The Dedalus Book of Decadence: (Moral Ruins) (17 page)

OLD FURNITURE

by Catulle Mendès

When the bed was broken:

“Look at that!”
she said.
“I ask you – what will they think of me when they see it tomorrow, with the mattress in that state and everything else you have managed to do?
This is a respectable hotel!
It must be said, sir, that your treatment of me has been singularly brutal; do you not realise how careful I must be to make sure that my husband never finds out that I have come away with you?
The poor man believes that I have gone to see my aunt in the country.
At this hour, he is probably fast asleep, in a bed which he has certainly never broken.
Why could you not have been as calm and gentle as he always is?
How I shall blush when the hotel manager and the servants find out what has happened.
Because I was ignorant of your faults I permitted myself to entertain the tenderest feelings for you, but what you have contrived to do obliges me to recognise that I was entirely wrong to trust you.
If I ever loved you at all, I love you no longer!
I must ask you to forget the favours which I have already granted you, and to give up any hope that they will ever be renewed.”

While she spoke these words, from the middle of the room, Roberta put on a fine show of controlled anger; her gestures were dignified, her manner was almost tragic.
As she put on her clothes her movements were perfectly graceful, and she maintained her composure until the last button was fastened and the last lace tied.

The breaker of the bed was enthusiastic to excuse himself.

“But, darling.…” he said.

She was quick to interrupt him.

“Oh, I know exactly what you are going to say.
You were not in control of yourself; you have waited so long, thanks to the virtuous resistance which I have exerted against your entreaties, that as soon as I ceased to be cruel you lost your head.
When at last the moment came and you were permitted to proceed, you were incapable of moderation.
And now, I suppose, I should be overcome by happiness!
One always cuts the most beautiful roses too quickly!
You will also suggest, no doubt, that in the older houses of this region the furniture is of dubious solidity, and that it is no fault of yours that I should happen to lay my young body down in a bed which is a hundred years old, or more.
None of these excuses, I assure you, can make the slightest difference.
It does not alter the incontestable fact that the bed is broken – oh, what a mess!
It is enough to make one die of shame!
Tomorrow the servants will all have smiles upon their lips when they see me come downstairs, blushing to the roots of my hair.”

He did not try to make any more excuses; his offence was all-too-evident; but he had an idea.

“But my dear,” he said, “things are not as bad as they seem.
The disengaged mattress, the broken springs, the cracked frame – all this can be repaired; given time and a little cleverness I can put things back in such good order that no one would ever imagine how wildly I was excited by the sight of your perfect teeth and your rosy cheeks.”

She collected herself.

Yes, certainly, that would be the best thing.
Repair the bed, and lose no time in doing so.
And so they both set about it, determinedly.
There were a few interruptions in the work, of course, because he had occasionally to touch
her soft white arms or kiss her bee-stung lips, but in the end they completed the task – by which time they were quite reconciled, as firmly united in one purpose as they had ever been.
Next day, the servants would be certain that the guests had slept very peacefully indeed.

On the other hand, the perilous scaffolding of the bed could not be expected to endure any further strain; the lightest jolt might easily make it collapse all over again.
There was, however, a large chaise longue positioned between the two windows, beneath an old tapestry which depicted Tiresias explaining how the tearful Alcmene had come to be seduced by the god Zeus.
There was plenty of room on the chaise longue for both of them, and they retired to it gratefully.

**********

When that also was broken:

“Look what you’ve done now!”
cried Roberta.
“I have to say, sir, that you are the most insupportable man that one could possibly imagine.
Insupportable, do you hear?
Even the clumsiest of giants – Gargantua and Pantagruel, and all the colossuses displayed in the fair at Neuilly – could not have contrived such extraordinary breakages.
Even Hercules never broke the couch where Omphale forced him to spin the wool of the golden fleece!
You have not even the excuse of being obese nor enormous; you are, indeed, rather slim, although you have the manners and appetite of a peasant.
My God, wasn’t it sufficient to break the bed?
Why couldn’t you take no for an answer?
Haven’t I told you how important it is that I do not appear to be undeserving of my husband’s trust?
My husband – who thinks that I have gone to see my aunt in the country!
You seem to think that my refusals are simply to be construed as an inducement to redouble the
effort of your assaults.
I was content to assume that the tumult of the battle on the bed was a consequence of the novelty of your victory – and so you assured me.
The chaise longue was supposed to be the rest camp to which combatants retire when the battle is over, and I cannot see that you have any excuse at all for sacking those positions which you had already conquered!
I can hardly bear to think about what might happen in the morning.
A maid, perhaps an entirely innocent girl – anything is possible in the country!
– will come into the room and immediately behold a broken chaise longue beneath a picture in which blind Tiresias looks so lovingly at Alcmene’s legs.
You can be certain that I shall never forgive you for the blushes with which you have stained my innocence; I have no more feelings for you, save for the hateful and unhappy legacy of shattered illusions.”

While she spoke these words from the middle of the room, Roberta had tears in her eyes.
They were little tears, no larger than tiny pearls – if only they could have been tears of happiness, the pearls would surely have been real – and, given that she was undressed, palely desolate and quivering from head to toe, she could never before have presented such a beautiful sight.

The breaker of chaises longues tried to excuse himself.

“But, darling…” he said.

She was quick to interrupt him.

“Oh!
I know exactly what you are going to say.
The fault, this time, was not all yours.
You little realise how hateful you are making yourself with these terrible accusations.
My excesses have been as great as your own in pursuit of our mutual goal, you declare, and you dare to give me to understand that is is I who am responsible for the breaking of the chaise longue.
Well, I will not entertain such an idea for an instant, and I find the very
suggestion offensive.
From the very beginning, I could see myself in the mirror which hangs on the opposite wall – and I am sure that I did not abandon for a single instant, despite certain appearances of complaisance, the attitude of disinterest which propriety commanded me to maintain.
But what does it matter?
The fact remains, real and undeniable: the chaise longue is a ruin!
How can you possibly expect me to endure the humiliation which will be heaped upon me by the sly laughter of the servants?”

“Oh, my love,” he said, “let us simply repair the sofa, just as we have repaired the bed.”

**********

But, when the task was completed – when the chaise longue once again had the appearance of an honest sofa on which one would not hesitate to seat oneself; when the cushions were placed as neatly as any bourgeois visitor could possibly wish – there was further embarrassment to come.
Where, now could they possibly spend the remainder of the night?
They could not possibly use the bed, which was as fragile now as a house of cards, nor the couch which they had just repaired, which would fall to pieces at the slightest shock.

The lovers – content at last to think only of sleep – dolefully studied the narrow armchairs and considered the dimensions of the marble top on the chest of drawers, until Roberta, in the end, could not help but shake with suppressed laughter, rippling the long fair hair which she had bound up in a gold ribbon.

Then, quickly putting on a dressing-gown, she pulled violently on the bell-cord.

The bellboy, summoned uncomfortably from his bed, finally opened the door.
“Madame rang?”
he inquired.

She was still laughing.

“Oh yes, I rang” she answered.

Then, very charmingly, with the light of mischief in her eyes and a smile upon her lips, she said: “This is a dreadful room.
It is terribly uncomfortable, and there is a draught from the window.
Can you let us have another – one with more solid furniture, perhaps?”

**********

DON JUAN IN HELL

by Charles Baudelaire

(translated by James Elroy Flecker)

The night Don Juan came to pay his fees

  To Charon, by the caverned water’s shore,

A beggar, proud-eyed as Antisthenes,

  Stretched out his knotted fingers on the oar.

Mournful, with drooping breasts and robes unsewn

  The shapes of women swayed in ebon skies,

Trailing behind him with a restless moan

  Like cattle herded for a sacrifice.

Here, grinning for his wage, stood Sganarelle,

  And here Don Luis pointed, bent and dim,

To show the dead who lined the holes of Hell,

  This was that impious son who mocked at him.

The hollow-eyed, the chaste Elvira came,

  Trembling and veiled, to view her traitor spouse.

Was it one last bright smile she thought to claim,

  Such as made sweet the morning of his vows?

A great stone man rose like a tower on board,

  Stood at the helm and cleft the flood profound:

But the calm hero, leaning on his sword,

  Gazed back, and would not offer one look round.

**********

DON JUAN’S SECRET

by Remy de Gourmont

Devoid of soul and avid in the flesh, Don Juan prepared himself from earliest adolescence for the vocation that would make his name legendary.
His cunning foresight had revealed to him the shape of things to come, and he entered upon his career armed and armoured by the motto:

To please yourself, you must take what you please from she who pleases you.

**********

From one of his fair-haired conquests he took a deft gesture of the hand, which echoed the painful beating of an empty heart;

From another he took an ironic fall of the eyelid, which conveyed an illusion of impertinence and which was certainly no mere reflex of a feeble eye before the light;

From another, he took the petulant stamp of her pretty and impatient foot;

From another, soft and pure, he took a smile in which he had previously seen, as if in a magical mirror, the contentment of satisfaction; and afterwards, the pleased renewal of desire.

From another, not so pure and without softness, but ever vibrantly alive and as nervous as a kitten, he took a very different smile: the kind of smile which remembered kisses strong enough to stir the heart of a
virgin;

From another, he took a sigh: a deep, tremulous and timid sigh; a sigh like the hectically fluttering wings of a frightenened bird in flight;

From another he took the slow and unsteady gait of one overwhelmed by an excess of love;

From another, he took the loving voice whose whispered endearments were like the weeping of angels.

