The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century (25 page)

Filled with these thoughts – which were more profound than he realised – the coffin-manufacturer devoted all his considerable energies to the abolition of the fear of death.

He had the honour of being the first to advocate the noble idea of the crematorium. According to this luminary, the traditional abhorrence of death was due, above all, to the hideous spectre of decomposition. At the conference of cremationists, who had elected him as their president, he expounded in florid rhetoric, and with all the eloquence of the impromptu speaker, on the repulsiveness of the subterranean chemistry which turns a human being into a flower – a process quite abhorrent to his accountant-like mentality.

‘I for one have not the slightest intention of allowing myself to become a putrefying corpse!’ he bellowed. ‘As soon as I pass away, I insist that I am cremated, that I am calcinated and reduced to ashes, for fire purifies all things,
etc.
,
etc.
’

His wishes were honoured in every particular, as we are about to see.

***

This worthy entrepreneur had the very sort of son you would wish a man who understands the value of money to have.

I must beg the reader’s permission at this point to insert a short eulogy.

Diedonné Labalbarie was, if I dare say it, even more admirable than his father. Conceived at a moment propitious for the ruination of more reckless rivals, he became the living embodiment of the sterling qualities that not even the most stolid credit establishments fail to recognise.

At fifteen, he had already opened a savings account and his conduct was as transparent as a ledger. If a calculating machine had been consulted, it would have been unable to discover the slightest irregularity in his life.

It would have been the height of injustice to reproach him for showing the faintest sign of any sentimental attachment to anything or any person.

So proud was he of having produced such a son that his father was obliged to support himself against a cash register whenever he mentioned his name.

This prodigy lived and prospered. In the three years since he was orphaned, he has even doubled his inheritance, having wheedled himself into the affections of a wealthy collector of tortoises whom he persuaded to marry him. Many people would undoubtedly recognise him immediately if I were not prevented from describing the pleasing nature of his features from fear of offending the delicate flower of his modesty.

Let those who are able to guess his identity do so. I will already have said too much perhaps if I reveal that he has the beautiful physiognomy of a reptile and that he is usually accompanied by a monstrously large mastiff.

I shall now recount for you the little-known story of the death and funeral service of the father.

Those who are easily offended are entreated to read no further.

***

One morning, the doctor certified that the great Fiacre had passed away.

Labalbarie junior immediately sprang into action. Without shedding useless tears, without slackening the pace of his own life, that is to say without wasting a moment (for, in the noble phrase of Benjamin Franklin, which he cited incessantly, ‘time is money’), he ordered his father’s affairs to be wound up on the spot and organised an immediate funeral.

At ten thirty-five, the newspapers were informed of his bereavement and the notification of his loss was simultaneously sent abroad to the four points of the compass – the cards having been judiciously ordered and collected long in advance.

The same was true for the black marble memorial plaque destined for the columbarium, on which a phoenix was designed spreading out its wings in the middle of the flames above the following terrifying inscription which the deceased had insisted on:

I SHALL BE BORN AGAIN

Diedonné Labalbarie went for a vigorous bicycle ride in order to boost his morale by means of an energetic dose of air, ate a hearty lunch, received several distressing calls, paid his respects to the Stock Exchange and, in the evening, managed to collect several large debts. As a mark of how overcome he was by his grief, he failed to return home that night.

The following day, an elegant hearse, strewn with flowers, and followed by a less than select crowd, carried the deceased’s remains to the crematorium.

‘Ah ha! You’d like to be born again, would you?’ muttered the affable Diedonné to himself, as he remained alone in the sombre chapel of rest with the two men responsible for feeding his father to the furnace. ‘We’ll soon see about that!’

The coffin – fashioned, according to regulations, from thin planks, which are immediately consumed at a temperature of seven hundred degrees – was resting on a mechanical trolley. A vigorous shove of the two metal antennae would propel the deceased into the furnace before withdrawing with a sound like a scream, the entire cycle of extension and retraction taking only twenty-five seconds.

Diedonné was dutifully fulfilling his filial obligations by paying his last respects to the deceased
when a noise could be heard coming from inside the bier
.

Admittedly, it was a muffled and rather indistinct sort of sound, but, all the same, a sound it was – like someone who isn’t dead trying to turn over in his shroud. It even seemed that the coffin moved slightly.

At the same moment, the mechanically-controlled door of the furnace swung open.

Three faces, each reflecting the unbearable heat of the flames, looked at each other.

‘It’s only the evisceration of the corpse,’ asserted Diedonné calmly.

The two workmen still hesitated.

‘Get on with it, for God’s sake!’ yelled the parricide angrily. ‘I tell you it’s just the evisceration of the corpse.’ And he planted a wad of bank notes into the nearest palm.

The antennae sprang forwards and withdrew.

The door closed, though not quickly enough perhaps, because Diedonné, standing straight before the opening, imagined he saw in the instantaneous conflagration of the coffin two outstretched arms and the desperate face of his father.

  
1
   
Alfred Vallette
(1858–1935) was the dominant figure behind the famous Mercure de France publishing house (which also brought out a journal of the same name).

  
2
   
Bourget.
Paul Bourget (1852–1935), popular French novelist of the turn of the century. His readable style and wide popularity earned the disapproval of the avant-garde.

One of the articles in the journal caught Jacques’ attention and he fell into a brown study. What a wonderful thing is science! he thought. Here you have a Professor Selmi at Bologna who has discovered ptomaine, some kind of alkaloid present in putrefying animal matter; it has a colourless, oily appearance and gives off a faint but distinct odour of hawthorn, musk, syringa, and rose or orange-blossom.

At the present date, these were the only fragrances which it had been possible to detect in the extracts of an organism in a state of decomposition, but others would undoubtedly present themselves; meanwhile, to satisfy the assumptions of such a commercial century as our own, which buries those without a penny by mechanical contrivance at Ivry, and recycles everything – waste liquids, residue from earth-closets, the guts of decaying carcasses, old bones – the cemeteries could all be converted into factories which would prepare to order for rich families the concentrated extracts of their ancestors, the essential oils of children, and the bouquet unique to the paterfamilias.

This would certainly have to be what is called, in the world of commerce, an ‘up-market’ product; but for the labouring classes (no question of neglecting them!) mighty laboratories could be annexed to these luxurious dispensaries whose sole object would be the mass production of perfume; this, of course, could be distilled from whatever remained unclaimed at the bottom of the communal burial pit; it would put the art of perfumery on a new footing, and make available yet more shoddy goods at bargain basement prices, well within the reach of all, especially as the raw materials would be not only plentiful but also cheap, costing no more than the wage bill for the chemists and those who exhumed the body.

Ah, how happy the lower-class womenfolk would be to buy whole tubs of pomades and blocks of soap manufactured from the essential oils of the proletariat!

And what better reminder, what fresher eternal memory, could one hope to achieve than these sublime emanations of the dead? At present, when one half of a loving couple dies, all the other can do is cherish their photograph and make a pilgrimage to their grave on All Saints’ Day. Thanks to the invention of ptomaine, it will be possible from now on to preserve the woman of cherished memory in the privacy of your own home, in your pocket even, in a volatile, mercurial state, to transform your beloved into a jar of smelling-salts, concentrate her into a juice, tip her in powder-form into an embroidered sachet bearing a heart-rending epigraph, and take a deep inhalation of her on bad days or perhaps just a sniff on more pleasant occasions, impregnated in your handkerchief.

On the subject of bodily reflexes, let’s not forget either that we might be able to dispense altogether with having to listen to the inevitable cry for help addressed to mother at the moment of defloration since the good lady herself may well be present at the occasion, disguised as a beauty spot or mixed up in the face powder evenly applied to her daughter’s breast, while the latter lies back in a swoon, clamouring for the assistance she knows perfectly well will not arrive.

Furthermore, with the progress of science, ptomaine, which is today a deadly poison, may one day be consumed without risk; so why not flavour certain dishes with it? Why not employ these fragrant essences just as we now use extracts of cinnamon, almonds, vanilla or cloves to enhance the taste of certain cakes? As with the cosmetics industry, this would open up new directions for the art of both the pastry-cook and the confectioner, directions which would be not only financially rewarding but also emotionally heart-warming.

And finally, ptomaine would certainly reaffirm and strengthen the noble ties of the family which have been progressively weakened during these disrespectful times. Families would be drawn cosily together in mutual affection during thrilling moments of solidarity. Ptomaine could conjure up, without fail and at just the right moment, the deceased’s life and so set an example to the children whose gluttony would fix such memories clearly in their minds.

It is the evening of the Day of the Dead. We are in a tiny dining room somewhere or other, furnished with a sideboard manufactured from some kind of lightly varnished wood with black borders. The lamp has been trimmed and a shade directs the light on to the table. The family is seated. The wife is a good mother; the father a clerk with some firm or bank; their son is still young, only recently over whooping-cough and childhood rashes. He has been momentarily calmed down by the threat of being deprived of pudding, and has at last agreed not to splash his soup with his spoon, and to eat up his meat with a slice of bread.

Motionlessly, he studies his parents who are contemplative and silent. The maid comes in, carrying a
crème aux ptomaines
. The very same morning, mother had respectfully taken from the mahogany Empire bureau with the trefoiled lock the crystal-stoppered phial containing the precious liquid extracted from grandfather’s decomposed internal organs. With an eye-dropper, she had herself carefully counted the aromatic drips which now perfume the dessert.

The boy’s eyes light up; but before he is served he must listen to an eulogy of the old man who has bequeathed him, besides certain physical traits, this posthumous taste of rose on which he is about to gorge himself.

‘Such an excellent fellow, Grandpa Jules! Sober, hardworking and prudent. He walked to Paris in his clogs and always managed to put a bit aside even when he was only earning a hundred francs a month. He wasn’t the sort of man to lend out his money without security and without interest. He was no fool! Business before pleasure! Cash down! And what respect he had for money and those who had it! Consequently, he died revered by his children, to whom he left investments befitting a family man, all in gilts!’

‘Can you remember Grandpa, my darling?’

‘Yum-yum! Grandpa!’ clamours the kid, who is smearing the ancestral cream all over his face and nose.

‘And Grandma? Can you remember her too, my pet?’

The child has to think for a moment. Every year a rice cake flavoured with the deceased’s corporeal essence is served to mark the anniversary of her death. She had always smelled of snuff when alive, but by some curious phenomenon, had exuded an aroma of orange-flower ever since her death.

‘Yum-yum! Grandma, too!’ rejoices the child.

‘Tell me, which do you like best? Grandpa or Grandma?’

Like all brats, who prefer what they haven’t got to whatever is placed before them, the boy longs for the far-off cake and admits that he liked Grandma best; but he nonetheless pushes out his plate towards the dish with Grandpa in it.

Fearful of an attack of filial indigestion, the prudent mother has the dessert removed.

What an utterly charming and touching family scene! thought Jacques, as he rubbed his eyes. And he wondered if, given his present mental state, he had not been dreaming, slumbering on his chair, with his face resting on the page of the scientific journal describing the discovery of ptomaine.

Oh! Such hell when I discovered that she had been deceiving me! Such hell when I finally held in my hands the proof that I had been looking for, waiting for, longing for in direct proportion to the hurt that I knew it would cause me. That’s just how I am, and I think most men are like me: we can’t bear not to know, even if life will never be the same afterwards; and the more harm it will do us, the more we have to know.

I’m a violent fellow, and I don’t try to disguise it. All my friends have born the brunt. I’ve fallen out with plenty of people that I really liked, and ruined my chances in the world a dozen times over. I’m sorry enough for these acts of violence after the event, but I do and say things without being able to hold them in, and without really trying to. It’s the demon in me struggling to get out, as the ancient philosophers would have put it; or the beast in me waking up, as they say nowadays. At such times, I’m like an animal. I have a furious temper, and the worst of it is that instead of wearing itself out, the longer it goes on, the madder I become, I am unable to look at a problem in my head from all angles, it seems to spin round and round, like the wooden horses on a carousel, always faster and faster, until the whole roundabout goes out of control and disintegrates.