The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century (38 page)

The whitewashed walls of the cell were completely bare. Light filtered into this bright yet sinister little room through a narrow, barred window, high up and well out of reach. The madman, sitting on a wicker chair, was staring at us with a vague, terrified look. He was very thin with sunken cheeks and hair which one imagined had turned almost completely white in a matter of months. His clothes seemed too large for his shrunken body. You had the feeling that this man was being eaten alive by some obsession which was gnawing away at him like a grub in a piece of fruit. His madness, his obsession, was there in his head, relentlessly devouring him. His body was slowly wasting away. Invisible, intangible, imperceptible – his obsession was undermining his flesh, sucking his blood, destroying him by inches.

How mysterious it is to see a man being killed by a mental abstraction. He filled the on-looker with fear and pity at the same time. What strange, terrifying delusions occupied his thoughts, causing that constantly changing pattern of furrows and creases on his brow?

‘He is given to terrible fits of rage,’ the doctor said to me. ‘I have never seen a case like it before. He would seem to be afflicted with some form of erotic obsession akin to necrophilia. What’s particularly interesting is that he has kept a diary in which he describes the exact nature of his illness with remarkable clarity. In one sense this means at least we have a good idea of what we are dealing with. Would you care to have a look at it?’

I followed the doctor to his office, and he handed me the poor wretch’s diary.

‘Read it,’ he said. ‘I would like to know your opinion.’

Here are the entries I found.

Until I was thirty-two I led a quiet existence and I had never been in love. Life seemed very simple to me, very good and very easy. I was quite wealthy. I was interested in so many things that nothing held an undue fascination for me. I took life just as I found it. I would wake up feeling happy and contented in the morning, prepared to do whatever took my fancy, and I would go to bed happy and contented at the end of the day, looking forward to the next day without a cloud on the horizon.

There had been a few women in my life, but I had never experienced anything resembling passion or been tormented by the pangs of love. As I say, it was a very comfortable existence. Ordinary people may feel a wonderful sense of euphoria when they fall in love, but nothing perhaps as intense as what I later experienced, for love took possession of me in the most extraordinary way.

Not being short of money, I used to collect antiques of all kinds, especially furniture; and I would often wonder about the unknown hands which had caressed these objects, about the eyes which had gazed on them in admiration, about the hearts which had loved them – for love such things we do. I could spend hour after hour staring at a little watch from the eighteenth century. It was so delicate, so pretty, with its skilfully-crafted enamel and gold. And it was still in perfect working order, just as it had been the day on which some woman or other had purchased it in the flush of enthusiasm to own such a fine piece of jewellery. Its mechanical heart had never ceased beating, ticking away regularly for more than a century. Who, I wondered, was the first woman to wear it, keeping it warm and cosy among the folds of her dress, their life-forces pulsating in unison? What hand had tenderly held it, turning it over and over again with the tip of the finger, or wiped the porcelain shepherds whose image had become momentarily dulled by the moisture of human skin? What eyes had anxiously studied the tiny face decorated with flowers watching for the long-awaited hour, the dear, the divine hour of love?

How I would like to have known, or even seen her, the woman who had once chosen this rare and exquisite object! She is long since dead! I am obsessed with my desire for women of yesteryear; I love, from a distance, every woman who was once in love. The thought of all those bygone passions fills my heart with longing. All that beauty, all those smiles, all those youthful caresses, so much hope! Should not such things live forever?

How I have wept for nights at a time over these forgotten women, women who were so beautiful and gentle, women who would open their arms to receive a kiss – dead, they are all dead now! The kiss itself is immortal! It travels from lip to lip, from century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others, and then die in turn.

I am fascinated by the past and terrified by the present, because all that the future holds in store is death. I long for everything that has already happened, I weep over those who have already lived. If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of my self for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again.

Farewell, ladies of bygone years! I love you all!

But I do not ask for pity. I have found the woman I have been waiting for; and through her I have known unimaginable pleasure.

One sunny day I was strolling through Paris with a carefree step, casually glancing into the shop windows from idle curiosity. Suddenly I noticed in an antique dealer’s an Italian bureau from the seventeenth century. It was a rare and magnificent piece. I felt convinced that it was the work of a Venetian craftsman by the name of Vitelli, who was very famous in his day.

But I did not venture in. Why did the image of this object pursue me so obstinately that I had to turn round and retrace my steps? I stopped once again outside the shop and, as I stood looking at it, I knew that it was tempting me.

What a strange thing temptation is! You look at something, and slowly it seduces you, disturbs you, invades your very being like a woman’s face. You become imbued with its charms, a peculiar charm which is composed of its shape, its colour, its very appearance. And already you have fallen in love, you want it, you must have it. The desire to possess it takes hold of you, a desire which is pleasurable enough at first, but quickly turns violent and overpowering.

Shopkeepers seem able to guess this secret, irresistible desire from the gleam in your eye.

I bought this piece of furniture and had it delivered to my home immediately. I put it in my bedroom.

How sorry I feel for those who have never enjoyed the honeymoon period which a collector experiences when he has just made an acquisition! You let your eye and your hand run over it as if it were human; you are constantly coming back to it, always thinking about it, wherever you go, whatever you do. The thought of your new purchase accompanies you every time you walk down the street, as you are jostled by the crowds; and when you return home, even before you take off your hat and gloves, you go and gaze at it with the tender eyes of the lover.

For a whole week I was incredibly taken with this piece of furniture. I was forever opening the doors and drawers, handling it with sheer delight, savouring all the intimate joys of possession.

One evening, as I was feeling the thickness of one of the sides, I realised that it must contain a secret recess. My heart started pounding, and I spent the whole night in the vain attempt to discover the hiding-place.

