The Necklace and Other Tales by Guy de Maupassant (translated by Joachim Neugroschel).
Title: The Necklace and Other Tales.
Author: Guy de Maupassant (translated by Joachim Neugroschel).
Genre: Short stories, literature, social criticism, horror, romance, war lit.
Country: France.
Language: French.
Publication Date: 1876, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1886, and 1889 (this collection 2003).
Summary: This volume collects 12 short stories-poignant scrutinies of social pretension, wicked tales of lust and love, and harrowing examinations of terror and madness. In The Necklace (aka The Diamond Necklace (1884), a lady of humble means who yearns for fame and riches borrows a diamond necklace from a friend for a ball, not suspecting it would lead to her utter ruin. Butterball (1880) is set in the Franco-Prussian War and follows a group of French residents of Rouen who decide to flee to Le Havre in a stagecoach, but are held up in the enemy's territory at an inn with the commanding officer only willing to let them go if a prostitute who's in their party agrees to sleep with him. In The Tellier House (aka Madame Tellier’s Establishment (1881), a novella, "Madame" Julia Tellier, a well-known procuress who runs a whorehouse in Normandy, takes her girls on an outing to her brother's village to attend the first communion of her niece Constance. In On the Water (aka On the River) (1876), a boat-man recounts a horrifying experience he had on the lake when he was stranded by a thick fog. In Mademoiselle Fifi (1882), set during the Franko-Prussian war, an unexpected confrontation takes place when occupying German officers request the company of prostitutes for a little celebration, but underrate the women's nationalist pride. In The Mask (1889), the attendees of a costume ball in Montmartre in for a sad shock when the most most energetic and fabulous guest loses consciousness and is unmasked. The Inn (aka The Hostelry) (~1886) is a story in which the young Ulrich and the older Gaspard take care of the Hauser family’s inn on the Gemmi pass high up in the Swiss Alps throughout the winter months, but encounter tragedy and horror in their isolation. In A Day in the Country (aka An Outing in the Countryside and A Country Excursion) (1881), a young woman has an unexpected, passionate and life-changing encounter with a stranger when her family takes a day off to spend in the country by the Seine. In The Hand (1883), a magistrate recounts an occurrence of a man who keeps his enemy's severed hand chained to a wall, claiming he is endangered by it, before he is seemingly murdered by it. In The Jewels (aka The False Gems(1883), an impoverished husband mourning his wife and struggling to manage his finances now she's gone is shocked when he takes her "fake, gaudy" jewelry to be appraised. The Model (1883) is a story of an artist and a model who would go to any lengths necessary to stop being his mistress and become his wife. The Entity (aka The Horla) (1886) is a novella of a man's steady decline into madness while living in the countryside near Rouen, as he becomes conscious of a horrifying, invisible presence that is taking him over.
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ Unable to adorn herself, she remained simple, but as miserable as if she'd come down in the world. For women have no caste or breed, their beauty, their grace, and their charm serve them in lieu of birth and family background. Their native finesse, their instinct for elegance, their versatile minds are their sole hierarchy, making shopgirls the equals of the grandest ladies.
♥ Whenever she sat down for supper at the circular table covered with the same tablecloth for three days, she faced her husband, who, removing the lid from the tureen, ecstatically declared: "Ah! A good stew! I don't know of anything better!"
She fantasized about elegant dinners, about shiny silverware, about tapestries filling the walls with ancient figures and exotic birds in the midst of a magic forest; she fantasized about exquisite courses served in wondrous vessels, about gallantries whispered and listened to with sphinxlike smiles, while the diners consumed the rosy flesh of a trout or the wings of a grouse.
She had no wardrobe, no jewels, nothing. And those things were all that she loved; she felt that they were what she's been born for. She so dearly wanted to be liked, to be envied, to be seductive and in demand.
She had a rich friend, from convent-school days, whom she stopped visiting because she suffered so deeply upon coming home. And she'd weep for entire days, weep with chagrin, with regret, with despair, and with distress.
♥ She danced, intoxicated, swept away, heady with pleasure, thinking of nothing, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her conquest, in something like a cloud of happiness made of all that homage, all that admiration, all that awoken yearning, all that complete victory that is dear to a woman's heart.
♥ Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become the strong, and hard, and crude woman of poor households. Her hair ill kept, her skirts awry, and her hands red, she spoke loudly and she washed the floors with big buckets of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she would sit down at the window and daydream about that long-ago ball, where she had been so beautiful and so celebrated.
What would have happened if she hadn't lost the necklace? Who knows? How strange life is, how full of changes! How little it takes to doom you or save you!
~~The Necklace.
♥ Legions of snipers with heroic appellations-Avengers of the Defeat, Citizens of the Tomb, Partakers of Death-passed by in turn, acting like bandits.
Their leaders, former cloth or grain merchants, soap or bacon mongers, temporary warriors, made officers thanks to their escutcheons or the length of their mustaches, covered with weapons, flannel, and braids, spoke in ringing tones, discussing campaign plans and claiming to be the sole support of a France in the throes of dying on their swaggering shoulders. But at times they feared their own soldiers-jailbirds, often daredevils, plunderers and debauchees.
♥ Orders shouted by an unfamiliar, guttural voice echoes along the houses, which looked dead and deserted, while, from behind the closed shutters, eyes peered at these victorious men, who, by "right of war," had become the masters of the town, the commanders of the fate and the lives of the populace. The inhabitants, in their darkened rooms, suffered the kind of panic triggered by cataclysms, by tremendous and murderous upheavals of the earth, against which all wisdom and all strength are useless. For the same feeling recurs whenever the established order of things is upset, when security no longer exists, when everything that protected human or natural laws is at the mercy of irrational and ferocious brutality. The earthquake that crushes an entire population under tumbling houses; the overflowing river that sweeps drowned farmers together with carcasses of cows, with beams torn from roofs; or the glorious army that massacres people defending themselves and brings back the survivors as prisoners, looting by right of the Sword and thanking their God to the booming of cannon-these are all terrifying scourges that cripple any faith in eternal justice, any trust that we have been taught to place in divine protection and human reason.
