Our Lady of the Flowers (27 page)

“If a guy wanted to . . .”

“Well, shall we clear out?”

“Right!”

“You think we'll be able to go far?”

“Sure, farther than this way (pointing to his ridiculous uniform), and besides we'll be able to beg.”

Don't complain about improbability. What's going to follow is false, and no one has to accept it as gospel truth. Truth is not my strong point. But “one must lie in order to be true.” And even go beyond. What truth do I want to talk about? If it is really true that I am a prisoner who plays (who plays for himself) scenes of the inner life, you will require nothing other than a game.

So our children waited for a night well-disposed to their nerves in order to steal a skirt, jacket, and coif; but finding only shoes that were too narrow, they kept their sabots. Through the window of the washroom they went out into the dark street. It must have been midnight. It took them only a second to get dressed under a porch. They helped each other and put the coifs on with great care. For a moment, the darkness was disturbed by the rustlings of woolens, the click of pins between teeth, by such whisperings as: “Tighten my string . . . . Move over.” In an alley, sighs were tossed from a window. This taking of the veil made of the town a dark cloister, the dead city, the valley of Desolation.

In the home, they were probably slow to notice the theft of the clothes, for nothing was done during the day “to stop the fugitives.” They walked fast. The peasants were hardly surprised; rather, they were amazed to see these two serious-looking little nuns, one in sabots and the other limping, hurrying along the roads with dainty gestures: two delicate fingers lifting up three pleats of a heavy gray skirt. Then hunger gripped their stomachs.
They dared not ask anyone for a bite of bread, and, as they were on the road leading to Culafroy's village, they would probably have got there very soon, were it not that, in the late afternoon, a shepherd's dog came up and sniffed at Pierre. The shepherd, who was young and had been brought up in the fear of God, whistled to his dog, who did not obey. Pierre thought he had been discovered. He rushed off with jittery agility. He ran limping to a lone umbrella pine at the edge of the road and he climbed up. Culafroy had the presence of mind to climb up another tree nearer by. Seeing which, the dog got down on its knees beneath the blue sky, in the evening air, and uttered the following prayer: “Since the sisters, like magpies, make their nests in umbrella pines, Lord, grant me remission for my sins.” Then, having crossed himself, he got up and rejoined the flock. To his master the shepherd he related the miracle of the pines, and all the villages around were informed of it that very evening.

I shall speak again about Divine. but Divine in her garret, between Our Lady, the marble-hearted. and Gorgui. If Divine were a woman, she would not be jealous. She would be perfectly willing to go out alone in the evening to pick up customers between the trees on the boulevard. What would it matter to her that her two males spent their evenings together? On the contrary, a family atmosphere, the light of a lamp shade, would utterly delight her; but Divine is
also
a man. She is, to begin with, jealous of Our Lady, who is young and handsome and without guile. He is in danger of obeying the sympathies of his name. Our Lady, without guile and wily as an Englishwoman. He may arouse Gorgui. It would be easy. Let us imagine them at the movies one afternoon, side by side in the artificial darkness.

“Got your snotrag, Seck?”

No sooner said than done, his hand is on the Negro's pocket. Oh! fatal movement. Divine is jealous of Gorgui. The Negro is her man, and that little tramp of an Our Lady is young and pretty. Beneath the trees of the boulevard, Divine is looking for old geezers, and she is being torn apart by the anguish of a double jealousy. Then, as Divine is a man, she thinks: “I have to feed them both
together.
I'm the slave.” She is becoming bitter. At the movies, well-behaved as schoolboys (but, as around schoolboys, who–and that's enough–lower their heads together behind the desk, there prowls, ready to leap, a mad little act), Our Lady and Gorgui smoke and see only the film. In a little while they will go for a glass of beer, unsuspecting, and they will return to the garret, but not without Our Lady's having strewn on the sidewalk little pistol caps with which Gorgui amuses himself by exploding them beneath his steel-tipped shoes; thus, like the whistle blasts between those of pimps, sparks blazed forth between his calves.

The three of them are about to leave the garret. They're ready. Gorgui is holding the key. Each has a cigarette in his mouth. Divine strikes a kitchen match (she sets fire to her own stake each time), lights her cigarette, then Our Lady's, and holds out the flame to Gorgui.

“No,” he says, “not three on a match. That's bad luck.”

Divine:

“Don't play around with that, you never know what it can lead to.”

She seems weary and drops the match, now all black and skinny as a grasshopper. She adds:

“One starts with a little superstition and then falls into the arms of God.”

Our Lady thinks:

“That's right, into the priest's bed.”

At the top of the Rue Lepic is the little cabaret of which I have already spoken,
The Tabernacle,
where the habitués practice sorcery, concoct mixtures, consult the cards, question the bottoms of teacups, decipher the lines of the left hand (when questioned, fate tends to answer the truth, Divine used to say), where good looking butcherboys are sometimes metamorphosed into princesses in flowing gowns. The cabaret is small and low-ceilinged. Milord the Prince governs. Assembled there are: All of them, but especially First Communion, Banjo, the Queen of Rumania, Ginette, Sonia, Persifanny, Clorinda, the Abbess, Agnes, Mimosa, Divine. And their Gentlemen. Every Thursday the little latch door is closed to the curious and excited bourgeois visitors. The cabaret is given over to the “pure few.” Milord the Prince (she who said, “I make one cry every night,” speaking of the safes he cracked which the jimmy made creak) sent out the invitations. We were at home. A phonograph. Three waiters were on duty, their eyes full of mischief, lewd with a joyous lewdness. Our men are at the bar playing poker dice for drinks. And we are dancing. It is customary to come in drag, dressed as ourselves. Nothing but costumed queens rubbing shoulders with child-pimps. In short, not a single adult. The make-up and the lights distort sufficiently, but often we wear black masks or carry fans for the pleasure of guessing who's who from the carriage of a leg, from the expression, the voice, the pleasure of fooling each other, of making identities overlap. It would be an ideal spot for committing a murder, which would remain so secret that the fluttering queens, in a state of panic (though quickly one of them, startled into maternal severity, would be able to transform herself into a rapid and precise detective), and the little pimps, their faces
tense with terror, their bellies drawn in, huddling against the ladies, would try in vain to know who was the victim and who the murderer. A crime at a masked ball.

Divine has dug out for this evening her two 1890 silk dresses, which she keeps, souvenirs of former carnivals. One of them is black, embroidered with jet; she puts it on and offers the other to Our Lady.

“You're nuts. What'll the guys say?”

But Gorgui insists, and Our Lady knows that all his pals will have a laugh, that not a single one will snicker; they esteem him. The dress drapes Our Lady's body, which is naked under the silk. He rather likes the way he looks. His legs, with their downy, even slightly hairy skin, brush against each other. He bends down, turns around, looks at himself in the mirror. The dress, which has a bustle, makes his rump stick out, suggesting a pair of cellos. Let us put a velvet flower into his tousled hair. He is wearing Divine's tan shoes, the ones with ankle straps and high heels, but they are completely concealed by the flounces of the skirt. They dressed very quickly that evening because they were going out for real fun. Divine puts on her black silk dress and over it a pink jacket, and takes a spangled tulle fan. Gorgui is wearing tails and a white tie. Occurred the scene of the match being blown out. They went down the stairs. Taxi.
The Tabernacle.
The doorman, quite young and ever so good looking, leers three times. Our Lady dazzles him. They enter the brilliant fireworks of silk and muslin flounces which cannot fight clear of the smoke. They dance the smoke. They smoke the music. They drink from mouth to mouth. Our Lady is acclaimed by his pals. He had not realized that his firm buttocks would draw the cloth so tight. He doesn't give a damn that they see he has a hard-on, but not to such a point, in front of the fellows. He would like to hide. He turns to Gorgui and, slightly pink, shows him his bulging dress, muttering:

“Say, Seck, let me ditch that.”

