Now the room was full of bizarre individuals dressed like sheep. But, Eleanor, they were naked…. Their clothes were nothing but fleece. All of them were men made up like whores.
“The lambs of God” Célestin said.
We sat down at a round table, and about twenty pairs of hands suddenly appeared from between the strands of hair. I noticed their nails were varnished but very dirty. The hands were pale, greyish.
This was only a moment’s impression, for I really had eyes for nothing but Célestin’s hands. I swear to you, Eleanor, that his hands were running with moisture … and so smooth, and their colour was strange, like mother-of-pearl. He too was looking at his hands with a secret smile.
“Pigeon, fly!” he cried, and all the hands went up in the air, waving like wings. My hands too were fluttering in the air.
“Sheep, fly!” Célestin called.
The hands trembled on the table but didn’t lift.
“Angel, fly!”
So far nobody had made a mistake.
Suddenly Célestin’s voice rose in a sharp cry, a terrible cry, “CÉLESTIN, FLY!”
Eleanor, dear Eleanor, his hands …
At this point Agathe’s journal suddenly stopped.
I turned to her portrait: the canvas was empty, I didn’t dare look for my face in the mirror. I knew what I would see: my hands were so cold!
(1937-40)
THE THREE HUNTERS
I was having a rest in a deep forest. The trees and wild fruit were ripe. It was autumn. I was beginning to fall asleep when a heavy object fell on my stomach. It was a dead rabbit, blood running from its mouth. It was dead of fatigue. I’d hardly freed myself of the rabbit when, with a leap more agile than a stag’s, a man landed beside me. He was of medium height, had a red face, and a long white moustache. From his face, I’d have guessed him to be about ninety.
“You’re pretty nimble for your age,” I said, but then I looked at his clothes. He was wearing a hunting jacket the colour of Damascus rose, a bright green hat with orange plumes, and very long black boots trimmed with summer flowers. He wore no trousers. He looked at the rabbit with interest.
“I was going slowly, to give the poor beast a chance,” he said. “But it just didn’t know how to run. In the future I’ll leave the rabbits to Mcflanagan.”
I tried to think of something nice to say to him.
“I like your outfit,” I said with a pleasant smile.
“Oh that,” he replied. “People with a certain aesthetic appreciation will find that it lacks distinction. But it’s only sporting to wear these colours. If the animals see me coming, they have more chance.” Then his expression changed. “Is it whisky you’ve got in that bottle?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Really?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Ah.” He sat down beside me and said, staring at the bottle as if hypnotized, “You did say it was whisky?”
“1900.”
“A very good year. It’s the vintage I prefer.”
“Me too.”
“Ah.”
“Yes.” By this time I’d guessed that he’d perhaps wanted a little drink. I offered him a drink. He accepted.
“You know, I’ve got an extraordinary cellar. Would you like to taste some of my wines?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Take this path on the left straight on and cross every path you come to. It’s the first manor after the eighteenth crossroads.”
“But aren’t you coming?”
“I can only travel in leaps and bounds,” he replied, disappearing between the trees in leaps five yards long.
I started out. Around midnight I arrived at the manor house. The door was opened by an individual on all fours.
“My brother Mcbologan has been waiting for you since noon. I am Mcflanagan, the Terror of the Forest. Mcbologan is the Curse of the Forest, and Mchooligan is the Abomination of the Forest. Mchooligan is the cook.”
We went into a room a hundred yards long and fifty wide. Mcbologan was sitting at the table in front of six dozen hares, a hundred wild ducks, and nineteen boars.
“Mchooligan,” shouted Mcbologan, “we’re ready to start eating.”
A noise of wind and Mchooligan entered like lightning: he couldn’t stop himself before the other end of the room and hit the wall, and sat at the table bleeding. His brothers looked at him with gloom.
“He can never go slower than that,” said Mcflanagan, still on all fours. Mchooligan was maybe ten years older than Mcbologan, and exhibited the same profound sadness as his brothers. During the meal they all cried hot tears into their plates.
Towards the end of the meal, Mcbologan said, “Mcflanagan ought to have a shave.”
It was the first thing that had been said. An hour later Mcflanagan said, “Why?” and two hours after that Mcbologan said, “Because.” Mchooligan didn’t say anything at all, he was crying too much. Getting on five in the morning, Mcbologan said, “Let’s live it up a bit, shall we? I need some amusement.” And since the others still didn’t say anything, he turned to me. “I’ve got some hunting trophies. Would you like to see them?”
Walking through the long gallery, we arrived in a room well lit by some lamps. There was nothing but sausages. Sausages in aquariums, sausages in cages, sausages hanging on the walls, sausages in sumptuous glass boxes. Nothing but sausages. I may have shown a certain surprise. Mcbologan looked at his sausages.
“That,” he said to me, “is the hand of destiny.” I stood beside him in deep thought. “One’s got to realize that nothing is eternal, that nothing”—he contemplated a landscape of sausages—“nothing is finally stronger than goodness. Since my grandfather Angus Mcfruit’s first communion, the family has been in dire straits. Jock Mcfish Mcfruit, my poor father, could walk only on his head. Geraldine, my mother (a saint!), could walk only on her … ah, but, the details are too personal.” He shed a few tears.
“Still, don’t let’s be sentimental. It all began the day of my grandfather’s first communion. He was only a lad, he didn’t realize the solemnity of the occasion. The evening before this Holy Day, the eve before he was to receive his Lord, he ate a plate of beans. And next morning at church …” Mcbologan hesitated. “It happened that a certain noise escaped him….” He went on looking at the landscape of sausages. I felt him fighting his emotions. “From that day the judgement of the good Lord has been upon us. Whatever trophy we try to preserve becomes a sausage. And we ourselves … well, as you can see.”
He turned away with great emotion, and I heard his bounding steps disappear into the manor house.
(1937-40)
MONSIEUR CYRIL DE GUINDRE
On a heavy, balmy spring afternoon, Monsieur Cyril de Guindre was resting elegantly on his ice blue couch. Moving like a tired snake, he was playing with his cat. Despite his age, he was very beautiful.
“His face is that of an albino orchid,” said his great friend Thibaut Lastre. “His greedy violet mouth is a poisonous bee-orchid like a lunar insect, and where can you find a rare animal with a coat comparable to his hair?”
Monsieur de Guindre sighed in his halo of perfume, thinking of Thibaut, who was already half an hour late for tea.
The garden was so intensely green that he had to shield his eyes. “Your gaze tires me as much as the garden,” he said to his cat. “Shut your eyes.”
He didn’t notice Thibaut, who had come silently into the room carrying a bouquet of moss roses. Thibaut, who was a great deal younger than Cyril de Guindre, had golden skin like the corpse of a child preserved in an old and excellent liqueur. He wore an elegant dressing gown the colour of trout flesh, and his face, behind the roses, was livid with anger.
“Ah, Thibaut,” Cyril said in a weary voice, “whatever have you been doing all afternoon to keep me waiting like this? You know very well that I take tea at five o’clock … as does everyone, indeed …”
Thibaut threw the roses at the cat, which growled a
nd clawed Cyril’s thighs, looking across the flowers with malevolent eyes. “Moreover,” continued Cyril, disentangling his cat from the roses, “I have an important project that I’ve been wanting to discuss with you…. But since you seem to prefer nature to my company, I hesitate to tell you what I have in mind.”
Thibaut shrugged. “Will you please explain,” he retorted, “how it has come about that your garden is infested with nymphs?” His voice hissed with anger.
“Nymphs?” Cyril asked. “Wherever have you been seeing nymphs?” His hand trembled a little as he arranged the lace on his chest.
“I saw a young girl beside the lake,” Thibaut said sharply. “Who is she?”
Cyril reflected for a few moments, his eyes closed, but he did not stop fondling his cat. “Ring for a bottle of champagne, dearest Thibaut, and I’ll explain it to you.”
Thibaut obeyed with bad grace.
“First of all,” said Cyril, when he had a crystal goblet full of champagne in his hand, “first of all tell me, was the girl pretty?”
“I hardly saw her,” replied Thibaut, looking distraught. “Why should it interest you?”
“It interests me, my dearest Thibaut, because that little girl is probably a very close relation of mine. She could even be my daughter.” A painful smile played around Thibaut’s lips, which held a cigarette, and his fingers clawed the arms of his chair.
“Really?”
“Yes. Twenty years ago I committed the indiscretion of taking a woman. Moreover, I married her. She was extremely tiring, an uncivilized creature, painfully lacking in delicacy. Lacking as was her wont, she became pregnant six years after we were married. The grossness of her physique during those nine months made me fall quite ill. I was obliged, my dear Thibaut, to stay in bed for several weeks after her daughter’s birth. I suffered greatly, imagining myself pregnant. Thanks only to the massage administered by Wang To, a Chinese, was I finally put back on my feet.”
“And then?” asked Thibaut in a blank voice.
“And then,” said Cyril, moistening his lips with champagne, “I began to imagine that I had sexual relations with a mermaid who was forever fondling me with her heavy, limp tail, wetting my pink dressing gown ….”
Thibaut stopped him with an irritated movement. “I didn’t ask for the details of your psychological state. I wanted to hear what happened to this domestic idyll.”
“I’m coming to that,” answered Cyril with a sigh. “My wife never regained her normal state of mind. Actually she’s in a sanatorium, a very comfortable one, of course. She suffers from strange hallucinations and an unfortunate simple-mindedness. I haven’t seen her for ten years.”
Thibaut’s face was filled with disgust. He swayed like a drunk. “Charming … Charming …” he murmured between dry lips. “And the girl?”
“I placed her in the good hands of the Purple Sisters of the Convent of the Holy Tomb. These excellent nuns have taken care of her moral and worldly education. The little girl’s name is Panthilde, a whim of her mother’s. Now, darling Thibaut, you know as much about my life as I do myself.”
Thibaut got up, very pale, saying he had to go rest.
“Panthilde,” murmured Cyril de Guindre, “whatever shall I do if you’re ugly? I shall make you disappear gently into the emerald water of my lake, for I can’t endure ugliness. She ought to be fourteen, awkward age…. If only she doesn’t end up looking like her mother. What a disaster! Whatever shall I do with a girl?”
He rang for his servant, a bloated young man who looked like a plump hen cooked in aromatic stock. His name was Dominique, and he had the gestures of a Jesuit.
“Monsieur?” he murmured while arranging the cushions behind Cyril’s head.
“Dominique, my succulent plant, when you were a lay brother at the Jesuits’, did you ever hear of the Purple Sisters of the Convent of the Holy Tomb?”
Dominique looked at the ground with his milky eyes. “There was the Abbot, monsieur, who from time to time went to the good sisters to say mass and hear confessions.”
“Ah, and what did he think of them?”
“Brother Coriolan, who assisted the Abbot with his bath, told me that the Abbot was always jaunty after his visits to the Convent of the Holy Tomb. He always scented himself with bitter almonds on the eve of his visits. May I add that the Abbot knew how to savour the agreeable subtleties of life?”
“Dominique, go and prepare my bath of rose water. This evening I shall make up with peacock green powder. Afterwards, go into the garden and find me the little girl who is playing near the lake.”
Dominique bowed and went out backwards.
“Lay out my angora gown,” added Cyril with closed eyes, “and the Pope’s striped socks.”
The final detail of Cyril de Guindre’s toilet were a few drops of opium essence behind his ears. He looked with satisfaction at his reflection in the mirror. He really had beautiful ears, delicate as geranium leaves. He bent towards the mirror and kissed the reflection of his lips, leaving a crimson mark the shape of a bird in flight.
“Precious mummy,” he murmured, laughing. “Who knows? Won’t you have fun after all?”
Slowly he went down the marble staircase.
Panthilde was standing in the middle of the drawing room. They looked at each other in silence. Cyril saw a little girl of fourteen, dressed like a pupil of a convent school. Her dress was made of stiff black material and had a little white collar at the throat. Her skinny legs were covered in thick black wool. A straw hat hid her face. Her long, black hair was braided into correct plaits: an inch or two more and they would have reached the ground.
After a few moments’ silence, Cyril advanced towards her and cautiously took off her hat. He was astonished by her perverse beauty: she resembled him very much.
“Panthilde,” he said finally, “don’t you recognize your father?”
She threw him a vague glance and shook her head.
“No, monsieur, I don’t know you.”
“How long have you been staying here?” he asked with an immense effort. He was irritated by a slight smile on Panthilde’s lips that disappeared immediately.
“I don’t know, monsieur…. It seems to me I’ve been here some time. I study every day with the Abbot.”
Cyril felt so tired that he went to lie down on the couch. He lit a special myrrh-scented cigarette, and soon fell asleep, though he remained vaguely conscious. He had the feeling Panthilde was sitting near his head singing with a child’s high-pitched voice,
Daddy don’t cry I’ll buy
A dolly in a coach one day!
Across a cloud of sleep he saw Panthilde take a little jar from her pocket, dip her lips into its black and sticky contents, and put her face close to his. Her lips were black and gleaming like the back of a beetle. Then he felt himself compelled, quite against his will, to taste her lips. He opened his mouth and moved towards her, but she moved her head out of reach, laughing: he trembled with horror and desire.
“Papa wants Spring,” Panthilde said in a mocking voice. “Papa wants Spring. Papa wants Spring.”
She began to chant the monotonous rhythm of the words. “Papa wants Spring.”
Cyril went to sleep.
He woke up with Thibaut looking at him, Thibaut in a tight suit that fit his body as closely as a second skin.
“Good heavens,” Cyril said, “is it already time for dinner?”
Dinner was served, as usual, on the terrace of the weeping willows. Cyril sat opposite Thibaut, across a bronze table in the shape of a poppy, dreaming amongst the scents of the garden and the food. His eyes were tired. Dominique prowled around the table with soft steps, serving delicate dishes, a plump fat chicken with stuffing made of brains and the livers of thrushes, truffles, crushed sweet almonds, rose conserve with a few drops of some divine liqueur. This chicken, which had been marinated—plucked but alive— for three days, had in the end been suffocated in vapours of boiling patchouli: its flesh was as creamy and tender a
s a fresh mushroom.
A chilled asparagus mousse and creamed oysters were followed by a procession of strange and succulent cakes, all white, yet as varied as the animals in a zoological garden. Cyril and Thibaut tasted each, conversing from time to time while listening to music played by a little boy dressed as an angel.
Thibaut spoke of a suit he intended to have made.
“It will hardly be a suit for going out in,” he said, “but rather for the privacy of the boudoir … tea for two…. The trousers are to be made of a rosy beige fur, and very delicately striped in another colour, like the pants of a Persian cat. The shirt will be of a very pale green like the feathers of a dying kingfisher, half hidden by an acid blue jacket, brilliant like the scales of a fish. What do you think of it?”
“Ravishing,” Cyril replied, taking a bite out of some fruit. “But I’d have the shirt made in velvet of a green verging on ochre. A moss green.” He stopped abruptly, putting his hand to his forehead. On the rose-coloured stone wall, the shadows of two horses were fighting with frightful ferocity.
The terrible battle only lasted a few seconds: the shadows faded, and Cyril, very pale, turned his head and saw, behind him, a priest.
“Monsieur the Abbot of Givres,” said Dominique’s voice.
The Abbot’s soutane was grey with dust, and riddled with the depredations of moths. His chin and shaved skull were blue, his face sombre. De Guindre felt overcome by nausea as the Abbot held out a hand he couldn’t refuse to take, a hand long and thin like a woman’s and like the cast skin of a snake.
“My dear Monsieur de Guindre,” said the Abbot in a gentle voice, “what a pleasure to come to know all this at last.” He indicated with a gesture an imaginary circle around him. “My ecclesiastical work has prevented me from meeting you as soon as I would have wished. I have, however, had the great pleasure of being of some little use to Mademoiselle de Guindre in her studies.”
With a smile of charming frankness he took a chair and sat down beside Cyril. He ignored Thibaut.
The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington Page 6
