The Bacchantes, page 11
“Let’s go see the ‘Moroccan dances,’” said Bénalep, who found all the bustle amusing, and who gave brief consultations to his rustic clients as he passed by.
The gramophone was playing some jazz number. It was supervised by one of the dancers, three-quarters nude in the Parisian fashion, with a beautiful sweat-pearled skin, plump and perfect breasts and a few pink ribbons around her torso, both faded and garish, as in a painting by Renoir. Mélanie remarked on the slenderness of her legs, devoid of stockings, of a voluptuous elegance. Next to her was a child of about ten, her son, who looked at her tenderly and helped her change the records. On the improvised stage the audience members were fidgeting around a rather disquieting travesty advertised on the program as “the beautiful Ottaro.”
As he passed by, Ignacio undid the string that was retaining the “musician’s” corsage, thus revealing the breast of a goddess terminated by a rounded buton reminiscent, in the dim light, of a mulberry. At the same time he slipped a hundred-franc bill into her hand, which was small with dirty fingernails, Then the little boy took the gentleman’s arm and indicated the stage on which the ragged dancers were twirling, as if to say: “Pay attention to those, not this one.” That childish protection was so touching that Ariana’s hisband softened, and doubled the tip. The dancer looked up at him covertly and made him understand, with a slight movement of the head, that he could meet her in the wings. He did nothing, but was very amused when, at the exit, the robust “Alta Turca” boasted to him, in a low voice, in crude terms, of the exceptional qualities of the “royal piece.”
Couples tangoed rhythmically on the compacted earth of the ballroom, which was decorated with tricolor flags. Jean Calvat, elegant, slim and calm, came to invite his stepmother Tullie, as beautiful as an ancient priestess in her white dress, to dance—but she refused, the death of Pere Calvat still being too recent, and she gave him to understand, in a few words, that it would be better for him to abstain too. He made no reply, and invited the beautiful Ariana, clad in a mauve veil as light as a butterfly, who lent herself to the handsome rustic’s tremulous and awkward grip.
This time, he did not unclench his teeth or make her any confidence, but at a given movement he lifted her up and held her positively pressed against him. She was delightfully excited by it, and immediately thought about the little cabin out there on the edge of the grounds, where the Master had failed dismally with the beautiful Donabella.
Meanwhile, Romain had put his arm around the waist of a delightful peasant-woman from Brancheville, who was some thirty years old, with two children, and was whirling her around, without holding her tightly, in an old-style waltz, in the midst of the tangoing couples. He did not even know her name. From afar, people watched the quinquegenarian sorcerer, who did not disdain to pivot a respectable peasant woman in front of everyone, with wonder and irony.
“What’s your name?”
“Adélaide, Monsieur.”
“I couldn’t resist the desire to approach you—but it can’t be very amusing to dance with an old bear like me.”
“Oh, I swear to you that it’s ever so good! You’re the man that everyone is talking about and all the women thinking of, more or less. But have no fear of getting closer, or holding me tight.”
“Do you love your husband?”
“Not at all. He’s dirty and a drunk, and he beats me. I only stay with him because of the children.”
“Have you ever seen a laboratory? Would you like to visit mine one day?”
“But there’s Tullie.”
“She won’t be there. Or if she is, she’ll close her eyes.”
“But the domestics…Marianne, the fat Abrice, Caroline.”
“I’ll send them away.”
“People will see me going into your house.”
“Do it after nightfall. Let me know a day in advance, when I take my walk and your husband’s on the booze.”
They had that conversation while twirling, his voice ardent, hers hesitant. Ségétan made sure in that fashion that his fluid was always as active and as fascinating, and the semi-swoon of the little peasant-woman in his arms procured him an incomparable intellectual delight, the most agreeable and fecund of trances. This one too, like Donabella, was naïve beneath the weight of her ignoble drunkard, no more ignoble than the American of varnished wood.
As he sat the weak-kneed woman with the odorous chestnut hair down again, he thought he heard once again the strident whistle-blast that had snatched the soft blonde bread from his mouth at the door of Ariana’s cabin after the banquet—but it was the whistle of a horse-trainer.