He barely snickers. His eyes seem moist, and Gorgui does not know whether he is kidding or annoyed; then, the Negro takes the murderer by the shoulders, hugs him, clasps him, locks between his mighty thighs the jutting horn that is raising the silk, and carries him on his heart in waltzes and tangoes which will last till dawn. Divine would like to weep with rage, to tear cambric handkerchiefs with her nails and teeth. Then, a former state resembling the present one suddenly recalled the following: “She was in Spain, I believe. Kids were chasing her and screaming ‘Maricona’ and throwing stones at her. She ran to a sidetrack and climbed into an empty train. The kids continued from below to insult her and pepper the doors of the train with stones. Divine crouched under a seat, cursing the horde of children with all her might, hating them until she rattled with hatred. Her chest swelled out; she longed for a sigh so as not to choke with hatred. Then she realized it was impossible to devour the kids, to rip them to pieces with her teeth and nails, as she would have liked, so she loved them. The pardon gushed forth from her excess of rage, of hatred, and she was thereby appeased.” She consents, out of love, to the Negro's and Our Lady's loving each other. Around her is the room of Milord the Prince. She is sitting in a chair; on a carpet, masks are strewn about. They are all dancing downstairs. Divine has just slit everyone's throat, and in the mirror of the wardrobe she sees her fingers contracting into criminal hooks, like those of the Düsseldorf vampire on the covers of novels. But the waltzes ended. Our Lady, Seck, and Divine were among the last to leave the ball. It was Divine who opened the door, and quite naturally Our Lady took Gorgui's arm. The union, destroyed for a moment in the leave-taking, had been so abruptly reconstructed, unknotting the tricks of
hesitation, that Divine felt a bite in her side, the bite of contempt with which someone dispatches us. She was a good loser; so she remained behind pretending to fasten a garter. At five
A.M.
the Rue Lepic went straight down to the sea, that is, to the promenade of the Boulevard de Clichy. The dawn was tight, a little tight, not very sure of itself, on the point of falling and vomiting. The dawn was nauseous when the trio was still at the top of the street. They went down. Gorgui had placed his top hat very properly on his kinky head, at a slight angle. His white shirt-front was still rigid. A big chrysanthemum was drooping in his buttonhole. His face was laughing. Our Lady was holding him by the arm. They descended between two rows of garbage cans full of ashes and comb-scrapings–those garbage cans which every morning receive the first shifty glances of the merrymakers, those garbage cans which zigzag down the street.

If I were to put on a play in which women had roles, I would insist that these roles be performed by adolescent boys, and I would so inform the audience by means of a placard which would remain nailed to the right or left of the sets throughout the performance. Our Lady. in his pale-blue faille dress, edged with white Valenciennes lace, was more than himself. He was himself and his complement. I'm mad about fancy dress. The imaginary lovers of my prison nights are sometimes a prince–but I make him wear a tramp's castoffs–and sometimes a hoodlum to whom I lend royal robes. I shall perhaps experience my greatest delight when I play at imagining myself the heir of an old Italian family, but the impostor-heir, for my real ancestor would be a handsome vagabond, walking barefoot under the starry sky, who, by his audacity, would have taken the place of this Prince Aldini. I love imposture. So, Our Lady walked down the street as only the great, the very great ladies of the court knew how to walk, that is, without too much
stiffness and without too much swaying, without kicking aside his train, which casually swept the gray cobblestones, dragged along straw and bits of wood, a broken comb, and a leaf of yellowed arum. The dawn was purging itself. Divine followed from some distance. She was furious. The costumed Negro and murderer staggered a bit and leaned against each other. Our Lady was singing:

Taraboom ti-ay!

Taraboom ti-ay! Taraboom ti-ay!

He laughed as he sang. His smooth bright face, the lines and masses of which had been knocked awry by a night of dancing and laughter, of tumult and wine and love (the silk of the dress was spotted), offered itself to the dawning day as to the icy kiss of a corpse. Though the roses in his hair were only of cloth, they had wilted on the brass, but they still held up, a flower basket in which the water had not been changed. The cloth roses were quite dead. To freshen them up a bit, Our Lady raised his bare arm, and the murderer made almost the very gesture, though perhaps a trifle more rough, that Emilienne d’ Alençon would certainly have made in rumpling her chignon. In fact, he resembled Emilienne d’ Alençon. The big proud Negro was so moved by the bustle of Our Lady's blue dress (what was called a false bottom) that he drooled slightly. Divine watched them tripping down to the beach. Our Lady was singing among the garbage cans. Imagine a blond Eugénie Buffet, in a silk dress, singing in courtyards one early morning, clinging to the arm of a Negro in evening dress. We're surprised that none of the windows on the street opened on the sleepy face of a dairywoman or her mate. Such people never know what goes on beneath their windows, and that's as it should be. They
would die of grief if they knew. Our Lady's white hand (his nails were in mourning) was lying flat on Seck Gorgui's forearm. The two arms grazed each other so delicately (they had probably seen this kind of thing in the movies) that had you watched them you would certainly have been reminded of the madonnas of Raphael, who perhaps is so chaste only because of the purity that his name implies, for he lit up the gaze of little Tobias. The Rue Lepic descended perpendicularly. The Negro in full dress was smiling as champagne can make one smile, with that festive, that is vacant air. Our Lady was singing: