The Eye of Purgatory

by Jacques Spitz

  It was around Yvane that all those obscure forces were gravitating, to her that I returned again. Her phantom pressed me more closely than ever. And more than anything else, the thought broke my heart that, while I believed I was giving her all the love of which I was capable, I had only marked her for death. I horrified myself. The significance of my sentiments, the very ones that I had thought the noblest, appeared to me to be deceptive and frightful.

  In spite of everything, it all remained obscure, as if too complicated for me. What parts of truth and falsehood were mingled in the doctor’s words? Had he wanted to avenge himself on me by torturing me with terrible confidences invented wholesale, or had he confessed the truth in one last fit of lucidity? His madness did not explain everything. In the play of secret powers that we had all unleashed—me in allowing myself to be guided by my heart, the doctor by his mad research—Heaven and Hell seemed to lose their colors, to play their parts indifferently.

  The fact also remained that certain predictions made by Dirk were strangely verified. Was it not to escape a new prophecy that I had decided, the previous evening, to flee? Might not Narda’s rectitude of thought and cold lucidity, which had pleased and reassured me, be one more trap? Why had I promised to help her? Where was the error? Where was the truth? The excessively clear explanations that she gave left out too many things, too many nuances to which, in spite of everything, I felt attached. And was she not prowling around me like a new threat? I no longer knew what to think; I was frightened. Living in that atmosphere, I felt that I was in danger of ending up like the doctor. It was necessary to abandon everything, to renounce seeing clearly, to leave, to have a change of scene, to forget.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Three months passed; my leave was coming to an end. After a few days in a rest home, where inactivity had done me more harm than good. I embarked on a tiresome winter crossing to the Canaries, then accompanied a friend I had made on an automobile journey across the Sahara. I saw many faces, many horizons, deserts and seas, but I could not forget. Remorse pursued me incessantly. The entire human race seems always to be carrying out a duty of expelling from its bosom that which honors it. But even I, no more than anyone else, in spite of all my love and what I thought to be a sophisticated understanding, had not been capable of saving the most delicate and most marvelously sensitive creature that had ever seen the light of day. More than that, I had been chosen, as if by the gods, to be the instrument of her annihilation. I could not get over that.

  Although, with time, my despair had taken on a less precise and lees acute form, less attached to those details that the memory retrieves to pierce the heart, and I had moved on to vaguer, more abstract considerations, the memory of Yvane still occupied my thoughts fully, like an infinite chain of mountains, so imposing that no matter how far one moves away from them, they nevertheless mark the entire landscape with their character.

  I had anticipated that a certain pride would enter into that desire to compose a great dolor for myself, but taking account of it did not signify any progress toward a cure. Whatever attitude I took, the fact remained that I had met the most exquisite of creatures, and that I had killed her. I was infinitely guilty. A certain dread of life, and a certain mistrust of myself, still paralyzed me. Every action seemed to engage my beyond my intention. I would have preferred not to leave the desert or the four walls of a room.

  It was, however, necessary that I return to Paris in order to make my return journey to the Far East. One morning, I was about to collect my mail from the American Express office when a tall brunette girl came toward me in the hall.

  “Narda!” I said, surprised at first but then immediately embarrassed to see her again after the abrupt fashion in which I had left Lausanne—but she did not appear to be disposed to hold me to account for that. She accompanied me, chatting all the while, as far as the sidewalk of the Opéra. She explained that she was about to leave for South America, in the company of a Dutch family, and gave me abundant details of her future situation. Discreetly, she avoided any reference to the past, but one question was burning on my lips. I asked her for news of the doctor.

  “He’s in a nursing home—quite calm, but there’s little hope of ever seeing him leave it.”

  “It’s better thus,” I said, becoming thoughtful again, “for he might be dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” she said, in surprise.

  It was my turn to be astonished that, with the sureness of judgment with which I credited her, she had not been alerted to that. After various allusions that, although clear, were not understood, I said straightforwardly: “After all, he was the one who killed Yvane.”

  “What?” she said. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m only repeating what your uncle confessed to me.” I added: “In order that Dirk’s predictions should not be found at fault, he did not hesitate…” In spite of myself, my voice broke.

  “But Pierre,” she said, placing her hand on my arm, “what you say is impossible.”

  “He told me himself, and gave me reasons that I cannot repeat to you.”

  “His mind must already have been disturbed, and perhaps it was his bad conscience talking. He’s a lunatic, but he’s not a criminal. I’m absolutely sure that he didn’t…”

  Blushing with emotion, she could not finish her sentence. In the midst of the noise of the traffic, in the open area in front of the Opéra, that conversation took on a strange character.

  I regretted having spoken, having dispelled the illusions of an innocent soul again. Decidedly, everything I did turned bad. But Narda resumed: “He didn’t kill Yvane, since…”

  “…It was an accident,” I finished, evasively.

  “No,” said Narda, looking me in the eyes. “It wasn’t an accident. Yvane killed herself.”

