Our Lady of the Flowers Read online

  Solange was standing at the top of the rock. She leaned back very slightly, as if she were inhaling. She opened her mouth to speak and remained silent. She was waiting for a thunderclap or for inspiration, which were not forthcoming. A few seconds passed in a tangle thick with fright and joy. Then, she uttered, in a pale voice:

  “In a year, a man will throw himself from the rock.”

  “Why in a year? What man?”

  “You're an idiot.”

  She described the man. He was stout, wore gray trousers and a hunting jacket. Culafroy was as upset as if he had been told that a suicide had just been committed there and that a body still warm was lying in the brambles under the rock. The emotion entered him in light, short waves, invading him, and escaped through his feet, hands, hair and eyes, gradually drifting throughout nature as Solange went on to relate the phases of the drama, which was as complicated and cunning as I imagine a Japanese drama must be. Solange took great pains with it, and she had chosen the tone of tragic recitative, in which the voice never joins the tonic.

  “He's a man who comes from afar, no one knows why. He's probably a pig dealer returning from the fair.”

  “But the road's far away. Why does he come here?”

  “To die, you innocent. You can't kill yourself on the road.”

  She shrugged her shoulders and tossed her head. Her lovely curls struck her cheeks like leaded whips. The little pythoness had crouched. Seeking on the rock the carved words of the prophecy, she resembled a mother hen scratching around in the sand to find the grain that she will show to her chicks. Thereafter, the rock became a place that is visited, haunted. They went there as one goes to a grave. That piety for one of the future dead hollowed out in them a kind of hunger or one of those weaknesses which resist fever.

  One day Culafroy thought to himself: “That was nine months ago, and Solange is returning in June. So, in July she'll be here to see the climax of the tragedy of which she's the author.” She returned. At once he realized that she belonged to a world different from his. She was no longer part of him. She had won her independence; this little girl was now like those works that have long since dropped away from their author: no longer being directly flesh of his flesh, they no longer benefit from his maternal tenderness. Solange had become come like one of those chilled excrements which Culafroy used to deposit at the foot of the garden wall among the currant bushes. When they were still warm, he took a tender delight in their odor, but he spurned them with indifference–at times with horror–when they had too long since ceased to be part of himself. And if Solange was no longer the chaste little girl taken from his rib, the little girl who used to pull her hair into her mouth to nibble at it, he himself had been charred by living near Alberto. A chemical operation had taken place within him, giving birth to new compounds. The past of both youngsters was already as old as the hills. Neither Solange nor Culafroy found the games and words of the year before. One day they walked to the hazel trees, which the summer before had been the scene of their wedding, of a baptism of dolls and a banquet of hazelnuts. Upon once again seeing the spot, which the goats always kept in the same condition, Culafroy remembered the prophecy of the Grotto. He wanted to speak of it to Solange, but she had forgotten. To be exact, it was thirteen months since she had announced the violent death of the pig dealer, and nothing had happened. Culafroy saw another supernatural function fade away. A measure of despair was added to the despair which was to accompany him until his death. He did not yet know that the importance of any event in our life lies only in the resonance it sets up within us, only in the degree to which it makes us move toward asceticism. As for him, who receives only shocks, Solange on her rock had not been more inspired than he. In order to show off, she had played a role; but then, though one mystery was thereby disposed of, another and denser one rose up: “I'm not the only one,” he thinks, “who can play at not being what they are. So I'm not an exceptional creature.” Then, finally, he suddenly detected one of the facets of feminine glitter. He was disappointed, but above all he was filled with another love and with a certain pity for the too pale, delicate, and distant little girl. Alberto had attracted to him, like a fork of lightning, all the marvel-ousness of the external. Culafroy told Solange a little about snake fishing, and he knew, like a knowing artist, how to confess and suppress. She was sweeping the ground with a hazel branch. Certain children have in their hands, without anyone's suspecting it, inherent powers of sorcery, and people who are naive are astonished at the perturbations in the laws of animals and families. Solange had formerly been the fairy of the morning spiders–Grief, says the chronicle. I interrupt myself here to observe, “this morning,” a spider that is weaving in the darkest corner of my cell. Destiny has artfully directed my gaze to it and its web. The oracle manifests itself. I can only bow without cursing: “You are your own fate, you have woven your own spell.” Only one misfortune can befall me, that is, the most terrible. Here am I, reconciled with the gods. The arts of divination do not make me set myself questions, since they are divine. I should like to come back to Solange, to Divine, to Culafroy, to the sad. drab creatures I sometimes desert for handsome dancers and hoodlums; but even the former (especially the former) have been far away from me since I received the shock of the oracle. Solange? She listened like a woman to Culafroy's confidences. For a moment she was embarrassed and laughed, and her laugh was such that a skeleton seemed to be frisking about on her close-set teeth and hammering them with sharp blows. In the heart of the countryside she felt herself a prisoner. She had just been bound. Jealous, the girl. She had difficulty finding enough saliva to ask: “You like him?” and her swallowing was painful, as if she were swallowing a package of pins. Culafroy hesitated to answer. The fairy ran the danger of oblivion. At the moment when it had to be done, when the answer was a “yes” suspended whole and visible, ready to explode, Solange dropped the hazel wand and in order to pick it up bent down, in a ridiculous position, just as the fatal cry fell, the nuptial “yes,” with the result that it was mingled with the sound of the sand which she scraped; it was thereby stifled, and the shock to Solange was absorbed. Divine never had any other experience with woman.

