Traitor comet, p.31
Traitor Comet, page 31
“Surely the La Charité train station would have a phone,” Louis said as we watched him strut down the driveway. I nodded. Roger glared at Louis, then sat down and glared into space. Artaud stood up again and slunk toward the farthest chair from the rest of us and burrowed into it, trying to catch Génica’s eye. She turned her face away. Justine leaned her forehead into her hand. After a moment I sat down too, on the sofa next to Louis. I opened a travel magazine belonging to Artaud and stared at the page without seeing it at all.
CHAPTER 13
HALF AN HOUR later, the tension was unbearable. Roger sat glowering and so did Génica. Justine seemed fragile and frequently burst into silent tears. Whenever I went to her to touch her shoulder or her arm, I felt Roger’s cynical gaze on me. Artaud seemed to be in agony, longing to escape this group, gesturing to Génica to leave with him, but she ignored him and sat in smoldering self-pity.
Finally Louis let his head fall to the back of the sofa and rolled it my way, a stupid grin on his face. “Do something, Geoff,” he begged. “Save us from each other.”
“Why me?” I mumbled.
“Because you’re a monk,” Roger snapped, “Jack.”
Fuck you, Jack. But I didn’t say it. I stood up. “I’ve no intention of saving any of you. I have had quite enough merriment, thank you. I’m going for a walk in the woods. Hell—I’m going to pack a supper and sleep in the damned woods.” I tossed the magazine aside and started for my room.
“That sounds wonderful! I’m going with you,” Justine cried out. I turned around but Justine fled past me. Artaud brightened and Roger scowled. Roger, his eyes on Justine’s retreating back, said he was coming, and Génica announced she wanted to come as well. At this, Artaud lowered his forehead to his hand. She’s so stupid, I thought vehemently as I watched Génica walk to their bedroom, oblivious to Artaud’s disappointment. Dejected, he sat, and Louis leaned his head against the back of the sofa. I stood helplessly while around us the others started gathering clothes and supplies.
I sighed and turned to Louis. “Aren’t you coming, too?”
He closed his eyes and slowly rolled his head back and forth against the back of the sofa, mouthing the words Hell, no.
“Thanks, Antichrist,” he said smugly, “you should be upgraded from a monk to a saint.” He stretched his arms behind his head and watched the packing, and he was still sitting there when we left. Not about to be separated from his love, Artaud came too, gravely carrying a bundle of blankets.
Now that we had something to do, we were less awkward with each other. “Geoff, we’re relying on you to pick a good spot,” said Roger, and Génica, with her talent for stating the obvious, asked, “Suppose it rains again?” I could not fathom why the women wanted to come, although Justine was adventurous and seemed game for anything.
“Even if it doesn’t, you’re going to get pretty muddy,” I warned, but to my disappointment Génica trudged along. In fact, the sun blazed down on us, though the ground was still soggy. “We’ll build a lean-to,” I added.
We followed the soppy road until the trees came nearer and met it, and then we turned and entered the forest. “If we go straight, we will run into the Loire and, having the river by us, no one will get lost in the dark,” I told Roger, and he nodded. I bit back my worry about people falling into the water. As we pushed on, the trees slowly moved together behind us and obscured the road. We were already scratched and muddied past our ankles, but we staggered on, shifting our heavy parcels.
Soon we were dwarfed by the massive trunks. Artaud marched easily here, suddenly catlike again, and I wondered if I weren’t constantly underestimating him. Génica too stamped forward with determination, and it made me think that perhaps they were at least equally matched in stubbornness. The tall grass brushed our legs, and everyone was soaked up to the knee. Roger and I led the way, and the others silently followed.
Once I turned back to see how they were doing and some trick of the light made Artaud’s dark pants, his dark jacket sleeves, and the dark blankets crushed against him disappear, while his white face stood out in sharp contrast to his dark eyes, and brows, and hair, and lips. He looked like a skull bobbing casually along behind everyone else, and despite myself I was unnerved. Then the Loire appeared through the trees ahead of us, throwing light into those apparently hollow sockets and making them eyes, living eyes, Artaud’s eyes staring back quizzically at me. I looked away.
