Laura (5 page)

You speak of all this with great ease, I replied. It is possible that I may rightly be considered a little young to marry; but that is a defect one can correct in oneself by willpower. If I had not been left in ignorance about all that you have revealed to me, I would have been neither lazy nor pedantic … I would not have allowed myself to be dragged by Uncle Tungstenius into the
examination
of scientific hypotheses that his life and mine could not resolve, and into which moreover I was not perhaps
borne by any special genius or enthusiastic passion. I would have listened to Walter’s advice, I would have
studied
practical science and industrial craft: I would have made myself a blacksmith, miner, potter, geometrician or chemist; but not so many years have yet been lost. What my uncle teaches me is not useless: all the natural sciences are closely linked, and the knowledge of terrains leads me straight to the research and exploitation of useful
minerals
. Give me two or three years, Laura, and I shall have a position, you have my word upon it, I shall be a positive man. Can you not wait for me a while? Are you in such a hurry to marry? Have you no feelings of friendship for me?

You are forgetting one very simple thing, Laura went on: it is that, in three years’ time, I shall also be three years older and that, consequently, there will never be the age distance between us that my father demands.

And, since Laura laughed as she said this, I lost my temper and reproached her.

You laugh, I said, and I suffer; but that is all the same to you, you love neither Walter nor me; you love only
marriage
, the idea of calling yourself “Madame” and wearing feathers in your hat. If you loved me, would you not make an effort to react against the will of a father who is
probably
not without feelings, and who is less wedded to his ideas than to your happiness? If you loved me, would you not have understood that I loved you too, and that your marriage to another would break my heart? You weep to leave your house in the country, and your cousin Lisbeth, and your governess Loredana, and perhaps also your
garden
, your cat and your canaries; but for me you have not
one tear, and you ask me to be jolly so that you can forget your little customs among which my memory counts for absolutely nothing!

And, as I was saying this with scorn, turning my empty glass round in my clenched hand, for I dared not look at Laura for fear of seeing her angered against me, I saw all at once her face reflected in one of the facets of the Bohemian crystal. She was smiling, she was wondrously beautiful, and I heard her saying to me:

Calm yourself, you silly great child! Didn’t I tell you that I love you? Don’t you know that our earthly life is only a vain fantasmagoria, and that we are forever united in the transparent, radiant world of the ideal? Don’t you see that Walter’s earthly self is obscured by the acrid smoke from the coal, that this unfortunate has no
memory
, no presentiment of his eternal life, and that, while I enjoy myself on the serene heights where the prismatic light radiates the purest flames, he thinks only of
burrowing
into the dark shadows of stupid anthracite or into the muffled caverns where the frightful weight of
galenite
oppresses every seed of vitality, every flight towards the sun? No, no, in this life Walter will marry only the abyss, and I, daughter of the heavens, shall belong to the world of colour and shape; I must have palaces whose walls glitter and whose peaks shimmer in the free air and the full light of day. I sense incessant flight around me and I hear the harmonious beating of the wings of my true soul, forever borne towards the heavens; my human self could not accept the slavery of a union contrary to my true destiny.

Walter tore me away from the delights of this vision,
reproaching me for being drunk and gazing at my own image in the smoky crystal of my glass. Laura was no
longer
by my side. I do not know how many moments earlier she had left; but, until the moment when Walter came to speak to me, I had distinctly seen her charming image in the crystal. I tried to see Walter’s there; with terror, I saw that it did not appear, and that this limpid substance was rejecting my friend’s reflection as if his approach had changed it into a block of coal.

The evening was wearing on, and Laura had taken to dancing with a sort of frenzy, as if her lightness of character had wanted to protest against the revelations of her ideal being. I felt most fatigued by the noise of this little celebration, and I withdrew without anyone noticing. I was still staying in a part of the establishment separated from my uncle’s lodgings by the botanical garden; but, as I had become assistant curator of the museum in place of Walter, who had been promoted, and as I exercised a jealous watchfulness over the
scientific
riches entrusted to my keeping, in order to reach my domicile I took the path which led past the
mineralogical
gallery.

I was walking along the glass cases, running the
brightness
of my candle over the pigeonholes, not looking in front of me, when I almost bumped into a strange
person
whose presence in this place, to which I alone had the keys, surprised me a great deal.

Who are you? I asked him, raising my lantern close to his face and speaking to him threateningly. What are you doing here, and how did you get in?

Calm this great anger, replied the bizarre stranger, and
know that since I belong to the house, I know its ins and outs.

You do not belong to this house, since I do, and I do not know you. You are going to follow me to my Uncle Tungstenius and explain yourself.

So, my little Alexis, went on the stranger, for it can only be you who are speaking to me, you take me for a thief! … Know that you are considerably mistaken, bearing in mind that the most beautiful specimens in this collection were furnished by myself, the majority of them given free of charge. Indeed, your Uncle Tungstenius knows me, and we shall go and see him shortly; but before doing so, I want to talk with you and ask for a little information.

I declare to you, I replied, that it shall not be so. You inspire no confidence at all in me despite the richness of your Persian costume, and I do not know the meaning of a disguise of this type on the body of a man who speaks my language without any trace of a foreign accent. You undoubtedly wish to lull my suspicions by pretending to know me, and you believe you will escape from me
without
my ensuring …

I believe, heaven protect me, that you are planning to arrest me and search me! replied the stranger, looking at me with disdain. A novice’s fervour, my little friend! It is good form to take the duties of one’s job to heart; but one must know whom one is dealing with.

As he said this, he seized me by the throat with an iron hand, not gripping me any tighter than was necessary to prevent me shouting and struggling; he made me leave the gallery, whose doors I found open, and took me into the garden without letting go of me.

There, he made me sit down on a bench and sat down at my side, telling me with a laugh that was as strange as his face, his clothes and his manners:

Well! do me the pleasure of recognising me and asking forgiveness from your Uncle Nasias for having taken him for a lock-picker. Recognise in me the former husband of your Aunt Gertrude and the father of Laura.

You! I cried out, you!

Nasias is my name abroad, he replied. I have just arrived from the depths of Asia, where—thanks to God—I did some rather good business and made some rather precious discoveries. Learn that I am now
domiciled
at the court of Persia, where the sovereign treats me with the greatest consideration because of certain rarities which I procured for him, and that, if I have broken off from my great occupations to come here, it is not with the intention of stealing from your little museum a few
miserable
gemstones with which the pettiest Indian rajah would not deign to decorate his slaves’ toes or noses. Let us leave that, and tell me if my daughter is married.

She is not, I replied impetuously, and she will not yet be, if you consult her true inclination.

My Uncle Nasias took my lantern, which he had placed next to us on the bench, and raised it to my face as I had done to his a few moments earlier. His face was not precisely menacing as mine had been; it was rather mocking, but with an expression of icy irony, implacable, upsetting. As he took his time contemplating me, I also had the leisure to examine him in my anxiety.

In my childhood memories, Laura’s father was a fat, blond, rosy-faced man, with a gentle, cheery face; the one
my eyes now beheld was thin, olive-complexioned, of a type that was at once energetic and cunning. On his chin he wore a small, very black beard that looked rather like a goat’s, and his eyes had acquired a satanic expression. He wore a tall hat of fine, jet-black fur and a robe of gold brocade, embroidered with incomparable richness. A magnificent Indian cashmere encircled his waist, and a yataghan covered with gemstones glittered at his side. I do not know if the Eastern sun, the great exhaustion of his journeys, the habitual great dangers and the necessity of a life mingled with cunning and audacity had transformed him to this extent, or if my memories were completely inaccurate: it was impossible for me to recognise him, and I was still in some doubt as to whether I was dealing with a bold impostor.

This suspicion gave me the strength to bear his keen gaze with a pride that suddenly seemed to satisfy him. He replaced the lantern on the bench and said to me calmly:

I see that you are an honest boy and that you have never sought to seduce my daughter. I see also that you are naive, sentimental, and that, if you love her, it is not at all from ambition; but, from what you say, you are in love and you would very much like to see me break the marriage to which I have consented for her. Embed this in your mind, my dear nephew, that, if I did break it, it would not be to your benefit, for you are only a child, and I do not find in your face any special energy which promises a brilliant destiny. So answer me disinterestedly, as you have nothing better to do, and with sincerity, since chance has caused you to be born an honest man: what of this other fellow Walter, of whom my brother-in-law
Tungstenius and his cousin Lisbeth wrote to me in such glowing terms?

Walter, I replied without hesitation, is the most
worthy
boy in the world. He is frank, loyal and his conduct is irreproachable. He has intelligence, learning and the ambition to distinguish himself in practical science.

And has he a profession?

He will have one in six months’ time.

Very good, replied my Uncle Nasias, he is the son-
in-law
who suits me; but he will have the goodness to wait until he actually has the title of his employment. I am not a man to change my mind, and I am going immediately to tell him so and make his acquaintance. As for you, make haste to forget Laura, and, if you wish in a short space of time to become bold, intelligent, rich and active, prepare yourself to follow me. I am leaving again in a few days, and it is entirely up to you whether I take you along with me. Now let us go and see if the family will recognise me and give me a better welcome than yours.

I did not feel brave enough to follow him. I was
shattered
by fatigue. I was far from liking my Uncle Nasias and he seemed not at all favourable towards my hopes; but Laura’s marriage had been delayed, and it seemed to me that in six months, immense events could surface and change the look of things.

When I awoke, with the first glimmers of dawn, I was surprised to see Nasias in my room, stretched out in my old leather armchair, and so profoundly asleep that I had the leisure to attend to my toilet before he had opened his eyes. He was so motionless and starkly white in the half-light of morning that, if I had seen him like that for
the first time, he would have terrified me like a ghost. I approached him and touched him. He was singularly cold, but he was breathing very regularly and in such a peaceful manner, that his disturbing face was entirely changed. Like this, he seemed like the calmest of dead men and his strange ugliness had given way to a strange beauty.

I was preparing to leave soundlessly in order to go and attend to my duties, when he awoke of his own accord and looked at me without hostility or disdain.

You are surprised, he said, to see me in your bedroom; but you should know that, for more than ten years, I have not lain in a bed. That way of sleeping would be unbearable to me. It is as much as I can do if, from time to time, on my days of laziness, I sleep in a silk hammock. Moreover, accustomed as I am to a female companion, I do not like sleeping alone. Yesterday evening I found the door to your room standing ajar, and, instead of going to suffocate in the eiderdown Laura had had prepared for me at the height of summer, I came in with you, and took possession of this leather armchair which suits me very well. You snore a little loudly, but I imagined I was sleeping amid the roaring of lions roaming around my encampment, and you reminded me of nights of rather agreeable emotions.

I am happy, Uncle, I replied, that my armchair and my snoring agree with you, and please make use of them as often as you like.

I want to pay you back for your politeness, he went on; now come into my room, I have to speak with you.

When we were ensconced in the apartment which
Uncle Tungstenius had had made ready and which was the finest in the establishment, he showed me his luggage, whose smallness surprised me. It consisted entirely of a change of robe and hat, with a little case of
underclothing
made from yellow cloth, and an even smaller bronze box.

This, he said, is the way to travel freely from one end of our planet to the other, and, when you have adopted my habits, you will see that they are excellent. You must begin by becoming thin and losing the garish roses of your Germanic complexion, and for that, there is no better regime than eating little, sleeping fully dressed on the first chair you find, and never halting for more than three days under the same roof; but, before I take charge of your fate, which is no mean favour to do you, I want a few sincere explanations, and you are going to answer me as if you were standing before …