The Dedalus Book of Decadence: (Moral Ruins) (11 page)

Rosaria had been less intimidated.
She had bravely swallowed the lukewarm blood, saying only: “This red milk is a little thick for my taste.”

Now, it is a governess who has the task of conducting the girl into the depths; every morning they go down, at five or six o’clock, to that devils’ kitchen beneath the rue de Flandre, to an enclosure where the blood is drained from the living calves, to make the white and tender meat.

And while the young girl makes her descent into that place, where bright-burning fires warm the water in porcelain bathtubs to scald the flesh of the slaughtered beasts, La Barnarina stays here, by the window in the great hallway, perfectly tragic in her velvet and her lace, mirroring in her mode of dress the snow-whiteness of the narcissi, the frost-whiteness of the tulips, and the nacreous whiteness of the irises; here, striking a pose with just a hint of theatricality, she watches.

She keeps watch upon the courtyard of the hotel,
and the empty avenue beyond the gate, and her anguish reaches into the uttermost depths of her soul while she anticipates the first kiss which the child will place upon her lips, as soon as she returns: a kiss which always carries an insipid trace of the taste of blood and a faint hint of that odour which perpetually defiles the rue de Flandre, but which, strangely enough, she does not detest at all – quite the contrary – when it is upon the warm lips of her beloved Rosaria.

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LANGUOR

by Paul Verlaine

I am the Empire at the end of its decline,

Which awaits the Barbarians fair and tall

While composing acrostics in an idle scrawl

To which sad sunlight lends its golden shine.

The lonely soul is tediously sick at heart.

Down there, they say, the bloody combat wanes.

So faint are the desires, so slow the pains,

No need can ever flourish, nor existence start.

No need, nor facile taste of death at last!

Alas, all gone!
Is the laughter of Bathyllus done?

All supped, all eaten, the cause of silence won!

Alone, a newborn poem into the fire to cast,

Alone, to be neglected by dishonest slaves,

Alone, not knowing what the sick heart craves!

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THE GRAPE-GATHERERS OF SODOM

by Rachilde

When the day dawned, the land was fuming like a fermenter filled with the grapes of wrath.
The vineyard surrounded by the vast and troubled plain shone redly in the fierce light of the sun – a sun as bright as the hot fires which were used to start the grapes fermenting, and which made the huge pips burst out of them like black eyes popping out of their sockets.
The vineyard seemed, for a while, to be set at the bottom of a pit of seething bitumen.
While it displayed its own red-and-gold foliage to the sky, a seeming abundance of monstrous riches, the ground all around it gave vent to writhing plumes of grey smoke, which glittered in the sunlight like molten metal.

As the luscious fruits of the vineyard were ripening, so the softened red clay of the carnal earth was yielding its own produce of poisonous volcanic gas.
Like an over-fecund beast released from its tethers in order to drop its litter, the land threw out her vaporous garlands: imploring arms held out towards the newly-risen sun, delirious with sinfully ecstatic joy.
As the sun-baked surface cracked here and there, hot liquids oozed out of her like thick tears.
These irruptions gradually condensed into lustrous brown masses: prodigious fruits of the earth’s womb, distilled by volcanic fire, their dark hue suggestive of satanic sugar.
And from some of these clustered and half-rotted fruits there continued to ooze a gentle and abominable liquor whose gaseous exhalation intoxicated
the bees which swarmed about the vineyard, tempting them to their deaths.

Between the clouds, so red that one would have thought them all afire, and the plain, so yellow that one might have believed it powdered with saffron, no creature stirred nor bird sang.
Only the vineyard was alive, possessed by a dull humming of busy insects like the gentle vibration of a simmering kettle.

In the midst of that forest of golden boughs, on the rim of the primitive fermenting vat – a huge trough of raw granite, crudely hollowed-out, like an altar of human sacrifice – there sat a fabulous lizard clad in sparkling viridian scales, with darting eyes the colour of hyacinths; it stretched itself out enigmatically, occasionally raising its silvery belly as it took a deep breath.
It, too, was intoxicated by the drifting vapours, almost to the point of death.

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Little by little, as the day progressed, the incendiary glow reflected in the clouds became fainter; they gradually paled, became opalescent, and slowly dissipated.
The sky’s hot light was gradually concentrated into that solitary blaze which was the sun; the clear sky took on the appearance of the blue sheen which metal has when it has been seared by a fierce torch.

The land of the tribes of Israel extended as far as the eye could see, faintly dappled by the shadows of slender fig-trees.
Every one of those puny trees trailed its palmate leaves as though dissatisfied with its lot, and their lighter branches, all entwined, were ringed by unnatural excrescences of sap like amber bracelets.
Their trunks had been deformed by the unfortunate combination of the fire above and the fire below, their
pliant contours twisted and warped.

Far away, beyond the most distant of these clumps of trees, there stood the protective wall of a town.
Behind the wall loomed a tall tower made of stone as white as ivory or bleached bone, whose spire stood out sharply against the vivid colour of the sky, like a road into the infinite or a spiralling flock of great white birds in search of a place to roost.

There emerged from the walled town a party of Sodomites, heading for the vineyard.

The party was headed by a gloomy old man, perhaps a centenarian twice over, whose bony and tremulous head was devoid of hair and who had long since lost all his teeth.
He was dressed in a linen tunic which was loosely gathered about his rickety limbs, hanging upon him like a shroud.
He was the father, chief and patriarch of the party which he led, and as he marched before them his stern forehead shone with reflected sunlight like a rectangular star as bright as the moon.
He directed his charges by signalling to them with his staff, having long since given up speech.

On either side of the patriarch marched his eldest sons: huge and robustly healthy men with luxuriant black beards.
One of them, whose name was Horeb, carried suspended from his leathern belt several shining metal cups, which struck one another melodiously as he strode along.

Behind this leading group there came a group of younger sons, headed by one Phaleg, a nearly-naked giant whose smooth flesh was like veined marble, whose beard was rust-red, and who carried on his head a stack of wicker baskets, some of which contained wheat-cakes.

Further behind, keeping a respectable distance, came playful adolescents who were clad in short robes girdled with ornately-embroidered sashes; their fair
girlish tresses streamed behind them as they capered about.
The most handsome of these was a child with lips the colour of ripe plums or the blurred violet of the distant horizon; his name was Sinéus, and he had innocently dressed his half-open goatskin tunic with plucked flowers.
When Sinéus entered the graveyard, the bees swarmed about him, taking him for some mysterious honey-bearer because of his golden appearance, but they did him no harm.

After singing a celebratory hymn the grape-gatherers began to work, using baskets to carry the grapes from the vines to the fermenting-vat.
The older ones, as measured and efficient in their movements as they always were, reached up to take the best grapes; the younger ones hurriedly grabbed those which came most easily to hand, crying out with excitement all the while.
After a time the old man, who had set himself down on the rim of the stone trough, stood up and raised his staff to signal that everyone should gather round to admire the full baskets; then he sat down again and the work of emptying the baskets into the stone vat began.

As they worked, some of them were accidentally splashed about the legs by the ruddy juice, others smeared it haphazardly upon their clothing.
Sinéus fervently set about treading the grape-harvest, occasionally mixing in with it a handful of wild roses.
Beneath the hot sun their labour was very tiring, and when they had filled the stone trough they lay down around it to sleep.
The old patriarch remained on the rim of the vat, still sitting up but quite immobile, looming over the liquefied mass of the trampled grapes like an image of some long-dead king preserved in stone.

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After a while, there emerged furtively from the shade of the nearest clump of fig-trees a very strange creature: a girl.

She was thin and wan, and naked – but she was burnished by the sun, and covered with a light down of fair hair, so that it seemed as if she were clothed in linen embroidered with filamentous threads of gold.
Her forehead struck such a contrast with the blue of the sky that it gleamed like a polished spear-head.
Her long yellow hair was gathered up into a sheaf; her heels were as round as peaches, bouncing off the ground as she danced forward like a delighted animal; but the two nipples upon her breasts were very dark, almost black – as if they had been badly burned.

