Palafox

12

Palafox blows his entrance. We give a reception in his honor, to present him to the world, put ourselves out for him, all the leading experts are there, stately, at their peaks, footmen by their sides, all gathered to celebrate him, and just moments after getting there, Palafox decapitates Madame Franc-Nohain’s Scottish terrier with one bite, the last thing he should have done. Her Scottish terrier meant the world to her. Métalo, she had called him Métalo, derisively, Métalo followed her everywhere, he ate from her plate, one pea for each of hers, he slept in her room, quite a loss for the president’s wife. And if he had stopped there it might have been forgotten, but Palafox made more mistakes, as if at will, many faux pas, upending chairs and side tables, without releasing Métalo’s head from which a mischievous eye hung, someone should wipe up all this blood.

Algernon’s salon is mobbed. A man in a black morning coat and white gloves moves from group to group with his platter, without a word, but each understands, it seems, who beg of him the alms of a toast, or an olive, or a shrimp or a round cake, without anything to say either, without exhorting him to work like everyone else, with great tact actually, with great compassion, going so far as to not look him in the face so that he needn’t even have to lower his gaze. Other than the four zoologists already there at La Gloriette, we should mention the Franc-Nohains, the Swanscombes, the Fontechevades, the Sadarnacs, a few Luzzattos. The Palackys also came, the Paladrus, the Palamas, the Palamás, the Palatins and the Palermes, friends all. General Fontechevade, the fighting getting entrenched, was able to break free. Many of our invitees, who had not yet met him, find Palafox disappointing and don’t hide it. We would have forgiven his ignorance of custom, one had thought he would have felt some discomfort at the beginning, before learning to hide his boredom, to laugh and lie with some finesse, to submit to our cushions and customs, but he’s gone too far, him who we take for an herbivore, to gulp down Métalo’s head right now shows a total lack of willingness to tolerate our society that our solicitude is brought immediately back into question. In the same way, coming from where he does, a certain sloppiness of dress would have been tolerated. We suspected that the fabric and the cut of his suit would have brought a smile to people’s faces, that his thick shoes, his poor tangled tie, his hat from another century would stand out amidst the elegant finery of our guests (thus the dress of Madame Franc-Nohain is decorated with a gold lamé train, supported by five ladies in waiting whose more modest veils, in silver lamé, seem like shimmering cascades dripping from the pool of their shoulders — we will allow ourselves to borrow that puddle from realist literature — coming down to refresh the hands of her hand-maidens, five teams of three, themselves dressed by an inventive couturier. We understand that it would be difficult for the president’s wife to slip away unnoticed with all these people around, despite her despair, especially if she expected to jump out a window). Our indulgence was all Palafox’s. But he went too far. May the rhino, or the hippo — since it is impossible to talk of the one without mentioning the other — wallow in the marny waters to escape maddening insects, the many parasites that burrow beneath their skin, it’s only fair that they would, but ours, bathed daily by Olympia, never had to defend himself against dust mites. Palafox armored in black mud makes a terrible impression on our guests, just as the clown with a painted face on his powdered counterpart impresses, disastrously.

The chaos is indescribable — if you’ve skimmed no more than two books you know that this formula I’ve used trumpets a particular state of affairs, scenes of meticulously described disaster, an inventory of broken or scattered objects and live reports of the crowd’s movements: Palafox runs on the long buffet table, does some gardening in the salad bowls, tastes all the dishes, bouquets, worse, cuts the carotid artery of genies Algernon bottled forty years earlier, unstable and aggressive in their time, improved by the humid straw of his cellar, each day gaining in respectability, to finish thus, trickling around shards of broken glass, drowning in their own blood. Palafox drinks from the puddle. Now he takes the opportunity to throw fruit, pastries, whatever he gets his mitts on, glasses, knives, ashtrays, our guests protect themselves as best they can, those who brought their mothers use them as human shields. Palafox’s behavior does not augur well the outcome of the war. Laugh if you want to, professor Zeiger continues, but without horuspication the Roman Empire wouldn’t have spread past its seven hills. Priests read birds’ flights, appetites, songs. No general would go into battle without consulting a bird. They would wait if necessary, this one buffing his shield, the other sharpening his double-edged sword, waiting for a more propitious hour to take flight. They triumphed without encountering resistance, they met no match, undone their enemies capitulated, they dominated the Occident for five centuries. Horuspication also directed matters of the state. A cock picked the successor to emperor Valens, in 379. An alphabet had been drawn on the ground, a grain of wheat placed on every letter, then let the bird go. t,h,e,o,d, he pecked without hesitation. They bowed. It was done according to avian will and Theodosius, first named co-emperor of the Orient, became in 394 the single sovereign of the empire. He recognized the authority of the bishop of Rome, guardian of the true faith, and was also on this occasion the first to speak the word ‘pope,’ as if by chance, because it all fits together, which is also the common name of a bird, the whitethroat with brightly colored plumage, I will stop my lesson there since you seem convinced. Palafox’s behavior, believe me, augurs nothing good, it would be better to cease maneuvers.

A chase scene in the salon. Algernon and Chancelade were on the hunt. Blinded by the electric light, the animal begins to fly headfirst into the walls; beneath the dress of Madame Fontechevade where he hides, cave dwelling creature accustomed to dark and to lichen-roughened walls, Palafox gets around far better, digs into the calf and thigh of the general’s wife, spreads vermillion in the shadowy lace, and let us note that he has already lost his pursuers long ago. When he reaches her navel, that most ancient of scars — where surgeons may one day succeed in screwing a lecherous eye — waiting wide for visitors — Palafox hesitates to make contact, and then no, his path is chosen, he will follow the crease in her belly to the side, the dorsal spine to the nape, in the wake of shivers find himself on the bare shoulder, uncovered, and from there, secreting his liana, reach the ground, and from there the wall, which he scales, then the ceiling, where he catches his breath. Madame Fontechevade twists in her armchair, occasionally a little nervous laugh escapes her lips, a long moan, then the cries begin again. She would no better and to no clearer end negotiate in hell. She puts her hands under her dress; clawed fingers, fists clenched that no longer recognize the damage they are doing to her own body, all the blows land, and in her distraction, Madame Fontechevade believes she has the horrible beast, of which she refuses to be anything less than unforgiving, rousing more screams from him, tearing him to pieces, turning him to gruel, and the more her pain increases the harder she tries, while Palafox, suspended from a nearly invisible silky thread oscillates gently above her head as if to tell us that were we to drill there we would find a well.

A wild animal remains a wild animal, Algernon, he must be slaughtered. Franc-Nohain shares the general’s opinion, a wild animal remains a wild animal, and we are not going to cut to the story of his head-to-head with a crazy loner, the year before, but I hit him twice, without carefully aiming at first, my buckshot had about as much effect on him as a bucketful of confetti, he bowled the dogs over, I knelt to aim, he rushed at me, I shouldered the gun — the president’s hunting exploits prompt admiration, but his presence among us gets in the way of the dramatic progression of the story, as we are able to divine that the writer whose autobiography weighs on our knees will not die of the whooping cough he contracts at the end of chapter one, despite the talent with which he describes his agony for us and the anguish of his family it is clear that Franc-Nohain will win the day, if not we would all be there listening to the wild boar, I rushed at him, he aimed, his second shot went into the branches, I was on him already, tearing his chest and sides, he resisted, I crushed his nose into his cheeks, he fell silent, I tore out his liver, spleen, intestine, intestines, large and small, Messieurs-dames, your winding intestines, so many unnecessary detours, the itinerary of some gold convoy for routine cargo, with all due respect, we see straight away that this sort of installation wasn’t put in yesterday, I got tangled up in these guts, I dragged the cadaver of the president for several meters before becoming untangled — the second shot hit him in the jaw without slowing him down, he pushed straight ahead, his fur stiff and vermillion, like the bloody mane of a cannonball which has just removed eighteen heads and continues on its path, I had just the time to pull my knife, he was on me already, tearing my chest and sides, three times I sunk the blade into his throat, he collapsed. I was a bit sad at first not to be able to keep his bloody head, at the very least to put it in a bottle, but it would have spoiled the collection of trophies that decorate the walls of my library, tiger heads, elk, swordfish, in addition to the death mask of my poor mother, whose every feature we knew, she who was peacefully extinguished and whose smile I am not ready to forget, thanks to this mold, the pretty smile she had when she came to kiss me goodnight and, before leaving my room, was willing to check under my bed to see if a wolf was hiding there, and kissed me again, then, before leaving the room, was willing to check again, ready to face this wolf barehanded, if he had been there, and perhaps she would have won, so give me his head, huh mom? For my collection. All the same I kept a souvenir of the boar in question, instead of his head, his gut, which I inflate from time to time to amuse my grandchildren, when I’m out of balloons.

But Palafox has his defenders, among whom is Madame Swanscombe, a bit intimidated though she may be to grab the reins of the narrative so late in our journey, but whose voice grows stronger with each word she now speaks, aren’t you afraid of committing a sacrilegious act by executing Palafox? I have skimmed the preceding pages, and it occurs to me that you haven’t bothered to consider for one moment the significance of his presence among us. Do you have any idea what you are on the brink of destroying? You believe you are dealing with crude and chaotic stuff, and yet you aren’t the least surprised to hear the beast whimper in his sleep. This living room’s upheaval is a devastated corner of the world, you would see the cyclone responsible punished, you refuse to admit that he belongs here, that we in fact are the undesirables, the vandals, the troublemakers, with our flower arrangements, our peach preserves, our mahogany end tables, our walnut drawers, our screens, our umbrellas, our parasols, all our artifices of shadow and light, can’t you see that Palafox is only here to treat wood as wood, glass like sand, the only one in this wax-polished room to think about the bees that burnished it. Madame Swanscombe grows bolder. She strides the length of the room descanting her text and punctuating her words with one unwavering gesture: the dagger she draws from her belt transforms into a silk fan above her head, then the arm falls and tightens, the hand opening and shaking it off. All this apostolic rhetoric is only suggestive of course, but little by little we are swayed by our friend’s conviction, threat and charm work their magic, the old accomplices that serve our idols and their makers, recruiting hearts and minds, that root the idea of God in a pebble and bring to power an athletic tyrant, blonde and bright-eyed whose political program would be contained in this inadmissible proposition, eliminate from the surface of the Earth all men neither short nor weak, dark, with slanting forelocks and straight mustaches. But our charming and threatening friend is only trying to save Palafox. She mentions people of high culture who keep pandas, cows or crocodiles as sacred and woe betide the malefactor who spills their blood. Haven’t you already seen Palafox or any old ladybug rebel against their fate and dispute the universe? They behave like creatures, they have no pretensions of changing the earth beneath their feet, to conquer outer space, nor that of measuring time, they scrape together seconds, they are the true owners of this world, the legitimate tenants, God’s true champions.

But then, dear Madame — this crude reply emanating from the general, unsurprising in its crudity even if his kepi stung with stars gives him, from afar, the appearance of a poet lost in his astral dream — do tell us why Palafox only kneels to drink, only joins his hands to break open nuts, and doesn’t pretend to follow any sort of religious practice? Why, among the animals who secrete their lairs into being, those who, more than all their counterparts, should give thanks to their creator, not one of them ever thought it useful to burden themselves with a steeple?

The following reply, from out of the mouth of Baruglio, is just as upsetting — Unless, dear Madame, Palafox is not himself descended from Olympus in the shape of an animal to seduce and carry off Maureen, so great is the beauty of this young mortal, in which case I would wager on Zeus whose tricks we can see in Palafox, this new metamorphosis would betray him as surely as his emblematic lightening-bolt, were he to wield it in our presence, one more metamorphosis in a long line of others, the swan that Leda loved, the eagle that ravished Ganymede, the white bull with gold horns that carried off Europa, the cuckoo that perched on Hera’s lap, the serpent that married Persephone, the jig is up, I have unmasked the God of gods.

More seriously, professor Pierpont will say a few words on the subject of metempsychosis — he clears his throat, that done, he thanks us for putting our pencil sharpeners away, yes, we’re listening — so the fallen souls will be sent to do penitence on the Earth, prisoners of the crude animal envelope in which they are sealed, dominated by basic instincts, condemned to ruminate hay. Think about that before destroying Palafox. Perhaps he shelters the humiliated soul of a sinner that we will expose, in cutting his punishment short, to God knows what worse torments, eternal damnation, trial by fire, eternal wandering in a misty, ruined land. You will doubtless think that this believed assassin, this barbarian, this debauched monk, this bag-thief, after all, merits no pity, but — and there Pierpont slips, just as the hippo inevitably occurs in the mind of he who thinks of the rhino, as we have already noticed, and then storms the lips, in the same way the professor raises the initial subject of metempsychosis, and soon mentions an entirely different hypothesis, reincarnation, as if his knowledge of zoology made him an expert there too — he could also be a righteous man, one of our valiant ancestors, Fontechevade, or your dear wife, Buffoon, in a transitional situation, awaiting his next human incarnation: to destroy Palafox would then be a crime that we would ourselves pay for, in our lives to come.

Madame Fontechevade blushes three times over, out of shame, anger and urticaria, three very nearly imperceptible reactions on this naturally crimson face, opens her mouth to speak next, and a terrible racket of broken dishes reaches our ears, at the same moment, from the neighboring room, priority given over to events, the general’s wife understands. Out of respect for all those who delighted to hear her, were there one such person, comfortably settled in the salon, feet up near the hearth, here, in quick order, is what Madame Fontechevade should have said: by sacrificing Palafox to the gods, we will obtain their mercy for our faults and their support in battle. And now, please join us next door. Taking advantage of our inattention, but of course metaphysics owes everything to scatterbrains, Palafox slipped into the blue salon where Algernon displays his earthenware, his unique artifacts, Hannongs, Clérissys, Fontanas, Masséot Abaquenes. Each day, our friend dusts them, he washes his hands in milk before picking them up, elbows held tightly to sides, he keeps a lid on his gestures, handles the items carefully, like delicate little girls, they are the apple of his eye. The rare visitors admitted in the blue salon are given a thousand instructions on the threshold, roll up your sleeves, make sure your laces are tied, step prudently forward, move like a fox but with your tail tucked in, please, sneeze into your pocket and don’t even breathe. Even a butterfly could do damage in here, even a mosquito, and so here’s Palafox. The pachyderm has broken everything, tureens, tea-pots, mustard bowls, compote cozies, sugar bowls, hanaps, ewers, Delft plates, treasures of Urbino, wig-holders, shaving bowls, tobacco-holders. Sugar-sprinklers and saltshakers pulverized, the animal upsets all the tables, rattles the walls, shelves collapse, two decorative polychrome pharmacy jars, with stickers on their bellies reading Onc. of Mercury and Elec. of Theriac, break at Olympia’s feet. Algernon is livid, the veins in his temples seem drawn with manganese violet, like the arabesques and leaves of eighteenth century Strasburg ornamentalists, while three hairs stuck to his forehead imitate the cracks in the enamel — it must be that his heart has stopped beating, or that Algernon will fall in pieces as well, among the white shards of his pottery. Swanscombe pieces together the two halves of a bidet bowl, then adjusts them so as to reconstitute the group of musical angels which decorate the background, it’s reparable. We can also save an oil-vessel and its cruets, not, though, a handle and the two tops, a cup and saucer, and two painted plates, the first representing a circle of Chinese children beneath a sky full of birds, lightly nicked, and the other, intact, Mirabeau’s tomb beneath an unreadable revolutionary phrase, all around it three kinds of alternating emblems, a sword, a cross, a bouquet, a sword, a cross, a bouquet, a sword, a cross.

Palafox signed his death sentence, the sentence that satisfied everyone, including Madame Swanscombe, including Maureen and Olympia now disillusioned, let us now presently decide the means of execution. Just try and quarter an eel, we renounce the pike as well since it wouldn’t impress an armadillo, the axe which brushes against the turtle, and the noose, of course, the giraffe is everything but gallows-food. He deserves to die a rat’s death, but we don’t want to use poison, we aren’t assassins, instead let’s give these two boxes to Franc-Nohain, his wife’s a pain, the young woman he’s provided for for the past three years has just blown in his hair, the day before yesterday, for the first time, and he’s pretty confident about what will come next. Rifle, garrote, cleaver, Sadarnac only has eyes for the trident. Perhaps the pyre, why not, since the salamander, (if we have enough time and room left to tear down one more silly belief), and without claiming to compare logs and coal, grills as well as anything else over a fire. But Ziegler’s suggestion, to disembowel Palafox, is the most seductive of all, the examination of his entrails will offer us so much new knowledge and far more than what may be gained by watching his behavior, and from which investigation we will be able to choose a strategy to repel the enemy that has occupied two thirds of our territory already, at last word, sewing death and despair, and its exotic grain in our furrowed earth, which spreads in a forced march in the direction of our coasts. The gods gave us Palafox for this purpose, so that we could know their wishes, all their future plans for the world, he shares with a fist of stars the secret of our destiny, open him up, let us discover it all, lean over him quickly, explore the fateful viscera, the heart, the stomach, the liver, the kidneys, pull them all into the light. The Roman priests, the haruspicants, who practiced this form of divination best of all recommended the veal, the colt, the lamb: grab Palafox.

But we will learn nothing. Fontechevade struck too hard. The green blood, or whatever, this juice on the wall, a bitter scent of moisture and cold wax, Palafox squashed will harm no one again. We want to see, Algernon steps in, note the death throes, aggression follows resentment. Cadavers fresh from existence do not lose their fighting reflexes immediately, their organs are bathed in venom, draw back, these posthumous nervous crises offer a unique sort of violence, entirely excusable, but dangerous for those nearby, don’t get eaten now that it’s finally over and done. And yet the animal has resigned himself to death. He is dead, Maureen says (and this final parenthesis will have to be pretty airtight to contain the tears, pure pearls that roll down her cheeks, shining still while falling with a crystal brilliance, but which form on this notebook without stains or deletions little lakes of black ink, courage, my child). Fontechevade can put his shoe back on. There really isn’t anything to fear now. Not even that of having nothing else to do. Excellent idea, Olympia: we’ll stuff Palafox.