Cocaine

4

Madame Kalantan Ter-Gregorianz’s villa was completely white, as white as an ossuary and as round as an ancient Greek temple. At the side there was a small triangular evergreen garden that looked like a leaf attached to a bridal bouquet.

The villa might have been the garçonnière of a fairy who has not yet made her appearance in current fairy stories, but ought unquestionably to do so: that is, the fairy Libertine.

Tito Arnaudi and Pietro Nocera arrived there in the evening in an open taxicab. A ribbon-shaped cloud extended from the perfectly round moon, resembling an arm holding a lamp. Clusters of stars twinkled untidily here and there in the sky, looking like wind-scattered platinum filings.

Between the pergola and the euonymus hedges rectangular shirt fronts framed by evening dress stood out in the darkness of the garden under the moon. The air was full of the fragrance of night, that always young and beautiful cocotte. The two men in evening dress got out of the taxi.

The entrance hall was in Roman style. The walls were adorned with mythological frescoes against a bright red background, like those of Pompeii, which prudish and virginal English misses consider shocking. The temperature was that of a tepidarium.

The two Italians handed over their top hats and, preceded by a flunkey wearing more braid than a Turkish admiral, advanced down a corridor that was semi-circular like those in a theater and were shown into a big room.

This was the penguin room. There were big mirrors all round it, and on them were painted polar landscapes, vast expanses of snow, blocks of ice, and huge icebergs that acted as platforms for assemblies of penguins. And since only the lower part of the mirrors was painted, the higher, unpainted part provided an infinity of reflections of the landscapes facing them.

The penguins looked like gentlemen in evening dress with their hands behind their back.

A huge carpet covered with white, green and blue hieroglyphics covered the whole floor. Tiger skins and brocade cushions lay on semi-circular divans. There were no lamps and no windows, but a misty light from invisible colored lamps filtered through the light blue glass ceiling.

“We were admiring the sorceress’s cave,” Tito said, going up to Kalantan, who came in holding out one hand to him and the other to his companion.

“We’re the first. Are we too early?”

“Not at all. Someone has to be first.”

A fur as shaggy as a royal mantle acted as door curtain. No sooner had the flunkey dropped it than he had to raise it again to announce three names, preceded by three titles.

Three gentlemen came in.

One of them was tall, thin, clean-shaven and white-haired; his white sidechops gave him the austere appearance of a maître d’hôtel.

Kalantan introduced him: “Professor Cassiopea, astronomer, in charge of the world’s most powerful telescope.”

Bows. She then introduced the two Italians. “Dr Chiaro di Luna, Professor Où Fleurit l’Oranger, both journalists on a Paris newspaper.”

More bows.

Two other gentlemen had come in with the astronomer.

“The painter Triple Sec.”

He was young, blond, thin, and trebly dry. More bows.

“Dr Pancreas, of the Faculty of Medicine.”

Bows and handshakes.

On a sign from the hostess the five gentlemen moved towards a divan; the two Italians were invited to precede the three Frenchmen.

The divan was so soft and well sprung that once one had sat on it one’s knees were at the height of one’s shoulders. To avoid assuming ungraceful positions there was no alternative to either getting up again or lying flat.

The flunkey announced more guests.

A rich industrialist, an antique dealer with several deposed kings among his clientèle, a blonde of indefinable age between thirty and sixty, a cocotte of recent vintage, more men, more women.

One of the latter announced that M. — was playing in a tragedy of Corneille’s that evening and would be arriving later.

An old gentleman apologized for the absence of a colleague who had had to go to Marseilles to perform an operation. The painter realized at once what lay behind this excuse. The surgeon, who was the master of an important masonic lodge, was never free on Thursdays.

More guests arrived, and there were more introductions and more bows; and no one showed surprise at seeing anyone else there.

Four flunkeys brought in about a hundred multi-colored cushions and piled them round the ladies sitting on the divans. At one end of the big circular room a smaller circle formed: an assembly of men, women, cushions, pink female shoulders, women’s hair-dos, wisps of cigarette smoke; the overhead light tinted everything pink and blue, turning the shadows greenish and violet.

A great correctness of attitude gave a certain nobility to the promiscuousness of cushions, the huddle of limbs, the close proximity of austere elderly men in tails and women in revealing dresses.

Kalantan, the beautiful Armenian lady, was sheathed in darkness; her dark gray dress with greenish and bluish reflections clung to her form as if she were wearing tights; it was not trimmings or stitching that held the silk to the curves of her body. She was like a bronze nude or a basalt statue, but touching her would no doubt have revealed the adhesive softness of a vampire. There was not so much as a silk chemise between her dress and her skin; round her waist she had a green girdle, knotted in front, and the tassels at the two ends ended in two big emeralds. Her stockings were green, and so were her satin shoes and her fingernails.

A kind of trapdoor opened, and a pale young man with a girlish face, carrying a violin in one hand and a bow in the other, emerged from below. The hostess signed to him, he disappeared again, and the trapdoor shut.

Through the floor — and only then did its thinness become apparent — there rose the sound of soft, caressing music that seemed to come from great depths.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen you,” the painter Triple Sec said to the man beside him. “At the Grand Palais yesterday morning you said that a painting of mine was full of sublime falsities. The phrase struck me.”

“Good gracious,” said the gentleman with the austere face of a maitre d’hôtel, “do you mean to say you were standing next to your picture?”

“Of course he was,” said a woman with metallic blonde hair. The painter’s always near the picture just as the deceased’s close relatives are always near the hearse. If you want to say nasty things about a picture or someone who has just died, it’s better to keep your distance.”

“And do you like the false in art?” the painter asked.

The astronomer: Of course; only the false is beautiful. Crazy distortions, maddening contrasts, are the only means by which artists can produce any reaction in me. We’ve had enough of the truth, of life and realism. What I want of an artist is that he should be able to give me the illusion of walking city streets paved with stars with a pair of galoshes on my head, enabling me to splash about with my head in the puddles of the sky while rain and light come up to me from below. Instead of admiring flowers and plants, I want to see them buried, with their roots exposed to the winds; instead of effects I want to see causes, instead of consequences I want to see origins. I’m much more interested in the roots of daisies than in their corollas.

Surgeon: For an astronomer like you that’s a bit much.

Astronomer: Astronomers are nothing but poets manqués, because instead of studying qualities and their distortion they concentrate on the exact study of quantities, which is absurd.

Kalantan, the beautiful Armenian lady: Nevertheless you’re held in high esteem…

Astronomer: Yes, because we use huge telescopes, write numbers thirty digits long, calculate in sextillions and write unintelligible formulas. But what is the actual use of measuring the distance of the stars?

Kalantan: If only you made mistakes in your measurements and forecasts. The infuriating thing about you is your accuracy.

A gentleman with the face of a chronic cuckold came in. After the usual exchange of courtesies, he sat on the floor and went to sleep with a cushion between his legs, just like an emigrant with his bundle.

Kalantan: He always goes to sleep.

Retired cocotte: Who is he?

Kalantan: A big business man.

Tito Arnaudi: But how does he manage to look after his business?

Kalantan: He has a partner.

Surgeon: How he must fleece him.

Kalantan: No, the partner’s his wife’s lover, and she keeps an eye on the business and sees he doesn’t do any dirty work, at any rate so far as the business is concerned.

This information raised a laugh, based partly on amusement and partly on malice.

A flunkey brought in a big silver tray with about twenty champagne glasses full of fruit and offered one to each guest. Another flunkey offered each guest a small golden spoon.

“Fruit salad,” Pietro Nocera explained to Tito Arnaudi, helping himself to a strawberry that sparkled with tiny crystals of ice and was soaked in champagne and ether.

By now the smell of ether had spread through the room; the condensed vapor frosted the outside of the glasses.

A third flunkey went round with a small cubical silver box, one side of which was perforated; from it he shook into each glass some white powder that dissolved in the liquid.

The invisible violinist played laments as heart-rending as those of a troubadour imprisoned in a dungeon for some crime of love. The weak, tremulous light, the velvety carpets, the soft cushions, the circular walls, the men in black, the almost silent women gave an air of solemnity to the pagan ceremony; the men sat with legs crossed in the Turkish fashion, holding their glasses and sedately and impassively sipping the subtle, alcoholized mixture of sweet and pungent fruit.

On a tripod taller than a man’s height there was a Chinese jade vase with a big bunch of violet carnations and black roses (they looked as if they had been skillfully made of wrought iron) carnally perfumed with ambergris; they let out a cry of picturesque immodesty.

The notes of the invisible violin were like drops of dew slipping along a silk spider’s web in the sun.

Tito Arnaudi: And who’s the man that looks like a convalescent cuckold?

Pietro Nocera: He’s an antique dealer. He and the other two who look like incurable sentimentalists are three ex-lovers of the lady of the house. They’re called the mummies’ gallery, because their volcanic lover has made them literally useless from the love-making point of view. It seems that in that connection the lady once said: What does it matter to me if a man is of no use to other women after he has been useful to me?

Tito Arnaudi: What rubbish. Do you believe that excess can lead to —

Surgeon: And why shouldn’t it? Look at the tortoise. It lives for a hundred years, but makes love only once a year.

Painter: I don’t envy it. So far as I’m concerned, there’s only one thing that’s worse than excess.

Surgeon: And what’s that?

Painter: Abstinence.

The man who was always asleep, waking up: I heard you talking about me; you said I was a cuckold. Cuckold, tart — they’re just words. The cuckold is ridiculous because of the existence of the word. A deceived woman would be just as ridiculous if there were a corresponding word for her. An unfaithful woman is a tart. An unfaithful man is merely an unfaithful man, only because a term for a male tart has not yet been coined. But what does it matter? I spend my time in dream or sleep. When there’s morphine in my veins I dream; when there isn’t I sleep.

And he dropped off to sleep again.

Tito Arnaudi: But why does he sleep all the time?

Surgeon: Morphine.

Two flunkeys came in and raised both parts of the curtain door to allow two dancers to appear.

“Danse polynésienne,” the male dancer announced, putting his arm round his partner’s waist.

The violinist struck up a wild tune.

But no one took any notice. The surgeon had taken a small gold box from the pocket of his white waistcoat and inhaled a big pinch of cocaine, and at Kalantan’s instigation a flunkey had filled the glasses with more ether and more champagne.

Kalantan went down on her knees in front of a glass that had been put on the floor and drank as if she were drinking the clear water of a lake.

While she drank, Tito Arnaudi put his face near her black hair, which had an exciting odor of musk, like India ink.

The dancers withdrew, and the flunkies reappeared with small white cups like those in which Arabs take coffee.

“Strawberries with chloroform,” a thin lady with a green wig explained.

“Who’s she? Tito asked.

“A recently launched hetaira. You’d have said she was born and had spent her life at an imperial court, though last year she was still a waitress at a divisional police station. These women provide the most remarkable examples of mimicry in the animal kingdom. One year they still have dirty feet, and the next they graciously offer you their hand and take offence if you don’t kiss it. One year they don’t know whether numbers are read from left to right or from right to left, and the next you find them talking about shares in the railway from Senegal to Zanzibar by way of Lake Tanganyika and discussing the latest Goncourt Prize and the paintings of Cézanne.”

The room was suddenly invaded by a swarm of butterflies. Some of the terrified creatures crashed into the mirrors in their dash for freedom, and others performed the most absurd evolutions among the guests. They glittered like pieces of cloth shot with metal, purple, gold and glass, silver and ice, air and brass. They flew desperately this way and that, landing upside down on the luminous ceiling or fluttering on the floor. One came to rest on the moiré silk lapel of an evening dress jacket, with its wings spread and its huge stupefied eyes.

Then it took off again, hovered undecidedly between a woman’s red hair and a glass, and then, asphyxiated by the fumes of ether and chloroform, fell into a glass of champagne, covering it with its spread wings like a paten on a chalice.

Others alighted on the flowers.

