Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal (23 page)

Perhaps it was thieves?

But if Teleny—?

No, the very idea was absurd. How could I suspect the man I loved of infidelity. I shrank from such a supposition as from something heinous—from a kind of moral pollution. No, it must be anything else but that. The key of the door downstairs was in my hand, I was already in the house.

I crept stealthily upstairs, in the dark, thinking of the first night I had accompanied my friend there, thinking how we had stopped to kiss and hug each other at every step.

But now, without my friend, the darkness was weighing upon me, overpowering, crushing me. I was at last on the landing of the
entresol
where my friend lived; the whole house was perfectly quiet.

Before putting in the key, I looked through the hole. Had Teleny, or his servant, left the gas lighted in the antechamber and in one of the rooms?

Then the remembrance of the broken mirror came into my mind; all kinds of horrible thoughts flitted through my brain. Then, again, in spite of myself, the awful apprehension of having been supplanted in Teleny's affection by someone else forced itself upon me.

No, it was too ridiculous. Who could this rival be?

Like a thief I introduced the key in the lock; the hinges were well oiled, the door yielded noiselessly, and opened. I shut it carefully, without its emitting the slightest sound. I stole in on tiptoe.

There were thick carpets everywhere that muffled my steps. I went to the room where, a few hours before, I had known such rapturous bliss.

It was lighted.

I heard stifled sounds within.

I knew but too well what those sounds meant. For the first time I felt the shattering pangs of jealousy. It seemed as if a poisoned dagger had all at once been thrust into my heart; as if an enormous hydra had caught my body between its jaws, and had driven its huge fangs through the flesh of my chest.

Why had I come here? What was I to do now? Where was I to go?

I felt as if I were collapsing.

My hand was already on the door, but before opening it I did what I suppose most people would have done. Trembling from head to foot, sick at heart, I bent down and looked through the keyhole.

Was I dreaming—was this a dreadful nightmare?

I stuck my nails deep into my flesh to convince myself of my self-consciousness.

And yet I could not feel sure that I was alive and awake.

Life at times loses its sense of reality; it appears to us like a weird, optical illusion—a phantasmagoric bubble that will disappear at the slightest breath.

I held my breath, and looked.

This was, then, no illusion—no vision of my overheated fancy.

There, on that chair—warm yet with our embraces—two beings were seated.

But who were they?

Perhaps Teleny had ceded his apartment to some friend for that night. Perhaps he had forgotten to mention the fact to me, or else he had not thought it necessary to do so.

Yes, surely, it must be so. Teleny could not deceive me.

I looked again. The light within the room being much brighter than that of the hall, I was able to perceive everything clearly.

A man whose form I could not see was seated on that chair contrived by Teleny's ingenious mind to enhance sensual bliss. A woman with dark, dishevelled hair, robed in a white satin gown, was sitting astride him. Her back was thus turned to the door.

I strained my eyes to catch every detail, and I saw that she was not really seated but standing on tiptoe, so that, though rather stout, she skipped lightly upon the man's knees.

Though I could not see, I understood that every time she fell she received within her hole the good-sized pivot on which she seemed so tightly wedged. Moreover, that the pleasure she received thereby was so thrilling that it caused her to rebound like an elastic ball, but only to fall again, and thus engulf within her pulpy, spongy, well-moistened lips, the whole of that quivering rod of pleasure down to its hairy root. Whoever she was—grand lady or whore —she was no tyro, but a woman of great experience, to be able to ride that Cytherean race with such consummate skill.

As I gazed on, I saw that her enjoyment kept getting stronger and ever stronger: it was reaching its paroxysm. From an amble she had gone on quietly to a trot, then to a canter; then, as she rode along, she clasped, with ever-increasing passion, the head of the man on whose knees she was astride. It was clear that the contact of her lover's lips and the swelling and wriggling of his tool within her, thrilled her to an erotic rage, so she went off in a gallop, thus—

Leaping higher, higher, higher,

With a desperate desire

to reach the delightful aim of her journey.

In the meanwhile, the male, whoever he was, after having passed his hands on the massy lobes of her hindparts, began to pat and press and knead her breasts, adding thus to her pleasure a thousand little caresses which almost maddened her.

I remember now a most curious fact, showing the way in which our brains work, and how our mind is attracted by slight extraneous objects, even when engrossed by the saddest thoughts. I remember feeling a certain artistic pleasure at the ever-changing effect of light and shadow thrown on different parts of the lady's rich satin gown, as it kept shimmering under the rays of the lamp hanging overhead. I recollect admiring its pearly, silky, metallic tints, now glistening, then glimmering or fading into a dull lustre.

Just then, however, the train of her gown had got entangled somewhere round the leg of the chair, so, as this incident impeded her rhythmical and ever quicker movements, enclasping her lover's neck, she managed deftly to cast off her gown, and thus remained stark naked in the man's embrace.

What a splendid body she had! Juno's in all its majesty could not have been more perfect. I had, however, hardly time to admire her luxuriant beauty, her grace, her strength, the splendid symmetry of her outlines, her agility, or her skill, for the race was now reaching its end.

They were both trembling under the spell of that rapturous titillation which just precedes the overflowing of the spermatic ducts. Evidently the tip of the man's tool was being sucked by the mouth of the vagina, a contraction of all the nerves had ensued; the sheath in which the whole column was enclosed had tightened, and both their bodies were writhing convulsively.

Surely after such overpowering spasms, prolapsus and inflammation of the womb must ensue, but then what rapture she must give.

Then I heard mingled sighs and panting, low cooings, gurgling sounds of lust, dying in stifled kisses given by lips that still cleaved languidly to each other; then, as they quivered with the last pangs of pleasure, I quivered in agony, for I was almost sure that that man must be my lover.

'But who can that hateful woman be?' I asked myself.

Still, the sight of those two naked bodies clasped in such a thrilling embrace, those two massy lobes of flesh, as white as newly-fallen snow; the smothered sound of their ecstatic bliss, overcame for a moment my excruciating jealousy, and I could hardly forbear from rushing into the room. My fluttering bird—my nightingale, as they call it in Italy—like Sterne's starling—was trying to escape from its cage; and not only that, but it also lifted up its head in such a way that it seemed to wish to reach the keyhole.

My fingers were already on the handle of the door. Why should I not burst in and have my share in the feast, though in a humbler way, and like a beggar go in by the back entrance?

Why not, indeed!

Just then, the lady whose arms were still tightly clasped round the man's neck, said,—

'Bon Dieu! how good it is! I have not felt such intensity of rapture for a long time.'

For an instant I was stunned. My fingers relinquished the handle of the door, my arm fell, even my bird drooped down, lifeless.

What a voice!

'But I know that voice,' I said to myself. 'Its sound is most familiar to me. Only the blood which is reaching up to my head and tingling in my ears prevents me from understanding whose voice it is.'

While in my amazement I had lifted up my head, she had got up and turned round. Standing as she was now, and nearer the door, my eyes could not reach her face, still I could see her naked body—from the shoulders downwards. It was a marvelous figure, the finest one I had ever seen. A woman's torso in the height of its beauty.

Her skin was of a dazzling whiteness, and could vie in smoothness as well as in pearly lustre with the satin of the gown she had cast off. Her breasts—perhaps a little too big to be aesthetically beautiful—seemed to belong to one of those voluptuous Venetian courtesans painted by Titian; they stood out plump and hard as if swollen with milk; the protruding nipples, like two dainty pink buds, were surrounded by a fringe of the passion flower.

The powerful line of the hips showed to advantage the beauty of the legs. Her stomach— so perfectly round and smooth—was half covered with a magnificent fur, as black and as glossy as a beaver's, and yet I could see that she had been a mother, for it was
moire
like watered silk. From the yawning, humid lips pearly drops were slowly trickling down.

Though not exactly in early youth, she was no less desirable for all that. Her beauty had all the gorgeousness of the full-blown rose, and the pleasure she evidently could give was that of the incarnadined flower in its fragrant bloom; that bliss which makes the bee which sucks its honey swoon in its bosom with delight. That aphrodisiacal body, as I could see, was made for, and surely had afforded pleasure to, more than one man, inasmuch as she had evidently been formed by nature to be one of Venus' Votaresses.

After thus exhibiting her wonderful beauty to my dazed eyes, she stepped aside and I could see the partner of her dalliance. Though his face was covered with his hands, it was Teleny. There was no mistake about it.

First his god-like figure, then his phallus, which I knew so well, then—I almost fainted as my eyes fell upon it—on his finger glittered the ring I had given him.

She spoke again.

He drew his hands from off his face.

It was he! It was Teleny—my friend—my lover—my life!

How can I describe what I felt? It seemed to me as if I were breathing fire; as if a rain of glowing ashes were being poured down upon me.

The door was locked. I caught its handle, and shook it as a mighty whirlwind shakes the sails of some large frigate, and then tears them to shreds. I burst it open.

I staggered on the sill. The floor seemed to be giving way under my feet; everything was spinning around me; I was in the very midst of a mighty whirlpool. I caught myself by the doorposts not to fall, for there, to my inexpressible horror, I found myself face to face with—my own mother!

There was a threefold cry of shame, of terror, of despair—a piercing, shrill cry that rang through the still night air, awakening all the inmates of that quiet house from their peaceful slumbers.

—And you—what did you do?

—What did I do? I really don't know. I must have said something—I must have done something, but I have not the slightest recollection of what it was. Then I stumbled downstairs in the dark. It was like going down, down into a deep well. I only remember running through the gloomy streets—running like a madman, whither I knew not.

I felt cursed like Cain, or like the Eternal Wanderer, so I ran on at random.

I had fled from them, would that I had been able to flee from myself likewise.

All at once, at the corner of the street, I ran against someone. We both recoiled from each other. I aghast and terror-stricken; he, simply, astonished.

—And whom did you meet?

—My own image. A man exactly like myself —my
Doppelganger,
in fact. He stared at me for an instant, and then passed on. I, instead, ran with whatever strength was left in me.

My head was reeling, my strength was breaking down, I stumbled several times, still I ran on. Was I mad?

All at once, panting, breathless, bruised in body and in mind, I found myself standing on the bridge—nay, on the very same spot on which I had stood some months before.

I uttered a harsh, jarring laugh that frightened me. So it had come to this, after all.

I cast a hurried glance around me. A dark shadow loomed in the distance. Was it my other self?

Trembling, shuddering, maddened, without a moment's thought, I climbed on the parapet and plunged head foremost into the foaming flood beneath.

I was again in the very midst of a whirlpool, I heard the noise of rushing waters in my ears; darkness was pressing closely round me, a world of thoughts flitted through my brain with astonishing rapidity, and then, for some time, nothing more.

Only I vaguely remember opening my eyes, and seeing as in a looking glass my own ghastly face staring at me.

A blank came over me again. When at last I recovered my senses I found myself in the
Morgue
—that dreadful charnel house, the
Morgue!
They had believed me dead, and had carried me there.

I looked around me, I saw nothing but unknown faces. My other self was nowhere to be seen.