Pierre Louÿs

“ I, who have never denied anyone, I could not dream that should change so quickly. I had only sold you my body upon the bed, now I give you all my excellence, all my purity, my sincerity, my passion, my virgin soul, Demetrios. Come with me; let us leave this town for a time; let us go into a hidden place, where there are only you and I. We will spend days such as the world has never seen. Never did a lover do what you have done for me. Never did a woman love as I love: it is not possible! ”

“ It lay on the horizon line like a vast swollen orange.
A great gnarled palm-tree stood with its thicket of green leaves hanging over the balustrade. Chrysis ensconced her tingling nudity in its shade, and shivered, with her breasts in her hands.
Her eyes wandered over the gradually whitening town. The violet vapours of the dawn rose from the silent streets and disappeared in the pellucid air.
Suddenly, an idea burst upon her mind, grew upon her, took possession of her. Demetrios, who had already done so much, why should he not kill the Queen, Demetrios who might be the king? ”

“ Dipping the end of her hair in water, the young gate-keeper moistened first his eyelids, then his lips and fingers, in order that his glance might be sanctified, as also the kiss of his mouth and the caress of his hands.
And then he pressed forward into the wood of Aphrodite.
Through the dark branches, he perceived a setting sun of sombre purple, powerless to dazzle the eyes. It was the evening of the day on which his life had been convulsed by the meeting with Chrysis.
The feminine soul is of a simplicity incredible to men. ”

“ Forget my name, Demetrios. In their lovers’ arms, women have no name. I am no longer what you think. I am nothing but a woman who loves and whose yearning for you fills her frame as far as the points of her breasts.”
Demetrios did not open his lips.
“Listen to me a little while longer,” she went on. “I know who enthrals you. I will not even be your mistress, nor make the least attempt to rival the queen. No, Demetrios. Do with me as you will. Take me like some little slave-wench that a man possesses for a few minutes, leaving her afterwards with a remembrance that becomes oblivion. ”

“ CHRYSIS IMMORTAL
When Demetrios found himself alone in his red studio, littered with marble statuary, rough models, trestles, and scaffoldings, he endeavoured to apply himself once more to his work.
With his chisel in his left hand and his mallet in his right, he resumed, but without ardour, an interrupted rough study. It was the breast and shoulders of a gigantic horse intended for the temple of Poseidon. Under the close-cropped mane, the skin of the neck, puckered by a movement of the head, curved in geometrically like an undulating marine basin. ”

“ He had done everything for her, certainly more than any lover had ever done for any woman. She repeated it unceasingly and reiterated her triumph again and again. Demetrios, the Well-Beloved, the impossible and hopeless dream of so many feminine hearts, had run every sort of peril for her, every kind of shame, of willing remorse. He had even abjured the ideal of his thought, he had despoiled his handiwork of the miraculous necklace, and that day which was just dawning would see the lover of the goddess at the feet of his new idol. ”

“ Listen, listen, Rhodis! By the girdle of Aphrodite upon which all desires are embroidered, all desires are unknown to me; for you are more than my dream! By the horn of Amaltheia whence flow all the good things of the world, the world is a matter of indifference to me; for you are the only good I have found in it! When I look at you and when I see myself, I know not why you love me in return. Your hair is as fair as ears of corn; mine is black as a ram’s fleece. Your skin is as white as shepherd’s cheese ”

“ She drew herself up slowly to her full height and offered a bronze mirror which hung from her girdle.
“To thee, Astarte of the Night, that joinest hand to hand and lip to lip, and whose symbol is like to the footprint of the deer upon the pale soil of Syria, Chrysis consecrates her mirror. It has seen the haggard darkness of the eyelids and the glitter of the eyes after love, the hair glued to the temples by the sweat of thy battles, O! warrior-queen of ruthless hand, thou that joinest body to body and mouth to mouth.” ”

“ O women! if you wish to be loved, show yourselves, return, present yourselves! The emotion he had felt on her entrance was so entire and overwhelming that it was out of the question to dream of struggling against it by a violent effort of the will. Demetrios was bound like a barbarian slave to a triumphal car. The idea of escape was an illusion. Without knowing it, and quite naturally, she had made him her captive.
He had seen her coming in the distance, for she wore the same yellow robe she had had on the quay. She walked with low, supple steps and with languid undulations of the hips. ”

