French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics) (14 page)

The pale and lunar mirror seemed to give the artist the feeling he would have got from bathing in a pool; Chaudval was shivering.

Alas! The truth must out—which was that in the dark and cruel mirror, the actor had just discovered he was getting old.

He remarked that his hair, pepper-and-salt only yesterday, was now quite white; it had happened just like that! Farewell encores and garlands, farewell roses of Thalia, laurels of Melpomene!
*
He must take his leave forever, with tears and valedictory handshakes, of the Ellevious and the Laruettes, of the great liveries and the curves, of the Dugazons
*
and the
ingénues
!

He must climb down rapidly from the chariot of Thespis and watch it disappear, his comrades still aboard! And he must watch the banners and banderoles that fluttered in the morning sun as far down as the wheels, playthings of the joyful wind of Hope, disappear at the turning in the road, twilight all around.

Suddenly conscious of his fiftieth year, Chaudval (who was an excellent man) sighed. A mist passed before his eyes and a kind of wintry fever seized him, and his pupils dilated as if he were hallucinating.

The way he stared so fixedly at the fateful glass finished by conferring on his pupils that ability to magnify objects and saturate them
with solemnity, a phenomenon physiologists have noticed in individuals when under the influence of very intense emotion.

The long mirror became deformed under his eyes, that were charged now with vague and languid notions. Childhood memories of beaches and silvery waves danced in his brain. And the mirror, doubtless due to the presence of stars that deepened the surface, seemed to him like the still surface of a gulf. And distending even more, as the old man sighed, the mirror took on the likeness of the sea and the night, those two old friends of the lonely-hearted.

He feasted on this vision for a while, but the streetlamp which reddened the thin cold drizzle at his back and over his head seemed to him, reflected deep in the terrible glass, like the gleam of a
lighthouse
, the colour of blood, which lured to shipwreck the vessel without compass or future.

He shook off this hallucination and straightened up, to his full height, and with a burst of nervous laughter that sounded bitter and false, he startled the two constables under the trees. Most fortunately for the artist, the two of them imagined it was some inoffensive drunk or maybe a desperate lover, and continued on their round without attaching any importance to the wretched Chaudval.

‘Well then, let’s call it a day!’ he said simply and quietly, like a condemned man who, woken by surprise, says to the hangman: ‘I am all yours, my friend.’

And then the old actor launched into a monologue, carried on in a kind of bewildered prostration:

‘I acted wisely’, he went on, ‘the other evening, when I charged Mademoiselle Pinson, my good friend (who has the minister’s ear, as well as sharing his pillow), to obtain for me, between two ardent declarations, the position of lighthouse-keeper that my ancestors occupied on the Ponant coast. And now I come to think of it, I can see why that streetlamp in the mirror produced such a strange effect on me!… It was what I had in mind.—Pinson will send me my licence, there’s no doubt of that. And I shall retire to my lighthouse like a rat into a cheese. I shall give light to the boats, far out at sea. A lighthouse! It always seemed to me rather like a stage-set. I am all alone in the world: and that is decidedly the haven best fitted to my declining years.’

Suddenly, Chaudval interrupted his reverie.

‘But of course!’ he said, patting at his chest underneath his greatcoat… ‘that letter the postman handed me, just as I was going out,
that must be the reply?… I went into the café to read it and forgot all about it!—I’m really slowing down!—Ah, here it is!’

Chaudval had just extracted a large envelope from his pocket, from which, once he had torn it open, dropped a ministerial document. Feverishly, he picked it up and ran his eye over it, under the fiery red of the streetlamp.

‘My lighthouse! My licence!’ he exclaimed. ‘
Saved
, by God!’ he added automatically, as if out of long habit, and in a voice so cracked and falsetto, so unlike his own, that he looked around, as if it belonged to someone else.

‘Come now, be calm… and…
be a man!
’ he went on after a moment.

But having said this, Esprit Chaudval, born Lepeinteur, known as Monanteuil, stopped short as if changed into a statue made of salt. The expression seemed to have paralysed him.

‘What?’ He went on after a pause. ‘What have I just wished?—To be a Man?… And why not, after all?’

He crossed his arms and thought it through.