“Oof! It’s hot!” said the scientist, on returning to his wife and friends.
Bénalep laughed. “But you’re twenty-five—you’re extraordinary! My dear Tullie, this isn’t the Master of the Waves, it’s Don Juan—or, rather, Bath-au-pieu.”23
“What vulgarity, M’sieu Bienallé!” Thus spoke Mélanie, mimicking the Blésois accent.
All seven continued the tour of the fairground, now completed by a jumble sale, where household objects of all sorts were on sale. Ségétan, as cheerful as a child, bought a batch of old ribbons, of various amusing colors, which he made the three young women put on. Then there were boxes of bonbons and nougats, and, to cap it all, he gave Bénalep, with a flourish, the useful present of a gilded porcelain chamber-pot.
“The very image of ill-acquired fortune!” cried the delighted Silenus.
The heat was scarcely declining. Ignacio and Ariana went back to Brancheville. The three scientists and the two young women returned to the Villa Dyonisos, read the newspapers, chatted and relaxed until dinner, which consisted of a copious cold meal, permitting the servants to stay out as late as they wanted at the fête. When the guests had done it full honor, they returned to the local press.
“Here’s something curious, damn it!” exclaimed Mélanie, whose alluring face with the large eyes became serious. She read: “Châteaudun, tenth of September. Two local farmers died, a few hours apart, from the sting of an unknown insect, having developed an enormous black and purulent blister and a generalized intoxication. Conjectures as to the nature of the venom and the creature have been fruitless, both being unknown in our region.”
“Well, what!” said Félix Dévenot, negligently. “It’s Jehovah, my scorpion, continuing to do his thing. A superb specimen! I’ll never console myself for having let him escape.”
“The price of science! Humanity will see many others, when our successors make discoveries at will.” Having said that, the Master plunged back into his reading, with a shrug of his shoulders.
Momentarily, he looked up at Tullie, sprawled beneath an electric lamp sheathed in pink, with a serious expression and a penetrating gaze. There had been talk about the enormous hayricks in the fields and the mingled odors of straw and roses, as intoxicating as that of freshly-mown grass, which emanated from them, and an Avenillan rose-garden nearby. An amorous fantasy crossed his mind.
He got up and said to Tullie, in a tone she knew well: “I’m stifling, darling; let’s go take a walk.” Then, after shaking hands with the Dévonets, husband and wife and Bénalep, he disappeared, followed by his brunette, already consenting.
Avoidng the fête, where the maroons announcing the firework display were exploding, they went around Les Arges farm, scarcely illuminated by a faint crescent moon, everyone being at the fairground, and went into the fields that extended as far as the eye could see, dotted with somber clumps of trees and giant phantasmal hayricks.
They thought they were alone. The song of crickets wore away the silence, as a file wears away iron, with an insistent whine. The air brought them, in heavy waves, the perfume of the hundreds of red roses cultivated a hundred meters away by a renowned horticulturalist, and the somber yellow warmth of the scraps of the cut and threshed wheat. The high conical tower of the assembled and heaped-up stalks formed, by virtue of its edges, a kind of tapered crib carpeted with glittering litter.
“I understand,” she said. “Don’t say another word.”
He turned round and stepped aside while she undressed hastily, throwing her dress, slip, underclothes and transparent stockings on the ground, pell-mell. It was the movement of a rural bacchante, on whom the lunar half-light projected a pale, almost marmoreal radiance.
At that moment, a gunshot resounded, followed by a terrible groan, which ended in a croak.
The fireworks! Tullie thought, in a flash—but already Ségétan had collapsed, two paces way from her, as if struck dead, and from the depths of her terror she heard the sound of footsteps running away.
No longer remembering that she was naked, she threw herself on to her lover’s body and saw his bloody face.
“He hasn’t killed me,” he murmured, “but I received the charge full in the eyes.” Then, with his usual self-control, he added: “Get dressed, quickly.”
“But who fired the shot? Who?”
“Jean, of course. I recognized his silhouette when he raised the gun.”
