French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics)

by Unknown

  ‘There’s a great battle going on in the sky,’ her old Breton chambermaid said to her. ‘The angels are tearing out each other’s feathers—and that is why it’s snowing. Madame should know that.’

  There was no arguing with this assertion, and Madame did not try. Every year, and sometimes several times each winter, her old Breton maid confided the same secret, always completed by a ‘Madame should know that’, expressed as an irrefutable and slightly threatening fact. The old servant had a neat, short, ready-made answer for everything—quaint explanations delivered as manifest truths.

  Madame did not reply, but as soon as her hair was dressed she dismissed the old maid.

  She desired to be alone—alone with the Snow.

  She was not properly dressed, she had lost interest halfway through, and sat on a divan near the fire, watching fascinated by the spirals of angelic snowy fluff and feather.

  Getting dressed! Oh what a bore it was, two or three times a week! Adultery is highly pleasurable at the beginning—it’s a journey into the unknown, you’re spread like a sail on the stiff but delicious breeze that drives you on to new embraces, you’re filled with curiosity, and there’s nothing in your head but the anticipation of a fresh and evermore gratifying pleasure: sin feels like a baptism to the inventive mind of the female sinner. But for any little delinquent, however intense the sense of rebirth afforded by the thrill of lying, the feeling does not last, and its detestable twin brother, Boredom, tags along behind.

  What a bore! You have to remember so many things, and experience is there to nudge you to remember the thousand humiliating and discouraging measures that must be taken.

  ‘For example,’ she mused (without taking her eyes off the snow), ‘I have to wear pumps and not boots. He dropped a heavy hint to that effect. The first time, he rebuttoned them innocently and worshipfully, drawing my leg upon his knees; the second time he took a button-hook from his pocket and gave it to me; and the third time he didn’t even think of bringing that, and I was most unhappy.

  ‘Same thing for the corset and the dress. Monsieur is impatient. He tears at my stays, he tangles the laces. I’ve had to design a special bodice that comes undone in one go, and I have replaced the corset with a kind of halter you put on babies, that unbuttons much the same way as a bodice. In a flash, I am naked, or very nearly.

  ‘Yes, naked, because he makes me wear petticoats rather like soutanes, which fall open like curtains once one has undone the tiny buttons that hold them together; and the costumes affect the way I behave.

  ‘Come on! I must put on the baby-halter and lock away my corset, so that my scandalized maid doesn’t blurt out to my husband, on my return, “Madame went out without her corset. And Madame knows it.”

  ‘The snow is so beautiful!…’

  They went on falling, the fine, soft, white angel plumes. The mutinous adultress became childlike; the fascination exerted upon her by the subtle and monotonous snow, the perpetual and apparently infinite snow, acted on her sensibility. The peremptory nonsense of the little Bretonne came back to her, and she felt sorrow for the angels who had lost their feathers!

  A featherless angel must be an odd sight, rather like those plucked geese you saw in farmyards in Normandy, the poor geese who gave their plumage to stuff the pillows of fussy adultresses.

  It was a foolishly childish image, but plucked angels are still angels—and angels are very beautiful creatures.

  Snow went on falling, and it was getting thicker, so thick that the air now seemed condensed into a polar ocean of white stars, or into an immaculate flight of gulls that a gust would occasionally disturb and throw in tumult against the panes.

  Forgetting all about her classic rendezvous, the little darling became obsessed by these sudden gusts, but she was even more delighted when the crystalline cloud crumpled slowly and majestically with the sovereign calm of certainty. But her eyes kept closing and she could scarcely keep them open, resolved as she was not to give way, but to watch the snow fall for as long as the snow would fall.

  She was overcome: her eyes closed and did not open again until after she had fallen into a long semi-trance. But behind her eyelids the snow kept falling. The windowpanes no longer kept out the rain of limpid flakes. It was snowing in her room, on the furniture and on the carpet, everywhere; it was snowing on the couch where she lay, overcome by fatigue. One of the cold stars fell on her hand; another on her cheek; another on her breast which was half-uncovered: and these were, especially the last, new and exquisite caresses.

  Other stars fell: her pale-green dress was lit up like a meadow by a host of simple daisies; her hands and her neck were soon all covered, and her hair and her breasts. This unreal snow did not melt on contact with the heat of her body, nor of the fire: it remained flowering, like a beautiful gown.

  Deliciously icy, the snow kisses passed through her clothes, and in spite of all her defences they found her skin and gathered in the declivities: it was wonderfully gentle, and procured her a voluptuous pleasure she had most certainly never felt before!

  In fact this was a rape, the snow possessed her—and Danaette put up no resistance, curious about this novel adultery, entirely given up to the unspeakable and almost terrible pleasure—of being the willing prey of a divine caprice, and the lover elected by a few angels suddenly turned perverse.

  The snow kept on falling, and penetrated so deeply into her prone body that she had no other feeling than that of wanting to die, buried under these adorable snow kisses, to be embalmed in the snow—and then to be swept off, in a final gust, to the land of eternal snow, to the fabled infinite mountains where the darling little adultresses lie in a perpetual swoon, ceaselessly and firmly caressed by all the perverse angels.

  The Faun

  SHE had retired early after dinner, believing herself ill but in fact merely sad, and weary of the innocent chiming laughter of the smaller children, of the good-hearted conviviality of the poor relations enjoying a bit of a holiday, that wretched seasonal pantomime dictated by the calendar.

  Most of all she was depressed and almost indignant at the hypocritical tenderness that shone in the dull eye of her husband when they had people round: like other women, she would have preferred to be beaten in public and loved in secret.

  She dismissed her maid, bolted the door, and began to feel properly alone, and free, and less unhappy.

  She undressed slowly, adopting poses, glancing at herself in the mirror, simulating languors, as if she were making ready to fall artfully into beloved outstretched arms, and receive a delicate compliment on her shoulder or even her knee, and a reminder that one has a beautiful soul and beautiful skin… She played at all this—it was merely harmless fun—with the confidence of a woman who does not fear the surprises of her own imagination.

  Her ingenuous little acts of daring were tempered by her modesty. She knew how far to raise her skirts, she knew the level fixed for dry weather and wet weather, and just like Arlette, when favoured by the attentions of Robert le Diable,* she would have torn her gown rather than raised it. So she felt rather ashamed and, smothered in a fur, she knelt down chastely in front of the fire.

  She poked at the fire, built up blazing structures, almost burned her face, got bored.

  Would it not have been better to respond to the opportunistic caresses of her husband? With a few provocations she could dominate him, and the evening would end in some really rather calming exercises—instead of which here she was restless, enervated, angry—and she could become melancholy to the point of tearfulness, and prey to that extreme sobbing which no one can calm, sobbing that shakes the heart like a ship in the storm!

  Oh! The sad and stupid business of Christmas Eve! Must there be dates, and magical days, during which it is a crime to be alone, during which human contact is prescribed almost under duress and the threat of remorse! Ideas of this order crossed her weak and flitting brain, but soon it all grew too complicated to ponder and she summed it all up under one word—Christmas!r />
  And there she was again, a little girl, going to midnight mass—and tucked up in bed falling asleep, dreaming of how the Baby Jesus would spoil her with goodies…

  … No, that’s such a cliché! Everyone has these visions of the past, every year the tender memories of the child’s Christmas returns. Mediocre dreams, these, for mediocre folk, they’re two a penny! Wretched, conformist, sentimental dreams!

  In rebellion against the snow-white purity of her memories, she fell into sensual imaginings. The heat from the logs that were blazing still tickled her, brazenly: it set her dreaming—she imagined a series of startling kisses coming down the chimney like so many wingless little angels, hotter and nimbler than the sparks that played among the burning embers like amiable demons.

  She dreamed on, and imagined a lavish act of fornication, of being debauched suddenly and unexpectedly, to which she gave herself as willing victim, here on the soft rug, and with this fine beast, this loving and devoted he-goat…

  The scattered atoms of the incubus in the warm room started massing together… and a shadow, like that of a young faun, darkened the mirror, mussed her hair, and blew hot upon the nape of her neck.

  She was frightened, but she wanted to be more frightened; and yet she dared not turn round or raise her eyes to the mirror. What she had felt was piercingly sweet; what she had seen was troubling, strange, curiously absurd: a hard, blond head, with ravenous eyes and a large, almost obscene mouth, with a pointed beard…* She shivered: the being that was going to take her must be tall and strong and handsome! How she would tremble in his arms! But she was trembling already, possessed already, prey already to the amorous monster who was staring at her and coveting her so.

  The fur slipped off her shoulders, and instantly a violent kiss burned into her naked flesh—a kiss so violent and so ardent that the mark would undoubtedly stay with her, like that from a red-hot iron. She tried, in that movement women have when being undressed, to regather her cloak around her and preserve some vestige of modesty, but the Being was having none of it and he seized both her arms with his hands. His violence was not displeasing to her, she rather expected it as a form of homage. Her back and shoulders were fashioned to be seen, and to accommodate such kisses, was it not their duty as well as their delight?

  But the assault was hurried and the incubus was breathing as hard as a bellows, which made her laugh lightly: ‘What a performance!’ she thought. ‘He’s clumsy… I shall steal a look at him out of the corner of my eye…’

  As she turned her head the beast thrust forward his muzzle, and his wide, obscene mouth crushed her lips.

  She closed her eyes, but too late; she had seen the monster face to face, and no longer in the complacent reflections of a mirror fashioned by her dream. She had seen him, no longer forged by desire, but disfigured by the most uncompromising of realities: he was so ugly, with his cruel goat’s face—so ugly and so bestial and drunk on a desire so singlemindedly base—that she was revolted and stood up.

  … She saw herself naked in the long mirror at the far end of the room, naked and all alone in the dreary room.

  Don Juan’s Secret

  … Et simulacra modis pallentia miris.

  (Virgil, Georgics 1.477)

  I

  VACANT-SOULED and greedy for flesh, from adolescence on Don Juan prepared to accomplish his vocation and fulfil his legendary role. Subtle, foresightful spirits showed him the way, and he entered upon his career armed and embellished with this motto:

  ‘To please, you must take what pleases from those that please.’

  From a fainting blonde he imitated the gesture of pressing a dainty hand to his absent heart;

  From another, he took the ironic blinking of eyelids which seemed to be impertinence but was in fact the flickering of a weak eye exposed to the light;

  From another he took the act of raising the little finger and scrutinizing it carefully, like a rare jewel;

  From another he took the subtle, pretty, impatient tapping of her foot;

  From another, pure and languid, he took the smile in which, as in a magic mirror, you see, before the act, the pleasures it procures, and after the act the reanimated joys of desire;

  From another, no less pure, but lively and without languor, and continually restless like a cat during a storm, he took a different smile, the smile in which there are kisses so strong they disarm the hearts of virgins;

  From another he took the sigh, the long, broken sigh which is the shy brother of the sob, the stirring sigh that precedes the storm like the hurried flight of a bird;

  From another he took the slow and languid movements of those who have been sated with love;

  From another he took the loving way of murmuring sweet nothings and lisping ‘It’s raining’, as if it were raining angels.

  He took these looks, every look, the gentle, the imperious, the docile, the astonished, the compassionate, the envious, the subtle, the proud, the devouring, the look that kills, and he took a lot of others, among them the entire rosary, bead by bead, made up of the looks which fascinate. But the most beautiful look taken by Don Juan, the ruby among the corals, the sapphire among the turquoise, was that of the cornered animal, vouchsafed him in the gaze, dying of love and despair, of a girl he had raped. This look was so touching that no one at all could resist it, not even the wildest, and eternal vows melted in its light like sin under a ray of grace.

  II

  DON JUAN made an even greater conquest, he conquered a soul—a soul that was ingenuous and proud, tender and haughty, the soul of a seductress by gentleness and of one by violence, and of a soul that did not know itself, a soul full of instinctive desires, a soul deliciously naive.

  He came near, adorned in all his seductions, the grieving attitude attenuated by an ironic gleam in the eye and a certain joy playing over the lips; his movements slow, as of one sated by love but corrected with a proud lift of the head; and the first long, broken sigh that escaped his breast was accompanied by a subtly impatient tapping of his foot—which said: ‘You have wounded my heart, but I cannot help myself from loving you, and yet I feel some anger.’ Next, he put on the gaze of the cornered animal; and then, he played at observing his little finger.

  After a short silence, he lisped lovingly, ‘It’s a beautiful evening’—and it was then the young woman answered: ‘It is my soul you are after, Don Juan! Have it then, I give it you!’

  Don Juan accepted this soul so deliciously naive, and so feminine, that the instantly subjugated had offered him along with her skin, her hair, her teeth, every one of her beauties and the fragrance of all her concealments: and having had his fill of her, he went his ways.

  Out of this soul he fashioned a limpid and invincible cape in which he draped himself, as though in folds of white velvet. Equipped with such a soul, and more triumphant than a Moorish killer, more adored than a pilgrim from Compostella or a crusader returned from Palestine, he multiplied his conquests to the number of a thousand and three.

  All of them! All who might give a new pleasure, a new frisson of joy, all were seduced by what he had taken that pleased them about their sisters. They passed before him, they kissed his hands, they bowed before him, a whole lovesick people already vanquished by the approaching conqueror.

  Soon they fought among themselves as to who should be the first to fall, and who the most subjugated. Drunk on their slavery, they would die of love before having tasted it.

  In the towns and in the castles, and even in the cottages, their cry went up: ‘O my dearest! O my deepest! He is irresistible!’

  III

  BUT Don Juan started to fade.The sap which had bloomed in luxuriant force fell back down in a rain of dry leaves, and though it still stood tall, the tree was no more than a shadow.

  Don Juan expended, from a few late flowers, the last of his pollen; as long as there was a trace of seed in his blood, he loved—and finally, no longer able to love, he lay down to wait for what must come, the only one he had not yet
conquered.

  And when she arrived, Don Juan set out to seduce her, offering all that pleases, all that he had taken from the pleasers.

  ‘I offer you the power of seduction,’ said Don Juan, ‘I offer you, O ugly one, my attitudes, my looks, my smiles, my various voices, everything, even my coat which is made from a soul: take all this and go! I want to relive my life in memory, for now I know that the true life consists in remembering.’

  ‘Live your life over again,’ said Death. ‘I shall return.’

  Death vanished and the Simulacra rose up in crowds from out of the shadow.

  They were young and beautiful women, all of them naked and all of them silent, and anxious, like beings who were seeking for something they lacked. They were arranged in a spiral around Don Juan, and while the first of them placed her hand on his breast, the last was so remote that she was mingled with the stars.

  She who put her hand on his breast took back from him the action of holding in the emotion from an absent heart;

  Another took back from him the ironic fluttering of his white eyelids;

  Another took back from him the grace involved in examining the nail of his little finger;

  Another took back from him the impatience of his tapping feet;

  Another took back from him the complex smile of satisfaction before and of desire after;

  Another took back from him the smile that, as in an alcove, leads to a swooning;

  Another took back from him the sigh of a fearful bird.

  And then he was stripped of his languid movement as of one who has been sated with love; and of his loving way of saying ‘It’s raining’, as if it were raining angels; and from the rosary of gazes, one after the other: the imperious like the astonished, the docile and the fascinating were taken back from him;—and the gentle one he raped came in her turn and took back from him the gaze of the cornered animal, the gaze of love and of despair.