♥ The French were grateful for these sentiments; besides, sooner or later, they might need an officer's protection. If they humored him, he might keep down the number of men they would have to quarter. And why offend someone on whom you were totally dependent? Such behavior would be less courageous than foolhardy. And foolhardiness is no longer a foible of the burghers of Rouen as it was in the days of the heroic defenses that made their city so illustrious. And finally, drawing a supreme rationale from the tradition of French politesse, the citizens argued that it was quite legitimate for them to be courteous in their own homes, provided they did not act familiar with the foreign soldiers in public. Outdoors they ignored one another, but indoors they chatted freely, and the German stayed with them longer and longer each evening, warming himself at their fireplace.
♥ Furthermore, the officers of the Blue Hussars, arrogantly dragging their huge instruments of death over the sidewalks, did not appear to despise the simple citizens much more than the officers of the light infantry, who had been drinking in the same cafés the previous year.
Yet there was something in the air, something subtle and unfamiliar, an unendurable alien atmosphere, like a widespread odor, the odor of invasion. If filled the homes and the public squares, it changed the taste of food, it made people feel as if they were traveling very far away, among barbarous and dangerous tribes.
♥ Meanwhile, some five or six miles downstream, toward Croisset, Dieppedalle, or Biessart, mariners and fishermen often hauled in a corpse from the watery depth, a bloated, uniformed German who had been stabbed with a knife, or kicked to death, or shoved off a bridge, or whose head had been crushed by a rock. The river's mud buried these obscure reprisals, these both savage and legitimate retaliations, these anonymous deeds of heroism, these voiceless attacks, which were more perilous than battles in broad daylight and which brought no echoes of glory.
For hatred of the Foreigner will always hearten a few Intrepid souls who are ready to die for an Ideal.
♥ All noise faded. The frozen passengers were silent; they remained rigid and immobile.
A curtain of white flakes kept endlessly sparkling as it descended toward the earth; it blurred all shapes, powdered all things with an icy froth; and in the vast, calm, wintry hush of the buried city, all that could be heard was the vague, elusive, indefinable rustle of falling snow-more a feeling than a sound, a mingling of airy atoms that seemed to fill all space and blanket the whole world.
♥ The other nun, a very puny woman, had pretty but sickly features over a consumptive chest ravaged by the devouring faith that produces martyrs and illuminati.
♥ The three ladies felt that, with their dignity as wives, they should form a united front against thus shameless hussy; for legal love always looks down on its free colleague.
♥ And the three men exchanged quick and friendly glances. While belonging to different social classes, they felt like brothers by dint of money, in the vast freemasonry of men who possess, who can jingle gold by slipping a hand into their trouser pockets.
♥ Butterball was showered with congratulations. She grew in the esteem of her companions, who hadn't shown such guts. And Cornudet, listening to her, maintained the approving and benevolent smile of an apostle, the way a priest hears a devotee praise God, for democrats with flowing beard have a monopoly on patriotism just as men in cassocks have a monopoly on religion.
♥ Cornudet, impassive, maintained a disdainful and superior smirk, and they all sensed the coming of foul words; however, the count steeped in and, not without difficulty, calmed the exasperated girl by declaring authoritatively that all sincere opinions should be respected. However, the countess and the manufacturer's wife, both of them fostering the irrational hatred that genteel people level at the Republic, felt the instinctive tenderness that all women nurture for all swaggering and despotic governments; and so despite themselves, those two ladies were drawn to this highly dignified prostitute, whose convictions overlapped with theirs.
♥ "..They're all out in the fields. And forward march and backward march, and turn this way and turn that way. If they at least did a little farming or repaired the roads in their own country! But oh no, Madame! Those soldiers aren't useful for anybody! So the poor population has to feed them so that all they do is learn how to massacre! I'm only an old, uneducated woman, that's true. But when I see them trampling from dawn till dusk, ruining their constitutions, I say to myself: "If there are people who discover so many useful things, why do others have to go to so much trouble to wreck things?! Honestly, isn't it an abomination to kill people, whether they're Prussians or else Englishmen, or Poles, or Frenchmen?" If you get back at somebody for doing you dirt, that's bad, because you'll get punished. But when they gun down our boys like game, that's fine and dandy, because they give medals to the soldier who's killed the most. No, I tell you, I'll never understand that!"
♥ The first Prussian they saw was peeling potatoes. The second one, farther on, was cleaning the barbershop. Another soldier, bearded up to his eyes, was hugging a wailing baby and dandling it on his lap, trying to calm it down. And the buxom peasant women, whose men were "away at war," used signs to instruct their obedient conquerors as to which chores they should perform: split wood, boil soup, grind coffee. One Prussian was even doing the laundry for his hostess, a helpless nanny.
The astonished count questioned the beadle, who was emerging from the rectory. The old church official responded: "Oh! These guys ain't nasty. They ain't even Prussians, I hear. They come from father away-I ain't sure where. And each one left a wife and kids at home. The war ain't much fun for them, believe me! I'm sure their families are crying for their men, just like our near and dear, and lousy times are coming for them and also for us. The locals ain't too miserable for now because the Prussians don't do no harm and they work like these were their own homes. Look, Monsieur, poor people gotta help each other... It's the biggies who wage war."
♥ The German, who was familiar with human nature, had shown him the door. He said he would hold on to the entire group so long as his desire remained unsatisfied.
Now Madame Loiseau's riffraff temperament exploded.
"I'm not planning to die of old age here. Since that tramp makes her living by doing that with all men, I don't think she's got the right to act so picky. What's the difference, I ask you. Why, in Rouen, she took any man she found, even coachmen! Yes, Madame, the prefect's coachman I know it for a fact, I do-he buys his wine from us. And today, when she could help us out of a jam, she gets stuck-up-that slut!...I personally find that he's behaving very nicely-that officer. He may've been deprived for a long time now, and he'd have preferred us three. But no, he's satisfied with a girl for all seasons. He respects married women. Just think: he's the master here. All he had to say was, "I want," and he could violate us with the help of his soldiers."
The other two women shivered. Pretty Madame Carré-Lamadon's eyes were shining, and she was a bit pale, as if already feeling violated by the officer.
♥ So they plotted.
The women huddled together, the voices were lowered, and the discussion became general, with everyone speaking his mind. It was all quite respectable, though. The ladies especially found discreet expressions, subtle and charming locutions to make the most indelicate points. The rules of suitable diction were observed so carefully that no outsider would have caught the slightest drift. But since the thin patina of propriety marking every sophisticated woman is quite flimsy, they basked in their smutty adventure, exulted wantonly in it, feeling that they were in their element while pursuing their amorous designs with the sensuality of a gluttonous cook preparing someone else's supper.
The whole business ultimately struck them as so funny that it restored their good mood. The count recited jokes that, albeit slightly risqué, were so well told as to bring smiles to all faces. Loiseau, in his turn, produced some bawdier yarns that no one took offense at. And his wife's brutally voiced challenge dominated all minds:
"Seeing as it's the slut's livelihood, why should she be inclined to reject him more than someone else?"
♥ The travelers were cudgeling their brains, trying to unearth more examples but finding none, when the countess, unpremeditatedly perhaps, and feeling a murky need to pay tribute to Religion, questioned the older nun about the great deeds in the lives of saints. Now, many of them had done things that would be crimes in our eyes; but the Church fully absolves those atrocities if they are perpetrated for the glory of God or for the benefit of one's neighbor.
It was a powerful argument; the countess made the most of it. And so, through one of those tacit understandings, through one of those veiled connivances at which all wearers of ecclesiastic garb excel, or merely because of a felicitous stupidity, an suspicious absence of intelligence, the old nun provided the conspiracy with a formidable support. The others had viewed her as timid; she proved to be bold, long-winded, violent. She wasn't even bothered by the trails and errors of casuistry; her doctrine seemed ironclad; her faith never faltered; her conscience had no scruples. She judged Abraham's sacrifice of his son Isaac to be quite natural, for she would have killed her father and mother without further ado if she had received an order from on high; and nothing, in her opinion, could displease the Lord if the intention was praiseworthy. The countess, profiting from the sacred authority of her unexpected confederate, incited her to come out with an edifying paraphrase of that moral axiom, "The end justifies the means."
The countess asked the nun: "So, Sister, you believe that God accepts any and all means and forgives the misdeed if the motive is pure?"
"Who could doubt it, Madame? An action that is blameworthy in and of itself often becomes meritorious because of the thought that inspires it."
And so on they went, illuminating God's wishes, foreseeing His decisions, and trying to arouse His interest in things that were really none of His concern.
♥ The count, as had been agreed, took Butterball's arm and lagged behind the others. He spoke to her in that familiar, paternal, and slightly disdainful tone that staid men employ when dealing with prostitutes. Calling her "my dear child," he talked down to her from the very acme of his social position, his undisputed respectability.
♥ Although in deplorable taste, these jokes were amusing and they wounded no feelings, for indignation, like anything else, depends on its milieu, and the atmosphere that had gradually developed around these people was charged with lewd thoughts.
♥ And all through the night, the darkness of the corridor bristled with shivers, faint, breathlike, barely audible noises, the grazing of bare feet, imperceptible creaks. It was obvious that nobody went to sleep until very late, for thin strips of light shimmered on the thresholds for a long time. Champagne has that effect; it supposedly interfered with sleep.
~~Butterball.
♥ The tiny village was enveloped in that endless, almost religious silence of the fields, a tranquil, pervasive silence that reaches the stars. The girls, accustomed to the tumultuous evenings at the public house, felt deeply affected by the mute repose of the slumbering countryside. They had gooseflesh, shivering not with cold but with the solitude of anxious and troubled hearts.
The instant they were paired off in their beds, they coiled their arms around one another as if protecting themselves from invasion by the earth's calm and profound sleep.
♥ Suddenly, a kind of madness swept through the church, the clamor of a delirious throng, a tempest of sobs and stifled cries. It passed like the gusts bending the trees in a forest; and the priest remained standing, immobile, clasping a wafer, paralyzed with emotion, whispering to himself: "It is God, God is among us, manifesting His presence, descending upon His kneeling people in response to my voice." And, at a loss for words, he stammered frenzied prayers, the prayers of a soul raging toward heaven.
He completed the communion with a faith so rapturous that his legs buckled underneath him; and when he himself had drunk the blood of his Lord, he collapsed in an act of tumultuous thanksgiving.
♥ The congregants formed two lines, and when the children appeared, each family swooped down on theirs.
Constance was grabbed, surrounded, hugged and kissed by the entire female household. Rosa in particular wouldn't weary of embracing her. Finally, she took one of the little' girl's hands, Madame Tellier grasped the other hand; Raphaёle and Fernande held the long train of the communicant's muslin skirt to keep it from dragging in the dust; Louise and Flora brought up the rear together with Madame Rivet; and the child, still bewildered, thoroughly penetrated by the God she carried inside herself, began walking in the midst of that guard of honor.
♥ All at once, Fernande, who loved music, begged to sing; and Rosa brazenly launching into "The Fat Priest of Meudon." But Madame instantly shushed her, finding that ditty unsuitable on this of all days. She added: "Sing us something by Béranger." So Rosa, after wavering for a few seconds, made her choice and she warbled "Granny" with her worn-out vocal cords:
At her birthday my granny said,
After sipping a bit of pure wine
And shaking her head:
"How many lovers I've called mine!
Oh, how I do miss
My fleshy arms,
My shapely legs,
And my bygone charms!"
And the chorus of prostitutes, led by Madame herself, joined in the refrain:
Oh, how I do miss
My fleshy arms,
My shapely legs,
And my bygone charms!
.."What, Granny, you weren't pure?" I said.
"No! I learned at fifteen the delight,
Of using my charms alone in bed,
For I would never sleep at night."
