Joris-Karl Huysmans - Down There (Là-Bas)

Then he shaved, touched up his moustache, and proceeded to make an elaborate toilet, asking himself, as he dressed, whether he had better wear button shoes or slippers. He decided that shoes were less familiar and more dignified but resolved to wear a flowing tie and a blouse, thinking that this artistic negligée would please a woman.

"All ready," he said, after a last stroke of the brush. He made the turn of the other rooms, poked the fires, and fed the cat, which was running about in alarm, sniffing all the cleaned objects and doubtless thinking that those he rubbed against every day without paying any attention to them had been replaced by new ones.

"Oh, the 'little essentials' I am forgetting!" Durtal put the teakettle on the hob and placed cups, teapot, sugar bowl, cakes, bonbons, and tiny liqueur glasses on an old lacquered "waiter" so as to have everything on hand when it was time to serve.

"Now I'm through. I've given the place a thorough cleaning. Let her come," he said to himself, realigning some books whose backs stuck out further than the others on the shelves. "Everything in good shape. Except the chimney of the lamp. Where it bulges, there are caramel specks and blobs of soot, but I can't get the thing out; I don't want to burn my fingers; and anyway, with the shade lowered a bit she won't notice.

"Well, how shall I proceed when she does come?" he asked himself, sinking into an armchair. "She enters. Good. I take her hands. I kiss them. Then I bring her into this room. I have her sit down beside the fire, in this chair. I station myself, facing her, on this stool. Advancing a little, touching her knees, I can seize her. I make her bend over. I am supporting her whole weight. I bring her lips to mine and I am saved!

"-Or rather lost. For then the bother begins. I can't bear to think of getting her into the bedroom. Undressing and going to bed! That part is appalling unless you know each other very well. And when you are just becoming acquainted! The nice way is to have a cosy little supper for two. The wine has an ungodly kick to it. She immediately passes out, and when she comes to she is lying in bed under a shower of kisses. As we can't do it that way we shall have to avoid mutual embarrassment by making a show of passion. If I speed up the tempo and pretend to be in a frenzy perhaps we shall not have time to think about the miserable details. So I must possess her here, in this very spot, and she must think I have lost my head when she succumbs.

"It's hard to arrange in this room, because there isn't any divan. The best way would be to throw her down on the carpet. She can put her hands over her eyes, as they always do. I shall take good care to turn down the lamp before she rises.

"Well, I had better prepare a cushion for her head." He found one and slid it under the chair. "And I had better not wear suspenders, for they often cause ridiculous delays." He took them off and put on a belt. "But then there is that damned question of the skirts! I admire the novelists who can get a virgin unharnessed from her corsets and deflowered in the winking of an eye-as if it were possible! How annoying to have to fight one's way through all those starched entanglements! I do hope Mme. Chantelouve will be considerate and avoid those ridiculous difficulties as much as possible-for her own sake."

He consulted his watch. "Half-past eight. I mustn't expect her for nearly an hour, because, like all women, she will come late. What kind of an excuse will she make to Chantelouve, to get away tonight? Well, that is none of my business. Hmmm. This water heater beside the fire looks like the invitation to the toilet, but no, the tea things handy banish any gross idea."

And if Hyacinthe did not come?

"She will come," he said to himself, suddenly moved. "What motive would she have for staying away? She knows that she cannot inflame me more than I am inflamed." Then, jumping from phase to phase of the same old question, "This will turn out badly, of course," he decided. "Once I am satisfied, disenchantment is inevitable. Oh, well, so much the better, for with this romance going on I cannot work."

"Miserable me! relapsing-only in mind, alas!-to the age of twenty. I am waiting for a woman. I who have scorned the doings of lovers for years and years. I look at my watch every five minutes, and I listen, in spite of myself, thinking it is her step I hear on the stair.

"No, there is no getting around it. The little blue flower, the perennial of the soul, is difficult to extirpate, and it keeps growing up again. It does not show itself for twenty years, and then all of a sudden, you know not why nor how, it sprouts, and then forth comes a burst of blossoms. My God! I am getting foolish."

He jumped from his chair. There was a gentle ring. "Not nine o'clock yet. It isn't she," he murmured, opening the door.

He squeezed her hands and thanked her for being so punctual.

She said she was not feeling well. "I came only because I didn't want to keep you waiting in vain."

His heart sank.

"I have a fearful headache," she said, passing her gloved hands over her forehead.

He took her furs and motioned her to the armchair. Prepared to follow his plan of attack, he sat down on the stool, but she refused the armchair and took a seat beside the table. Rising, he bent over her and caught hold of her fingers.

"Your hand is burning," she said.

"Yes, a bit of fever, because I get so little sleep. If you knew how much I have thought about you! Now I have you here, all to myself," and he spoke of that persistent odour of cinnamon, faint, distant, expiring amid the less definite odours which her gloves exhaled, "well," and he sniffed her fingers, "you will leave some of yourself here when you go away."

She rose, sighing. "I see you have a cat. What is his name?"

"Mouche."

She called to the cat, which fled precipitately.

"Mouche! Mouche!" Durtal called, but Mouche took refuge under the bed and refused to come out. "You see he is rather bashful. He has never seen a woman."

"Oh, would you try to make me think you have never received a woman here?"

He swore that he never had, that she was the first…

"And you were not really anxious that this-first-should come?"

He blushed. "Why do you say that?"

She made a vague gesture. "I want to tease you," she said, sitting down in the armchair. "To tell you the truth, I do not know why I like to ask you such presumptuous questions."

He had sat down in front of her. So now, at last, the scene was set as he wished and he must begin the attack. His knee touched hers.

"You know," he said, "that you cannot presume here. You have claims on-"

"No, I haven't and I want none."

"Why?"

"Because… Listen," and her voice became grave and firm. "The more I reflect, the more inclined I am to ask you, for heaven's sake, not to destroy our dream. And then… Do you want me to be frank, so frank that I shall doubtless seem a monster of selfishness? Well, personally, I do not wish to spoil the-the-what shall I say?-the extreme happiness our relation gives me. I know I explain badly and confusedly, but this is the way it is: I possess you when and how I please, just as, for a long time, I have possessed Byron, Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval, those I love-"

"You mean…?"

"That I have only to desire them, to desire you, before I go to sleep…"

"And?"

"And you would be inferior to my chimera, to the Durtal I adore, whose caresses make my nights delirious!"

He looked at her in stupefaction. She had that dolent, troubled look in her eyes. She even seemed not to see him, but to be looking into space. He hesitated… In a sudden flash of thought he saw the scenes of incubacy of which Gévingey had spoken. "We shall untangle all this later," he thought within himself, "meanwhile-" He took her gently by the arms, drew her to him and abruptly kissed her mouth.