The Songs of Maldoror
Song VI
Chapter 1
You, whose enviable calm can only polish your face’s sheen, don’t think I’m still here to churn out, in fourteen- or fifteen-line strophes like a fourth-form pupil, cries that’ll seem out of place or loud clucks of a Cochin hen, as grotesque as one might imagine if they bothered trying; rather, it’s wiser to prove claims with facts. Would you dare say that just because I’ve mocked man, the Creator, and myself in my plain hyperboles, as if in jest, my task’s done? No: the heftiest chunk of my work still looms as a job yet to tackle.
From now on, the novel’s strings will tug those three figures named above; they’ll gain a less abstract might that way. Life will surge grandly through their blood’s rushing stream, and you’ll see how stunned you’ll be to find, where once you saw only vague wisps of pure theory, on one hand a fleshly frame with its nerve-branches and slick linings, on the other the spirit’s spark ruling the body’s fleshy works. These are beings pulsing with fierce life who, arms crossed and chests stilled, will pose plain before your face (though I’m sure the effect will ring poetic), just steps away, so sunlight, first striking roof-tiles and chimney-caps, then glints clear on their earthly, solid hair.
But they won’t be curses anymore, fit only to spark laughs; nor made-up masks better left in the author’s skull; nor nightmares perched too high above daily life. Note that this makes my poetry all the finer. You’ll touch with your hands the rising forks of aortas and adrenal pods; and then feelings too! The first five songs weren’t for naught; they framed my work’s front, the building’s base, the upfront sketch of my coming poetics; and I owed myself, before packing my bags and setting off for imagination’s wilds, to tip off true literature lovers with a quick outline — clear and sharp — of the aim I’d set to chase.
So, I reckon the groundwork part of my craft’s now whole and well-enough unpacked. Through it, you’ve learned I aim to strike man and Him who shaped him. For now and later, you needn’t know more! Fresh angles seem surplus to me, since they’d just echo, in broader form maybe but the same, the thesis this day’s end will start to unfold.
From all this, it follows my plan’s to launch the breakdown part now; so true that just minutes ago I voiced a fierce wish you’d be trapped in my skin’s sweat-glands to test my claims’ truth firsthand. I know I must back my theorem’s case with a heap of proofs; well, they’re there, and you know I don’t hit anyone without solid grounds!
I laugh full-throat when I think you fault me for spitting bitter jabs at mankind, me one of its own (that alone proves me right!), and at Providence; I won’t take back my words; but, telling what I’ve seen, justifying them with truth as my sole aim won’t be hard. Today, I’ll craft a little novel of thirty pages; that length will hold steady from here on.
Hoping to see my theories soon crowned, one day or another, by some literary form, I think I’ve finally hit — after some groping — my fixed mold. It’s the best: the novel! This hybrid preface has been laid out in a way that might not seem natural enough, catching the reader off-guard, so to speak, unsure at first where it’s leading; but this jolt of stark wonder, which you’d usually shield readers passing time on books or pamphlets from, I’ve strained every nerve to stir. Indeed, I couldn’t do less, despite my good will; only later, once a few novels drop, will you better grasp the preface of this soot-faced renegade.
Chapter 2
Before diving in, I find it daft that I must (not everyone’ll agree, I bet, if I’m wrong) set an open inkpot beside me and some unchewed sheets. This way, I can kick off, with love, the string of teaching poems I’m itching to craft in this sixth song. Grim episodes of ruthless use!
Our hero saw that haunting caves and holing up in unreachable spots broke logic’s rules and spun a vicious loop. For while, on one hand, it fed his loathing for men with the balm of solitude and distance, fencing his narrow world amid stunted shrubs, thorns, and wild vines, on the other, his drive found no fuel to stoke the minotaur of his twisted urges. So, he vowed to edge closer to human clusters, convinced that among so many ready prey his varied hungers would find plenty to gorge on.
He knew the police, that shield of order, had hunted him with grit for years, a whole army of agents and spies ever on his heels. Yet they never caught him. His stunning craft threw off, with top flair, the surest tricks—tactics honed by the sharpest thought. He had a rare knack for donning shapes no trained eye could spot. Master disguises, if I speak as an artist! Getups of downright shoddy effect, when I mull morals.
Here, he brushed genius. Haven’t you clocked the spry grace of a neat cricket, darting through Paris sewers? Just one like that: Maldoror! Magnetizing thriving capitals with a wicked spark, he lulls them into a numb daze where they can’t guard themselves as they ought. All the riskier for going unguessed. Today he’s in Madrid; tomorrow, Saint Petersburg; yesterday, Peking.
But pinning down the exact spot his poetic Rocambole’s feats now dread-fill outstrips my thick reasoning’s might. That brigand might be seven hundred leagues from this land; or maybe steps from you. Wiping out men entirely isn’t easy, and laws stand firm; but with patience, you can pick off the do-good ants one by one.
Since my birth’s days, when I dwelt with our race’s first kin, still green in stretching my snares; since far-off times beyond history’s reach, when, in sly shifts, I ravaged globe’s patches through eras with conquest and slaughter, sowing civil strife among folk—haven’t I crushed whole broods under my heels, limb by limb or all at once, their countless tally no hard guess? The bright past made grand vows to the future: it’ll keep them.
For raking my lines, I’ll naturally use the raw way, backtracking to the savages for lessons. Simple, grand gents, their gracious mouths ennoble all spilling from their inked lips. I’ve just proved nothing’s laughable on this orb. Odd planet, but splendid. Grabbing a style some’ll call naive (when it’s so deep), I’ll bend it to frame notions that, sadly, might not seem grand!
By that very act, shedding the light, scoffing airs of usual chatter, and wary enough not to set… I’ve lost what I meant to say, since the phrase’s start slipped me. But know poetry lurks wherever man’s duck-faced, dumb smirk isn’t.
