Arrival in the Stars Read online

  And through his virile nose, Phidias sensed the music of Meyerbeer passing.

  He went into his house.

  Atchoum! He heard in the distance of his apartment.

  The voice of his wife!

  Atchihoum! Aratchihohuhoum!

  “Depraved!” murmured Phidias.

  But he heard an exceedingly lush and well-known sternutation.

  Nerehitchahihohihoum! zou! zou!

  Phidias shuddered.

  “What does this signify?” he said, going pale.

  With furtive steps, he headed toward the room from which the suspect sternutations were coming.

  “Wretches” he cried, entering it like a cyclone.

  Deceived!

  His wife and his negro were making one another sneeze reciprocally with the conjugal wands!

  12

  He threw the negro, his unworthy and abominable apostle, out of the door.

  As for his wife, tragically, as was befitting, he said to her: “Madame, you’re going to die!”

  And he got ready to blow out her brains.

  But he reflected soon enough about the blindness of terrestrial justice.

  “The bourgeoisie won’t understand me!” he said to himself, throwing away his revolver with a shrug of the shoulders.

  Oh, but he required a vengeance, though: an exemplary vengeance, a terrifying vengeance that would give satisfaction to his outraged honor!

  He launched himself toward his wife.

  But he loved her! He loved her, in spite of her sin, the wretch! He felt it keenly, on seeing those pink, fascinating—oh, so pink and so fascinating!—nostrils!

  So?

  So, to satisfy simultaneously his vengeance and his amour, he made a grim but slightly sadistic determination with regard to his wife.

  He ate her nose.

  13

  Since that day, Madame Dupont bears on her stigmatized visage a magnificent silver nose that her unhappy but inflexible husband has made her affix to it.

  It is said that she finds some consolation in the practice of illicit and unconscious amours—of the ancient formula—but the poet lives above those prejudices of another age.

  Solitary and inconsolable, he spends his days in a rustic pavilion that he has had erected in the middle of an island.

  From there, passing navigators can sometimes hear a languorous and complicated sigh that can be divined, alas, to be uttered by an ashamed and enfeebled voice:

  Nerehitchahihohihoum! zi! zi!

  Phidias is amusing himself.

  Gnu!

  Prologue

  At the Jardin des Plantes.

  Two parallel rows of animals, separated by railings.

  First row (sheltered and comfortably accommodated, evidently because of the superiority of the animals composing it): lions, hyenas, tigers, panthers, bears, etc.

  Second row: humans.

  Those two categories of animals gaze at one another reciprocally with a mutual curiosity.

  In one particular location, a group in the human row is extraordinarily amused by making a bear perform capers. For that, the human is throwing hazelnuts at the bear.

  For its part, the bear is prodigiously amused by making a human throw hazelnuts and making him utter grunts of an irresistibly comical sort. For that, the bear is performing capers in front of the human.

  In brief, they are having an enormously good time on either side.

  1

  Suddenly, the animals of the second category (humans) turn round, break up and agglomerate with all kinds of typical exclamations:

  “What is it?”

  “It’s over there. Come and see.”

  Two animals of their kind, two women, arrive at a run, one after the other. Those subjects constitute what is known, in the language of animals of the second category, as a “daughter of the people” and a “loose woman.”

  The loose woman is pursuing the daughter of the people with guttural cries that constitute a very animated song.

  “Stop her! Grab her!” she yelps.

  “What has she done?” yelp the chorus of humans in their turn.

  “She’s just thrown her child in the Seine!”

  At these words, all the animals of the second category precipitate themselves toward the daughter of the people, vociferating. The latter is doubtless conscious of having committed something monstrous, for she dare not look at the faces of her peers.

  “Why have you killed your child?”

  “Because I didn’t have what was necessary to enable it to live.”

  With that, the loose woman utters a mewl of indignation, to which the humans respond in chorus.

  Two agents of the police arrive; the young woman is seized, and, in the midst of the jeers of the audience, is taken to the Depot, perhaps to hear herself condemned to death a few days later, for the law—something majestically incoherent, imagined by the animals of category number two—punishes certain kind of infanticide with death.

  It appears that the fashion employed by the daughter of the people is one of those.

  And during the arrest, a magistrate who happens to be passing addresses lively felicitations to the loose woman, in the name of Justice.

  2

  Now there is in that crowd of animals (still number two) an individual male who is a philosopher, and whose reflections have the pretention of going further than the Code.

  That individual says this to himself:

  “They’re going to kill that daughter of the people who prevented that child from living, and they’re congratulating a young woman who defrauds people and whose métier consists of refusing life to all the children she might be capable of producing; that isn’t just!”

  And, revolted by the satisfaction of that kept woman, who is strutting triumphantly in the middle of the men, he goes toward her and, fortified by the logic of his reasoning, he says to her:

  “You know, Madame, that if there were any Justice in this world, you would precede the woman you have just had arrested to the Court of Assizes!”

  Great hubbub in the crowd.

