'Sweet Diane!'
'No, say "You whore! " Let me fully savour my degradation in words....'
I freed myself from her. We lay side by side, our hearts still beating high. I said:
'No, Diane, you will hear no such word from me. I refuse. And I must admit I find it very bitter that you think my love degrading.'
'Not yours,' she said, drawing me to her. 'Mine! My love for you, you insignificant boy! Oh, you lovely fool, you don't understand!' Whereupon she took my head and knocked it several times against her own in a kind of tender exasperation. 'I am an author, you must know, a woman of the intellect. Diane Philibert — my husband, his name is Houpflé, c'est du dernier ridicule — I write under my maiden name, Diane Philibert, sous ce nom de plume. Naturally you have never heard the name — how should you, indeed? — which is on so many books, they are novels, you understand, full of psychological insight, pleins d'esprit, et des volumes de vers passionés.. . . Yes, my poor darling, your Diane, she is d'une intelligence extrême. And yet the intellect — oh!' — and once more she knocked our heads together, somewhat harder than before — 'how could you understand that? The intellect longs for the delights of the non-intellect, that which is alive and beautiful dans sa stupidité, in love with it, oh, in love with it to the point of idiocy, to the ultimate self-betrayal and self-denial, in love with the beautiful and the divinely stupid, it kneels before it, it prays to it in an ecstasy of self-abnegation, self-degradation, and finds it intoxicating to be degraded by it -'
'Well now, dear child,' thus I finally interrupted her. 'Beauty apart — and if nature made a good job of me, so much the better — you mustn't think me as stupid as all that, even if I haven't read your novels and poems -'
She did not let me go on. I had enchanted her in a quite unintentional way.
'You call me "dear child"?' she cried, embracing me stormily and burying her mouth in my neck. 'Oh, that's delicious! That's much better than "sweet whore"! That's a much deeper delight than anything you've done, you artist in love! A little naked liftboy lies beside me and calls me "dear child", me, Diane Philibert! C'est exquis, ça me transporte! Armand, chéri, I didn't mean to offend you. I didn't mean to say that you're especially stupid. All beauty is stupid because it simply exists as an object for glorification by the spirit. Let me see you, see you completely — heaven help me, how beautiful you are!! The breast so sweet in its smooth, clear strength, the slim arms, the noble ribs, the narrow hips, and, oh, the Hermes legs -'
'Stop it, Diane, this isn't right. It is I who should be praising you.'
'Nonsense! That's just a male convention. We women are lucky that our curves please you. But the divine, the masterpiece of creation, the model of beauty, that's you, you young, very young men with Hermes legs. Do you know who Hermes is?'
'I must admit at the moment -'
'Céleste! Diane Philibert is making love with someone who has never heard of Hermes! What a delicious degradation of the spirit! I will tell you, sweet fool, who Hermes is. He is the suave god of thieves.'
I was taken aback and blushed. I looked at her closely, was suspicious, and then let the suspicion drop. An idea came to me, but I pushed it aside; besides, it was soon drowned in the flood of avowals she was pouring forth, now whispering them into my arm, now lifting her voice, warm and chanting.
'Would you believe, beloved, that I have loved only you, always only you since I was able to feel? That means, of course, not you but the idea of you, the lovely instant you incarnate. Call it perversion if you will, but I detest the grown man full-bearded and woolly-chested, the mature and significant man — affreux, dreadful! I am significant myself — that's just what I would consider perverse: de me coucher avec un homme penseur. It's only you boys I have loved from the beginning — as a girl of thirteen I was crazy about a boy of fourteen or fifteen. The ideal grew a little as I grew, but it never went above eighteen; my taste, the yearning of my senses never reached beyond that... . How old are you?'
'Twenty,' I replied.
'You look younger, you are practically too old for me.'
'I, too old for you?'
'Come, come! The way you are is right for me, right to the point of heavenly bliss. I will tell you: perhaps my passion is connected with the fact that I was never a mother, never bore a son. I would have loved him with idolatry if he had been only half-way beautiful, which, to be sure, would have been very unlikely if I had got him from Houpflé. Perhaps, I say, this love for you is transferred mother-love, the yearning for a son. . . . Perversity, do you say? And all of you? What do you want with our breasts that gave you suck, our womb that bore you? Isn't it your wish simply to go back to them, to become sucklings again? Isn't it the mother you illicitly love in the wife? Perversion! Love is perversion through and through, it can't be anything else. Prove it where you will, you will find perversion. . . . But it's admittedly sad and painful for a woman to be able to love a man only when he is quite, quite young, when he is a boy. C'est un amour tragique, inadmissible, not practical, not for life, not for marriage. I, I married Houpflé, a rich businessman, so that in the shelter of his riches I could write my books, qui sont énormément intelligents. My husband can do nothing, as I told you, at least with me. Il me trompe, as they say, with a theatrical demoiselle. Perhaps he is some good with her — I should rather doubt it. It's a matter of indifference to me — this whole world of men and women and marriage and betrayal is a matter of indifference. I live in my so-called perversion, in the love of my life that lies at the bottom of everything I am, in the happiness and misery of this enthusiasm with its heavy curse that nothing, nothing in the whole visible world equals the enchantment of the youthful male. I live in my love for all of you, you, you image of desire, whose beauty I kiss in complete abnegation of spirit. I kiss your presumptuous lips over the white teeth you show when you smile. I kiss the tender stars of your breast, the little golden hairs on the dark skin of your armpits. And how does that happen? With your blue eyes and blond hair, where do you get this colouring, this tint of light bronze? You are baffling. How baffling! Le fleur de ta jeunesse remplit mon cœur âgé d'une éternelle ivresse. This intoxication will never end, I shall die of it, but my spirit will woo you forever with its wiles. You, too, bien-aimé, will all too soon grow old and approach the grave, but here are comfort and balm for my heart; ye will endure forever, brief joy of beauty, gracious inconstancy, eternal instant!'
'How strangely you speak!'
'How so? You are surprised that one praises in verse what one so ardently admires? Tu ne connais pas donc le vers alexandrin — ni le dieu voleur, toi-même si divin?'
Abashed, like a small boy, I shook my head. She did not on that account cease her endearments, and I must admit that so much praise and adulation, finally even expressed in poetry had greatly excited me. Although my offering in our first embrace had, as was usual with me, been my utmost — she found me once more in manly state — found me so with that combination of compassion and delight that I had noted in her before. We were united again. But did she on that account desist from what she called the self-abnegation of the spirit, from this nonsense about degradation? She did not.
'Armand,' she whispered in my ear, 'be rough with me! I am entirely yours, I am your slave! Treat me as you would the lowest wench! I don't deserve anything else, and it would be heaven for me!'
I paid no attention to this. We expired again. In the ensuing lassitude, however, she brooded and suddenly said:
'Listen, Armand.'
'What is it?'
'How would it be if you beat me? Beat me hard, I mean. Me, Diane Philibert? It would serve me right, I would be thankful to you. There are your braces, take them, beloved, turn me over and whip me till I bleed.'
'I wouldn't think of it, Diane. What do you take me for? I'm not that kind of lover.'
'Oh, what a shame! You have too much respect for this fine lady.'
At that the thought that had slipped away from me returned. I said: 'Liste
n to me, Diane. I will confess something to you that perhaps will make up in a way for what I have had to refuse you on the grounds of good taste. Tell me this, when you were unpacking your bag, the big one, or having it unpacked, was there perhaps something missing?'
'Missing? No. But yes! How did you know?'
'A little case?'
'A little case, yes! With jewelry. How did you know about that?'
'I took it.'
'Took it? When?'
'At the customs we were standing side by side. You were busy. I took it then.'
'You stole it? You are a thief? Mais ça c'est suprême! I am lying in bed with a thief! C'est une humiliation merveilleuse, tout à fait excitante, un rêve d'humiliation! Not only a domestic — a common, ordinary thief!'
'I knew it would give you pleasure. But at that time I did not know, and so I must ask your pardon. I could not foresee that we would love each other. Otherwise I would not have inflicted on you the distress and shock of having to get along without your wonderfully beautiful topaz jewelry, the diamonds and all the rest.'
'Distress? Shock? Get along without? Beloved, Juliette, my maid, searched for a while. As for me, I didn't worry about the stuff for two seconds. What does it matter to me? You stole it, sweetheart — so it is yours. Keep it. What are you going to do with it, by the way? Never mind. My husband, who is coming tomorrow to take me away, is so rich! He makes bathroom toilets, I must tell you. Everyone needs them, as you can understand. Strassburg toilets by Houpflé, they are much in demand, they are shipped to the four corners of the earth. He bedecks me with too much jewelry out of sheer bad conscience. He'll present me with things three times as pretty as the ones you stole. Oh, how much more precious to me is the thief than what he took! Hermes! He does not know who it is — and it is he! Hermes, Hermes! ... Armand?'
'What is it?'
'I have a wonderful idea.'
'What's that?'
'Armand, you shall steal from me. Here under my very eyes. That is, I'll shut my eyes and pretend to both of us that I am asleep. But secretly I'll watch you steal. Get up, as you are, thievish god, and steal! You haven't by any means stolen all the things I have with me; for those few days before my husband's arrival I did not deposit anything at the office. There in the upper right-hand drawer of the cupboard is the key to my bureau. In it you will find all sorts of things under the lingerie. There's cash there, too. Prowl around my room on cat feet and catch the mice! You will do this favour for your Diane, won't you?'
'But, dear child — I call you that because you like to hear me say it — dear child, that would not be nice or at all gentlemanly after what we have been to each other.'
'Fool! It will be the most enchanting fulfilment of our love!'
'And tomorrow Monsieur Houpflé comes. What will he — '
'My husband? What has he to say? I'll explain to him, casually and with an expression of complete indifference, that I was robbed on my journey. That happens when rich women are a trifle careless. Gone is gone, and the robber has long ago disappeared. No, just leave my husband to me!'
'But, sweet Diane, under your eyes– '
'Oh, to think that you have no feeling for the charm of my idea! All right, I will not see you. I'll put out the light.' And in fact she turned off the little redshaded lamp on the night table so that darkness shrouded us. 'I will not see you. I will only listen to the parquet softly creaking under your thief's tread, only hear your breathing as you steal, and the soft clink of the thief's booty in your hands. Go on, steal away from my side, prowl, find, and take! It is my dearest wish.'
And so I obeyed her. Cautiously I left her and took what the room offered — too easy a theft, for right on the night table in a little dish were her rings, and the pearl necklace she had worn to dinner lay on top of the table around which the easy chairs were grouped. Despite the complete darkness I had no trouble in finding the key to the bureau in the corner cupboard. I opened the top drawer almost noiselessly and had only to take out a few items of lingerie to come upon the jewelry, pendants, bracelets, brooches, in addition to some encouragingly large-sized notes. All this I brought to her in the bed, for reasons of propriety, as though I had got it together for her. But she whispered:
'Little fool, what are you doing? This is your booty of love and theft. Put it in your pockets, get dressed, and vanish, as is proper! Hurry and flee! I heard it all, I heard you breathing as you stole. And now I am going to telephone the police. Or would it be better for me not to? What do you think? How far along are you? Finished soon? Have you your livery on again with all your booty of love and theft in it? Surely you didn't steal my button-hook, here it is . . . Adieu, Armand! Farewell, farewell forever, my idol! Do not forget your Diane, for in her you will survive. After years and years when — le temps t'a détruit, ce cœur te gardera dans ton moment béni. Yes, when the grave covers us, me and you too, Armand, tu vivras dans mes vers et dans mes beaux romans, every one of which — never breathe this to the world! — has been kissed by your lips. Adieu, adieu, chéri .. .'
PART THREE
CHAPTER 1
THE fact that I have devoted a whole chapter to the foregoing extraordinary episode and have used it as a festive ending to the second book of my confessions will, I trust, seem understandable and even commendable. It was, I can say with assurance, the experience of a lifetime, and its heroine's earnest pleas not to forget her entirely unnecessary. A woman so singular as Diane Houpflé, in every sense of the word, and the amazing circumstances of my meeting with her are not likely to be forgotten ever. This does not mean that the situation in which the reader was privileged to overhear us, considered simply as situation, stands by itself in my career. Ladies travelling alone, particularly older ladies, are not always simply horrified to discover that a young man has found something in their bedrooms to interest him; if their first impulse is to raise an alarm, it is an impulse they sometimes succeed in suppressing. But if I have had such experiences (and I have), they fell far short of that significant and unique night, and at the risk of blunting my reader's interest in the further course of my confessions, I must announce that in the sequel, however high I rose in society, I never again had the experience of being addressed in alexandrines.
For the treasure trove of love and theft which the poetess's bizarre idea had left in my hands I received from Master Pierre Jean-Pierre six thousand francs and innumerable pats on the shoulder. Moreover, as Diane's bureau drawer had provided the thieving god with cash as well — four thousand-franc notes hidden under the lingerie, to be exact — I was now the possessor, all told, of twelve thousand three hundred and fifty francs. Naturally enough, I did not wish to carry such a sum around with me any longer than necessary, and at the first opportunity I deposited it in a bank-account at the Crédit Lyonnais under the name of Armand Kroull, retaining only a couple of hundred francs for pocket money on my afternoons off.
The reader will learn of this step with approval and a feeling of relief. It would be easy to picture a young fop, endowed with such means through the tempting favour of fortune, immediately abandoning his unpaid position, setting himself up in attractive bachelor quarters, and indulging in all the delights that Paris has to offer — until the easily foreseeable day when his treasure was exhausted. I did not think of such a thing, or if I thought of it, I banished the idea with proper decisiveness as soon as it occurred. What could I expect if I acted on it? Where would I be when sooner or later, depending on the liveliness of my dissipations, my windfall was used up? The temptation was easily overcome when I recalled the words of my godfather Schimmelpreester (with whom, now and then, I exchanged short messages on picture postcards) — the words in which he described to me the splendid goals of an hotel career, goals that might be reached by straightforward advancement but also by one or another of the by-paths. I could not show myself ungrateful to him by throwing away the opportunity he had secured for me through his world-wide connexions. To be sure, in holding on to my first position w
ith characteristic tenacity, I gave little or no thought to the 'straightforward advancement' he had mentioned and I did not picture myself as head-waiter, concierge, or even manager. The by-paths were all the more vividly in my mind and I had only to guard against mistaking the first cul-de-sac, such as was offered me now, for a reliable short-cut to happiness.
And so, possessor of a cheque-book though I was, I remained a liftboy at the Hotel Saint James and Albany. There was a certain charm in playing this role against a background of secret wealth, thanks to which my becoming livery took on the quality of a costume my godfather might have had me try on. My secret wealth — for this is how my dream-acquired riches seemed to me — transformed my uniform and my job into a role, a simple extension of my talent for 'dressing up'. Although later on I achieved dazzling success in passing myself off for more than I was, for the time being I passed myself off for less, and it is an open question which deception gave me the greater inner amusement, the greater delight in this fairy-tale magic.
It is true I was ill fed and ill housed in that luxurious and expensive hotel; but in both prospects I was at least put to no expense, and if, moreover, I got no salary, I not only could husband my own resources but could increase them modestly through the pourboires, or, as I preferred to call them, douceurs, which regularly came my way from the travelling public — just as they fell to my colleagues in the lifts. Rather, to be quite accurate, they fell to me in somewhat larger quantities and more readily, a preference revealing people's recognition of finer clay which my more common companions, perceptively enough, never really begrudged me. One franc, two or three, even five, as much as ten francs in special cases of reckless generosity, would be tucked into my never importunate hand by departing guests or, at intervals of a week or fortnight, by grateful permanent residents. They would come from ladies with averted faces or smiling glances — sometimes also from gentlemen who, to be sure, often had to be prompted to it by their ladies. I remember many a little scene between husband and wife, which I was not supposed to see and which I appeared not to, a poke in the ribs accompanied by a murmur: 'Mais donnez donc quelque chose à ce garçon. Give him something, he is nice.' Whereupon the husband would draw out his wallet murmuring something in reply, only to be rebuked: 'Non, c'est ridicule. That's not enough, don't be so stingy.' Twelve to fifteen francs per week is what it always amounted to — an agreeable addition to my pocket money for use on the half-day off that the establishment, in its miserly way, granted us every two weeks.