“ Chrysis did not answer.
“We had given doves,” said the little flute-player; “will the goddess remember? The goddess must be very angry. And you, my poor Chryse! you who were to be very happy to-day or very powerful . . .”
“All is accomplished,” said the courtesan.
“What do you mean?”
Chrysis took two steps backwards and lifted her right hand to her mouth.
“Look well, Rhodis; look, Myrtocleia. Human eyes have never beheld what you are to behold to-day, since the day, when the goddess descended upon Ida. And such a sight will never be seen again upon the earth.” ”

“ Have you counted the men who think they are loved by Chrysis? Show me the way! I shall not show it you, if you please. Stay here or go away, but you shall not go home with me!”
“You do not know who I am.”
“You? Of course I do! You are Demetrios of Saïs; you made the statue of my goddess; you are the lover of my queen and the lord of my town. But for me you are nothing but a handsome slave, because you have seen me and you love me.” ”

“ This black silence terrified him: the darkness became alive with the unknown. He put his hand to his forehead like a man who does not want to awake for fear of finding himself among the living. At last he looked.
He saw, in a glory of moonbeams, the dazzling figure of the goddess. She stood upon a pedestal of pink stone laden with pendent treasures. She was naked and fully sexed, vaguely tinted with the natural colours of woman. With one hand, she held a mirror with a priapus handle, and with the other she adorned her beauty with a seven-stringed pearl necklace. ”

“ This little noise enhanced the immense silence of the harbour. Leaning against the cold parapet, he tried to drive away all thought, and began to look at the things around him.
He had a horror of life. He only left his house when the life of the day was dying down, and he returned home when the dawn began to draw the fishermen and market-gardeners to the town. The pleasure of seeing nought in the world but the ghost of the town and his own stature had become a voluptuous passion with him, and he did not remember having seen the mid-day sun for months.
He was wearied. The queen was tedious. ”

“ It is exactly like me, it has my eyes, my mouth, my breasts, but it is the statue that you treasure. I am a poor deserted woman. I weary you, and I see it well. You think of your marble and your ugly statues as if I were not more beautiful than all of them, and, in addition, alive, amorous, and tender, ready to grant you whatever you are willing to accept, resigned whenever you refuse. But you want nothing. You have refused to be a king, you have refused to be a god and be adored in a temple of your own. ”

“ Thus it was that the soul of Chrysis, limpid as a little child’s, appeared to Demetrios more mysterious than a problem in metaphysics. After leaving this woman upon the quay, he went back to his house like a man in a dream, incapable of answering all the questions which tormented him. What did she want with these three gifts? It was impossible for her either to wear or to sell a celebrated mirror, acquired by theft, the comb of an assassinated woman, the pearl necklace of the goddess. If she kept them at home, she would expose herself every day to the possibility of a fatal discovery. ”

“ I have other than women at the palace; I have sturdy Ethiopians with chests of bronze and arms bulging out with muscles. In their embrace, I shall soon forget your womanish legs and your pretty beard. The spectacle of their passion will doubtless be a new one for me, and I shall give my amorousness a rest. But the day I am certain that your eyes have ceased to trouble me by their absence, and that I can replace your mouth, then I shall despatch you from the top of the bridge of Hermes to join my necklace and my rings like a jewel I have worn too long. Ah! what it is to be a queen! ”

“ She has heavy hair, the colour of dull gold, and of a length one may surmise to be marvellous, judging by the mass of the great coil that lies on her drooping neck. A black tunic envelopes this woman, and a robe blacker still is draped upon the tunic, and the iris whose perfume she breathes with downcast eyelids is of the same hue as night.
In all this mourning garb, Demetrios sees but the hair, like a golden vase on an ebony column. He recognises Chrysis. ”

“ Demetrios gazed at her without understanding.
“Yes, all that is a pure matter of indifference to you, is it not?” continued Chrysis. “You did not love her. It is I that you love. You have not even listened to what I have just told you. I am sure you could not repeat a single word. You are absorbed in wondering how my eyelids are made up, speculating on the sweetness of my mouth, on the softness of my hair. Ah! how many others know all this! All who have desired me have had their pleasure upon me: men, young men, old men, children, women, young girls. ”

“ The garden of Hermes Anubis was a little necropolis long ago abandoned, a sort of no man’s land to which parents no longer brought the libations to the dead, and that the passers-by avoided. In the midst of the crumbling tombs, Chrysis advanced in the greatest silence, quaking with fear at every stone that clattered under her feet. The wind, always charged with fine sand, blew her hair over her temples and sent her veil of scarlet silk floating towards the white leaves of the sycamores. ”