  Near the taxi, no longer obliged to think, she became Divine again. Instead of getting in (she had already grasped between two fingers the ruffle of her black dress and lifted her left foot), as Gorgui, already settled, was inviting her in, she let out a burst of strident laughter, festive or mad, turned to the driver and. laughing in his face, said:

  “No, no. With the driver. I always get in with the driver, so there.”

  And she became kittenish.

  “Does the driver mind?”

  The driver was a regular fellow who knew his business (all taxi drivers are procurers and traffic in snow). The fan in Divine's fingers did not unfold. Besides, Divine did not take the fan to throw people off the track; she would have been mortified at seeing herself mistaken for those horrible titty females. “Oh! those women,” she would say, “those wicked, wicked things, those vile sailors’ tarts, those tramps, those dirty nasties. Oh! those women, how I hate them!” The driver opened the door of his own seat and, smiling pleasantly, said to Divine:

  “Come, get in, baby.”

  “Oh, that driver, he's he's . . .”

  Cracklings of taffeta riddled the driver's splendid thigh.

  The day was wide-awake when they reached the garret, but the darkness made by the drawn curtains, the odor of tea and, even more, the odor of Gorgui, engulfed them in a night of magic. As was her wont, Divine slipped behind the screen to take off her mourning dress and put on a pair of pajamas. Our Lady sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette (at his feet, the mossy mass of the lace of his dress made for him a kind of rustling base), and, with his elbows on his knees, watched–chance having accepted and instantly organized them–Gorgui's evening jacket, white satin vest, and pumps assume before him on the rug the form of the evidence that a ruined gentleman leaves on the banks of the Seine at thr
ee in the morning; Gorgui went to bed naked. Divine reappeared in green pajamas, because, for the room, the green of the cloth was becoming to her ocher-powdered face. Our Lady had not yet finished his cigarette.

  “You coming to bed, Danie?”

  “I am, just wait till I finish this.”

  As always, he answered as one answers from the depths of thought. Our Lady never thought of anything, and that was what gave him the air of knowing everything straight away, as by a kind of grace. Was he the favorite of the Creator? Perhaps God had let him in on things. His gaze was purer (emptier) than du Barry's after an explanation by her lover the King. (Like du Barry, at that moment he did not realize that he was moving in a straight line toward the scaffold; but, since men of letters explain that the eyes of little Jesuses are sad unto death at the anticipation of Christ's Passion, I have every right to request you to see, in the depths of Our Lady's pupils, the microscopic image, invisible to your naked eye, of a guillotine.) He seemed numbed. Divine ran her hand through the blond hair of Our Lady of the Flowers.

  “You want me to help you?”

  She meant: help him undo his dress and take it off.

  “O.K., grab hold, go on.”

  Our Lady dropped his butt and crushed it on the rug; standing on the toes of one foot, be took off one shoe, then the other. Divine unlaced the back of the dress. She stripped Our Lady of the Flowers of one part, the prettiest part, of his name. Our Lady was a little tight. The last cigarette had made him woozy. His read rolled and suddenly fell on his chest, like those of the plaster shepherds kneeling on the tree trunks in the Christmas mangers when you put a coin into the slot. He hiccupped with sleep and ill-digested wine. He let his dress be taken off without the slightest movement to help himself, and, when he was naked, Divine lifted up his feet and toppled him on the bed, where he rolled against Seck. Usually Divine slept between them. She saw that today she would have to content herself with remaining on the outer edge, and the jealousy which had gripped her at The Tabernacle revived her bitterness. She turned off the lamp. The ill-drawn curtains admitted a very thin ray of light which was diluted into blond dust. The room was filled with the chiaroscuro of poetic mornings. Divine lay down. At once she drew Our Lady to her; his body seemed boneless, nerveless, with milk-fed muscles. He was smiling vacantly. He smiled in this complacent way when he was mildly amused, but Divine did not see the smile until she took his head in her hands and turned toward herself the face that at first had been turned toward Gorgui. Gorgui was lying on his back. The wine and liquor had dulled him, as they had dulled Our Lady. He was not sleeping. Divine took Our Lady's closed lips into her mouth. We know that his breath was fetid. Divine therefore wanted to shorten her kiss on the mouth. She slid down to the foot of the bed, licking as she went the downy body of Our Lady, who awoke to desire. Divine buried her head in the hollow of the murderer's legs and belly, and waited. Every morning it was the same scene, once with Our Lady and the next time with Gorgui. She did not wait long. Our Lady suddenly turned over on his belly and, holding his still supple tool, roughly thrust it with his hand into Divine's open mouth. She drew back her head and pursed her lips. The violent member turned to stone (go to it, condottieri, knights, pages, ruffians, gangsters, under your satins go stiff against Divine's cheek) and tried to force open the closed mouth, but it knocked against the eyes, the nose, the chin, slid along the cheek. That was their game. Finally, it found the lips. Gorgui wasn't sleeping. He sensed the movements by their echo on Our Lady's naked rump.

  “What a fine pair! You're getting me all hot. I want to get in on this!”

  He stirred. Divine was playing at offering herself and withdrawing. Our Lady was panting. Divine's arms encircled his solemn flanks, her hands caressed them, smoothed them, though lightly, so as to feel them quiver, with her finger tips, as when one tries to feel the eyeball rolling under the lids. She ran her hands over Our Lady's buttocks, and behold! Divine understood. Gorgui mounted the blond murderer and tried to penetrate him. Despair–terrible, profound, unparalleled–detached her from the game of the two men. Our Lady was still seeking Divine's mouth and found the eyelids, the hair, and in a voice broken with panting, but moist with smiling, he said:

  “Ready, Seck?”

  “Right,” said the Negro.

  His breath must have been blowing through Our Lady's blond hair. A furious movement started above Divine.

  “That's life,” Divine had time to think. There was a pause, a kind of oscillation. The scaffolding of bodies collapsed into regret. Divine's head climbed back to the pillow. She had remained alone, abandoned. She was no longer excited, and for the first time she did not feel the need to go to the toilet to finish off with her hand.

  Divine might have got over Seck's and Our Lady's offense had it not been committed in her home. She would have forgotten it. But the insult was likely to become chronic, since all three seemed to be settled in the garret permanently. She hated Seck and Our Lady equally, and she felt quite clearly that this hatred would have blown over had they left each other. She would keep them in the garret no longer. “I'm not going to fatten up those two sloths.” Our Lady was becoming hateful to her, like a rival. In the evening, when they had all got up, Gorgui grabbed Our Lady by the shoulders and, with a laugh, kissed him on the back of the neck. Divine, who was preparing tea, acted as if her thoughts were elsewhere, but she could not refrain from glancing at Our Lady's fly. A new fit of rage seized her: he had a hard-on. She thought she had stolen this glance without being seen, but she lifted up her head and eyes just in time to catch the quizzical glance of Our Lady who was pointing at her for the Negro's benefit.

