A Woman’s Hair
The walls of the cell were bare and whitewashed. A narrow, barred window, so high that it could not easily be reached, lighted this bright, sinister little room; the madman, seated on a straw chair, looked at us with a fixed eye, vague and troubled. He was very thin, with wrinkled cheeks and almost white hair that had evidently grown white in a few months. His clothes seemed too large for his dried-up limbs, his shrunken chest, and hollow body. One felt that this man had been ravaged by his thoughts, by a thought, as fruit is by a worm. His madness, his idea, was there in his head, obstinate, harassing, devouring. It was eating his body, little by little. It, the Invisible, the Impalpable, the Unseizable, the Immaterial Idea gnawed his flesh, drank his blood, and extinguished his life.
What a mystery, this man killed by a Thought! He is an object of fear and pity, this madman! What strange dream, frightful and deadly, can dwell in his forehead, to fold such profound and ever-changing wrinkles in it?
The doctor said to me: “He has terrible paroxysms of rage, and is one of the strangest lunatics I have ever seen. His madness is of an erotic, macabre kind. He is a sort of necrophile. He has written a journal which shows as plainly as daylight the malady of his mind. His madness is visible, so to speak. If you are interested, you may run through this document.”
I followed the doctor into his office and he gave me the journal of this miserable man.
“Read it,” said he, “and give me your opinion about it.”
Here is what the little book contained:
“Up to the age of thirty-two years I lived quietly, without love. Life appeared to me very simple, very good, and very easy. I was rich. I had a taste for so many things that I had never felt a passion for anything. It was good to live! I awoke happy each day, to do things which it pleased me to do, and I went to bed satisfied, with a calm hope for the next day and a future without care.
“I had had some mistresses without ever having my heart torn by desire or my soul bruised by love after the possession. It is good to live thus. It is better to love, but it is terrible. Still those who love like everybody else should find happiness, less than mine, perhaps, for love has come to me in an unbelievable manner.
“Being rich, I collected ancient furniture and antiques. Often I thought of the unknown hands which had touched these things, of the eyes that had admired them, and the hearts that had loved them for one does love such things! I often remained for hours and hours looking at a little watch of the last century. It was so dainty, so pretty with its enamel and gold embossing. And it still went, as on the day when some woman had bought it, delighted in the possession of so fine a jewel. It had not ceased to palpitate, to live its mechanical life, but had ever continued its regular ticktack, although a century had passed. Who then had first carried it upon her breast, in the warmth of the dress—the heart of the watch beating against the heart of the woman? What hand had held it at the ends of its warm fingers, then wiped the enamelled shepherds, tarnished a little by the moisture of the skin? What eyes had looked upon this flowered dial awaiting the hour, the dear hour, the divine hour?
“How I should have liked to see her, to know her, the woman who had chosen this rare and exquisite object. But she is dead! I am possessed by a desire for women of former times; from a distance I love all those who loved long ago. The story of past tenderness fills my heart with regrets. Oh! the beauty, the smiles, the caresses of youth, the hopes! Should not these things be eternal!
“How I have wept, during whole nights, over the women of old, so beautiful, so tender, so sweet, whose arms opened to love, and who are now dead! The kiss is immortal! It goes from lip to lip, from century to century, from age to age! Men take it and give it and die.
“The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death. I regret all that which is gone, I weep for those who have lived; I wish to stop the hour, to arrest time. But it goes, it goes on, it passes away, and it takes me, from second to second, a little of me for the annihilation of tomorrow. And I shall never live again.
“Farewell, women of yesterday, I love you.
“And yet I have nothing to complain of. I have found her whom I awaited, and I have tasted through her of inconceivable pleasure.
“I was roaming around Paris on a sunny morning, with joyous foot and happy soul, looking in the shops with the vague interest of a stroller. All at once I saw in an antique shop an Italian piece of furniture of the xvii century. It was very beautiful, very rare. I decided it must be by a Venetian artist, named Vitelli, who belonged to that epoch. Then I passed on.
“Why did the remembrance of this piece of furniture follow me with so much force that I retraced my steps? I stopped again before the shop to look at it, and felt that it tempted me.
“What a singular thing is temptation! One looks at an object, and, little by little, it seduces you, troubles you, takes possession of you like the face of a woman. Its charm enters into you, a strange charm which comes from its form, its colour, and its physiognomy. Already one loves it, wishes it, desires it. A need of possession seizes you, a pleasant need at first, because timid, but increasing, becoming violent and irresistible. And the dealers seem to suspect, from the look of the eye, this secret, increasing desire. I bought that piece of furniture and had it carried to my house immediately. I placed it in my room.
“Oh! I pity those who do not know this honeymoon of the collector with the object which he has just acquired. He caresses it with his eye and hand as if it were flesh; he returns every moment to it, thinks of it continually, wherever he goes and whatever he may be doing. The thought of it follows him into the street, into the world, everywhere. And when he re-enters his house, before even removing his gloves or his hat, he goes to look at it with the tenderness of a lover.
“Truly, for eight days I adored that piece of furniture. I kept opening its doors and drawers; I handled it with delight and experienced all the intimate joys of possession.
“One evening, in feeling the thickness of a panel, I perceived that there might be a hiding-place there. My heart began to beat and I passed the night in searching out the secret, without being able to discover it.
“I came upon it the next day by forcing a piece of metal into a crevice in the panelling. A shelf slipped, and I saw, exposed upon a lining of black velvet, a marvellous head of woman’s hair!
“Yes, a head of hair, an enormous twist of blond hair, almost red, which had been cut off near the skin and tied together with a golden cord.
“I stood there stupefied, trembling and disturbed! An almost insensible perfume, so old that it seemed like the soul of an odour, arose from this mysterious drawer and this most surprising relic.