“You ladies should be wearing trousers out here, for the love of God,” panted a sweaty Roger.
I expected a retort from Justine but it was Génica who sneered, “You men should be wearing skirts out here, for the love of God. I don’t suppose you males gave any thought to the inconvenience of undoing and doing buttons out here when ladies don’t have to.”
“Jack,” punctuated Justine.
Roger wagged his head at their logic. “As many times as I’ve undone my buttons, that did not occur to me.”
“People think I don’t have a brain! There once was an actress from Bucharest,” sniped Génica, slogging through the grass in her long skirt with her bundle, her hair a riot of waves that clung in damp wisps around her face. Artaud put an arm around her shoulders and his pile of blankets promptly unrolled.
Roger stopped to help them regather everything. “Who always managed to look her best,” he rhymed gently. “You don’t still get teased, do you? What beasts.”
We continued on. Then Justine burst out, “When they said, ‘Send her back,’ she yelled, ‘Fuck you, Jack!’”
At that I had to stop and Roger bent in half, and the five of us guffawed triumphantly like escaped convicts. Artaud flung himself to the ground and, lying on his back in the mud, laughed harder than I had ever heard him. Génica laughed standing with feet akimbo while her hair fell across her cheek.
“So red armbands they wore to each protest,” Justine concluded.
“Oh, Justine,” exclaimed Roger in admiration, and Justine shifted her bundle so she could hold her other hand high. She bent it at the wrist, summoning our applause.
I held out a hand to help up Artaud. It was hopeless—his back was now covered in mud, but he merely swiped back that wing of hair that had fallen over his forehead. He was so meticulous about his hair, but never his clothes.
“Get up, Charlemagne,” Roger teased him.
I was still laughing. “Teased about what?” I gasped finally.
“Oh, it came up during the Antigone fracas,” Artaud explained, mashing his blankets into a bundle again, “when Breton interrupted our play. Something about the close relations between France and Romania. That was meant as a gibe at Génica and me.”
“Don’t think too deeply about it,” Roger added. “Fauxshevik Breton will take a swing at anything. Chivalry is not his middle name. Or his last, or his first.”
“Well, Breton sounds jealous to me,” I assured Génica, and both she and Artaud smiled at me.
We made camp along the shore and Justine built a fire, expertly laying wood to make large coals. Génica and Justine set out bread and cheese and sausage. Artaud did his best to help me and Roger put together a crude shelter, but it became apparent he was not the robust, knockabout type. In the outdoors he looked quite strange, his skin very pale, his hair very dark, like some translucent nocturnal creature with luminous eyes.
It didn’t speed up our work when he made us laugh by ranting on and on about the evil modern department store and how customers should instead be marched out to wild places like this to craft their own furniture—or preferably run like wolves—instead of buying such “impoverished junk.” Roger and I couldn’t stop sniggering at his droll performance.
“And I mean the stupid color reproductions, the idiotic sideboard, the phony antique brass lamp, and all the other hideous putridity that the Bon Marché foists on the slobbering public whose lives are steeped in ugliness from birth to death due to it!” Artaud yelled, his sarcasm carrying over the water. The ripped long pieces of bark I was using as ties kept slipping through my fingers because I shook with mirth. The thought of Franz tromping out here to construct a baby’s crib amused me. He would probably ask me to do it.
“In Vienna, each house’s interior reflects its owner’s individual stamp, isn’t that so?” Artaud asked me. “Whereas Paris homes today are heaped beneath Bon Marché mummies.”
“That was true once, but it’s been a long time since I lived in Vienna. I should think that city has department stores by now, too, so don’t romanticize,” I warned him.
We ate by the fire, enjoying the comfort of the firelight and the quiet arrival of a few early stars. I checked the fuel in the lantern, wondering how long this little outing would last before someone, probably Génica, decided she’d had enough and would want to go back. They weren’t used to it as I was; I could handle being hot, wet, muddy, and not having modern plumbing facilities. Génica stuck it out though, and it grew very dark.
