by Guy Endore
GUY ENDORE
A NOVEL
PEGASUS CRIME
NEW YORK LONDON
These creatures live onlely without meats;
The Camelion by the Air,
The Want or Mole, by the Earth,
The Sea-Herring by the Water,
The Salamander by the Fire,
Unto which may be added the Dormouse,
which lives partly by sleep,
And the Werewolf, whose food is night,
winter and death.
(AN OLD SAYING)
TO
HENRIETTA PORTUGAL
—Introduction—
Where shall I begin my tale?
This one has neither beginning nor end, but only a perpetual unfolding, a multi-petaled blossom of strange botany.
I might, for example, begin with Eliane. Remember, please, Eliane, not Elaine. She has nothing to do with the story, except that she happened to start it off. Or rather she happened to start me off on it. She burst into my room one day when I thought her three thousand miles away, if not more.
She opened the door and said: “Here I are!” Pretty, pert and healthy, a certain amount of money and a certain amount of brains. Nothing extravagant. Just a certain amount. But entirely sufficient for her purposes.
I did my best to express “Welcome to Paris,” but I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job of it. We weren’t really such great friends back home. But in the torrid atmosphere of Paris, a nodding acquaintance ripens quickly to intimacy. At any rate among Americans who have just come over. As for myself, I considered myself an old resident and Paris a quiet city in which to do a hard piece of work.
“I want to go to Zelli’s and see the Folies Bergère and oh! just everything. I’ll have to work fast because you see I’ve got only a week.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, only half interested, “and don’t forget le Louvre.”
“And I want to go to the Dôme and the Select and eat in the Dingo and at Foyot’s.”
“There are fine things in the Musée du Luxembourg,” I added. But she went right on:
“And I’ve got to see the Moulin Rouge and the Rat Mort.”
“And the Cluny,” I reminded her.
“Oh,” she said, “all the places I’ve read so much about. Montmartre and Montparnasse. And you’ll go with me.”
“I’ll go what?”
“You’ll go with me. Oh! I know you haven’t any money. Of course, I mean to pay for both of us.”
“I have no money,” I said severely, “and I have no time. I’m busy.”
“Busy with what?” she asked innocently.
“Why, my dear child, do you see all these books?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied, “but they’re written already, aren’t they? What are you doing, writing them again?”
“You may put it that way,” I said, somewhat offended by her refusal to be impressed.
She picked up a volume: “De Rerum Natura. Of things in nature,” she translated.
“Of the nature of things,” I corrected harshly.
“What’s the difference?” she asked. “Say you’ll come. Don’t be mean. There’s no one else in Paris whom I know. If you won’t take me around I’ll have to go rubbernecking with the rest of the tour’s gang. And I’m just sick of them.”
“And my work?” I reminded her.
“It’ll keep,” she said. “Besides, why don’t you write fiction? Then you’d make money. I read the swellest book on the boat coming over. Flaming Youth. Have you read it?”
“No,” I said with decision.
“You should. It’s about the new generation that’s growing up with freedom. I wish I could get mom and pop to see it. They just won’t understand. But you’re young, you ought to be with us. Be modern. Not a stick-in-the-mud.”
“It’s you who is the stick-in-the-mud,” I said. “Look, I’ll show you. Here,” I said, opening up a volume, “is a quotation from an ancient Egyptian papyrus. The young people no longer obey the old. The laws that ruled their fathers are trampled underfoot. They seek only their own pleasure and have no respect for religion. They dress indecently and their talk is full of impudence. Do you find yourself depicted there? There always was a younger generation and there always will be. And the younger element will always think it smart to thumb its nose at its elders.”
But my superior wisdom was of little avail against her persistence. We went to Zelli’s. The champagne was, as usual, excellent and expensive and all that, but I don’t care for it anyhow. I like beer. I remember reading in a German restaurant: Ein echter Deutscher mag kein Franzen nicht, doch seine Weine trinkt er gern. A real German can’t stand a frog, but he drinks French wine with pleasure. Many French feel the same way. They don’t like Germans but they like their beer well enough. In fact, the beers in Paris are never spoken of, but they are really fine. I ordered beer at Zelli’s. The waiter must have thought me crazy.
Eliane drank champagne. I forget how much. She danced with me. Then with a dark-skinned fellow, a Cuban probably. Then she decided we would go elsewhere—just when I had decided that we ought to be going home. The taxis would be charging double fare soon. Eliane had no such compunctions. She was beginning to find Paris a huge lark. So it is, for people who don’t have to count pennies and work hard for a Ph.D.
We went elsewhere and then elsewhere again and then somewhere else. I forget just where all we went. There are any number of places to go in Paris. You would think there are no such places in the United States. They are full of Americans. The waiters speak English, the band is American, the customers are from back home. What’s the use of being abroad? Now MS F.2839, on which I was writing my thesis, was not to be found in America. So I had to be in Paris. But dives? There are dives all over the world. And all over the world they are the same. That is because sin is the same all over the world. And sin is always the same. You might rack your brain from now till doomsday and you won’t manage to think up a new sin.
