Locus Solus

by Raymond Roussel

  At the end of the book was an excellent alphabetical index, always in two columns and of interminable extent, which contained all the subjects — animal, vegetable or mineral — that were treated. After each entry an indication of the pages dealing with it was given.

  As fifty days, counting the present one, still stood between him and the unalterable date of his death, Gérard looked to see if there was any page that listed precisely this number of words. At the top of the fifteenth page, which answered his requirement he employed his skillful process to write the words “Cell Days” — the first word being warranted by the harshness of his confinement. Two further words, “Credit” and “Debit” were written to serve as titles, one the right way round above the first column, and the other back to front below the second. Still using the thorn, the water and the gold dust, he was to strike out each day, starting from the beginning of the page one of the fifty names henceforth destined to represent the last fifty days of his solitary confinement. Gérard would see his credit, consisting of the number of days accomplished, grow at the same time as his debit, the total of days yet to do, diminished.

  At each cancellation he set himself the task of learning by heart, between rising and retiring, everything about the crossed-out name in the pages referred to in the index. The prisoner thus placed himself, in a striking manner, under the strict obligation required. Starting at once, he followed his plan of conduct unwaveringly, and found his fill of oblivion in these arid exercises of memory.

  Three weeks before the fatal date, he thought he was dreaming as he took in his arms Clotilde who, beside herself with joy, had arrived at the camp bringing the price of his freedom. A certain Eveline Bréger, formerly a close friend of hers at the convent, had, though of modest origin, made a splendid marriage thanks to her great beauty. Having lost touch with Eveline, Clotilde had remained ignorant of the change in her fortunes, but the latter, glancing through a magazine,

  had read the details of the drama of the Berlin coach, which were followed by a biographical note on Gérard — and his wife, whose family was named. Her heart had been moved by the anguish that her former schoolfellow was enduring, and she had generously sent her the total amount de­manded for the ransom.

  The poet was freed at once, obtaining permission from Grocco, who turned out to be a decent man, to take with him, as poignant mementos of his imprisonment, the stone child with its strange bonnet, the two books adorned with gold writing and the stem with the single thorn. As for the crown, it hung from his wrist as before, still overlooked.

  Now it was the principle episodes of this confinement, so outstanding in his life, that the dead Gérard Lauwerys relived under the influence of resurrectine and vitalium.

  The required set was built in the ice house and completed with the souvenirs which the poet had reverently kept until his death, caused by a renal infection. The erection of a ruined altar was not overlooked, nor a statue of the Virgin, lying broken, with its arms correctly positioned. To give the dead man a free hand, they had to remove from the Infant Jesus the ointment and the bonnet that had so long adorned it; then the frail golden characters had to be effaced from the two books.

  After that the corpse performed before the weeping Clotilde from time to time. Florent, who was a youth by now, used to attend, beside his mother, at this disturbing resurrection which gave the bereaved pair some moment of sweet illusion.

  After each performance the pink film and headgear were removed from the stone head, and from the two books their gilded text was effaced.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  2. Mériadec Le Mao, deceased at the age of eighty.

  The scene he enacted was of a very touching character, one that his widow Rozik Le Mao quickly recognized.

  The Le Mao couple had spent all their lives in Brittany, in their native village Plomeur, which is still full of local color and faithful to the old traditions. In particular, a curious custom concerning the celebration of golden weddings is still preserved there. Any couple here who achieve a total of fifty years in the conjugal yoke go ceremoniously, on the anniversary of their distant wedding day, to hear mass at St Ursula’s, the oldest church in the vicinity.

  In the middle of the service, after a brief address, the priest takes from a precious metal casket a large and ancient vice of very simple design, made of iron-colored felt. He descends toward the couple, who stand up; then, setting them face to face, he makes them clasp their right hands, which he at once places, firmly united, between the make-believe implement’s open jaws.

  The nut, the screw and the spring are all three made of real iron — though the latter is very weak — so as to ensure that the object will function. The nut, turned by the priest, tightens the screw and pulls the jaws together. These, forming a variable angle underneath by means of a V-joint, inflict a pressure (which because of their softness is not painful) upon the two victims, to symbolize their firm union of fifty years. Released after a moment, the couple return to their seats and the mass is concluded.

  This object, which from time immemorial has served at every golden wedding celebration, is called “The Unseasonable Vice,” because of the unwontedly amorous nature of its so tardy intervention in the lives of old folk. Its full name glitters plainly in letters of garnet upon one face of the casket that encloses it.

  The Le Maos, who were married young, had recently celebrated their golden wedding in Plomeur with all the customary ceremonial, and, out of tender mischievousness, Mériadec had turned the make-believe vice’s nut himself, with his left hand, using more force and insistence than were usual — as though he wished thereby to tighten his conjugal bonds afresh.

  Shortly afterward Mériadec had fallen ill from pericarditis and had died in Rozik’s arms, after coming to Paris for consultations. And the moments that he relived at Locus Solus were those during which the vice had fulfilled its role.

