Boitelle
Old
for you!
“Well, I had made a mistake, it was worse than I thought, much worse. Just listen. I fell back on the usual trick, I pretended to go away. Every time I left the house my wife lunched out. I need not tell you how I bribed a waiter at the restaurant so that I might catch them.
“The door of the private room was to be opened for me and I arrived at the appointed time determined to kill them both. I could imagine the whole scene as clearly as if it had already occurred. I could see myself going in. A small table covered with glasses, bottles, and plates separated her from Montina, and they would be so surprised when they saw me that they would not attempt to move. Without saying a word I would bring down the loaded stick I was carrying on the man’s head; killed by one blow, he would crumple up with his face on the table. Then, turning towards her—I would give her time—a few seconds—to understand what was happening, and to stretch her arms out to me, mad with terror, before dying in her turn. Oh I was quite ready. Strong, determined, and happy, happy to the point of intoxication. The idea of her terrified look at the raised stick, of her hands stretched out imploringly, of her strangled cry, of her face, suddenly livid and convulsed, avenged me beforehand. I had no intention of killing her at one blow! You must think me fierce, don’t you? But you don’t know what a man suffers. To think that a woman—wife or mistress—one loves is giving herself to another, surrenders herself to him as she had done to you, and accepts his kisses as she has done yours. It is terrible, appalling. Anyone who has suffered that agony is capable of anything. I am surprised there are not more murders, for all who have been betrayed—every one of them—want to kill, have gloated over the idea of death: in the solitude of their own room or on a lonely road, haunted by the hallucination of satisfied vengeance, they have in imagination either strangled the betrayer or beaten him to death.
“I arrived at the restaurant and asked whether they were there. The bribed waiter replied: ‘Yes, sir,’ and, taking me upstairs, showed me a door, saying: ‘In here.’ I grasped my stick as if my fingers were made of iron, and went in.
“The moment was well chosen. They were kissing each other, but it was not Montina. It was the General de Flèche, aged sixty-six!
“I was so sure I was going to find the other one there that I was rigid with surprise.
“Besides … besides … I don’t yet know exactly how it all happened. If I had found the other I would have been wild with rage! But this one! This old potbellied man with his hanging cheeks made me choke with disgust. She, who looked about fifteen, had given herself to this fat old man almost in his dotage, because he was a Marquis, a General, the friend and representative of dethroned kings. No, I can’t say what I felt, nor what I thought about it. I could not raise my hand against the old man. That would have been disgraceful! No, I no longer wanted to kill my own wife, but all women capable of such behaviour. I was not jealous now, I felt as full of despair as if I had seen the Horror of Horrors!
“You may say what you like about men, they are not so vile as that! If you do meet one he is held up to universal derision. The husband or lover of a old woman is more despised than a thief. We men are a decent lot, as a rule, but they, they are prostitutes with hearts full of filth. They give themselves to all men, young or old, for the most contemptible reasons, because it is their profession, their vocation, their function in life. They are the eternal, unconscious, placid prostitutes who give their bodies without disgust because it is the merchandise of love, whether they sell them to the old man with money in his pocket who hangs about the streets, or whether they give them, for the glory of it, to a lewd old monarch, or to a celebrated and repulsive old man! …”
He cried aloud like a prophet of old, in a tone of wrath, under the starry sky. With the fury of desperation he told about the exalted shame of all the mistresses of kings: the shame, considered worthy of respect of all young girls who marry old men; and the tolerance showed to all young wives who smilingly accept old men’s kisses.
As he called them up I could see them all from the beginning of time, surging around us in the Eastern night: girls, beautiful girls with vile souls like beasts who, ignoring the age of the male, are docile to senile desire. They rose up before me, the handmaids of the patriarchs praised in the Bible, Hagar, Ruth, Lot’s daughters, the dark Abigail, the virgin of Shunam whose caresses restored David to life, and all those others, young, fat, white patricians or plebeians, irresponsible females belonging to a master, the unclean flesh of submissive slaves, whether paid for in money or bought by the glamour of greatness.
I asked: “What did you do?”
“I went away,” he replied, simply. “And here I am.”
For a long time we stayed together without saying a word, just dreaming! …
I have retained an unforgettable impression of that evening. All that I had seen, felt, heard, guessed; the fishing excursion, perhaps the octopus too, and that harrowing story amid white phantoms on the neighbouring roofs, all combined to produce a unique sensation. Certain chance meetings, certain inexplicable combinations of events, contain—without any outward appearance of the unusual—a greater amount of the secret quintessence of life than is spread over whole days of ordinary happenings.
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