Supported on one hand, he straightened up, getting to his knees. With the other hand, he groped around and grasped the fabric—a skirt—that she was holding out to him. He wiped his face. He only had a slight wound, having received a scattered blast of hunting-shot at some distance —but he could no longer see. He was blind.
“Help, help! Murder! Help!” Tullie shouted in the darkness, in a heart-rending voice, formidably intermediary between nightmare and delirium, reinforced by dolor.
Soon, running footsteps were heard. People came running.
The amazement of the first witnesses was extreme when they recognized Ségétan, and they brought him to his feet, swaying, like a huge mannequin, while twenty skyrockets, departing at the same time, lit up the plain, the tragic hayrick and the beautiful farmer’s wife from Les Arges, twisting her harmonious bare arms in front of the rick. In her anguish, she had forgotten her stockings and satin slippers, and, testifying to her distress, her small and delicate feet were blooded by the prickly straw.
Four solid fellows from Les Arges, moved by their employers’ tears, wanted to carry the wounded scientist by the arms and legs, but he refused, and said, in a masculine voice: “Just guide me—and two of you run to inform Doctors Bénalep and Dévonet.”
“But what happened?” they were asking one another. “Who fired the rifle-shot?”
“It was Jean Calvat, Calvat’s son, my co-owner. The Master saw him taking aim, the wretch.” Recovering her composure at a stroke, and drying her tears, Tullie denounced her stepson without the slightest hesitation.
“What, it was Jean! Oh, that’s too much—the swine! We have to catch him and hang him.”
“No, he has to be handed over to the gendarmes.”
“To maim a man like that, who’s the glory of the region!”
“The glory of the region! Rather say the glory of France! Perhaps he’s gone mad, Calvat.”
“He’s a shit all the same! They’ll cut off his head, mad or not, and it’ll be a good thing!”
As they drew closer to the village, curious people surged forth from all directions, blue and red silhouettes in the glare of the fireworks, and the indignation grew. A few peasants, armed with pitchforks, were already dispersing in all directions in pursuit of the criminal. One of them discovered the rifle, still hot from the crime, under a bush. It was observed that both cartridges had been fired. The homicidal intention was certain.
In the meantime, when Ségétan had been taken home and laid on his bed, fully dressed, Maire Taupin arrived, with three rural policemen, from the fête, and then Bénalep, Dévonet and Mélanie, in great distress. The villa was in uproar. Abrice, who was howling for vengeance and stirring up the people of the neighborhood, was given orders to go to Blois immediately to inform the gendarmerie and the examining magistrate, summoning them to mount a search and catch the murderer.
Tullie, Mélanie and Marianne, serving as nurses under the direction of Bénalep and Dévonet, undressed the Master silently, put him to bed and bathed the wound on his face with infinite precaution. One eye, the right, was tumefied, black and closed. The other seemed in better condition, but was absolutely fixed, as if it were made of glass. The lead shot had mostly peppered the forehead, the lips, the upper one being lacerated, and the cheeks.
The two physicians exchanged a glance laden with anxiety. They could not yet assume the worst, and it was necessary to postpone a full examination until the next day, but for now, blindness, at least in one eye and perhaps complete, was to be feared.
The wounded man was under no illusion. He asked the women to leave, and when he was alone with his friends he said: “Will I remain blind? Don’t leave me in suspense, I beg you, for doubt is the worst thing of all.”
“My dear chap,” Bénalep replied, paternally, “it’s impossible for us to reply. Persently, you can’t see anything—that’s understood—but it might be that tomorrow, or in three days, you’ll have recovered vision. It’s also possible that you won’t recover it until later.”
“Or not at all,” observed Ségétan, sardonically.
“Or only on one side. At the earliest opportunity, tomorrow, we’ll telephone Pénétrot in Paris, asking him to come immediately with his instruments, and he’ll give you a sure diagnosis…at least insofar as it’s possible to be sure of anything.”
“I have a severe pain in the depths of the left eye—a horrible pain. Give me a little morphine, Bénalep—two and a half centigrams—right away. Has the little bastard been arrested?”
“No, not yet. But it won’t be long, I think. He’s an epileptic and a madman. At any rate, he’ll be locked up, and Tullie and you will have nothing more to fear.” So saying, the old Silenus made the injection in his friend’s muscular thigh.
“It’s just that my eyes,” the latter added, “are the most important thing to me. My vision, as you know, is narrowly linked to the faculty of investigation. Blind, I’ll be good for nothing but dying.”
“Don’t be like that, my poor Romain. We’ll get you out of this—you have Bénalep’s word.”
“And Dévonet’s.”
Marianne opened the door slightly, after having knocked timidly, to ask whether Monsieur could receive Monsieur le Maire, who had come to tell him something interesting, and Monsieur l’Abbé Parroy, who had just arrived.
“Send them in!”
The Abbé was distraught, the Maire comically solemn.
“Oh, my dear friend, my dear friend!” said the priest, and embraced the invalid with cautious effusion.
“I don’t need your services yet, Man of God,” said Ségétan, jokingly, “but I’ve had a narrow escape. Fortunately, your parishioner isn’t a good shot.”
“The wretch! The demented wretch!”
“And you, Monsieur le Maire—are you there? What have you to tell me?”
“That the key piece of evidence has been found, but not the man. He must have run off toward Quatrebois. The rifle is Père Calvat’s. It’s a current model. I regret, my dear Master, for you and the commune, this exceedingly unfortunate incident.”
The falseness of the term brought a wry smile to the patient’s bandaged face. He murmured, as if to himself: “I can’t see anything—anything at all.”
The rapid passing of the vital tranquil confidence in the acquisition of light had changed his mental horizon in an instant. Nevertheless, he could see the superb hayrick, Tullie undressing, the starry sky. Had he contemplated those various beauties for the last time?
* * * *
Meanwhile, the young murderer, crawling and bounding from thicket to copse and from hayrick to hayrick, like a cat, had reached the secret cabin at the Château de Brancheville. He was firmly convinced that he had killed Ségétan and he only had one idea: to escape the consequences of that murder; to flee, if he could, and disappear, or to commit suicide if he could not.
The fireworks had ended, along with the distant music of the fête. The search had not been organized yet. Jean Calvat unlocked the door with the key that Ariana had given him, went in, opened the window, and gave voice in the darkness to the sinister screech of the barn owl.
It happened that, at that moment, the “star” was taking the air on her balcony, thinking confusedly about the singular circumstances of her life. She shuddered. It’s him, without a doubt. What’s happening?
She was in her nightdress. She threw a light mantle of black taffeta over her shoulders and was just about to go downstairs when someone rang the bell at the château gate.
Breathless voices were audible; someone—doubtless Sylban—climbed the stairs and knocked on Ignacio’s door. Five minutes later, the latter came into his wife’s room.
“Something’s happened. Young Calvat has shot Ségétan. The poor fellow’s been taken to Dyonisos, dead or alive. Bénalep and Dévonet have been summoned. I’m going too. Will you come with me or join me there?”
“I have an atrocious headache. I’ve just taken some aspirin. If it gets better, I’ll be with you in ten minutes. If not, send me news, for I’m terrible anxious too. Poor Ségétan!”
Her husband disappeared. She went to her cupboard and grabbed a wad of banknotes—money is always useful in a drama—and picked up the mantle again.
Within five minutes, Ariana was in the cabin.
“I couldn’t stand it any longer,” Calvat told her. “I’ve killed the monster. You’ve been very good to me. I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”
“Where will you go, and how, you stupid child! Why did you do it?”
“Because he stole Tullie from me, because he’s cast a spell on the farm and the region, and because he struck me down with the fit. You don’t believe it, but he’ll destroy you all, and I’ll be damned if I’m not certain—yes, certain—of everything I’ve accused him of.”
“You don’t have any remorse?”
He uttered a somber and cruel laugh. “Remorse, no—joy. Whatever happens to me, I’ve got my own back. Adieu, Madame! My only chance is that Brancheville isn’t surrounded yet. Then again, it’s dark, and a lot of people are drunk, because of the fête.”
