One Evening
The steamer Kleber had stopped and I looked with pleasure at the beautiful Gulf of Bougie that spread out ahead of us. The Kabyle forests covered the high mountains; in the distance the yellow sand edged the blue sea with powdered gold, while the sun fell in torrents of fire over the white houses of the small town.
The warm African breeze wafted the delightful odour of the desert to my nostrils, the odour of that great mysterious continent into which men from the North rarely penetrate. For three months I had been wandering on the borders of that great unknown world, on the outskirts of that strange land of the ostrich, camel, gazelle, hippopotamus, gorilla, elephant and Negro. I had seen the Arab galloping in the wind, like a waving standard. I had slept under the brown tents, in the shifting homes of these white birds of the desert. I was drunk with light, with magic, and with wide horizons.
But now after this final excursion I had to leave, go back to France, to Paris, that city of futile gossip, of commonplace preoccupations, and of continual handshaking. I must reluctantly say farewell to the things I loved, to things so new to me and of which I had barely caught a glimpse.
A fleet of small boats surrounded the steamer. I jumped into one belonging to a young Negro, and was soon on the quay near the old Saracen gate, whose grey ruins at the entrance of the Kabyle town looked like an old family coat of arms.
As I was standing beside my suitcase, looking at the big vessel at anchor in the roads, and filled with admiration at the beauty of the coast, the circle of mountains bathed by blue waters more exquisite than those of Naples, as beautiful as those of Ajaccio and Porto in Corsica, I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder.
I turned to find a tall man with a long beard, a straw hat on his head and wearing flannels, by my side, staring at me with blue eyes.
“Are you not my old schoolmate?” he said.
“Possibly. What is your name?”
“Trémoulin.”
“By Jove! You were in my class.”
“Ah! Old chap, I recognised you at once.”
And his long beard was rubbed against my cheeks.
He seemed so glad, so jolly, so happy to see me that in an outburst of friendliness I squeezed both hands of my former schoolfellow and felt very pleased to meet him again.
For four years Trémoulin had been my greatest friend at school. In those days his tall, thin body seemed to carry an over-heavy head, a large, round head that bent his neck first to the right, then to the left, and crushed the narrow chest of the long-legged schoolboy.
Trémoulin was the great prize-winner of our class: he was very intelligent, gifted with marvellous facility, a rare suppleness of mind and an instinctive leaning towards literature. We were quite convinced at college that he would turn out a celebrated man, a poet no doubt, for he wrote poetry and was full of ingeniously sentimental ideas. His father, who was a chemist in the Panthéon district, was not considered well off.
As soon as he had taken his Bachelor’s degree I lost sight of him.
“What are you doing here?” I exclaimed.
He replied, smiling: “I am a settler.”
“Bah! You are busy growing things?”
“I gather in the crops, too.”
“Of what?”
“Of grapes, from which I make wine.”
“You are successful?”
“Very.”
“So much the better, old chap.”
“Were you going to an hotel?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then, you must come home with me instead.”
“But …”
“That’s settled.”
And he said to the young Negro who was watching us: “Home, Ali.”
Ali replied: “Yes, sir,” and started running with my suitcase on his shoulder, raising the dust with his black feet.
Trémoulin caught hold of my arm and led me off. First he asked questions about my journey, my impressions, and seemed to like me better than ever for my enthusiastic reply. His home was an old Moorish house with an inner courtyard, having no windows on the street and dominated by a terrace which, in its turn, dominated those of the neighbouring houses, the gulf, the forests, the mountains, and the sea.
I exclaimed: “Ah! That’s the real thing, the East casts its spell over me in this spot. What a lucky dog you are to live here! What nights you must spend on the terrace! Do you sleep there?”
“Yes, in summer. We will go up this evening. Do you like fishing?”
“What kind?”
“Fishing by torchlight.”
“Yes. I love it.”
“Well, we’ll go after dinner, then come back and have cool drinks on the roof.”
After I had had a bath, he took me to see the captivating Kabyle town, a real cascade of white houses tottering down towards the sea, then we returned home as night was falling and after a good dinner set off for the quay.
We could see nothing but the lights of the streets and the stars, the big twinkling, shining stars of the African heavens.
A boat was waiting in a corner of the harbour. As soon as we got in, a man whose face I could not distinguish began to row, while my friend got the brazier ready for lighting. He said to me: “You know, I do the spearing. No one is better at it.”
“My congratulations.”
We had rounded a kind of mole and were, now, in a little bay full of high rocks whose shadows looked like towers built in the water, and I suddenly realized that the sea was phosphorescent. The oars which beat it gently and rhythmically kindled, as they fell, a weird, moving flame that followed in our wake and then died out. Bending over, I watched the flow of pale light scattered by the oars the indescribable fire of the sea, that chilly fire kindled by a movement, that dies as soon as the waters return to rest. The three of us glided over the stream of light through the darkness.
Where were we going? I could not see my companions, I could see nothing but the luminous ripple and the sparks of water thrown up by the oars. The heat was intense. The darkness seemed as if it had been heated in an oven, and I felt uneasy in my mind about this mysterious voyage with the two men in the silently moving boat.
Dogs—those thin Arabian dogs with red coats, pointed muzzles and bright eyes—were barking in the distance as they bark every night in every quarter of the world, from the shore of the sea to the depth of the desert where wandering tribes pitch their tents. Foxes, jackals, hyenas, answered back; and doubtless, not very far away, a solitary lion was growling in some pass of the Atlas mountains.
Suddenly the boatman stopped. Where could we be? I heard a faint scratching noise close to me and by the light of a match I saw a hand—only a hand—carrying the fragile light towards the iron grating piled up with wood like a floating funeral pyre that hung from the bow.
I gazed, full of surprise, at this novel, disquieting scene, and excitedly watched the slender flame reach out towards a handful of dried heather that began to crackle.
Then in the stillness of the night a sheet of flame shot up, illuminating under the dark pall that hung over us, the boat and two men—an old, thin, pale, wrinkled sailor with knotted kerchief on his head, and Trémoulin, whose fair beard shone in the sudden glare of light.
“Forward,” he shouted, and the old man began to row, surrounded by the blaze of fire, under the dome of mobile dusk that accompanied us. Trémoulin kept throwing wood on the brazier, now burning brightly.
I bent over the side again and saw the bottom of the sea. A few feet below the boat that strange kingdom of the waters unfolded itself—waters which like the air above give life to beast and plant. The brazier cast its brilliant light as far as the rocks and we glided over amazing forests of red, pink, green and yellow weeds. Between them and us there lay a crystal-clear medium that made them look fairy-like, turning them into a dream—a dream springing from the depths of the ocean. This clear, limpid water that one knew was there without seeing it, caused a strange feeling of unreality to come between us and this weird vegetation, making it as mysterious as the land of dreams.
At times the weeds came up to the surface, like floating hair, hardly stirred by the slow passage of the boat.
Among the seaweed thin silver fish darted about, visible for a second, then lost to sight. Others, still asleep, floated about in the watery undergrowth, gleaming, graceful, and impossible to catch. A crab would run off to hide itself in a hole, or a bluish, transparent jellyfish, hardly visible—a pale azure-coloured flower, a real flower of the sea—allowed its liquid mass to be dragged along in the slight ripple made by the boat. Then, suddenly, the ground at the bottom disappeared under a fog of thickened glass, and I saw huge rocks and gloomy-coloured seaweed vaguely, illuminated by the light from the brazier.
Trémoulin, who was standing in the bows with his body bent forward, holding the sharp pointed trident called a spearing-hook in his hands, closely watched ricks, weeds, and water, with the intensity of a beast in pursuit of its prey. Suddenly, with a quick, gentle movement, he darted the forked head of his weapon into the sea so swiftly that it speared a large fish swimming away from us.
I had seen nothing but Trémoulin’s sudden movement, but I heard him grunt with joy and as he raised his hook in the light of the brazier I saw a wriggling conger-eel, pierced by the iron teeth. After looking at it and showing it to me while he held it over the fire, my friend threw it into the bottom of the boat. The sea serpent, with its body pierced by seven wounds, slid and crawled about, and grazed my feet in its search for a hole to escape by; then, having found a pool of brackish water between the ribs of the boat, it crouched there almost dead, twisting itself round and round.
Every minute Trémoulin was gathering up, with remarkable skill and amazing rapidity, all the strange inhabitants of the salt waters. In turn I saw held over the fire, convulsed with agony, silver catfish, eels, spotted with blood, prickly scorpions, and dry, weird-looking fish that spat out into and turned the sea black.
I thought I heard the cry of birds in the night and raised my head in an attempt to see from whence came the sharp whistling sounds, now short, now long, now near, now far away. There were so many different sounds that a cloud of wings seemed to be hovering over us, attracted doubtless by the fire. At times the noise seemed to deceive the ear and come from the sea.
I asked: “Whatever is that whistling?”
“The falling cinders.”
It was indeed caused by the brazier dropping a shower of burning twigs into the sea. They fell down red-hot or in flames, and went out with a soft, penetrating, queer protest, sometimes like a chuckle and sometimes like the short greeting of a passing emigrant. Drops of resin droned like cannonballs or hornets and suddenly expired in their plunge into the water. The noise was certainly like human voices: an indescribable, faint murmur of life straying about in the shadow near us.
Suddenly Trémoulin shouted: “Ah—the beggar!”
He threw his spear and when he pulled it up I saw what looked like a big lump of throbbing red flesh wrapped round the teeth of the fork and sticking to the wood. It was an octopus that was twining and untwining long, soft tentacles covered with suckers around the handle.
He held up his victim and I saw the sea-monster’s two huge eyes look at me; they were bulging, terrible eyes that emerged from a kind of pocket like a tumour. The beast, thinking it was free, slowly stretched out one of its feelers in my direction. The end was as fine as a piece of thread and as soon as the greedy arm had hooked itself on to the seat, another was uncurled and raised itself to follow the first.
There was a feeling of irresistible force about that soft, sinewy mass. Trémoulin opened his knife and plunged it swiftly between the beast’s eyes. We heard a sigh, a sound of escaping air, and the octopus ceased to move. It was not dead, however, but its power was destroyed, its spendour gone, it would never again drink blood or suck a crab dry.
Trémoulin unwound the now useless tentacles from the sides of the boat and suddenly filled with anger, shouted: “Wait a bit, I’ll make it hot for you.”
With a stroke of the spear he picked up the beast, raised it in the air, held it to the fire, rubbing the thin fleshy ends of its arms against the red-hot bars of the brazier. They crackled as the heat of the fire twisted and contracted them and I ached all over at the idea of how the hideous beast must be suffering.
“Don’t do that,” I cried.
He replied quite calmly: “Bah! Anything’s good enough for that thing,” and threw the burst, lacerated body of the octopus into the boat, where it dragged itself between my legs to the hole full of brackish water and lay down to die amongst the dead fish.
And so our fishing continued until the wood began to run short. When there was not enough to keep the fire going, Trémoulin thrust the brazier into the water, and night, which the brilliant flames had kept at a distance, fell upon us, wrapping us once more in its gloom.
The old sailor began to row slowly and regularly. I had no idea what was port or what land, nor what was sea or what the entrance to the gulf. The octopus still moved about close to my feet and my nails hurt as if they too had been burnt. Suddenly I saw the lights: we were entering the port.
“Are you sleepy?” my friend asked.
“No, not in the least.”
“Then let us go and have a talk on the roof.”
“With pleasure.”
Just as we reached the terrace I saw the crescent moon rising behind the mountains. The warm breath of the wind slipped slowly by, full of faint, almost imperceptible, odours, as if it were sweeping up the scents of all the gardens and towns of every sun-scorched country, on its way.
Around us the white houses with their square roofs descended towards the sea, we could see human forms lying down or standing up on the roofs, either asleep or dreaming in the starlight; whole families wrapped in long, flannel garments resting in the hush of the night from the heat of the day.
Suddenly it seemed as if the soul of the East was taking possession of me, that poetic, legendary soul of a simple and fanciful people. My mind was full of the Bible and the Arabian Nights: I heard prophets telling of miracles, and saw princesses in silk Turkish trousers sauntering about on palace terraces, while incense whose smoke curled up in the shape of genii, burned in silver lamps.
I said to Trémoulin: “You are lucky to live here.”
He replied: “Chance brought me here.”
“Chance?”
“Yes, chance and misfortune.”
“You have been miserable?”
“Very.”
He was standing up in front of me, wrapped in his burnous, and the tone of his voice made me shiver, it was so full of misery.
After a moment’s silence he continued:
“I can tell you my grief. It may do me good to talk about it.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Do you really mean it?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, then. You remember what I was like at college: more or less a poet, brought up in a chemist’s shop. My dream was to write books, and I tried after I had taken my degree but did not succeed. I published a volume of verse, then a novel, without selling more of one than of the other, then I wrote a play which was never acted.
“Then I fell in love, but I am not going to tell you all about that.
“Next door to my father’s shop there lived a tailor who had a daughter, it was she I loved. She was intelligent and had passed Higher School Examinations, she was mentally alert, her mind being in keeping with her body. She looked fifteen although she was really twenty-two. She was very small, with refined features, slim figure, delicate complexion, in every way like a dainty watercolour. Her nose, mouth, her blue eyes and fair hair, her smile, figure, hands, indeed her whole being, seemed more fit for a glass case then for an open-air life. Nevertheless she was vivacious, supple in her movements and incredibly active, and I was very much in love with her. Two or three walks in the Luxembourg Gardens, near the Médicis fountain, I remember as the happiest time of my life. You must know all about that queer phase of love’s folly when every thought is centred on worship of the loved one. You are nothing but a maniac haunted by a woman, nothing exists in the world but her.
“We were soon engaged and I told her of my plans for the future, of which she disapproved. She did not believe in me as a poet, novelist, or dramatic author, and thought that trade, if successful, could procure perfect happiness. So I gave up the idea of writing books, I resigned myself to selling them and bought a book shop—the Universal Library—at Marseilles, its former owner being dead.
“I had three good years. We had made our shop into a kind of literary salon where all the cultured men in the town met for conversation. They came to the shop as they would have gone to a club, and discussed books, poets, and more especially politics. My wife, who was the head of the sales department, was very popular in the town; as for me, while they were all talking downstairs I was at work in my study on the first floor which communicated with the shop by a winding staircase. I heard voices, laughter, discussions, and sometimes stopped writing to listen to what was going on. I was secretly writing a novel—which I never finished.
“The most regular frequenters were Monsieur Montina, a man of private means, a tall, handsome type of man, often met with in the South, with black hair and eyes full of flattery; Monsieur Barbet, a magistrate; two business men, Messieurs Faucil and Labarrègue; and General the Marquis de Flèche, head of the Royalist party, the most important man in the province, aged sixty-six.
“Business was good and I was happy, very happy. However, one day about three o’clock I was obliged to go out and when I was in the Rue Saint-Ferréol I saw a woman come out of a house whose figure was so like my wife’s that I would have said to myself ‘It is she’ had I not left her ill at home.
“She was walking ahead of me very quickly, and never looking back; in spite of myself I started to follow her with a feeling of surprise and uneasiness. I said to myself:
“ ‘It is not she. No. That’s impossible, as she had a headache. Besides, what would she be doing in that house?’
“Still I wanted to clear the matter up, so hurried after her. Whether she felt or guessed I was behind her or whether she recognised my step, I can’t say, but she turned round suddenly. It was she! When she saw me she blushed and stopped, then said with a smile: ‘Halloa, is it you?’
“I felt sick at heart and said: ‘Yes. So you did go out? And your headache?’
“ ‘It was better. I have been on an errand.’
“ ‘Where to?’
“ ‘To Laussade’s, in the Rue Cassinelli, to order some pencils.’
“She looked me full in the face. She was not blushing now, on the contrary, she was rather pale. Her clear, limpid eyes—ah! a woman’s eyes!—seemed full of truth, but I had a vague, painful feeling that they were full of lies. I was more worried, more uncomfortable than she was, I dared not suspect her, and yet I felt sure she was telling me a lie. Why was she doing it? I had no idea, so I merely said: ‘You were quite right to go out if you felt better.’
“ ‘Yes. I felt much better.’
“ ‘Are you going home?’
“ ‘Of course I am.’
“I left her and wandered about the streets alone. What was going on? While I was talking to her I knew instinctively that she was lying, but now I could not believe it, and when I went home to dinner I was angry with myself for having suspected her, even for a moment.
“Have you ever been jealous? Whether you have or not makes no difference. The first hot breath of jealousy had touched my heart. I could think of no explanation, I could not believe anything. I only knew that she had lied. You must remember that every evening when we were alone together, after all the customers and the clerks had left, either when strolling down towards the port in fine weather, or else in my study when the weather was bad, I opened my heart to her without reserve, for I loved her. She was part of my life, the greater part, and all my happiness, and in her little hands she held captive my poor trusting, faithful heart.
“In the early days of doubt and distress before suspicion grew into a certainty I was depressed and cold to the marrow, just as you feel before a serious illness. I was always cold, really cold, and could neither eat nor sleep.
“Why had she lied to me? What was she doing in that house? I had been there to try and find out, but without success. The man who lived on the first floor, an upholsterer, told me all about his neighbours but without giving me any clue. A midwife lived on the second floor, a dressmaker and a manicure on the third, and two cabmen with their families in the attics.
“Why had she lied to me? It would have been so easy to say that she was coming from the dressmaker’s or the manicure’s. Oh! how I longed to ask them questions, too. I did not for fear she might be warned, and guess my suspicions.
“One thing was certain, she had been to the house and was concealing the fact from me, so that there was some mystery. But what? At times I thought there must be a good reason, some hidden charitable deed, some information she wanted, and I accused myself for suspecting her. Have we not all the right to our little, innocent secrets, to that second, inner life for which we are not obliged to account to anybody? Because he has been given a young girl as companion, has a man the right to expect that she shall never have a thought, can never do anything, without telling him about it? Does marriage mean the renunciation of all liberty, all independence? Might she not have gone to the dressmaker’s without telling me, and might she not be helping the wife of one of the cabmen? Perhaps she thought that, without blaming her, I might criticize the reason she had for going to the house, although there was no harm in it. She knew me through and through, all my slightest peculiarities, and probably was afraid, if not of being reproached, at least of a discussion. She had very pretty hands, and I ended by thinking that she was having them secretly manicured in the suspected house, and that she would not confess to it so as to avoid any appearance of extravagance. She was very methodical and thrifty and looked after the household expenses most carefully. Doubtless she would have felt herself lowered in my eyes had she admitted to this slight piece of feminine extravagance. Women’s souls are full of subtlety and natural trickery.
“But all my reasoning failed to reassure me. I was jealous. My suspicions tormented me, torturing and preying upon my mind. As yet it was not a suspicion but simply suspicion. I endured misery and frightful anguish. An obscure thought possessed me—a thought covered with a veil—and a veil I dared not raise, for beneath it lay a terrible doubt. … A lover! … Had she a lover? … Think of it! think of it! It was unlikely, impossible … and yet? …
“Montina’s face was always before my eyes. I saw the tall, insipid beauty, with shiny hair, smiling into her face, and I said to myself: ‘It is he.’ I made up a story of their intrigue. They had been talking of a book, discussing some amorous adventure, finding an incident similar to their own, and from this had followed the rest. I kept a lookout, a prey to the most abominable torture that man can endure. I bought shoes with rubber soles so that I could move about silently and I spent my life going up and down the little winding staircase so as to catch them. Often I crept down the stairs on my hands, head first, to see what they were doing. Then I had to go up again backwards, with great difficulty, after finding that the clerk was always there with them. I lived in a state of continual suffering. I could think of nothing, I could not work, nor could I look after the business. As soon as I had left the house, as soon as I had walked a hundred yards along the street, said to myself: ‘He is there,’ and back I went. He was not, so I went out again! But I had hardly left the house when I thought: ‘He has come now,’ and returned again.
“This went on every day.
“The night was worse still, for I felt her by my side, in my bed. There she was asleep or pretending to be asleep! Was she asleep? Of course not. Then that was another lie?
“I lay motionless on my back, on fire from the warmth of her body, panting and in agony. I was filled with a vile but steady desire to get up, take a candle and hammer and with a single stroke split her head open to see what was inside! I knew that I would find nothing but a nasty mess of brains and blood, nothing else. I would have learnt nothing. Impossible to find anything out! And her eyes! When she looked at me, I was seized with a wild fit of fury. You may look at her—she looks back at you! Her eyes are clear, candid—and false, false, false! and no one can guess what lies behind them. I longed to stick needles into them, to burst open the mirrors of deceit.
“How well I understand the Inquisition! I could have twisted her wrists in the iron bracelets.—Speak. … Confess! … You won’t? Just wait! … I could have strangled her by degrees. … Speak, confess! … You won’t? … And I would have squeezed, squeezed, until her throat began to rattle, until she choked to death. … Or else I would have burned her fingers over the fire. … Oh! that I would have done with great pleasure! … Speak … speak then. … You won’t? I would have held them on the red-hot coal, they would have been roasted at the tips … then she would have spoken … surely! … she would have spoken. …”
Trémoulin, standing erect with clenched fists, shouted his story. On the neighbouring roofs, around us, the ghostly shadows awoke and sat up, they listened, disturbed in their sleep. As for me, I was deeply moved, and completely gripped by the tale I was listening to.
In the darkness I saw before me the little woman, the little, fair, vivacious, artful woman, as if I had known her. I saw her selling her books, talking to the men who found her childlike manner disturbing, and in her delicate doll-like head I could see petty crafty ideas, stupid exaggerated ideas, the dreams of musk-scented milliners attracted by the heroes of romantic novels. I suspected her just as he did. I hated and detested her, and would also willingly have burned her fingers to make her confess.
He continued more calmly: “I don’t know why I am telling you all this. I have never yet spoken about it. Never, but I have seen nobody for two years. I have not talked to a single person, and the whole thing was seething within me like fermenting wine. I am emptying my heart of its pain, unluckily for you!
“Well, I had made a mistake, it was worse than I thought, much worse. Just listen. I fell back on the usual trick, I pretended to go away. Every time I left the house my wife lunched out. I need not tell you how I bribed a waiter at the restaurant so that I might catch them.
