I affirmed once again to Eveline that I did not have the slightest idea what had become of Laurence.
“At any rate, I don’t believe that I’m qualified to give her lessons in morality.”
The vibrations of my voice had a great importance that evening. In the manner in which I pronounced those words there was an intention of indifference that astonished me, and produced an effect as great as the previous melancholy.
Eveline stood up. She was like an archer who has launched an arrow and has just perceived that the target has been traversed completely. She took a few steps around the room without losing sight of me. How nervous she was, and how different from how I had known her. What was that movement of her ignorant loins, in which there was almost a hint of sensuality?
She affected to be looking with interest at the books that covered the walls.
“What of the Essenes?” I said. “Were other nocturnal masses celebrated out there after my departure?”
She turned around abruptly and her voice became lower in order to reply. Dusk had now invaded the room.
“Oh, the masses,” she said. “Yes, there are going to be ceremonies, but here in Paris. It appears the masses can have an extraordinary magical power if they’re accomplished in accordance with the original rites. They once served to attract spiritual forces to humans. Monsieur Althon and Kotzebue have discovered the ancient ceremonial.”
Eveline had pronounced those names with respect, almost with dread.
“Do you see much of Monsieur Althon?”
She turned her head away. “No. But...I once went to his house with Kotzebue, precisely because of the masses. Everything has changed among the Essenes since Monsieur Althon has joined us.”
As I could scarcely distinguish Eveline’s face in the half-light, I thought it a good idea to switch on the electricity. A lamp lit up. There was an anxiety in the young woman’s face. She almost made a gesture of hiding it with her hand.
“Why put the light on?” she said. “The twilight is very pleasant. We can still take advantage if it for a few more minutes.”
I switched the lamp off. Then Eveline said, with vivacity: “I don’t know why I’m talking to you about the masses. You mentioned them to me first, and then I let myself go, but I beg you not to say anything to anyone. If Kotzebue knew that I had even made an allusion to them...”
“I thought that everyone was admitted to the masses. I witnessed one myself in the Midi...”
“Oh, it’s no longer the same thing. Henceforth there will only be a small number of initiates who are allowed to take part in them.”
“But why?”
Eveline uttered a singular laugh, whose resonance made me feel uneasy, a laugh that clashed with her nature, and I saw her blue eyes fixed in an upward direction, as if she were seeing imaginary forms of an unexpected character.
“Physical beauty has an action on the development of the soul. The pleasure of the body also, it seems. There is a secret in amour that was lost for ages, and which Simon Magus rediscovered. Of course, neither Monsieur Althon or Kotzebue must know that I’ve mentioned that secret to you. But you’re perhaps aware of the role that Helen played.”
I wanted to dissipate the sentiment of embarrassment that I experienced and I said: “It’s completely dark now.”
I switched on the light.
Then I went to the window that overlooked the street and drew the curtains. As I did so, my gaze chanced to plunge down to the sidewalk opposite. I perceived Kotzebue pacing back and forth in an impatient fashion, in the attitude of a man who is waiting.
My first thought was that he had accompanied Eveline, that there was an understanding between that two of them and that I was a dupe—I did not know of what, but of something.
The curtain fell back. I turned around. But Eveline did not seem to be in any hurry to leave. She had not given a succinct character to her words, as one does when one knows that someone is outside the door and is waiting for you. Kotzebue had not come with her, but he had doubtless followed her without her knowledge. It was to her that he destined the role of Helen in the cult of which he intended to be the high priest and whose rites were only secret because of their equivocal character. I remembered in a second the projects that he had once exposed to me, to which I had listened with admiration, but which he had disdained to develop because he did not judge me capable of understanding them.
I also remembered the moments I had spent in the Rue Ballu outside his door, measuring his jealousy by mine, and I savored a sort of revenge in that just reversal of things.
No, Eveline had no hatred. The shade of the lamp that I had just illuminated was made of Chinese silk with crimson tints. The light that filtered over her gave her a dreamlike appearance. Her abundant hair overflowed beneath the fur of her toque. I thought about the oblique light of the corridor, the circle that the night-dress had formed at her feet.
And suddenly, I had the knowledge of the path that evil follows in the human soul. It gives birth to desire, and desire is creative. I had often dreamed of having Eveline in my home, and she was there, improbable as it might be! I had often dreamed of drawing her to me, of dragging her into my bedroom, and a presentiment told me that if I attempted it at that moment I would only encounter a resistance strong enough to give more value to the success.
I did not have to ask myself how that was possible. I had already observed that, in the course of my life, many women had abandoned themselves to me with facility too great to be explained by ordinary reasons. A power had devolved to me and I did not know from whom I had received it. I had the striking evidence of that power and I understood that it was also exercised independently of me, since an unknown cause had cast Eveline into the state of disturbance in which I now saw her.
I shivered, but I did not think of reacting against the force that seemed to be directing my actions.
“Is it indiscreet to ask to see the letter that Laurence wrote to you?” Eveline said to me, to break the silence and also to recall the purpose of her visit.
“Not at all.”
The letter was in a drawer in my bedroom and that bedroom communicated with the studio by a door. I had only to go and fetch it. Instead of that I said: “Come with me. At the same time, you can see the rest of my library. The letter is here in my bedroom.”
I had lowered my voice to pronounce the final words, in such a way that Eveline might not have heard them.
She replied, with great simplicity: “Good.”
I opened the door and she went in. I recalled at the same time that in all the creations of my mind, after having imagined Eveline in my studio, I had imagined her crossing the threshold of my bedroom. Her feet made no sound on the carpet and the door closed silently behind her.
Everything went similarly. From that moment on I was drawn away by the force of my past imaginations. I was no longer the master of my actions. They were determined by my old desires: my desires, children of evil. I was conscious of that and I said to myself:
No one is free. Every action is the irresistible terminus of a long sequence of causes.
“How warm it is in here,” Eveline said to me.
And I replied: “Yes, the heater is open.”
The banality of phrases pronounced calmly is always a sign of mental agitation. An ordinary little wind precedes storms.
I took out Laurence’s letter and I held it out to Eveline.
“Can you see well enough?” I asked her.
She made an affirmative sign and I leaned over her shoulder as if to reread the letter. A human breath reached me, almost imperceptible, in which no essence of perfume was mingled.
Eveline’s shoulders lifted up. She had reached the sentence: I’ve divined that you were thinking incessantly about my sister, and I don’t hold it against you.
Eveline turned to me and said: “Really! Is that possible? You thought incessantly about me?”
I was conscious that there was something distraught in her gaze. I
ought to have replied to her that indeed, I had been thinking about her, and for a long time. But I was living a scene already dreamed, and those who are dreaming do not talk about desired women; they throw themselves upon them.
I took Eveline in my arms and I pushed her on to the low bed, where we both fund ourselves half-lying down. I experienced then the intoxication of her presence against me, to the point of being entirely overturned. It was as if the inclined position that I had just abruptly adopted had made me fall into another universe, where everything was frivolous sensuality and the delight of realization.
But in that intoxication my intelligence remained active, and weighed the movements, judged the motives with an inconceivable rapidity.
The inaccessible Eveline only defended herself feebly. She scarcely sketched the habitual gestures of modesty. To the distraction of her eyes was added an expression of indescribable fear. As my mouth was upon hers, she turned her head with an abrupt movement, preserving her lips but offering her body.
Why? Whence came that partial consent? Did she want, by virtue of feminine jealousy, to take a revenge on her sister? Ws it not a sort of sacrifice, a holocaust to my desire, by virtue of extravagant ideas by which her mind had been troubled? Yes, that was the pretext, and a will foreign to mine had imposed it on her. I was the plaything of evil, by virtue of a distant convention, and Eveline had come for her fall, and for mine.
It seemed to me that I was lifting the robe of a priestess, placing a hand on a sacred zaimph,8 offending a chaste goddess in the bounds of her temple. And I rejoiced in the offense, I was penetrated delectably by the profanation of the divine. The dream followed its inexorable march into reality.
I could no longer see Eveline’s face, which was turned to the pillow and hidden by the spread of her hair, but I contemplated the perfection of her body. The extension of the legs was so perfect that it was reminiscent of a poem finishing in a cry of hope. In the birth of the breasts, in the movement of the arm folded for a confused defense, there were statuesque graces, the matt texture of marble polished for worshipful admiration. And in its immobility that body evoked, as it had by means of the dance in the middle of pines and mimosas, the surge of the spirit that wants to disengage from matter.
Then there was something like a light within me.
No one is free, I had thought, a few moments before; we are drawn along by our own momentum. I understood that I was free, that I could choose—and for the first time, I saw the mysterious line of demarcation between good and evil.
I had had Laurence; I was about to have Eveline. I had had no remorse in taking Laurence, and even on reflecting on it afterwards, I had approved of myself for having drawn her into life, away from her family, for the joy and the dolor. I was on the point of playing the same role with Eveline, but I sensed that no bad action could equal in evil the one that I was about to accomplish. For if amour and life were Laurence’s law, Eveline had surpassed that goal and had a higher one, more elevated.
Physical love had always inspired disgust in her. No sensuality had awakened in her. She had wanted to devote herself exclusively to the spirit, to neglect material enjoyments for creative chastity. She was like a vestal gone astray in our time.
And I was about to make her regress, to accomplish the greatest crime, one that is unpardonable, one committed against the spirit.
It was because I was veritably accursed, then. Somewhere, in a world very close to ours and yet did not communicate with it, evil beings, with faces in which beauty and ugliness were only one, were rejoicing, alerting one another to the act that I was about to commit. I saw their signs, I understood their language, and I was astonished to resemble them, to have the same duality, to be so beautiful and so ugly at the same time.
But no, there was still time; the act had not been accomplished, and by a deliberate determination, I renounced its accomplishment.
I disengaged the arm with which I was pressing Eveline’s breasts and I allowed her to fall back gently next to me, like the splendid burden of human responsibility.
I brushed her golden temple with my lips, and rendered her the light kiss that her sister had posed on mine when quitting me.
She turned, like someone wounded on a battlefield astonished at not being finished off by the enemy, but I understood that, in her perfect ignorance, she thought that perhaps there was no reason to be astonished.
As I murmured a few incomprehensible words, which included the word pardon, the clock on the mantelpiece chimed seven.
Eveline uttered a cry. She got dressed, putting on her dress in haste. I tried to talk to her, to explain to her that she ought not to see Kotzebue or Monsieur Althon any longer. Those names put an expression of terror in her physiognomy, but she gave the impression of not grasping the meaning of what I said. As I persisted, she made a sign to me to speak more quietly, and appeared to fear that someone might overhear me—not someone who was listening behind the door, but who might have been everywhere, in the ambience of the atmosphere.
At that time, the valet de chambre should have returned. I rang, and I sent him to find a taxi. He came back almost immediately. Eveline was already in the antechamber.
I would have liked to see her again, to put her on guard, to make her understand the danger that I sensed around her and which I could not specify precisely. I dared not ask her to come back and I sensed that she did not want to. There was no bitterness in the limpid blue of her eyes, but only anxiety and disorder.
She went down the stairs very rapidly and I heard the door of the taxi close.
I went back to the studio and I lifted the curtain. I perceived Kotzebue’s silhouette. He was motionless, uncertain of what he ought to do. In the same attitude as me, once, in the Rue Ballu, when I had seen Laurence draw away, he watched Eveline’s vehicle disappear. He departed in the same direction, and I almost ran out in order to catch up with him.
He disappeared into the shadow, but cannot have gone very far.
I had let the curtain fall back and I stared at the carpet. It was full of familiar and absurd faces that I knew well, but their expression appeared to me to be transformed. Those faces were threatening, like those of redoubtable enemies with whom I had just entered into battle. I had disobeyed Lucifer. Somewhere, in the sanctuary of my soul, a lamp had been lit of which I had to defend the flame. But was there enough courage in me?
The doorbell rang. I went to open the door myself, thinking that Eveline might have come back. I saw Kotzebue on the landing, I had never noticed his tall stature, his thick neck and his square jaw so clearly.
“I have to talk to you,” he said.
And I replied: “Me too.”
I sensed when he had come in that we were both prey to an extraordinary excitement.
“If I’ve offended you in any way,” I said, “I’m ready to give you an honest explanation.”
He contented himself with sniggering.
“It’s you who first reminded me of the pact we once signed, and enabled me to glimpse its scope. At first I didn’t take what you said seriously. I refused to believe in the gravity of what had only been childishness. But I’ve thought about it. Events have brought me proofs. Perhaps I’m only afflicted by a sickness of the imagination, I’m sure that you’re afflicted by the same sickness as me. In any case, you know something. You’ve studied the questions that are preoccupying me. You know what forces we were once able, unknown to ourselves, to put into action. You can deliver me from an obsession...”
I perceived that I was addressing him as tu for the first time in fifteen years, so haunted was I by the idea of our equality in the pact.
Kotzebue was not thinking of picking up that change of tone. He had not ceased sniggering while I was speaking. At the same time, he was considering my pajamas, my unkempt hair, and my distraught features. As the bedroom door was still open, he took two or three steps that permitted him to see the disordered bed. He must have found in that sight an answer to the questions that had moti
vated his visit, and his physiognomy expressed the phrase: Now I know!
He remained silent, his head bowed.
“Well?”
“It’s too late. You’ve taken the left-hand path, from which one cannot turn back, It will be too comfortable, in any case. Haven’t you received what you asked for? Haven’t you seen your desires granted? You’ve been a perfect instrument of Lucifer, without suspecting it. But he knew it, and he guided you. Now you’d like to get away from him. It’s vain to try. He’s the companion that one never quits, who accompanies you not only in the voyage of life but that one makes after death.”
“Come on” I cried, “You’re not being serious. You’re holding a grudge, admit it. You think you have grievances against me, so you want to get your revenge. But you don’t believe in the existence of Lucifer either as a person or as an active will! You don’t believe in the fallen angel!”
“You’re mistaken—I do believe it. There are fallen angels. There was one here just now. And redoubtable, believe me. He will become even more so. Why should there not be a greater one who sent him?”
“But you said it yourself, for a long time the world has been directed by men alone. Above the human there were only forces, only laws. Evil was only the human tendency to egotism.”
“I might have been mistaken. Since I’ve seen you, I’ve learned things that I didn’t know. My ideas on that subject have changed completely.”
I was convinced that Kotzebue had only come to see me under the empire of jealousy, to take his revenge on me and torment me, so I only half-believed what he said. I examined his face, where there was a hint of sudden gravity, and I discovered with anguish that he was speaking in all sincerity.
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