I’ll blow my nose first, needing it, and then, with my hand’s stout aid, grab the pen my fingers dropped. How’d the Carrousel bridge hold its neutral stance when it caught the sack’s piercing shrieks?
Chapter 3
Novel 1 — I
Rue Vivienne’s shops flaunt their riches to dazzled eyes. Lit by countless gas jets, mahogany cases and gold watches spill dazzling light-sheaves through windows. Eight’s struck at the Bourse clock; it’s not late! Barely has the hammer’s last clang faded when the street, just named, quakes and rattles its bones from Place Royale to Boulevard Montmartre.
Strollers quicken their pace and slip home, lost in thought. A woman faints, crumpling to the asphalt. No one lifts her; all itch to flee this stretch. Shutters slam shut with fury, and folks burrow under blankets. You’d think the Asian plague had bared its fangs. So, while most of the city gears up to swim in nightlife’s revels, Rue Vivienne freezes sudden in a kind of stony grip. Like a heart quit of love, its pulse has died.
Soon, word of the oddity seeps through the city’s layers, and a bleak hush hangs over the grand capital. Where’d the gas jets go? What’s become of the love-sellers? Nothing: solitude and dark! An owl, flying straight with a snapped leg, sweeps over the Madeleine, winging toward the Trône gate, crying out:
“Trouble’s brewing.”
Now, in this spot my pen (that true pal who plays my foil) just cloaked in mystery, if you glance where Rue Colbert cuts into Rue Vivienne, you’ll spot, at the angle their crossing carves, a figure loom and steer its light stride toward the boulevards. But draw closer, sly enough not to catch that passer’s eye, and you’ll see, with a pleased jolt, he’s young! From afar, you’d peg him mature. Days’ tally means naught when gauging a grave face’s sharp wit.
I’m deft at reading years in a brow’s lines: he’s sixteen and four months! He’s fair as the retracting claws of raptors; or else, as the twitchy flux of muscle in soft neck wounds; or better, as that endless rat-trap, ever reset by the caught beast, nabbing rodents solo forever, working even hid in straw; and above all, as the chance meet of a sewing machine and umbrella on a dissecting slab!
Mervyn, that son of blond England, fresh from a fencing lesson with his master, wrapped in his Scots tartan, heads home to his folks. It’s half-past eight, and he hopes to hit his door by nine; bold of him to fake knowing what’s ahead. Can’t some unseen snag trip his path? Is that so rare he’d shrug it off as a fluke? Why not see it freakish instead that he’s felt so free of dread till now, almost glad?
By what right does he reckon he’ll reach his house unscathed when someone stalks him from behind like coming prey? (It’d be poor grasp of my thrill-writer’s craft not to toss in these hedging questions before the line I’m set to close.) You’ve pegged the dream-hero who’s long crushed my wretched mind with his lone weight!
Now Maldoror nears Mervyn, etching the lad’s features in his skull; now, flung back, he recoils like Australia’s boomerang in its second arc, or rather, like a hell-machine. Wavering on his move. But his conscience shows no flicker of raw feeling, as you’d wrongly guess. I saw him veer off a moment the other way; was remorse crushing him? Yet he wheeled back with fresh zeal.
Mervyn can’t tell why his temple-veins throb hard, and he hastens, gripped by a fear he and you hunt vainly to name. Give him credit for trying to crack the riddle. Why doesn’t he turn? He’d see it all. Does anyone ever think of the simplest fix to end a scare?
When a barrier-prowler roams a suburb’s edge, a bowl of white wine down his gullet and blouse in rags, if he spots by a milestone an old muscled cat — kin to the revolutions our fathers saw — musing glumly at moonrays spilling over the sleeping plain, he slinks up in a crooked curve and signals a mangy mutt that lunges. The noble feline stands brave against its foe, fighting dear for life. Tomorrow, some ragpicker’ll buy a sparky pelt. Why didn’t it bolt? So easy.
But here, Mervyn’s ignorance hikes the risk. He catches faint glints, rare as they are, too dim to prove; still, he can’t guess the truth. He’s no seer — I won’t say otherwise — and claims no gift for it.
Hitting the main drag, he swings right, cutting through Boulevard Poissonnière and Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. At this leg of his trek, he strides into Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, leaves the Strasbourg rail yard behind, and halts at a tall gate before reaching Rue Lafayette’s cross. Since you urge me to wrap this first stretch here, I’ll bend to your wish this once.
Know that when I think of the iron ring stashed under stone by a madman’s hand, a chill I can’t shake runs through my hair?
Chapter 4
Novel 2 — II
He tugs the copper knob, and the modern mansion’s gate swings on its hinges. He strides across the courtyard, strewn with fine sand, and climbs the eight steps of the porch. The two statues, posted right and left like the aristocratic villa’s guards, don’t block his way. He who’s spurned all—father, mother, Providence, love, ideals—to fix on himself alone took care to trail the steps ahead.
He saw him step into a grand ground-floor salon, its walls clad in cornelian wood. The family’s son flops onto a sofa, too shaken to speak. His mother, in a long, trailing gown, fusses around him, wrapping him in her arms. His younger brothers cluster round the furniture, burdened with its load; they don’t know life enough to grasp the scene clear. At last, the father lifts his cane and casts an authoritative gaze over all.
Gripping the armchair’s rests, he rises from his usual seat and edges, anxious yet frail with years, toward his firstborn’s still form. He speaks in a foreign tongue, and all listen in hushed respect:
“Who put the boy in this state? The misty Thames will haul a fair heap of silt before my strength’s fully spent. No guarding laws seem to hold in this harsh land. He’d feel my arm’s vigor if I knew the culprit. Though I’ve quit the sea’s fights, my commodore’s sword, hung on the wall, hasn’t rusted yet. Sharpening its edge is easy enough. Mervyn, calm down; I’ll order my staff to track the one I’ll hunt from now on, to slay with my own hand. Woman, step aside and crouch in a corner; your eyes soften me, and you’d do better to cork your tear-ducts. My son, I beg you, rouse your senses and know your kin; it’s your father speaking…”
The mother stands off, and to heed her master’s word, she grabs a book and strives to stay still, facing the peril her womb’s child braves.
