Arrival in the Stars Page 3

  But suddenly, a frisson. Oh, the cold!

  And Laferrade woke up in contact with the water, in contact with the mild, placid water, white with moonlight, alone!

  10

  One night—it was the end of the month of March—on awakening like that on the edge of the water, he had a terrible vision.

  Heavens! But yes! From up there…splash! Something has fallen in the river…something that moves, floats, and disappears... Finally!

  He launches himself forth, swimming; he launches himself heroically, as always, cleaving the black water with his feverish arms. Hup! One more effort and there it is, the unexpected victim!

  Gabriel advances a hand...

  “Oh, that idiot!”

  A burst of mocking laughter on the bridge and a shadow fleeing.

  It is a dead dog that the rescuer is holding. The April fool trick of a practical joker.

  “Oh, it’s like that!” grumbled the virtuous Gabriel. “That’s all right!”

  And a Machiavellian plan suddenly loomed up in his brain.

  “Yes, we’ll see if…huh!”

  He stopped. Virtue only seemed to be playing a secondary role in that.

  “Let’s think about it, though. That young woman, what if I make love to her? Of course! Yes, I’m going to make love to her!”

  So he made love to her, deceived her—oh, the human heart, you see!—and waited confidently under the bridge.

  Despair! She hanged herself, the deceived young woman, instead of throwing herself in the water.

  Youth is very depraved nowadays.

  11

  Meanwhile, Artemise prospered. Her husband’s disappointments caused her to prosper. She grew fatter, became as round as a quail. She had a fashion of saying: “Well, Gabriel, it’s not going well any more, is it, the drowned women?” that gave Laferrade crises of epilepsy.

  “Pardon me! It’s going to make progress!” he riposted, one evening, with fulgurant eyes.

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Important repairs were being made to the Pont de Sainte-Eulalie. A central arch had collapsed.

  Five or six laborers were working on it. Every evening, one of them put up barriers and then lit red lanterns at certain places dangerous for passers-by.

  Bleak and pensive, his body agitated by nervous frissons, Laferrade followed the works with a haggard gaze.

  From time to tell he leaned his elbows on the parapet and, somber and taciturn, making pessimistic rounds of the water and spitting in the Garonne, lost himself in considerations of virtue.

  12

  One evening, he approached a workman. His entire being was tremulous.

  Something grave was evidently in preparation in Laferrade’s life.

  “Come here!” he said, in a low voice, with a sound of chattering teeth.

  The workman advanced prudently, worried by the yellow gleams passing through the rescuer’s eyes.

  “It’s you, isn’t it, who puts the barriers over the holes every night?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  The yellow gleams in the rescuer’s eyes appeared to become a conflagration.

  “Well, what do you want of me?” asked the workman.

  In vain, Laferrade coughed, opened his mouth, swallowed his saliva, searched for words; nothing came out.

  Shrugging his shoulders, the laborer was about to go away when the hand of the rescuer retained him by the sleeve.

  “Well…well…,” Gabriel articulated, painfully, his exorbitant eyes seeming to want to pop out of his head, “five hundred francs for you! Five hundred francs if tonight, you don’t put anything in front of that.”

  With a vibrant finger, he indicted a hole in the middle of the bridge: a large and gaping hole that allowed the water to be seen beneath it.

  The workman understood. It was him who would be responsible for any accidents that might happen.

  “Never!” he said, with a fine impulse of virtue. “You’ll understand that...that…it’s worth more than that!”

  13

  But the two of them went into an inn. A few moments later, the bargain was concluded.

  The tailor promised the workman a thousand francs—all he possessed—and the workman, for his part, promised not to put any barriers or lanterns in front of the hole. The two parties to the contract would spent the night on the bridge, on watch; and only when a pedestrian had fallen in the water would Laferrade give the thousand francs to the workman, from hand to hand.

  The two men emerged from the inn, exchanged a loyal handshake, and Laferrade, his heart in paradise, saw a star emerge in the sky, as round as a second-class medal.

  14

  What a night! An unforgettable night!

  It was a dark, moonless night. Gabriel and the workman tucked themselves away in a night watchman’s hut, not far from the hole, and them, with oppressed breasts, they waited.

  People go to bed early in Sainte-Eulalie. Passers-by were scarce.

  Every time a human silhouette approached, Laferrade felt his heart swell within him, like a balloon. The silhouette grew, became a man or a woman, arrived at the hole...

  Good! Here it is, then, the terrible moment.

  Not yet.

  The silhouette avoids the gulf, keeps going, goes along the parapet, and disappears.

  Ten times, twenty times, thirty times over, the rescuer had that poignant anxiety. And no one ever fell.

  Nine o’clock chimed in the belfry of Sainte-Eulalie.

  And more passers-by only showed themselves at long, long intervals.

  The Garonne sang against the piles. The workman yawned, becoming drowsy.

  Laferrade gazed at the stars, with the expression that Joshua must have had when he stopped the sun.

  15

  Did they stop?

  What is certain is that immediately after Gabriel’s gaze, a black form came on to the Pont de Sainte-Eulalie.

  Laferrade was no longer considering the stars.

  The form continued approaching, became a woman, took the middle of the bridge, marched toward the hole...

  “Holy angels!” stammered the rescuer, his hair bristling with anguish.

  …marched toward the hole rapidly, and lost its footing!

  “Help!”

  A cry in the night. Then—splash!—the fall of a human body into the water.

  “There’s your thousand francs!” said the rescuer to the workman.

  And, taking off his clothes, heroically, with a long sight that must have permitted the stars to resume their progress on high, he threw himself in the water.

  16

  Oh, beneficent, voluptuous, revivifying water! His supple body cleaved through it and swam toward the human form.

  Out there, she was out there, she shouted, she sank up…disappeared!

  This is the moment! Gabriel judged, who, as befit a self-respecting rescuer, wanted to make the value of his intervention felt.

  The moon rose.

  He dived, searched, and found the unfortunate woman, brought her back to the surface with his customary skill, and was getting ready to tow her, safe and sound, to the bank, when…when...

  No! The pen refuses to describe that horrific spectacle!

  Oh, the grimacing face of that person, suddenly recognized in the moonlight!

  Laferrade uttered a loud cry, a great cry of desperation that must have woken up many sleeping couples in Saint-Eulalie, and, terrified, allowed the person to fall back to the river bed.

  He could not save her! No, he could not, the unfortunate fellow!

  It was his wife.

  17

  One does not recover from such catastrophes.

  Gabriel Laferrade regained the bank, and, in shock, shivering, his teeth still chattering under the horror of the situation, he started wandering along the quays.

  He considered, the moon, the stars, the Garonne, and then, in the distance, on the other side of the river, the public garden. Oh,
dreams! Oh, twists of tobacco!

  He thought about the thousand francs, wasted, about his consummate ruination, the impossibility of paying for another drowning victim, and, uttering a supreme roar, he threw himself into the water, into the water for good, yes, into the Garonne, head first, into the vast Garonne, into the luminous Garonne, which, ironically, seemed to be ferrying toward the distant sea, myriads of crosses and yellow medals distributed by the moon.

  18

  But an hour later, a naked and shivering man rang the doorbell at the commissariat de police in Sainte-Eulalie with all his might. He was holding his head in one hand, that man, and, with the other, he was hugging himself, as if he were afraid of escaping himself.

  It was Laferrade.

  “I’ve got him! I’ve got him!” he cried, in a shrill voice.

  “Who?”

  “A desperate man who tried to drown himself. Fortunately,” he remarked, “I fished him out in time!”

  The commissaire’s eyes widened.

  “I asked you who!”

  “Myself!” said Laferrade, widening them further.

  The two men looked at one another for ten seconds without being able to explain their reciprocal bewilderment.

  19

  The commissaire kept the rescuer until morning and, at sunrise, labored by a suspicion, secretly ordered a gendarme to put on a show of throwing himself in the water.

  Solomon could not have imagined anything better.

  Laferrade did, indeed, start swimming, seized the gendarme, brought him back to the bridge—and did not ask for any recompense! Finally, it was for virtue!

  There was no doubt about it: he was insane.

  He was immediately taken to a sanitarium.

  The Dilettantism of Crime

  1

  Jehan Racca, crossbowman, engendered Hugues Racca, master apothecary.

  Hugues Racca, master apothecary, engendered Urbain Racca, surgeon.

  Urbain Racca, surgeon, engendered Frédéric Racca, restaurateur.

  It was therefore natural that Frédéric Racca, restaurateur, engendered a son who, summarizing within himself all the professions and aptitudes of his ancestors, exhibited special dispositions for the voluptuous art, fertile in exquisite emotions, of exterminating his fellows. So there was only one cry of approval, from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, when Hyacinthe Racca, the scion of that illustrious race, was elected master executioner of the beautiful land of France.

  2

  The first time that Hyacinthe Racca operated in public on some criminal who had killed for the vulgar pleasure of stealing, the habitués of capital executions could not help clapping their hands.

  Hyacinthe Racca, to be sure, announced himself as a remarkable virtuoso of the guillotine. In spite of the emotion inseparable from a debut, he commenced with a masterstroke.

  Correctly clad in black, with a white cravat and polished shoes, he arrived on the scaffold, bowed slightly to the enthusiasts, without emphasis as without false shame, with the ease of genius that is conscious of its value, passed his hat and gloves to an aide, took the condemned by a slender hand and, tipping his man over, rapidly, with the slickness of a conjuring trick, he introduced the head into the fatal semicircle. That was done in the blink of an eye, before the amazed audience had time to realize it.

  Then, gravely, after two seconds of solemn immobility, like a punctuation mark, Hyacinthe placed his left hand on the head of the condemned, set it delicately at the required point, like a hairdresser greeting ready to curl his client’s hair, and then, serenely, while he sensed ten thousand ecstatic gazes upon him, he raised his right hand and brought the thumb and index finger together like a dandy offering a flower. Here a further punctuation mark, that holds the respiration of ten thousand breasts suspended—and then Racca brushed the mechanism of the guillotine with his two perfumed fingers.

  Snap!

  With lightning velocity, the heavy blade fell.

  A shiver of enthusiasm made the crowd vibrate.

  “Bravo!” cried the audience.

  And the applause redoubled when the severed head was seen to make a half-rotation and reappear, suspended by a hank of hair, at the end of Hyacinthe Racca’s triumphant hand.

  3

  After that, the dramatic matinees known as executions became exceedingly popular.

  All Europe wanted to see Racca sat work.

  The latter always operated himself, and every time with a new mastery.

  The executioner, possessed by his art, only lived for the guillotine. Between two executions he grew thinner, his eyes became hollow, the spleen of bloodshed took possession of him, and one felt that that artist of genius would have died rapidly if he had not killed someone every week.

  Like Raphael, Racca had several styles. To begin with, he had sectioned the condemned between the second and third vertebrae, which gave an entirely round decapitated head. After numerous studies, he was led to slice the necks one vertebra lower down. In the basket, such heads had more character, more lines, and resembled the effigies of ancient medallions.

  In the second place, he had begun by slicing obliquely, with a hint of whimsy. But in correcting his game, he became classic, like all great geniuses, and no longer cut other than correctly, in a plane perpendicular to the vertebral column.

  All that was appreciated by the dilettanti, and the judges hastened to send Racca as many men condemned to death as possible, which brought back a little gaiety to the land.

  4

  But the wisdom of nations has said it: glory and grandeur often doom men.

  They doomed Racca.

  Having a great deal of worldly success, the young and already glorious executor of noble works was enthusiastic to go to a rendezvous implored of him by a sentimental great lady on the eve of an execution.

  Racca, habitually so sober, allowed copious draughts to be poured for him by the hand of the enchantress—with the result that, when the hour of the execution arrived, the executioner was still guillotining bottles of champagne.

  Hastily, he mounted the scaffold. No one had the idea of asking the indulgence of the public for him.

  It was sickening.

  The blade fell maladroitly, as if unhooked by a profane hand, and the head fell, cut at an angle, with half of a fractured jaw.

  When he had sobered up, Racca shuddered.

  He curbed his head, devouring tears of shame, and, having the sentiment of the ignominious outrage to which he had subjected his art, as decency demanded, he handed in his resignation.

  It was rejected.

  Hyacinthe Racca insisted.

  Humanitarian societies expressed pleas demanding the retention of the heroic executioner in his noble functions.

  It made no difference. Racca was unshakeable, and a successor had to be found.

  5

  O nostalgia of murder!

  Three months later, Racca was dying for want of people to kill.

  He had an idea, just in time.

  He married, was deceived by his wife, and killed the adulterous spouse along with her lover, with all sorts of criminal refinements.

  His health improved slightly.

  Having been acquitted, naturally, Racca reestablished himself completely by killing a few people in duels.

  Then, as he found himself at the head of an immense fortune originating from legacies offered to him by admirers of his talent, he spent everything he had in perpetrating artistic crimes, always bearing the stamp of the greatest originality.

  He killed thus several examining magistrates among his friends, without ever getting caught.

  Having attained perfection in murder, he resolved to sign his works henceforth. He adopted for a monogram two thrusts of a dagger in the heart of his victims, two dagger-thrusts puncturing the skin at a distance of two centimeters and converging on a determined point in the left ventricle.

  One night, in the folly of inspiration, he killed an entire family like that: the father, the mother, t
he three children and the two domestic servants.

  Wonderstruck by this work, he signed all the cadavers, took paper and charcoal, and drew the scene of carnage from memory, on the very location of the crime, before escaping via the chimney-flue.

  On that occasion Racca deployed so much verve, so much variety, so much exuberance and lyricism, that the frightful slaughter merited being called, by competent men, the masterpiece of murder.

  Racca was dizzied by it himself.

  He stirred up the terrorized crowd the next day, and, seeing floods of human heads around him as far as the eye could see, he cried with all his might:

  “You’re seeking the author of all these terrible crimes, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, yes!” howled three million voices.

  “Well, set up your triumphal arches! It’s me!”

  6

  He was condemned to death.

  He marched to the scaffold with a light step on the morning of the fatal day. Except that, seeing that his successor was a banal executioner, devoid of the sacred fire, Racca suffered horribly, and nearly fainted.

  At a given moment, no longer able to contain himself, he made a supreme effort on the seesaw on which the executioner had extended him with a prosaic and trivial hand, and, crushing his unworthy successor with a scornful gaze, he roared: Bourgeois!”

  And, striking an academic pose, Hyacinthe Racca gave the public a gracious salute, lifted his right hand with a movement full of majestic amplitude, and, brilliantly and artistically, with all the virtuosity of which he was capable, he guillotined himself.