Memoirs of a Madman and November Page 5

  Every morning I would go to see her swimming, I gazed at her from afar beneath the water, I envied the soft peaceful waves lapping against her sides and covering with foam that heaving breast, I could see the outline of her limbs beneath the wet clothes enwrapping her, I could see her heart beating, her breast swelling, I mechanically contemplated her foot placing itself on the sand, and my gaze remained fixed to the trace of her steps and I could almost have wept at the sight of the waves slowly washing them away.

  And then when she came back and passed by me, and I heard the water dripping from her clothes and the swish of her walk, my heart beat violently, I lowered my eyes, blood rushed to my head – I was suffocating – I could feel that woman’s half-naked body passing by me with the odour of the waves. Even deaf and blind I would have guessed at her presence, for there was within me something intimate and tender which was submerged in ecstasy and graceful imaginings, whenever she passed by like that.

  I still seem to see the place where I was rooted to the shore, I can see the waves sweeping in on every side, breaking and spreading out, I can see the beach festooned with foam, I can hear the sound of the mingled voices of the swimmers talking among themselves; I can hear her footsteps, I can hear her breath as she walked by me.

  I was as motionless with stupor as if Venus had climbed down off her pedestal and started to walk. For this was the first time I was really aware of my heart, I could feel something mystical, strange, like a new sense. I was immersed in infinite, tender feelings, I was rocked by hazy, vague images, I had grown and at the same time become more proud.

  I was in love.

  To love: to feel young and full of love, to feel nature and its harmonies pulsating within you, to need that reverie, that activity of the heart, and to feel filled with happiness by it! Oh, a man’s first heartbeats, his first throbbings of love, how sweet and strange they are! And later on, how silly and ridiculously stupid they seem!

  The odd thing is that there is a mixture of torment and joy in that insomnia – is it the result once more of vanity?… Ah! Could it be that love is merely pride? Must we deny what the most impious of people respect? Should we laugh – at the heart?

  Alas! alas!

  The wave has washed away Maria’s footsteps.

  It was at first a singular state of surprise and admiration – a quite mystical sensation in some degree, all idea of pleasure excluded. It was only later that I felt that frenzied and sombre ardour of the flesh and the soul, an ardour that devours both of them.

  I was in the astonishment of the heart experiencing its first throbs. I was like the first man when he had discovered all his faculties.

  What did I dream of? it would be quite impossible to say – I felt myself new and all strange to myself, a voice had come into my soul; a trifle, a fold in her dress, a smile, her foot, the least meaningless word impressed themselves on me like supernatural things, and I had enough to dream of for a whole day. I would follow her traces at the corner of a long wall and the rustle of her clothes made me quiver with pleasure.

  When I heard her footsteps, the nights when she went for a walk or came towards me… no, I cannot tell you how many sweet sensations of the heart’s intoxication there are, how much of blessedness and folly there is in love.

  And now that I am so full of mockery at everything, so bitterly convinced of the grotesque side of existence, I still have the feeling that love, the love I dreamt of at school without having it, and which I experienced later, which has made me weep so much and at which I have laughed so much, how firmly I still believe it can be at one and the same time the most sublime of things, or the most clownish of tomfooleries.

  Two beings thrown into the world by chance, by something or other, and who happen to meet, fall in love because one is a woman and the other a man. Look at them panting for each other, walking out together at night and getting damp with the dew, looking at the moonlight and finding it diaphanous, admiring the stars, and saying in every tone of voice: “I love you, you love me, he loves me, we love each other”, and repeating it with sighs, with kisses – and then home they go, both impelled by an extraordinary ardour, for the organs of these two souls are violently overheating, and there they soon are grotesquely coupled, roaring and sighing, both of them bent on reproducing another imbecile on earth, a wretch who will imitate them. Just look at them, more idiotic at this moment than dogs and flies, fainting away – and taking pains to hide from men’s eyes their solitary pleasure, thinking perhaps that happiness is a crime and pleasure something shameful.

  I will, I think, be forgiven for not talking about platonic love, that love exalted like that of a statue or a cathedral, that shuns any idea of jealousy and possession and which should be found shared mutually among men, but which I have rarely had occasion to observe. A sublime love if it existed, but which is only a dream like everything beautiful in this world.

  I will stop here, for an old man’s mockery should not tarnish the young man’s virginal feelings; I would have been as indignant as you, reader, if I had had to hear such cruel language then.

  I thought that a woman was an angel… Oh, how right Molière was to compare her to a bowl of soup!*

  11

  MARIA HAD A CHILD – a little girl. She was loved, hugged, fussed over with caresses and kisses. How happy I would have been to pick up a single one of those kisses shed like pearls, in profusion, on the head of that child in her swimsuit!

  Maria was breast-feeding her herself – and one day I saw her opening her dress and presenting her breast to the child.

  It was a plump round breast with brown skin and veins of deep blue visible beneath that ardent skin. Never had I seen a naked woman at that time. Oh, the singular ecstasy into which the sight of that breast plunged me – how I feasted my eyes on it, how I would have liked simply to touch that breast! It seemed to me that if I had placed my lips on it, my teeth would have bitten it in rage – and my heart melted with delight at the thought of the pleasures that kiss would give me.

  Oh! I gazed at it repeatedly, for such a long time, that throbbing breast, that long graceful neck and that head bent down with its black hair in curl papers over her suckling child, as she rocked it gently on her knees, humming an Italian tune!

  12

  WE SOON GOT TO KNOW each other more intimately. I say we, for can you imagine me personally plucking up courage to say anything to her, given the state the sight of her had put me in?

  Her husband was something in between an artist and a commercial traveller. He was resplendent in moustaches, fashionable clothes – he smoked like a chimney, was lively – a good sort and amiable with it – not one to look down on the pleasures of the table: I once saw him walk three leagues for a melon from the next town. He had come with his post-chaise – with his dog, his wife, his child and twenty-five bottles of Rhenish wine.

  At seaside resorts, in the countryside or while travelling, it is easier for people to talk – you want to get to know the others. Any insignificant reason is enough for you to strike up a conversation; rain and shine take up even more time on these occasions than on others. People complain about their uncomfortable lodgings, and the horrors of inn food. These latter remarks especially show you have the best possible tone: “Oh! The linen – so dirty! There’s too much pepper, it’s too spicy! Oh, how ghastly, my dear lady!”

  If you go out walking together, everyone tries to outdo the others in their ecstatic outpourings over the beauty of the landscape. How lovely it is, how lovely the sea is! Add to this a few poetic and bombastic expressions, two or three philosophical observations interlarded with sighs and more or less heavy inhalations through the nose. If you can draw, then take out your morocco sketchbook – or, even better, pull your hat down over your eyes, fold your arms and go to sleep so as to give people the impression you are deep in thought.

  There are women whose wit I have been able to sniff a quarter of a league off, simply by the way they were gazing at the waves.

 
And you must complain about men, eat little and wax passionate about a rock, admire a meadow and die of love for the sea. Ah! You will be exquisite – then everyone will say: “The charming young man – what a nice smock he has, how elegant his boots are, what grace, what a beautiful soul!” It is this need to talk, this instinct for herding together in groups where the boldest march in front, which lies at the origin of societies and which these days brings together all social gatherings.

  It was doubtless a similar reason that made us start talking for the first time. It was in the afternoon, it was warm and shafts of sunlight fell into the room in spite of the shutters. We had remained behind, a few painters, Maria, her husband and I, stretched out on chairs, smoking and drinking hot toddies.

  Maria smoked, or at least if a remnant of feminine stupidity prevented her from doing so, she liked the smell of tobacco (how monstrous!); she even gave me some cigarettes.

  We talked about literature – an inexhaustible subject with women. – I participated fully; I spoke at length and with fiery enthusiasm; Maria and I were completely at one in our feelings about art. I have never known anyone with a more naive and less pretentious feel for it; she had a simple, expressive, striking way of putting things, and above all so much casual grace, so much unselfconsciousness, so much nonchalance – you would have said she was singing.

  One evening her husband suggested we take a boat out. The weather was the finest imaginable. We accepted.

  13

  HOW CAN ONE EXPRESS in words those things for which there is no language, those impressions of the heart, those mysteries of the soul unknown to itself, how can I tell you of all that I felt, all that I thought, all the intense pleasures I experienced that evening?

  It was a fine summer night; around nine o’clock we climbed into the rowing boat – the oars were put in place, we set off. – The weather was calm, the moon’s reflection shone on the smooth surface of the water and the wake of the boat made its image waver under the ripples. The tide started to rise again and we felt the first waves slowly rocking the boat.

  We were silent. Maria started talking. I do not know what she said, I yielded to the enchanting sound of her words as I yielded to the rocking of the sea. She was next to me, I could feel the outline of her shoulder and the contact of her dress, she was lifting her gaze towards the sky, pure, starry, resplendent with diamonds as it gazed down at its reflection in the blue waves.

  She was an angel – when you saw her like that with her head raised and her celestial eyes.

  I was heartsick with love; I could hear the two oars rising rhythmically, the waves beating the sides of the boat, I succumbed to the caressing touch of it all, as I listened to Maria’s voice, gentle and vibrant.

  Will I ever be able to describe to you all the melodies of her voice, all the grace of her smile, all the beauties of her gaze, will I ever succeed in telling you how it was enough to make me die of love, that night full of the fragrance of the sea with its transparent waves, its sand silvered by the moon – that fine, calm swell, that resplendent sky and then next to me that woman – all the joys of the earth, all its pleasures, everything most sweet, most intoxicating?

  It was all the enchantment of a dream together with all the intense pleasures of reality. I let myself be swept away by all those emotions, I advanced deeper into them with an insatiable joy, I grew more and more drunk on the voluptuous calm, that woman’s gaze, that voice; I sank deep into my heart and discovered infinite pleasures in it.

  How happy I was! – the happiness of the dusk darkening into nightfall, a happiness passing like the wave expiring, like the shore…

  We returned. We got out. I accompanied Maria back to her place; I said not a word to her, I was timid; I was following her – dreaming of her, of the sound of her walking; and when she had gone in, I looked for a long time at the wall of her house lit up by the rays of the moon; I saw her light shining through the window panes, and I turned round to look at it from time to time, as I made my way back along the strand; then when that light had disappeared, I said to myself, “She’s asleep.”

  And then all at once a thought came to assail me, a thought of rage and jealousy: Oh no, she is not asleep. And in my soul I suffered all the torments of the damned.

  I thought of her husband, that vulgar, jovial man. And the most hideous images presented themselves to my mind’s eye; I was like those people who were left to die of starvation in cages, while surrounded by the most exquisite dishes.

  I was alone on the strand. Alone. She was no longer thinking of me. As I looked at that immense solitude before me, and that other solitude that was yet more terrible, I started to cry like a child – for near me, a few steps away, she was there, behind those walls that I was feasting my eyes on; she was there, beautiful and naked, with all the pleasures of night, all the graces of love, all the chastity of the marriage bed; that man had only to open his arms and she would come to him without him having to make an effort or wait; she would come to him; and they loved each other, they embraced; his were all the joys, all the delights were for him! My love under his feet, that whole woman, her head, her throat, her breasts, her body, her soul – her smiles, her two arms enfolding him, her words of love: for him everything, for me nothing.

  I started to laugh, for jealousy inspired me with obscene, grotesque thoughts, and then I sullied the two of them, I piled on top of them the most bitter ridicule, and those images which had made me weep with envy – I tried to laugh with pity at them.

  The tide was starting to go out again, and from place to place you could see big holes filled with water shining silvery in the moonlight, patches of still-wet sand covered with seaweed, here and there a few rocks sticking just above the surface of the water, or rising higher black or white; nets laid out and torn by the sea, which was withdrawing with a roar.

  It was hot, I felt stifled; I went back to the room in my inn. I tried to sleep: I could still hear the waves against the sides of the boat, I could hear the oar falling, I could hear Maria’s voice talking; I had fire in my veins, the whole scene played itself out again and again before me – both the evening trip, and the walk back along the shore at night – I saw Maria in bed – and I stopped there. For the rest made me quiver. I had lava in my soul, I felt worn out by it all, and lying on my back I watched my candle burn down and its disc tremble on the ceiling; it was with a dazed stupor that I saw the tallow running down the copper candlestick and the black spark grow longer in the flame.

  Finally daylight appeared – I went to sleep.

  14

  THE TIME CAME TO GO. We separated without being able to bid her farewell. She left the resort the same day as we did – it was a Sunday – she left in the morning, we left in the evening.

  She left and I never saw her again. Farewell for ever! She left like the dust of the road that flew up behind her. How I have thought of it since – how many hours spent dumbfounded at the memory of her gaze, or the intonation of her words! In the carriage I let my heart travel back down the road we had travelled, I imagined myself once more in the past that would never return; I thought of the sea, its waves, its shore, of all that I had just seen, of all that I had felt – the words spoken, the gestures, the actions, the slightest thing, it all throbbed with life; it was a chaos in my heart, an immense buzzing – a madness.

  It had all passed like a dream. Farewell for ever to those lovely flowers of youth so quickly faded and towards which later on your thoughts return from time to time with simultaneous bitterness and pleasure! Eventually I saw the houses of my town, I returned home, everything there appeared to me deserted and doleful, empty and hollow. I started to live, to drink, to eat, to sleep.

  Winter came, and I returned to school.

  15

  IF I TOLD YOU THAT I HAVE LOVED other women I would be a despicable liar.

  I thought I did, however; I forced myself to bind my heart to other passions, but it slid over them as if over ice.

  When you are a chil
d, you have read so many books about love, you find the very word so melodious, you dream of it so much, you have such a strong yearning to experience that feeling which makes you quiver when you read novels and dramas, that at every woman you see you say to yourself: isn’t this love? You endeavour to love so as to make a man of yourself.

  I have been no more immune than any other man from that childish weakness; I have sighed like an elegiac poet, and after many efforts I was quite astonished to find myself sometimes managing for a fortnight without having gone over to the woman I had chosen as the object of my dreams. All this child’s vanity was erased when Maria appeared.

  But I have to go back further – I have sworn an oath to say everything. The fragment you are about to read had been partly composed last December, before I had had the idea of writing the ‘Memoirs of a Madman’.

  As it was to be an isolated piece I had placed it in the framework which follows…

  Here it is, just as it was.

  *

  Among all the dreams of the past, the memories of days gone by and my reminiscences of youth, I have preserved a very small number with which I entertain myself in my hours of boredom. At the recollection of a name, all the characters return with their costumes and their language to play their roles as they played them in my life and I can see them performing their actions in front of me like a God entertaining himself by gazing at the worlds he has created. One especially – the first love, which was never violent nor passionate, since erased by other desires but still remaining in the depths of my heart like an ancient Roman way traversed by a wretched railway carriage.

  It is the story of those first heart-throbs, those first sensations of indefinite and vague pleasures, of all the hazy things that happen in the soul of a child when he sees a woman’s breasts, her eyes, and hears her songs and her words, it is that hotchpotch of emotion and reverie that I had to lay out like a corpse before a circle of friends who came one day in winter, in December, to get warm and laze around, to have a peaceful chat by the fireside while smoking their pipes whose acrid fumes were diluted by a glass of something or other.