One night during that same fecund week, we were on our way back from the Opera, when Jacinto announced with a yawn that there was to be a party at No. 202.
‘A party?’
‘In honour of the Grand Duke, poor soul. He’s going to send me a very rare and delicious fish which is only ever caught off the coast of Dalmatia. I’d have preferred a brief lunch myself, but the Grand Duke demanded a supper. He’s a barbarian at heart, steeped in the literature of the eighteenth century, a man who still believes in suppers – in Paris! So this Sunday, just to amuse him, I’ve invited a few ladies and ten or so typically Parisian gentlemen. You should come too. It will be like leafing through a list of the great and the good of Paris society. But it really is the most frightful bore!’
Since Jacinto was not himself looking forward to the party, he took few pains to make it a brilliant success. He merely ordered a gypsy orchestra (in those far-off days, Parisians were still excited by the sight of gypsies in their short scarlet jackets and by the harshly melancholic strains of the czardas, the Hungarian national dance), and, in his desire to cater for all tastes from the tragic to the picaresque, he arranged to have the Theatrephone in the Library linked up to the Opéra, the Comédie Française, the Alcazar and the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens. Later, on Sunday evening, we inspected the supper table, resplendent with Dom Galeão’s old dinner service. And the lavish profusion of orchids – for upon the silk-embroidered cloth whole forests of them had been arranged around the Saxe fruit bowls made of cut glass and filigree of gold – gave off such a refined sense of luxury and good taste, that I found myself murmuring: ‘God bless money!’ For the first time, too, I visited the abundantly and minutely equipped pantry, and admired, in particular, the two lifts that travelled up from the depths of the kitchen, one for fish and meat – heated by hot water pipes – and the other for salads and ices – lined with refrigerating panels. Ah, No. 202!
At nine o’clock, however, on my way down to Jacinto’s study to write a letter to my Aunt Vicência, while Jacinto remained at his dressing-table where the manicurist was engaged in polishing his nails, we experienced yet another fright in that delightful palace festively decked out with flowers! All the electric lights, throughout the whole of No. 202, suddenly went out! In my immense distrust of these universal forces, I immediately raced for the door, stumbling in the darkness and bleating a ‘Help! Help!’ that positively reeked of rustic Guiães. Up above, Jacinto, still in his pyjamas, was calling out too, while the manicurist clung fearfully to him. Then the lights slowly flickered on again, like a laggardly servant who appears only when summoned, dragging his slippers. Nevertheless, my ashen-faced Prince, who had come downstairs by then, gave orders to send for an engineer from the Central Company for Domestic Electricity, and, just in case, another servant was despatched to the grocery store to buy a few packets of candles, while Cricket disinterred from the cupboards the abandoned candelabra and heavy, archaic candlesticks from the unscientific days of Dom Galeão. These were the sturdy veteran reserve troops to be used in the awful eventuality that later, over supper, the inexperienced forces of Civilisation should again treacherously fail. The electrician, who arrived out of breath, assured us, however, that the Electricity would stand firm and throw no further tantrums. Ever cautious, I slipped two candle stubs into my pocket.
The Electricity did, indeed, stand firm and tantrum-free. And when I came down from my room (late, because I had lost my dress waistcoat, which I found, after a furious search and much cursing, fallen behind the bed!), the whole of No. 202 was aglow, and the gypsies in the antechamber – tossing their hair and furiously bowing their violins – were playing a waltz so irresistible that the larger-than-life characters in the tapestries on the walls – Priam, Nestor and sly Ulysses – were all lifting their venerable feet in time to the music and panting!
Tugging nervously at my shirt cuffs, I crept timidly, noiselessly into Jacinto’s study. I was greeted at once by the perennial smile of the Countess de Trèves, who, in company with the illustrious historian Danjon (of the Académie Française), was marvelling at my supercivilised Prince’s sumptuous collection of machines and instruments. Never had the Countess seemed to me more majestic than in those saffron silks, her décolletage edged with lace à la Marie Antoinette, her curly, reddish hair caught back over her magisterial brow, and her curved patrician nose sheltering that ever-glittering smile, just as the arch of a bridge shelters the flow and shimmer of a stream. Erect as a throne and with her long tortoiseshell lorgnette held to her small, dull blue eyes, she stood first before the Graphophone and then before the Microphone, listening as if to some superior melody as Jacinto, with pained politeness, gave a garbled explanation of their workings. And each wheel, each spring elicited from her cries of wonder and finely turned compliments, as, with a mixture of shrewdness and candour, she attributed all these scientific inventions to Jacinto himself. The mysterious implements crowding his ebony desk were for her like a stirring rite of initiation. A paginating machine! A sticker-on of stamps! The metals grew warm beneath the gentle caress of her dry fingers. And she begged Jacinto for the addresses of the manufacturers so that she herself could purchase these adorably useful items! For thus equipped, one’s life would be so much easier! But it was, of course, necessary to have Jacinto’s taste and talent in order to choose and to ‘create’! Nor did she offer the honey of flattery only to Jacinto (who received it with resignation). Caressing the Telegraph machine with the handle of her lorgnette, she praised Danjon’s eloquence. As we stood by the Phonograph, she even managed to flatter me (whose name she did not even know) by saying how sweet it was to be able to record and collect the voices of one’s friends – a plump and luscious compliment which I sucked on as if it were a piece of celestial candy. Like a good farmer’s wife, she threw grain to all the hungry chickens, maternally feeding other people’s vanity as she went. Eager for more candy, I followed the whispering saffron train of her dress. She paused next to the Adding Machine, and Jacinto patiently provided her with an erudite description of its uses. She again ran her fingers over the holes concealing the black numbers, and with the same rapturous smile, murmured: ‘It really is quite remarkable, this electric printing press of yours!’
Jacinto spluttered:
‘But it’s a …’
Still smiling, Madame de Trèves had, however, already moved on. She had failed to understand the function of each of my Prince’s machines! She had not listened to a single one of his explanations! In that room filled with sumptuous machinery, her sole concern had been to exercise, with profit and perfection, the Art of Pleasing Others. Everything about her was sublimely false. I confessed my astonishment to Danjon.
The eloquent academician rolled his eyes:
‘Oh, she has such taste, such intelligence, such allure! Besides, one dines so well at her house! What coffee! She is, dear sir, a truly superior woman!’
I sidled away into the Library. At the entrance to that temple of erudition, a few gentlemen stood talking next to the shelf housing the Fathers of the Church. I stopped to greet the editor of Le Boulevard and the feminist psychologist, author of The Triple Heart, whom I had met the day before over lunch at No. 202. The latter greeted me paternally and, as if he urgently required my presence there, greedily clasped my large, coarse, country paw in his illustrious, glitteringly beringed hand. Everyone there, in fact, was celebrating his novel, The Cuirass, which had been launched that week to little yelps of pleasure and an excited rustle and flurry of skirts. An overcoat, with a vast head of hair – which resembled a wig coiffed à la Van Dyck – was standing on tiptoe and proclaiming that the scalpel of experimental psychology had never before penetrated so deeply into that ancient thing, the human soul! And everyone agreed and pressed closer to the psychologist and addressed him as ‘Maître’. Even I, never having so much as glimpsed the book’s yellow cover, but finding myself the object of those imploring eyes, hungry for more honey, murmured sibilantly:
‘Yes, absolutely delicious!’
And the psychologist, face aglow, lips moist, neck pinched by a high collar around which coiled an 1830s-style cravat, modestly confessed that he had dissected the souls who appeared in The Cuirass with ‘some care’, basing himself on documentary evidence, on scraps of still-warm, still-bleeding life. And it was then that Marizac, the Duke de Marizac, his hands in his pockets, remarked, with a smile sharper than the glint on the blade of a cut-throat razor:
‘And yet, my friend, in this carefully researched book there is one mistake, a very strange, very curious mistake.’
The psychologist threw back his head and squeaked:
‘A mistake?’
Yes, a mistake. And a most unexpected one in a man of the Maître’s great experience. The mistake consisted in attributing to The Cuirass’s splendid heroine – a Duchess with exquisite taste – a black satin corset! This black satin corset made its appearance in an otherwise fine and passionately perceptive passage in which she was getting undressed in Ruy D’Alize’s bedroom. And Marizac, still with his hands in his pocket, but looking serious now, appealed to the other gentlemen. Was it likely that an aesthetic, Pre-Raphaelite woman like the Duchess, who bought her clothes from such intellectual couturiers as Doucet and Paquin, would wear a black satin corset?
The psychologist was struck dumb, caught out, wounded! Marizac was the supreme authority on the underwear of duchesses, and he knew that when spending the afternoon in a young man’s bedroom, a duchess would – for purely idealistic reasons and in keeping with the dictates of her yearning soul – always wear a white corset and a white petticoat. The editor of Le Boulevard then weighed in pitilessly, declaring confidently that only an uneducated grocer’s wife would ever think that the combination of plump flesh and black satin could possibly be attractive. And in order that they would not think me inexperienced in such expensive, ducal adulteries, I smoothed my hair and said:
‘Black, of course, would only be suitable if the woman happened to be in deep mourning!’
