The Horla (4 page)

August 19
. I know … I know … I know everything! I have just read this in the
Revue du Monde Scientifique
:

And now I remember it, I remember the fine Brazilian three-master that passed by my windows as
it went up the Seine, last May 8th. And I thought it was so pretty, so white, so cheerful! The Being was on it, coming from down there, where his race was born. And he saw me! He saw my white house too; and he jumped from the ship onto the shore. Oh my God!

Now I know, I have guessed. The reign of mankind is over.

He has come, the One the primal terrors of primitive tribes dreaded, the One anxious priests exorcised, the One magicians summoned on dark nights, without ever seeing him appear, the One to whom the premonitions of adepts wandering through the world attributed all the monstrous or gracious forms of gnomes, spirits, genies, fairies, elves. After the coarse imaginings of primitive horror, more perspicacious men had a clearer presentiment of him. Mesmer guessed his existence, and for ten years now doctors have discovered, in an accurate way, the nature of his power before he himself even exercised it. They have played with this weapon of the new Lord, the domination of a mysterious will over a human soul, which turns into a slave. They called it ‘magnetism,’ ‘hypnotism,’ ‘suggestion’.… What do I know? I have seen them amuse themselves like foolish children with this terrible power. We are cursed. Mankind is cursed. He has come, the … the … what is his name … the … he seems to be shouting out his name to me, and I cannot hear it … the … yes … he
is shouting it … I am trying to hear … I can’t … again … the … Horla … I heard … the Horla … it is he … the Horla … he has come!

Now the vulture has eaten the dove, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the sharp-horned buffalo; man has killed the lion with the arrow, with the sword, with powder; but the Horla will make man into what we made the horse and the steer: his thing, his servant and his food, by the simple power of his will. Our woe is upon us.

But the animal sometimes rebels and kills the one who tamed him.… I too want to do this.… I could … but I must recognize him, touch him, see him! Scholars say that the eyes of an animal, different from our own, cannot distinguish objects as our eyes do.… And my eyes cannot distinguish this newcomer who oppresses me.

Why? Now I remember the words of the monk at Mont Saint-Michel: “Do we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Look, here is the wind, which is the strongest force in nature, which knocks men down, destroys buildings, uproots trees, whips the sea up into mountains of water, destroys cliffs, and throws great ships onto the shoals; here is the wind that kills, whistles, groans, howls—have you ever seen it, and can you see it? Yet it exists.”

And I thought further: My eye is so weak, so imperfect, that I cannot even make out solid objects,
if they are transparent as glass!… If a two-way mirror bars my way, it knocks me down, just as a bird who has flown into a room breaks his neck on the windowpanes. A thousand other things deceive our sight and lead it astray. What is so surprising about our not knowing how to perceive a new body, one that light can pass through?

A new being! Why not? Surely it had to come. Why should we be the last people? If we can’t distinguish him, as we can all the other creatures before us, it’s because his nature is more perfect, his body finer and more absolute than ours, which is so weak, so clumsily conceived, encumbered with organs that are always weary, always strained, like machinery that is too complex—our body, which lives like a plant, like an animal, feeding with difficulty on air, grass, and meat, an animal machine prey to sicknesses, deformations, putrefactions, short-winded, unstable, simple and strange, naively, poorly made, a coarse and delicate work, a rough outline of a being that could become intelligent and superb.

There are just a few of us in this world, so few species between oysters and men. Why not one more entity, now that the era is over when all the various species appeared in orderly succession?

Why not one more? And why not other trees with immense, dazzling flowers, perfuming entire regions? Why not other elements besides fire, air, earth, and water?—There are four of them, just four, those foster
parents of beings! What a pity! Why aren’t there forty elements instead, or four hundred, or four thousand? How paltry everything is, how miserly, how wretched! Stingily given, aridly invented, heavily made! Look at the elephant, the hippopotamus—such grace! The camel, such elegance!

But you’ll say, what about the butterfly? A flower that flies! I dream of one that would be as large as a hundred universes, with wings whose shape, beauty, color, and movement I cannot even describe. But I can see it … it goes from star to star, refreshing them and soothing them with the harmonious and light breath of its journey!… And the peoples up there, ecstatic and ravished, watch it go by!

What is wrong with me? It is he, the Horla, who is haunting me, making me think these mad thoughts! He is inside me, he is becoming my soul; I will kill him!

August 19
. I will kill him. I have seen him! I had sat down at my table last night, and I pretended to write with great concentration. I was well aware that he would come prowl around me, quite close, so close that I might perhaps be able to touch him, to seize
him.… And then … then, I would have the strength of the desperate. I would have my hands, my knees, my chest, my forehead, my teeth to strangle him, crush him, bite him, tear him apart.

And I watched for him with all my overexcited organs.

I had lit both my lamps, along with the eight candles on my mantelpiece, as if, in this brightness, I might expose him.

