“Monsieur Althon? Why?”
“There’s gossip. It’s better not to pay any attention to it.” He made a broad gesture that signified that life was more beautiful than all those imaginations.
“And the mole and the snake?” I asked
“I went several kilometers on foot to lose them in those woods you see over there, on the horizon. That gave me a great deal of pain. I can’t explain how, but those animals had understood everything. The snake hissed, the mole snorted. It was heart-rending. Oh, it’s impossible to conciliate everything.”
I started walking rapidly. Dusk was falling. I reached the main road and walked straight ahead.
I had been walking for more than an hour and night had fallen completely when I passed a small tavern whose terrace was illuminated by a lantern. I sat down to rest.
I recognized the landscape that was in front of me. On the flanks of the hill, that line off gray walls was the enclosure of the convent of repentant prostitutes. The mass of stone riddled with electric light was the hotel. I distinguished between the branches the roof of the small villa that I had rented the previous year, and on the right I saw the driveway opening between the eucalypti that led to Monsieur Saint-Aygulf’a dwelling.
Around a table to one side of me, chauffeurs in livery were chatting and laughing with local people. The same words recurred incessantly in their conversation. There was mention of “dingos” and “crackpots” and I was immediately certain that it was a matter of people I knew, and perhaps myself.
Involuntarily, I listened. I understood that a fat taciturn man and a valet de chambre with a face like a weasel were Monsieur Althon’s domestics. After confidences in a low voice which made them snigger, the taciturn fat man exclaimed in a loud voice: “D you want to know what I think? Well, they’re simply pigs.”
The laughter resumed. A chauffeur told a joke that I didn’t hear, but my heart bat faster when the name Saint-Aygulf was pronounced. He had just departed suddenly for Paris, it was said, leaving his daughter all alone, and they were going to take advantage of that this evening.
“They’re going to treat themselves. That’s why they’ve given us the evening off.”
A peasant with a large moustache, who must have been a gardener, must have had a benevolent reservation relative to Eveline.
“She’s like the rest, perhaps worse,” said the weasely valet de chambre, with a smile.
Then I heard the peasant say: “They have the right, since they have the means, but why the Devil do they have to mingle stories of religions with it?”
And the taciturn man clamored again: “They’re pigs, I tell you.”
I got up and left. I was ashamed of having listened, and yet I was glad to know. Curiosity devoured me. Monsieur Althon! Eveline! If there still existed in my imagination beings consecrated to evil and who worshiped Lucifer as others worshiped God, Monsieur Althon must be one of them.
The moon was full and shining with an extraordinary brightness. I had not had anything to eat, my head was empty, and it seemed to me that the moonlight contributed to my intoxication.
But suddenly, I stopped. I had arrived in front of the little path that led to Monsieur Althon’s property. A group coming along the road in the opposite direction had just turned and plunged under the trees, with something furtive in their movements.
When I try to remember now what thought impelled me, I’m incapable of retrieving it I didn’t believe that I had a role to play, a duty to accomplish. Nor was I avid to witness a scene of collective eroticism, for which that kind of gathering is usually the pretext. I started to walk along the little path behind the group that was preceding me, like some visitor invited by Monsieur Althon.
Having arrived at the house I stopped and instinctively hid in a bush to allow three people coming behind me to go past. I had recognized Madame Vigière’s laughter. She was leaning on the arms of two young men that I knew, and while walking she was unbuttoning a large fur coat that enveloped her all the way to her feet. I did not have time to be astonished that she was wearing a fur coat on such a warm evening; the coat opened as she arrived alongside me; she was naked underneath it.
And while the three silhouettes drew away in the moonlight, I was struck by something special in the heavy fashion of walking, the movement of shoulders, a thickness of necks, that I had never noticed before. I remembered the words that I had just heard in the tavern:
They’re pigs!
I went into the garden after them. It was formed by thick clumps of bushes, and it seemed to me that the plants composing those clumps belonged to unknown species.
But I was then in a semi-unconscious state and I headed for the house at a tranquil pace. No light appeared therein. It was massive, silent, dead. It had swallowed the visitors by I know not what door, which had closed again silently. I wanted along the façade, futilely, and wondered seriously whether I might do better to call out in a resounding voice, shouting my name. But I told myself, with reason, that Kotzebue, who would undoubtedly be there, would have me thrown out.
I also had the idea of igniting a few pine branches, which I could collect and dispose in front of the door in order to set fire to it. I searched in my pocket for my matches, and that thought amused me to the point that I started laughing all on my own. I renounced the project, however, thinking it wiser to wait in the garden for the arrival of a new guest who would permit me to penetrate by surprise.
I took a path at hazard and walked as far as an open space where I saw the gavel sparkling in the moonlight. I stopped when I distinguished a white form, indecisive and motionless, which was bizarrely suspended in the air. On looking more attentively, I saw above the white form the straight line of a pole.
It was a cross that was in the center of that crossroads, and an immaculate being with bloodstains on the body had been crucified there. I was hypnotized at first by the eyes, which appeared to be staring at me, obstinately fixed and astonishingly empty, like glass eyes.
Of an absolute whiteness, from the extremity of its little pointed ears to its narrow hooves, was the crucified lamb in the presence of which I found myself. In order for the forepaws to be nailed, the legs had been dislocated by pulling them apart. A cord held the neck tight, obliging the head to straighten. The nails were profoundly driven in and had broken the bones. I discovered, on passing my hand over the animal’s fur and feeling a slight warmth therein, that the surprising torture had been very recent.
Everyone knows that animals are killed in order to be eaten and no one is indignant at the butchers; but the death of that lamb, that exhibition on a cross and the mysterious ritual character that seemed to me to be attached to that death, filled me with disgust. I darted a glance around, and the garden seemed to have become singularly menacing, heavy with an incomprehensible enigma.
Then I was struck by the resonance of a distant chant. It was a trailing, muffled lament, which came from the ambient space rather than a determined place. I thought at first of someone singing at the top of a tree, through the foliage. The voice died away and was renewed, monotonously, and I soon realized that it must be coming from the terrace on the roof of the house. What was its significance? Was a ceremony commencing at that moment, of which it was the accompaniment? Of what order was that ceremony?
I quit the shadow of the bushes and started making a circuit of the house, my nerves suddenly overexcited by the strange anguish of that chant.
I found myself on the side opposite the façade, in the party of the garden overlooked by the kitchens. I bumped into a rubbish-bin. I tried to open a door but it was locked. On examining a small window attentively, however, I discovered that it was only closed; it yielded to the pressure of my hand. It was broad and not very high. I hesitated momentarily, evoking the hypothesis of a redoubtable and silent dog that might be waiting for me on the other side. Then I introduced myself into Monsieur Althon’s house.
Everything that happened thereafter unfurled rapidly, and I have only re
tained thereof the memory left by things accomplished in a dream.
By the light of a match I saw that I was in the kitchen and that the remains of the servants’ meal were still on the table. My first concern was to unlock the door that led to the garden. Then I applied myself to turning soundlessly the handle of a door on the other side of the kitchen. After having devoted a few minutes to that, I found myself in a servants’ parlor before another closed door. I employed the same precautions to open it, and another match showed me a silent and deserted drawing room. There were panoplies of arms and Turkish fabrics on the walls. It seemed to me to be furnished with the Oriental bad taste that had presided over many installations fifty years before. I saw men’s hats and three or four women’s coats on a divan surmounted by an awning of Tunisian veils.
I only took vague account of the poor welcome to which I had to be going. The worst thing that might happen to me was being thrown out brutally, but I had cast aside all self-esteem. I thought that the best thing to do was to be audacious, and I switched on the electric light. In any case, I was weary of turning creaky door-handles slowly.
I went one after another into another drawing room and the dining room. The ground floor was deserted. The gathering must be on the first. I listened, but could not hear anything except the exasperating muffled lament of the cantor who must be on the roof, face turned toward the moon.
At the extremity of the drawing room I saw the staircase leading to the first floor. I climbed it in three bounds and hesitated between several doors. Finally, a voice that I recognized struck my ears. It was Kotzebue’s voice. It was emphatic, even though the tone was veiled. He must have been reciting a prayer, but that prayer was in a language whose syllables were striking my ears for the first time.
The door of the room in which Kotzebue was speaking opened by a crack at that moment. A thin middle-aged woman who must have heard my footsteps poked her head through the gap and examined me with a lorgnette in the semi-darkness of the landing. I thought I recognized an enigmatic creature that I had perceived the previous year on the beach, and who had been identified to me as Monsieur Althon’s secretary.
“You’re late, hurry up,” she said, standing aside to let me pass.
I went in and she closed the door quietly behind me.
At first I could not distinguish anything, because the light only came from three lamps disposed in a triangle, and those lamps were on the far side of the room, which was very long. It had to be a kind of studio-cum-drawing-room separated into two parts by columns, which had been cleared of furniture for the occasion. Around me were men and men, many of whom were unknown to me. A few belonged to the group of Essenes, and I saw by the shriveling of their features and the gleam in their eyes what ardor they brought to this worship, so different from their former ideal. The faces were so taut that I could not tell whether the women were pretty. I saw some who were old and haggard. As for the men, it was impossible for me to definite the class to which they belonged. They all had their eyes fixed on the extremity of the room and a curtain that veiled a party of it; they seemed to be waiting for a strangely attractive event.
The curtain was made of dark blue silk, sparkling and moving, on which lunar crescents and silver stars were embroidered. The beauty of the fabric was captivating. It made one think of the sky of an extraterrestrial region, the secret zaimph of the temple of Carthage. A semicircular balustrade was disposed between the columns. All around, the walls were hung with colored fabrics, in which crimson and violet were dominant. In the middle, a divan on a platform gave the impression of playing a preponderant role. It was covered in the same silk as the curtain, but that silk was crumpled and soiled, and even had rips in several places. On a low table reposed a copper vase filled with water, and various metal objects. The nails were visible that held the fabrics to the wall, and the plaster that had fallen. The ensemble had something about it that was fake and improvised, reminiscent of the drawing room of a conjuror or scenery hastily erected in a photographer’s studio.
Sitting beside the divan was a curly-haired man with a cynical and cheerful face, who was completely naked. He was so hairy that I thought at first that he was clad in some sort of fur, and I leaned forward to assure myself of his nudity. He must have been short and a trifle deformed, but his bull-like neck and his enormous arms seemed to indicate a professional wrestler. He straightened up, and sometimes darted a sly and surprised glance at the audience. He gave the impression of being embarrassed, astray in an unknown milieu, to which he had been induced to come by paying him, in order to accomplish some bizarre action.
Alongside him was a large cage in which white-plumed birds were stirring. There was an occasional flutter of wings and clicking of beaks, and the naked man then turned toward the birds, at which he stared attentively, in order to put on a brave face.
On the other side of the divan, Kotzebue was standing, intoning the prayer that had immediately struck my ears. I found that he was thin, and that his eyes were smaller than usual. He was wearing a costume that was formed by a sort of dalmatic, half-Byzantine and half-Egyptian. He was reading the prayer from a parchment of elongated form, and as the light was insufficient he sometimes brought it very close to his eyes. The trembling of his hand, the lividity of his face and a hunching of his shoulders betrayed the fear to which he was prey. That fear was visible and material around him; everyone felt it by receiving its radiation, and it was that inexplicable fear that rendered terrible a scene that ought to have been merely grotesque.
I was struck by the resonances of certain words that recurred in Kotzebue’s prayer, especially the resonance of one word, a proper noun: Apophis.
