The ivory orchestra lost itself in gay fatalistic improvisation; the
opulence of two hundred over-fed tetrarchal Dining-Companions swished in
the Evening salon, and overflowed coruscated couches. They slithered
through their genuflections to the throne. The princes puffed out their
elbows, simultaneously attempting to disentangle their
Collars-of-the-Fleece in the idea that these would be a suitable
present for their entertainer. Neither succeeded; suddenly in the midst
of the so elaborate setting they perceived the æsthetic nullity of the
ornament, its connotations were too complex to go into.
The tetrarchal children (superb productions, in the strictly esoteric
sense) were led in over the jonquil-colored reed-matting. A water-jet
shot up from the centre of the great table, and fell plashing above on
the red and white rubber awning. A worn entertainment beset the
diminutive music-hall stage: acrobats, flower-dancers, contortionists,
comic wrestlers, to save the guests conversation. A trick skater was
brought in on real ice, did the split, engraved a gothic cathedral. The
Virgin Serpent as she was called, entered singing "Biblis, Biblis"; she
was followed by a symbolic Mask of the Graces; which gave place to
trapeze virtuosi.
An horizontal geyser of petals was shot over the auditorium. The hookahs
were brought in. Jao presumably heard all this over his head. The
diners' talk became general, the princes supporting the army, authority,
religion a bulwark of the state, international arbitration, the
perfectibility of the race; the mandarins of the palace held for the
neutralization of contacts, initiated cénacles, frugality and
segregation.
The music alone carried on the esoteric undertone, silence spread with
great feathers, poised hawk-wise. Salome appeared on the high landing,
descended the twisted stair, still stiff in her sheath of mousseline; a
small ebony lyre dangled by a gilt cord from her wrist; she nodded to
her parent; paused before the Alcazar curtain, balancing, swaying on her
anæmic pigeon-toed little feet--until every one had had a good look at
her. She looked at no one in particular; her hair dusty with exiguous
pollens curled down over her narrow shoulders, ruffled over her
forehead, with stems of yellow flowers twisted into it. From the dorsal
joist of her bodice, from a sort of pearl matrix socket there rose a
peacock tail, moire, azure, glittering with shot emerald: an halo for
her marble-white face.
Superior, graciously careless, conscious of her uniqueness, of her
autochthonous entity, her head cocked to the left, her eyes fermented
with the interplay of contradictory expiations, her lips a pale
circonflex, her teeth with still paler gums showing their
super-crucified half-smile. An exquisite recluse, formed in the island
æsthetic, there alone comprehended. Hermetically enmousselined, the
black spots in the fabric appeared so many punctures in the soft
brightness of her sheath. Her arms of angelic nudity, the two breasts
like two minute almonds, the scarf twined just above the adorable
umbilical groove (nature desires that nude woman should be adorned with
a girdle) composed in a cup-shaped embrace of the hips. Behind her the
peacock halo, her pale pigeon-toed feet covered only by the
watered-yellow fringe and by the bright-yellow anklet. She balanced, a
little budding messiah; her head over-weighted; not knowing what to do
with her hands; her petticoat so simple, art long, very long, and life
so very inextensive; so obviously ready for the cosy-corner, for little
talks in conservatories....
And she was going to speak....
The Tetrarch bulged in his cushions, as if she had already said
something. His attention compelled that of the princes; he brushed aside
the purveyor of pine-apples.
She cleared her throat, laughing, as if not to be taken too seriously;
the sexless, timbreless voicelet, like that of a sick child asking for
medicine, began to the lyre accompaniment:
"Canaan, excellent nothingness; nothingness-latent, circumambient, about
to be the day after to-morrow, incipient, estimable, absolving,
coexistent...."
The princes were puzzled. "Concessions by the five senses to an
all-inscribing affective insanity; latitudes, altitudes, nebulæ, Medusæ
of gentle water, affinities of the ineradicable, passages over earth so
eminently identical with incalculably numerous duplicates, alone in
indefinite infinite. Do you take me? I mean that the pragmatic essence
attracted self-ward dynamically but more or less in its own volition,
whistling in the bag-pipes of the soul without termination.--But to be
natural passives, to enter into the cosmos of harmonics.--Hydrocephalic
theosophies, act it, aromas of populace, phenomena without stable order,
contaminated with prudence.--Fatal Jordans, abysmal Ganges--to an end
with 'em--insubmersible sidereal currents--nurse-maid cosmogonies."
She pushed back her hair dusty with pollens, the soft handclapping
began; her eyelids drooped slightly, her faintly-suggested breasts
lifted slightly, showed more rosy through the almond-shaped eyelets of
her corsage. She was still fingering the ebony lyre.
"Bis, bis, brava!" cried her audience.
Still she waited.
"Go on! You shall have whatever you like. Go on, my dear," said the
Tetrarch; "we are all so damned bored. Go on, Salome, you shall have any
blamed thing you like: the Great-Seal, the priesthood of the Snow Cult,
a job in the University, even to half of my oil stock. But inoculate us
with ... eh ... with the gracious salve of this cosmoconception, with
this parthenospotlessness."
The company in his wake exhaled an inedited boredom. They were all
afraid of each other. Tiaras nodded, but no one confessed to any
difficulty in following the thread of her argument. They were, racially,
so very correct.
Salome wound on in summary rejection of theogonies, theodicies,
comparative wisdoms of nations (short shift, tone of recitative).
Nothing for nothing, perhaps one measure of nothing. She continued her
mystic loquacity: "O tides, lunar oboes, avenues, lawns of twilight,
winds losing caste in November, haymakings, vocations manquées,
expressions of animals, chances."
Jonquil colored mousselines with black spots, eyes fermented, smiles
crucified, adorable umbilici, peacock aureoles, fallen carnations,
inconsequent fugues. One felt reborn, reinitiate and rejuvenate, the
soul expiring systematically in spirals across indubitable definitive
showers, for the good of earth, understood everywhere, palp of Varuna,
air omniversal, assured if one were but ready.
Salome continued insistently: "The pure state, I tell you, sectaries of
the consciousness, why this convention of separations, individuals by
mere etiquette, indivisible? Breathe upon the thistle-down of these
sciences, as you call them, in the orient of my pole-star. Is it life to
persist in putting oneself au courant with oneself, constantly to
inspect oneself, and then query at each step: am I wrong? Species!
Categories! and kingdoms, bah!! Nothing is lost, nothing added, it is
all reclaimed in advance. There is no ticket to the confessional for the
heir of the prodigies. Not expedients and expiations, but vintages of
the infinite, not experimental but in fatality."
The little yellow vocalist with the black funereal spots broke the lyre
over her knee, and regained her dignity. The intoxicated crowd mopped
their foreheads. An embarassing silence. The hyperboreans looked at
each other: "What time will they put her to bed?" But neither ventured
articulation; they did not even inspect their watches. It couldn't have
been later than six. The slender voice once more aroused them:
"And now, father, I wish you to send me the head of Jao Kanan, on any
saucer you like. I am going upstairs. I expect it."
"But ... but ... my dear ... this ... this...." However--the hall was
vigorously of the opinion that the Tiara should accomplish the will of
Salome.
Emeraud glanced at the princes, who gave sign neither of approbation nor
of disapprobation. The cage-birds again began shrieking. The matter was
none of their business.
Decide!
The Tetrarch threw his seal to the Administrator of Death. The guests
were already up, changing the conversation on their way to the evening
tepidarium.