“I took it gently, almost religiously, and lifted it from its resting-place. Immediately it unwound, spreading out its golden billows upon the floor, where it fell, thick and light, supple and brilliant, like the fiery tail of a comet.
“A strange emotion seized me. To whom had this belonged? When? Under what circumstances? Why had this hair been shut up in this piece of furniture? What adventure, what drama was hidden beneath this souvenir? Who had cut it off? Some lover, on a day of parting? Some husband, on a day of vengeance? Or, perhaps, the woman herself, whose hair it was, on a day of despair? Was it at the hour of entering the cloister that she had thrown there this fortune of love, as a token left to the world of the living? Was it the hour of closing the tomb upon the young and beautiful dead, that he who adored her took this diadem of her head, the only thing he could preserve of her, the only living part of her body that would not perish, the only thing that he could still love and caress and kiss, in the transport of his grief?
“Was it not strange that this hair should remain there thus, when there was no longer any vestige of the body with which it was born?
“It curled about my fingers and touched my skin with a singular caress, the caress of death. I felt myself affected, as if I were going to weep.
“I kept it a long time in my hands, then it seemed to me that it had some effect upon me, as if something of the soul still remained in it. And I laid it upon the velvet again, the velvet blemished by time, then pushed in the drawer, shut the doors of the closet, and betook myself to the street to dream.
“I walked straight ahead, full of sadness, and full of trouble, of the kind of trouble that remains in the heart after the kiss of love. It seemed to me I had lived in former times, and that I had known this woman.
“And Villon’s lines rose to my lips, like a sob:
Dictes-moy où, ne en quel pays
Est Flora, la belle Romaine,
Archipiada, ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine?
Echo parlant quand bruyt on maine
Dessus rivière, ou sus estan;
Qui beauté eut plus que humaine?
Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?
⋮
La royne blanche comme un lys
Qui chantoit à voix de sereine,
Berthe au grand pied, Bietris, Allys,
Harembouges qui tint le Mayne,
Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine
Que Anglais bruslèrent à Rouen?
Où sont-ils, Vierge souveraine?
Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?18“When I returned to my house I felt an irresistible desire to see my strange treasure again. I took it up and felt it, and in touching it a prolonged thrill ran through my body.
“For some days, however, I remained in my ordinary state, although the thought of this hair never left me. Whenever I came in, it was my first desire to look at it and handle it. I would turn the key of the desk with the same trembling that one has in opening the door of one’s mistress, for I felt in my hands and in my heart a confused, singular, continual, sensual desire to bury my fingers in this charming rivulet of dead hair.
“Then, when I had finished caressing it, when I had returned it to its resting-place, I always felt that it was there, as if it were something alive, concealed, imprisoned; I felt it and I still desired it; again I felt the imperious need of touching it, of feeling it, of enervating myself to the point of weakness, by contact with this cold, smooth, irritating, exciting, delicious hair.
“I lived thus for a month or two, I no longer know how long, with this thing possessing me, haunting me. I was happy and tortured, as in the expectation of love, as one is after the avowal which precedes the embrace.
“I would shut myself up alone with it in order to feel it upon my skin, to bury my lips in it, to kiss it, and bite it. I would roll it around my face, drink it in, drown my eyes in its golden waves, in order to see life golden through it.
“I loved it! Yes, I loved it. I could no longer live away from it, nor be contented an hour without seeing it. I expected—I expected—what? I know not—her!
“One night I was suddenly awakened with a feeling that I was not alone in my room. I was alone, however. But I could not go to sleep again; and, as I was tossing in the fever of insomnia, I rose and went to look at the twist of hair. It appeared to me sweeter than usual, and more animated.
“Could the dead return? The kisses with which I warmed it made me swoon with happiness, and I carried it to my bed and lay down with it, pressing it to my lips, as one does a mistress he hopes to enjoy.
“The dead returned! She came! Yes, I saw her, touched her, possessed her as she was when alive in former times, large, blond, plump, with cool breasts, and with hips in the form of a lyre. And I followed that divine, undulating line from the throat to the feet, in all the curves of the flesh, with my caresses.
“Yes, I possessed her, every day and every night. The Dead Woman had returned, the beautiful Dead Woman, the Adorable, the Mysterious, the Unknown, and she returned every night.
“My happiness was so great that I could not conceal it. I found in her a superhuman delight, the profound, inexplicable joy of possessing the Impalpable, the Invisible, the Dead! No lover ever tasted joys more ardent or more terrible.
“I knew not how to conceal my happiness. I loved it so much that I could not bear to leave it. I carried it with me always, everywhere. I walked with it through the city, as if it were my wife, conducting it to the theatre and to restaurants as one would a mistress. But they saw it—and guessed—they took me, and threw me into prison, like a malefactor. They took it away—oh! misery!—”
The manuscript stopped there. And suddenly, as I raised my wondering eyes to the doctor, a frightful cry, a howl of fury and exasperated desire filled the asylum.
“Listen,” said the doctor, “it is necessary to douse that obscene maniac with water five times a day. Sergeant Bertrand is not the only man who fell in love with the dead.”
I stammered, moved with astonishment, horror, and pity: “But that hair—did it really exist?”
The doctor got up, opened a closet full of vials and instruments, and threw me, across his office, a long thick rope of blond hair, which flew towards me like a golden bird.
I trembled as I felt upon my hands its caressing, light touch. And I stood there, my heart beating with disgust and desire, the disgust we have in coming in contact with objects connected with crimes, and the desire which comes with the temptation to test some infamous and mysterious thing.
Shrugging his shoulders, the doctor added: “The mind of man is capable of anything.”