By three o’clock I was saying to Eliane that, well, now, this was enough. But she had learnt from someone that there is an all-night restaurant at Les Halles where one could have onion soup and she wanted that. So off we went and landed there. By that time I was myself a little hazy and there were two or three other people in the party. I can’t remember how they joined us or if they joined us at all. But one of them was a nice young man and he and I were soon deep in a discussion of mimicry. It was long since I had read anything on the subject, but in my drunkenness it was as fresh as if I had studied it only the day before.
“There’s the pinthea,” I said, “that imitates bird excrement, looks just like the dropping of a bird. There’s a harmless insect that imitates a wasp. And a beetle that looks like a dangerous ant.”
“Can’t you people ever stop that?” Eliane said. “God, what are you men made of?” Whereupon she rose and began to dance around by herself. We continued our talk. He had some very interesting points to make. I forget what they were. Then I noticed that Eliane was singing at the top of her voice.
“I’m hot,” she said, and quickly loosening her dress she slipped out of it and began to pirouette in her silken panties and brassière. The proprietor came running out and began to upbraid her and all of us as sales américains. But Eliane was not to be stopped so easily. She cast herself into the arms of a strange man and said: “Take me; I’m yours. I want to belong to you. To you only.”
He put his arms around her and led her over to his table, where she was at once at home on his lap, her arms slung tightly around his neck and their mouths as if glued together.
I went over to him and expostulated. Eliane promptly abandoned him and said to me, “Don’t be jealous, I’ll be yours. Yes, I’ll be you
rs. Take me with you quick.”
Right there I made my mistake. For what I said was: “Now come along, Eliane, get your clothes on and let me take you home.” I should have pretended to fall in with her plans. Instead I summoned her to be decent. That was precisely what she did not want to be.
“If you won’t have me, then anyone can have me. Who wants me?” she shouted, “Who wants me? I want a man! I’m a virgin and free and white and good-looking, too. I’ll show you,” and she began to tug at her brassière.
I tried to hold her arms, but she pushed me away. “Eliane!” I said.
The stranger on whose lap she had sat came up to her and said: “You know, darling, you are mine. You shall come with me. We belong to each other. All night long I shall worship your sweet body,” and other rubbish of the sort, which, it is true, I have said to women myself, but it does sound like rubbish when you hear someone else saying it. Things like that are not meant to be overheard. That’s boudoir talk and should be born and die there.
She took him seriously and melted onto his shoulder. Literally melted. Became limp all over and clove to his body. He pulled her away and talked her into putting on her dress. Then he took her downstairs and called for a taxi.
I have a faint notion that I kept following her all about and trying to make her see reason and reminding her of her mother and father. And I have the same notion that my friend of the mimicry discussion kept following me and talking to me all the time about insect mimicry.
I tried to get into the taxi with Eliane and her friend, but he pushed me out gently, she less gently. Well, such is the world.
And my friend was saying: “Unless you taste insects, you can have no clear conception of how far this mimicry goes: there’s a butterfly of the Euphoadra family that tastes just like one of the Aletis, without looking like it.”
“Haven’t you got things a little mixed?” I said. We had walked up to the Tower of Saint Jacques and were proceeding toward the Seine.
Just then a young girl stopped us and invited us to partake of her. My friend asked at once: “How much?”
She mentioned a sum. “That’s too much,” he said. She came down. Still he shook his head.
“Come,” she said finally, with a weary expression on her sallow face. “I don’t want any money. I just want you.”
Whereupon he took his watch out and said: “It’s too late. Sorry, some other day, if you don’t mind.” And taking me by the arm he started to move off. She caught and held me.
“For nothing,” she repeated with despair in her deep-sunk eyes. “For nothing,” she breathed. “For nothing. I don’t want any money. See, I’m rich.” She opened her purse and pulled out a roll of bills. Rolls of bills mean nothing much in France, but indeed she might have been rich. She was well dressed, I noticed. Nothing extravagant, but certainly not poorly. Her whole body trembled as if in fever. And the tremors coursed through her hand and communicated themselves to me.
My friend tore me away. As we hastened on, I looked back and saw her standing where we had left her, her hands covering her face.
“Why did you do that?” I asked. The action of my new acquaintance had disgusted me. He had meant only to tease her.
“I wanted to see how far down she would come. I’ve had them come down to two francs, but never to nothing. But her case can’t count because she wasn’t after money. She’s a pathological case.”
“I think that sort of sport is pretty cruel,” I said. I thought to myself: I’ll be glad to get rid of you.
“It’s a disease,” he went on to say. “They are as if possessed by a beast. Did you know that there is a new school of psychology that is returning to the old belief in possession?”
He waited for an answer so I said briefly: “No.” It would have done no good to say yes, he would have continued to impart his information to me anyhow.
“You’ve heard of Hyslop, of course?” he said. “Well, I should think he would have thought the two examples we saw tonight evidences of possession by the spirits of beasts.”
“Are you sure you’re right?” I asked. I was slightly skeptical of the security of his knowledge. It threatened like the Tower of Pisa.
“That was the ancient psychology, too. The Romans, for example, thought of insatiable sexual appetite as due to possession by a wolf.”
“I thought the billygoat was the symbol of sexual insatiability.”
“You are wrong,” he answered. “The word wolf is to be recognized in the Latin vulva, and in the word lupanar, a brothel, lupus being Latin for wolf. You know the Roman festival of the Lupereales. It would correspond to our carnival and was characterized by a complete abandonment of morals.”
“Wasn’t Lupercus another name for the god Pan?” I asked.
“So it was, but the name means the protector against the wolves. It had something to do with the nursing of Romulus and Remus by a she-wolf, but its sexual significance is shown by the fact that at the sacrifice of goats during this festival, the women who wished to be fruitful allowed themselves to be beaten with bloody strips cut out of the goat’s hide.”
“I find those theories usually built on too shallow a foundation,” I objected. “It sounds like Frazer and there’s nothing I care for less. Besides, there are theories for which I don’t care no matter how good they are.”
“You mistake me,” he returned, and went on to fill my ears with a lot of arguments which I have forgotten. I wasn’t particularly interested, and a one-sided discussion always annoys me. Moreover, I was thinking of Eliane. When would I see her again? What would she say to me then? As a matter of fact I didn’t see her until some years later and then she was married, I think to the man who drew her out of the restaurant. But I could not ask either of them. Delicacy forbade. It would have been a romantic conclusion to that night’s adventure, but I’m not sure I dare set it down as true.
But something did come of this night. As it was beginning to dawn, my friend, whom I hoped never to meet again, found his fountain of words drying up and said that he was going to his rooms in Rue de l’École de Médecine. Was I going that way? I was, or ought to have been, for I lived nearby, but I said no, I was going the other way, and so we separated at last.
I walked along the quai, then toward a little park at the river’s edge, and there I sat down on a bench. My mind was vacant, ringing yet with all the myriad sounds that had been poured into it, as one’s legs sometimes will tingle when one halts after a long walk.
Two men came along, each with a sack slung across his shoulder, and they began to lay out on the ground the spoils of a morning’s tour of inspection of the city’s rubbish. They broke electric bulbs, separated the brass base from the glass, and took out the tungsten filament. They had bottles and bits of string, and pieces of rag and buttons, and one of them had a roll of paper bound with a ribbon. He untied the ribbon and spread out the roll. There were several sheets laced together and evidently covered with writing. That was as much as I could see from where I was sitting.
I wondered what might be written on those bound sheets. Some schoolboy’s composition, no doubt: the proud effort of a youthful author with high aspirations. Or some commercial report, perhaps even of recent date, for the use of the typewriter is still unknown to many French businessmen. Then again it might be a really valuable production of a famous writer, a manuscript which would fetch a high price.
Bitten with curiosity I arose and walked over to the men. They looked up at me from their squattering position and answered my greeting. I made some general comments on the difficulties of earning a living. It will be recalled that at this time the franc was plunging like a wild horse, and a little reference to this secured me the men’s goodwill. There is no beggar so poor but that he likes to think his status involved in international finance, too.
Then I bent and picked up the manuscript, saying apologetically: “What is this machin-là?”
One of the men hastily assured me that sometimes such things brought in a
deal of money. The other, seeing which way the wind was blowing, chimed in with a rapid story of one Jean Something-or-other who had retired upon a single find of that nature. The first knew of even a more surprising case. In short, it seemed there was little doubt but that the men had struck it rich that morning and were quite prepared to retire on their prospective earnings.
One look, however, had made me keen to own the manuscript. That look had happened upon the words: The lupercal temples became the later brothels or lupanars. Still today in Italian, lupa signifies both wolf and wanton.
I offered one franc. The men shrugged their shoulders. They went on separating their bits of metal and rag and exchanged a few rapid remarks, in argot, which I could not catch.
Then I did a brave thing, though my heart pounded in fear. I threw the manuscript down at their feet and saying: “Bonjour, messieurs,” I walked off. I had taken ten steps, and with difficulty had restrained my desire to look back, when I heard one of them cry out:
“On vous le vend pour cinq, monsieur.”
I turned back, took the manuscript and said as calmly as I could: “Va, pour cinq,” and handed them a little bill of five francs.
Thus through Eliane, in a way, I came into possession of the Galliez report: thirty-four sheets of closely written French, an unsolicited defense of Sergeant Bertrand at the latter’s court-martial in 1871.
I had thought at first of publishing the defense as it stood and providing this curiosity with the necessary notes to help the reader to an understanding of the case. But on second thought, I determined to recast the whole material into a more vivid form, incorporating all the results of my own investigations. For I confess that the report by Aymar Galliez was of such compelling interest that I set aside my Ph.D. thesis for the moment and concentrated on it.
From its very first words, the manuscript exerts a curious fascination. Its wisdom is as strange as that of the pyramidologists of our day, those strangely learned men who prove at great length that the pyramids of Egypt were built to be a permanent storehouse of a scientific knowledge greater than that which we possess at present.