Roger fashioned a spindly torch, went back to our tippy lean-to, and tried to strengthen it, tugging at the ties so that its shape became more and more bowed until I feared it would snap and launch the branches like arrows. Justine and I put our heads together and snickered. Artaud borrowed the lantern to take his girl for a walk. The hiss of the glowing wick faded with them into the darkness of the trunks as Justine and I sat watching them go.
“They’re an odd pair,” Justine confided to me after a moment.
“Yes. Pretty mismatched, I’d say.”
She stirred the fire with her stick and slapped away a spark that landed on her knee. “He’s so unrealistic about her.”
“She’s very beautiful. He’s not unrealistic about that.”
Justine frowned at me, clearly annoyed. “What does she see in him, I wonder?”
“Well—that’s uncharitable, Justine.”
“You do know,” she said, “that in addition to him having a cousin in the film business, Antonin’s uncle is the director of Nalpas Productions in Paris, don’t you?”
“The father of the stick-in-the-mud?” I joked. “A cousin and an uncle in the film industry?”
“Yes. And she’s a stick-in-the-mud too!” Justine said acidly. “All Génica Athanasiou wants from life is to be an actress and sit in the cafés and hang on the arm of some decorative man, and if he has motion picture connections, all the better. She’s one of the vulgar artists Paris is flooded with. Art as self-worship. Soulless success. May as well be bankers.”
I thought of Franz, my banker brother. “It doesn’t seem Artaud’s film connections do him much good, though,” I said.
“They don’t. And if she doesn’t lose that accent, she’s not going far either.” Justine’s silent appraisal told me clearly she didn’t approve of me defending Génica even in the slightest. Well, I wasn’t, but I couldn’t believe Génica could use Artaud that way. The last thing Antonin Artaud needed was another person in his life who didn’t care for him. It was incomprehensible to me.
Justine sighed. “Geoff, I don’t like her. Antonin’s so in love with her, it’s as if he loves some feminine ideal in his head. He writes her all these ecstatic letters and she asks me to explain them. She actually shows me his letters! And don’t tell Roger that, or anyone else, please. My God.” She rolled her eyes. “Antonin, going on and on about ‘celestial love.’ Sometimes I think men are the true romantics, not women.”
“Of course, Justine, I won’t breathe a word to Roger.” Seeing her shiver, I laid my coat over her shoulders as she sat jabbing at the fire. It wasn’t cold, but there was a breeze from the river. Then I teased, “Men are not romantic? Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy seeing me fight Roger about you.”
She glanced toward the shadowy figure struggling with the lean-to and laughed a little. A muttered curse in the dark was followed by a crash, and more swearing. “It took me by surprise, that’s for sure,” Justine replied. “You just don’t seem the type! I guess I was flattered, but mostly I enjoyed seeing you take him down a notch. It’s what I wish I could do.” Her voice was husky. She turned from me then.
“You can,” I said, my hand resting on her shoulder. “You can leave him before he leaves you. Justine—” I leaned closer but she didn’t look at me. “Eventually, Roger will leave everyone. Can’t you sense it? It’s not your fault.”
She threw her stick into the flames and sat listening.
“I think he loves you,” I added, “but Roger bores easily. You can find someone else, someone with whom you have more in common.”
Her small hand clutched the collar of my coat as she turned to me. The firelight shaded her high cheekbones and outlined the graceful curve of her lips. “And who is that someone else, Geoff?”
There was a crackle of leaves behind us and Artaud and Génica entered the circle of light. Génica sat down on the log opposite Justine while Artaud shoved a piece of wood in the fire with his foot, watching the sparks fly up. “That’s really true, what you were saying about the Paris theatre scene,” he said to Justine. She and I exchanged a look, wondering how much of our conversation they had heard. “Actors are dogs,” Artaud declared.
“Do you mean actors or ‘actors?’” Justine managed.
“What’s the difference?”
“Didn’t you believe in what your director tried to do? Dullin? His theatre troupe?”
Because the flames caught his eyes, I could see Artaud roll them heavenward. “The gods help the thespians if the theatre ceased to be their showcase and became instead a means of action, of changing life, of achieving wholeness,” he ranted again. “What would happen to all of our great idols? Molière! Shakespeare! Racine!” He clutched his heart in mock devotion. Justine and I smiled but Génica looked remote again. I remembered she was still an actress with Dullin’s Atelier.
“Perhaps the difference is between those who seek recognition for themselves,” I ventured, “and those who seek slavery for themselves—slavery to the Absolute. A willingness to surrender, to be used by inspiration—”
“But that’s what you were looking for at your farm, wasn’t it?” he asked.
I hesitated. Standing over the fire Artaud looked at me, and the coals moved the shadows on his face but now they threw no light on the eyes beneath his brow. I nevertheless felt his eyes on me like black coals.
“No,” I said. “I was addicted to the frenzy I could whip myself into about God.” And now I’m addicted to the feelings your ideas give me. “I’m embarrassed about it now. I was a phony.”
“You weren’t,” he insisted.
An image of Marianne’s tear-streaked face leaped into the flames and I tensed. “Yes, I was.”
“No. You were trying to sort out the truth from the bureaucracy of doctrine that a religious upbringing gave you. I was the same; I used to pray for hours. A good way to destroy a religious faith is to become very, very religious,” he added.
I nodded.
Artaud went on, “You began to see the mechanism behind religion, how it’s just a grist mill after all, but you also glimpsed a reality beyond which the priests don’t want us to… Did you just hear something?”
We sat still, listening. I was sure I’d heard it too, a cry from somewhere. “Probably an owl,” I said. Then we heard it again—a muffled screech. I strained to hear it over the wind. It turned through the air with the familiar winding of speech. We looked at each other.
Roger called out from the darkness, “Did anyone just hear—”
Like a beating fist finally smashing through a pane of glass the cry burst clear and sliced its way to us, a human scream, a woman’s scream. We leaped to our feet and I brushed off Justine’s hand. I shoved her gently toward Artaud. “Roger, get over here, stay with the women!” I yelled. I ran toward the sound.
“Wait!” Artaud shouted.
I hurried through the trees, my feet stumbling over roots and stones. Branches snapped in my face. Footsteps hit the ground at my back, and I stopped to look back. Artaud appeared, illuminated by our lantern. “Oh—good idea,” I said. But its light only darkened the surrounding forest, so he blew out the flame. We heard the scream again, loud, almost a roar, full of mindless horror. When our eyes adjusted somewhat to the dark, we tried to run. Justine’s voice called out to us from the tangled branches at our backs.
We came to a clearing. There was no moon, but the ground glowed eerily. Marsh gas, I thought, but there was also a bright planet in the sky above us, probably Jupiter, which at certain times shone bright enough to cast a shadow on my farm. The wildflowers and grasses shimmered silver at the periphery of my vision, but everything went black when I tried to look at things directly.
“Now we could use that lantern,” Artaud grumbled. “I didn’t think to bring matches. But I have my knife!”
Because you’re impulsive. I placed a calming hand on his shoulder because he seemed to vibrate with rage. “The lantern would only make us visible to whoever is out there,” I replied. “We’re better off without it lit, but keep it. The kerosene is a weapon, too.”
A small form scurried toward us. “Justine! Get back with the others,” I hissed. She stood out clearly in the silver-bluish glow of the meadow. I caught her by the arm and marched her back to the protective darkness of the trees.
“You’re going the wrong way,” she panted. “The scream came from back there, deeper in the woods toward the house.”
“No, we were following the sound,” Artaud argued.
“It came from back there, I tell you. There’s a strange man, too. We heard someone moving about and then we saw him in the firelight, and then he disappeared. I think he’s been circling us.”
“You little fool, you should have stayed with Roger,” I snapped.
Artaud moaned, “Génica—I should never have left her!”
