The man who pronounced these words was an old and famous sea captain. To avoid inaccuracy, since it isn’t quite certain whether his name was Smith, Dupont, Rossi, Mueller, Gonzales or Ivanov, we shall call him So-and-So. However, let this be clear right away, he was not inciting and readying his crew for a sortie against some fierce tribe living in the Sonda Islands, which had—let us say—captured an imprudent comrade. No, So-and-So had uttered the words related above only to himself, in the comfortable and friendly atmosphere of his toilet, during his laborious daily evacuation.
In this place, sacred to men’s inner life and stimulating to their spirit, some have chosen to write their masterpieces, others to get over, by sublimating the most deep-seated feelings, the bitterness of amorous failure; but all persons double up on themselves to remember and meditate, and to try incessantly to understand the profound reasons of things and of their own souls. Thus So-and-So abandoned himself to memory and relived his heroic and mythical, adventurous and reckless life. Of course—let’s be clear about this, too—he couldn’t help but exaggerate a little. For, in that particular place, there sprang from his words and actions the image of an extraordinary So-and-So, not only polylingual and inured to all sorts of hardships, aware of all stratagems and emergencies, master of every situation and holder of the key to every eventuality (one of his specialties consisted in carrying to a conclusion the most unexpected and desperate enterprise by calling on elementary psychological motives or elementary physical laws which he manipulated with boundless deftness), but also wise in the most secret habits of beasts and men, in the most remote properties of vegetables and minerals of all latitudes, always smiling, and, like every respectable white hunter, with a smattering of scientific knowledge. If there was no fire, he produced it by mysterious rubbings; if there was no water, he extracted from the gum tree a “fresh and aromatic” liquid, and so on, and so on. Suppose that he found himself tied to a death stake with a mine beneath his feet and it was a question of putting out the already ignited fuse. Very well. While anyone else would have escaped by means of some sort of miraculous intervention or very complicated maneuver, which freed him from his bonds a split second before the fuse exploded the powder, So-and-So got out of the dangerous situation with a glob of spit directed with incredible precision, after having studied the direction of the wind and the specific weight of his saliva. Always wonderfully sure and calm, “endowed with exceptional self-possession and nerves of steel,” infallibly skillful in handling weapons of every kind, furnished with very sharp senses and a perceptivity that grew apace in proportion to the danger, unusual physical stamina, capable of any physical and mental exploit and of bearing every wound and pain without batting an eye, perpetually invulnerable amid ambushes, perils, traps, hot lead and poisoned arrows, surrounded by a hand-picked phalanx of adventurers with famous names—Acrocerauni, De La Tour d’Auvergne (whom he addressed informally as Tour d’Auvergne)—all his precious collaborators. He not only—I say—seemed a physically perfect man and a perfect man of action, but also, may God forgive him, a scholar in many branches of knowledge, in glottology, history, an expert in law and mathematics—inevitably—and even inclined to literary debates, although at bottom he considered them the fritterings of women and the activity of weaklings. From the heights of his seat in the toilet he had, with his oral talents, amazed a committee of glottologists chosen from among the most learned in the world, had lectured on the ancient Chinese dynasties, and had granted audiences to all kinds of petitioners anxious to be enlightened on matters of the heart and the law.
Agreed, he boasted. For example, in his heart he knew very well that he did not know Chinese; and yet, in the above mentioned speech, we have seen him speak to a sailor in this language. But imposture and mystification always contribute their share to the creation of all great men of action.
In general, one might say that the process of amplification and rounding out in the memory (secret pangs of conscience, shame?) ran parallel to another process, which the writer will call, provisionally, the decline of vocal potency. With the passing of the years, the speeches, lectures, and various stage appearances, at first declaimed in a loud voice and acted out with very statuesque poses, had little by little lost their vividness until they were only mumbled and hinted at and, in the end, withdrew somewhat further inside So-and-So’s mind. To such an extent that now it would be hard to say whether the words were murmured or simply imagined, and whether the poses were merely unrealized thoughts. His voice and mimicry seemed to have retreated beneath the cover of his skin.
To bring this unpleasant subject of the toilet to an end, the writer must point out that whereas every man of true sensitivity naturally desires in his soul to be able to stay in there as long as possible, as in every other calm and comfortable place where we can best be ourselves—but because of real need: in fact the reasons for this great comfort are wholly physical and therefore the writer feels it unnecessary to mention them. Those who want to employ as little time as possible in satisfying that “vulgar” need are simply brutes. The chronically constipated are poor devils who have lost all freshness and candor; while those who are only partially and occasionally constipated are the happiest men in the world—this emotion was especially acute in So-and-So. He, by dint of desiring the beneficial bodily stimulus, in difficult or mixed-up or sad circumstances, or on the eve of some important decision, had reached the point of identifying sadness, indecisiveness, the need for clarification or consolation with that very stimulus. For obvious reasons this equation was irreversible. As a consequence, a disappointment could act only as a purge, but under no circumstances could the need act on him in the same way as, say, the discovery of his wife’s adultery. On the other hand, how, during his adventurous and hazardous life, he had always succeeded in finding comfortable spots worthy of this description, is a mystery which the writer has never been able to solve.