“… Kids, go play in the park, and mind you don’t tumble into the pond admiring the swans’ swim…”
The brothers, hands limp, stay mute; all, with nightjar-feathered caps, velvet breeches to the knee, and red silk hose, clasp hands and slip from the salon, treading the ebony floor on tiptoes. I’m sure they won’t play and will roam the plane-tree paths with solemn steps. Their wits bloom early. Good for them.
“… Vain care, I cradle you in my arms, and you’re deaf to my pleas. Would you lift your head? I’ll kiss your knees if need be. But no… it drops limp.”
— “My gentle lord, if your slave may, I’ll fetch from my room a vial of turpentine essence I keep for migraines after theater nights or when tales of our ancestors’ knightly deeds in Britain’s annals lull my dreamy mind into drowsiness’s bogs.”
— “Woman, I didn’t give you leave to speak, and you had no right to take it. Since our lawful bond, no cloud’s crept between us. I’m pleased with you, never had a gripe; nor you with me. Go fetch that turpentine vial from your dresser’s drawers. I know it’s there, no need to tell me. Hurry up the spiral stairs and come back with a glad face.”
But the tender Londoner’s barely hit the first steps (she doesn’t scamper like some low-class lass) when a lady-in-waiting darts down from upstairs, cheeks flushed with sweat, clutching the vial that might hold life’s brew in its crystal walls. The maid bows with grace, offering her prize, and the mother, with regal gait, nears the sofa’s fringe—her sole care’s tender load.
The commodore, with a proud yet kind sweep, takes the vial from his wife’s hands. An Indian scarf dips in it, and they bind Mervyn’s head in silk’s winding loops. He breathes salts; an arm stirs. Blood flows anew, and a Philippine cockatoo’s joyful screeches ring from the window’s ledge.
“Who’s there? Don’t hold me… Where am I? Is this a tomb propping my heavy limbs? The planks feel soft… Is my mother’s locket still round my neck? Back, wild-haired fiend! He couldn’t catch me, and I left a scrap of my doublet in his grip. Loose the bulldogs’ chains, for tonight a thief we’d know might break in while we sleep. Father, mother, I see you, and I thank your care. Call my little brothers. I bought pralines for them, and I want to hug them.”
At those words, he sinks into a deep daze. The doctor, rushed in haste, rubs his hands and cries:
“The fit’s passed. All’s well. Tomorrow your son’ll wake hale. Everyone, off to your beds, I order it, so I stay alone by the patient till dawn breaks and the nightingale sings.”
Maldoror, hid behind the door, caught every word. Now he knows the household’s ways and will act accordingly. He knows where Mervyn dwells and wants no more. He’s jotted the street name and number in a pad. That’s key. He’s sure he won’t forget. He slinks forth like a hyena, unseen, hugging the courtyard’s sides. He scales the gate nimbly, snagging a moment on its iron spikes; with a leap, he’s on the pavement. He pads off wolf-soft.
“He took me for a crook,” he snarls, “him, the fool! I’d love to find a man free of the charge that brat pinned on me. I didn’t snatch his doublet’s scrap, as he said. Just a sleep-haze trick from fright. I didn’t aim to nab him today—got bigger plans for that shy lad later.”
Head toward the swan lake; and I’ll tell you soon why one’s pitch-black among the flock, its frame bearing an anvil topped with a rotting crab’s husk, rightly stirring wariness in its water-mates.
Chapter 5
Novel 3 — III
Mervyn’s in his room; he’s got a letter. Who’s writing him? His jitters kept him from thanking the postman. The envelope’s edged black, its words scrawled fast. Will he take it to his father? What if the sender flat-out forbids it?
Racked with dread, he cracks his window to breathe the air’s scents; sunlight splays its prismatic beams across Venice mirrors and damask drapes. He tosses the note aside, amid gilt-edged books and pearly albums scattered on the embossed leather topping his schoolboy desk. He lifts his piano’s lid and runs slim fingers over ivory keys. The brass strings stay mute. That sly nudge prods him to grab the vellum sheet again; but it shrinks back, as if stung by his pause.
Caught in this snare, Mervyn’s curiosity swells, and he unfolds the rag-bit prepped for him. Till now, he’d only seen his own hand.
“Young man, I care for you; I want your joy. I’ll take you as my mate, and we’ll roam long through Oceania’s isles. Mervyn, you know I love you, and I needn’t prove it. You’ll grant me your friendship, I’m sure. Once you know me better, you won’t rue the trust you’ve shown. I’ll shield you from perils your greenness courts. I’ll be your brother, and good counsel won’t fail you. For more, meet me the morning after next, at five, on the Carrousel bridge. If I’m not there, wait; I aim to hit the mark sharp. You do the same. An Englishman won’t lightly ditch a chance to see his affairs clear. Young man, I greet you, and soon. Show this to no one.”
“Three stars for a signature,” Mervyn cries, “and a blood-smear at the page’s foot!”
Thick tears spill over the odd lines his eyes gorged on, prying open to his mind the boundless sweep of uncertain, fresh horizons. It strikes him (only since finishing the read) that his father’s a touch stern, his mother too grand. He’s got reasons I don’t know, so can’t pass on, hinting his brothers don’t suit him either. He tucks the letter to his chest.
His teachers noticed that day he wasn’t himself; his eyes darkened wildly, and a veil of overthought sank round their rims. Each blushed, fearing they’d fall short of their pupil’s wit, yet for once he skipped his work and didn’t try.