The girl approached the sleeping Sinéus, who slept very soundly, having eaten abundantly of those grapes which he had gathered and trodden.
She too ate greedily, and having done so she lay down beside the boy, entwining herself about him in a serpentine fashion.
It was not long before her writhing caused the boy to wake, and he awoke groaning lamentably because he felt that some impure sensation was working within his flesh.
He got up expeditiously, crying out to wake his brothers; they responded with roars of their own.

The old man awoke too, stretching forth his staff against the intruder with a deathly gleam in his eye.
The girl was quickly surrounded by the entire company.

The girl was one of many who had been condemned as temptresses, and driven out of Sodom at the behest of the priests.
In a mad fit of righteous wrath, the assembly of the men of God had decreed that the town must be relieved of the evil passions which haunted it from twilight until dawn.
The girls of Sodom, they had decided, had been so badly guided by their lax mothers that they had become voluptuous vessels of iniquity which sapped
the strength of the men of the town – strength which would be needed for the harvest, and must be conserved by rigid chastity.

In the grip of this madness, the men of Sodom had repudiated their wives and cast out their sisters; these women had been thrown into the streets, beaten and bruised, their clothes torn from their bodies, and chased by dogs into the wilderness without the walls.
Driven into the desert, the women had been forced to cross the burning sands to seek refuge in Gomorrah.
Many had died in the furnace of the noonday heat; a few had kept themselves alive by plundering the vineyards.
But none of these accursed creatures had been brought to repentance, for their flesh was still inflamed by insensate desires, which took nourishment from the fiery heat of the sun and lusted also after those secret fires which were hidden beneath the surface of the plain.

Now, here was one of these bitches, driven by her appetite for the flesh of men to inflict her attentions upon a child no older than herself.

“Who are you?”
Horeb demanded of her.

“I am Sarai!”

Sinéus buried his face in the crook of his elbow, hiding his eyes.

“What do you want?”
said Phaleg.

“I am thirsty!”

Oh yes!
It was evident to them all that she had a thirst in her!

The sons looked at one another, uncertain what to do, but their grim-faced father raised his staff to issue a command, and each one bowed down obediently to take hold of a stone.

The woman, her golden skin glistening in the sunlight, extended her arms like two beams of light.

She cried out, in a voice so strident that they
recoiled:

“A curse upon you all!”

“Oh yes,” said Horeb then, “I recognise you.
One night you came to steal the very best of my metal cups.”

“I know you too,” said Phaleg.
“You have tempted me to sin on the Sabbath.”

“As for me,” cried Sinéus, with tears glimmering beneath his eyelids, “I do not know you at all, nor have I the slightest wish to know you!”

The old man brought down his staff.

“She must be stoned!”
they roared in unison.

The woman had no opportunity to escape.
Thirty stones were hurled at her all at once.

Her breasts were lacerated and splashed with red; her forehead was wreathed with bands of vermilion.
She fell back, writhing desperately, her long hair was loosed, but it clung to her like binding ropes; she tried to make herself very small, and tried to crawl away after she fell, squirming like a snake; but she slipped and tumbled into the great vat where the grape-juice was fermenting.
She groped feebly at the crushed clusters, but soon became inert, augmenting the blood of the grapes with the exquisite wine of her own veins.
The brief convulsion of her death pulled her down into the depths of the trough, among the burst and trodden grapes which spurted out their black pips – but reflected in her rolling eyes, there was an expression of supreme malediction.

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That evening, having completed their task in the saintly fashion required of them, the grape-gatherers distributed the wheat-cakes which they had brought with them, and filled their cups.
They had not taken the trouble to remove the cadaver from the trough, and they
were already drunk – more intoxicated by the killing than by the vintage which they had prepared.
They continued to utter blasphemies against the luckless girl while they drank more of the horrible liquor they had made, saturated with poisonous love.

That same night – while unknown beasts howled in the distance all around them, and the atmosphere they breathed was heavy with the odour of sulphur, and the giant tower in the city took on a skeletal pallor beneath the dismal light of the moon – those men of Sodom committed for the first time their sin against nature, in the arms of their young brother Sinéus, whose soft shoulders somehow seemed to be flavoured with honey.

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