  The bears, the panthers and the hyenas hear prolonged yapping emanating from menagerie number two, the menagerie that the solicitude of the State causes to file past their eyes every day.

  There is mingling and jostling. Some of the biped animals take the side of the loose woman, others that of the philosopher. Bizarre howls intersect in the air.

  “He’s right!”

  “However…”

  “What about gallantry, Messieurs, gallantry?”

  Briefly, a Persian lion, which is dying of boredom at the monotonous spectacle served up to it very day, interrupts its yawning and gets ready to open an eye.

  Finally, the loose woman, jeered and whistled, decamps. And, disgusted by the inconceivable principles of those people, in order to regain her composure, she enters the palace of monkeys.

  And the rabble of idlers acclaim the philosopher, who, with the modesty of a spirit of justice, bows humbly and then slips away from the ovations.

  3

  Meanwhile, a warden of the Jardin, his hands behind his back, contemplates the philosopher with a gaze full of touching admiration.

  He knows him, that philosopher! He has seen him a little while ago lurking in the garden of medicinal plants, pausing studiously before a green bush protected by railings.

  He approaches our hero with respect and puts a hand gently on his shoulder.

  “I congratulate you, Monsieur,” he says. “You wouldn’t have a cigarette on you?”

  “Of course, my dear Monsieur,” says the philosopher, touched.

  And he puts his hand to his pocket.

  But now, green leaves fall out of that pocket.

  The philosopher blushes and hurriedly picks up the plants that he has just dropped.

  Then the warden folds his arms, in the manner of the victorious Napoléon.

  “You’re a cheeky fellow, you are!” he cries, looking our man in the eyes.
“Where did you get that rue?”

  “In the garden.”

  “To do what?”

  The virtuous philosopher who can see further than the Code does not reply.

  But his confusion and his anger reply for him: “To do what? Well, to make my wife abort, you damned nuisance!”3

  4

  “Well, if that isn’t shameful!” says the revolted warden, telling the story to the magistrate, who is passing by again.

  And he crumples something in his pocket, absent-mindedly.

  5

  The perspicacious magistrate, who is well-informed, looks the warden up and down and asks him what he has just bought from the trader in medical supplies at the corner of the quay.

  The warden is nonplussed and evasive.

  “That? Eh, parbleu! It’s for…well, yes, without that she’d make an heir every nine and a half months, the little slut!”

  6

  “At least I have a tranquil conscience. I have nothing to do with the depopulation of France!” says the magistrate—a great elector, very sturdy—as an aside.

  And he goes to join the loose woman, who is coming out of the monkey palace.

  7

  “Hey, you know, warden,” shouts the magistrate, turning round, “it’s necessary to take the name of that philosopher and come by my office—the philosopher, you, and you too, Madame—to give evidence in that revolting affair of infanticide.”

  Epilogue

  In the row of animals number One:

  The bear Martin to the bear François (looking at the humans): “Gnu! Aren’t those beasts curious, François?”

  The bear François to the bear Martin (likewise): “Very curious, Martin! Gnu!”

  For Virtue

  I

  Why, having seen some woman throw herself in the water from the Quai de Sainte-Eulalie, did Gabriel Laferrade, a tailor, who was angling at the time, put away his maggots, take off his clothes, dive in a masterly fashion, swim, disappear, search the river, and finally bring the unknown woman back to the bank, safe and sound?

  For no reason. For virtue.

  It is true that the weather was hot, that a bath in the Garonne could only be an agreeable thing in that season, and there were, up there on the Pont de Saint-Eulalie, the long black eyes of the postmistress, which encouraged Gabriel’s action strangely, and finally, in the tailor’s mind, very distantly, the thought that the rescue might by crowned by...

  But let us stop there; one can sometimes find disinterested actions in the life of a man, if one does not make overly profound investigations. So, Gabriel Laferrade, acclaimed by the fifty idlers that his meritorious action had attracted, was heading triumphantly toward the commissariat de police, with the woman he had saved when, something huge and Himalayan, suddenly perceived in the crowd, sent a chill down his spine.

  That enormous thing was his spouse, Artemise. At there were at the summit of that living joist two sharp eyes that were saying a great deal about that rescue.

  Gabriel turned his head away, went into the commissaire’s office, stammered a few explanations with all due modesty, received the felicitations of the authority with the requisite confusion and went home, fleeing, as is appropriate, the ovations of the audience.

  Scarcely had be entered, however, than he saw the enormity known by the name of Artemise coming home in her turn. It was not only the gaze but also the mouth of the latter that said:

  “Well, Gabriel, so you desire the military medal that much?”

  “It’s not true!” roared the husband, with the convinced tone that the conscience finds in order to lie.

  And, after having broken a table with a blow of his fist, he went out, consigning Artemise to the infernal gods.

  No, certainly, it was not for the medal that he had saved someone. And the proof is that he did not ask for it.

  Except that he had it requested for him—unknown to him, as is appropriate—by an obliging friend.

  2

  He did not obtain it, the medal.

