Mad?
When I was told: “You know that Jacques Parent has died mad in the asylum,” a painful shiver, a shiver of fear and anguish, ran through my frame; and suddenly I saw him again, the tall, queer fellow, mad for many years perhaps, a disturbing, even a frightening, maniac.
He was a man of forty, tall, thin, slightly stooping, with the eyes of one suffering from hallucinations, black eyes so black that the pupils were imperceptible, expressive, wandering, morbid, haunted eyes. A strange, disturbing creature, bringing with him and spreading round him a vague uneasiness of soul and body, one of those incomprehensible nervous disorders that make supernatural influences seem credible.
He had an irritating mannerism: a mania for hiding his hands. He scarcely ever let them wander, as we all do, over objects or on tables. He never handled things lying about with that familiar gesture possessed by almost all men. He never left them naked, his long, bony, delicate, slightly feverish hands.
He thrust them into his pockets, or folded his arms and tucked them under his armpits. You would have said he was afraid they would fall against his will to some forbidden task, perform some shameful or absurd action if he left them free and masters of their own movements.
When obliged to use them for the ordinary purposes of existence, he moved them in abrupt jerks, with swift movements of his arm, as though he was not going to let them have time to act by themselves, defy his will, and do some other thing. At table, he would snatch his glass, his fork or his knife so swiftly that one never had time to foresee what he meant to do before it was done.
Now one evening I got the explanation of this amazing malady that preyed on his soul.
From time to time he would come and spend a few days with me in the country, and that evening he seemed unusually agitated!
A storm was rising in the sky, stifling and black, after a day of appalling heat. No breath of air stirred the leaves. A hot, furnace-like vapour blew in our faces: it made us breathe in gasps. I felt ill at ease, agitated, and was anxious to go to bed.
When he saw me rise to go, Jacques Parent seized my arm with a frightened gesture.
“Oh! no; stay a little longer,” he said.
I stared at him in surprise, murmuring:
“This storm is affecting my nerves.”
“Mine too!” he moaned, or rather shrieked. “I beg you to stay; I do not want to be alone.”
He seemed to be quite out of his wits.
“What is the matter with you?” said I; “are you off your head?”
“Yes, sometimes,” he stammered, “in evenings like this, electric evenings. … I … I … I am afraid … afraid of myself … don’t you understand? I am endowed with a faculty … no … a power … no … a force … Well I don’t know what to call it, but I have inside me such an extraordinary magnetic action that I am afraid, yes, afraid of myself, as I said just now!”
And with frantic shudders he hid his quivering hands under the lapels of his coat. I suddenly realised that I too was trembling with a vague, overmastering, horrible fear. I wanted to get away, escape, fly from the sight of him: I did not want to see his wandering eye pass over me, then avert itself, gaze round the ceiling, and seek some dark corner of the room to stare at, as though he wanted to hide his fatal glance too.
“You never told me that before,” I stammered.
“Do I ever tell a soul?” he answered. “But tonight I cannot keep silent, and I would rather you knew all; besides, you might be able to help me.
“Magnetism! Do you know what it is? No. No one knows. But it is known that there is such a thing. It is recognised, doctors practise it, and one of the most famous, M. Charcot, teaches it; so there can be no doubt that it exists.
“A man, a human being, has the power, terrifying and incomprehensible, of putting another human being to sleep by the strength of his will, and, while he is asleep, of stealing his mind as one would steal a purse. He steals his mind, that is to say, his soul, the soul, the sanctuary, the secret of the Ego, the soul, that deepest part of man, once thought impenetrable, the soul, the asylum of thoughts that cannot be confessed, of everything a man hides, everything he loves, everything he would conceal from all human creatures. That sanctuary he opens, violates, displays and flings to the public! Is it not frightful, criminal, infamous?
“Why, and how, is this done? Does anyone know? But what is known?
“It is all a mystery. We only communicate with things by means of our wretched, incomplete, infirm senses, so weak that they scarcely have the power to discover the world around us. It is all a mystery. Think of music, the divine art, the art that stirs the soul to its depths, ravishes, intoxicates it, maddens it. What is it? Nothing.
“You don’t understand? Listen. Two bodies meet. The air vibrates. These vibrations are more or less numerous, more or less rapid, more or less violent, according to the nature of the shock. Now we have in our ears a little membrane that receives these vibrations of the air and transmits them to the brain in the form of sound. Imagine a glass of water turning to wine in your mouth. The drum of the ear accomplishes that incredible metamorphosis, the astounding miracle of turning movement into sound. That’s all.
“Music, that complex and mysterious act, precise as algebra and vague as a dream, an art made of mathematics and the wind, only happens, then, as the result of the properties of a little membrane. If that membrane did not exist, sound would not exist either, since in itself it is merely vibration. Can one imagine music without the ear? No. Well, we are surrounded with things whose existence we never suspect, because we lack the organs that would reveal them to us.
“Magnetism is perhaps one of these. We can but have presentiments of that power, try fearfully to get in touch with these spirits who neighbour us, and catch glimpses of this new secret of nature, because we do not ourselves possess the revealing instrument.
“As for myself. … As for myself, I am endowed with a horrible power. You might think there was another creature imprisoned within me, always longing to escape, to act in defiance of me; it moves, and gnaws at me, and wears me out. What sort of thing is it? I do not know, but there are two of us in my poor body, and it is often the other thing that is the stronger, as it is tonight.
“I need only look at people to send them to sleep as though I had given them a draught of opium. I need only stretch out my hands to produce … terrible … terrible things. If you knew? Yes. If you knew? And my power extends not merely over men, but over animals and even over … over objects. …
“It tortures me and terrifies me. Often I have longed to tear out my eyes and cut off my hands.
“But I will … I want you to know everything. Look, I’ll show it you … not on human beings, that is done everywhere, but on … on … animals. Call Mirza.”
He was walking in long strides, with the air of a man suffering from hallucinations, and he exposed his hands hidden in his breast. They seemed to me terrifying, as though he had bared two swords.
And I obeyed him mechanically, subjugated, quivering with terror and consumed by a kind of impetuous desire to see. I opened the door and whistled to my dog, who was lying in the hall. At once I heard the hurried sound of her claws on the stairs, and she appeared, wagging her tail with pleasure.
Then I signed to her to lie down in a chair; she jumped on it, and Jacques began to caress her, gazing at her.
At first she seemed restless; she shivered, turning her head to avoid the man’s fixed stare, and seemed agitated by a growing fear. Suddenly she began to tremble, as dogs tremble. Her whole body palpitated, shaken by long-drawn shudders, and she tried to escape. But he laid his hand on the animal’s head, and, at his touch, she uttered a long howl such as is heard at night in the country.
I myself felt drowsy, giddy, as one is on board ship. I saw the furniture sway, and the walls move. “Enough, Jacques, enough,” I stammered. But he was no longer listening to me, and stared at Mirza in a steady, frightening way. She closed her eyes now and let her head fall as though going to sleep. He turned to me.
“It is done,” he said; “now look.”
And, throwing his handkerchief to the other side of the room, he cried: “Fetch it!”
At that the animal rose and, tottering along as though blind, moving her legs like a cripple, she went towards the piece of linen that was a white blotch by the wall. Several times she tried to take it in her mouth, but her jaws closed on one side of it, as though she had not seen it. At last she seized it, and returned with the same swaying somnambulistic gait.
It was a terrifying sight. “Lie down,” he ordered. She lay down. Then, touching her forehead, he said: “A hare: seize him, seize him!” And the beast, still lying on her side, tried to run, stirring like a dog in the middle of a dream, and uttering strange little ventriloquial barks, without opening her mouth.
Jacques seemed to have gone mad. The sweat poured from his brow. “Bite him, bite your master,” he cried. She gave two or three frightened twitches. One would have sworn she was resisting, struggling. “Bite him,” he repeated. Then, rising, my dog came towards me, and I retreated towards the wall, shaking with terror, with my foot raised to kick her, to keep her off.
But Jacques commanded: “To me, at once.” She turned back towards him. Then, with his two great hands, he began to rub her head, as though he were freeing her from invisible bonds.
Mirza opened her eyes again. “It is finished,” he said.
I dared not touch her, and pushed the door for her to go out. She went out slowly, trembling, exhausted, and again I heard her claws on the stairs.
But Jacques returned to me: “That is not all. It is this which frightens me most; look. Things obey me.”
On my table was a sort of dagger that I used as a paper-cutter. He stretched out his hand towards it, and the hand seemed to crawl slowly towards it; and suddenly I saw, yes, I saw the knife itself quiver, then move, then slide gently, of itself, over the wood towards the hand, that lay still, waiting for it; it placed itself between his fingers.
I screamed with terror. I thought I was going mad myself, but the shrill sound of my own voice calmed me at once.
“All things come to me like that,” continued Jacques. “That is why I hide my hands. What is it? Magnetism, electricity, the loadstone principle? I do not know, but it is horrible.
“And do you realise why it is horrible? When I am alone, as soon as I am alone, I cannot restrain myself from attracting everything that surrounds me.
“And I spend whole days changing the positions of things, never wearying of testing my abominable power, as if to see whether it has not left me.”
He had buried his great hands in his pockets, and stared into the night. A slight sound, a faint quivering, seemed to pass through the trees.
It was the rain beginning to fall.
“It is frightening,” I murmured.
“It is horrible,” he repeated.
A murmur ran through the leaves, like a gust of wind. It was the storm, a heavy, torrential downpour.
Jacques began to breathe in great gasps that made his breast heave.
“Leave me,” he said; “the rain will calm me. I want to be alone now.”