  “You might at least be decent,” she said.

  “We're not doing any harm,” said Our Lady.

  “Ah! you think so!”

  But she did not want to seem to be expressing disapproval of an amorous understanding, nor even to seem to have discovered it. She added:

  “You can't stay a minute without roughhousing.”

  “We're not roughhousing, eh, baby? Here, take a look.”

  He was showing, clutching it in his fist, the bump under the throbbing cloth.

  “That's a serious matter,” he said with a laugh.

  Gorgui had let go of Our Lady. He was brushing his shoes. They drank their tea. Never had Divine had the occasion–never had she dreamed of being jealous of the physique of Our Lady of the Flowers. There is every reason to believe, however, that this jealousy existed, that it was veiled, hidden. Let us recall a few small facts that we have merely noted in passing: Divine once refusing Our Lady her mascara; her joy (quickly concealed) at discovering the horror of his foul breath; and, without realizing it herself, she pinned to the wall Our Lady's ugliest photo. This time, the physical jealousy (we know how bitter it is) was obvious to her. She planned and carried out in thought acts of frightful revenge. She scratched, slashed, amputated, lacerated, flayed, vitriolized. “May he be odiously mutilated,” she thought. As she wiped the tea cups, she carried out appalling executions. After laying aside the dish cloth, she was pure again, but, however, returned among humans only by a skillful gradation. Her acts bore the marks of it. Had she taken vengeance upon a faggot, Divine would doubtless have achieved a miracle of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. She would have shot a few arrows–but with the grace she had while saying: “I toss you an eyelash,” or “I toss you a bus.” A few scattered shafts. Then a salvo. Would have defined the faggot's contours with arrows. Would have imprisoned her in a cage of arrows and finally nailed her outright. She wanted to make use of that method against Our Lady. But this method has to be carried out in public. Though he allowed anything in the garret, Our Lady would not tolerate being kidded in front of the gang. He was ticklish. Divine's arrows hit against granite. She looked for arguments and, naturally, she found them. One day she caught him red-handed in an act worse than selfish. They were in the garret. Divine was still in bed. The evening before, Our Lady had bought a pack of Cravens. When he awoke
he looked for the pack: there were only two cigarettes left. He handed one to Gorgui, took the other and lit them. Divine was not sleeping, but she kept her eyes closed and tried to look as if she were still asleep. “It's to see what they're going to do,” she said to herself. The liar knew perfectly well that it was a pretext to keep herself from seeming annoyed if they forgot her in the distribution, and to enable her to retain her dignity. Now that she was nearing thirty, Divine began to feel the need of dignity. Trifles shocked her; she who, when young, had been of a boldness that had made barmen blush, herself blushed and felt herself blushing at the least little thing which, by the very subtlety of that symbol, recalled states in which she had really been able to feel herself humiliated. A slight shock–and terrible because the slighter–brought her back to her periods of wretchedness. You will be surprised to see Divine growing in age and sensitivity, whereas the common notion is that the older one gets, the thicker one's skin becomes. She was no longer ashamed, obviously, of being a queen for hire. If need be, she would have boasted of being one who lets jissom flow through her nine holes. It was all the same to her if men and women insulted her. (Until when?) But she lost control of herself, became crimson, and almost failed to pull herself together without a scandal. She clung to dignity. With her eyes closed, she imagined Seck and Our Lady scowling in order to excuse each other for having reckoned without her, when Our Lady made the blunder of uttering aloud the following remark (which grieved Divine, entrenched in her night of closed eyes), a remark that emphasized, indeed proved the fact that a long and complicated exchange of signs concerning her had just taken place: “There're only two cigarettes left.” She herself knew that. She heard the match being struck. “After all, they're not going to cut one of them in half.” She answered herself: “Well, he should have cut it (the he was Our Lady), or even have done without it and left it for me.” So, from this scene dated the period when she refused what Seck and Our Lady offered her. One day Our Lady came home with a box of candy. The scene was as follows. Our Lady to Divine: