French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics) (29 page)

‘And it was all a dream, as usual!’ said Jaquels to de Romer.

‘Oh yes! I dreamed it so clearly in fact, that there is today, in the asylum at Villejuif, an incurable ether addict, whose identity they have never been able to establish. You merely have to check the register: found on Wednesday, 10 March, at the Hotel…, rue d’Amsterdam, nationality French, probable age twenty-six, probable name Edmond Chalegrin.’

I
N
the hotel where I was then lodging on the rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, I became aware of a suspicious-looking client. I was at that time a penniless law student, and very self-involved, so for this woman to attract my attention, she must have cut a figure which contrasted violently with the grey uniformity of the other lodgers.

She was… how shall I put it?… an intermittent guest at the hotel… and even though she rented her room by the month, she rarely slept there; on the other hand, not a week went by without her coming to spend a couple of hours shut up in her room, and she was never alone. Sometimes she would bring a man, sometimes a woman, and at other times her girl-friends in a group. In winter there were hearty fires and she had bowls of punch brought up; in summer, lemonades and soda.

She was treated with the greatest deference at the hotel. The manager and his wife were lavish in their praise of Madame de Prack: she must have tipped very generously.

She was not a prostitute, as I had first thought. Early on, seeing her come in with someone different each time, I took her for a vulgar tart of the worst kind, since she apparently took up with anybody. But not a bit of it, and on further reflection I supposed her to be a member of some secret society, a creature hunted by the police, hiding out in Paris under assumed names: the wife of an anarchist, a ringleader, or just a common criminal belonging to a gang—of the sort that operates in the big department stores—giving tip-offs to denizens of the murky underworld, and indulging in the handling and resale of stolen goods. And then other notions flitted across my mind: perhaps this woman was nothing more than a degenerate, seeking distraction in debauchery and secret orgies from the daily boredom of conjugal life in a bourgeois setting.

From the well-heeled bourgeoisie, in any case, since Madame de Prack’s expenses were considerable by the standards of the other lodgers, who were hard-up students or office clerks. She would always arrive in a carriage and leave the same way, and the men she brought in were usually shabbily dressed and seemed to belong to the lower classes: little bowler hats, long rumpled overcoats, grubby scarves. But often they had something remarkably debonair and lively
about them, and carried themselves like gymnasts or acrobats—so much so that I began to entertain the idea that Madame de Prack was some kind of theatrical agent, working for circuses and music-halls in the provinces.

The women she brought with her were more elegant, with their red henna’d hair, their eyes made up, and their mouths heightened by lipstick. They seemed to belong to the same family of small-time actresses, or waitresses on the night-shift, and their loud voices, gaudy clothes, and histrionic gestures were in stark contrast with the excessively sober appearance of their friend.

Madame de Prack was perfectly turned-out. Always in black, wrapped in soft furs for winter or in tulle and silk muslins for summer, which made her figure look even slimmer, she hid beneath thick veils a remarkably pale face, and eyes that seemed dashed with kohl between their purple eyelids, the whole not without charm, but for a slightly long nose. An over-large mouth also rather spoiled the face, but it opened scarlet onto some wide-set, brilliant little teeth. Shadow dwelt at the join of the lips, and her wide smile, flecked with scarcely perceptible down on the upper lip, was not without a certain
piquant
. With her narrow face, her pointed chin, and horse-like profile, she looked a little like an elongated grasshopper, with the slow and then sudden movements to match.

Madame de Prack must have had a strong character—to judge from her appearance at least—for if she was neither a thief nor from a theatrical agency, she remained a fine-spun net of lust; and judging from the prey she caught, fish or fowl, all was grist to her mill.

More than once I brushed past her on the stairs of the hotel; she was coming up, I was coming down, or vice-versa, and each time I had the audacity to trail my hand along the banister in an attempt to meet her own, because that shadowy, enigmatic mouth and those inviting eyes pierced me through. But it was each time in vain. I cannot have been her type, and her strangely insistent eyes never once met mine. For a time I resented this. The svelte woman with the melting eyes would have made an exquisite and obliging mistress—sex and mystery within my grasp! The hotel staff never said a word about their guest, and they refused to be drawn. As I have suggested, Madame de Prack must have been very generous. My pride was hurt, and for a while I was base enough to try and dream up some trick to play on my neighbour, and then I just forgot about it.

Chance, that great agent in human affairs, was to help me solve one part of the mystery. It was the end of winter, during a performance at the Français, where I had a cheap seat in the last row of the stalls. They were playing repertory, and the actors were going through the motions; indeed, they dozed so deeply that I had stopped listening to their droning, riveted as I was by a whispered conversation two women were having in one of the boxes just above and behind me. Here are the fragments I heard:

‘No, I wouldn’t dare!’ said one voice. ‘And how could I leave my house in a carnival cape? There’s the coachman. I can trust my own maid, but the footman and the housekeeper are devoted to the Marquis. I am watched over—spied on—don’t you see! Yours puts up with everything, lucky you.’—‘And what a mistake!’ exclaimed the other woman.—‘The fact is his trust does him credit. No, Lucie, there’s no question of it, and yet heaven knows how dearly I would love to go to that ball! To wander about for a whole night in disguise, free to come alongside and brush past every kind of debauchery and vice, including those one never imagined—certain of not being recognized!’—‘Indeed! It’s all quite pungent, and you’ll never imagine the kind of thing people get up to on those nights.’ At this point a whispered confidence ended in stifled laughs, and then the more hesitant voice came through again clearly: ‘But how do you manage? What about the servants? Is your lord and master jealous?’—‘I dine out on those evenings, of course, and I sleep at my mother’s. You really are too innocent, Suzanne. I indulge all my fantasies. Life is short and I want to live it. Renting a room by the month at the hotel, under a false name, like I do, isn’t ideal either, I can tell you…’—It was the end of the act; the audience got up to the sound of shoes scraping and seats springing back. I heard no more that night.

Ten days after this the hotel manager died. Influenza carried him off in less than a week, and it was in the little furnished reception room, transformed into a chapel of rest, that the gloomy wake was held. The devastated widow sat near the body, weeping the loss both of her husband and her business partner. The shutters had been closed, and there in the darkened room the poor woman, helped by two relatives, tried to find some solitude in the middle of the incessant coming and going of the hotel; in spite of her grief, she remained professionally attentive to noises coming from the street and the hotel itself. With another of the lodgers, I had gone in to pay my respects
to the widow. After exchanging the usual formalities we fell silent, rather embarrassed, and not knowing quite how to take our leave. Suddenly there came the sound of a carriage stopping in front of the hotel, followed by hurried steps on the stair, and in a bristling mass of astrakhan Madame de Prack burst into the room. She was not alone; another woman, young, elegant, and heavily veiled, was with her.

The newcomers were taken aback—they knew nothing of what had happened, and were shocked at the funereal scene; but Madame de Prack soon recovered her sang-froid. After murmuring a few words, and having pressed the hand of the widow: ‘I am so sorry, and I feel wretched, my dear Madame! But I must ask of you a service. Where have you stored my capes and wigs and costumes?’ When the hotel-keeper, rendered speechless, gestured helplessly, Madame de Prack went on: ‘You see, Madame here (and she indicated the stranger), Madame is to accompany me to the ball tomorrow, and I am lending her a costume, and we want to try it on. Am I disturbing you?’ The widow’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, and she pointed to a cupboard on the far side of the corpse. The dead man had been placed right in front of it.

‘It is indeed very inconvenient, but what can I do? None of this is my fault, and my friend is in rather a hurry.’ The widow, who had stood up, now fell back into her chair and started sobbing in silence, her hands on her knees, and with an imploring expression on her face; but Madame de Prack just stood there, her long, pale visage imperious and wicked. The widow made an effort, and removing her trousseau of keys from her belt, stepped over the coffin, and with her legs apart, straddling the corpse, opened the cupboard and passed over a whole mass of satins, velvets, and lace to her implacable client.

A wig that was hanging out loose nearly caught fire in the candle-flame; we looked on in dread. ‘Thank you,’ said Madame de Prack, flattening down the dresses and capes with the back of her hand; then, turning towards her companion: ‘Are you coming, Suzanne?’

O
CTOBER:
the ambiguous and sinister aspect of certain outlying streets during these rainy and livid days of the late season, especially
at dusk when, once the sickening grind of the daily task has been acquitted, the bestial instincts inside us come to the fore, emboldened in the general stew of lust as the brothels light up, and provoked by the multitude of skirts trailing along in the gloom.

Voici le soir charmant, ami du criminel…
*

It’s that moment in the evening when the bars are ablaze, and between the tall vessels of polished copper, like those in a laboratory, a ragged, hollow-eyed crowd made up of old working men and young toughs fraternize and banter: outside the anxious silhouettes of the tarts keep watch, especially on pay-day, when any man a bit the worse for drink is prey. There they are, working the pavement, black-rimmed eyes set in faces white as plaster, looking like masks in the wan light of the streetlamps. And there, on the other side, is a crowd of worn overalls and resigned expressions—they belong to the legitimate spouses and the mothers of these working men in the grip of vice—and they wait for their menfolk at the wine-seller’s door… there, at the dark, damp crossroads they wait, timidly and pitiably, for the week’s earnings; deformed, worn out, and ugly, like pathetic ghosts of virtue—they have come to bargain for food on the table for the brats, competing against alcohol and sex.

Further on, where the crowded street leads down towards the ramparts, it becomes less well lit, and the storefronts of the wine-sellers, half-concealed by curtains, are engulfed in mystery; the voices of the customers become hushed and the tarts more spaced out along the empty pavements; the footsteps of the last stragglers ring out more rapidly, and along the tall fences that close off the newly built blocks of flats there are groups of three or four at the most, standing together in the dark, holding dubious council.

Slang words are exchanged in whispers—
pognon
and
rousse
*
—a guttural and sinister slang, like the sound of a steel blade rasping in the dark; then the group disperses, and at the windows of the new blocks and the old slums the vaguely gleaming forms of women in petticoats emerge, leaning their pallid flesh on the lintels.

These are the prostitutes who work from their windows, the most refined and shameful of such practices, and also the most troubling for the client—for the woman thus glimpsed seems far off, idealized in her squalor or by the mystery and crudeness of the decor, the promise of unimagined pleasures, the danger of a strange house, the
thrill of the ambush lying in wait in the black stairwell, the terror of the blackmailer—who knows?—squatting behind the alcove curtains!… and the alluring face, the made-up face appearing high up in the darkness, out of the blind façade, that might conceal the ageing flesh refurbished by creams and powders, or the pretty oval of a little immature virgin offered as bait by Poverty to Vice. All this contains uncertainty, and doubt, and gives off a whiff of risk irresistible to the sated or the daring… It’s the heady rush towards the abyss, the ineluctable magnetism of the chasm, the old symbol rejuvenated, modernized, and even more deadful in its new context than the smiling head of Scylla,
*
the supernatural head swimming and singing above the blue Sicilian gulfs, with the puerile charm of over-red lips and wide, glassy eyes; a bodiless head, and all the more enticing as men’s lust bodied forth for this head torso, arms, legs, and haunches. In their madness, they picture all this beauty below the dangerous head; all the more desirable in that it is the smile set in the façade of the dull brick house, like a mask.

Ah, the woman at her window in the houses of the dreary streets, golden apple of infernal pleasures, placed there on the window lintels, just as Scylla’s head, once upon a time, emerged, revolving on the waves, a lethal flower from the abyssal depths.

Outside, there are puddles and mud reflecting the gaslight, rain pattering and dripping from gutters, the muffled footstep of cut-throats in the night; and high, high up, set in the top storey of the blind façade, like a fleshy orange in lamplight, juicy and full of flavour, shines the painted face.

The fascination exerted by the window, the power of glimpsed flesh and muslin gown, seen as luminous from the cold and dark of the street, their hold on the senses of modern man, the city-dweller especially, with his overstretched and morbid imagination, has been described by Banville in a wonderful story entitled ‘You Will Return’.
*