Maldoror and Poems, Page 3

  11

  A family around a table with a lamp on it:

  'My son, give me those scissors on that chair.'

  'They are not there, mother.'

  'Go and look for them in the other room, then. Do you remember the time, my dear husband, when we vowed to have a child in whom we would be born again a second time and who would be the comfort of our old age?'

  'I remember, and God granted our wish. We have nothing to complain in our lot on this earth. Every day we bless Providence and its goodness. Our Edward has all his mother's charms.'

  'And his father's manly qualities.'

  'Here are the scissors, mother. I found them at last.'

  He resumes his work...but someone has appeared at the front door, and has for some time been contemplating the scene before him.

  'What does this sight mean? There are many people less happy than these. What shifts have they made to be able to love their existence so? Away, Maldoror, from this peaceful hearth! You do not belong here!'

  He has withdrawn!

  'I do not know what can have brought it about; but I feel my human faculties conflicting in my breast. My soul is ill at ease, and does not know why; the atmosphere is heavy.'

  'Wife, my impressions are the same as yours; I am trembling with fear that some misfortune is going to befall us. Have faith in God; our supreme hope is in Him.'

  'Mother, I can hardly breath; my head aches.’

  'You too, my son! I will wet your temples and forehead with vinegar.'

  'No, dear mother.'

  See, he leans back on his chair, tired.

  'Something is going round and round inside me, which I cannot explain. Now the least object annoys me.'

  'How pale you are! This evening will not pass without some catastrophe plunging all three of us into the lake of despair.'

  I hear in the distance prolonged cries of the most acute pain.

  'My son!'

  'Oh mother, I am afraid.’

  'Tell me quickly if you are feeling ill.'

  'Mother, I fell no pain...I am not telling the truth.'

  His father has not recovered from his astonishment: 'These are cries one sometimes hears in the silence of starless nights. Although we hear these cries, he who utters them is not near here; for one can hear groans at three leagues' distance, borne by the wind from one town to the next. People have often spoken to me of this phenomenon; but I have never had occasion to judge the truth of it for myself. Wife, you spoke to me of a catastrophe; never has greater woe existed in time's long spiral than the woe of him who now troubles the sleep of his fellows...’

  I hear in the distance prolonged cries of the most acute pain.

  'Please heaven his birth may not be a calamity for his country, which has driven him from her breast. He goes from land to land, abhorred by everywhere. Some say he has been afflicted since childhood with a kind of original madness. Others assert that he is extremely and instinctively cruel, is himself ashamed of this, and that his parents died of sorrow. There are some who claim that he was branded with a surname in youth; that he has been inconsolable ever since, because his wounded sense of dignity saw in this fact a flagrant proof of the wickedness of man, which becomes apparent in his earliest years and increases later. That surname was the vampire!'

  I hear in the distance prolonged cries of the most acute pain.

  ‘They add that day and night, without relief or rest, horrible nightmares make him bleed from his mouth and his ears; that spectres sit at his bed’s head and—impelled in spite of themselves by an unknown force, implacable persistent, in voices one moment gentle, another like the roars of battle—yell in his face this name, still tenacious, still hideous, which will only perish with the universe. Some even assert that love has reduced him to this state; or that these cries testify to his repentance at some crime buried in the night of his mysterious past. But the majority think that he is tortured by immeasurable pride, as Satan once was, and that he wants to be equal with God...’

  I hear in the distance prolonged cries of the most acute pain.

  ‘My son, these are exceptional confidences. I pity you for having heard them at your age, and I hope you will never imitate this man.’

  ‘Speak, oh my Edward; answer that you will never imitate this man.’

  ‘Oh beloved mother, to whom I owe my life, I promise you, if the holy promise of a child has any value, that I will never imitate this man.’

  ‘That is good, my son. You must obey your mother, no matter what.’

  The groans can no longer be heard.

  ‘Wife, have you finished your work?’

  ‘There are still a few stitches to be put in this shirt, though we have stayed up late this evening.’

  ‘And I have not yet finished my chapter. Let us take advantage of the lamp’s last gleams; for the oil is running out, let each one of us finish his work.’

  The child exclaims: ‘If God lets us live!’

  ‘Radiant angle, come to me. You will walk through meadows from morning to evening; you will no have to work. My palace is built of silver walls, gold columns, and diamond doors. You will go to bed when you choose, to the sound of celestial music, without saying your prayers. When, in the morning, the sun shows its dazzling rays and the lark carries its song with it out of sight up into the sky, you can stay in bed until you become tired of it. You will walk on the most precious carpets; you will be constantly enveloped in an atmosphere composed of the perfumed essences of the most fragrant flowers.’

  ‘It is time to rest body and mind. Rise up, mother, on your muscular ankles. It is right that your stiff fingers should abandon this excessive work. We should avoid extremes.’

  ‘Oh, how pleasant your life will be there. I will give you an enchanted ring; when you turn its ruby round, you will be invisible, like the princes in fairy-tales.’

  ‘Put those daily weapons of yours into the cupboard while I, for my part, arrange my papers.’

  ‘When you put it back in its normal position you will reappear as nature formed you, oh young magician. All this because I love you and aspire to make you happy.’

  ‘Go away, whoever you are; take your hands off my shoulders.’

  ‘My son, do not fall asleep, lulled by the dreams of childhood. Our evening prayer together has not begun, and you have not yet put your clothes tidily on your chair...on your knees! Eternal creator of the universe, you show your inexhaustible goodness even in the smallest things.’

  ‘Do you not like clear streams where thousands of little red, blue and silvery fish dart? You will catch them with a net so fine it will itself be the bait, until it is full. You will see the shiny pebbles beneath the surface, more polished than marble.’

  ‘Mother, look at these claws; I do not trust him; but my conscience is clear. I have nothing to reproach myself with.’

  ‘You see us as prostrate at your feet, overwhelmed by you greatness. If any proud thought has crept into our minds, we reject it immediately with the spittle of contempt and make you irremissible sacrifice of it.’

  ‘You will bathe with the girls there, who will embrace you in their arms. When you have left the bath, they will tress you crowns of roses and carnations. They will have transparent butterfly wings and long undulating hair floating around their pretty foreheads.’

  ‘Even if your palace were more beautiful than crystal, I would not leave this house to follow you. I believe you are no imposter, since you speak so softly, for fear of being heard. To leave one’s parents is a wicked deed. I do not intend to be an ungrateful son. As for your little girls, they are not as beautiful as my mother’s eyes.’

  ‘All our life is spent singing canticles to your glory. We have been your faithful servants up to now and such we will remain until the moment when we receive your command to leave this earth.’

  ‘They will obey you at your slightest sign and will think of nothing but pleasing you. If you wish for the bird which never rests, they will bring it to you. If you
wish for the snow-carriage which takes you to the sun in the twinkling of an eyelid, they will bring it for you. They would bring you anything you asked for! They would even bring you the kite, big as a tower, who was hidden in the mo and from whose tail birds of all kinds hang by a silken thread. Think of what you are doing...follow my advice.’

  ‘Do whatever you wish. I do not want to interrupt the prayer by calling for help. Although your body vanishes whenever I try to ward it off, know that I do not fear you.’

  ‘Before you, nothing is great, unless it be the flame from a pure heart.’

  ‘Think of what I have told you, if you do not want to repent later.’

  ‘Celestial Father, avert, avert the woes which may befall our family.’

  ‘Will you not be gone evil spirit?’

  ‘Preserve this my dearest wife, who has consoled me in my dejection.’

  ‘Since you refuse, I will make you weep and grind your teeth like a man on the gallows.’

  ‘And this my loving son, whose pure lips have scarcely opened to the kisses of life’s dawn.’

  ‘Mother, he is strangling me...Father, help me, I cannot breathe...Your blessing!’

  A cry of immense irony has risen in the air. See how the eagles, stunned, fall turning and turning from the clouds, literally thunderstruck by the column of air.

  ‘His heart has stopped beating...And his mother dead too at the same time as the fruit of her womb, whom I can no longer recognize, he is so disfigured...My wife...My son...I recall a far-off time when I was a husband and a father!’

  At this scene he had said that he would not be able to bear this injustice. If that power accorded him by the infernal spirits, or rather which he draws from within himself, is efficacious, then this child, before the night has passed, should no longer be.

  12

  He who does not know how to weep (for he has always repressed the suffering within) saw that he was now in Norway. He was in the Folrol isles, looking for sea-birds’ nests on sheer crevasses, and was astonished that the three-hundred-metre-long rope which hold the explorer above the precipice had been so well chosen for strength and soundness. He saw in this, whatever may be said, a striking example of human goodness, and could not believe his eyes. If it had been his responsibility to prepare the rope, he would have made little cuts in it, so that it would snap, and hurt the hunter into the sea!

  ‘Grave-digger, do you not want to talk to me? A sperm-whale slowly rises from the ocean’s depths, lifting its head above water to see the ship which is passing through these solitary regions. Curiosity was born with the universe.’

  ‘Friend it is impossible for me to exchange ideas with you. For a long time now the moonbeams have been shining on the marble tombstones. It is the silent hour when more than one human being dreams that he sees women in chains appear, trailing their winding-sheets, covered in blood-stains, like stars on a clear night. He who sleeps utters groans like those of a condemned man, until he awakes to find that reality is three times worse than dreams. I must finish digging this grave with my tireless spade, so that it is ready tomorrow morning. One cannot do two things at once, if one is doing serious work.’

  ‘He thinks that digging graves is serious work! You think that digging graves is serious work!’

  ‘When the savage pelican resolves to give its breast to be devoured by its young, with no other witness than Him who could create such love, although the sacrifice is great, this is an act which can be understood. When a young man sees a woman he would worship in the arms of a friend, he starts to smoke a cigar; he stays at home, and enters into indissoluble friendship with sorrow; this act can be understood. When a boarder at school is controlled for years which seem like centuries, from morning to evening and from evening to morning again by a pariah of civilization whose eyes are constantly fixed on him, he feels the tumultuous upsurge of lasting hatred rising like thick smoke to his brain, which seems about to burst. From the moment when he was thrown into that prison, to the approaching moment when he will leave it, an intense fever turns his face a sickly yellow, knits his brow, makes his eyes sink in their sockets. At night he broods because he does not want to sleep. During the day, his thoughts soar beyond the walls of the place of degradation until the moment comes when he escapes, or when, as if plague-ridden, he is thrown out of the eternal cloister. This act can be understood. Digging a grave often surpasses the forces of nature. How, stranger, can you expect the pick to go on digging this earth which first nourishes us then provides us with a comfortable bed, protected from the winter winds which whistle through these cold lands, when he who holds the pick—having all day been touching convulsively with his trembling hands the cheeks of those once living who are now returning to his realm—sees before him in the evening, written in flaming letters on each cross, the statement of that terrifying problem which man has not yet resolved: the mortality or immortality of the soul. I have not ceased to love God, the creator of the universe; but if after death we are no longer to exist why do I see most nights each grave opening and its inhabitants gently lifting the leaden lids, to go out and breathe the fresh air?’

  ‘Stop your work. Emotion is sapping your strength; you seem weak as a reed; it would be utter madness to go on. I am strong; I will take your place. Stand aside; and let me know if I am doing anything wrong.’

  ‘How muscular his arms are, and what a pleasure it is to watch him digging the earth with such ease.’

  ‘You must not let your mind be tormented by useless doubt: all these graves scattered throughout the cemetery are worthy of measurement by the philosopher’s serene compass. Dangerous hallucinations may come by day; but above all they come at night. Do not therefore be surprised as the fantastic visions which your eyes seem to perceive. During the day when the mind is resting, examine your conscience; it will tell you, certainly, that the God who created man and gave him part of His own intelligence possesses goodness without limits and after our earthly death will take His masterpiece to His breast. Grave-digger, why do you weep? Why these tears, like a woman’s? Remember this: we are on this mastless vessel to suffer. It is man’s merit that God has judged him capable of conquering his deepest sufferings. Speak and since, according to your wishes, there would be no more suffering, tell me, if your tongue is like that of other men, in what virtue, that ideal which everyone strives to attain, would then consist?’

  ‘Where am I? Has not my character changed? I fell a powerful breath of consolation brush against my cool, calm forehead, like the spring breeze which revives old men’s hopes. Who is this man who in sublime language has said things which no mere passing stranger could have uttered? What musical beauty there is in the incomparable melody of his voice! I would rather hear him speak than hear others sing. Yet the more I observe him the less candid his face appears to be. The general expression of his features contrasts singularly with these words which only the love of God could have inspired. His somewhat wrinkled forehead is marked with an indelible stigma. And this stigma which has prematurely aged him, is it a mark of honour or infamy? Should those wrinkles be looked on with veneration? I do not know, I am afraid to know. Although he says what he does not believe, I think he has reasons for acting as he has done, moved by the few tattered shreds of charity which still remain in him. He is absorbed in reflections which are unknown to me, and he is redoubling his activity in a kind of labour to which he is unaccustomed. His skin is drenched in sweat; he does not notice. He is sadder than the feelings inspired by the sight of a child in its cradle. How sombre he is!...Where do you come from? Stranger, allow me to touch you, let my hands, which rarely grasp those of the living, trespass on the nobility of your body. Whatever happens, I would know what to hold on to. This hair is the finest I have ever touched in my life. Who would be so bold as to doubt my judgment of the quality of hair?

  ‘What do you want with me? Can you not see I am digging this grave? The lion does not wish to be disturbed when he is feasting on flesh. If you don not know that, I
will teach you. Come on, hurry. Do what you wish.’

  ‘What is now shivering at my touch, making me shiver too, is flesh, there is no doubt of it. It is real...I am not dreaming! Who are you, you who stoop here as you dig a grave, while I stand here doing nothing, like an idler living on others’ bread? It is the hour for sleep, or for sacrificing one’s repose to the pursuit of knowledge. In any event, no one is out of his house, or if he is, he has been careful to close the door, so as not to let in thieves. Everyone is enclosed in his room as best he can, while the ashes in his old fireplace can still manage to give off enough dying heat to keep the room a little warm. But you do not do what the others do. Your clothes indicate that you are from some distant land.’

  ‘Although I am not tired, it is pointless to continue digging the grave. Now undress me; then put me into it.’

  ‘The conversation we have just been having, the two of us, is so strange that I do not know how to answer...I think the gentleman is having a little joke.’

  ‘Yes, yes, it is true, I was not serious; I do not know what I am saying any more.’

  He collapsed, and the grave-digger rushed to support him!

  ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘Yes, yes, it is true. I was lying. I was really tired when I put down the pick...it is the first time I have done this kind of work...do not take any notice of what I said.’

  ‘My opinion of him is being confirmed more and more. He is someone who has known dreadful affliction. I pity him so much that I prefer to remain in the dark. And then he would not want to answer me, that is sure: to open one’s heart in such an abnormal state is to double one’s suffering.’

  ‘Let me leave this cemetery; I will continue on my way.’

  ‘Your legs are not strong enough to hold you. You would get lost on the way. My duty is to offer you a simple bed. I have no other. Trust in me. Accepting my hospitality does not oblige you to reveal any of your secrets to me.’