In any event, an unacknowledged and malign weakness, which in itself could have placed him beside the giants and heroes of history and myth, would be enough to support the assertion—if there were still any need for this—that So-and-So was a great man of action. Like Achilles, like Samson and like Margutte, So-and-So had a weak spot. Spiders. Dread or religious horror, idiosyncrasy or abysmal attraction, the fact remains that So-and-So absolutely could not stand those tiny creatures. In ordinary speech one would say that “he was afraid of spiders.” Entering a room where in the darkest, most remote corner nested the fragile, light-legged enemy, So-and-So detected it at once. If someone was with him he would beg him to catch it and throw it away, but without hurting it;1 otherwise, staking his all—as he himself would say at such moments—he armed himself with the longest possible pole and began a so-to-speak hand to hand struggle with the enemy, slashing out with great cleaving, thwacking strokes. Once, when So-and-So was still a young boy and was exploring his large house at night—it is not quite clear under what circumstances—suddenly, beneath the steps of a wooden stairway which led to the attic, there it was: a huge gelatinous spider of a fleshy yellow color. At first dismayed, then perhaps heartened by the realization that he was indeed walking through the house at night, So-and-So thought that it would be appropriate to touch the spider with the flame of the candle and burn it: the spider gave a prodigious bound and vanished in the air. Well, our hero, who of course was walking about in his nightshirt with bare legs, was seized by such a dreadful frenzy because of the fear that the spider might have fallen on him that, for an indefinite time, he kept hopping convulsively from one foot to the other. Time passed, but whenever So-and-So happened to go up that stairway he shied like a colt. On another occasion a spider crept over So-and-So’s neck as he was sleeping and when he saw it later on the bed, he moved lock, stock and barrel to another room to sleep, or perhaps to stay awake, assailed by unspeakable nightmares. For a long time he had feared that the touch of a spider would be enough to stop his heart forever, but after that episode he used to mutter: “Yes, we have a pr
etty tough hide!”
It would take too long to relate all the details of So-and-So’s stormy relations with spiders. In any case, it is still a matter for wonder that during the course of the life described above, the captain succeeded in victoriously resisting the assaults of the inevitable, monstrous, tropical spiders; besides, his enemies would have required only a handful of spiders to disrupt his whole lofty strategy, and that handful would have produced a much more sensational effect than all of Pyrrhus’ elephants.
Such was the man who, having stood the other customary formalities, prepared to issue from the toilet. And right away a feeling of irritation overcame him: in fact, after having opened and shut the door, he had to undertake a thorough cleansing of his fingers, dirtied by contact with the doorknob. That knob was not especially dirty, but it was nevertheless the knob “of the toilet.” Just as when out walking So-and-So had to press all protruding cobblestones exactly with the center of his sole, so he could not bear the contact of dirty things. If it were a question of tactile contamination, cleansing was achieved by an opportune spit on the tip of one finger, which then moistened the other fingertips and the infected portion of the palm. If, however, the dirty object had simply been seen, or a scatalogical expression had been heard, the ceremony consisted in expelling by force the exhalations which had clung to the eyes and ears. As for these snorts from the mouth—kisses blown into the air in memory of the dear departed—all this exigent and painstaking ritual, other writers have already dealt with them and there is no point in repeating it here.
Therefore, So-and-So spat into his palm, rubbed his hands and, finally, having seen to all his inner needs, turned with a benevolent look to life.
It was understandable that he should do so; it was a crystalline day at the very beginning of spring, with a bright sun shining and everything clear, fresh, etched. So-and-So crossed the courtyard full of burgeoning greenery; and then, from the door of the living room, Rosalba came to meet him.
2
Louange aux femmes pour leur vie merveilleuse!