The poor author of The Cuirass accepted defeat. His reputation as an authority on Female Elegance lay in tatters, and the whole of Paris would now assume that he had never seen a duchess unfastening her corset in his psychologist’s boudoir! Moistening his lips grown dry with fear, he acknowledged his mistake and contritely attributed it to a moment of unthinking improvisation.
‘It does indeed strike a completely false note. How could it possibly have escaped my notice, I mean a black corset, it really is absurd! At the very most – as a reflection of the duchess’ state of mind – it could have been lilac or possibly the very palest of yellows, with just a touch of old Malines lace. I can’t understand how I could have made such a blunder! I have my notebook of interviews, all carefully annotated and documented!’
In his distress, he ended up begging Marizac to broadcast his confession everywhere, at the club and in all the salons. It had been purely and simply an artistic lapse, for true artists, of course, are always working at such a fever pitch of inspiration, lost in the black depths of the souls they are probing! He hadn’t even noticed the corset or its colour. Arms outstretched, he declared to the editor of Le Boulevard:
‘I am ready, dear friend, to give an interview and to make a full and frank declaration to my public! Send me one of your reporters. Tomorrow at ten o’clock! Yes, we will hold an interview and decide there and then what should be the correct colour – which, naturally, should be lilac. Yes, send me one of your men, dear friend! It would also give me an opportunity to list, out loud, the many services Le Boulevard has done for the psychological sciences and for feminism!’
With his back pressed against the spines of the Holy Fathers on the shelves, he continued in this supplicant vein. I hurried off to the far end of the Library, where Jacinto was engaged in a heated discussion with two men.
They were Madame de Trèves’ ‘two men’ – her husband the Count de Trèves, a descendant of the kings of Candia, and her lover, the formidable Jewish banker, David Efraim. And so earnestly were they arguing with my Prince that they failed even to recognise me, both offering me a vague, limp handshake and addressing me as ‘dear Count’! As I rummaged around on the lemonwood table for a box of cigars, I realised at once that they were talking about the Burma Emerald Company, a forbidding enterprise that glittered with potential millions and to which these two confederates of bourse and bed had been trying, since the beginning of the year, to recruit Jacinto’s name, influence and money. Bored with business and distrustful of those emeralds buried in some obscure valley in Asia, Jacinto had so far resisted. The Count de Trèves, a very tall, thin man with a gaunt, bristly, sparsely-bearded face and a domed yellow head like a melon, was bent on assuring my poor Prince that, as the current prospectus made clear in setting out the sheer scope of the endeavour, it would outshine the Thousand and One Nights. More important still, any truly cultivated mind would see in the excavation of those emeralds a powerful civilising force. It would bring a whole stream of Western ideas flowing into Burma and thereby educate the country. He himself had taken on the directorship of the company for purely patriotic reasons.
‘Besides, a business involving gems, art and progress should only be carried out by the very cream of society, among friends.’
And on Jacinto’s other side, the formidable Efraim smoothed his beautiful beard – a beard curlier and blacker than that of any Assyrian king – with one small, plump hand and declared that, given the powerful forces backing it – Nagaiers, Bolsans, Saccart – the success of the enterprise was guaranteed.
Jacinto, weakening, wrinkled his nose.
‘You have, I presume, at least carried out the necessary studies? It has been shown that there are emeralds to be found?’
Efraim found such naïveté exasperating.
‘Emeralds? Of course there are emeralds! Wherever there are shareholders to be had there are emeralds!’
And I was still admiring the boldness of this maxim, when one of No. 202’s regular visitors arrived, out of breath and unfurling a highly perfumed handkerchief. This was Todelle – Antoine de Todelle – a young man prematurely bald, but a man of many talents, for he could lead a quadrille, imitate the singers at the café-concerts, concoct unusual salad dressings, and tell you all the latest Paris gossip.
‘Is he here? Has the Grand Duke arrived yet?’
No, His Highness had not arrived. And where was Madame de Todelle?
‘She can’t come … can’t leave the sofa … grazed her leg.’
‘Oh, dear!’
‘Oh, it’s nothing really. She fell off her velocipede!’
Jacinto was immediately all ears.
‘Madame de Todelle rides a velocipede?!’
‘Well, she’s learning to. She doesn’t actually own one herself, but during Lent, she’s been practising on one belonging to Father Ernesto, the priest at St Joseph’s. However, yesterday, in the Bois, crash, over she went! Grazed her leg. Just here.’
And with his finger he indicated on his own leg the exact location of the graze. Efraim said rather coarsely, but very seriously: ‘The best place, dammit!’ But Todelle did not even hear him, for he was already scuttling over to the editor of Le Boulevard, who was approaching, slow and paunchy, wearing his black monocle like an eyepatch. The two men met and stood pressed against a bookshelf, whispering earnestly.
Jacinto and I went into the billiard room, whose walls were lined with old Cordoban leather and where smoking was allowed. The great Dornan – that Neoplatonist poet and mystic and subtle master of all the metres – was sitting slumped among the cushions on a divan, one foot resting on his fat thigh, like an Indian god, two buttons of his waistcoat undone, and his pendulous double chin concealing his collar, as he puffed majestically on a vast cigar. Seated near him was an old man I had never seen before at No. 202, a slender figure, with white ringlets pushed back behind his ears; his face was heavily powdered, and he sported a small, very black, very curled moustache; he had clearly just finished telling some salty anecdote, for Joban, that theatre critic supreme, was standing beside him, roaring with laughter, his bald head scarlet with pleasure, and a red-haired young man (a descendant of Coligny), with a profile like a parakeet, was flapping his short arms about like wings and squawking: ‘Delicious! Divine!’ Only the idealistic poet, in his plump majesty, remained utterly impassive. However, as we approached, that same master of the metre, having first blown out a great cloud of smoke and greeted me with a slow lifting of his eyelids, began in a rich, metallic-sounding voice:
‘Oh I know a better story than that, infinitely better. You all know Madame Noredal, don’t you? Well, Madame Noredal has the most enormous buttocks …’
Alas, Todelle rushed into the room at that moment, loudly calling for Jacinto. The ladies wanted to hear an aria by Patti on the Phonograph! My friend shrugged and said irritably:
‘An aria by Patti … oh, I don’t know. The rolls are all in a mess. Besides, the Phonograph doesn’t work very well. No, what am I saying? It doesn’t work at all. I’ve got three of them and not one of them works.’
‘Not to worry!’ exclaimed Todelle gaily. ‘I’ll sing “Pauvre fille” instead. It’s better suited to a supper party anyway. Oh, la pauv’, pauv’, pauv’ …’
And with that, he linked arms with me and dragged me and my rustic shyness into the faded pink salon, where, like goddesses in one of Olympus’ choicest circles, Madame d’Oriol, Madame Verghane and the Princess de Carman were waiting, resplendent, along with another very fair-haired woman, who wore large diamonds in her long hair, and had such bare shoulders, such bare arms and such a bare bosom, that her white dress edged with pale gold seemed more like a chemise about to slip off. Impressed, I grabbed Todelle and growled softly: ‘Who’s that?’ But the jolly man had already scurried over to join Madame d’Oriol, with whom the Duke de Marizac – with easy, superior familiarity – was enjoying a joke, along with a young man whose soft downy beard was the colour of maize, and who was rocking back and forth on his heels, like an ear of wheat in the wind. I was left stranded by the piano, slowly rubbing my hands, trying to quell my embarrassment; then Madame Verghane got up from the sofa where she had been talking to an old man (who wore the Grand-Croix de St André pinned to his chest) and advanced, nay, glided towards me across the carpet, a small, brilliant figure, dragging behind her the long dark-green velvet train of her dress. So tiny was her waist, between the fecund roundness of her hips and the vastness of her bare, mother-of-pearl bosom, that I feared she might break in two as she slowly swayed towards me. Her famous, furiously black hair, parted in the middle and combed smoothly down on either side, entirely covered her ears; and on a large gold circlet glittered a diamond-studded star, as if on the brow of a Botticelli angel. Doubtless knowing my position of authority in No. 202, she threw me a smile – like a beneficent bolt of lightning – that made her liquid eyes still more liquid. She murmured:
‘The Grand Duke is still coming, isn’t he?’
‘Of course, Madame, he’s coming for the fish.’
‘For the fish?’
And at precisely that moment, the Rákóczy March burst forth in the antechamber with a triumphant roll on the drum and much furious scraping on the violins. It was he! In the Library, our majordomo boomed out:
‘His Highness, the Grand Duke Casimiro!’
Madame de Verghane uttered a brief, excited sigh and pushed out her chest, as if to provide the Grand Duke with a better view of her marble magnificence. And the editor of Le Boulevard, the old fellow wearing the Grand-Croix, and Efraim almost pushed me out of the way as they charged the door in their eagerness to see the Royal Personage.
The Grand Duke entered, preceded by Jacinto. He cut an imposing figure, slightly balding and with a neat, pointed, greying beard. For a moment, he hesitated, rocking slowly back and forth on his small feet, which were shod in flat shoes almost entirely concealed by his very wide trousers. Then, leisurely and smiling, he went over to shake hands with the ladies who had sunk into their velvets and silks as they performed a low curtsey. Then, clapping Jacinto jovially on the shoulder, he asked:
‘And how’s that fish coming along? You did use the recipe I sent you, didn’t you?’
Jacinto murmured a reassuring reply.
‘Just as well, just as well!’ exclaimed the Grand Duke in his loud commanding voice. ‘Because I’ve had no dinner you know, not a crumb! Well, one eats so badly at Chez Joseph! I don’t know why anyone bothers to dine there at all? Whenever I come to Paris, I ask: “Where’s the best place to dine now?” And everyone tells me: “Chez Joseph”. Nonsense! Today, for example, they were serving snipe! Absolutely foul! They haven’t the faintest notion how to cook snipe!’
His rather murky blue eyes glinted and grew wide with indignation.
‘Paris is losing all its finest qualities. One can’t dine well anywhere in Paris nowadays!’
Around him, the other guests all glumly nodded their agreement. The Count de Trèves defended Le Bignon, where they still kept up the noble traditions. And the editor of Le Boulevard, leaning towards His Highness, attributed the decadent state of cooking in France to the Republic, to the crude democratic taste for cheapness.
‘At Paillard’s you can still …’ began Efraim.
‘At Paillard’s!’ thundered the Grand Duke. ‘But the Burgundy there is appalling, simply appalling!’
He let his arms hang limp and dejected by his side. Then he carefully smoothed the lapels of his tailcoat and, with the slow rolling gait of an old sea captain, went over to greet Madame d’Oriol, every part of whom seemed to glitter: her smile, her eyes, her jewels, each fold of her salmon-pink silk dress. However, no sooner had the pale, soft creature begun to chatter, fluttering her fan like a bright bird’s wing, than His Highness noticed the Theatrephone positioned among some flowers on a table, and he summoned Jacinto:
‘In communication with the Alcazar by any chance? A Theatrephone, is it?’
‘It certainly is, sir.’
Excellent! Perfect! He had regretted having had to miss Gilberte singing that new song ‘Les Casquettes’. Half past eleven! That was just the time she was due to sing it in the final act of La Revue Électrique! He clamped the two ‘receivers’ from the Theatrephone to his ears and stood there, engrossed, an earnest frown on his stern face. Suddenly, he issued a command:
‘It’s her! Sh! Come and listen. It’s her! Everyone, come over here! Princess, you too! All of you! It’s her! Sh!’
Then, since Jacinto had been so prodigal as to install two Theatrephones, each equipped with twelve lines, all the ladies and gentlemen present hurriedly pressed a receiver to one ear and stood, motionless, enjoying ‘Les Casquettes’. The faded pink salon and the Library filled with an august silence, and I alone remained disconnected and instead stood idly by, my hands in my pockets.
On the monumental clock, which marked the time in all the capitals of the world and the positions of all the planets, the delicate hands fell asleep. Like some icy, melancholy sun, the Electricity blazed down on the silence and on the pensive immobility of all those backs and all those décolletages. From each attentive ear, cupped by a hand, hung a black wire, like a piece of intestine. Dornan, slumped across the table, had closed his eyes, like a fat monk at his meditations. The historian of the Dukes d’Anjou was gravely performing his palace duty, delicately holding the ‘receiver’ between the tips of his fingers and holding his sad, sharp nose aloft. Madame d’Oriol was smiling languidly as if the wire were murmuring sweet-nothings in her ear. To stir myself, I risked taking one timid step, but was immediately halted by a fierce ‘Sh!’ from the Grand Duke. I withdrew behind the curtains to hide my idleness. The psychologist and author of The Cuirass was standing some way from the table, the long wire drawn taut, and he was biting his lip in the sheer effort of concentration. Reclining in a vast armchair, His Highness was in seventh heaven. Beside him, Madame Verghane’s bosom rose and fell like a milky wave. And my poor Jacinto, ever conscientious, was bent over the Theatrephone as sadly as if it were a tomb.
Confronted by this vision of superior, civilised beings devoutly and silently drinking in the obscenities Gilberte was bleating down the line at them from beneath the soil of Paris, through wires buried in the gutters, close by the sewers, I thought about my sleeping village. The same crescent moon accompanied by one tiny star that was racing through the clouds over the rooftops and the black chimneys of the Champs-Elysées would also be racing over the pine woods there, but shedding a softer, brighter light. Far off in the deeps of the Dona, the frogs would be croaking. Up on the hill, the little church of São Joaquim would be glowing white, bare and innocent.
One of the women muttered:
‘That’s not Gilberte!’
And one of the men said:
‘That’s a cornet, isn’t it?’
‘Now they’re applauding.’
‘No, it’s Paulin!’
The Grand Duke uttered another ferocious ‘Sh!’ In the courtyard of my house in Guiães, the dogs were barking. From beyond the river, João Saranda’s dogs answered. Now I was walking down a narrow lane, beneath the trees, with my staff on my shoulder. And there among the silk curtains, I sensed in the fine, soft air the smell of pine logs crackling in hearths, the warmth from the sheep-pens that penetrated even the high surrounding hedges, and the sleepy whisper of the streams.
I awoke to a shout that came neither from the sheep-pens nor from the shadows. It was the Grand Duke who had leapt to his feet with a furious shrug of the shoulders.
‘I can’t hear a thing! Nothing but squeaks and buzzes! What a bore! But what a song, eh?
‘Oh les casquettes,
‘Oh les casqu-e-e-ttes!’
Everyone lay down their wires, proclaiming Gilberte to be simply divine. And the good majordomo, opening wide the two leaves of the door, announced:
‘Monseigneur est servi!’
At the table, whose splendid orchids drew loud praise from His Highness, I sat between the ethereal poet Dornan and the young man with the blond fuzz of beard, the one who swayed like an ear of wheat in the wind. After unfolding his napkin and arranging it on his ample lap, Dornan disentangled a large lorgnette from his watch chain in order to study the menu, which met with his full approval. He leaned towards me with his fat apostle’s face and muttered:
‘If this is Jacinto’s 1834 port, it must be authentic, don’t you think?’
I assured the Master of the Metres that the port had indeed been aged in Dom Galeão’s cellars. By way of preparation, the poet carefully brushed aside the long, thick hairs of the moustache that covered his large mouth. A cold consommé with truffles was served. And the maize-coloured young man, looking up and down the table with his gentle, blue eyes, murmured, half-regretful, half-amused:
‘What a shame! All that’s lacking are a general and a bishop!’
And he was right! The Ruling Classes were all there, eating Jacinto’s truffles. Opposite us, Madame d’Oriol gave a laugh as melodious as bird-song. The Grand Duke had noticed among the forest of orchids surrounding his plate one particularly sinister and ugly one, resembling a green scorpion with lustrous wings, fat and tumescent with venom; very delicately he handed this monstrous flower to Madame d’Oriol, who, warbling with laughter, solemnly placed it in her décolletage. Next to that soft flesh – like fine cream – the ‘scorpion’ had grown still greener and its wings trembled. All eyes lit up, fixed on that lovely bosom, to which the misshapen, poisonous-looking flower only gave an added piquancy. Madame d’Oriol glowed, triumphant. The better to accommodate the flower, she adjusted the neckline of her dress, thus revealing further beauties and showing the way to all those male eyes, which, aflame with curiosity, were slowly undressing her. Jacinto’s frowning face stared down at his empty plate. And the lyric poet of Mystic Twilight, stroked his beard and snarled scornfully:
‘She’s a beautiful woman right enough; scrawny hips, though, and no bottom at all, I bet!’
Meanwhile, the young man with the downy beard had returned to his theme. It was such a shame not to have a general with his sword there and a bishop with his crosier!
‘But for what purpose, sir?’
The young man made a delicate gesture that made all his rings sparkle.
‘Why, for a dynamite bomb. Here we have a splendid bouquet of the flowers of Civilisation, including a Grand Duke. Imagine the effect if someone lobbed a bomb through the door! What a fine end to a fin-de-siècle supper!’
And when I merely stared at him in amazement, he, taking sips of his Chateau d’Yquem, declared that the one genuine, truly refined pleasure would be to destroy Civilisation. Neither science nor the arts, neither love nor money could bring such real, intense pleasure to our satiated souls. Any pleasure that could be had from creating had long since been exhausted. Now all that remained was the divine pleasure of destroying!
He uttered several more such enormities, his pale eyes twinkling. However, I was no longer listening to this genteel pedant, for something else was troubling me. I noticed that suddenly, all around me, as in the tale of the Petrified Palace, all service had ceased. The next dish should have been the famous fish from Dalmatia, His Highness’s fish, the inspiration for the party! Jacinto was nervously crushing a flower between his fingers. And every one of the servants had vanished!
Fortunately, the Grand Duke was busy regaling the table with a story about a hunting party on a game reserve in Sarvan, during which a lady, the wife of a banker, had suddenly leapt from her horse when they reached a clearing. He and all the other hunters had stopped, and the gallant lady, ashen-faced, had caught up her riding habit and disappeared behind a rock … However, we never found out what the banker’s wife was doing in that clearing, crouched behind a rock, because, just then, the majordomo appeared, his face glistening with sweat, and whispered something to Jacinto, who bit his lip in horror. The Grand Duke fell silent. Everyone looked at each other in bright expectation. Then my Prince, patiently, heroically, forcing a pale smile, said:
‘My friends, something most unfortunate has occurred …’
Dornan leapt up from his chair:
‘Is there a fire?’
No, there was no fire. The dumb waiter had unexpectedly gone wrong and got stuck halfway, with His Highness’ fish inside!
The Grand Duke flung down his napkin. His politeness cracked like badly applied enamel.
‘This is too much! I had the devil’s own job getting hold of that fish! That, after all, is why we’ve come here for supper. How ridiculous! Why didn’t they just bring it up by hand? Stuck halfway? Honestly! Let me see. Where’s the pantry?’
And he stumped angrily off towards the pantry, led by the stumbling majordomo, cowed by the Grand Duke’s terrifying rage. Jacinto followed, like a shadow, carried along in His Highness’ wake. Unable to restrain my curiosity, I went with them down to the pantry to witness the disaster, while Dornan kept slapping his thigh and demanding that we finish our supper without the fish.
The Grand Duke was already there, peering into the black well of the lift and holding a candle that made his flushed face seem still redder. I looked over his royal shoulder. Down below, in the darkness, on a large platter, surrounded by slices of lemon, lay the precious fish, white and gleaming, the steam still rising from it. Jacinto, looking as white as his own tie, was desperately fiddling with the lift’s complicated springs. Then it was the Grand Duke’s turn, and with his hairy hands, he gave the cables a tremendous shaking. In vain. The machine was stuck fast, as inert as eternal bronze.
There was a rustle of silk at the pantry door. It was Madame d’Oriol and behind her Madame Verghane, eyes flashing, curious to know what was happening to this fish about which the Grand Duke clearly cared so passionately. Our friend Marizac appeared too, smiling and proposing that a ladder be lowered into the shaft. Then the psychologist joined us and duly psychologised, attributing wise motives to that stubborn fish. And in response to each of them, the scarlet-faced Grand Duke pointed, with one tragic finger, at his fish lying in the bottom of that black hole! They all peered over and muttered: ‘Yes, there it is!’ Todelle, in his haste, almost tumbled in. Coligny’s parakeet descendant flapped his wings, squawking: ‘Doesn’t it smell delicious!’ In the crowded pantry, the ladies’ décolletages rubbed up against the lackeys’ uniforms. The heavily powdered older man accidentally put his foot in a bucket of ice and uttered a feral yelp! And above them all, the historian of the Dukes d’Anjou moved his sad, pointed nose back and forth.
Suddenly, Todelle had an idea:
‘It’s perfectly simple! We must fish for the fish!’
The Grand Duke gave his thigh a triumphal slap. Of course! They must fish for the fish! And he so enjoyed this comical suggestion, so unusual and so novel, that his anger vanished, and he became once more the amiable nobleman, magnificently polite, asking the ladies to take a seat in order to watch this miraculous bit of fishing! He himself would be the fisherman! All that was required for this diverting exploit was a walking-stick, a piece of thread and a hook. Madame d’Oriol excitedly offered one of her hairpins. Everyone crowded round her, conscious of her perfume and the warmth of her skin, and praised such sweet dedication. And the psychologist proclaimed that never had such a divine hook been used for fishing!
When two astonished servants returned bearing a walking-stick and some string, the Grand Duke, radiant now, bent the hairpin to form a hook. Jacinto, still pale, held a lamp over the darkness of the deep shaft. And the more serious gentlemen – the historian, the editor of Le Boulevard, the Count de Trèves, the man with the Van Dyck hairstyle – stood in the doorway, showing a reverent interest in His Highness’ little fancy. Madame de Trèves, meanwhile, was serenely examining the contents of the pantry. Only Dornan had not risen from the table. With his clenched fists resting on the cloth and his fat neck bowed, he looked as sullen and bored as a caged beast whose lump of meat has just been snatched away.
Meanwhile, His Highness continued his fervent fishing! To no avail. The rather blunt hook, dancing about on the end of the thin soft thread failed to catch hold.
‘Jacinto, lift that light up higher!’ he cried, his face puffy and perspiring. ‘Higher! Now! Yes! It has to catch the gill, that’s the only place the hook can get some purchase. Yes! Oh, no, dammit! It won’t work!’
He looked up from the shaft, breathless and weary. It was impossible. What they needed was a crew of carpenters with crowbars! And we all urged him anxiously to abandon the fish.
The Grand Duke, smiling and rubbing his hands, agreed that it had, in the end, turned out to be more fun fishing for the fish than eating it! And the elegant group returned eagerly to the table, to the sound of a Strauss waltz, which the gypsies attacked with languid ardour. Only Madame de Trèves hung back in order to tell my poor Jacinto how much she admired his pantry. It was perfect! What an acute understanding of life it revealed, what a keen appreciation of comfort!