♥ Rivet, leaving the station, hurried over to the barrier for one last glimpse of Rosa; and when the railroad car with that load of human merchandise lurched past him, he started cracking his whip and hoping and bawling with all his strength..
~~The Tellier House.
♥ He was a veteran boatman, indeed a ferocious boatman, always near the water, always on the water, always in the water. He must have been born in a boat, and he is sure to due during a final boat ride.
♥ He had a great passion in his heart, an all consuming an irresistible passion: the river.
-
Ah! (he said). I've got countless memories of this river, which you see flowing there, next to us! You street-dwellers don't know what a river is. But just listen to a fisherman pronounce that word. For him it is something profound, mysterious, unknown, the land of mirages and phantasmagorias, where, at night, you see things that don't exist, where you hear noises you've never heard before, where you tremble without knowing why, like when you cross a graveyard. And indeed, the river is the most sinister of graveyards, the kind that has no graves.
For a fisherman, the land is limited, while, on a dark, moonless night, the river is infinite. A mariner doesn't feel the same way about the sea. The sea is often harsh and wicked, that's true; but it shouts, it howls, it's loyal-the open sea-while the river is silent and perfidious. It never roars, it always flows noiselessly; and this eternal motion of the flowing water is more terrifying for me than the towering waves of the ocean.
Dreamers claim that the sea hides in its bosom huge bluish countries, where downed corpses roll among enormous fish, in the midst of weird forests and crystal grottoes. The river has nothing but black chasms, where the dead decay in the mire. Yet the river is beautiful when it shines in the rising sun and gently ripples to and fro between banks covered with murmuring reeds.
When writing about the ocean, Victor Hugo said:
Oh, waves, the lugubrious tales you know!
Deep waves, feared by kneeling mothers,
You, who tell your tales to the rising tide.
And you tell them with those desperate voices
That you have when you come to us in the evening.
Well, I believe that those stories whispered by the slender reeds in their faint, sweet voices must be even eerier than the grim tragedies recounted by the howling waves.
♥ Meanwhile, the river was gradually blanketed by a very dense, white fog that hovered on the surface of the water, so that when I stood up, I could no longer see the river, or my feet, or my boat; all I could make out were the tips of the reeds and, farther away, the very pale, moonlit meadow, with dark, sky-high patches that were actually clusters of black Italian poplars. I was virtually buried up to my waist in a sheet of bizarre white cotton, and my mind conjured up wild fantasies. I imagined that somebody was trying to climb into my boat-which I could no longer discern-and that the river, concealed by that opaque fog, must be teeming with strange creatures that were circling around me. I felt horrible uncomfortable, my temples were throbbing, my heart was pounding intensely enough to suffocate me and, losing all control, I thought of jumping into the river and swimming to safety. But then that very notion made me shudder in dread. I saw myself lost, fumbling about in the thick mist, floundering amid unavoidable reeds and plants, rattling with fear, not seeing the bank, not finding my boat; and I felt as if I'd be pulled by my feet to the very bottom of the black water.
Indeed, I would have to struggle against the current for a least five hundred yards before reaching a spot free of plants and rushes, where I could get a solid foothold; nine chances out of ten, I'd be unable to find my way in this fog and I would drown, good swimmer though I was.
I tried to reason with myself. I tried to will myself not to be afraid; but there was something in my mind besides my will, and that something was scared. I asked myself what I had to fear; my brave self poked fun at my cowardly self, and never have I grasped that conflict as sharply as on that night, that opposition between the two beings in our soul: the being that wills and the being that resists, each prevailing in turn.
♥ I was flabbergasted by the most wondrous, the most astonishing spectacle that anyone could ever see. It was one of those phantasmagorias of fairyland, one of those visions described by travelers who return from far away and whom we listen to in disbelief.
The fog, which had been floating on the water for two hours, had gradually shifted a little and gathered on the shores. Leaving the river utterly free, it had formed an unbroken mound six or seven yards high, on either bank, and these mounds were shining in the moonlight, as dazzling as snow. They were so superbly blinding that nothing was visible except for that fiery river flowing between those two white mountains; and up above, over mu head, a full, huge, broad moon illuminated a bluish and milky sky.
All the creatures of the water had awakened; the frogs were croaking furiously, while, from moment to moment, now from the right, now from the left, I heard that brief, mournful, monotonous note thrown at the stars by the ringing voices of the toads. It was odd, I was no longer afraid; I was in the midst of a landscape so extraordinary that I wouldn't have been surprised to encounter the most phenomenal things.
I can't tell how long that phantasm lasted, for I finally dozed off. By the time I reopened my eyes, the moon was gone and the sky was cloudy. The water lapped lugubriously, the wind blew, the air was cold, the darkness was profound.
♥ Dawn was coming, somber, gray, rainy, icy, one of those days that bring you sadness and misery.
~~On the Water.
♥ The church bell hadn't rung since the arrival of the Prussians. And that, incidentally, was the only local resistance that the invaders had encountered: the resistance of the belfry. The priest hadn't objected to receiving and feeding Prussian soldiers; a few times, he had even agreed to share a beer or a Bordeaux with the enemy commandant, who often used him as a benevolent intermediary. But it was futile asking him for even a single clang of his bell; he would rather have been shot. It was his own way of protesting the invasion-a peaceful protest, a silent protest, the only kind, he said, that suited a priest, a mild and not bloodthirsty man. And everyone within a radius of ten leagues praised the staunchness, the heroism shown by Father Chantavoine, who dared to affirm the public grief, to proclaim it through the obstinate hush of his church.
The entire village, inspired by his resistance, was ready to support its pastor come what may, to brave everything, for the villagers regarded that tacit protestation as a safeguard of their national honor. In line with that, they felt they deserved more of their country than Belfort and Strasbourg, that they were setting an equally sublime example, that the name of their hamlet would become immortal. Aside from that, they refused their Prussian conquerors nothing.