That night, the family gathered in the dining hall, lined with old portraits. Mervyn eyes the plates piled with juicy meats and fragrant fruits but doesn’t eat; the Rhine wines’ motley streams and champagne’s fizzy ruby gleam in tall, slim Bohemian stone cups, leaving even his gaze unmoved. He props an elbow on the table and sits lost in thought like a sleepwalker.
The commodore, face weathered by sea-foam, leans to his wife’s ear:
“The eldest’s shifted since that fit; he was already too prone to wild notions; now he drifts worse than ever. I wasn’t like that at his age. Act like you don’t see. Here’s where a sharp cure, flesh or spirit, could work. Mervyn, you who relish travel tales and nature’s lore, I’ll read you a yarn you’ll like. Listen close; we’ll all gain, me first. And you kids, learn from heeding my words to hone your style’s cut and catch an author’s slightest drift.”
As if that clutch of sweet brats could grasp rhetoric! He speaks, and with a hand’s flick, a brother heads to the father’s shelves, returning with a tome underarm. Meanwhile, the table’s cleared of plates and silver, and the father takes the book. At that charged word “travels,” Mervyn lifts his head, straining to shake off stray musings. The book’s cracked mid-spine, and the commodore’s steely voice proves he can still, as in his glory days, rule men and storms.
Well before the tale’s end, Mervyn slumps back on his elbow, unable to track the reasoned thread of filed-down phrases and soaped-up metaphors. The father shouts:
“That’s not what grabs him; let’s try another. Read, woman; you’ll have better luck than me chasing our son’s gloom away.”
The mother holds no hope; still, she grabs another book, and her soprano voice rings sweet to the ears of her womb’s fruit. But after a few words, despair swamps her, and she quits the literary take herself. The firstborn cries:
“I’m off to bed.”
He leaves, eyes down with a cold stare, saying no more. The dog lets out a mournful howl, finding this odd, and the night wind, seeping uneven through the window’s long crack, sways the bronze lamp’s flame, capped by twin pink crystal domes. The mother presses hands to her brow, and the father lifts his gaze skyward. The kids shoot spooked looks at the old sailor.
Mervyn bolts his room’s door twice and scribbles fast:
“I got your note at noon, and forgive me if I’ve kept you waiting. I don’t have the honor of knowing you myself, and I wasn’t sure if I should write. But since rudeness doesn’t live in our house, I’ve taken pen to thank you warmly for caring about a stranger. God keep me from slighting the kindness you heap on me. I know my flaws and don’t puff up over them. But if it’s fit to take an older soul’s friendship, it’s just as fit to hint our natures differ. You seem older, calling me young man, yet I doubt your true years. How do you square your logic’s chill with the heat it spills? I won’t ditch my birthplace to roam far lands with you; that’d need my parents’ leave first, long-awaited. But since you bid me keep this dark, twisty matter hushed (in the word’s fullest weight), I’ll haste to bow to your flawless wisdom. Seems it wouldn’t face light gladly. As you wish me to trust you (no mean wish, I’m glad to own), please match that trust toward me and don’t reckon I’d stray so far from your mind that, come the morn after next at the set hour, I’d miss our meet. I’ll scale the park’s wall, since the gate’ll be locked, and none’ll spot me leave. Frankly, what wouldn’t I do for you, whose strange bond flashed swift to my stunned eyes, dazed most by such unlooked-for grace? I didn’t know you. Now I do. Don’t forget your vow to stroll the Carrousel bridge. If I pass there, I’ve a matchless certainty I’ll find you, clasp your hand — unless that innocent gesture from a lad who, till yesterday, knelt at modesty’s shrine offends you with its respectful ease. Isn’t ease fair in a deep, fierce closeness when ruin’s earnest and sure? And what harm, I ask you, in a quick farewell as I pass, rain or no, when five strikes the morn after next? Judge yourself, sir, the tact I’ve shaped this note with; I daren’t say more on a stray sheet apt to drift. Your address at the foot’s a puzzle. Took me near a quarter-hour to crack it. You were wise to scribble it tiny. I skip signing, aping you; we live in too wild a time to blink at what might come. I’d love to know how you found where my icy stillness dwells, ringed by a long row of barren halls, foul crypts of my dull hours. How to put it? When I think of you, my chest heaves, booming like a crumbling empire’s fall; for your love’s shade hints a smile that might not be — too vague, its scales writhing so crooked! To your hands, I yield my wild feelings, fresh marble slabs, still untouched by death’s grip. Let’s bide till dawn’s first glints, and in waiting for the hour that’ll hurl me into your vile arms’ pestilent weave, I bow low at your knees and clutch them.”
After penning this guilty note, Mervyn mailed it and slipped back to bed. Don’t count on his guardian angel there. True, the fish-tail’ll flap just three days; but, alas, the beam’ll still burn, and a conical bullet’ll pierce the rhino’s hide, despite the snow-girl and beggar! For the crowned fool will’ve spoken true on the fourteen daggers’ faith.
Chapter 6
Novel 4 — IV
I’ve noticed I’ve got just one eye smack in my forehead! O silver mirrors, set in the hall’s panels, how many favors hasn’t your reflecting knack done me! Since the day an angora cat gnawed my parietal hump for an hour, like a drill boring a skull, leaping sudden on my back because I’d boiled its kits in an alcohol vat, I’ve not stopped firing torment’s arrow at myself.
Today, under the sting of wounds my body’s taken in sundry scrapes — some from my birth’s doom, some my own fault; bowed by my moral fall’s toll (a few deeds done, who’ll guess the rest?); cool witness to the freaks, born or bred, decking the sinews and mind of this speaker — I cast a long, pleased gaze on the split that shapes me… and find myself fair!
Fair as the inborn flaw of man’s sex parts, where the urethra’s stubby run and split or missing lower wall gape at odd spots from glans to shaft; or else, as the fleshy knob, cone-shaped and grooved with deep cross-wrinkles, jutting from a turkey’s upper beak-base; or better, as this truth:
“The system of scales, modes, and their harmonic links rests not on fixed natural laws but stems instead from aesthetic rules that shift with mankind’s creeping growth, and will shift again;”
and above all, as an ironclad turret-ship!
Yes, I stand by my claim’s truth. I’ve no smug delusions, I boast, and lying’s no gain; so what I’ve said, you shouldn’t doubt a whit. Why’d I rouse horror in myself before the praise my conscience sings?
I envy the Creator nothing; but let him loose me down my fate’s stream through a swelling run of glorious crimes. Else, lifting to his brow’s height a glare riled by any snag, I’ll make him see he’s not the universe’s lone lord; that sundry quirks, tied straight to a deeper grasp of things, back the other view and slap a flat no on one-power’s hold.
For it’s two of us eyeing each other’s lid-lashes, see… and you know my lipless mouth’s blared victory’s horn more than once. Farewell, famed warrior; your grit in grief wins regard from your fiercest foe; but Maldoror will track you soon to wrest the prey called Mervyn.
So the cock’s prophecy will come true, when it glimpsed the future in the candelabra’s depths. Heaven grant the edible crab catch the pilgrims’ caravan in time and spill, in scant words, the Clignancourt ragman’s tale!
Chapter 7
Novel 5 — V
On a Palais-Royal bench, left side near the pond, a figure steps from Rue de Rivoli and sits. His hair’s a mess, and his clothes show the gnawing bite of long want. He’s gouged a hole in the dirt with a sharp stick and filled his palm’s hollow with soil. He lifts this meal to his mouth and spits it out fast.
He stands, presses his head to the bench, and swings his legs skyward. But since this tightrope stunt defies gravity’s grip on balance, he crashes back heavy on the plank, arms dangling, cap masking half his face, legs thrashing the gravel in a wobbly, ever-less-steady hold. He stays like that a long spell.
Near the north gate, by the rotunda with its café hall, our hero’s arm leans on the railing. His gaze sweeps the rectangle’s span, missing no angle. His eyes loop back after the probe and spot, mid-garden, a man pulling shaky stunts with a bench, straining to steady himself with feats of might and skill. But what can the best aim, lent to a fair cause, do against madness’s sway?
He steps toward the madman, helps him with kind care to set his dignity upright, offers a hand, and sits beside. He notes the madness comes and goes; the fit’s faded; his mate answers every question straight. Need I relay his words’ drift? Why flip open, at any page, with blasphemous haste, the tome of human woe? Nothing teaches more.
Even if I’d no true tale to tell, I’d spin yarns from thin air to pour into your skull. But the sick man didn’t choose his lot for fun; and his tale’s truth pairs fine with the reader’s trust.
“My father was a carpenter on Rue de la Verrerie… May the death of the three Marguerites crash on his head, and a canary’s beak forever gnaw his eyeball’s core! He took to drink; in those spells, staggering home from tavern counters, his rage swelled near boundless, and he’d lash out blind at whatever caught his eye. But soon, stung by friends’ scolds, he mended full, turning dour. None could near him, not even our mother. He nursed a secret grudge against duty’s yoke that reined his whims. I’d bought a canary for my three sisters; it was for them I got it. They’d caged it above the door, and passers stopped each time to hear its song, eye its fleeting grace, and trace its clever shape. More than once, my father ordered the cage and its bird gone, fancying the canary mocked him with its airy trills. He went to yank it from the nail, slipped off the chair, rage-blinded. A slight knee-scratch was his prize. After pressing the swelling a spell with a wood-chip, he tugged his trousers down, brows knit, took better care, tucked the cage underarm, and headed to his workshop’s back. There, despite our family’s cries and pleas (we clung to that bird, our home’s spirit), he stomped the wicker box with iron heels while a plane, whirling round his head, kept us at bay. Chance spared the canary instant death; that feather-puff still breathed, though blood-smeared. The carpenter stalked off, slamming the door. My mother and I strove to hold the bird’s life, slipping away; it neared its end, its wings’ flutter now just a mirror of death’s last twitch. Meanwhile, the three Marguerites, seeing hope fade, clasped hands by pact and shuffled, after shoving a grease-barrel aside, to crouch behind the stairs near our bitch’s kennel. My mother pressed on, warming the canary between her fingers with her breath. I dashed wild through every room, crashing into furniture and tools. Now and then, a sister peeked from the stairs’ foot for news of the poor bird, pulling back glum. The bitch left her kennel and, as if grasping our loss, licked the three Marguerites’ dresses with a tongue of barren comfort. The canary had moments left. Another sister, the youngest, thrust her head into the gloom of dimming light. She saw my mother blanch, and the bird, after a flash of neck-lift in its nerve’s last spark, droop limp forever between her fingers. She told her sisters. No rustle of whines or whispers broke free. Silence ruled the workshop. Only the jerky snap of cage-shards, flexing back partway to their old shape by wood’s spring, stood out. The three Marguerites shed no tears, their faces keeping their ruddy bloom; no… they just stayed still. They dragged to the kennel’s innards and stretched on the straw, side by side, while the bitch, mute witness to their move, gaped in shock. My mother called them often; they gave no sound back. Worn by the strain, they slept, likely! She scoured every nook without a glimpse. The bitch tugged her dress to the kennel. That woman stooped and peered in. The sight she caught, barring fear’s sickly stretch, could only be grim, by my mind’s tally. I lit a candle and handed it over; no detail slipped her then. She pulled her head, strewn with straw, from that early tomb and said:
‘The three Marguerites are dead.’
Since we couldn’t pull them out — mark this — they were tight-twined, I fetched a hammer from the shop to smash the doghouse. I set to wrecking straight off, and passers might’ve thought, with a spark of fancy, work thrived at ours. My mother, irked by delays though they had to be, clawed at the planks, snapping nails. At last, the bleak freeing ended; the kennel split wide all round; and we hauled from the wreck, one by one after tough untangling, the carpenter’s girls. My mother left the land. I’ve not seen my father since. As for me, they call me mad, and I beg the public’s alms. What I know is the canary sings no more.”
The listener nods inside to this fresh proof for his foul theories. As if one drunk man’s deed lets you damn all mankind. That’s the odd twist he tries to plant in his head, at least; but it can’t oust the grave lesson’s weight.
He soothes the madman with fake pity, wiping his tears with his own hanky. He leads him to a diner, and they eat at one table. They hit a chic tailor’s, and the ward’s dressed princely. They knock at a grand house’s porter on Rue Saint-Honoré, and the madman’s set in a plush third-floor flat. The rogue forces his purse on him and, snagging the chamber pot from under the bed, plops it on Aghone’s head.
“I crown you king of wits,” he cries with planned pomp, “call, and I’ll rush; dip deep in my chests; body and soul, I’m yours. At night, stow the alabaster crown back where it belongs, free to use it; but by day, when dawn lights the towns, set it on your brow as your might’s mark. The three Marguerites will live again in me, plus I’ll be your mother.”
Then the madman staggers back a few steps, as if snared by a mocking nightmare; joy’s lines etch his grief-worn face; he kneels, shamed, at his patron’s feet. Gratitude’s seeped, like poison, into the crowned fool’s heart! He tries to speak, and his tongue stalls. He lurches forward and flops on the tiles.
The bronze-lipped man slips off. What’s his aim? To snag a foolproof friend, naive enough to heed his every whim. He couldn’t have struck better, and luck’s tipped his way. This bench-l sprawler, since a youth’s blow, can’t tell good from ill. It’s Aghone he needs.
Chapter 8
Novel 6 — VI
The Almighty had sent an archangel to earth to snatch the lad from certain death. He’ll have to come down himself! But we’re not yet at that twist in our tale, and I’m forced to clamp my lips, since I can’t spill it all at once; each stage-trick will strut its spot when this yarn’s weave permits.
To dodge notice, the archangel took an edible crab’s shape, big as a vicuña. It perched on a reef’s tip amid the sea, biding for the tide’s ripe moment to slip shoreward. The man with jasper lips, crouched behind a beach curve, spied the beast, stick in hand. Who’d dare read those two minds?
The first owned its task was tough:
“How can I win,” it cried, as swelling waves battered its fleeting perch, “where my master’s might and grit have faltered more than once? I’m just a bounded thing, while the other — no one knows his roots or final aim. At his name, heaven’s hosts quake; and many up where I’ve left whisper Satan himself, evil’s flesh, isn’t so dire.”
The second mulled this, his thoughts staining even the blue dome above:
“He looks green; I’ll settle him quick. Likely sent from on high by that one too scared to show himself! We’ll see in the clash if he’s as lofty as he seems; he’s no earth-apricot dweller; those roving, wobbly eyes betray his seraph start.”
The crab, lately scanning a coastal patch, spotted our hero (who then reared to his Herculean height) and hailed him thus:
“Don’t try a fight; give up. I’m sent by one above us both to chain you, locking thought’s twin cronies from stirring. Clutching knives and daggers in your grip must stop now, trust me — for your sake as much as others’. Dead or alive, I’ll have you; my orders say alive. Don’t force me to tap the power loaned me. I’ll act with care; you, don’t resist. That’s how I’ll gladly see you’ve taken your first step to remorse.”
When our hero caught this speech, laced with such rich jest, he struggled to keep a straight face on his rugged, tanned mug. But who’d blink if I say he burst out laughing? He couldn’t help it! No malice meant! He sure didn’t aim to catch the crab’s flak! How he fought to stifle the mirth! How oft he mashed his lips tight to not slight his stunned foe! Too bad his bent shared mankind’s grain, and he laughed like bleating sheep! At last he stopped! High time! He nearly choked!
The wind bore this reply to the reef’s angel:
“When your master quits sending snails and crawfish to fix his mess and stoops to parley with me himself, we’ll find a way to settle, I’m sure — since I’m beneath your sender, as you so rightly put it. Till then, talk of truce feels half-baked, fit only for dreamy flops. I’m far from blind to the sense in your every word; and since we might tire our throats yelling three kilometers, you’d be wise to swim down from your uncrackable fort and hit dry land; we’d hash out surrender’s terms — fair as they might be — more snugly, though for me they’re still a sour prospect.”
The archangel, unready for this goodwill, nudged its head a notch from the crevice’s depths and answered:
“O Maldoror, has the day finally dawned when your vile urges douse the torch of baseless pride steering them to endless doom? Then I’ll be first to sing this noble shift to the cherub ranks, thrilled to reclaim one of theirs. You know, and haven’t forgotten, an age when you held prime spot among us. Your name flew mouth to mouth; now you’re our lone talks’ theme. Come then… come strike lasting peace with your old lord; he’ll greet you like a stray son, blind to the huge guilt-pile — stacked like an Indian elk-horn mound — you’ve heaped on your heart.”
It spoke, hauling all its parts from the dark gap. It gleams, radiant, on the reef’s face; like a priest sure he’s lured a lost sheep. It’s set to leap waterward, swimming to the pardoned. But the man with sapphire lips had long schemed a sly blow. His stick flies hard; after skimming waves, it cracks the kind archangel’s head. The crab, fatally struck, tumbles into the sea. The tide drifts the floating wreck ashore.
It waited the tide to ease its descent. Well, the tide came; it rocked it with songs and laid it soft on the beach—isn’t the crab pleased? What more does it want? And Maldoror, bent over the shore’s sand, catches in his arms two pals, fused tight by wave’s whim: the crab’s corpse and the killer stick!
“I’ve not lost my touch,” he crows, “it’s itching to flex; my arm keeps its brawn, my eye its aim.”
He eyes the lifeless beast. He dreads a reckoning for spilled blood. Where’ll he stash the archangel? And yet, he wonders if death hit instant. He slings an anvil and corpse on his back, trudging to a vast pond ringed thick with giant reeds, like walls.
He’d first thought a hammer, but it’s too light; with a heftier load, if the corpse twitches, he’ll drop it and pound it to dust with anvil blows. His arm’s not short on grit—least of his woes. Nearing the lake, he sees it swarmed with swans. He figures it’s a safe hideout; with a shift, not shedding his haul, he joins the flock.
Mark Providence’s hand where you’d swear it’s gone, and heed the marvel I’ll tell. Black as a crow’s wing, thrice he swam among the glaring-white webfeet; thrice he kept that stark hue, coal-block distinct. For God, in justice, wouldn’t let his ruse fool even a swan troop.
So he lingered plain in the lake’s heart; but all shunned him, no bird nearing his shamed plumes for company. And then he penned his dips to a lone bay at the pond’s edge, solitary among sky-dwellers as among men! Thus he primed the wild deed at Place Vendôme!
Chapter 9
Novel 7 — VII
The gold-haired corsair got Mervyn’s reply. In this odd page, he tracks the mind’s turmoil of its writer, left to his own frail nudge. The lad would’ve done far better asking his folks before answering a stranger’s friendship. No good’ll come from starring in this murky plot. But, well, he chose it.
At the set hour, Mervyn steps from his house’s door, cuts straight along Boulevard Sébastopol to the Saint-Michel fountain. He takes Quai des Grands-Augustins, crosses Quai Conti; as he hits Quai Malaquais, he spots a figure on Quai du Louvre, pacing parallel to him, sack underarm, eyeing him close. Morning mists have cleared. Both walkers spill onto each end of the Carrousel bridge at once.
Though they’d never met, they knew each other! True, it was moving to see these two, split by years, knit their souls with grand feeling. At least, that’s what any onlookers might’ve thought, a sight even a math-mind could’ve found stirring. Mervyn, face wet with tears, mused he’d met, near life’s gate, a rare prop for coming woes. Rest assured the other said nothing.
Here’s what he did: he unfurled his sack, widened its mouth, and, grabbing the lad by the head, shoved his whole frame into the canvas wrap. He knotted the open end with his hanky. As Mervyn let out shrill screams, he yanked the sack off like a laundry bundle and bashed it, again and again, on the bridge’s rail. Then the patient, hearing his bones snap, fell silent.
A scene unmatched, no novelist will top! A butcher rolled by, perched on his cart’s meat. A figure runs up, begs him to stop, and says:
“Here’s a dog in this sack; it’s got mange — kill it quick.”
The hailed man obliges. The caller, drifting off, spots a ragged girl reaching out. How far does this peak of gall and godlessness stretch? He hands her alms!
Tell me if you want me to take you, hours later, to a far-off slaughterhouse gate. The butcher’s back, tossing a load to the ground, and tells his mates:
“Let’s hurry and kill this mangy mutt.”
Four of them grab their usual hammers. Yet they waver, since the sack thrashes hard.
“What’s this grip on me?” one yells, easing his arm down slow.
“This dog whines like a kid,” another says, “like it knows what’s coming.”
“It’s their way,” a third chimes, “even when they’re not sick, like here; just their master gone a few days, and they howl fit to fray your nerves.”
“Stop! Stop!” the fourth shouts, before all arms rise in sync to strike hard this time. “Stop, I say; something’s off here. Who says this sack holds a dog? I’ll check.”
Then, despite his pals’ jeers, he unties the bundle and pulls out, one by one, Mervyn’s limbs! The lad was near choked in that cramped knot. He faints at light’s return. Moments later, he shows clear life-signs. The saver says:
“Learn next time to weave caution into your trade. You nearly saw for yourselves ignoring that rule’s no use.”
The butchers bolt. Mervyn, heart tight with grim forebodings, heads home and locks his room. Need I dwell on this stretch? Who wouldn’t mourn its done deeds! Let’s wait the end for a harsher verdict.
The close will rush in; and in tales like this, where some passion, whatever its bent, once set, fears no bar to carve its path, there’s no call to thin shellac across four hundred trite pages. What fits in half a dozen strophes, say it, then hush.
Chapter 10
Novel 8 — VIII
To rig up a sleep-tale’s brain by rote, it’s not enough to slice up nonsense and dose the reader’s wits with fresh jolts till they’re numb for life, locked stiff by fatigue’s sure rule; you’ve got to, besides, with good magnetic juice, slyly pin him in a sleepwalker’s bind, forcing his eyes to cloud against their bent under your fixed stare.
I mean, not to clear things up but just to stretch my though — which grips and grates at once with a piercing tune—that I don’t think you need, to hit your mark, a poetry wholly off nature’s usual track, its wicked gusts seeming to topple even bedrock truths; but pulling off such an end (square with aesthetic laws, if you mull it right) isn’t as easy as folks reckon: that’s what I meant. So I’ll strain every nerve to get there!
If death halts the gaunt stretch of my shoulder’s two long arms, busy crushing my grim gypsum prose, I want at least the mourning reader to say:
“Give him his due. He’s dulled me plenty. What mightn’t he have done with more years! Best hypnotism teacher I know!”
They’ll carve those few touching words on my tomb’s marble, and my shades will rest content! I press on!
A fish-tail twitched in a hole’s bottom, next to a worn-out boot. It wasn’t natural to ask:
“Where’s the fish? I just see the tail wiggle.”
For if you owned up to missing the fish, it wasn’t there. Rain had left a few drops in that sandy funnel. As for the beat boot, some later figured it came from a willful toss.
The edible crab, by divine might, was to rise from its split atoms. It yanked the fish-tail from the well and vowed to stitch it back to its lost body if it told the Creator its agent couldn’t tame Maldoror’s raging sea. It lent it two albatross wings, and the fish-tail took flight. But it soared to the renegade’s lair, spilling all and betraying the crab.
The crab guessed the spy’s scheme and, before the third day’s end, pierced the fish-tail with a poisoned dart. The traitor’s throat rasped a faint cry, breathing its last before hitting dirt.
Then a centuries-old beam, perched on a castle’s peak, reared full height, bouncing on itself, and roared for vengeance. But the Almighty, turned rhino, told it the death was earned. The beam calmed, sank back to the manor’s depths, stretched flat again, and called the spooked spiders to weave their webs in its corners like old times.
The man with sulfur lips learned his ally’s flop; so he ordered the crowned fool to burn the beam to ash. Aghone obeyed that harsh command.
“Since you say it’s time,” he cried, “I dug up the ring I’d buried under the stone and tied it to the cable’s end. Here’s the bundle.”
And he offered a thick rope, coiled on itself, sixty meters long. His master asked what the fourteen daggers were up to. He said they stayed true and stood ready for anything, if need be. The convict nodded, pleased.
He showed surprise, even unease, when Aghone added he’d seen a rooster split a candelabra with its beak, peer into each half, and crow, flapping wild:
“It’s not so far as folks think from Rue de la Paix to Place du Panthéon. Soon we’ll see grim proof!”
The crab, astride a fiery steed, galloped full tilt toward the reef — witness to the stick’s launch by a tattooed arm, haven of its first earth-day. A pilgrim caravan marched to that spot, now hallowed by a noble death. It hoped to reach them, begging urgent aid against the brewing plot it’d learned of.
You’ll see a few lines on, through my icy hush, it didn’t make it in time to tell what a ragman, hid behind a building-site scaffold, had spilled the day the Carrousel bridge, still damp with night’s dew, saw with dread its thought’s horizon blur in widening rings at dawn’s rhythmic kneading of an icosahedral sack against its chalky rail! Before it stirs their pity with that tale’s echo, they’d best kill hope’s seed in them…
To snap your slack, muster good will’s grit, walk beside me, and don’t lose sight of this fool, night-pot crowned, shoving ahead with a stick-armed hand — the one you’d struggle to know if I didn’t warn you, whispering “Mervyn” to your ear. How changed he is! Hands bound behind, he trudges forward like to the gallows, yet guilty of no wrong.
They’ve hit Place Vendôme’s round rim. On the massive column’s ledge, leaning on the square rail over fifty meters up, a man casts and uncoils a cable, dropping near Aghone. With practice, it’s quick; but I’ll say he wasted no time tying Mervyn’s feet to the rope’s end.
The rhino had sniffed what was coming. Sweat-soaked, it staggered out at Rue Castiglione’s corner. It didn’t even get a fight’s thrill. The man atop, scanning round, cocked his revolver, aimed careful, and fired. The commodore, begging streets since deeming his son mad, and the mother, dubbed snow-girl for her stark pallor, thrust their chests to shield the rhino. Vain care. The bullet drilled its hide like an auger; you’d think, with some logic, death must follow. But we knew the Lord’s essence filled that beast. It slunk off, grieved.
If it weren’t plain he’s too kind to one creature, I’d pity the column’s man! With a sharp wrist-flick, he hauls the weighted rope back. Strung off kilter, its swings sway Mervyn, head down. He snags quick with his hands a long immortelle garland linking two base corners, jamming his brow against it. He lifts with him, skyward, what’s no firm hold.
After piling much of the cable at his feet in stacked loops, leaving Mervyn dangling half the bronze obelisk’s height, the escaped con twists the lad’s spin with his right hand into a steady whirl, flat to the column’s axis, while his left gathers the snaky coils sprawled below.
The sling hisses through space; Mervyn’s body trails it everywhere, ever flung from the core by centrifugal pull, ever holding its roving, even arc in an airy ring, free of matter. The civilized savage eases off, bit by bit, to the far end he grips with a firm palm, what might pass for a steel bar.
He starts running round the rail, clutching it with one hand. This shift tilts the cable’s first spin-plane, hiking its already fierce strain. Now it wheels grand in a flat sweep, after gliding through slanted planes by slow steps. The right angle of column and plant-thread has even sides! The renegade’s arm and murder-tool merge in one line, like light’s atomic bits piercing a dark chamber.
Mechanics’ theorems let me speak so; alas, we know one force plus another breeds a sum of both! Who’d dare claim the rope wouldn’t have snapped already without the athlete’s vigor, without hemp’s fine weave?
The gold-haired corsair, sudden and swift, halts his gained speed, opens his hand, and drops the cable. This jolt, so at odds with before, cracks the rail at its seams. Mervyn, trailed by rope, apes a comet dragging its blazing tail. The noose’s iron ring, glinting in sunlight, bids you fill the illusion’s gap.
In his parabola’s arc, the doomed cuts the air, past the left bank, overshooting by an impulse I’ll call boundless, and his body slams the Panthéon’s dome, while the rope’s coils clutch part of its vast crown.
On that spherical, bulging face — orange-like only in shape — you see, any hour, a shriveled skeleton hung. When wind rocks it, they say Latin Quarter students, fearing such a fate, mutter a quick prayer: trifling tales you needn’t buy, fit just to spook small kids.
It grips in clenched hands, like a wide ribbon of old yellow blooms. Mind the distance; none can swear, despite sharp eyes, those are truly the immortelles I named, torn from a grand perch in a lopsided scrap near the new Opéra. Still true, the crescent drapes there no longer hold their fourfold symmetry’s final stamp: go see for yourself if you doubt me.