But I found it the next morning, pushing the blade of a knife into a crack in the woodwork. A panel slid back and I saw, lying on a background of black velvet, a magnificent head of hair belonging to a women!

Yes, a head of hair, an enormous mass of braided hair, blonde in colour though possessing an almost auburn lustre, which must have been cut close to the scalp and was now bound together by a single golden thread.

I was speechless, stupefied! A barely perceptible perfume, so ancient that it was more like the ghost of a perfume, emanated from this mysterious recess and the remarkable relic it contained.

I touched it gently, almost reverently, and drew it from its place of concealment. Immediately it uncoiled itself, spilling out in a gold wave, thick and light, and as supple and brilliant as the fiery tail of a comet, until it almost reached the floor.

I felt myself strangely moved. What was it all about? How and when had it happened? Why had the hair been hidden away in a bureau? What adventure, what drama, lay behind this momento?

Who had cut off the hair? A lover, on the day of his departure? A husband, on the day he accomplished some desperate act of vengeance? Or perhaps the woman whose hair it was had done it herself on a day of despair?

Or could it be that she had thrust this love token in a hidden receptacle, as if to leave something behind her, before entering a religious order? Or again, had her lover, as they were screwing down the lid of the coffin following the untimely death of one who had died so young and beautiful, decided to preserve the glorious adornment of her head, the only part of her he could possibly keep, the only living part of the body which would not rot, the only part which he could still love and caress and embrace in the frenzy of his grief?

Was it not strange that the hair has survived like this, though not the smallest particle of the body to which it had belonged remained?

It flowed through my fingers, brushed against my skin in a peculiar manner – like the touch of a dead woman. I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I was on the verge of tears.

I held it in my hands for such a long time; until, in fact, I began to feel that the hair was upsetting me, as though something of the woman’s soul remained within it. I replaced it on the velvet, which had lost its sheen with age; then, after closing the drawer and locking the bureau, I went out for a walk in order to lose myself in thought.

I walked straight ahead, filled with sadness and a tremendous uneasiness – the kind of uneasiness you feel after you have exchanged a passionate kiss. I felt a strong sense of déjà-vu, as if I had known this woman in another life.

And some lines from Villon
¹
came to my lips, almost like a sob:

Tell me where Flora’s gone,

Flora, the beautiful Roman?

And what about that other courtesan,

Thaïs, whatever became of her?

And what about Echo, a sprite in the air,

Possessed of such beauty none could bear?

Where are the snows of yesteryear?

Blanche the Queen, pure as snow,

Bertha, Beatrice, Alice in a row,

Won’t someone tell me where they go?

Arembourg to Maine once heir,

Good Joan burnt in Rouen square?

Supreme Virgin, tell me where,

Where are the snows of yesteryear?

When I got back home, I felt an overwhelming urge to inspect my strange find. As soon as I picked it up a long shudder passed through my entire body.

For the next few days, I managed to live according to my usual fashion, though not for a single moment could I think of anything else other than the head of hair.

Each time I came home, I had but one desire: to look at it and feel it. I used to turn the key in the lock of the bureau with the same thrill of expectancy as a man visiting his favourite mistress. My hands and heart were possessed of an unwavering yet strangely confused need to dip my fingers into that delightful stream of dead hair.

Then, each time I had finished fondling it and locked it away in the bureau again, I could always feel its presence afterwards, as though it was a human being I was keeping prisoner. Not only could I detect its presence but I lusted after it; I was the continual victim of an overwhelming impulse to take it out again, to stroke it, to excite myself to the point of exhaustion by means of its smooth, cold, enervating, delicious contact.

I must have lived like that for a couple of months or so. I became thoroughly obsessed with the hair. I was both incredibly happy and utterly miserable, as if my love could find no physical outlet.

I would lock myself in alone with it so that I could press it against my skin or bury my lips in it, kissing and biting it. I would smother my face in it, drinking it in, drowning my eyes in its rippling golden waves or peering through its auburn veil.

I was in love with it! Yes, I was in love! I could no longer do without it, not go a single hour without seeing it.

And I waited, for what I do not know, but I waited. For
her
.

One night I suddenly woke up convinced that I was not alone in the room.

I was alone, of course. Yet I couldn’t go back to sleep; and after tossing and turning in a feverish insomnia, I got out of bed to touch my talisman. It seemed to me to be in a more gentle humour than usual, and more full of life. Do the dead come back? The kisses I lavished on it almost caused me to faint with euphoria; and I carried it back to bed with me, where I lay with my lips pressed against it like a mistress one is about to possess.

The dead
do
come back! She has come back. Yes, I saw her, I have held her in my arms, I have possessed her, just as she was when she was alive – tall, blonde, slightly plump, with cold breasts and hips shaped like a lyre. And I touched with my finger those divine undulations which run from the neck to the feet, following every curve in her flesh.

Yes, I possessed her, every day and every night. She came back, the Dead Woman, the Beautiful, the Adorable, the Mysterious Dead Woman. Every night she came back.

My happiness was so intense that I could no longer hide it. In her presence I felt a superhuman ecstasy, the profound, inexplicable joy of possessing the Intangible, the Invisible, the Dead Woman! No lover has ever tasted more ardent or more terrible delights than I!

I loved her so passionately that I only wanted to be in her presence. I took her with me wherever I went. Even when I went for a walk around town I carried her with me, as though she were my wife, and when I went to the theatre I would rent a private box, as if she were my mistress … But we were seen together … People put two and two together … They took her away from me … Then they threw me in prison as if I were a common criminal … They have taken her away from me! … And now I am so miserable!