The commandant and his officers laughed at that inoffensive courage; and since the whole countryside proved obliging and cooperative, the invaders gladly tolerated that mute heroism.
♥ And five women stepped down to the perron, five beautiful prostitutes carefully selected by a captain's friend, to whom Le Devoit had brought a card from his superior.
The women didn't play hard to get, they were sure to be well paid; for they'd gotten to know the Prussians in these three months of drawing them out and resigning themselves to men and to facts. "It's part of the job," they had told one another en route, responding, no doubt, to some secret prickle in a vestige of conscience.
♥ A short time later, she was taken from the brothel by an unprejudiced patriot who loved her for her wonderful deed, then, eventually cherishing her for herself, married her and turned her into a lady, who was every bit as good as so many other ladies.
~~Mademoiselle Fifi.
♥ "You see, he told me everything... He couldn't keep his trap shut... No, he couldn't. Things like that give a man so much pleasure! Maybe even more pleasure to talk about it than to do it.
"When I saw him come home in the evening, a bit pale, content, with shiny eyes, I thought to myself: "Another one, he must have seduced another one." And I longed to question him, a longing that ripped me apart and another longing not to know, to stop him from talking if he started. And we looked at each other.
"I knew perfectly well that he wouldn't shut up, that he'd be getting down to brass tacks. I could tell by the way he acted, the way he laughed, just to make me understand. "I had a great day today, Madeleine." I'd pretend not to see, not to guess, and I'd set the table, I'd bring in the soup. I'd sit down across from him.
"At moments like that, I felt like my affection for him had been crushed inside me by a rock. It really hurt, awfully. But he didn't get it, he didn't know. He needed to tell somebody, to boast, to show how loved he was... And it was only me he could tell... you get it?... Only me... And so... I had to listen and swallow it like poison."
.
~~The Mask.
♥ The day was waning; the snow was becoming rosy; dry, icy gusts blasted across its crystal surface. Ulrich yelled out-a long, shrill, vigorous yell. His voice soared through the deathlike hush of the sleeping mountains; it flew far away, over the deep and inert waves of glacial foam like the cry of a bird over ocean waves; then his cries faded, and there was no response.
He began walking again. The sun had dropped behind the peaks, which were still purpled by the reflections of the sky; however, the depths of the valleys were turning gray. And suddenly, the young man felt scared. It was as if the hush, the cold, the loneliness, the wintry death of those mountains were penetrating him, stopping and freezing his blood, stiffening his limbs, transforming him into an inert and frozen being. And he broke into a run, fleeing toward his shelter.
♥ Night had fallen, the pallid night of mountains, the wan night, the livid night, illuminated at the edge of the horizon by a dim, yellow crescent that was ready to vanish behind the summits.
♥ He slept a long time, a very long time-an invincible sleep. All at once, a voice, a cry, a name: "Ulrich," shook his profound torpor and made him sit up. Had he been dreaming? Was it one of those bizarre shouts that lunge through the dreams of troubled minds? No, he could still hear it, that vibrant shout, which had entered his ears, remaining in his flesh to the very tops of his sinewy fingers. He was certain; someone had shouted; someone had called out, "Ulrich!" Someone was there, near the house. He couldn't doubt it. He opened the door and hollered: "Is that you, Gaspard?" with all the strength that his lungs could muster.
There was no response; no sound, no murmur, no sigh, nothing. It was night. The snow was pale.
The wind had risen, the icy wind that breaks stones and lets nothing survive on those abandoned heights. Its sudden blasts were more parching and more lethal than the fiery wind of the desert. Ulrich again hollered: "Gaspard! Gaspard! Gaspard!"
Then he waited. Everything remained silent on the mountain! He was shaken with terror to his very bones. He dashed back to the inn, slammed the door, and bolted it; next, he collapsed on a chair, shivering, convinced that his comrade had called out to him while giving up the ghost.
He was sure of it, the way you're sure that you're alive or eating bread. Old Gaspard Hari had agonized for two days and three nights, somewhere, in some hole, in one of those deep and immaculate ravines whose whiteness is more sinister than subterranean darkness. He had agonized for two days and three nights, and now he had just died while thinking about his companion. And his soul, barely liberated, had flown to the inn, where Ulrich had been sleeping, and it had called to him by that mysterious and horrible power with which the souls of the dead haunt the living. Hari's soul has cried out, that voiceless soul, cried out inside the sleeper's worn-out soul; it had cried out its final farewell-its rebuke or its curse on the man who hadn't searched long enough.
And Ulrich felt it there, very close, behind the wall, behind the door that he had just closed. Hari's soul was roaming like a bright bird whose plumage brushes an illuminated window; and the terrified young man was ready to scream in fright. He wanted to escape, but he didn't dare leave; he didn't dare and would never dare, for the ghost would linger, day and night, around the inn, until the old guide's corpse was recovered and laid to rest in the consecrated soil of a cemetery.
♥ And he felt alone, miserable, like no man who had ever been alone! He was alone in that immense desert of snow, alone at two thousand meters above the inhabited earth, above human homes, above noisy, throbbing, stirring life, alone under the frozen sky! He was racked by a wild yearning to flee no matter where, no matter how, to descend to Leuk by throwing himself into the abyss; but he didn't dare to even open the door-the was certain that the other man, the dead man, would block his path rather than remain alone up here.
Toward midnight, Ulrich, tired of pacing, overwhelmed with fear and anguish, finally dozed off in his chair, for he was scared of his bed the way you are scared of a haunted place.
♥ And he spent a few days as a drunken brute. Whenever he thought of Gaspard Hari, he resumed drinking until he collapsed on the floor in a drunken stupor. And he stayed there, facedown, dead drunk, snoring, with torpid limbs. But no sooner had he digested the enraging and burning fluid than the same shout "Ulrich!" awoke him like a bullet that had pierced his skull; and he struggled to his feet, extending his arms to keep from falling, and summoning Sam to help him. And the dog, who seemed to be growing as insane as his master, hurled himself against the door, scratching it with his claws, chewing it with his long, white teeth, while the young man, with his neck thrown back, his head in the air, chugalugged the brandy like cool water after a race, and again the liquor quickly darkened his mind, and his memory, and his frenzied terror.
