupidity. He had not paid any attention to that strip. So? The amaryllis must have spring forth there like the plants that fakirs cause to emerge from the earth by extending their hand. But I had not seen any fakir coming into the garden.

  There was something mysterious in that conjuring trick of a terrestrial order, that sleight-of-hand of nature. And a thought immediately occurred to me. Was that not an indication, an advertisement of some superior power? But what was the mechanism of the prodigy? Nothing comes of nothing, and a superior power requires elements in order to produce a prodigy. An amaryllis bulb must repose beneath that slightly sandy strip. That bulb was doubtless destined to die miserably like so many other seeds. The marvelous element had intervened by giving it an extraordinarily rapid growth. The amaryllis had grown in one night—for nature has a certain margin to permit potencies that are unknown to us to accomplish extraordinary things without violating her laws entirely.

  In a single night! So, if I had come down into the garden at midnight with a lamp and I had sat down beside the strip, I would have been able to see the movements of the flower, see with my eyes the most secret mystery of the earth, the hatching of a flower! No gardener-poet has been able to flatter himself with having perceived that. No one has heard the delicate sound of subtle silk tearing that the narrow bud of a flower makes in blooming. Perhaps the crickets are charged with singing in order that the rustle of divine fabric in question goes unperceived. There is a modesty of nature with regard to humans.

  But what had the power that had manifested itself in the amaryllis wanted to tell me? Would it not have been simpler to express itself in direct speech? Perhaps human language was difficult to materialize for a power that does not have human organs, while it could dispose of a creative breath permitting it to give life to an amaryllis seed.

  Monsieur de Lusignan had told me that butterflies and moths were utilized for divine messages because of the matter of which they are made. Flowers were also made of divine mater, without analogy with anything that there is in the world. By virtue of its complexity, that amaryllis must have an extended meaning. What was the message of the amaryllis?

  I consulted the language of flowers, which informed me that the amaryllis signified pride. I interrogated simple souls. A vegetable-seller going from house to house, announcing her coming by a cry similar to that of a mariner in distress, replied to me in a surly tone that the amaryllis always announced a misfortune in the house. The vegetable-seller was a taciturn individual of ill augury.

  My optimistic housekeeper winked in a malign fashion to tell me that a marriage was in prospect.

  My God, who to believe? How to discover the secrets of divine symbolism? And perhaps there was an urgent reply for me to give! How difficult relationships with the invisible powers are!

  THE GREEK AMPHORAE

  Humans are subject to aberrations and they are even deceived sometimes by false visions. Had I not imagined, for example, that I had seen the silhouette of an elegant young man on the threshold of that little house where Roseline was supposed to be conferring with farmers?

  Well, that was an aberration, a play of my imagination. Imagination has always played tricks on me. And I have the certainty of that error. With a great deal of skill, when I saw Roseline again, I steered the conversation toward those farmers of La Mothe
, the custodians of butter and fresh eggs. Roseline has furnished me with various very precise details regarding the family in question. There are several children, a son who is doing his military service and two daughters, one of whom is very intelligent and the other slightly innocent. Such are the eccentricities of heredity. Thus, in the Lusignan family, there are two sisters, one of whom is beautiful—that was the elder—and the other ugly, who is her, Roseline.

  Naturally, I protest. Roseline laughs and agrees that, strictly speaking, one could accord her the beauty of the devil. Of the devil, that’s right. And there are all sorts of differences between the two sisters. There is even an incredible opposition. Her older sister never goes out, whereas she is on the move all the time, obliged to go here or there. One reads and the other does not. One wants the doors to be closed and the other wants them open. One likes red and the other blue. One only likes young men and the other has a predilection for men of a certain age.

  I ask negligently which of the two has that rather rare predilection.

  It is her, Roseline. Firstly, that predilection is not rare. Secondly, young men have no conversation, they are conceited and know nothing. She cannot remain five minutes with a young man because she gets bored immediately. They can only talk about cars or aviation. To get back to the farmers of La Mothe...

  For Roseline returns to the farmers without the slightest hesitation, which she would not do if she has not gone to visit them the other day or if they did not exist.

  Internally, I reproach myself sharply for having a suspicious soul. No, Roseline does not lie; she never lies. She is one of those women of whom one can say that they wear their heart on their sleeve. She has certainly told me, once or twice, that she has the faculty of changing into a snake on certain days, albeit not very often, but that must be considered as a fantasy rather than a lie. And then, does one ever know?

  We say such things while we go on foot, along minor roads, to the beach of Agay. That excursion has been decided by Roseline.

  “You’ll make yourself ill by force of reading. And then, there’s something very curious to see. You know that Agay was once a great Roman port. Now, one stormy night, a galley was shipwrecked opposite the port on the sandbanks outside the bay. The galley—no one knows how many oarsmen it had—was transporting a cargo of beautiful painted earthenware amphorae full of Greek wine, which has two images on their sides. On one side was the god Dionysus, who changes the grapes of the vine into wine by means of the sunlight, and on the other the goddess Athene, who changes the wine of grapes into joyful spirit by means of the art of transmutations. If one goes over the sea in a boat one can glimpse the galley in the depths, with its benches, its oars and is broken masts.

  I ask Roseline whether she has seen the galley herself.

  “Of course, and everyone can see it if they go out to sea when the water is calm, and everyone, with a little luck, can buy a amphora with the images of the gods from a fisherman, because from time to time the capricious sea extracts one from the sand and rolls it as far as the shore. My father bought one, and observed that I resemble in an extraordinary fashion the goddess Athene sculpted on one side of the amphora. Yesterday there was a very violent tempest. It’s certain that the tempest has thrown up a few amphorae, or fragments of amphorae, along the beach at Agay, which we’re going to pick up.

  And we hasten our steps, for fear of being forestalled by some lover of amphorae.

  It is the time when the mimosas and the while laurels are flourishing along the banks of the Armitelle. It is the time when the air is very pure and one can see from a long way off the contours of the branches of trees on the hills.

  And when, at a bend in the road, we perceive the bay of Agay, all blue in the gold of the afternoon, Roseline, exultant with joy, points at the sky and the sea and says:

  “You’re going to follow the circular line of the sand, attentively examining the extreme edge beaten by minuscule waves. You see that family boarding-house. It’s a very small boarding-house where my friend Blanche d’Elbée is staying, in order to do painting there. I’ve mentioned her to you, I believe. Blanche d’Elbée is an artist who seeks solitude. She’s a little neurasthenic, and any foreign presence, apart from mine, is intolerable to her. Apart from mine—and that’s quite exact. I’ll go and say bonjour to her for a few minutes. Oh, only a few minutes! She can’t bear any more, poor Blanche! Keep a careful lookout for the amphorae! After two thousand years under the sea they no longer look like amphorae at all; they’re completely coved in seaweed and it’s necessary to look attentively in order to discover them.”

  And Roseline drew away with such a light step that one might have thought that she was going to fly all the way to the little family boarding-house.

  No, no, it wasn’t a matter of falling back into the baseness of certain suspicions, degrading for the person who experiences them. I applied myself with great conscientiousness to the search for sculpted amphorae under the robes of seaweed and wrack. But no face of Athene or Dionysus appeared among the seashells and parasitic arthropods. In made a circuit of the beach several times, in vain.

  A duration of time that I refused to evaluate went by. Come on, neurasthenic as she was, Blanch d’Elbée was amusing herself conversing with a friend.

  In the end I saw Roseline coming out of the boarding-house. Blanche d’Elbée was not accompanying her, but she was followed by a young man. I saw them coming toward me over the sand, exchanging joyful words. The joy seemed to be coming from Roseline in particular.

  The young man, who was tall and strong with a square jaw, gave an impression of somber humor, for romantic causes. He was bare-headed, as befits a modern young man, who cannot wear a hat without dishonor, and he had a red silk handkerchief wrapped around his wrist. A large lock of black hair barred his forehead, and he sometimes swept it back with a rapid gesture. That movement allowed the sight of a gold bracelet on the wrist where no handkerchief was wrapped. He had thick red lips and a profile sufficiently regular for it to be called a Greek profile.

  “My friend, the Comte de Grimaldi, of the Grimaldi family. You know...”

  I did not know anything, but I shook the young man’s hand.

  Roseline had just encountered him be chance in Blanche d’Elbée’s house. What a coincidence! He was an old friend. He had also done paining in Paris, and Roseline had known him on the Lemaître course. The Lemaître course! Those were good times, weren’t they, Pierre?

  Pierre nodded his head.

  “All three of us are going back on foot,” said Roseline, in a confidential tone. “The Comte de Grimaldi’s auto is being repaired.”

  “Yes, exactly...”

  “In fact, did you find any amphorae?” Roseline asked me, distractedly, as we left the beach.

  It did not cause her any disappointment to learn that I had not found any. She had scarcely expected it.

  While walking, I wondered where I had seen the Comte de Grimaldi before. I have a vague sensation of having seen not long before the contour of his shoulders and his equally square jaw.

  He did not say much, except about one subject that seemed to be a dominant preoccupation for him. That subject was the antiquity of the Grimaldi family.

  Roseline must know that, for, doubtless with the aim of making him shine, she said, à propos of nothing: “You know that the Grimaldi family is very ancient.”

  The young man smiled like someone about to launch forth in a plan mounted on a white horse.

  “The most ancient of the Grimaldis,” he said, “was a certain Grimoald, who was the mayor of the palace under King Childebert II. He was the ancestor of the kings of Monaco. But there is a tradition in our family that takes the Grimaldis back even further. We don’t talk about it, because it’s a matter of an exaggerated antiquity.”

  “Why not?” asked Roseline, whom extraordinary things did not astonish.

  “The isles of Lérins were once called Lero, the name of a god, a legendary hero, who was a Hercules
of the Ligurian race.13 That Lero was the ancestor of the Grimaldis.”

  “Is there any historical basis to that genealogy?” I asked.

  “A little,” Pierre de Grimaldi replied. “There are no archival documents, but there are moral data, which, without being rigorous certainties, nevertheless have some value.”

  Then, as we were out to reach the large clump of flowering mimosas that formed the edge of the Armitelle, I remembered abruptly, by a curious whim of my memory, the place where I had seen the silhouette of Léro’s descendant before. It was on the threshold of the little house with the newly-painted shutters where Roseline had stopped at La Mothe a few days earlier.

  That memory struck me like a poisoned arrow, whose poison makes itself felt immediately.

  But the memory excels in deceiving itself, I told myself, immediately. It transposes scenes, it makes fugitive creations. One cannot add serious faith to it.

  And as Roseline had stopped to cut mimosa branches, I picked a few flowers myself that were growing between the stones. Grimaldi did the same, but negligently, without haste, and he only kept one flower. I noticed that it was an amaryllis.

  THE NIGHT OF THE CROW

  It was a moonlit spring night. I know not what distant bell had chimed a nocturnal one o’clock. I was leading on my window sill and admiring the delicacy with which the designs of leaves were outlined against the transparent blue of the sky. I perceived the profound meditation of the old pine, and how deeply it felt the dolor of the world, that of things and that of living creatures. Certain aged trees, by virtue of an excess of sensibility, no longer know happiness. They have too great a power of identification with what surrounds them. They experience suffering, but cannot bring any remedy to it because of the chain of roots. They have to be content with participating in it with the continual prayer of their raised branches.