Woman and Puppet 5

Woman and Puppet 5

She seemed to know nothing of what had happened. Did she lie? I heard

her Memoirs once more, and paid for her glasses of Eau-de-vie.

 

My sole instants of joy were provided by the dances of Concha. Her

triumph was the dance named _The Flamenco_. What a tragic dance! It

is, so to speak, all passion expressed in three acts. I always see her

in that dance. She was resplendent. During a month she tolerated me in

what may be called the dressing-room, at the rear of the stage where

the dances took place. I had not even the right to see her home; I kept

my “place” near her on conditions--no reproaches as to the past or the

present. As to the future I did not know anything, and had no idea

whatever what would be the solution of my most pitiable adventure of

body and spirit.

 

Then came a night when, with other dancers, she danced, with bosom

bared, in a room up-stairs. There were two rich Englishmen present.

 

I went up to her, and said--

 

“Follow me. Do not be afraid. But come or beware!”

 

But again, she dared and defied me.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XI

 

 

They left us alone.

 

“Defend yourself. Lie. You lie so well!” I cried.

 

“Ah,” she answered. “You accuse me. Superb! After entering here like a

thief, spoiling my dance, and scaring every one away.”

 

The usual scene of reproach, recrimination and explanation followed. At

the end I drew her on to my knees.

 

“Listen,” I said. “I cannot live thus. If you stay here a day longer I

will indeed leave you for ever, Conchita.”

 

Then she protested that she loved me, and had always loved me.

 

Again she tamed me with her words, and the scene ended as so many had

ended--in her triumph. We returned to Seville, where I took a house

for her. In that house she pretended that she had a lover. It was

pretence, but at last I turned and struck her in the face!

 

She tried to stab me but failed. Then I beat her until I hurt my own

hand. On her knees she craved my pardon, and opened her arms to me. I

took her. She was virginal as on the day of her birth.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XII AND LAST

 

 

André returned to Seville. He there met Concha Perez.

 

As they were starting for Paris a letter came by hand addressed to her.

A little later in life André knew that the letter was as follows--

 

“_My Conchita, I pardon you. I cannot live where you are not. Return

to me. Now it is I who kneel to you. I kiss your feet._

 

“MATEO.”

 

 

 

 

THE NEW PLEASURE

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

 

 

For four or five years I lived in a flat that was in a street near

the little Park Monceau. I was there only for certain days in the

week. The flat was not the finest in Paris, but was discreet, and the

place generally had a well-valeted look. A distinct drawback was that

although one end of my street gave on to the park, I could not enjoy

that latter place much, for the gates were closed every evening before

midnight--just when I most deeply appreciate walking for exercise and

to take the pure air.

 

One night at the flat I sat in silent contemplation of two blue china

cats that crouched upon a white table. I was wondering whether it would

be better to pass the time smoking cigarettes or writing sonnets.

Another idea was that it might be better to smoke the cigarettes and

stare at the painting on the ceiling. Cigarette, sonnet, or stare? The

most important thing at such an hour is to have a cigarette ready to

hand and lip. It enshrouds all the most material things with scarves

of cloud, fine and celestial. It adds something both to the lights and

to the dark of the chamber, taking away the hard mathematics of the

angles, and by means of a scented magical spell brings to the agitated

human spirit a panacea and peace. It brings, too, the land of dreams.

On the particular evening I now speak of there was the intention of

doing some writing, and yet the desire to do nothing was active and

coercive. Put differently, it was an evening that resembled many other

similar evenings of the “unlit lamp and ungirt loin.” Evenings that

ended with a full ink-well, sheets of dead-white writing paper, and--a

large ash-tray full of golden ends of cigarettes, ashes and unused

ideas.

 

Suddenly I was brought back from my “open-eye dreams” by the unexpected

ringing of the bell. I raised my head and tried to be positive that on

Friday night, the ninth of June, I did not await any one at that hour

of the night. A second ring soon came, so I went to the door and drew

back the bolt.

 

When the door was opened I saw a woman waiting. She was wrapped in a

sort of mantle, like a travelling cloak, fastened around the throat.

Above, the head was poised. I saw that her hair was blond, and that she

was young. Beneath the shadow of her tresses gleamed very dark eyes.

The face was a trifle teasing in its __EXPRESSION__, and rather sensual,

the mouth being very red.

 

“Do you wish me to come in?” she said, inclining her sweet head upon

her shoulder.

 

I drew back, flattened as it were against the wall, suffering from

the genuine, the natural astonishment of a man who has to open his

door at such an hour to a woman of whom he has not the slightest

recollection--a woman, too, who used the intimate form of address,

“thou,” in the first phrase she used.

 

“My dear lady,” I said, with a touch of timidity, as I followed her

into my chamber, “spare me any blame. Of course I recognize you

clearly, but by some lapse of memory I do not recall your name. Is it

not Lucienne or Tototte?”

 

She smiled a tender, indulgent smile, but, making no reply, unfastened

her mantle.

 

Her robe was of sea-green silk, with an iris pattern. Snared in the

low-cut corsage were beautiful breasts, that seemed as though they

longed to burst forth--a flow of imprisoned beauty. Clasped around

each of the nude, dark arms was a golden snake, with glittering

emerald eyes. Around the throat of darkest cream were two rows of

pearls--pearls that had meant the loss of many lives.

 

“If you remember me it is because we have met in the land of dreams, or

in some land of the mind, where it seems that dreams come true. I am

Callisto, daughter of Lamia. During eighteen hundred years my tomb has

had peace. It is in the flowerful fields and woods of Daphne, near to

the hills where were the voluptuous dwelling-places of Antioch. But in

these days even the tombs have no abiding home. They took me to Paris,

and my shadow or spirit followed. For a long time I slept in the icy

caves of the Louvre. I should have been there for ever and ever if it

had not been for a great and grand pagan, a really holy man, Louis

Ménard. He is the only living man in all this land who knows to-day the

signs and symbols of the ancient divinities. Before my tomb he solemnly

pronounced the words that of old gave a nightly and transitory life to

the unhappy dead! Therefore behold me. For seven hours each night I may

go through your miserable city....”

 

“Oh, child of the older world,” I cried, “how you must see the change

the world sorrows under!”

 

“Yes, and yet no. I find the dwellings dark, the dresses ugly, the sky

sorrowful. How oddly you dress for such a climate. I find that life

in general is more stupid, and that human beings look much less happy

than in the older and more golden days. But if there is one thing that

greatly stupefies me, it is to see that you have still so many of the

things that I knew of old. What ... in eighteen hundred years have you

all made nothing more, nothing new? Is that so really and truly? What

I have seen in the houses, the open air, the streets, is that all?

Have you not succeeded in finding a new thing? If not, what misery, my

friend!”

 

My attitude of astonishment was my sole reply.

 

She smiled, the lovely red lips parting over her mother-of-pearl teeth

most enchantingly. Then she murmured in explanation--

 

“See how I am dressed. This was my burial attire. Regard it. In my

first lifetime one dressed in wool and silk. In returning to the earth

I thought that such things would have passed away even from the memory

of man. I imagined that after so many years that the human race would

have discovered fabrics to dress in more wonderful than a tissue of

sun and silk, more pleasurable to touch than the exquisite tender skin

of young virgins, of rose-leaves, of downy peaches. But you still

dress or clothe yourselves in thread, in wool, in the silk we all had

of old. Then look at my shoes of olive morocco, worked with gold like

the binding of a rare book. Have you as lovely things for the feet in

these days? And so with the gems and jewels of these days. I knew them

all, then.”

 

“Callisto,” at last I said, “you give these things too great an

importance. A girl is never so beautiful as when she is made as the

gods made her.”

 

She gazed at me, then said very slowly, “Are you sure now that women

themselves, their form, has not changed since my early days of life?”