Apophis! The syllables of that name floated in my mind for a few seconds, dead and deprived of meaning, but gradually they were animated and colored by the repetition, along with them, of other evocative syllables.
A few years before, at the moment of my initial curiosity about the history of religions, I had studied ancient languages, notably the rudiments of the Coptic language. It was in Coptic that Kotzebue was expressing himself! And I recognized the name of the being to which his prayer was addressed, with a voice simultaneously imploring and terrified. Apophis: the serpent that personifies darkness in the Egyptian Book of the Dead; the serpent that is called Nahash in Genesis; the very principle of eternal evil! And Kotzebue was invoking it in a tone galvanized by fear, and he was also invoking Astes, the lord of the Amenti; Ouadj, the extinguisher of radiance; Azi, lust; Khem the ithyphallic; Khepra the transformer; and Sokari, who cuts gladioli with which to fan the dead. He was giving the demons the first names by which humans had designated them, in order that his appeal might be more powerful by virtue of the virginity of the primordial names.
I had thought I was assisting at a caricature of the black mass, a base orgy to which the religious dreams of certain sects engender, in which mysticism is confounded with sensuality. But no: I was in the presence of the most ancient cult of evil, whose rite had been perpetuated through the ages, and without understanding it, I gazed at its ridiculous and mysterious accessories.
Suddenly the voice quavering with fear broke. There was a shiver among the audience, who pressed forward to see, and the marvelous azure curtain slid away silently. It only allowed the sight of a bust, and my first impression was one of disappointment. On a black plinth, it was not even a bust, but only a marble head, in the Egyptian style, a head of natural size, with curly hair, a straight nose and regular features. That head was crowned with recently-cut branches of a pepper-bush.
It took me a few seconds of attention to take account of the inexpressible attraction emanated by that visage. Did the attraction come from the indifference of the smile, the perfect harmony of the lines, the love of pleasure concealed by a slight prominence of the chin or the passionate intelligence reflected by the emptiness of the eyes? I could not discern that precisely, but the more I considered that Egyptian head, the more I felt penetrated by a kind of laxity, a desire t
o continue contemplating the void of that gaze, the fascinating beauty of that face. And at the same time I had the sensation that my ideas were melting, that my personality was in the process of dissolving, that I was ceasing delectably to be myself.
I made a violent effort to react, to recover consciousness of myself, and I perceived that my teeth were chattering and that I was afraid, with a panic fear, a fear that chilled my bones: the same fear that I saw before me, inscribed in Kotzebue’s features.
Then a little door that the curtain had uncovered as it slid turned on its hinges, and I felt my heart beat precipitately on seeing Eveline appear. Her loose hair fell over her shoulders. She was naked and I was dazzled by the astonishing harmony that her tottering body emanated. The silhouette of a man was outlined behind her. I understood by the movement of Eveline’s shoulders that the man had just aided her to take off a peignoir or a cloak that he was still holding in his hand, and which he dropped near the door. I realized that it was Monsieur Althon.
Eveline’s eyes were wandering, and seemed not to be seeing anything. There was a curl of dementia in her lips.
Then Kotzebue approached the cage; he opened the door and his enormous hand took out a bird. He lifted it up in the air, held it toward the divinity with the dead eyes and, murmuring a few words that I could not hear, let it fall.
The bird, stifled by Kotzebue’s grip, made a white patch on the azure divan. At a sign from Kotzebue the hairy man had stood up, and Eveline and he found themselves face to face on either side of the divan, like a symbol of good and evil, under the aspect of perfect beauty and victorious ugliness.
The re-enactment of what ancient rite was I about to witness? I knew that, since the commencement of the world, profaners of beauty had celebrated their love of degradation. I saw passing in the disordered vertigo of my ideas the image of the goddess Mylitta of Babylon, that of the Carthaginian Moloch, the secret festivals of Suburra in Rome, the obscene agapes of the Nicolaitans, and the adoration of the demonic goat in the Sabbat of the Middle Ages.
Lucifer Page 18
