"Lirat! Ah, at last it is you! For a week I have been looking for you,
have been writing to you, have been calling you, have been waiting for
you.... Lirat, my dear Lirat, save me!"
"What? My God! What's wrong?"
"I want to kill myself."
"Kill yourself! Well, that's an old story. Come, there is no danger."
"I want to kill myself! I want to kill myself!..."
Lirat looked at me, blinked his eyes and paced up and down the study
with long strides.
"My poor Mintié!" he said, "if you were a statesman, a stockbroker
or.... Well, I don't know ... say a grocer, an art critic, or a
journalist, I would say to you: 'You are unhappy and you have had
enough of life, my boy! Go ahead, kill yourself!' And with these words
I would leave you. But here you have that rare opportunity of being an
artist, you possess that divine gift of seeing, understanding, feeling
things which others can't see, can't understand and can't feel! There
are harmonies in nature which exist only for you and which others will
never hear ... you have all the real joys of life, the only joys, the
noble, grand and pure ones, the joys which make you forget men and
which render you almost Godlike. And because some woman has deceived
you, you want to renounce all that? She has deceived you; it is evident
that she has deceived you.... Well, what else did you expect her to do?
And what concern is it of yours, even if she has?..."
"Please don't jeer at me. You don't know anything, Lirat. You don't
suspect anything. I am lost, dishonored!"
"Dishonored, my friend? Are you sure of it? Do you have unclean debts?
You'll pay them off!"
"It is not a question of that! I am dishonored! dishonored, do you
understand? It has been four months since I have given Juliette any
money ... four months! And here I live, I eat, have my amusements.
Every evening ... before dinner ... late at night.... Juliette
re-enters the house. She is worn-out, pale, her hair disheveled. From
what dens, what alcoves, what arms is she returning? Upon what pillows
has her head reclined! Sometimes I see pieces of bed clothes insolently
hanging on the top of her hair.... She no longer feels ashamed of
it, she does not even take the trouble to lie about it ... one might
think it had been arranged between us. She undresses, and I believe
she takes a perverse delight in showing me her ill-fastened skirts,
her unlaced corset, all the disorder of her rumpled clothes, of her
loosened garments which come off, falling to the ground about her, and
lie conspicuously on the floor, filling the bedroom with the breath of
other people!
"I tremble with rage and want to sink my teeth into her body; my wrath
is kindled to a frenzy and boils within me--I feel like killing her.
And I say nothing! Often I even come up to her to embrace her ... but
she pushes me away: 'No, leave me alone, I am tired!' At first, when
this abominable life started, I used to beat her ... for you must
know, Lirat, there isn't a disgraceful act that I have not committed.
I have exhausted every form of indecency--yes, I beat her! She bent
her back ... and hardly uttered a complaint. One evening I seized her
by the throat, I threw her to the ground. Oh! I had quite made up my
mind to finish her. While I was strangling her, I turned my head away
for fear that I might be moved to pity, fixed my gaze upon a flower
design on the carpet, and in order to hear nothing, neither her wailing
nor rattling, I shrieked out inarticulate words, like a possessed
one. How long did it last? Soon she ceased struggling ... her muscles
relaxed.... I felt her vitality giving out under my fingers ... a few
more convulsions ... and that was the end.... She did not stir any
more. And suddenly I saw her black-blue face, her contracted eyes, her
mouth, large and wide open, her rigid body, her motionless arms. And
like a madman I rushed into every room of the apartment, calling the
servants: 'Help, help, I have killed Madame! I have killed Madame!'
"I fled, tumbling down the stairway, without a hat, dashed into the
caretakers: 'Go upstairs quickly, I have killed Madame!' Then I darted
out on the street, in a frenzy. The whole night I was running without
knowing whither, rushing along the boulevards, crossing bridges,
dashing against benches in the parks and mechanically turning back
toward the house. It seemed to me that through its closed shutters
there penetrated the light of wax tapers; priests' vestments,
surplices, eucharists passed before me in confusion; it seemed to me
that I could hear funeral chants, the rumble of organs, the noise of
ropes rubbing against the wood of the coffin. I pictured Juliette
stretched out on the bed, dressed in a white robe, her hands clasped,
a crucifix on her breast and flowers about her. And I was surprised
not to see black draperies on the door, or a hearse with flowers and
wreaths at the entrance outside, or people in mourning fighting for a
chance to be sprinkled with holy water.
"Oh, Lirat, what a night that was! How did I ever manage not to throw
myself under the wheels of the carriages, crash my head against the
housewall, or plunge into the Seine. I don't know!... Day came....
I had a notion to surrender to the police. I wanted to go up to a
policeman on the street and say to him: 'I have killed Juliette....
Arrest me!' But thoughts, each wilder than the other, came to my mind,
clashed and yielded to others. And I ran and ran as if pursued by a
pack of barking hounds.... It was Sunday, I remember. There were many
people on the streets flooded with sunshine. I was sure that all looked
at me, that these people, seeing me run, cried out in horror: 'Here is
Juliette's murderer!'
"Toward evening, worn out, on the verge of collapsing on the sidewalk,
I met Jesselin! 'I say,' he exclaimed, 'you have done a nice thing,
you have!' 'Do you already know it?' 'Why, all Paris knows it, dear
friend. A little while ago, at the races, Juliette showed us her neck
and the marks which your fingers had left on it. She said: "Jean did
this to me." Why, man you are getting on fine!' And while parting, he
added: 'For the rest, she has never been more beautiful. And such a
success!' And so you see that while I believed her to be dead, she was
promenading at the racetrack. I had left the house and she could have
thought that I would never come back again, and yet she went to the
races ... prettier than ever!"
Lirat gravely listened to me. He was not pacing about any more; he
seated himself and shook his head.
"What do you want me to tell you? You must go away."
"Go away?" I rejoined. "I should go away? But I don't want to! An
adhesive force like glue which is getting thicker every day holds
me fast to her carpets, a chain growing heavier every day holds me
riveted to her walls. I can't leave her! Look, at this very moment I
am dreaming of committing all sorts of mad, heroic acts. To cleanse
myself of all this baseness, I am ready to throw myself in front of
the fire-spitting muzzles of a hundred cannons. I feel myself strong
enough to crush whole formidable armies single handed. When I walk on
the street I look for runaway horses, fires or any other dangerous
adventure where I can sacrifice my life. There is not a perilous or
superhuman deed that I have not the courage to perform. But, that! I
can not do!
"At first I offered myself the most ridiculous excuses, I gave myself
the most illogical reasons for not leaving her. I said to myself that
if I left her, Juliette would sink to even lower depths; that my love
for her had in some manner been her last vestige of decency which I
should finally succeed in restoring by saving her from the mire in
which she wallowed. Truly I had been repaid by the luxury of pity and
self sacrifice. But I was lying! I simply can't leave her! I can't
because I love her, because the more depraved she is the more I love
her. Because I want her, do you hear, Lirat? And if you only knew what
it means to me, this love, what frenzies, what shame, what tortures?
If you only knew to what depths of Hell passion can sink, you would be
horrified! At night when she is asleep, I prowl about in her dressing
room, opening drawers, digging among the cinders of the fire place,
putting together pieces of torn letters, smelling the linens which she
has just removed, devoting myself to the vilest spying, to the most
shameful searching! It was not enough for me to know; I had to see as
well! I have no longer a mind, a heart, or anything. I am just the
embodiment of disordered, raving, famished sex, which demands its share
of living flesh, like the fallow-deer that howl in their frenzy on
rutting nights."
I was exhausted ... the words came out of my throat with a hissing
sound ... still I continued.
"Ah! It is beyond all comprehension! Sometimes it happens that
Juliette is sick. Her members, overstrained by pleasure, refuse to obey
her; her constitution, worn out by nervous shocks, revolts. She takes
to her bed. If you could only see her then? A child, Lirat, a sweet and
touching child! She dreams only of the country, little brooks, green
prairies, simple joys: 'Oh, my dear, she exclaims, 'with ten thousand
francs of income, how happy we should be!' She makes all sorts of
Virgilian and charming plans. 'We ought to go far, far away, to live in
a house surrounded by tall trees. She will raise chickens which will
lay eggs she herself will take out of the hatching place every morning;
she will make cream, cheese; and she will wear aprons like this and
straw hats like that, jogging along pathways astride a donkey that she
will call Joseph. Geeho! Joseph, Geeho! Ah, how nice it will be!'