Opposite me, my bed, an old oaken four-poster; to my right, my fireplace; to my left, my door, which I had carefully shut, after having left it open for a long time, in order to lure him in; behind me, a very high wardrobe with a mirror, which I used every day to shave and dress, and in which I had the habit of looking at myself, from head to foot, every time I passed in front of it.

I was just pretending to write in order to trick him, for he too was spying on me; and suddenly, I felt, I was sure, that he was reading over my shoulder, that he was there, grazing my ear.

I stood up with my hands outstretched, turning around so quickly that I almost fell down. And? Everything there was clear as in full daylight, but I could not see myself in my mirror—it was empty, clear, profound, full of light! My image was not inside it … yet I myself was facing it! I could see the large clear glass from top to bottom. I looked at it with
terrified eyes, but dared not move forward. I did not dare to make any movement, fully aware that he was there, but that he would escape me again, he whose imperceptible body had devoured my reflection.

I was terrified. Then suddenly I began to see myself in a mist, in the depths of the mirror, in a mist as if through a sheet of water. It seemed to me that this water shimmered from left to right, slowly, making my image more precise, from second to second. It was like the end of an eclipse. Whatever was obscuring me seemed not to possess any clearly defined outlines, but just a sort of opaque transparency, little by little becoming clearer.

Finally I could distinguish myself completely, just as I do every day when I look at myself.

I had seen him! The terror of it has remained with me, and makes me tremble still.

August 20
. How can I kill him, if I cannot touch him? Poison? But he would see me mixing it in the water; and besides, will our poisons even have any effect on an imperceptible body? No … no … they cannot.… What then?

August 21
. I have had a locksmith come from Rouen, and ordered iron shutters for my bedroom, the kind certain mansions have in Paris, on the ground floor, because of fear of thieves. He will also
make me a door of the same material. I let him think me a coward, but I don’t care!

September 10
. Rouen, Hôtel Continental. It is done … it is done … but is he dead? My soul is in turmoil over what I have seen.

Yesterday, after the locksmith had installed my iron shutters and door, I left everything open until midnight, although it was beginning to turn cold.

All of a sudden, I felt that he was there, and a joy, a mad joy seized me. I rose up slowly and paced back and forth, for a long time, so that he wouldn’t guess anything was amiss; then I took off my shoes and nonchalantly put on my slippers; then I closed the iron shutters, and, quietly walking to the door, closed it too with a double turn of the lock. Then I came back to the window, locked it with a padlock, and put the key in my pocket.

All of a sudden, I knew that he was getting agitated near me, that it was his turn to be afraid, that he was commanding me to open the window. I almost gave in. I did not give in. Instead, leaning back against the door, I half-opened it, just enough to let me slip through, backwards; since I am very tall, my head touched the lintel. I was certain he had been
unable to escape, and I shut him in, all alone, all alone! At last! I had him! Then I ran downstairs. I picked up both the lamps in my drawing-room, which was underneath my bedroom, and poured out all the oil onto the rug, the furniture, everywhere. Then I set fire to it, and ran out, after having carefully closed the large front door with a double turn of the lock.

I ran to the back of my garden to hide in a clump of bay-trees. How long it took! How long it took! Everything was dark, silent, motionless; not a breath of air, not a star, just mountains of clouds that couldn’t be seen, but that weighed so heavy, so heavy, on my soul.

I watched my house, and I waited. How long it took! I was beginning to think the fire had put itself out, or that he had put it out, He, when one of the windows on the ground floor caved in under pressure from the fire, and a flame, a huge red and yellow flame, tall, soft, caressing, soared up along the white wall and kissed it all the way up to the roof. A glow ran through the trees, the branches, the leaves, and a shiver, a shiver of fear too! The birds woke up; a dog began to bark; it looked as if dawn were breaking. Immediately two other windows shattered, and I saw that the entire ground floor of my house was nothing more than a terrifying inferno. But a scream, a horrible, high-pitched, penetrating scream, a woman’s scream, rent the night, and two garret windows opened. I had forgotten my servants! I saw their terrified faces, and their waving arms.

Then, beside myself with horror, I began to run towards the village, shouting, “Help! Help! Fire! Fire!” I met some people who were already on the way, and I went back with them, to see.

The house, now, was nothing more than a terrible and magnificent pyre, a monstrous pyre, illuminating all the land around, a pyre where people were burning, and where he was burning too, He, He, my prisoner, the new Being, the new master, the Horla!

Suddenly the entire roof caved in between the walls, and a volcano of flames shot up to the sky. Through all the windows opening onto the furnace, I could see the pit of fire, and I thought about him there, in this oven, dead.…

—Dead? Maybe not.… What about his body? Wasn’t his body, which daylight could go right through, indestructible by all the methods that kill our own bodies?