Jacky S - Suburban Souls, Book II

I have nothing more to say. It would be too easy to overwhelm the Japanese girl. I have had enough of rummaging in your heaped-up mess of disgusting lies. All this is adulteration, fabrication, sophistication. Anyhow, I have left the game easy for you to finish- Suzanne-Césarée, false virgin; falsely incestuous; falsely cunning. Your “Papa-lover" told me you were a liar and wicked. Strange woman! Must then all your lovers scorn and despise you? What will become of you in a few years? Soon you will tire of the unnatural life you lead. Will you become a Miss Pawlee or worse?

Here is your pretext for closing the doors of your house against me. A few words thrown out about the audacity of S. coming to your town with his whore, and you are all well rid of me. Am I not a good fellow? I take all the wrong-doing over to myself. Such is my last act of delicacy. Final coquetry of your ex-lover, the son of Satan. That devil Jacky! — one never knows if he is mocking or no.

So, adieu! Keep a good recollection of me. That should be easy for you, as I am the man to whom you gave the least. Do not hate me too much. You will never more help me to salt. Only say this to yourself:

“Of all my lovers, both beneath my roof and out of doors, this one never did me any harm.”

With the remembrance of the last lingering kiss of your lying lips,

JACKY.

P.S. -I shall always send the papers to your “Papa,” as I have done for years.

I enclosed two newspaper cuttings. They were, “Divorce Among the People,” (See Appendix I.) and, “The Alleged Offence under the Criminal Law Amendment Act.” (See Appendix J.)

June 14, 1899.

Lilian sends me back the two novels: Suzanne, and La Femme et le Pantin, together with the proofs of The Double Life, and the newspaper cutting: “ Tête-à-Tête,” but she did rot return the two paragraphs I had enclosed in my letter of rupture.

I had expressly told her I did not want the books to be returned and I had so written on the flyleaf of one of them. Nevertheless she sent the whole lot by post. This was for me to write, I think but I did not reply.

June 20, 1899.

No acknowledgement being received by Lilian, she consults Papa, I suppose; because I receive, six days after the novels, a parcel containing my gloves, the negatives of my likeness as a cyclist, in two positions, and all the books he had of mine, including The Romance of Lust, which had been in his possession since February.

I examine this obscene work and find that the corners of several pages have been turned down, and one which has been so treated with very dirty fingers-page 72, vol. II. On that page is the description of a young woman named Lizzie, with a little clitoris sticking out like a boy's penis.

In January, Lilian talks incessantly of the character in Justine with the elongated clitoris. In April and May, Papa mentions this deformity twice to me. He returns me The Romance of Lust, marked at the page where such a thing is described. Comment needless.

I do not acknowledge the parcel.

In my letter of adieu, as in all my others since the return from Brussels, I had not put everything that I exactly thought. I always tried to “keep a little bit up my sleeve,” for a future time, or until I could find more evidence on certain points. It will be seen that I never alluded to her frolics with Raoul, nor did I ever write, or even speak about the visit of the officer.

I also pretended that I thought an officer had been the first to possess her entirely. It was prettier and more romantic. Whoever it might have been: Papa, or a man who paid, it is not of the slightest consequence, but the work was done before the eleventh of November 1899.

After the lunch with Lord Fontarcy, at the end of September, I did not see her until that latter date, and then she was full of grief; denied receiving my letter, with the money in it; was behind-hand with her “courses,” and had a fit of hysterical weeping. She then asked me to marry her for the last time, believing me to have more money than I actually possessed.

No doubt she was already hymenless at that juncture, and this was her last desperate move to regain her lost position. Had I accepted, she would have kept me from getting into a bed with her until after the ceremony, with the aid of Papa and Mamma, who would have taught her how to bring me an alum-made virginity on the wedding night. To fully cheat me, she wanted a night in a bedroom. It could not be done otherwise, and this accounts for her strange behavior ever since, and her continual plans for traveling with me to London and Belfort. She feared the free play of the rue de Leipzig, when she would fling herself unrestrainedly about, stark naked, outside a bed in the open light of day.

That is why she dared not confess the slightest thing to me, as the comparison of dates with what she had written, and which she hardly remembered herself, would have damned her in my eyes. At least, so she thought in her petty way, little knowing that a frank avowal at any period would have disarmed me at once. And so she had gone on from falsehood to falsehood, until she had piled up such a scaffolding of lies about her, that if she had made the slightest move towards the truth, the tottering fabric would have fallen down and crushed her.

When I lifted my mask of stupidity in her pretty garden, she had to choose between my love and her lies. She elected to remain nothing in her silly infamy, especially as I had plainly made her understand that my pockets were empty. That last thought would be her supreme consolation.

Finding that her daughter's young life was spoilt, her mother-poor, tactless, ignorant, avaricious creature- preferred her to become a prostitute at home, sooner than drive her out into the gutter. It was also to her advantage for Lilian to lend her body for her keeper's lusts.

There are many other strange little secrets in this peculiar and patriarchal family, but it would be useless to say all here, and I do not wish to drag on the tiny stage of my theatre of living marionettes a variety of characters who were more sinned against than sinning. The figures passing like frightened shadows through the crude confessions of my worst passions and vices, are vile enough in all conscience, including the wretched writer, but he has had moments of remorse, and has not made many of his actors half as bad as they really were. He has done penance publicly and without stint, but he has handled his old friend Eric Arvel with comparative discretion and tenderness, and has let him off easily, suppressing much that he knows about him, because he sleeps with step-daughter Lilian, who formerly played at being Jacky's incestuous half-virginal offspring.

I had no news of the Arvels, and carefully avoided Sonis-sur-Marne, devoting myself to my invalid mistress, whose health seemed to get worse and worse.

I still sent Papa his bundles of newspapers and magazines, and suddenly I got the following extraordinary note:

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. July 13, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

I have been going to write to you over and over again to thank you for all the papers which you have sent me, but I have been upon the shelf for nearly a month from the effects of some violent poisoning with bichloride of mercury.

You know what you gave me was put away in my cartonnier. It got all over my papers, and when sorting them I got a full dose, and only just managed to scrape out with violent salivation.