“ Listen to me, Naukrates: not to desire, but to act in such a way that the opportunity offers itself; not to love, but to cherish from a distance certain well-chosen women for whom one feels one might have a taste in the long run, if chance and circumstances combined to throw them into one’s arms; never to adorn a woman with qualities one wants her to have, or with beauties of which she makes a mystery, but always to take the insipid for granted in order to be astonished by the exquisite. ”

“ When she drew the mirror of polished bronze from her girdle, she looked at herself in it for the last time before giving it to the priest, and the brilliancy of her eyes became stupefying. When, in order to take her copper comb, she laid her hand upon her hair and raised her bended arm, in conformity with the gesture of the Graces, the beautiful line of her body revealed itself under the tissue, and the sun illumined a tiny dew of brilliant sweat under her armpit. ”

“ One pearl larger than the others, long and silvery, shone between her two nipples like a nocturnal crescent between two rounded clouds. And they were the real sacred pearls born of the water-drops which had rolled into the shell of Anadyomene.
Demetrios lost himself in ineffable adoration.
Demetrios lost himself in ineffable adoration. He believed in very truth that Aphrodite herself was there. He did not recognise his handiwork, for the abyss between what he had been and what he had become was profound. ”

“ Their kiss is endless. Chrysis would seem to have under her tongue, not milk and honey, as in Holy Writ, but living, mobile, enchanted water. And this multiform tongue itself, now incurved like an arch, now rolled up like a spiral, now shrinking into its hiding-place, now darting forth like a flame, more caressing than the hand, more expressive than the eyes, circling, flower-like, into a pistil, or thinning away into a petal, this ribbon of flesh that hardens when it quivers and softens when it licks, Chrysis animates it with all the resources of her endearing and passionate fantasy . ”

“ I am choking. You see, I weep. I know now what it is to weep: it is through excess of happiness. But you do not answer! You say nothing? Kiss me!”
Demetrios stretched out his right leg to ease his knee, which was a little cramped. Then he raised the young woman, stood up, shook the creases out of his garments, and said softly with an enigmatic smile:
“No . . . Adieu . . .”
“You say nothing! Kiss me!
And he tranquilly turned away.
Chrysis stood rooted to the ground with stupefaction, her mouth open and her head dangling.
“What? What . . . what . . . what do you say?” ”

“ Alexandria! the sea, the men, the colossal marble Pharos whose mirror saved men from the sea! Alexandria! the city of the eleven Ptolemies, Physcon, Philometor, Epiphanes, Philadelphos; Alexandria, the climax of all dreams, the diadem of all the glories conquered during three thousand years in Memphis, Thebes, Athens, Corinth, by the chisel, the pen, the compass, and the sword! Still farther away, the Delta, cloven by the seven tongues of Nile, Saïs, Boubastis, Heliopolis ”

“ Seso, when you think fit to give us the pleasure of judging Timon, whether to applaud him, as he deserves, or to blame him, unjustly in my opinion, remember that he is an invisible being and that the nature of his soul is hidden from us. It has no existence in itself, or at least we cannot know it; but it reflects the souls of those that mirror themselves in it, and changes its aspect when it changes its place. ”

“ For your enlightened souls, love is not a sacrifice, it is an equal favour exchanged by two lovers, and so the sums we confide to you do not serve to compensate you for your priceless caresses, but to pay at its proper price for the multiple and charming luxury with which, by a supreme complaisance, you pacify nightly our ravenous passions. As you are innumerable, we always find amongst you both the dream of our lives and our fancy for the evening, all women at a day’s notice, hair of every shade, eyes of every colour, lips of every savour. ”

“ Thick carpets and rugs array it so luxuriously from floor to roof that nudity is not astonished in it. Lovers can easily imagine that they have cast off their garments upon the walls in all directions. When the door is closed again, it is impossible to guess where it was. There is no window. It is a narrow world, outside the world. A few wisps of black hair hanging to the cushions shed tear-drops of perfumes. And this chamber is lighted by seven little myrrhine panes which colour diversely the incomprehensible light of seven subterranean lamps. ”

“ You are her immortal Idea, the terrestrial soul of Astarte, the mother of her race. You shone in her blazing eyes, you burned in her sombre lips, you swooned in her soft hands, you gaped in her great breasts, you strained in entwining legs, long ago, before your birth; and the food which the daughter of a sinner hungers for is your tyrant also, you, a goddess, the mother of gods and men, the joy and anguish of the world. ”