Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (26 page)

I had come to the end of my tobacco, and I asked Reguera for some.

“I have some,” he said, “but it’s got marijuana in it.”

I took it, albeit fearfully, because I know the effects of that inebriating weed, and I lay back to smoke.

Immediately, the priest was snoring, but I couldn’t sleep.

All was silent in the forest, but it was a fearsome silence, in the pale light of the moon. Suddenly I heard in the distance a sound like a long, ululating moan, which soon became a chorus of howls. I knew that sinister music of these savage forests: it was the howling of the coyote.

When I realized that the sounds were getting closer, I got up. My head was light, and I felt queasy. I remembered the príest’s marijuana. Might that be it?

The howls grew louder. Without waking old Reguera I picked up my revolver and crept over to the edge of the clearing where the danger seemed to lie. I walked a bit farther, and even went a way into the woods, until I saw a kind of glow that was not from the moon, for the moonlight in the clearing had been silvery, while this, inside the woods, was gold. I continued on, deeper and deeper into the woods, until I heard the vague murmur of human voices alternating from time to time with the howls of the coyotes. I advanced as far as I could. And this is what I saw: A huge stone idol, which was idol and altar at the same time, rose in the midst of that glow that I have only barely described.

It was impossible to see anything clearly. Two serpent heads, which were like the arms and tentacles of the block of stone, joined at the top, above a kind of enormous fleshless skull, around which there was a braid, or wreath, of chopped-off hands on a necklace of pearls, and under that I saw, as though alive, a monstrous movement.

But above all, I observed a number of Indians, of the same group as those who had been carrying our equipment, silently and hieratically circling that living altar.

Living, because as I looked closely, and now recalling my special readings, I became convinced that that was an altar to Teoyoamiqui, the Mexican goddess of death. And that upon that rock there writhed living serpents, which gave the spectacle a macabre and horrific air.

I stepped forward. Not howling, but instead in mortal silence, a pack of coyotes appeared, and the canine beasts surrounded the mysterious altar. I noticed that the serpents were now writhing in a ball, and that at the foot of the ophidian block, a body was wriggling, the body of a man. It was Mr. Perhaps!

I huddled behind a tree trunk with my terrified silence. I believed I was having an hallucination, but what actually was there was that circle formed by those New World wolves, those howling coyotes more sinister than the wolves of Europe.

The next day, when we reached the camp, the doctor had to be called for me.

I asked about Padre Reguera.

“Colonel Reguera,” I was told by the person beside me, “is busy just now. There are still three left to go to the firing squad.”

There came to my brain, as though written in letters of blood:
Huitzilopoxtli.

THE CASE OF MADEMOISELLE AMÉLIE

That Doctor Z—is illustrious, eloquent, dashing, that his voice is deep and vibrant, his gestures hypnotic and mysterious, especially after the publication of his work
The Sculpture of Daydreams
—these things, you might be able to deny or accede to with certain reservations. But that his bald head is unique, remarkable, lovely, solemn, lyrical if you like—oh,
that,
you could never deny, I am certain! For how could one deny the light of the sun, the fragrance of roses, and the narcotic properties of certain verses?

Very well then: Last night, shortly after we saluted the midnight bells with a salvo of twelve champagne corks of the finest Röderer, in that lovely rococo dining room belonging to the sybaritic Jew Lowensteiger, the bald pate of Doctor Z—, haloed with pride, raised its burnished ivory orb, whose mirrorlike surface seemed to contain, by some caprice of the light, two sparks that formed, I know not how, a shape very like the glowing horns of Moses. The doctor directed his grand gestures and wise words in my direction. For there had issued from my lips, almost always closed, some banal phrase. This one, for example:

“Oh, if only time would stop!”

The look the doctor gave me and the sort of smile that adorned his mouth after hearing my exclamation, I confess would have unnerved anyone.

“Dear sir,” he said, savoring his champagne, “were I not totally disillusioned with youth, did I not know that all of you who are beginning to live are already dead—that is, dead in the soul, without faith, without enthusiasm, without ideals, gray-haired on the inside, no more than mere masks of life—yes, did I not know that, yet not see in you something more than a fin-de-siècle man, I would tell you that that phrase you have just spoken, ‘Oh, if time would only stop!’ has found in me its most satisfactory response.”

“Doctor!”

“Yes, I repeat—your skepticism prevents me from speaking as on another occasion I might.”

“I believe,” I answered in a firm, serene voice, “in God and His Church. I believe in miracles. And I believe, too, in the supernatural.”

“Ah, well. . . . That being the case, I will tell you all something that will make you smile. And I hope my narration will also make you think.”

Not counting Minna, our host’s daughter, four of us had remained behind in the dining room: Riquet the journalist, Pureau the abbot just sent in by Hirch, the good doctor, and I. In the distance we heard in the gaiety of the salons the usual words of the first hour of the new year:
Hap-py new year! Happy new year! Feliz año nuevo!

The doctor went on:

“Who among men is so wise as to say
This is so
? Nothing is known for a certainty.
Ignoramus et ignorabimus.
Who among men understands the concept of time? Who knows precisely what space is? Science proceeds by fits and starts, groping in the darkness, poking along like a blind man, and it sometimes thinks it has conquered when it manages to glimpse some vague glimmer of the true light. No one has ever been able to pull the snake’s mouth from its tail in that endless symbolic circle. From the thrice-great Hermes to our own day, the human hand has been able to lift barely one corner of the mantle that covers the eternal Isis. Nothing has been learned for an absolute certainty about the three great expressions of Nature: facts, laws, and principles. I, who have attempted to delve into the immense field of mystery, have lost almost all my illusions.

“I, who have been called wise in illustrious universities and voluminous books; I, who have consecrated my life to the study of humankind, its origins, its ends; I, who have penetrated the Kabbala, the mysteries of the occult and of theosophy, who have passed from the material plane of the sage to the astral plane of the wizard and the spiritual plane of the magus, who know how Apollonius of Tyana and Paracelsus worked their wonders, and who, in our own day, have aided the Englishman Crookes in his laboratory; I, who have delved into the Buddhist’s Karma and the Christian’s mysticism, and know both the unknown science of the fakirs and the theology of the Roman priests—I tell you that
we sages have seen not a single ray of the supreme light,
and that the immensity and eternity of the Mystery form a single, frightful truth.”

Then, addressing himself to me:

“Do you know what the principles of man are? Grupa, jiba, linga, sharira, kama, rupa, manas, buddhi, atma; that is, the body, the
force vital,
the astral body, the animal soul, the human soul, the spiritual force, and the spiritual essence . . .”

Seeing Minna put on an expression almost of desolation, I dared interrupt the doctor:

“I think you were going to explain to us that time . . .”

“Well,” he said, “since you seem not to like dissertations for prologues, let’s get right to the story I was going to tell you, which is the following: . . .”

 

Twenty-three years ago, in Buenos Aires, I met the Revall family, whose founder, a delightful French gentleman, had held a consular post during the times of the dictator Rosas. Our houses adjoined one another, I was young and enthusiastic, and in terms of beauty the three
mademoiselles
Revall would have given the three Graces a good run for their money. There is no need to mention, I suppose, that very few sparks were needed to light the bonfire of love. . . .

(
Lo-o-o-ove
, pronounced the obese sage, the thumb of his right hand hanging in the pocket of his waistcoat as his swift fat fingers drummed on his potent abdomen.)

I frankly confess that no one of them caught my fancy more than the others, and that Claire, Joséphine, and Amélie all held the same place in my heart. Or perhaps not the same place, because the both sweet and ardent eyes of Amélie, her gay red laughter, her childish piquancy. . . . I suppose I must say that she was my favorite. She was the youngest; she was barely twelve, and I was past thirty. For that reason, and because the young creature had a mischievous, jolly way about her, I treated her like the child she was, and between the other two shared out my incendiary looks, my sighs, my squeezings of the hand, and even my serious promises of matrimony—in a word, I confess to you all a most reprehensible and horrid bigamy of passion. But oh, little Amélie! . . .

When I went to the house, it was she who ran to greet me, with her smiles and her flattery: “Have you forgotten my
bonbons
?” Oh, that sacramental question! I would feel overcome with joy, after my somewhat stiffly polite greetings, and I would shower the girl with rich rose-flavored caramels and delicious chocolate drops which she, open-mouthed, would savor with a loud palatal, lingual, and dental music. The reason behind my feelings for this little girl with the knee-length skirts and pretty eyes, I cannot explain to you, but the fact is that when my studies took me away from Buenos Aires, I feigned emotion when I bade farewell to Claire, who would look at me with large pained and sentimental eyes; I gave a false squeeze to the hands of Joséphine, who held between her teeth, so as not to cry, a batiste handkerchief; and upon the forehead of Amélie I bestowed a kiss, the purest yet most ardent, the most chaste yet wanton of all I have given in my life.

And so I embarked for Calcutta, precisely like your beloved and admired General Mansilla when he departed for the Orient, himself full of youth and his pockets full of resounding new gold coins. I sailed away, thirsting for a taste of the occult sciences, and it was my intention to study among the mahatmas of India those things that impoverished Western science still cannot teach us. The epistolary friendship that I had kept up with Madame Blavatsky had opened many doors for me in the land of the fakirs, and more than one guru, knowing my hunger for knowledge, put himself at my disposal, offering to guide me along the path to the sacred fountain of truth, and although my lips believed they would sate their thirst in its cool diamantine waters, there was in fact no quenching my bottomless thirst. I sought, I sought with great determination, what my eyes yearned to contemplate, the Zoroastrian Keherpas,
²
the Persian Kalep, the Kovei-Khan of Indian philosophy, the Paracelsan arch-oenus, Swedenborg’s limbus.
³
I listened to the word of the Buddhist monks in the deep forests of Tibet; I studied the ten Sephiroth of the Kaballa, from that which symbolizes limitless space to that which, called Malkuth, contains the principle of life. I studied the spirit, air, water, fire, the heights, the depths, the Orient, the Occident, the North, and the South, and I almost came to understand and even know, intimately, Satan, Lucifer, Astaroth, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Belphegor, Mabema, Lilith, Adramelch, and Ba’al. In my desperate eagerness for comprehension, in my insatiable desire for wisdom, just when I believed I had achieved my ambitions, I would find signs of my weakness and manifestations of my poverty, and those grand ideas—God, space, time—would form a most impenetrable haze before my eyes. . . .

I traveled through Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. I helped Colonel Olcot found the theosophical circle in New York. And of all of this—the doctor suddenly asked, staring balefully at blond Minna—do you know what true science and immortality is? A pair of blue eyes . . . or black ones!

 

“And the end of the story?” the young lady sweetly groaned.

The doctor, yet more seriously than before, said:

I vow to you, gentlemen and lady, that what I am telling is absolutely true. The end of the story? Just over a week ago, I returned to Argentina, after twenty-three years of absence. I’ve grown fat, quite fat indeed, and as bald as your kneecap, but in my heart the flame of love, that vestal of the aging bachelor, still lives. And of course the first thing I did was find out the whereabouts of the Revall family. “The Revall girls!” I was told, “the girls in the Amélie Revall case!” and these words were accompanied with a special smile. I came to suspect that poor Amélie, the poor child. . . . And I searched and I searched until I found the house.

When I entered, I was greeted by an old negro butler, who took my card and asked me to step into a parlor in which everything bore a hue of sadness. On the walls, the mirrors were covered with crêpe veils of mourning, and two large portraits, in which I recognized the two older sisters, looked out, melancholy and dark, over the piano. Soon, Claire and Joséphine:

“Oh, my friend, oh my friend!”

That was all. Then, a conversation filled with reticences and timidities, broken phrases and sad, very sad smiles of intelligence. From all I could manage to piece together, I gathered that neither of these young women had married. As for Amélie, I dared not ask. . . . My question might strike those poor creatures as some sort of bitter irony, remind them perhaps of some terrible and irremediable disgrace and dishonor. . . . And just then I saw a little girl come skipping in, with a body and face exactly—but exactly, my friends—like those of my poor Amélie. She skipped over to me, and in that other girl’s very voice exclaimed: