Pitigrilli - Cocaine

“But what about the relatives’ religious feelings? The cult of the dead?” said the astronomer.

“That did not come into it,” the painter went on. “The factory owner refused to let me go on sleeping in his store, not because his customers had religious objections, but because the relatives of the deceased took the opportunity to demand a reduction in price.”

The dancers came back and announced an Andalusian dance.

“And where did you go and sleep then?”

There was a rattle of castanets.

“I started selling a few canvases, and I rented a garret and started being successful. Do you remember,” he said, turning to the woman with yellow hair, “the parties I used to give in my boîte up on the Butte? I actually had silver cutlery.”

“Yes, I remember your silver cutlery,” said the woman with the fiery hair. “On one fork there were the words Restaurant Duval , and on a spoon there were the words Station Buffet.”

“But that was a tactful gesture on my part,” said the painter. “I wanted to give my guests the feeling of exclusiveness.”

“I was at the Lycée Voltaire then,” said a gentleman who had not yet spoken.

“No, you were at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand,” the painter pointed out.

“Nonsense, it was the Lycée Voltaire.”

“No, I tell you it was the Lycée Louis-le-Grand.”

“Triple Sec is right,” a friend of the gentleman’s said. “You were at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand.”

The surgeon turned to Tito. “You see the stage he has reached,” he said. “Loss of memory.”

“Cocaine?” Tito asked.

“Morphine,” replied the surgeon.

The gentleman stayed open-mouthed, staring as if hypnotized by some detail of the pattern of the carpet.

He took a small metal container from the inside pocket of his evening dress and stuck a needle through his trousers into his thigh; and a few minutes later his face lit up and he exclaimed: “Yes, you’re perfectly right. I went right through the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and I was a class-mate of Ivan the Terrible and Scipio Africanus.”

Butterflies dazed by ether fluttered about and fell to the floor, dying.

One was crushed by the dancer’s feet, and another, bent over a rose as if to gaze at its own reflection in a dewdrop, languished and died in that coquettish posture. Another, with pure white wings, came to rest on the edge of an ashtray, seemingly intent on sprinkling itself with humility before dying. Kalantan put her little finger in a glass and dropped some liquid on the creature’s head; it was struck dead and collapsed on its back.

“Don’t, Kalantan, that’s cruel and stupid,” the blonde woman exclaimed as if her hand had been pricked with a pin. “You’re stupid and cruel, Kalantan.”

The woman’s voice was wooden and harsh as if she had water gurgling in her throat. Her eyes were glassy and her fingers contracted as if she were about to grab someone by the arm.

The violin seemed to be at death’s door.

The woman fell back in a state of nervous frenzy. Kalantan took the cocaine box from the surgeon’s hands and put some up the nostrils of the trembling woman, who with lined brow and terrified eyes went on hissing: “You’re wicked, wicked.”

Tito rose and went to the trapdoor. Neither the violinist nor his instrument were visible through the opening, though every now and then he caught a brief glimpse of the bow.

“She’s coming round,” Kalantan said, handing back the gold box to its owner.

The poison made the woman feel better for the moment. The wrinkles vanished from her brow, her fingers relaxed and an almost calm expression returned to her eyes.

“You’re very kind to me, my dear Kalantan,” she murmured. “Forgive me.” And she started to weep.

Kalantan picked her up by her bare, damp armpits, as if she were a little girl, and made her sit by her side.

“Poor darling, you’ve quite spoilt your make-up. Stop crying and, whatever you do, don’t laugh,” she said.

Kalantan knew all about these crises. She knew that weeping was followed by convulsions more dreadful than despair, by laughter that consisted of sobs. The woman would laugh or cry with the whole of her being, her livid mouth contracted into a grimace. She would be in a state of terrified gaiety, or grief-stricken hilarity, as if she were looking at a corpse dressed as a clown playing a ferocious pantomime with a lizard.

The man who always went to sleep went on sleeping.

The astronomer had taken a rose from the bunch and plunged it in ether. He inhaled it voluptuously, looking at it with ecstasy on his face. His left leg was stretched out on the floor and quivered convulsively as if as the result of some electromagnetic phenomenon. The mummies’ gallery were silent; one of them, after pricking himself with a syringe, did not have the strength to put it back, having been immediately overwhelmed by a feeling of stupefying bliss. The surgeon, who had preserved some traces of dignity, started talking about painting in order to create the impression that some remnants of clarity still remained in his head.

“I detect a Norwegian element in Van Dongen,” he said. “In my opinion he uses too many warm tones and too much white lead; and there’s a lack of stereoscopy in the position of the hands. What do you think?”

“What I think, my dear doctor,” the artist replied, “is that the latest method of treating arteriosclerosis is sound. The patient’s eye must be inoculated with horse kidneys and inhalations of hot vitriol must be put in his eyes. My own advice would be also to give him an injection of potassium chlorate and ipecacuanha between the first and second vertebrae.”

“What rubbish are you talking?” the surgeon exclaimed.

“I was only paying you back for the rubbish you talked about painting.”

The painter rose to his feet.

The male dancer announced a Bengal dance. He wore a white silk turban with a big brilliant and enormous plume. The woman, who was completely nude and depilated, wore a close-fitting golden cap that came down in two flaps over her cheeks to accentuate the oval line. Her bronzy yellow flesh gleamed and quivered with her feline movements. The spring-like, darting movements of her body alternated with brief, sinister pauses; like a young jaguar that hesitates before it pounces. In her eyes, heavily outlined with antimony, there was a veiled, drugged voluptuousness. Her skin exuded an ambiguous but strong perfume of saffron, sandalwood and benzoin. In her brownish face with its green reflections, the whiteness of her teeth looked like an ivory paperknife held between her open lips. Her arms turned and twisted and intertwined, clung to her neck, slipped down her sides, wound over her belly and writhed like two snakes whose heads were simulated by the fingers she stretched and clenched, adorned by two luminous chalcedonies that were as fascinating and as cold as two hypnotized eyes. The young jaguar’s body struggled wildly in the coils and the glazed smile twisted into a deathly grimace.

Those death throes full of a convulsive and arid eroticism were a marvelous evocation of all the fabulous mysteries of the jungle, far superior to an interminable lecture on India with slides.

Tito, carried away by the dancer’s legs, said: “Look at those slender ankle bones. Ankle bones are what excite me most in women. The breasts, the hips, the sexual organs are of interest only to seminarists, if that.”

The music came to an end and the dancers disappeared.

A rectangular opening appeared in the ceiling to let out the poisoned air, and through it the sharp breeze of early morning entered and a patch of clear blue sky became visible. In the garden a bird sang a few notes, as cheerful, sharp and ironic as an epigram.