The sun had barely begun its heavenly passage. Rosalba was a little girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age. Wearing a robe, ready for her bath. “I’m ready, papa,” she in fact cried, as soon as she saw So-and-So. Indeed, it ought to be known that besides a sickly, yellow-eyed little son, left him by his deceased wife, So-and-So also had this Rosalba, who had been adopted at a tender age “to give a little sister to the baby boy,” and who believed that he was her father. With her help he hoped to carry out an old plan which had become possible only now that, as he said, he had retired from business (and by business he meant that astonishing life of his). The plan was to watch over and accompany the growth and flowering of a female body. (In fact he would add—“and of a soul”—but the writer takes the liberty of doubting this last assertion.) To achieve this, it had been necessary to raise the small creature along special lines, that is, banning a priori certain conventions and feelings of shame, avoiding dangerous contacts, etc. This was actually what So-and-So had taken pains to do and—one must admit—with the best of results. Thus, for example, he had accustomed his charge to take her daily bath in his presence: in this way he had the opportunity to observe day by day the development and changes in that frail body. What he expected from such observations or in the long run, that is, when her development had been fulfilled, and what he got out of it, the writer cannot imagine. But just as a mere suggestion, the writer will venture the hypothesis that it was not a matter of pure esthetic interest and that So-and-So would not have subjected himself to the trouble of watching a young girl’s bath every blessed day, if he did not have in prospect the moment when this child would begin to be a woman: in short, if he were not interested in seeing the fruit slowly ripen. But there was perhaps something more in that desire for close contact with the intimate details of a young girl’s life, something more subtle.
In any case, up till now everything had gone according to plan. And Rosalba (this could be seen when, with a naïve gesture, she let her robe fall to the floor of the bathroom) had become a superb young girl. With great, deep eyes, her short hair soft and shining. Perhaps a trifle thin. The bathroom was simply a kind of closet rearranged for the purpose, and the door was always flung open to let in the light: the first tepid rays of the sun, together with the trees and bushes two paces beyond the threshold, cast bluish reflections on her frail, already blooming body. That body was neither milky nor virginal (white is the brazen hue of modesty), but rather brownish, beyond virginity and sin. Because of its muted tone, the curve of her loins made one think of the sound of a flute. Her legs had grown a bit thicker and sturdy, to support a slight torso, her shoulders were slanted and a bit bent, so that her breasts, drooping somewhat, lapped against the light, nearly transparent skin over her ribs, while her belly was ample and concave, shaded by brown and purple and with blonde tints in the upper part, almost like sprouting vegetation. Pointed hips (they were the feature which immediately struck one about her). That body, as though still benumbed by the warmth of bed, filled with drowsiness and shivering in the cool air, blossomed without shame, leaning slightly to one side, like the body of one of those Madonnas carved from an elephant’s tusk. Without shame: Rosalba regarded her bath in her father’s presence and all her intimacies with him as an ordinary, habitual thing, and perhaps did not even suspect that other girls, especially those of her age, do not as a rule undress in front of their fathers. The absence of shame was precisely the circumstance which made it possible for So-and-So to realize his plan. He was therefore extremely careful not to arouse her hidden sensitivity. Holding his breath every instant, tense from the effort of not betraying himself, whether he entered her room as she was slipping on her thin underwear, or helped her to sponge the least accessible parts of her body, he always had to disguise vigilantly whatever carnal feeling might exist in his solicitude and give himself a natural, unconcerned aspect; if he had behaved otherwise, it would have furthered her unconscious formative process. In this inflexible surveillance of himself at each and every moment, lay perhaps So-and-So’s keenest, most complete pleasure. Even admitting this, and even admitting his awareness that each decisive intimacy might at bottom signify the destruction of that voluptuous familiarity, one must still ask where the devil he found the strength to resist the spell of that young body, especially now that the natural solution was on the point of frustrating all his watchfulness.
Perhaps one must also admit that the naturalness of his relations with the girl was not at all feigned, and that precisely in this was hidden the situation’s voluptuousness. Put another way, he was sure of having the girl in his power, wholly and for any purpose. It is enough to conceive a feeling of assurance for it to pass into a remote region of our soul, where it ends by becoming impersonal and generic, that is, beyond the particular object which gave rise to it. There are many people for whom it is enough to be able to do a thing for them no longer to have a need to do it, and to feel satisfied, as if they actually had done it. But all these explanations are not really necessary.
After her bath, Rosalba is now ready to begin her day. And at this point the writer would like to have at his disposal a palette covered with subdued crystalline colors, shining yet diaphanous. Of what is the day of a twelve or thirteen-year-old girl composed? No doubt of small, nameless events, laughter beneath the light gold of her lashes—as a woman poet of some distant land has sung. Unfortunately the writer does not possess either the mythical naïvete or the pure vigor of that poetess and therefore he will renounce, to his dishonor and regret, the describing of that laughter. The sun, however, continued its heavenly passage, described an even loftier arc, reached its peak, remained for an instant as if suspended, and then sadly began its descent toward the horizon; but let us not be troubled, for tomorrow it will rise again, tomorrow it will be the same old story.
Gogol's Wife Page 11