  In response to a detailed request, the old church of Plomeur consented to lend the vice and its box. Rozik was touched to see which scene was upmost of all in the dead man’s memory at every artificial awakening and, despite her age, she determined to brave the cold in the ice house and play her own part herself, so as to feel her hand pressed again by her loved one’s hand. An extra in a tonsured wig played the priest.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  3. The actor Lauze, who had died at the age of fifty from pulmonary congestion; he had been brought by his daughter Antonine, still prac­tically a child.

  Antonine had been prompted by her fervent admiration for her father’s talent to desire a temporary resurrection which, as she had good reason to suppose, stood a fair chance of being wholly inspired by the stage. Her hopes were soon completely fulfilled by seeing the corpse momentarily play again the principle role in a much discussed play called Roland de Mendebourg — the name of a historical personage whose deservedly illustrious life was well suited to fill five acts.

  Roland de Mendebourg was born in 1148 to a noble family of Le Bourbonnais, a province where, according to a peculiar custom of the period, every child of note passed at birth through the hands of an astrologer, who sought out the star that had presided over its coming into the world and employed a special process to print the name of it, in the form of monogram, upon the nape of the child’s neck. The man of science, with delicacy and care, used specially designed instruments to implant minute and prodigiously fine magnetic-tipped needles — barely a line in length — one by one deep into the skin at the back of the neck, and perpendicular to the latter. They were so arranged that in the end their dense mass, visible beneath the epidermis, formed the required design, which from that time was fixed for ever. The aim of the operation was to place the subject in constant contact, throughout his life, with the designated star, which was to protect and guide him by means of its magnetic emanations, attracted by the magnetic points.

  The nape was chosen as the site so that, as the effluvia fell from the sky, in
the great majority of instances they would have to pass through the brain before reaching the needles — thus pouring a precious illumination into the seat of thought.

  At his first newborn cry, Roland de Mendebourg was brought to the astrologer Oberthur, who declared that he was born under the influence of Betelgeuse; using the Gothic script, he imprinted a design which united the three letters B, T and G.

  Relations having been established on this occasion between the Mendebourgs and Oberthur, the latter was later entrusted with the education of Roland, who acquired from him a pronounced taste for the sciences.

  At the age of twenty-five, master of his property, married according to the dictates of his heart and the father of two boys, Roland was peacefully enjoying his good fortune in the strong castle of his forefathers when a serious event brought about his downfall.

  He used to confide the management of his estate, without supervision, to his steward Dourtois, who had served the family for nearly half a century with the most scrupulous honesty. For all amounts to be settled or arrangements to be made, Dourtois received blank signed papers to fill in as he chose.

  Every night before retiring, Dourtois used to make a tour of inspection in the castle to make sure that all the exits had been closed. After performing this duty one evening, he returned to his chamber to find there traces of a small conflagration, the cause of which seemed obvious to him. The imposing abode of the Mendebourgs, being situated on a height, was subject to violent gusts of wind from time to time, and a lit taper placed on an oaken table before the window must have set fire to the curtains when some sudden gust, powerful enough to penetrate the points of the glazed shutters, had distended them that far; from the curtains the fire had reached the table, which it quickly consumed, then, encountering nothing but stone walls and a tiled floor, it had gone out of its own accord.

  Now, Roland had given Dourtois a blank signed paper that day, which the latter had hastened to put under lock and key in a drawer of the oaken table. Convinced that the precious document had been destroyed before it could have fallen into the hands of any stranger, the steward was not much worried by the event and the next day recounted the whole affair to Roland, who handed him another blank signed paper.

  As a matter of fact, the conflagration was the work of a lazy, base-born varlet named Quentin, who had been specially appointed to Dourtois’s service. One day, seeing the steward fill in one of his master’s blank signed papers, it had occurred to him that a thing like this, filched away intact, could make his fortune. Constantly on the alert since then, he had noticed Dourtois stowing a familiar-looking parchment in the table the day before. At the steward’s first absence he had broken the drawer open and possessed himself of the blank document; afterward, to ensure his peace by concealing the theft, he had started a blaze that might reasonably have been ascribed to some gust of wind.

  The only signature the parchment bore was a cob drawn by Roland.

  Many nobles of the ninth century, being unable to read or write, learnt after a fashion to make a crude drawing, with which they used to sign important documents. Indeed, they more readily succeeded in creating with the pen some shape familiar to their eyes, than the cold assemblage of letters that composed their name. Poor though it might be, the sketch identified the hand that had executed it even better than a piece of writing would have done. The subjects of the vignettes chosen by these escutcheoned illiterates, who were guided by their respective tastes, were infinitely varied: figures, animals or objects connected with war or venery, the arts, the sciences or nature. Once such a subject had been adopted and officially registered, it ever afterward formed the characteristic signature for the whole family of the nobleman in question, from generation to generation, daughters retaining it unaltered after marriage; each member was distinguished by his personal handling of the drawing’s execution, and even if he could write, he was obliged to trace it at the foot of any important document — to which his name, though appended with all due flourishes, would not have conferred the slightest validity.

  Later, as the use of writing gradually became more widespread, each of the families in question, at various times, had their special signatures suppressed; some still possessed them in the twelfth century, though they were very rare — notably the Mendebourgs, concerned in the present case.

  Now the illiterate Mendebourg of long ago, to whom the vignette’s choice of subject was due, had excelled above all as an outstanding horseman, full of elegance and mastery in the saddle — and, being very short, he never mounted any horses except a certain medium-sized English breed, already known as a cob in his day. In adopting a signature, his preference had at once inclined toward the pattern of his favorite mount. Thus Roland, like so many other Mendebourgs before him, could only give validity to a document by drawing a cob beneath its text.

  This circumstance was known to Quentin, who wished to transform the precious stolen sheet, to his advantage, into a wholly autographic donation of Roland’s total possessions; for he knew that, in law, a strange hand might have served to substantiate dangerous claims that the blank document had been abused.

  In return for half the future profits, the varlet bought the col­laboration of one Ruscarrier, captain of a band of marauders that had been pillaging the land of late. The agreement was to capture Roland, who used to take a solitary walk in the forest every day reading some scientific work, and then to induce him, by a subterfuge, to write the coveted words in the correct place. Even without the theft beforehand, it would have been possible to have seized him in this way in order to compel him under threat of torture and death to write the required document and sign it with his cob, but, knowing that Roland would have endured torments and death rather than ruin his children by abandoning all his goods, Quentin was bent on using trickery.

  The cob on the blank document was placed just below the middle of the sheet, which Quentin folded very sharply in two in order to stick the upper and lower halves of the verse together with transparent glue. After this, the whole paper had the appearance of being a single, short, thick sheet, and upon the virgin side of it presented to him, Roland, to save his life, would obediently write a deed that he believed to be invalid, and sign it with his name. By using a blade afterward to separate the two parts stuck together, and straightening the parchment, which could easily be washed, a valid article would be obtained — thanks to the favorable position of the cob, Quentin was sure that Roland, who was proverbially scrupulous and honest, would never for a moment dream of contesting its validity.

  Roland was seized in the course of one of his studious walks under the trees, and led to the marauder’s camp. Quentin was wary of showing himself, for the captive would think that one of his household could not be unaware of the peculiarity of the cob and might have scented the real trap on seeing him.

  Addressing Roland by name, Ruscassier gave him the choice between death and immediate self-ruin, pointing to the notorious parchment which lay ready, with a writing case, upon a bundle serving as a table. As they expected, to secure his life the prisoner readily submitted to requirements which he considered to be without real significance. He knelt before the bundle and announced that he was prepared to write.

  Since Roland had children, he could not legally surrender his wealth; so, upon strict instructions instigated by Quentin, he recognized a debt of eight hundred thousand pounds to Ruscassier, by note of hand. According to his authorized statements, this sum represented the totality of his possessions. Ruscassier had written out a paper in the proper form beforehand, declaring that half the debt belonged to Quentin.

  Roland signed his name at the foot of the document, at the head of which he had had to write, under Ruscassier’s eye, the words “Note of Hand,” by way of a title, so as to comply with a categorical requirement of the law. After being compelled to swear that he would refrain from attempting the slightest reprisal against the authors of the plot, Roland regained hi
s liberty.

  Next day, while he was sitting at his desk, annotating one of his favorite scientific authors, Ruscassier was announced. At his command the latter entered and claimed his due, referring to the note of hand which he held between his fingers. Roland, joyfully anticipating the discomfiture of his oppressor of the previous day, determined to take an innocent revenge by making his disclosures concerning the tradition of the cob with a certain mockery. He continued his annotations without even turning his head toward Ruscassier, who stood before the once more closed door, precisely to the right, and said ironically:

  “Really . . . a note of hand? . . . What does it show as a signature? . . .”

  “A cob,” replied Ruscassier.

  At this latter word, which made known to him his utter ruin and that of his dependants, Roland twisted his head with terrible violence toward his interlocutor and at once felt a transitory pain in the nape of his neck, just where the magnetic triple letter was, accompanied by a swift and instinctive movement to bring relief. Without paying much attention to it, he rose, livid, walked up to Ruscassier and saw his authentic cob on the terrible parchment, which had been beautifully straightened out with no trace of the fold or the glue, and clearly appeared to him as one of the blank documents confided to Dourtois.

  At all events, this signature — which, since its origin three hundred years before, had never been disowned by any of his people — set beneath a text written in his own hand, constituted in his eyes a binding agreement which, as Quentin had anticipated, he proposed to honor blindly, without even invoking the circumstance of its having been obtained by violent means. Dismissing Ruscassier with a promise to pay him promptly, he sent for Dourtois.

  Once informed of these events, the steward remembered the fire which had at first been attributed to chance, and suspected Quentin, who, on being questioned, cynically admitted everything and, after reminding Roland that he was bound by an oath to remain neutral toward the guilty parties, was merely dismissed on the spot.