"Here he comes!" she murmured suddenly, while women in front of them scurried about or knelt in front of the chairs.
Preceded by the two choir boys the canon entered, wearing a scarlet bonnet from which two buffalo horns of red cloth protruded. Durtal examined him as he marched toward the altar. He was tall, but not well built, his bulging chest being out of proportion to the rest of his body. His peeled forehead made one continuous line with his straight nose. The lips and cheeks bristled with that kind of hard, clumpy beard which old priests have who have always shaved themselves. The features were round and insinuating, the eyes, like apple pips, close together, phosphorescent. As a whole his face was evil and sly, but energetic, and the hard, fixed eyes were not the furtive, shifty orbs that Durtal had imagined.
The canon solemnly knelt before the altar, then mounted the steps and began to say mass. Durtal saw then that he had nothing on beneath his sacrificial habit. His black socks and his flesh bulging over the garters, attached high up on his legs, were plainly visible. The chasuble had the shape of an ordinary chasuble but was of the dark red colour of dried blood, and in the middle, in a triangle around which was an embroidered border of colchicum, savin, sorrel, and spurge, was the figure of a black billy-goat presenting his horns.
Docre made the genuflexions, the full-or half-length inclinations specified by the ritual. The kneeling choir boys sang the Latin responses in a crystalline voice which trilled on the ultimate syllables of the words.
"But it's a simple low mass," said Durtal to Mme. Chantelouve.
She shook her head. Indeed, at that moment the choir boys passed behind the altar and one of them brought back copper chafing-dishes, the other, censers, which they distributed to the congregation. All the women enveloped themselves in the smoke. Some held their heads right over the chafing-dishes and inhaled deeply, then, fainting, unlaced themselves, heaving raucous sighs.
The sacrifice ceased. The priest descended the steps backward, knelt on the last one, and in a sharp, tripidant voice cried:
"Master of Slanders, Dispenser of the benefits of crime, Administrator of sumptuous sins and great vices, Satan, thee we adore, reasonable God, just God!
"Superadmirable legate of false trances, thou receivest our beseeching tears; thou savest the honour of families by aborting wombs impregnated in the forgetfulness of the good orgasm; thou dost suggest to the mother the hastening of untimely birth, and thine obstetrics spares the still-born children the anguish of maturity, the contamination of original sin.
"Mainstay of the despairing Poor, Cordial of the Vanquished, it is thou who endowest them with hypocrisy, ingratitude, and stiff-neckedness, that they may defend themselves against the children of God, the Rich.
"Suzerain of Resentment, Accountant of Humiliations, Treasurer of old Hatreds, thou alone dost fertilize the brain of man whom injustice has crushed; thou breathest into him the idea of meditated vengeance, sure misdeeds; thou incitest him to murder; thou givest him the abundant joy of accomplished reprisals and permittest him to taste the intoxicating draught of the tears of which he is the cause.
"Hope of Virility, Anguish of the Empty Womb, thou dost not demand the bootless offering of chaste loins, thou dost not sing the praises of Lenten follies; thou alone receivest the carnal supplications and petitions of poor and avaricious families. Thou determinest the mother to sell her daughter, to give her son; thou aidest sterile and reprobate loves; Guardian of strident Neuroses, Leaden Tower of Hysteria, bloody Vase of Rape!
"Master, thy faithful servants, on their knees, implore thee and supplicate thee to satisfy them when they wish the torture of all those who love them and aid them; they supplicate thee to assure them the joy of delectable misdeeds unknown to justice, spells whose unknown origin baffles the reason of man; they ask, finally, glory, riches, power, of thee, King of the Disinherited, Son who art to overthrow the inexorable Father!"
Then Docre rose, and erect, with arms outstretched, vociferated in a ringing voice of hate:
"And thou, thou whom, in my quality of priest, I force, whether thou wilt or no, to descend into this host, to incarnate thyself in this bread, Jesus, Artisan of Hoaxes, Bandit of Homage, Robber of Affection, hear! Since the day when thou didst issue from the complaisant bowels of a Virgin, thou hast failed all thine engagements, belied all thy promises. Centuries have wept, awaiting thee, fugitive God, mute God! Thou wast to redeem man and thou hast not, thou wast to appear in thy glory, and thou sleepest. Go, lie, say to the wretch who appeals to thee, 'Hope, be patient, suffer; the hospital of souls will receive thee; the angels will assist thee; Heaven opens to thee.' Impostor! thou knowest well that the angels, disgusted at thine inertness, abandon thee! Thou wast to be the Interpreter of our plaints, the Chamberlain of our tears; thou wast to convey them to the Father and thou hast not done so, for this intercession would disturb thine eternal sleep of happy satiety.
"Thou hast forgotten the poverty thou didst preach, enamoured vassal of Banks! Thou hast seen the weak crushed beneath the press of profit; thou hast heard the death rattle of the timid, paralyzed by famine, of women disembowelled for a bit of bread, and thou hast caused the Chancery of thy Simoniacs, thy commercial representatives, thy Popes, to answer by dilatory excuses and evasive promises, sacristy Shyster, huckster God!
"Master, whose inconceivable ferocity engenders life and inflicts it on the innocent whom thou darest damn-in the name of what original sin?-whom thou darest punish-by the virtue of what covenants?-we would have thee confess thine impudent cheats, thine inexpiable crimes! We would drive deeper the nails into thy hands, press down the crown of thorns upon thy brow, bring blood and water from the dry wounds of thy sides.
"And that we can and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, Profaner of ample vices, Abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, do-nothing King, coward God!" "Amen!" trilled the soprano voices of the choir boys.
Durtal listened in amazement to this torrent of blasphemies and insults. The foulness of the priest stupefied him. A silence succeeded the litany. The chapel was foggy with the smoke of the censers. The women, hitherto taciturn, flustered now, as, remounting the altar, the canon turned toward them and blessed them with his left hand in a sweeping gesture. And suddenly the choir boys tinkled the prayer bells.
It was a signal. The women fell to the carpet and writhed. One of them seemed to be worked by a spring. She threw herself prone and waved her legs in the air. Another, suddenly struck by a hideous strabism, clucked, then becoming tongue-tied stood with her mouth open, the tongue turned back, the tip cleaving to the palate. Another, inflated, livid, her pupils dilated, lolled her head back over her shoulders, then jerked it brusquely erect and belaboured herself, tearing her breast with her nails. Another, sprawling on her back, undid her skirts, drew forth a rag, enormous, meteorized; then her face twisted into a horrible grimace, and her tongue, which she could not control, stuck out, bitten at the edges, harrowed by red teeth, from a bloody mouth.
Suddenly Durtal rose, and now he heard and saw Docre distinctly.
Docre contemplated the Christ surmounting the tabernacle, and with arms spread wide apart he spewed forth frightful insults, and, at the end of his forces, muttered the billingsgate of a drunken cabman. One of the choir boys knelt before him with his back toward the altar. A shudder ran around the priest's spine. In a solemn but jerky voice he said, "Hoc est enim corpus meum," then, instead of kneeling, after the consecration, before the precious Body, he faced the congregation, and appeared tumefied, haggard, dripping with sweat. He staggered between the two choir boys, who, raising the chasuble, displayed his naked belly. Docre made a few passes and the host sailed, tainted and soiled, over the steps.
Durtal felt himself shudder. A whirlwind of hysteria shook the room. While the choir boys sprinkled holy water on the pontiff's nakedness, women rushed upon the Eucharist and, grovelling in front of the altar, clawed from the bread humid particles and drank and ate divine ordure.
Another wo
man, curled up over a crucifix, emitted a rending laugh, then cried to Docre, "Father, father!" A crone tore her hair, leapt, whirled around and around as on a pivot and fell over beside a young girl who, huddled to the wall, was writhing in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, weeping, and spitting out frightful blasphemies. And Durtal, terrified, saw through the fog the red horns of Docre, who, seated now, frothing with rage, was chewing up sacramental wafers, taking them out of his mouth, wiping himself with them, and distributing them to the women, who ground them underfoot, howling, or fell over each other struggling to get hold of them and violate them.
The place was simply a madhouse, a monstrous pandemonium of prostitutes and maniacs. Now, while the choir boys gave themselves to the men, and while the woman who owned the chapel, mounted the altar caught hold of the phallus of the Christ with one hand and with the other held a chalice between "His" naked legs, a little girl, who hitherto had not budged, suddenly bent over forward and howled, howled like a dog. Overcome with disgust, nearly asphyxiated, Durtal wanted to flee. He looked for Hyacinthe. She was no longer at his side. He finally caught sight of her close to the canon and, stepping over the writhing bodies on the floor, he went to her. With quivering nostrils she was inhaling the effluvia of the perfumes and of the couples.
"The sabbatic odour!" she said to him between clenched teeth, in a strangled voice.
"Here, let's get out of this!"
She seemed to wake, hesitated a moment, then without answering she followed him. He elbowed his way through the crowd, jostling women whose protruding teeth were ready to bite. He pushed Mme. Chantelouve to the door, crossed the court, traversed the vestibule, and, finding the portress' lodge empty, he drew the cord and found himself in the street.
There he stopped and drew the fresh air deep into his lungs. Hyacinthe, motionless, dizzy, huddled to the wall away from him.
He looked at her. "Confess that you would like to go in there again."
"No," she said with an effort. "These scenes shatter me. I am in a daze. I must have a glass of water."
And she went up the street, leaning on him, straight to the wine shop, which was open. It was an ignoble lair, a little room with tables and wooden benches, a zinc counter, cheap bar fixtures, and blue-stained wooden pitchers; in the ceiling a U-shaped gas bracket. Two pick-and-shovel labourers were playing cards. They turned around and laughed. The proprietor took the excessively short-stemmed pipe from his mouth and spat into the sawdust. He seemed not at all surprised to see this fashionably gowned woman in his dive. Durtal, who was watching him, thought he surprised an understanding look exchanged by the proprietor and the woman.
The proprietor lighted a candle and mumbled into Durtal's ear, "Monsieur, you can't drink here with these people watching. I'll take you to a room where you can be alone."
"Hmmm," said Durtal to Hyacinthe, who was penetrating the mysteries of a spiral staircase, "A lot of fuss for a glass of water!"
But she had already entered a musty room. The paper was peeling from the walls, which were nearly covered with pictures torn out of illustrated weeklies and tacked up with hairpins. The floor was all in pieces. There were a wooden bed without any curtains, a chamber pot with a piece broken out of the side, a wash bowl and two chairs.
The man brought a decanter of gin, a large one of water, some sugar, and glasses, then went downstairs.
Her eyes were sombre, mad. She enlaced Durtal.
"No!" he shouted, furious at having fallen into this trap. "I've had enough of that. It's late. Your husband is waiting for you. It's time for you to go back to him-"
She did not even hear him.
"I want you," she said, and she took him treacherously and obliged him to desire her. She disrobed, threw her skirts on the floor, opened wide the abominable couch, and raising her chemise in the back she rubbed her spine up and down over the coarse grain of the sheets. A look of swooning ecstasy was in her eyes and a smile of joy on her lips.
She seized him, and, with ghoulish fury, dragged him into obscenities of whose existence he had never dreamed. Suddenly, when he was able to escape, he shuddered, for he perceived that the bed was strewn with fragments of hosts.
"Oh, you fill me with horror! Dress, and let's get out of here."
While, with a faraway look in her eyes, she was silently putting on her clothes, he sat down on a chair. The fetidness of the room nauseated him. Then, too-he was not absolutely convinced of Transubstantiation-he did not believe very firmly that the Saviour resided in that soiled bread-but-In spite of himself, the sacrilege he had involuntarily participated in saddened him.
"Suppose it were true," he said to himself, "that the Presence were real, as Hyacinthe and that miserable priest attest-No, decidedly, I have had enough. I am through. The occasion is timely for me to break with this creature whom from our very first interview I have only tolerated, and I'm going to seize the opportunity."
Below, in the dive, he had to face the knowing smiles of the labourers. He paid, and without waiting for his change, he fled. They reached the rue de Vaugirard and he hailed a cab.
As they were whirled along they sat lost in their thoughts, not looking at each other.
"Soon?" asked Mme. Chantelouve, in an almost timid tone when he left her at her door.
"No," he answered. "We have nothing in common. You wish everything and I wish nothing. Better break. We might drag out our relation, but it would finally terminate in recrimination and bitterness. Oh, and then-after what happened this evening, no! Understand me? No!"
And he gave the cabman his address and huddled himself into the furthest corner of the fiacre.
CHAPTER XX
"He doesn't lead a humdrum life, that canon!" said Des Hermies, when Durtal had related to him the details of the Black Mass. "It's a veritable seraglio of hystero-epileptics and erotomaniacs that he has formed for himself. But his vices lack warmth. Certainly, in the matter of contumelious blasphemies, of sacrilegious atrocities, and sensual excitation, this priest may seem to have exceeded the limits, to be almost unique. But the bloody and investuous side of the old sabbats is wanting. Docre is, we must admit, greatly inferior to Gilles de Rais. His works are incomplete, insipid; weak, if I may say so."
"I like that. You know it isn't easy to procure children whom one may disembowel with impunity. The parents would raise a row and the police would interfere."
"Yes, and it is to difficulties of this sort that we must evidently attribute the bloodless celebration of the Black Mass. But I am thinking just now of the women you described, the ones that put their heads over the chafing-dishes to drink in the smoke of the burning resin. They employ the procedure of the Aissaouas, who hold their heads over the braseros whenever the catalepsy necessary to their orgies is slow in coming. As for the other phenomena you cite, they are known in the hospitals, and except as symptoms of the demoniac effluence they teach us nothing new. Now another thing. Not a word of this to Carhaix, because he would be quite capable of closing his door in your face if he knew you had been present at an office in honour of Satan."
They went downstairs from Durtal's apartment and walked along toward the tower of Saint Sulpice.
"I didn't bring anything to eat, because you said you would look after that," said Durtal, "but this morning I sent Mme. Carhaix-in lieu of desserts and wine-some real Dutch gingerbread, and a couple of rather surprising liqueurs, an elixir of life which we shall take, by way of appetizer, before the repast, and a flask of crême de céléri. I have discovered an honest distiller."
"Impossible!"
"You shall see. This elixir of life is manufactured from Socotra aloes, little cardamom, saffron, myrrh, and a heap of other aromatics. It's inhumanly bitter, but it's exquisite."
"I am anxious to taste it. The least we can do is fête Gévingey a little on his deliverance."
"Have you seen him?"
"Yes. He's looking fine. We'll make him tell us about his cure."
"I keep wondering what he lives on."
"On what his astrological skill brings him."
"Then there are rich people who have their horoscopes cast?"
"We must hope so. To tell you the truth, I think Gévingey is not in very easy circumstances. Under the Empire he was astrologer to the Empress, who was very superstitious and had faith-as did Napoleon, for that matter-in predictions and fortune telling, but since the fall of the Empire I think Gévingey's situation has changed a good deal for the worse. Nevertheless he passes for being the only man in France who has preserved the secrets of Cornelius Agrippa, Cremona, Ruggieri, Gauric, Sinibald the Swordsman, and Tritemius."
While discoursing they had climbed the stair and arrived at the bell-ringer's door.
The astrologer was already there and the table was set. All grimaced a bit as they tasted the black and active liqueur which Durtal poured.
Joyous to have all her family about her, Mama Carhaix brought the rich soup. She filled the plates.
When a dish of vegetables was passed and Durtal chose a leek, Des Hermies said, laughing, "Look out! Porta, a thaumaturge of the late sixteenth century, informs us that this plant, long considered an emblem of virility, perturbs the quietude of the most chaste."
"Don't listen to him," said the bell-ringer's wife. "And you, Monsieur Gévingey, some carrots?"
Durtal looked at the astrologer. His head still looked like a sugar-loaf, his hair was the same faded, dirty brown of hydroquinine or ipecac powders, his bird eyes had the same startled look, his enormous hands were covered with the same phalanx of rings, he had the same obsequious and imposing manner, and sacerdotal tone, but he was freshened up considerably, the wrinkles had gone out of his skin, and his eyes were brighter, since his visit to Lyons.
Durtal congratulated him on the happy result of the treatment.
Down There (Là-Bas) Page 24