“The door of the private room was to be opened for me and I arrived at the appointed time determined to kill them both. I could imagine the whole scene as clearly as if it had already occurred. I could see myself going in. A small table covered with glasses, bottles, and plates separated her from Montina, and they would be so surprised when they saw me that they would not attempt to move. Without saying a word I would bring down the loaded stick I was carrying on the man’s head; killed by one blow, he would crumple up with his face on the table. Then, turning towards her—I would give her time—a few seconds—to understand what was happening, and to stretch her arms out to me, mad with terror, before dying in her turn. Oh I was quite ready. Strong, determined, and happy, happy to the point of intoxication. The idea of her terrified look at the raised stick, of her hands stretched out imploringly, of her strangled cry, of her face, suddenly livid and convulsed, avenged me beforehand. I had no intention of killing her at one blow! You must think me fierce, don’t you? But you don’t know what a man suffers. To think that a woman—wife or mistress—one loves is giving herself to another, surrenders herself to him as she had done to you, and accepts his kisses as she has done yours. It is terrible, appalling. Anyone who has suffered that agony is capable of anything. I am surprised there are not more murders, for all who have been betrayed—every one of them—want to kill, have gloated over the idea of death: in the solitude of their own room or on a lonely road, haunted by the hallucination of satisfied vengeance, they have in imagination either strangled the betrayer or beaten him to death.
“I arrived at the restaurant and asked whether they were there. The bribed waiter replied: ‘Yes, sir,’ and, taking me upstairs, showed me a door, saying: ‘In here.’ I grasped my stick as if my fingers were made of iron, and went in.
“The moment was well chosen. They were kissing each other, but it was not Montina. It was the General de Flèche, aged sixty-six!
“I was so sure I was going to find the other one there that I was rigid with surprise.
“Besides … besides … I don’t yet know exactly how it all happened. If I had found the other I would have been wild with rage! But this one! This old potbellied man with his hanging cheeks made me choke with disgust. She, who looked about fifteen, had given herself to this fat old man almost in his dotage, because he was a Marquis, a General, the friend and representative of dethroned kings. No, I can’t say what I felt, nor what I thought about it. I could not raise my hand against the old man. That would have been disgraceful! No, I no longer wanted to kill my own wife, but all women capable of such behaviour. I was not jealous now, I felt as full of despair as if I had seen the Horror of Horrors!
“You may say what you like about men, they are not so vile as that! If you do meet one he is held up to universal derision. The husband or lover of a old woman is more despised than a thief. We men are a decent lot, as a rule, but they, they are prostitutes with hearts full of filth. They give themselves to all men, young or old, for the most contemptible reasons, because it is their profession, their vocation, their function in life. They are the eternal, unconscious, placid prostitutes who give their bodies without disgust because it is the merchandise of love, whether they sell them to the old man with money in his pocket who hangs about the streets, or whether they give them, for the glory of it, to a lewd old monarch, or to a celebrated and repulsive old man! …”
He cried aloud like a prophet of old, in a tone of wrath, under the starry sky. With the fury of desperation he told about the exalted shame of all the mistresses of kings: the shame, considered worthy of respect of all young girls who marry old men; and the tolerance showed to all young wives who smilingly accept old men’s kisses.
As he called them up I could see them all from the beginning of time, surging around us in the Eastern night: girls, beautiful girls with vile souls like beasts who, ignoring the age of the male, are docile to senile desire. They rose up before me, the handmaids of the patriarchs praised in the Bible, Hagar, Ruth, Lot’s daughters, the dark Abigail, the virgin of Shunam whose caresses restored David to life, and all those others, young, fat, white patricians or plebeians, irresponsible females belonging to a master, the unclean flesh of submissive slaves, whether paid for in money or bought by the glamour of greatness.
I asked: “What did you do?”
“I went away,” he replied, simply. “And here I am.”
For a long time we stayed together without saying a word, just dreaming! …
I have retained an unforgettable impression of that evening. All that I had seen, felt, heard, guessed; the fishing excursion, perhaps the octopus too, and that harrowing story amid white phantoms on the neighbouring roofs, all combined to produce a unique sensation. Certain chance meetings, certain inexplicable combinations of events, contain—without any outward appearance of the unusual—a greater amount of the secret quintessence of life than is spread over whole days of ordinary happenings.