‘For nearly half a century I have
acted
, I have
played
the passions of other people without ever feeling them—in fact I have never felt anything, myself.—So am I nothing like these “others” except for a laugh?—So does that make me nothing but a
shadow
? Passions! Feelings! Real actions! REAL! They are the things that make up a MAN! Now that age is forcing me to rejoin the human race, I owe it to myself to take possession of the passions, or at least of some
real
feeling… because that is the
sine qua non
for anyone pretending to the title Man. Now that’s solidly argued; that’s blinding common sense.—So let us choose something most in keeping with the nature I have brought back to life.’

He thought for a moment, and went on in a melancholy tone:

‘Love?… Too late.—Glory?… I have known it!—Ambition?… Leave that bauble to the politicians!’

Suddenly he let out a cry:

‘I have it!’ he said: ‘REMORSE!…—that’s what my dramatic temper needs.’

He looked at himself in the mirror, pulling a face stretched and convulsed as if by some inhuman horror:

‘That’s it!’ he finished: ‘Nero! Macbeth! Orestes! Hamlet! Erostratus!
*
—Ghosts!… Yes! Now it’s my turn to see
real
ghosts!—like all those aforementioned gents, who were lucky enough to see ghosts round every corner.’

He struck his forehead.

‘But
how?
… Am I innocent as the newborn lamb?’

And after a further
pause
:

‘Ah,
it depends on that!
’ he went on. ‘The end must have the means… I must surely have the right to become what I
am meant
to be? Humanity is my right! If I’m to feel remorse, I must commit the crime to go with it! Well so be it, I’ll go with crime: what difference does it make, as long as I commit it… with the right intention?—Exactly so…—It’s settled!’ (And he started to speak in dialogue) ‘—I shall do atrocious things.—When?—Straightaway. Don’t put off till tomorrow…—What crimes?—Just one!… But huge!—An atrocity, an enormity! Something to bring all the Furies forth from hell!—What, then?—The most dazzling, of course… Bravo! I have it! FIRE! Time is pressing! I must start my blaze and pack my trunks! And then return, duly muffled behind the window of some cab, to enjoy my triumph among the desperate crowds! I must harvest the curses of the dying—and then take my train to the north-west, with enough remorse on my plate to last the rest of my days.

‘And then I shall go and hide out in my lighthouse! In the light, out at sea! Where the police will never find me—for my crime will be
disinterested
.
*
And I shall lament all alone.’—Here Chaudval straightened up, practising this line, absolutely worthy of Corneille:
*

‘Washed of Suspicion by th’Enormity of the Crime!

‘It is spoken.—And now,’—concluded the great actor, picking up a cobblestone and looking around to make sure he was quite alone—‘and now
you
, you will never reflect anyone again.’

And he hurled the stone against the glass, which shattered into a thousand dazzling shards.

This first duty expedited, he hurried away—satisfied with this initial, but nonetheless energetic and striking act—and rushed towards the boulevards where, a few minutes later, he hailed a cab, jumped into it, and disappeared.

Two hours later the flare of a huge catastrophe, leaping up from large depots of petrol, oil, and matches, licked against all the windowpanes in the district of Le Temple. Soon there were squadrons of firemen rolling and pushing their machines, rushing in from all sides,
their bugles sounding sinister blasts, waking with a start the citizens of that densely populated area. The sound of numberless running feet echoed on the pavements, and the crowd assembled in the large Place du Château d’Eau and the neighbouring streets. People were already being organized into water-chains. In less than quarter of an hour the soldiery had closed off the area, and policemen kept the crowds moving, by the ruddy light of torches, away from the fire.

Carriages came to a standstill, gridlocked. Everyone was shouting. Further off, cries could be heard coming from the terrible crackling of the fire. Victims trapped in that hell were screaming, and burning roofs caved in on top of them. Around a hundred families, from the burning workshops at the centre of the blaze, were trapped, deprived of relief or refuge.

Some way off, a solitary carriage, with two stout trunks on its roof, was stationed behind the milling crowd in the Place du Château d’Eau. And there in the carriage sat Esprit Chaudval, born Lepeinteur, known as Monanteuil; from time to time he parted the blind to contemplate his handiwork.

‘Ha, ha!’ he muttered to himself, ‘now I feel an object of horror to God and man!—Yes, that is indeed the look of one rebuked!…’

The good old actor’s face looked radiant.

‘O wretch!’ he hissed between his teeth, ‘what dreadful avenging insomnia I shall suffer, a prey to the ghosts of my victims! I feel mingling within me the souls of Nero, burning Rome with an artist’s exaltation! Of Erostratus, burning the temple at Ephesus to immortalize his name!… Of Rostopschin,
*
burning Moscow for love of his country! Of Alexander, burning Persepolis for love of his immortal Thais!… But I, I burn out of DUTY, having no other means of
existence
!—I burn because I owe it to myself… I acquit myself! What a Man I shall be! Now at last I shall know what it feels like to have a tormented conscience! What sumptuous nights of horror I shall have!… At last, I can breathe… I feel born anew… I exist!… To think that I have lived as an actor!… And now I am no more, to the vulgar eyes of common mortals, than fodder for the scaffold—let us flee at the speed of light! Let us shut ourselves away in our lighthouse, to enjoy our remorse at leisure.’

Two days later, in the evening, having travelled without hindrance, Chaudval reached his destination and took possession of his old, abandoned lighthouse, situated along our northern coasts: an
obsolescent lamp atop a dilapidated structure, that an act of ministerial compassion had relit on his behalf.

It was hardly as if the beacon were of any use to anyone: all that was nothing but a superfetation, a sinecure, a dwelling with a flame on its roof which everyone could do without, except for Chaudval.

So it was that the worthy tragedian, having brought with him bedding, victuals, and a tall mirror with which to study the effects of all this on his physiognomy, shut himself up without more ado in his lighthouse, out of reach of human suspicion.

All around him murmured the sea, where the old abyss of the heavens dipped its starry points. He watched the waves breaking on his tower, driven by the squalls, much as the Stylite
*
might have watched the sand scatter against his column, driven by the gusts of the desert storm.

He watched distractedly, in the distance, the vapour from the steamboats and the sails of fishing boats ply back and forth.

And every moment, the dreamer forgot about his fire.—He went up and down his stone staircase.

On the evening of the third day, Lepeinteur—shall we call him?—sat in his room, sixty feet above the waves, rereading a Paris newspaper in which the events surrounding the great disaster were recounted.

‘An unidentified miscreant is reported to have thrown some lighted matches into a petrol depot. The monstrous fire that ensued in the area of the Faubourg du Temple kept the firemen and the surrounding neighbourhoods at their exertions all night.

‘There were close on one hundred casualties: unfortunate families plunged into the blackest despair.

‘The whole area was in mourning, and still smoking.

‘The name of the wretch who did this deed is unknown, as is the
motive
for the crime.’

On reading this, Chaudval jumped for joy, and rubbing his hands with delight exclaimed:

‘What a huge success! What a wonderful villain I am! Shall I be sufficiently haunted? What ghosts I shall see! I was sure that I would become a Man! Ah, I admit that the way was hard! But it had to be done!… It had to be done!’

Turning back to the newspaper, which continued with the announcement that a charity performance was to be given to raise money for the victims of the fire, Chaudval murmured:

‘Well, well! I should have deployed my talent and come to the aid
of my victims!—It would have been my final performance. I would have declaimed
Orestes
.
*
I would have been extremely lifelike…’

And with that, Chaudval began living in his lighthouse.

The evenings fell, and after them the nights, in succession.

Something which stupefied the artist came to pass. Something appalling.

Contrary to his hopes and expectations, his conscience dictated nothing resembling remorse. No ghost made its appearance.—He felt
nothing, absolutely nothing!
…

He could not believe the Silence. It dumbfounded him.

Sometimes, scrutinizing himself in the mirror, he noticed that his cheery countenance had not changed in the least!—In fury, he dashed up to the beacon and tampered with it, in the radiant hope of luring some steamboat onto the rocks—anything to help activate or stimulate his stubborn remorse!—To bring on his ghosts!

All to no avail!

A complete waste of time and effort! He felt
nothing
. He saw not a single threatening spectre. He couldn’t sleep any more, stifled as he was by despair and
shame
. Until one night, suffering a cerebral attack in his luminous solitude, in torment he cried out—accompanied by the sound of the ocean and the gales howling round his tower standing out there in the infinite: ‘Ghosts!… For the love of God!… Just one, let me see just one!—
I have earned it!
’