  “Who did he save?” the obliging friend was asked.

  “A woman.”

  The employee shrugged his shoulders. “But everyone has saved a woman, Monsieur! I who am speaking...”

  “How many does he need to save?” he friend hastened to ask, in order to avoid the confidences.

  “Hmm! That depends. Half a dozen, at least.”

  Gabriel Laferrade did not despair. He simply resolved to save the requisite number of women, with the required disinterest.

  3

  Unfortunately, in Sainte-Eulalie, women rarely drown themselves, and Gabriel, in spite of long stations on the stone bridge, only saw them fall down at long intervals—two or three a year, at the most.

  Each woman saved thus represented an average unemployment of five months, plus a bout of bronchitis, plus a violent quarrel with Artemise; and you will agree that a second class medal is very little to compensate a lifesaver for so many inconveniences.

  It was, therefore, undeniably the virtue.

  4

  It is true that the village of Sainte-Eulalie had a public garden, a delightful little public garden with goldfish and pink nannies and chubby children, and, well, when one is decorated…eh! eh!

  “Well!” cried Artemise, when she learned that her husband had saved a third woman, “so it’s to be appointed warden of the public garden that you’re so determined to get that medal?”

  “That’s false!” vociferated the virtuous Gabriel.

  And he was again obliged to go out, in order not to do any damage.

  5

  After all, even if it were in order to become a warden, what did that prove?

  Warden: a ridiculous employment, which does not provide a living. But in order to save a single woman, was he, Gabriel Laferrade, not risking his life every time?

  That is virtue, I tell you, nothing but virtue.

  And Gabriel, his conscience tranquil, continued to await the obliging desperate individual, under the bridge.

  6

  A fourth woman fell from the sky one winter morning.

  The Garonne was almost frozen. In spite of all his virtue, Gabriel hesitated.

  One seeing the red lantern of a tobacconist’s shop gleaming in the distance, however, he made one of those heroic movements familiar to operetta tenors and dived in.

  This time, Artemise remained pensive.

  “Well, well,” she finally revealed, after having plunged the green flame of her sharp eyes into the very depths of her dear man. “So you also need a tobacconist’s shop?”

  The rescuer uttered a cry of rage, and fainted.

  7

  Gabriel was ill for a long time. Delirium seized him every day, and his desiccated lips then released cataracts of absurd words: virtue, medal, cross of bravery, Prix Montyon and caporal tobacco. All of that terminated with an: “It’s not true! It’s for virtue!” that was capable of breaking windows.

  He got better, however, Artemise having been obliged to absent herself for a fortnight.

  On returning to Sainte-Eulalie, Madame Laferrade found him back on the quay, at his observation post.

  It was a spring day. In the sunshine, the trees in the public garden were wearing their beautiful green robes for the first time, brand new and very correct, as befit municipal trees. It felt good to be alive. The Garonne, white with light, was singing very soft airs against the black piles. One might have thrown oneself in for the pleasure of it.

  Gabriel waited. He waited for a month, two months, a year.

  Nothing.

  8

  He grew thinner.

  “Are they going to make me stand here much longer?” he asked himself, casting an anxious gaze over Sainte-Eulalie.

  The obliging friend renewed his request when the national festival arrived.

  “How many times have you been refused?” he was asked.

  “Three times.”

  “We can’t do anything for you. It’s never granted until
after four refusals.”

  Gabriel learned thus that he still had one person to snatch from certain death and one more refusal to endure.

  The refusal was granted to him on the first of the year, but the rescue made him wait.

  Summer, autumn and winter passed; spring brought the trees back into flower. Never a single suicide attempt.

  It’s a spell cast by my wife, Gabriel thought.

  He made a novena in order to ward it off.

  Vain prayers. The Garonne continued flowing, without a single cadaver.

  “They have a grudge against me around here!” the rescuer cried. “They only let me live to give me pain. Brigands!”

  He showed kindness to all his acquaintances and rendered their life comfortable, hoping to soften them.

  Illusory cares. The trees turned yellow again; the Garonne swelled up with autumnal rain; never a suicide on the horizon.

  “Deny that there’s a crisis, then!”

  And Laferrade sensed himself becoming a reactionary.

  9

  He voted against the government from that day on. Things did not get better.

  The virtuous Gabriel became pale and lost sleep.

  He had nightmares, and then fits of sleepwalking.

  Mute and pale, with long phantasmal stride, he wandered along the Garonne. He prowled the deserted quays for a while, gazing at the water with empty eyes, extended his arms and, vertiginously, plunged into the river in search of imaginary drowning victims.

  Oh, the drowning, the clusters of the drowning, the heaps of the drowning that he captured thus, that he brought back to the bank and made to file, white-faced and grateful, before the dazzled eyes of the administration! Oh, the medals, the heaps of medals and crosses that suddenly weighed down his breast and which covered him fabulously from head to foot like a triumphal armor of gilded scales…! Tobacco! Tobacco! Who wants packets of tobacco!