Atlantida - Pierre Benoît (good books to read txt) 📗

She was indeed lucky if her lover, having observed the position carefully, did not return with ships and troops of occupation."

"Your learning charms me," said Morhange. "Continue."

"Do you need examples? Alas! they abound. Think of the cavalier fashion in which Ulysses treated Calypso, Diomedes Callirhoë. What should I say of Theseus and Ariadne? Jason treated Medea with inconceivable lightness. The Romans continued the tradition with still greater brutality. Aenaeus, who has many characteristics in common with the Reverend Spardek, treated Dido in a most undeserved fashion. Caesar was a laurel-crowned blackguard in his relations with the divine Cleopatra. Titus, that hypocrite Titus, after having lived a whole year in Idummea at the expense of the plaintive Berenice, took her back to Rome only to make game of her. It is time that the sons of Japhet paid this formidable reckoning of injuries to the daughters of Shem.

"A woman has taken it upon herself to re-establish the great Hegelian law of equilibrium for the benefit of her sex. Separated from the Aryan world by the formidable precautions of Neptune, she draws the youngest and bravest to her. Her body is condescending, while her spirit is inexorable. She takes what these bold young men can give her. She lends them her body, while her soul dominates them. She is the first sovereign who has never been made the slave of passion, even for a moment. She has never been obliged to regain her self-mastery, for she never has lost it. She is the only woman who has been able to disassociate those two inextricable things, love and voluptuousness."

M. Le Mesge paused a moment and then went on.

"Once every day, she comes to this vault. She stops before the niches; she meditates before the rigid statues; she touches the cold bosoms, so burning when she knew them. Then, after dreaming before the empty niche where the next victim soon will sleep his eternal sleep in a cold case of orichalch, she returns nonchalantly where he is waiting for her."

The Professor stopped speaking. The fountain again made itself heard in the midst of the shadow. My pulses beat, my head seemed on fire. A fever was consuming me.

"And all of them," I cried, regardless of the place, "all of them complied! They submitted! Well, she has only to come and she will see what will happen."

Morhange was silent.

"My dear sir," said M. Le Mesge in a very gentle voice, "you are speaking like a child. You do not know. You have not seen Antinea. Let me tell you one thing: that among those"—and with a sweeping gesture he indicated the silent circle of statues—"there were men as courageous as you and perhaps less excitable. I remember one of them especially well, a phlegmatic Englishman who now is resting under Number 32. When he first appeared before Antinea, he was smoking a cigar. And, like all the rest, he bent before the gaze of his sovereign.

"Do not speak until you have seen her. A university training hardly fits one to discourse upon matters of passion, and I feel scarcely qualified, myself, to tell you what Antinea is. I only affirm this, that when you have seen her, you will remember nothing else. Family, country, honor, you will renounce everything for her."

"Everything?" asked Morhange in a calm voice.

"Everything," Le Mesge insisted emphatically. "You will forget all, you will renounce all."

From outside, a faint sound came to us.

Le Mesge consulted his watch.

"In any case, you will see."

The door opened. A tall white Targa, the tallest we had yet seen in this remarkable abode, entered and came toward us.

He bowed and touched me lightly on the shoulder.

"Follow him," said M. Le Mesge.

Without a word, I obeyed.

 

 

XI ANTINEA

 

My guide and I passed along another long corridor. My excitement increased. I was impatient for one thing only, to come face to face with that woman, to tell her.... So far as anything else was concerned, I already was done for.

I was mistaken in hoping that the adventure would take an heroic turn at once. In real life, these contrasts never are definitely marked out. I should have remembered from many past incidents that the burlesque was regularly mixed with the tragic in my life.

We reached a little transparent door. My guide stood aside to let me pass.

I found myself in the most luxurious of dressing-rooms. A ground glass ceiling diffused a gay rosy light over the marble floor. The first thing I noticed was a clock, fastened to the wall. In place of the figures for the hours, were the signs of the Zodiac. The small hand had not yet reached the sign of Capricorn.

Only three o'clock!

The day seemed to have lasted a century already.... And only a little more than half of it was gone.

Another idea came to me, and a convulsive laugh bent me double.

"Antinea wants me to be at my best when I meet her."

A mirror of orichalch formed one whole side of the room. Glancing into it, I realized that in all decency there was nothing exaggerated in the demand.

My untrimmed beard, the frightful layer of dirt which lay about my eyes and furrowed my cheeks, my clothing, spotted by all the clay of the Sahara and torn by all the thorns of Ahaggar—all this made me appear a pitiable enough suitor.

I lost no time in undressing and plunging into the porphry bath in the center of the room. A delicious drowsiness came over me in that perfumed water. A thousand little jars, spread on a costly carved wood dressing-table, danced before my eyes. They were of all sizes and colors, carved in a very transparent kind of jade. The warm humidity of the atmosphere hastened my relaxation.

I still had strength to think, "The devil take Atlantis and the vault and Le Mesge."

Then I fell asleep in the bath.

When I opened my eyes again, the little hand of the clock had almost reached the sign of Taurus. Before me, his black hands braced on the edge of the bath, stood a huge Negro, bare-faced and bare-armed, his forehead bound with an immense orange turban.

He looked at me and showed his white teeth in a silent laugh.

"Who is this fellow?"

The Negro laughed harder. Without saying a word, he lifted me like a feather out of the perfumed water, now of a color on which I shall not dwell.

In no time at all, I was stretched out on an inclined marble table.

The Negro began to massage me vigorously.

"More gently there, fellow!"

My masseur did not reply, but laughed and rubbed still harder.

"Where do you come from? Kanem? Torkou? You laugh too much for a Targa."

Unbroken silence. The Negro was as speechless as he was hilarious.

"After all, I am making a fool of myself," I said, giving up the case. "Such as he is, he is more agreeable than Le Mesge with his nightmarish erudition. But, on my word, what a recruit he would be for Hamman on the rue des Mathurins!"

"Cigarette, sidi?"

Without awaiting my reply, he placed a cigarette between my lips and lighted it, and resumed his task of polishing every inch of me.

"He doesn't talk much, but he is obliging," I thought.

And I sent a puff of smoke into his face.

This pleasantry seemed to delight him immensely. He showed his pleasure by giving me great slaps.

When he had dressed me down sufficiently, he took a little jar from the dressing-table and began to rub me with a rose-colored ointment. Weariness seemed to fly away from my rejuvenated muscles.

A stroke on a copper gong. My masseur disappeared. A stunted old Negress entered, dressed in the most tawdry tinsel. She was talkative as a magpie, but at first I did not understand a word in the interminable string she unwound, while she took first my hands, then my feet, and polished the nails with determined grimaces.

Another stroke on the gong. The old woman gave place to another Negro, grave, this time, and dressed all in white with a knitted skull cap on his oblong head. It was the barber, and a remarkably dexterous one. He quickly trimmed my hair, and, on my word, it was well done. Then, without asking me what style I preferred, he shaved me clean.

I looked with pleasure at my face, once more visible.

"Antinea must like the American type," I thought. "What an affront to the memory of her worthy grandfather, Neptune!"

The gay Negro entered and placed a package on the divan. The barber disappeared. I was somewhat astonished to observe that the package, which my new valet opened carefully, contained a suit of white flannels exactly like those French officers wear in Algeria in summer.

The wide trousers seemed made to my measure. The tunic fitted without a wrinkle, and my astonishment was unbounded at observing that it even had two gilt galons, the insignia of my rank, braided on the cuffs. For shoes, there were slippers of red Morocco leather, with gold ornaments. The underwear, all of silk, seemed to have come straight from the rue de la Paix.

"Dinner was excellent," I murmured, looking at myself in the mirror with satisfaction. "The apartment is perfectly arranged. Yes, but...."

I could not repress a shudder when I suddenly recalled that room of red marble.

The clock struck half past four.

Someone rapped gently on the door. The tall white Targa, who had brought me, appeared in the doorway.

He stepped forward, touched me on the arm and signed for me to follow.

Again I followed him.

We passed through interminable corridors. I was disturbed, but the warm water had given me a certain feeling of detachment. And above all, more than I wished to admit, I had a growing sense of lively curiosity. If, at that moment, someone had offered to lead me back to the route across the white plain near Shikh-Salah, would I have accepted? Hardly.

I tried to feel ashamed of my curiosity. I thought of Maillefeu.

"He, too, followed this corridor. And now he is down there, in the red marble hall."

I had no time to linger over this reminiscence. I was suddenly bowled over, thrown to the ground, as if by a sort of meteor. The corridor was dark; I could see nothing. I heard only a mocking growl.

The white Targa had flattened himself back against the wall.

"Good," I mumbled, picking myself up, "the deviltries are beginning."

We continued on our way. A glow different from that of the rose night lights soon began to light up the corridor.

We reached a high bronze door, in which a strange lacy design had been cut in filigree. A clear gong sounded, and the double doors opened part way. The Targa remained in the corridor, closing the doors after me.

I took a few steps forward mechanically, then paused, rooted to the spot, and rubbed my eyes.

I was dazzled by the sight of the sky.

Several hours of shaded light had unaccustomed me to daylight. It poured in through one whole side of the huge room.

The room was in the lower part of this mountain, which was more honeycombed with corridors and passages than an Egyptian pyramid. It was on a level with the garden which I had seen in the morning from the balcony, and seemed to be a continuation of it; the carpet extended out under the great palm trees and the birds flew about the forest of pillars in the room.

By contrast, the half of the room untouched by direct light from the oasis seemed dark. The sun, setting behind the mountain, painted the garden paths with rose and flamed with red upon the traditional flamingo which stood with one foot raised at the edge of the sapphire lake.

Suddenly I was bowled over a second time.

I felt a warm, silky touch, a burning breath on my neck. Again the mocking growl which had so disturbed me in the corridor.

With a wrench, I pulled myself free and sent