Nora, The Ape-Woman

by Félicien Champsaur

  “My dear friends, it’s a real find you’ve made there,” Ernest Paris said to them. “But fundamentally, what is this Nora? Woman or ape? I haven’t yet made up my mind.”

  “Me neither,” replied the actress, smiling.

  Meanwhile, on the other side, in the doctors’ box, a veritable emotion was added to the enthusiasm that was transporting the hall.

  “Dr. Goldry will be glad to know that we’ve found ‘his’ girl—who’s also a little ours.”

  “All that remains now to marry her off,” said Clemenceau. “It won’t be very easy, in that naked profession.”

  “Perhaps we can utilize her for further experiments,” said Marc Vanel.

  “When one creates a new plaything,” said the facetious Jean Fortin, “it’s necessary to amuse oneself with it or break it to see what there is inside.” He turned to Clemenceau. “How do you find the new star, Georges?”

  “Disconcerting. Is she a woman or an animal?”

  “Say: a she-ape who has become a woman, and you’ll have the truth of it.”

  II. A Corner of the Veil

  The performance of the revue and its fantastic ballet nègre attracted increasingly enthusiastic crowds to the Folies Bergère. Success, for a ballerina, is not limited to the theater; on the artistic side, there is the woman and the attraction of a unique personality. Nora was not a conventional beauty, to be sure; she was better, for she symbolized marvelously a kind of animal voluptuousness, ancestral and vicious.

  One sensed that that body, so supple and simultaneously so muscular, must be a splendid instrument of lust. Thus, love letters, flowers and jewels showered the artiste. Nora was not grimly virtuous, and her temperament, which was rather ardent, was not opposed to encounters in which her pleasure and interest had everything to gain. On the advice of her friend Maud, however, she made the decision to find and adopt a first rate maintainer, and her choice fell on Jules Ducon, one of those whom it is conventional to call the nouveau riche, because the World War permitted them, thanks to furnishing materials of war, to multiply a hundredfold in five years of excessive wastage, a capital that was already very tidy.

  Jules Ducon was certainly not an elite intelligence, not even in the second rank, but he had what is called, a trifle lightly, “a genius for business.” In ordinary times, he would doubtless have prospered, but would have taken twenty years to amass a few hundred thousand francs; in five years of war he had heaped up millions. Still young, he was fifty in 1928. Prudently, as soon as hostilities ended, he had liquidated his francs and sent his capital abroad in order to convert it into dollars, still equivalent. Then he traveled, made his world tour, and eventually returned to Paris, where, henceforth, he could live handsomely on dollars when the victorious franc was no longer worth more than four sous, and lead a sumptuous life.

  From then on he was at all fêtes, and did not refuse himself any fantasy, even the most costly—fantasies which, in any case, did not surpass a meager radius; Jules Ducon was too ignorant and too inartistic to spend his money on intellectual pleasures. For a being thus made, Nora was bound to have an immense attraction: an attraction that simultaneously tempted his vanity and his love of all sensualities. He was, in consequence, one of the most ardent in seeking to obtain the favors of the star, and the latter, who was not blinded by passion, imposed her conditions, to which he subscribed immediately, with urgency. That is why Nora was installed in a charming little town house in the Rue Spontini.

  For the moment, she was in the company of her intimate friend Maud Macfield, a charmer and debauched bacheloress of masculine mores. Both were extended on a low divan, covered in a sumptuous Chinese fabric, they were chatting and smoking Egyptian cigarettes.

  “Yes,” said Nora, “Jules is showing himself to be sufficiently generous, and I don’t regret having favored him, all the more so as I believe that I’ll be in Paris for some time. I’ve received very tempting offers from various impresarios, but I like it here, and I shan’t leave France until I’ve exhausted all my fantasies here, even though that might perhaps annoy you, the nomad millionaires who likes to parade your pleasures across the world. Furthermore, I have a kind of presentiment that it’s in France that I shall finally solve the enigma of my life.”

  “An enigma? A mystery?” said the American woman, interested. “What is it, then? In the six months that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing you, I haven’t seen anything peculiar in your existence.”

  “How old do you think I am?” asked Nora, abruptly.

  “I don’t know. About twenty.”

  “When my father put me in the convent from which I ran away, he declared that I was ten years old. I stayed in the convent for two years, which makes twelve. Since that time, five years have gone by. I am, therefore still a minor and it’s legally impossible for me to enter into legal contracts. If Paul Derval8 hadn’t been content with my physical appearance and had asked for my birth certificate, he wouldn’t have hired me. To that abnormal growth, add this...”

  The lovely girl kicked off the slipper in which she was shod, and, raising her foot to Maud’s face, delicately took her nose between the thumb and forefinger.

  “What do you say to that?”

  “It’s a strange anomaly…but there are, in certain individuals, such bizarre phenomena…especially in pregnant women. A look, as common parlance has it.”

  “Perhaps,” said Nora, thoughtfully. “In fact, I hadn’t thought of that. But there are within me aspirations to another, freer life—and more primitive too, but which attracts me nevertheless. At times I have crazy impulses to break, to bite...and, look at this!”

  With her fingers, she pushed back her lips, revealing a jaw with magnificent teeth, but somewhat beyond the normal for size and strength. The canines, especially, stood out more forcefully than the rest. Nora picked up the silver sugar-tongs from the table, and without apparent effort, snapped them in two between her incisors.

  “Damn!” exclaimed Maud. “I wouldn’t like to be bitten by you! But that confirms my hypothesis: your mother, when pregnant, must have seen a great ape in some menagerie, In any case two prehensile feet are less important than a wine-stain in the middle of the face. But you were going, just now, to tell me your life-story. We have time—do it, and if, as you say, there’s something mysterious about it, perhaps I can help you to clarify it.”

  “My life only really commences with my entry to the convent. What happened before that has not left me any memory. My father, I assume, was a physician, since the Mother Superior referred to him as ‘Doctor.’ I have even forgotten some of the events in which I took part at the convent. I learned easily, but my memory was very short, and it was only later that it began to acquire a certain fixity. Thus, all I remember about my father is his surname, because it’s mine: Nora Goldry.

  “It’s true that the Doctor didn’t come back to the convent to see me—he was traveling, it seems—but he sent my boarding fees regularly. Although I was one of the youngest pupils, I was the strongest and the most developed, and caused the good nuns considerable concern, because my intelligence surpassed the norm for girls of my age. The mystique of the milieu threw me into religious transports bordering on hysteria; the priest who confessed us every week further encouraged that tendency to religious exaltation, and I might perhaps have become a Saint Theresa or a Marie Alacoque,9 if a fortunate children’s book hadn’t enabled me to escape the influence of my confessor.

  “What tempted me in religion was the adoration of a beautiful Christ, everywhere displayed before our eyes in his human nudity. It was not God that I adored. The role of a supreme being making man in order to redeem a perverted humankind seemed to me rather puerile; in spite of its Christian education my mind was sufficiently critical; but I frankly adored the human form of that beautiful Christ and sensed an irresistible need to apply my flesh to it, emotionally. In many countries, all the cathedrals and all the chapels, women have a naked and suffering man to whom they can offer their desires and
their unrealized dreams in that way...”

  There was a brief silence, and the Nora went on:

  “A little book given to me by a comrade deflected my thoughts completely. It was Madame d’Aulnoy’s Contes de fées.10 From then on, the beautiful Christ gave way to an imaginary being who pleased me all the more because nothing prevented me from giving him the face and form of the god of my dreams. In fact, my ‘Prince Charming’ didn’t appear to me in velvet or silk. I represented him naked; but that didn’t prevent me from giving him all the qualities of a prince, a friend of god.

  “Oh, those enchantresses, good or wicked—how I loved them! How superior I found them to the saints who were offered to us as examples, with their futile martyrdoms and their uninteresting miracles. They, at least, were cheerful and fun-loving, they had affection for enticing princes and pretty princesses. Sometimes, they even protected a poor but handsome boy; they made him a king. I had an ardent imagination; how many themes I embroidered on fantastic adventures! I too was worthy of the sympathy of a good enchantress and the love of a king, of a Prince Charming. From then on, my religious mysticism was mingled with that fantastic world of fable. I prayed ardently to the beautiful Christ, but it was for him to descend from his cross and come with me to frolic through the world of the imagination.

  “I wearied of that waiting, in which I found nothing but an exasperation of senses already awake, and since my idol was obstinate in remaining on his perch, I became determined to go into the world to search for my ideal: Prince Charming. Of the world, I knew nothing. Geographical instruction at the convent was extremely summary, my idea of it was based more on the spirit of the stories. I saw nothing there but magnificent flowers, shady woods populated by benevolent or mischievous spirits, enchantresses traveling in nacreous chariots drawn by doves or butterflies. Even the animals there were enchanted, and could speak; the streams were milk and honey. In brief, for me, exterior life ought to be a perpetual enchantment,

  “I ruminated my escape. Thanks to my strength, my agility and my four hands, it wasn’t difficult. One beautiful moonlit night, I climbed an oak tree whose branches surpassed the walls of the convent. I had knotted together several of the ropes we used for skipping. In a matter of minutes I was outside and set forth into the country. I had no idea of the location of the convent; all that I knew, from my companions, was that it was situated between Toulouse and Bordeaux.

  “I walked until sunrise. Until then I had been following a dusty main road that did not respond very well to my caprice, but as I knew that it is by the most arduous routes that one arrives at lands of Enchantment, I was very hopeful.

  “I was then in the heart of the country, a desert of rocks and clumps of woods; in the distance, high mountains were visible, where I seemed to see the silhouettes of medieval castles. I left the road to head toward those fantastic palaces in a straight line. The sun rose and became increasingly ardent. My feet, poorly protected by light shoes, began to hurt, and, very prosaically, I was drowsy, not having closed my eyes for twenty-four hours. As I came around a hillock, I suddenly caught sight of a hut made of branches and interlaced reeds and covered in thatch. I ran toward it, hoping to encounter the protective spirit I was seeking. There was no one there, but a thick litter of straw covered the floor. I fell into it, exhausted, and immediately went to sleep.

  “I was woken up by a hand that was trying to be gentle. A tall man clad in a coarse jacket, knee-breeches and frayed leather gaiters was standing over me.

  “‘Hey, kid! What are you doing here?’

  “I only half-understood his dialect. The man did not seem very old, but his face, continually baked by the sun, did not give the impression of a Prince Charming. He was more like one of those rural spirits who take on a rustic appearance to test the qualities and defects of young women they encounter.

  “‘My name is Nora, Monsieur Genie, and I’ve left the convent to look for Prince Charming.’

  “The man started to laugh and sat down casually beside me. He was more accustomed to his local idiom than the French language, but he didn’t have much difficulty with what he wanted to say to me. He was the initiator, my first lover. He was a herdsman in the service of his commune and was taking a flock of goats through the commons. At a certain time, when the kids were weaned, Janitou went to Bordeaux with thirty goats and sold the milk from door to door. He didn’t make very much in that trade, but as he was violently smitten with me, his passion inspired him to evil thoughts. Until then he’d kept me in his cabin, bringing me bread and whatever he could steal from the farm: eggs, chickens or rabbits.

  “That half-savage existence didn’t displease me, and I let myself go in that sufficiently varied life, because, as well as sex with Janitou, there were crazy parties with the two dogs and the goats. Then came the time for the journey to Bordeaux. The herdsman couldn’t leave me in the hut, hidden from the farmer; I went with the goatherd, sharing his nomadic life. He lodged me in the house of an old woman outside the city, and then went about his business. The sojourn in Bordeaux lasted a month or six weeks, after which he was supposed to return to the farm taking is receipts, and come back again until the milk ran out. When the work was finished, though, he didn’t take the money back to his employer. He sold the goats, and with the produce of the sale we ran away to Spain.

  “We lived happily for a while. Janitou bought me new clothes, and even a few pieces of jewelry. The situation improved, but it was still a long way from my dreams. When the resources diminished, Janitou took up smuggling, and I followed him through the mountains enthusiastically. Unfortunately for him, Janitou had companions, and they didn’t take long to start pursuing me with their somewhat savage gallantries. Among them there was one very handsome fellow, Peppe Veno. He perceived that I wasn’t indifferent to him, and proved to me that I was right to prefer him to the former goatherd. Janitou saw that; there was a fight, and the herdsman remained on the roadside, stabbed in the side. Peppe was obliged to flee, and I was devoid of a gallant.

  “Oh, not for long! The brother of our innkeeper came to spend his leave at the inn—he was in the merchant navy. When he had to go back to his ship I went with him to Corogne, where it was docked. He came to an understanding with the captain, a lusty fellow, and I embarked for Buenos Aires, the destination of the voyage. During the crossing I was the queen of the ship, dividing my favors between Francesco and the captain.

  “Why did I go to America? I don’t really know. The desire to see something new, and perhaps to encounter, by that means, the land of my dreams. I sensed that the Enchantresses had deserted the old continent.

  “Then there was a life of adventures, passing from one man to another according to circumstance: from Buenos Aires to Rio, from Brazil to Caracas, from Venezuela to the Antilles. In Cuba, I met a minstrel troop who took me with them; it was there that I acquired my first notions of dancing, for which I became passionate. With them, I set out for Mexico, where dancing is considered as an art.

  “Then, there was the United States. Having left my black companions, I ran around the dives of Baltimore, dancing in sailors’ cabarets. It was in one of those dens of cut-throats that William Armstrong, the great impresario from Boston, found me. From then on, there was success. Then, during her tour of America, Cécile Borel took an interest in me, and I came to Europe with her. You know the rest...”

  “A beautiful life,” said the American woman, “well worth the trouble of being lived. I envy you, my dear Nora, but apart from the singularity of your conformity, I don’t see anything mysterious in your existence, and it would be easy enough to find your family by writing to the convent.”

  “But I don’t know the name of the convent; all that I know is that it’s located in Gascony. Then again, do you think that my father would be very pleased to find me again as I am? No. Besides which, I’ve lost all memory of him. Later, if I make myself an honorable life—in terms of social convention—perhaps I’ll try to find him.”

  “You�
��re right—I’m glad. This way, you’ll remain entirely mine.”

  “You’re mistaken, Maud, and you’re trying to mislead me. Our friendship is too recent and has too much sensuality and lust in it to last long. As I’ve had the frankness to confess, I’ve had numerous lovers, but I haven’t yet loved anyone.”

  “What idea do you have of love, Nora? Are you searching for something other than sensual satisfaction? I desire you, therefore I love you.”

  “No,” said Nora, “there’s something else, and that something else isn’t lust. It’s that ideal, that labor of our spirit, that makes us seek the impossible. It’s akin to the Prince Charming and the Christ of my childhood: very pure images, with which nothing imperfect is confused. They’re within me: that’s what love is.”

  “A love that isn’t dangerous for anyone. Your flesh is too vibrant to be content with a dream.”

  “I recognize that, but the dream makes me scornful of the reality.

  “Personally,” said the American woman, “I don’t fatigue my brain with that sort of metaphysics. I see a beautiful animal, and find it ravishing!”

  “Because you’ve never been in love. So long as I live, I shall love my Prince Charming.”

  “And as you’ll never find him, you’ll continue to love with your senses.”

  “One only loves with the mind; the other thing is animality.”

  “But it’s unhealthy, what’s happening to you. I no longer recognize you today.”

  “It’s remembering the past that’s enlightened me. I’ve seen myself again, I’ve relived the sensations of old, and that has opened my eyes. I understand the ideal love of those religious fanatics better now; in their chastity they find a tenderness stronger than their bestial sensuality.”