From all of them he took the expressions which showed upon their faces: the gentle, the imperious, the docile, the astonished, the combative, the envious, the lovely, the trusting, the devouring, the thunderous, and all the rest; and he built these one by one into a great garland of fascinating appearances.
But the most beautiful of all expressions to Don Juan – a precious stone among countless beads of glass – was the expression of a ravished girl, hunted and caught and mortified by love and despair.
That look he found so poignant that it became the motive force of his eternal search for more and more of the same wild gratification; it was the secret inspiration of his great carnal quest.

**********

Time and time again, Don Juan triumphed over the female heart.
He won hearts ingenuous and trusting, hearts tender and righteous, hearts which did not know their own secrets, hearts empty of innate desire, hearts deliriously naive; gentle seductresses and ardent seductresses all came alike to him, and were likewise beguiled.

The pattern of his seductions was always the same: his gentle touch, excused by a hint of laughter in the eye and a pleasant smile; her slow entrancement by his steady gaze; the first deep and fractured sigh wrung
from his breast, accompanied by a subtly impatient tap of his foot, as if to say: “You have wounded my heart; that will not prevent me from loving you, but I am angry.”
Then, he would see the precious look of the hunted beast upon her face; then he would touch her playfully with his little finger.

After a pause, he would whisper, lovingly: “How beautiful it is tonight!”
– and the young lady would instantly respond: “It is my heart and soul that you want, Don Juan!
So be it!
Take them, I give them to you freely.”

Don Juan would accept this delicious offering, and would savour all the feminine charms of the new lover: her skin; her hair; her teeth; all of her beauty and all the perfumes of her secret places – and, having enjoyed to the full the fruits of her newly-awakened love, would then depart.

Around his own heart he built an inviolable shell, in which it was as comfortably encased as if it were enshrouded in white velvet – and with that armour to protect him, bolder than any giant-killer, more revered than the holiest of relics, he increased the number of his conquests vastly.

He took all of them: all those who might provide a new hint of pleasure, a delicate nuance of joy; he took all that he was allowed to take by those whose sisters had already given him all that he desired.
His reputation went before him, and as it increased the women became all the more ready to bow down before him and kiss his hands submissively, overcome by the mere approach of their conqueror.

In the end, women competed with one another to be the first to submit to him or to be the one who would surrender most; intoxicated by the mere thought of their impending enslavement, they would begin to die for love of him before they had even tasted his love.

Through all the towns and all the chateaux, to the remotest parts of the land, there spread the cry of the fatally enamoured: “O my love!
O desire of my flesh!
He is irresistible.”

**********

But the time came, as it had to do, when Don Juan grew old.
His strength was sapped by his luxurious indulgence and his appetites dried up.
As is the inevitable way of things, he became a shadow of his former self.

To the last flowers of summer, Don Juan had given up the last grain of his pollen; there was not a drop of sap left in him.
He had loved, but now could love no more – and he lay down on his bed to await the arrival of the one who was destined to claim him.

But when that one arrived, Don Juan – still unready to accept his fate – offered to him anything that he cared to take, out of all that had been so carefully stolen from those with whom the great lover had taken his pleasure.

“I offer to you the rewards of all my seductions,” said Don Juan.
“To you, O Ugly One, I offer all my gestures, all my looks, all my smiles, all my divers sights – all of that, and the armour which encases my soul: take it and go!
I wish to relive my life in memory, knowing as I do now that memory is the true life.”

“Relive your life if you wish,” said Death.
“I will see you again.”

And Death departed, but left behind him a host of phantoms which he had raised from the shadows.

These phantoms were the forms of young and beautiful women, all of them naked and all incapable of speech, moving restlessly as though there were something which they were desperate to obtain.
They arranged themselves in a great spiral around Don Juan’s bed, and
though the first of them was close enough to take his hand and place it on her breast, the last was so far away that she seemed as distant as the stars.

She who had placed his hand on her breast took back from him a deft gesture of the hand which echoed the anguish of an empty heart;

Another took back from him the ironic fall of a white eyelid;

Another took back from him the petulant stamp of her foot;

Another took back from him the subtle smile which spoke of satisfaction obtained and the renewal of desire;

Another took back from him a different smile, which reflected the pleasure of secret delights;

Another took back from him a sigh like the flutter of a frightened bird;

And then there approached another, who moved with the slow and unsteady gait of one overwhelmed by an excess of love; and another whose sad and loving whispers were like the weeping of angels; and the great garland of the expressions which he had gathered one by one – the imperious and the thunderous, the astonished and the trusting, the gentle and the beguiled – all were retaken from him; and every one of those whom he had carefully violated came in her turn to take back from him her illimitably precious and fugitive expression of love and despair.

Another, finally, took from him his own heart, whose delicious innocence he had so carefully preserved within its cloak of white velvet; and then he was no longer the great Don Juan, but only a senseless phantom.

Like a rich man robbed of his wealth, or a flyer without wings, he was the merest echo of a human being, reduced to elementary truth, without his inspiration,
without his secret!

**********