~~The Inn.
♥ And he described his everyday life, poetically, and these city-dwellers, deprived of grass and starved for country outings, felt their hearts quiver with that idiotic love of nature that haunts them all year long, behind their shop counters.
♥ The coffee finished them off. The diners spoke about singing, and each person sang hid ditty, which the others frantically applauded. Then they struggled to their feet; and while the two women, who felt dizzy, took in some fresh air, the two men, dead drunk, tried to perform gymnastics. Heavy, limp, their faces crimson, they dangled awkwardly from the rings, unable to pull themselves up; and their shirts continually threatened to abandon the trousers and flap in the wind like banners.
♥ The other skiff moved more slowly. The rower was staring so intensely at the girl that he could focus on nothing else, and his strength was paralyzed by his overpowering emotions.
Sitting at the helm, the girl yielded to the gentle flow of the water. She lost all interest in thinking, her limbs were thoroughly relaxed, she felt she was fully abandoning herself, as if utterly intoxicated. Her face was deeply flushed, she was panting. The dizziness caused by the wine was aggravated by the torrential heat rustling all around her and making all the trees bow to her as she passed. A vague need for delight, a fermentation of her blood imbued her flesh, which was excited by that steamy day; and she was also troubled by her tête-à-tête on the water, in the middle of this rustic area, which was depopulated because of the blazing sky-her tête-à-tête with this young man, who found her beautiful, whose eyes kissed her skin, and whose desire was as penetrating as the sunshine.
♥ A nightingale! She had never heard one, and the thought of listening to one stirred her heart, arousing a vision of poetic tenderness. A nightingale! The invisible witness of trysts, evoked by Juliet on her balcony; that heavenly music attuned to human kisses; that eternal inspirer of all the languorous ballads that divulge an azure ideal to the poor little hearts of emotional girls!
So she wanted to hear a nightingale.
..She listened to the bird, lost in ecstasy. She felt infinite desires for happiness, abrupt tenderness that swept through her, revelations of divine poetry, and a melting of her nerves and her heart-a melting so deep that she wept without knowing why. The young man now held her right; she no longer resisted, it didn't occur to her.
..The girl was still weeping, imbued as she was with very sweet sensations, her warm skin alive with unfamiliar pricklings. Henri's head was on her shoulder; and suddenly he kissed her on the lips. She furiously rebelled, and, trying to avoid him, she struggled up. But he threw himself upon her, covering her entire body. He kept pursuing that fleeing mouth for a long while, and, finding it, he placed his lips on hers. Terrified by wild desire, she returned his kiss, hugging him on her bosom, and all her resistance collapsed as if crushed by an overpowering weight.
Everything was tranquil around them. The bird resumed its warbling. First it emitted three penetrating notes, which sounded like an appeal for love; next, after a momentary silence, its weakened voice launched into very slow modulations.
A soft breeze wafted, drawing murmurs from the leaves; and two ardent sighs emerged from the depths of the branches, blending with the singing of the nightingale and the soft breathing of the forest. The bird was intoxicated, and its voice, intensifying like a kindled fire or a growing passion, seemed to accompany a rustling of kisses under the tree. Suddenly, the delirium of the nightingale's throat exploded wildly. Now and then, it swooned for long stretches or went through deep, melodious spasms.
At times, it rested a bit, smoothly warbling just two or three light notes, then suddenly ending them on a high-pitched note. Or else it shot forth wildly, with spurts of scales, jolts, tremors, like a furious love song, followed by cries of triumph.
At last, it stopped singing and it listened to a moan down below, a moan so profound that it could have been taken for the farewell of a soul. The noise lasted for a while and then ended in a sob.
They were very pale, both of them, as they left their bed of greenery. The blue sky looked dark to them; the blazing sunshine was snuffed for their eyes; they perceived only silence and solitude. They walked together quickly, not speaking, not touching, for they seemed to have become irreconcilable enemies, as if disgust had risen between their bodies and hatred between their minds.
~~A Day in the Country.
♥ Several women had gotten up, coming over and remaining on their feet as they gazed at the magistrate's clean-shaven lips, which emitted earnest words. The women shivered, shuddered, wincing with their curious fear, the avid and insatiable need for horror that haunts a woman's soul, torturing her like hunger pangs.
♥ "Now, don't think for even a moment that I might have inferred there could be anything supernatural about that affair. I believe purely in normal causes. It would be a lot better if, instead of applying the term "supernatural" to things beyond our ken, we simply employed the word "inexplicable.""
♥ He replied without hesitating and told me that he had traveled a lot: in Africa, India, America. He added with a laugh: "I had much adventure! Oh, yes!"
Then I returned to the subject of hunting, and he supplied the most curious details about hunting hippopotamuses, tigers, elephants, and even gorillas.
I said: "All those animals are dangerous."
He smiled: "Oh, no! The most dangerous of all was man!"
He burst out laughing-the laughter of a big and content Englishman. "I've hunted my share of men too!"
~~The Hand.
♥ However, she got into the habit of wearing two big rhinestone eardrops-which glittered like diamonds-plus fake-pearl necklaces, pinchbeck bracelets, and combs studded with varied beads that looked like precious stones.
Her husband, a bit shocked by this passion for frippery, kept reiterating: "Darling, if a woman can't afford real jewels, then she appears only in her grace and beauty. Those are the rarest gems."
~~The Jewels.
♥ "For the couple you see over there, the accident wads very unique and awful. The little woman staged a play or rather a terrifying drama. Indeed, for her, it was all or nothing. Was she sincere? Did she love Jean? Who can say? Who can precisely determine what's true and what's false in a woman's actions? They're always sincere, but their feelings are forever ebbing and flowing. They're passionate, criminal, devoted, admirable, and ignoble. The lie nonstop, without meaning to, without realizing it, without grasping it; yet with all that, and despite all that, they are utterly frank in their emotions and sensations-a frankness they demonstrate with violent, unexpected, incomprehensible, and fanatical resolutions that confound our reasoning, baffle our lucid minds, and upset all our egotistical plans. And because their decisions are so brusque and unforeseen, women remain indecipherable enigmas for us. We keep wondering: "Are they honest? Are they dishonest?"
"But, my friend, they're both honest and dishonest at once, because it's in their nature to be at both extremes and at neither.
"Just look at the thoroughly honest measures they take to obtain their goals. Their methods are intricate and simple. So intricate that we never catch on to them in advance, and so simple that after being victimized we can't help being astonished and saying: "Huh? She really played me for a fool like that?"
"And they always succeed, my friend, especially when it comes to marriage."
♥ The woman is a model, of course. She posed for him. She was pretty-above all, elegant, and she apparently had a wonderful figure. He fell head over heels in love with her, the way you fall in love with any slightly seductive woman that you see a lot of. He imagined that he loved her with all his soul. And that's a bizarre phenomenon. The instant you desire a woman, you sincerely believe that you can't live without her for the rest of your life. You know very well that this isn't your first time, that possession has always been followed by disgust, that to spend your entire existence with another person you need, not a raw physical appetite, which is quickly sated, but a rapport of souls, moods, and temperaments. In yielding to seduction, you have to determine whether it's just a physical thing, an intoxication of the senses, or a profound spiritual attraction.
Well, he believed he loved her..
♥ We were sauntering along the riverbank, a bit intoxicated by the vague exaltation aroused in us by those wondrous evenings. We yearned to perform superhuman deeds, to love inscrutable and deliciously poetic creatures. We felt ecstasies thrilling inside ourselves, desires, mysterious strivings. And we kept silent, imbued by the serene and vivid freshness of the enthralling night, by that freshness of the moon, which seems to pass through our bodies, penetrate them, immerse our minds, fill them with fragrance, dip them in happiness.
♥ Three months later, he was struggling wildly in those invincible and invisible bonds with which the habit of a relationship entangles a life. She held him tight, tyrannized him, martyred him. They quarreled form dawn to dusk, trading insults, trading slaps.
Eventually, he wanted to flee, break off with her at any price.
~~The Model.
♥ I love this region, and I love living here because this is where my roots are, those profound and delicate roots that attach a man to the soil where his forebears were born and died, that attach him to what people think and what they eat, to both customs and food, to local phrases, to the intonations of farmers, to the smells of the earth, of the hamlets, of the very air.
♥ What is the source of those mysterious influences that change our happiness into discouragement and our confidence into distress? One might think that the air, the invisible air, is teeming with unfathomable Powers, whose mystifying presence we endure. I wake up cheerfully, my throat busting to sing. Why? I stroll along the current; and suddenly, after a brief walk, I reenter my house in a desolate mood as if some misery were awaiting me there. Why? Has a cold shiver grazed my skin, shaking my nerves and darkening my soul? Have the shapes of the clouds, the hues of the daylight, the so variable colors of things passed before my eyes and troubled my thoughts? Who knows!? Everything around us, everything we see without looking, everything we brush past without knowing it, everything we touch without feeling it, everything we encounter without distinguishing it-everything exerts rapid, surprising, and inexplicable effects on us, on our organs, and, through them, on our ideas and even on our hearts.
♥ Ah! If we had other organs that could work other wonders for us how many more things could we discover around us!
♥ Then I get into bed and I wait for sleep as you'd wait for an executioner. I fearfully await its arrival, and my heart pounds, and my legs shudder; and my whole body shakes in the warmth of the sheets, until I suddenly doze off as you'd plunge into a chasm and down in its stagnant water. I do not feel, as I once did, the coming of that perfidious sleep, concealed nearby, watching me, about to grab my head, close my eyes, annihilate me.
I sleep-a long time-two or three hours-then a dream-no-a nightmare clutches me. I truly feel that I'm lying and sleeping....I feel it and I know it....And I also sense that someone is approaching me, looking at me, touching me, climbing into my bed, kneeling on my chest, clutching my neck and squeezing...squeezing...strangling me with all his might.
As for me, I struggle wildly, bound by the atrocious incapacity that paralyzes us in our dreams. I try to yell-I can't. I try to move-I can't. Panting and desperately floundering, I attempt to turn, to hurl off the creature tat is crushing me and suffocating me-I can't!
And suddenly, I wake up in a panic, bathed in sweat. I light a candle. I'm alone.
♥ "If other beings besides ourselves exist on the earth, how come we haven't known about them long since, how come you've never seen them, how come I've never seen them?"
He responded: "Do we see even the hundred-thousandth part of existence? Look, here is the wind, which is nature's most powerful force, which knocks over men, flattens buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains of water, destroys cliffs, and hurls great ships against reefs-the wind that kills, that whistles, that moans, that bellows-have you ever seen the wind and can you see it? Yet it does exist."
I held my tongue against that simple reasoning. This man was a sage or perhaps a fool. I couldn't tell for sure; but I held my tongue. I had often thought about what he was now saying.
♥ I'm definitely crazy! And yet...
On July 6, before turning in, I placed some items on my table: wine, milk, water, bread, and strawberries.
Someone drank up-I drank up-all the water and a bit of the milk. No one touched the wine, the bread, or the strawberries.
On July 7, I repeated the experiment, and it produced the same results.
On July 8, I omitted the water and the milk. Nothing was touched.
On July 9, finally, I set out only water and milk on the table, first taking care to envelop the carafes in white muslin and tie down the stoppers. Next I rubbed graphite into my lips, my beard, my hands, and I went to bed.
Invincible sleep grabbed hold of me, soon followed by atrocious awakening. I hadn't stirred; my sheets were spotless. I hurried over to my table. The cloths around the carafes were immaculate. Throbbing with terror, I undid the strings. All the water had been drunk! All the milk had been drunk! Ah! My God!...
♥ Solitude is certainly dangerous for active intellects. We need to be surrounded by men who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time, we fill the emptiness with phantoms.
♥ How weak the mind is, how easily distraught, how swiftly bewildered, when struck by something slight and incomprehensible!
Instead of concluding with these simple words, "I don't get it because the reason eludes me," we instantly picture horrible mysteries and supernatural forces.
♥ Yet it's very silly to be joyful on a date fixed by a government decree. The populace is a moronic flock, alternating between stupid patience and fierce revolt. It is told, "Have fun." It has fun. It is told, "Go and fight your neighbor." It goes and fights. It is told, "Vote for the emperor." It votes for the emperor. Then it is told, "Vote for the Republic." And it votes for the Republic.
The men who rule it are likewise fools; but instead of obeying other men, they obey principles, which can only be asinine, sterile, and bogus, simply because they are principles-that is, ideas accepted as certain and indisputable in a world in which we are sure of nothing, since light is an illusion and noise is an illusion.
♥ The wise man says, "Perhaps?"
♥ It's obvious that everything depends on the place and the surroundings. To believe in the supernatural on the Island of La Grenouillère would be the height of madness....But what about on the peak of Mont Saint-Michel? What about in India? We submit terrifyingly to our environment. I'll be going home next week.
♥ I've known madmen; I've known some who've remained lucid, intelligent, even clear-sighted about all things in life-except for one point. They spoke about everything shrewdly, easily, and profoundly-when all at once, their minds hit the reef of their madness, smashed to pieces, scattered, and sank in that terrifying and infuriated ocean full of mists and squalls and bounding waves that are called "dementia."
♥ When you are stricken with certain illnesses, all the springs in your physical being seem broken, all your energy seems drained, all your muscles seem slack, your bones as soft as your flesh and your flesh as liquid as water. I feel this in my spiritual being, feel it in a bizarre and disheartening way. I have no strength left, no courage, no self-dominion, no power even to stir my will. I can no longer will; someone wills for me, and I obey.
♥ It would seem as if ever since he began to think, man has sensed and feared a new being, stronger than man, his successor in this world, and that, feeling his immediacy but unable to probe the nature of his master, he has, in his terror, created the whole fantastic tribe of hidden beings, vague phantoms born out of fear.
♥ No moon. The stars were glimmering and flickering in the depths of the black sky. Who inhabits those worlds? What life-forms, what creatures, what animals, what plants are out there? The beings that think in those far-off universes-what do they know more than we? What can they do better than we? What things do they see that we are utterly unacquainted with? Will one of them travel across space sooner or later and appear on our planet and conquer it just as the Normans once crossed the seas to subjugate weaker nations?
We are so frail, so defenseless, so ignorant, so tiny, we humans, on this speck of mud that swirls so feebly in a drop of water.
♥ So it had taken flight; it had been scared, it was scared of me.
Well, then...then...tomorrow...or later on...or someday, I will be able to cl it clutch my fists and crush it on the floor! Don't dogs sometimes bite their masters and rip out their throats?
♥ A number of curious bit of news has reached us from Rio de Janeiro. Insanity, an epidemic of insanity, comparable to those contagious dementias that afflicted European nations during the Middle Ages, is raging at this moment in the province of São Paulo. The panicky inhabitants are leaving their homes, deserting their villages, abandoning their fields, claiming that they are being pursued, possessed, controlled like human cattle by invisible yet tangible beings, creatures like vampires, which feed on their vital energy while these victims sleep, and which also drink water and milk without appearing to touch any other kind of aliment.
..Ah! Ah! I recall, I recall the glorious Brazilian three-master that sailed past my windows on May 8 as she headed upstream! I found her so lovely, so cheerful, so white! And the Being was aboard, coming from there, where its race was born! And it saw me! It also saw my white home and it jumped ashore. Oh, God!
Now I know, I've fathomed it. Man's reign is over.
♥ And I also mused: my eyes are so feeble, so imperfect, that they can't distinguish even hard objects that are as transparent as glass!...If a sheet of plate glass bars my path, my eyes throw me against it the way a bird trapped in a room smashes its head against the windows. And a thousand other things hoodwink my eyes and lead them astray. So is it any wonder that my eyes can't perceive a new object that light can pass through?
A new being! Why not? It was bound to come! Why should we be the last? And why can't we distinguish it as we can distinguish all other beings that were created before us? The reason is that its formation is more perfect, its body finer and more refined than our bodies, which are so weak, so awkwardly conceived, encumbered with organs that are always weary, always strained like overly intricate springs, our bodies, which live like plants and like beasts, arduously nourished on air, grass, and meat, live machines prey to diseases, deformations, putrefactions, wheezing, poorly regulated, naïve and bizarre, ingeniously misconstructed, a fragile, makeshift work, a rough sketch of something that could be intelligent and marvelous.
Varied creatures have been scarce in this world, from oyster to man. Why not one more being once we have completed the intervals that separate the successive emergences of all the diverse species?
Why not one more? Why not more trees with immense and dazzling flowers than imbue entire regions with their fragrances? Why not more elements in addition to fire, earth, air, and water? There are only four, nothing but four-of those nourishers of all beings! What a pity! Why aren't there forty, four hundred, four thousand? How poor everything is, how wretched, how miserable! Grudgingly given, badly designed, ineptly executed! Ah! The elephant, the hippopotamus-how graceful! The camel-how elegant.
But, you will say, how about the butterfly? A flying blossom! I picture one the size of a hundred universes, with wings whose shape, beauty, color, and motion I cannot express. But I can see the butterfly....It flits from star to star, refreshing them, perfuming them in the soft and harmonious breath of its passage!..And the nations up there are ravished and ecstatic as they watch it flutter by!...
♥ After man, the Entity.
Man, who can die on any day, at any hour, at any minute, through any accident, is followed by the Being who must die only on Its day, at Its hour, at Its minute because it has reached the limit of Its existence!
No...no...There is no doubt, there is no doubt....It isn't dead....And so...And so...I will have to kill myself,. myself!...
~~The Entity (The Horla).