I had drawn nearer to Laurence; she was speaking beside my face. She knew, like all women, even those who have less experience, what minute the man who is next to her will choose to take her in his arms. She did not draw away from me. The words “the first man to come along” were still on her lips when I kissed her, and the savor of the kiss was spoiled by them. Those words remained between us. It seemed to me that it would be the first man who came along, who would deceive her, later, with the words that are always the same and draw their power, I believe, from their banality.
And my deceit was double. I was also deceiving myself. For my bitterness in being the first to come along was simulated. I knew that ulterior remorse would give way to a serene tranquility because of those words. I knew that I would say to myself later, in weighing the pros and cons with some confidant:
“If it hadn’t been me it would have been someone else. She told me so herself.”
When we quit the abandoned house and I darted a last glance at the charred walls, I found that it gave an impression of sadness greater than half an hour before. In spite of the plans made, the promises exchanged, I had the sentiment of an incomplete victory.
I look around to see whether there might be any sign, a face traced on a tree or in the sky, which would have given all that a Luciferian significance—but no; nature, which is full of speech and images when one asks nothing of her, is determinedly mute when one interrogates her.
I have difficulty analyzing what happened within me during that epoch. The memory of the evening spent with Lévy and the pact concluded had given me thereafter a sort of anxiety. That anxiety was replaced by delight. That was not clear within me. I dared not admit it to myself. I said to myself:
The month of September has a singularly favorable influence in the Midi. I’ve never had such a plenitude of the body and mind. I’ve read, I don’t know where, that the vegetal effluvia that emerge from the trees accord by sympathy with the people who respire them, and augment their vitality. I’m benefiting from the force distributed by the pines and the eucalyptus, and my soul is growing because of their subtle virtue.
But I gradually sensed that my satisfaction with life had another cause. A protection extended over me. It was sufficient for me to formulate wishes for them to be realized. When I looked at myself in a mirror, I found myself abnormally young. It seemed to me that certain wrinkles to either side of the mouth that had afflicted me by their depth a few months earlier had now almost disappeared. It was true that my hair was graying at the temples, but how abundant it still was! How forcefully it emerged from my head! I was not far from believing that it was multiplying under the action of a new sap. In any case, there was a youth in my soul, perhaps more joyful than that of the twentieth year.
And after all, what if the pact had some reality? I had until now only considered it in its most puerile aspect. When one has been raised in the Catholic religion, the idea of the Devil, the spirit of evil, is inseparable from pitchforks, horns and eternal flames, but those are images for the use of old women and little children. It was possible that I had concluded a pact with an unknown force capable of giving me during my life whatever it pleased me to request. What I had to bring it in exchange remained vague. Was it my soul? I wasn’t sure of the immortality of the soul. Wisdom commanded me not to think about the part that I brought to the bargain. It instructed me to profit from the favorable turn that events had taken in my regard. To profit from it, it was necessary to desire, to possess, to enjoy. Yes, that must be the secret. It was necessary to desire as much as possible. The more I desired, the more would be given to me.
I recalled that in my research on pacts I had learned what had happened to a certain Abbé Duncanius.4 He had encountered a nondescript little lame man in a sunken road and in exchange for his soul—or, rather, the promise of his soul—he had received a book, a simple book, in mediocre binding, the ancient narrator specified. That book was a treatise on architecture. Now, Abbé Duncanius, who was old, had nourished since his youth the dream of building. He had been prevented from doing so by his ignorance. Thanks to the book, he edified convents churches and abbeys. His entire country was covered with them, and became an expanse of architectures of every sort. And in the middle of them was a tower so high that the Devil was unable to go to seek him there. In any case, those stories of pacts always finished like that. The man who had sold himself did not keep his word, and found a ruse to cheat the Devil. It was necessary to comprehend the tower of Abbé Duncanius in a symbolic fashion. I too, by a sublime leap of my thought, would succeed in launching myself so high toward the heavens that the angel of evil would not be able to do anything against me. But before then, I would have built innumerable monuments to pleasure and I would have lived in them.
I was soon at the point of saying to myself: I’m protected by Lucifer, and congratulating myself on that protection.
I knew that Kotzebue drank, but I had never seen him drink as much as on that day. I also knew that he didn’t like me, but I never saw his hostility in my regard burst forth so liberally.
I had met him at about six o’clock on the road not far from his hotel; his face had expressed by a grimace that encountering me did not give him pleasure. Then he had changed his mind and he said to me familiarly:
“Come and have a cocktail at the hotel bar.”
I had followed him. At first he talked to me with gravity about Essenes, the importance of the group, Simon Magus and the mission of which he believed himself to be the heir. I understood that that was only the prelude to other matters. He asked me whether I knew the story of Helen and Simon. I knew it and told him that many people attributed a mythical character to it. Helen would have been a representation of the moon and Simon Magus would have symbolized the sun.
He burst out laughing with an excessively exaggerated scorn, in order not to hide his evident intention to vex me, and he ordered a second cocktail for himself and for me.
Helen had really existed. The woman whom Simon Magus called “the divine thought of God” had been found by him in a brothel in Tyre.5 She was incomparably beautiful and offered herself innocently to the mariners of the port. In order for the divine thought to penetrate into the hearts of man, it was necessary that it be symbolized by a woman, and that the woman in question deliver herself to them. Simon Magus had understood that. In the course of sacred agapes he sometimes offered his disciples the body of Helen for an amorous communion that elevated the spirit. He, Kotzebue, who had taken up the tradition of Simon, had to do the same. He had to find Helen. He was no longer occupied with anything but that.
Then he changed the subject. He started talking to me about Monsieur Althon, the man with the white moustache who had uttered the strange cry of anger on seeing Eveline dance. He told me that he had renewed acquaintance with him. He was an eminent individual. He possessed one of the finest libraries he knew. Essene thought was familiar to him and he was of the same opinion on the subject of Helen.
I asked Kotzebue whether he could explain Monsieur Althon’s strange attitude the other evening.
“I can’t explain it,” said Kotzevue, embarrassed. “An unimportant eccentricity. A superior mind like that of Monsieur Althon has an idea of purity much higher than that one might acquire in watching Eveline dance.”
It was only after the third cocktail that Kotzebue finally arrived at the subject about which he was burning to talk to me. He did so with an appearance of pleasantry both coarse and amicable. There was a silence between us.
“Take care. You’re poaching on my preserves. Oh, don’t play the innocent. I saw you the other morning, and again yesterday. But I prefer to warn you. The place is taken.”
My heart began to beat faster; I sensed my eyes widening involuntarily, but I replied that I had no idea what he meant.
He tapped me on the shoulder, crying: “Joker!” and laughed noisily. “Why not be frank. Anyway, I have priority. Do you remember when I met you at about midnight about two months ago,
in a café in the Place Blanche?”
“So what?”
He hesitated. His mouth was thick, and he expressed himself with a kind of rage.
“She and I had dined together. She had been able to escape and I was to spend the night with her. You understand? There’s no need for me to tell you any more.”
Every time in my life that I have heard an utterly blatant lie, an absolutely unworthy assertion, I have remained mute with astonishment. I have been deprived by nature of the rapidity of reaction, the gift of the riposte. A veil suddenly covers me and I remain silent, in an attitude that might bear the name of cowardice. It is only afterwards, when it is too late, that brilliant and vengeful comments arrive, and I see the fashion in which I should he reacted.
I trembled. I could only articulate, in a low voice: “That’s not true! You’re a liar!”
Kotzebue’s face expressed amazement. He looked to the right and the left in order to see whether anyone had heard such disrespectful words addressed to such an important man. The bar was empty but the barman, behind his counter, had momentarily stooped the back-and-forth movement of his arms agitating the cocktail-shaker.
We looked at one another in silence.
“It’s characteristic of the man who is possessed by evil not to be able to tolerate the truth.” Then he changed his mind. “In any case, I haven’t pronounced any name. You don’t even know who I was talking about. You’d be very embarrassed to say.”
I wondered whether I ought to allow that hypocrisy to triumph or to protest and confound him. But at that moment I had a sensation of cold, as if at the passage of a breath of air, which could not have come from the open door but from the ambience itself. My back was turned to the corridor of the hotel that opened on to the bar, and at the same moment I heard footsteps behind me. There was nothing extraordinary about that. Doubtless the scene that had just taken place had overexcited my nerves. I evaluated anxiously the resonance of the approaching footsteps.
The barman had come forward, bearing new cocktails. He smiled in a special fashion to make it understood that he considered the words he had overheard as a joke.
Monsieur Althon was before me. Kotzebue introduced us and invited him to sit down with a hint of respect. I was surprised to hear on Monsieur Althon’s part a slight foreign accent, perhaps Russian, which clashed singularly with his entirely French appearance of a former colonel. I saw immediately that for him, I was an utterly insignificant person.
Kotzebue, however, lavished eulogies on my account. I was one of those, he said, before whom one could expose the Essene doctrine in all its purity with chances of being understood. He seemed to have completely forgotten the incident that had occurred a few minutes before.
Monsieur Althon continued to gaze at me as at someone to whom a doctrine in all its purity is absolutely prohibited. His scorn was so undisguised and I was so beside myself that I deliberated as to whether I ought to ask him for an explanation or slap him. I did nothing.
Monsieur Althon was very calm. He had ordered a Vichy water. He watched us drink.
I learned from the conversation that he too was informed regarding the voyages of Simon Magus along that part of the coast. Like Kotzebue, he believed in the virtue of rites and ceremonies. He was a partisan of restoring the magical agapes instituted by Simon. Those who, know, he said, might derive an immense advantage from them, augment their being in an indefinite fashion. So much the worse if it were at the expense of others, for the essential thing is to magnify one’s own personality.” He added: “I mean to divinize it.”
While speaking, he always gave the impression of knowing more than he allowed to appear.
As if he suddenly thought about a previous conversation, and was awaiting a response, he exclaimed: “Well, have you finally found Helen? The Divine Ennoia?”
But then Kotzebue got up abruptly, pretending not to have heard.
“Would you like to get some air?” he said.
As Monsieur Althon was about to repeat his question he made a sign to him to keep quiet, with a movement of the head in my direction.
Outside, it was very mild. Night was falling. The hills covered with pines were already in shadow, while the sea, receiving the setting sun like a host, was still illuminated. The little town of Saint-Tropez, on the other side of the bay, had never seemed to me so mysteriously white. It gave me the impression of a city of Ys that was Arabic, a port where some ancient ship might enter by virtue of some Oriental enchantment.
The pure air brought me, with the memory of the evening when I had followed Laurence, the certainty of Kotzebue’s lie. I breathed in deeply.
My two companions marched close by, exchanging a few words in low voices. They had an understanding. They were united by a recent sympathy. At one moment, Monsieur Althon even took Kotzebue familiarly by the arm.
I felt a need for immediate amity. I almost asked them to consider me as one of their own, to allow me to participate in their projects. I was on the point of assuring them that I really was capable of penetrating the pure doctrine.
There was a little path to the right that led to Monsieur Althon’s house. We stopped and he held out his hand to me, saying au revoir with a ceremonious courtesy. He added that he was putting his library at my disposal, He had some curious books. Doubtless I must have a lack of books in the Midi.
He did not smile on saying that to me, but I sensed an unexpressed smile under the mask of the face, and that he was thinking that a stupid individual of my species had not the slightest need of books.
And he drew away with Kotzebue.
The road was straight ahead of me. A man who was passing by with a long staff over his shoulder lit the only gas lamp in the region. The house, whose windows were illuminated, formed a confused mass through the trees. I glimpsed in another direction the line of centenarian eucalypti. I had the impression of malaise that the apprehension of an imminent danger causes, but I did not know whether the danger was within me or exterior to me, hidden in the house, ready to surge forth between the two rows of eucalypti.
It had been a long time since Marie with the long neck had gone back up to the convent and the grocer’s automobile had drawn away along the road. The winged air of the morning gave way to a heavy heat. I met Poor Jacques on the road.
He was walking rapidly. I noticed the abundance of his hair, which was damp because he had emerged from a bath. I was also struck by the impetus of his march, the haste that he seemed to be in.
He held out his hand to me with the joyful air that any action gives, even the slightest.
“Since I’ve met you,” he said, “I’ll ask you to give my apologies to Monsieur de Saint-Aygulf. I’m leaving, and I don’t anticipate coming back.”
“Don’t go,” I said to him. “Stay another few days, and even come along this evening...”
He made a swift negative gesture with his hand.
“I only came to shake your hand and those of a few friends, but I’ve found them so changed. Perhaps it’s me, though, who has become an entirely savage man by virtue of living in solitude. I must confess that I miss that solitude. Then again, there are so many things that I no longer understand.”
I asked him, rather foolishly, whether he didn’t get bored all alone in the middle of the pines, beside the sea.
He started to laugh.
“How would that be possible? I don’t have time. I go to bathe. I cook. I have a little field that I cultivate. Then too, I have friends that are very demanding: a family of snakes and a mole for whom I travel six kilometers a day in order to be able to offer him a saucer of milk.”
His gaze became thoughtful. An anxiety passed through it.
“I wonder how disappointed it must be not to have seen me for several days and to be deprived of milk.”
He extended his hand, and I understood that he wanted to say something else, but could not find the words. “And are you staying for long? Don’t you think it would be better...?”
I
retained his hand in mine, in order for him to finish his thought.
“Go on.”
He seemed to make a decision.
“I’m going above all because of the mole, which must be waiting for me and unhappy about my absence. But I think I would have left anyway. There’s something here I can’t explain: an influence, a charm... How can I put it, exactly? The air is less pure. I feel that I have to go.”
I wanted to retain him again, to make him speak, but he was in haste to draw away. He resumed his cheerfulness, raised a finger toward the sky and said to me, as he left:
“What does it matter, anyway? The sun purifies everything.”
He went quickly. His garment floated around his body like wings. The dust of the road lifted up by his bare feet made a sort of nimbus and fall back in the light.
And I thought to myself: Poor Jacques has become a poor peasant.
Monsieur de Saint-Aygulf drew me into the garden to talk to me about the ceremony that was to take place that evening. He was proud of participating in it, proud that it was taking place on land that belonged to him. He pointed with his hand to a group of trees that dominated a hill.
“It’s there,” he said. “Monsieur Althon will bring a Swedenborgian lady and also a disciple of Vintras. Our group will end up uniting in a single sheaf all the spiritualist groups. That’s Kotzebue’s secret desire.”
He leaned toward me, and in a low voice, for he aspired to give everything he said a confidential character, he added: “Kotzebue really is a great man, isn’t he? People will only find out later the role that he will have played in the development of the spirit. I continually have information on his subject that comes from my guides.”
Lucifer Page 8