His Highness, the Grand Duke, who was feeling rather hot after his efforts, energetically downed two glasses of Chateau-Lagrange. Everyone declared him a fisherman of genius. And the valets served the ‘Baron de Pauillac’ – a lamb dish from the Bordeaux region, the preparation of which involved almost sacred rituals, and which had been given this grand, sonorous name and thus elevated to the nobility of France.
I ate with the appetite of a Homeric hero. The champagne, like water flowing from a winter fountain, sparkled and spurted unceasingly into my glass and into Dornan’s. When they served the ortolans géles, which melted in the mouth, the divine poet, to my delight, murmured his sublime sonnet to Santa Clara. And since, on my other side, the young man with the fair, downy beard was still insisting on the destruction of the old world, I agreed with him as well, and together, sipping champagne so cold it had almost coagulated into a sorbet, we cursed Civilisation, the Century, and all the proud inventions of Science! Peering across through the flowers and the lights, I was also keeping a close eye on the breathless billowing of Madame Verghane’s vast bosom as she laughed like a bacchante. I didn’t even feel sorry for Jacinto who, with the meekness of St Jacinthus with his head on the executioner’s block, was longing for an end to his torment and to his party.
The party did finally end. I can still remember, at three o’clock in the morning, the Grand Duke standing in the antechamber – red-faced and unsteady on his small feet, unable to get his arms in the sleeves of the fur coat despite help from Jacinto and myself – and effusively inviting my friend to go hunting one day on his estates in Dalmatia.
‘I owe my friend Jacinto a fine fishing trip, and I want him to owe me an equally fine shooting party!’
And as we accompanied him to the door, past the ranks of servants, down the vast staircase, preceded by the majordomo bearing a three-branched candlestick, His Highness kept repeating over and over:
‘Oh yes, we’ll put on a fine shooting party for you … and Zé Fernandes must come too! Good old Zé Fernandes! An excellent supper, Jacinto! The “Baron de Pauillac” was divine! I reckon we should promote him to Duke. Yes, Duke de Pauillac! Another slice from the Duke de Pauillac’s leg, if you please. No, no, don’t come out! You’ll catch cold!’
And from the coupé, as it set off, he was still shouting:
‘Don’t forget to rescue that fish, Jacinto! It’ll be excellent for lunch, served cold with a green sauce!’
Climbing wearily back up the steps, drowsy with champagne and sleep, my eyes drooping, I said softly to my Prince:
‘Oh, that was fun, Jacinto! And what a gorgeous woman that Madame Verghane is! Shame about the dumb waiter …’
And Jacinto, in a dull voice that was half-yawn, half-roar, replied:
‘A disaster! A complete fiasco!’
Three days after the party at No. 202, my Prince unexpectedly received some important news from Portugal. A devastating storm of wind, lightning and rain had struck his house and estate in Tormes and, indeed, the whole area. With the heavy rain, ‘or for some other reason that the experts have yet to reveal’ (in the words of his evidently distraught administrator, Silvério), a section of the hillside that overhung the Vale da Carriça, had collapsed, dragging with it the old church – a little rustic chapel built in the sixteenth century, and in which Jacinto’s male forebears had had their final resting-place ever since the days of King Manuel. The venerable bones of all those Jacintos now lay interred beneath a shapeless mound of earth and rock. Silvério had already set to work with the young men on the estate to uncover the ‘precious remains’. He was, however, anxiously awaiting orders from Jacinto.
Jacinto turned pale with shock. The sudden collapse of that ancient mountain soil, which had stood firm and steady since the Goths! Those peaceful tombs thunderously hurled, in the midst of storm and darkness, into the dark depths of the valley! Those bones, the remnants of individuals each of whom had once had a name, a date and a history, now lying jumbled together like so much rubble!
‘How strange! How very strange!’
And all that evening, he kept asking me about the mountains and about Tormes, which I had known as a child, because the mansion, with its noble avenue of ancient beech trees, was only two leagues from our house, on the old road from Guiães to the station and to the river. The caretaker at Tormes, kindly Melchior, was the brother-in-law of our administrator at Roqueirinha, and, given my friendship with Jacinto, I had often entered that robust granite mansion to admire the grain piled up in its echoing rooms and to taste the new wine in its vast cellars.
‘And what about the church, Zé Fernandes? Did you ever go into the church?’
‘No, never, but it was very picturesque, with a squat, square, black tower, where a family of storks have lived for many years. It will be a terrible upheaval for them too!
‘How strange!’ my Prince was murmuring, still filled with foreboding.
And he sent a telegram to Silvério telling him to clear away the rubble, collect together the bones, rebuild the church and to spend on this work of piety and reverence whatever was necessary, as if money were as boundless as the waters of a great river.