“They’re sent to me by a friend of mine in Brazil,” Kalantan explained. “They’re the loveliest butterflies in the world. Every steamer from Rio de Janeiro brings me a small cageful. I’d like to have an arena and the most marvelous wild beasts and give them my servants to eat for your entertainment, but unfortunately the only exotic creatures I can offer you are butterflies.”

“What a bitch she is,” Tito said to Nocera. “If they’re all like that in her country, I shall begin to think the Kurds are right and I shall approve of the Armenian massacres.”

“And so the only spectacle I can offer you is the death of the butterflies,” Kalantan went on. “They die intoxicated by subtle poisons and perfumes. Perfume affects butterflies as it does gems. Did you know that perfumes harm gems? It’s an enviable death, because butterflies preserve all the beauty they had in life. You see them in collections transfixed by pins, and they seem to be alive because of their variegated colors. When I die you must all come and make me up as if I were to appear at a dress rehearsal at the Comédie.”

“Poor creatures,” said the incurable sentimentalist.

“Stop it,” the Armenian lady said to him. “Besides, I think my house is a tomb very worthy of a butterfly. A house,” she added with a smile, “where distinguished personalities such as yourselves come to kill yourselves little by little.”

“But where’s your coffin?” asked Tito.

“You wouldn’t want me to have it carried round in procession in accordance with the Egyptian practice at banquets,” Kalantan said.

“Why not?” said Tito. “There’s no one here who has a horror of death.”

“I have a certain familiarity with coffins,” the skinny painter said. “During my worst days as a Bohemian I got permission to sleep on a pile of straw in a coffin factory near the Bercy custom house. On the first night I couldn’t sleep. I have a lively imagination, and I kept trying to assure myself that all those boxes were to be used for transporting fruit or ladies’ underwear, but the shape gave the lie to that theory. On the second night I slept by fits and starts, and on the third night I slept well. But, though I had no more nightmares, the damp got into my bones and bits of straw into my skin.

“One evening they had made a magnificent coffin for a bishop, who was to take up permanent residence in it next day. It was a masterpiece, both decoratively and for comfort. There was a cushion for the episcopal feet and a pillow for the episcopal skull. All that was lacking was the episcopal corpse. There was even a kind of umbrella stand for the episcopal alpenstock.

“I decided it was unfair that a living artist should have to sleep on straw while a corpse was being given such a comfortable coffin to decompose in and, when I was sure that the caretaker had gone to bed, I went to sleep in it. I slept in papal splendor in that coffin.

“Next day they took it away, but there was a deluxe coffin there every evening, though not such a splendid one as the bishop’s, and none was to be expected until another bishop died. They were actually too luxurious for a proletarian like me. I admit that at first it was rather inconvenient to change beds, change coffins, every evening, but I got perfectly used to it, and I wouldn’t have exchanged my coffin for the bed of the Roi Soleil that’s kept at Versailles.

“I slept in that factory for two months. But one fine day difficulties arose. There were complaints that the coffins had been used.”

“Who complained? The dead?”

“No, the relatives.”

“What fools. When you’re dead, what does it matter if the coffin’s second-hand?” Kalantan said.

“But what about the relatives’ religious feelings? The cult of the dead?” said the astronomer.

“That did not come into it,” the painter went on. “The factory owner refused to let me go on sleeping in his store, not because his customers had religious objections, but because the relatives of the deceased took the opportunity to demand a reduction in price.”

The dancers came back and announced an Andalusian dance.

“And where did you go and sleep then?”

There was a rattle of castanets.

“I started selling a few canvases, and I rented a garret and started being successful. Do you remember,” he said, turning to the woman with yellow hair, “the parties I used to give in my boîte up on the Butte? I actually had silver cutlery.”

“Yes, I remember your silver cutlery,” said the woman with the fiery hair. “On one fork there were the words Restaurant Duval, and on a spoon there were the words Station Buffet.”

“But that was a tactful gesture on my part,” said the painter. “I wanted to give my guests the feeling of exclusiveness.”

“I was at the Lycée Voltaire then,” said a gentleman who had not yet spoken.

“No, you were at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand,” the painter pointed out.

“Nonsense, it was the Lycée Voltaire.”

“No, I tell you it was the Lycée Louis-le-Grand.”

“Triple Sec is right,” a friend of the gentleman’s said. “You were at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand.”

The surgeon turned to Tito. “You see the stage he has reached,” he said. “Loss of memory.”

“Cocaine?” Tito asked.

“Morphine,” replied the surgeon.

The gentleman stayed open-mouthed, staring as if hypnotized by some detail of the pattern of the carpet.

He took a small metal container from the inside pocket of his evening dress and stuck a needle through his trousers into his thigh; and a few minutes later his face lit up and he exclaimed: “Yes, you’re perfectly right. I went right through the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and I was a class-mate of Ivan the Terrible and Scipio Africanus.”

Butterflies dazed by ether fluttered about and fell to the floor, dying.

One was crushed by the dancer’s feet, and another, bent over a rose as if to gaze at its own reflection in a dewdrop, languished and died in that coquettish posture. Another, with pure white wings, came to rest on the edge of an ashtray, seemingly intent on sprinkling itself with humility before dying. Kalantan put her little finger in a glass and dropped some liquid on the creature’s head; it was struck dead and collapsed on its back.

“Don’t, Kalantan, that’s cruel and stupid,” the blonde woman exclaimed as if her hand had been pricked with a pin. “You’re stupid and cruel, Kalantan.”

The woman’s voice was wooden and harsh as if she had water gurgling in her throat. Her eyes were glassy and her fingers contracted as if she were about to grab someone by the arm.

The violin seemed to be at death’s door.

The woman fell back in a state of nervous frenzy. Kalantan took the cocaine box from the surgeon’s hands and put some up the nostrils of the trembling woman, who with lined brow and terrified eyes went on hissing: “You’re wicked, wicked.”

Tito rose and went to the trapdoor. Neither the violinist nor his instrument were visible through the opening, though every now and then he caught a brief glimpse of the bow.

“She’s coming round,” Kalantan said, handing back the gold box to its owner.

The poison made the woman feel better for the moment. The wrinkles vanished from her brow, her fingers relaxed and an almost calm expression returned to her eyes.

“You’re very kind to me, my dear Kalantan,” she murmured. “Forgive me.” And she started to weep.

Kalantan picked her up by her bare, damp armpits, as if she were a little girl, and made her sit by her side.

“Poor darling, you’ve quite spoilt your make-up. Stop crying and, whatever you do, don’t laugh,” she said.

Kalantan knew all about these crises. She knew that weeping was followed by convulsions more dreadful than despair, by laughter that consisted of sobs. The woman would laugh or cry with the whole of her being, her livid mouth contracted into a grimace. She would be in a state of terrified gaiety, or grief-stricken hilarity, as if she were looking at a corpse dressed as a clown playing a ferocious pantomime with a lizard.

The man who always went to sleep went on sleeping.

The astronomer had taken a rose from the bunch and plunged it in ether. He inhaled it voluptuously, looking at it with ecstasy on his face. His left leg was stretched out on the floor and quivered convulsively as if as the result of some electromagnetic phenomenon. The mummies’ gallery were silent; one of them, after pricking himself with a syringe, did not have the strength to put it back, having been immediately overwhelmed by a feeling of stupefying bliss. The surgeon, who had preserved some traces of dignity, started talking about painting in order to create the impression that some remnants of clarity still remained in his head.

“I detect a Norwegian element in Van Dongen,” he said. “In my opinion he uses too many warm tones and too much white lead; and there’s a lack of stereoscopy in the position of the hands. What do you think?”

“What I think, my dear doctor,” the artist replied, “is that the latest method of treating arteriosclerosis is sound. The patient’s eye must be inoculated with horse kidneys and inhalations of hot vitriol must be put in his eyes. My own advice would be also to give him an injection of potassium chlorate and ipecacuanha between the first and second vertebrae.”

“What rubbish are you talking?” the surgeon exclaimed.

“I was only paying you back for the rubbish you talked about painting.”

The painter rose to his feet.

The male dancer announced a Bengal dance. He wore a white silk turban with a big brilliant and enormous plume. The woman, who was completely nude and depilated, wore a close-fitting golden cap that came down in two flaps over her cheeks to accentuate the oval line. Her bronzy yellow flesh gleamed and quivered with her feline movements. The spring-like, darting movements of her body alternated with brief, sinister pauses; like a young jaguar that hesitates before it pounces. In her eyes, heavily outlined with antimony, there was a veiled, drugged voluptuousness. Her skin exuded an ambiguous but strong perfume of saffron, sandalwood and benzoin. In her brownish face with its green reflections, the whiteness of her teeth looked like an ivory paperknife held between her open lips. Her arms turned and twisted and intertwined, clung to her neck, slipped down her sides, wound over her belly and writhed like two snakes whose heads were simulated by the fingers she stretched and clenched, adorned by two luminous chalcedonies that were as fascinating and as cold as two hypnotized eyes. The young jaguar’s body struggled wildly in the coils and the glazed smile twisted into a deathly grimace.

Those death throes full of a convulsive and arid eroticism were a marvelous evocation of all the fabulous mysteries of the jungle, far superior to an interminable lecture on India with slides.

Tito, carried away by the dancer’s legs, said: “Look at those slender ankle bones. Ankle bones are what excite me most in women. The breasts, the hips, the sexual organs are of interest only to seminarists, if that.”

The music came to an end and the dancers disappeared.

A rectangular opening appeared in the ceiling to let out the poisoned air, and through it the sharp breeze of early morning entered and a patch of clear blue sky became visible. In the garden a bird sang a few notes, as cheerful, sharp and ironic as an epigram.

The sleepers started. Kalantan, lying prone on a rug, mumbled: “Close it.”

It was closed.

The only persons who were awake and almost normal were Tito and the painter.

“I have a very high opinion of your art,” Tito said, “and I’m delighted that the public follows you.”

“It’s not the public that follows us, but we that unconsciously follow the public, though apparently it’s the other way about,” the painter replied. “Haven’t you ever seen a flea circus at a fair, with tame fleas pulling tiny aluminum carts? The flea seems to be pulling the cart, doesn’t it? But actually the cart is on an incline and pushes the flea ahead of it. I should never have believed that the time would come when I would paint the portraits of Asian monarchs and presidents. I thought I’d always remain a caricaturist for humorous journals or a magazine illustrator or a painter of cabaret scenery. That’s why I adopted the absurd pseudonym of Triple Sec. But adopting a pseudonym is like being tattooed; you do it lightheartedly, and then you’re stuck with it for life. I have many journalist friends, and if I’ve been a success it’s partly due to them, because of the publicity they gave me. In the absence of publicity merit isn’t enough.”

“I know,” said Tito, who was ceasing to see things straight. “Publicity’s essential. If Jesus Christ became famous, it was thanks to the apostles, his twelve great publicity agents.”

When Pietro Nocera heard Tito mention Jesus Christ he pulled himself together, went over to him and said: “When you start referring to the Bible, you have more cocaine than gray matter in your head. Sit down.”

And with a push that was more vigorous than gentle he caused him quietly to subside between two piles of cushions.

An invisible fan began to hum. The astronomer, puzzled, looked all round him as if he were wondering whether it was an auditory illusion. But the man who always went to sleep awoke at that moment and said of the steady hum:

“Those butterflies would have done better to stay at home on the Orinoco.”

The painter knelt beside Tito and said: “I’ve also been greatly aided by women. Women are a great help in getting on in the world. If you don’t know what to do in a difficult situation, ask a woman.”

“I know,” said Tito, muttering indistinctly, leaving out syllables and alternating between low tones and a high falsetto. “I know. From crimes of high treason, in which international hetairae are used to wheedle their war plans out of enemy generals, all the way back to Eve, who acted as intermediary between the serpent and man, women have always and at all times been highly successful at the dirtiest deeds. And I’m not surprised that they should have helped a pig of a painter like you.”

The painter did not react. He wouldn’t have had the strength, and besides, cocaine gave him a sense, not just of euphoria, but of boundless optimism, and a special kind of receptivity to insults, which were converted in his ears into courteous compliments.

He smiled.

Everything in the room had become phantasmagoric: human voices gave forth non-human sounds; the light coming from numerous sources and reflected again and again had the wavering liquid transparency of an aquarium; straight lines bent; a vague, flowing motion replaced solidity and seemed to breathe life into lifeless objects; and all the people, with their slow, flaccid movements, who drooped, fell and writhed on the floor among the multi-colored cushions with disheveled hair, half naked and surrounded by broken glasses, were like creatures in an aquarium whose liquid environment softened and slowed down every movement.

The greenish carpet, splashed with spilled liquor, was like a muddy ocean floor on which the cushions were shells and the women’s loosened hair the fibrous tufts of byssus or the fabulous vegetation of submarine landscapes.

Meanwhile the excited and exciting music went on. A blind violinist was playing a melancholy gypsy tune without realizing that he was performing to an audience of corpses. No one talked now. Every so often there would be some sinister noise: the impact of a knife on a statue, or a barely audible moan. Was someone dying in the room? The shaggy curtains that acted as a doorway trembled, concealing who knew what menacing mysteries. The light floor that separated the room from the basement underneath seemed to be affected by a slow, rhythmical breathing — low notes lowered it and high notes raised it. If for any reason the light had gone out at that moment, all the people in the room would have gone mad, and when the light came back the big mirrors might well have been splashed with blood.

Kalantan lay on the floor with her face, breast, stomach, thighs, knees and the instep of one foot on the carpet. The other foot rested on the ankle. Her pose was perfectly symmetrical, as if it had been designed by an artist who liked balanced composition. The thin ankles and slender calves were favored with graceful tendons and healthy muscles; squeezing them would surely have made the same sound as squeezing fresh bread.

Tito lay near her, with his face close to her legs. His eyes were flooded with green, the iridescent green of her silk stockings. The closeness of his eyes to the silk and flesh on which he was concentrating produced a fantastically distorted image; that shining, emerald green object, suffused with a warm feminine perfume, was a sweet cyclopic hill, where the atmosphere was filled with the odor of young flesh.

The woman was plunged in an almost cataleptic sleep.

Slowly, with hesitant fingers, he raised her skirt to halfway up her thigh to savor the progressive revelation. Her stockings were held up by a light chain of platinum and pearls with a buckle decorated with Armenian symbols. Gently, religiously, as if he were shelling an almond or uncovering a sacred relic, he folded the stocking back on itself, rolled it back halfway down the calf, and contemplated the charming concavity at the back of the knee — concavities in women are far more exciting than convexities; its boundaries were marked by two tendons as slender as bow strings.

It formed a magnificent goblet.

A glass of champagne, still untouched and unbroken, was waiting humbly beside him. There were traces of foam at the edges, and rare bubbles rose and disappeared when they reached the surface. With trembling hands Tito took it by the slender stem and poured the contents into that sweet cavity without spilling a drop; the woman did not move; the back of her knee was as big as an open mouth.

“Kalantan,” he moaned.

He bent over that mouth of white flesh and with closed eyes took the champagne into his own feverishly dry mouth.

“Kalantan,” he moaned.

He seemed to be drinking from a magnolia.

“Kalantan, beautiful, marvelous Kalantan.”

The woman did not even tremble when Tito collapsed on top of her with his mouth on her flesh, moaning: “Kalantan.”

Someone again opened a glass rectangle in the ceiling. It was nearly dawn; the last stragglers among the stars flickered exhaustedly in the absinthe-colored sky.

A motor-horn sounded reveille in the Avenue des Champs Elysées. Aurora’s two horses, Lightning and Phaeton, are no longer enough for her; to announce the arrival of day she needs the eighty horsepower of a long, open tourer, gliding on soft tires, which she drives herself with her “rosy fingers,” made still more rosy by the enamel of a skilful manicure.