  A bus could have emerged from the entrance of the Metro and I would not have been so amazed. It required all the credit that I gave to Narda’s precocious intellectual maturity, not to believe her, but to be persuaded that she really had pronounced the words I had just heard.

  “Killed herself! Come on, that’s impossible!”

  “Yvane killed herself,” Narda repeated, very calmly. “I know that because she left me a letter. The version of the accident having been accepted, I preferred to keep the secret to myself, but after what you’ve told me, you need to know the truth.”

  I shook my head again.

  “If you’d care to accompany me to my hotel,” she proposed, “I’ll show you the letter.”

  I followed her, without seeing or hearing anything. When she said: “Here it is,” I stopped, and let myself fall into a chair in the hallway.

  She brought out a letter: a piece of white paper, folded in four. The large, irregular handwriting, with exaggerated capital letters, was definitely Yvane’s. The sheet trembled in my hands, and I was obliged to lean my elbows on the table.

  I read:

  My darling, I’m dying because I want to die. I shall never come down from the mountain. When one has reached the summit of happiness, one can no longer accept going back. Don’t weep, I have nothing to lament. I have seen and felt everything that it is necessary to see, and it’s with an indescribable delight that I depart. Never have I been so happy. Be kind to Pierre. You are both of the race of the living. Yvane.

  Facing me, pinned to the wall, was a poster for a shipping company depicting an African woman laden with bananas beside the bow of a ship. Through the open door, in the little street on the Left Bank where the hotel was located, I could see hatless women passing by, all carrying identical waxed-cloth bags, from which vegetables protruded. It was morning; a market must be close by. “It’s truly curious,” I said, “that all the women in a quarter resemble one another.” At the desk, the manageress, a plump blonde, was rubbing the plate of glass in front of the counter with a rag, moving the telephone and a stack of papers from one side to the other in their turn. The bus going past in the neighboring street made the electric light-bulb hangi
ng from the ceiling vibrate. I raised my head; fortunately, it was not directly above me. I uncrossed my legs, and the wicker armchair creaked under my weight. An old American woman presented herself, politely and modestly, and greeted the manageress—who, after a glance at the pigeon-holes, shook her head: there were no letters, no more today than yesterday, probably. Then I heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner on the upper floor, coming down the elevator shaft. The elevator wasn’t working, in need of repair. On the rattan table that separated me from Narda, a large yellow ash-tray bearing an advertisement for an aperitif caught my eye. Yielding to the imperious solicitation, I lit a cigarette. Finally, I said: “Yes, yes…”

  Thus, in that décor which I had not chosen, which I would never have been able to imagine, but which imposed itself upon me with a reality and a solidity that I had been unable to recognize in the surrounding world for many weeks, I felt the insistent phantom whose company held me prisoner in the past abandon me, at the same time as remorse. What relationship had the present décor of the world to the words of that poor letter, which I read once again? To what point in a vanished past was it trying to attach itself? The mountain, happiness—that was far away, far, far away beyond the sea. The residue of the stormy perturbation was fleeing into my internal sky. A great wind was blowing, bringing with it the quotidian daylight. The familiar, the banal and the ordinary resumed possession of my life.

  Narda was still talking.

  “…like my Aunt Suyter, her grandmother, who also killed herself—perhaps you knew that? An oppressive heredity weighs upon the family. Poor Yvane, she was already bizarre as a child, and had to be put in a nursing home on several occasions. In her, fits of terrible depression followed instants of great excitement. After her mother’s death she gave rise to great anxieties. My uncle had decided to keep her close to him, but his company was not designed to make things better. I had arrived at La Colle too recently to take clear account…”

  Her voice resembled the noises of the street. Her hair was as black as the telephone-stand. The cretonne cushion of the armchair also gave the impression of a family-member with a corsage, because of its embroidered flowers. She went on talking. Her common sense was overwhelming and contagious. The clock opposite showed that it was 12:25 p.m.

  “Well, shall we have dinner together?” I asked, abruptly.

  She accepted without needing any persuasion. At the corner of the street, I took her arm. It was smooth and muscular.

  “I know a little Italian restaurant…” she began.

  The idea of that little restaurant suddenly illuminated me. I was hungry. I was aware of that for the first time in many months.

  “An Italian restaurant?” I said. “I remember, one day in Boulogne…hang on...I ate…what was it called? It was marvelous…a mixture of pasta and vegetables…oh! It was lasagne verdi.”

  “Well, I believe that I saw the exact same thing on the menu!” she said, in a joyful explosion.

  I was holding on to that arm very firmly; it was allowing itself to be held. “No! They have it!” I replied, laughing. “Then I love you!”

  I was not, however, to marry her until much later, after the war. That erupted so abruptly into our lives that the entire drama that I have just recounted slipped away into the past before I could form a clear idea of it. In any case, I have been trying for a long time not to think too intensely about it, and the war at least had the merit of aiding me in that task. Thus, caught between so many proposed explanations, I have never been sure exactly how Yvane died, and why. Similarly, with respect to the doctor’s experiment, I have never been able to determine with certainty how much truth was mixed in with the simulation. All things considered, I prefer not knowing. I’ve reported the facts; I shall leave to others the pretention of seeing them clearly and interpreting them. For my part, I limit myself to the disillusioned opinion with which I began: everything that happens is of no importance whatsoever, and it is only for the sake of vain mental satisfaction that one imagines a logical sequence in the course of events. There are so many equally plausible ways of representing things that I flatly refuse to adopt any one of them. And what I have seen during the war could not modify my way of thinking—or, rather, of not thinking.

  THE EYE OF PURGATORY

  CHAPTER ONE

  Misfortune is definitely pursuing me. From the series of mishaps that has befallen me, I have even been able to conclude that the world has something particular against me. This morning, again, the vile Gugenlaert refused the canvas that I brought him, which he had virtually commissioned. His pretext: that his clients only like bright paintings. I’ll give him bright painting! What does he think I am? Anyway, like all art dealers, Gugenlaert knows nothing about painting. No one knows anything about painting, not even those who do it.

  Such blows make you disgusted with the work, and with yourself into the bargain. I came home with my canvas under my arm. Coward as I am, I have tried to do it over, to brighten it, to do what was required of me—but I soon perceived that it is impossible to match the image that others have of you, and I went out for a walk.

  I found myself in the Rue de Rivoli, amid the stalls set up for the New Year exhibition. I told myself that I might perhaps find what I needed, among the crowd of hideous and rather grotesque individuals, for my great canvas, my Fairground Burlesque project—and I put on a show of being interested in improved taps, articulated broomsticks, Armenian paper, home-made sweets, glue for sticking plates together, and all the usual trash. There was a reek of acetylene, which was quite pleasant.

  I stopped in front of a booth selling visiting cards to look at the display. Some specimens manifested pretentions to humor: ADAM ADAM, Rue de Paradis; MONSIEUR NEMO, Ship’s captain; BERTHE LAVENTOUSE, qualified nurse—with a little red cross in relief to the right. In a whimsical vein, one could read in the middle of a frame of lilies, MADEMOISELLE L’INCONNUE, Rue de Seine…

  The melancholy printer was wiggling his feet on top of an oil stove; from time to time he uttered his cry: “Two francs for 100, not even the cost of the paper!” He stood up suddenly; a client had pointed at one of the samples. It was an old man enveloped in a sort of greasy black overcoat, with a yellowing beard and medium-length hair protruding from a battered bowler hat. I noticed his aquiline profile and his eyes, sunken in their orbits: two veritable wells, toward which the forest of hair extended. If not for the bowler hat, he would have resembled Leonardo da Vinci.

  He spelled out his name for the merchant: Christian Dagerlöff.

  “Monsieur is a foreigner, I see. And the profession? The profession is 75 cents extra.”

  “Profession?”

  “Men generally indicate their profession on their cards. This card is an instrument of trade.”

  “Put génie.”11

  “Engineer? Military, no doubt?”

  “No, genius—man of genius, but genius will suffice.”

  At that moment, I burst out laughing. The old man turned toward me. His eyes were bright and translucent, an exceedingly pure aquamarine in color, with none of the opacity of old age. His white hair made the blue of the irises stand out. His gaze manifested the candor and vague reproof of a well-brought-up man.

  “It’s the genius,” I explained.

  “You don’t know what genius is?” he said, in a voice that was slow and serious, but very confident.

  “Yes, but I’m astonished that one can make a profession of it.”

  His jaw stiffened beneath his beard. “Can you prove that I’m not a man of genius, young man? No. In that case, kindly refrain…”

  The printer had activated the wheel of the press and slipped the cards into a little box with gilded strings. I was about to go on my way when the old man, abruptly pushing down his bowler hat, so that it swallowed up his white hair, said in a very courteous fashion: “Monsieur, to whom do I have the honor…?”

  In order not to be wanting in politeness, I told him my name. Then, opening his freshly-wrapped parcel, my inte
rlocutor held out the first of the hundred cards to me, before venturing, with a sigh: “I don’t want to keep you, Monsieur Poldonski. Go, and plunge yourself back into the mire of the century…”

  A certain curiosity, which I must have inherited from my poor crazy father, determined that, instead of going away, I sought to continue the conversation. There was a café within a few paces—one of those hideous modernized bistros in the vicinity of the Bastille, all ostentation, tingling with the desire to cut off thirst and inspiration. We went inside.

  The customers were worthy of the place, as sticky as flies caught in the dirty foam of an old glass of beer. On a seat upholstered in crimson breitschwanz, my companion assumed, by contrast, a certain allure. The light filtered through faded lampshades with floral motifs brought out nuances of cobalt blue and carmine in the hollow surfaces of his cheeks. His head might have served as the cold patch that I saw in the foreground in the left-hand corner of my Fairground. Unobtrusively, I weighed him up.