"When I hear her say that, I feel hope returning and I let myself
be taken in by that impossible dream of a rustic life with Juliette
disguised as a shepherdess. Quiet landscapes like places of refuge,
enchanting like a paradise, unroll before us ... and we grow exalted
and enthusiastic. Juliette cries: 'My poor little thing, I have caused
you suffering, but now it's all over. I promise you. And then I am
going to have a trained ram, am I not? A beautiful ram, very big, all
white, around whom I shall tie a bow of red ribbon, and who will follow
me everywhere together with Spy, not so, dear?' She insists that I have
my dinner in front of her bed, on a little table, and she coddles me
like a nurse and caresses me like a mother; she makes me eat as one
does a child, repeating without end and with agitation in her voice:
'My poor little thing!'
"At other moments she becomes thoughtful and grave: 'My dear, I would
like to ask you something that has been worrying me for a long time;
promise that you'll tell me.' I promise. 'Well, when one is dead, in
the coffin, is it true that one's feet rest against the board?' 'What
an idea! Why do you speak of it?' 'Tell me, please tell me!' 'But I
don't know, my dear Juliette!' 'Don't you know? Although it is true
that you never know anything when I am serious ... because ... you
see?... I don't want my feet to rest against the board. When I am dead
... you shall put a cushion inside and my white dress ... you know the
one with pink flowers ... the dress for which I won the first prize!
You'll be very sorry, my poor little thing, won't you? Embrace me! Come
over here, closer to me, still closer. I adore you!'
"And I used to wish that Juliette were sick all the time! But as soon
as she recovers she does not remember anything; her promises, her
resolutions are gone and our life of hell begins again, more violent
and exasperating than ever. And from that little bit of heaven to which
I have held on for a while, I tumble down again into the filth and
crime of this love even more frightfully maimed in spirit! Ah! that is
not all, Lirat! I should have stayed in that apartment to brood over
my shame, don't you think! I should have withdrawn into obscurity and
oblivion sufficient to make people believe that I am dead. And instead
of that! Well! Go to the Bois and you see me there every day. At the
theatre it is I whom you will find in the stage box, in a dress suit,
with a flower in my buttonhole, always I! Juliette is resplendent
amidst flowers, plumes and gems. She is exquisite, she has a new dress
which everyone admires, a stock of smiles each more modest than the
other, and the string of pearls, for which I have not paid, which she
toys gracefully with the tips of her fingers and without the least
remorse. And here I have not a sou, not a sou! And I am at the end of
my rope, having exhausted all my swindling tricks and crooked schemes!
Often I tremble. It seems to me that the heavy hand of a gendarme is
bearing down upon me. Already I hear the painful whisper, I catch the
stealthy looks of contempt.
"Little by little emptiness broadens and recedes all around me as
around a pestiferous person. Old friends pass by, turn their heads
away, avoid me in order not to greet me.... And unwillingly I assume
the sly and servile manner of disreputable people who walk with eyes
asquint and cringing back in search of an outstretched hand! The
horrible thing about it, you see, is that I am perfectly conscious
of the fact that it is Juliette's beauty that protects me. It is the
desire which she awakens, it is her mouth, it is the mystery of her
nude and defiled body which in this pleasure-seeking world shields me
with a false esteem, with a lying semblance of respect. A handshake, a
grateful look seems to say: 'I have been with your Juliette, and I owe
that to you. Perhaps you prefer money? Do you want it?' Yes, just let
me quit Juliette and with one kick I shall even be thrown out of this
crowd, this facile, fawning and perverted crowd and shall be reduced to
sordid association with gamblers and pimps!"
I burst out sobbing. Lirat did not stir, did not raise his head.
Motionless, with clasped hands he was looking at something I knew not
what ... nothing, I suppose. After a few moments of silence I continued:
"My good Lirat, do you remember our talks in your studio! I used
to listen to you, and what you told me was so beautiful! Without
suspecting it, perhaps, you awoke noble desires and sublime raptures
in me. You breathed into me a little of the belief, ambition and lofty
flights of your soul. You taught me how to read nature, to understand
her passionate tongue, to feel the emotions latent in things. You
proved to me the existence of immortal beauty. You said to me: 'Love,
why it is in the earthenware pitcher, it is in the verminous rags
which I paint. To take a feeling, a joy, a moment of suffering, of
palpitation, a vision, a shudder--anything, no matter how fugitive an
experience of life it may be--and recreate it, fix it in colors, in
words or sounds, means to love! Love is a man's yearning to create!'
"And I dreamed of becoming a great artist! Ah! my dreams, my delights
in being able to perceive things, my doubts, my sacred agonies, do you
remember them? Look what I have done with all that! I wanted to love
and I went to a woman who kills love. I started with wings, drunk with
the air, with the azure, with light! And now I am nothing but a dirty
hog, sunk in its filth, with greedy snout and sides shaking with impure
rutting. You can see for yourself, Lirat, that I am lost, lost, lost!
... and that I must kill myself."
Then Lirat approached and put both hands on my shoulders:
"You say you are lost! Let us see now; when one is of your stock, can
one say that a man's life is lost? You say you must kill yourself?
Does a man who has typhoid fever say: 'I must kill myself?' He says:
'I must cure myself!' You have typhoid fever, my poor child ... cure
yourself. Lost! Why, there is not a crime, do you hear me, there is not
a crime, no matter how monstrous and vile, that can not be redeemed
by forgiveness. I don't mean God's forgiveness or man's forgiveness,
but one's own forgiveness, which is much more difficult and more worth
while to obtain. Lost! I was listening to you, my dear Mintié, and
do you know what I was thinking? I was thinking that you had the
noblest and most beautiful soul that I ever knew. No, no ... a man who
accuses himself as you do ... who puts into his confession of sin the
heart-rending accents which you have put in yours just now ... why
no--that man is never lost. On the contrary, he finds himself again and
he is near redemption. Love has passed over you and has left all the
more filth in its wake because of your extremely delicate nature. Well!
You must wash this filth off--and I know where the water is that will
wash it off. You are going to leave this place ... leave Paris."
"Lirat!" I entreated, "don't ask me to leave! I have tried it twenty
times and I cannot do it."
"You are going away," repeated Lirat, whose face suddenly darkened. "Or
else I am mistaken about you, and you are a scamp!"
He resumed:
"In the heart of Brittany there is a fishing village, which is called
Le Ploch. The air there is pure, nature is superb, man rugged and kind.
It is there that you are going to live three months, six months, a year
if necessary. You will walk along the sandy shore, across the heath,
through pine forests, over rocks; you will dig the soil, you will catch
sea wrack, you will lift logs, you will shout in the wind. There, at
last, you will subdue this poisoned body insane with love. In the
beginning it will be hard for you and you will perhaps feel homesick
... you will rebel, you will be seized with passionate desires to
return. Don't be discouraged, I beseech you. On days especially hard to
bear, walk all the more ... spend nights out on the sea with the brave
people of the place ... and when your heart is heavy, weep, weep. Above
all, keep from leading an indolent life, from dreaming, from reading,
from carving your name on the rocks and tracing it on the sand. Don't
think of anything, don't think at all! On such occasions, literature
and art are poor counsellors, they are apt to bring you back to love
again. Incessant activity of your body, hard physical labor, your
flesh worn out by crushing fatigue, your head lashed and made giddy
by the wind, by the rain, by storms! I tell you, you will come back
from that place not only cured but stronger than ever and better armed
for struggle. And you shall have paid your debt to that monster. You
say, you shall have paid it with your fortune? Well what of it, that's
nothing. Why, I envy you and wish I could go with you. Come, my dear
Mintié, a little courage! Go!"
"Yes, Lirat, you are right. I must go away."
"Well go then!"
"I am going away tomorrow, I swear!"
"Tomorrow? Ah, tomorrow! She is going to come back, isn't that the
idea? And you will throw yourself in her arms again. No, go now!"
"Let me write to her. I can't leave her like this, without a word,
without saying good bye to her. Lirat just think! In spite of all this
suffering, in spite of all this shame, there still are happy memories,
blissful hours. She is not wicked ... she simply does not know ...
that's all ... but she loves me. I shall go away, I promise you I
shall. But give me just one more day! One more day! One day is not
much, especially since I shall not see her any more! Ah, one more day!"
"No, go now!"
"Lirat! My good Lirat!"
"No!"
"But I have no money! How do you expect me to go without money?"
"I have enough left to last you over the trip; I'll send it to you
there. Go!"
"At least let me get my things ready!"
"I have some wool stockings and caps; that's what you need. Go!"
He hurried me away. Without seeing anything, without realizing
anything, I went through the apartment, bumping into pieces of
furniture. I did not feel any pain, for I was insensible to everything;
I was walking behind Lirat with the heavy step and the passive gait of
a beast led to slaughter.
"Well where is your hat?"
"That's right! I went out without a hat. I did not think that I was
abandoning, that I was leaving behind anything that was a part of me;
that the things which I saw, in the midst of which I lived, were dying
one after another as soon as I passed by them."
The train left at eight o'clock in the evening. Lirat did not leave me
all day. Wishing, no doubt, to occupy my mind and to keep my will power
at its highest pitch, he spoke to me with broad gestures; but I did not
hear anything except a confused noise, annoying me and buzzing about
my ears like pestering flies. We dined in a restaurant near the Mont
Parnasse railroad station. Lirat continued to talk, stupefying me with
gestures and words, tracing strange geographic lines with his knife on
the table.
"Look, there's where it is! Then you will follow this side ... and ..."
I believe he was giving me instructions about my trip to the place of
exile I was bound for ... told me the names of villages, persons. The
word 'sea' recurred again and again with the rumble of pebbles, washed
by the waves and rubbing against one another.
"Will you remember?"
And without knowing exactly what he referred to, I answered:
"Yes, yes, I'll remember."
It was only at the station, this vast building, filled with noise and
bustle, that I realized my situation. I felt terribly downhearted.
And so I was going away! It's all over then! Never again shall I see
Juliette, never again! At this moment I forgot all my suffering, my
shame, my ruin, the irreparable conduct of Juliette and remembered only
our brief moments of happiness, and I rebelled against the injustice of
being separated from my well-beloved. Lirat meantime was saying:
"And then, if you only knew what a bliss it is to live among the lowly,
to study their poor but worthy life, their resignation of martyrs,
their...."
I had a notion to escape his surveillance, to flee then and there. A
foolish hope kept me from doing that. I said to myself: 'Celestine will
no doubt bring word to Juliette that Lirat has been at the house, that
he has led me away by force; she will understand at once that something
horrible is happening, that I am at this station, that I am going to
leave. And she will come running.' I really believed she would. So
strong was my faith that through the large open windows, I watched the
people who were entering; I searched among the various groups, examined
closely the dense crowd of passengers standing in front of the track
gate. And whenever some elegant lady appeared I gave a start, ready to
dart toward her. Lirat went on:
"And to think that there are some people who consider them brutes,
these heroes! Ah! you will see those magnificent brutes with their
horny hands, their eyes full of infinitude, and their backs which make
one weep."
Even on the platform I was still hoping for Juliette's arrival. Surely
in a second she will be here, pale, vanquished, suppliant, with
outstretched arms: "My Jean, my Jean, I was a bad woman, forgive me!
Don't bear me ill-will on account of that, don't forsake me. What do
you expect me to become, without you? Oh, come back, my Jean, or else
take me along!" And silhouettes flitted and disappeared in the cars;
fantastic shadows crept along and split against the walls; long whitish
columns of smoke spread out under the vaulted roof....
"Embrace me, my dear Mintié. Embrace me!"
Lirat drew me close to his breast. He was crying. "Write to me as soon
as you get there. Good bye!"
He pushed me into a car and drew the door curtain.
"Good bye!"
A whistle, then a dull rolling ... then lights chasing one another ...
things receding somewhere ... then nothing ... except black night. Why
did Juliette not come? Why? And in the midst of rumpled skirts on the
carpets, in her dressing room, in front of her looking glass, I clearly
see her, bare-shouldered, applying rice powder to her face. Celestine
with her soft flaccid fingers is sewing on a band of crepe at the
bottom of the low cut waist, and a man whom I don't know, reclining
on the sofa, with crossed legs, watches Juliette with eyes in which
desire is gleaming. The gas is burning, candle lights are blazing,
a bouquet of roses which someone has just brought, mingles its more
delicate perfume with the violent odors of dresses! And Juliette takes
a rose, twists its stem, straightens out its petals and sticks it in
the buttonhole of the man with a tender smile. A bonnet with hanging
strings is perched on top of a chandelier....
And the train is moving on, puffing, panting. The night is ever black,
and I am plunging into nothingness....