[ Back ] [ Up ] [ Next ]

Bad Blood

 

I have from my Gallic ancestors blue white eyes, a narrow skull, and maladresse in fight. I find my attire as barbarous as theirs. But I do not butter my hair.

The Gauls were skinners of beasts, grass-burners the most inept of their time.

From them, I have: idolatry and love of sacrilege; oh! every vice, anger, luxury—magnificent, luxury; above all lying and sloth.

I have a horror of all crafts. Masters and workers, all peasants, ignoble. The hand at the pen is worth the hand at the plow. What an age with hands! I shall never have my hand. Afterward, domesticity leads too far. The honesty of mendicity aggrieves me. Criminals disgust like castrates: me, I am intact, and it's all the same to me.

But! who made my tongue so perfidious, that it guided and safeguarded hitherto my sloth? Without using to live even my body, and idler than a toad, I have lived everywhere. Not a family of Europe I do not know—I mean families like mine, that have everything from the declaration of the Rights of Man—I've known every son with money.

 

If I had antecedents at one point whatsoever in the history of France!

But no, none.

It is quite evident to me that I have always been inferior race. I cannot comprehend revolt. My race never lifted itself but to pillage: like wolves at the animal they haven't killed.

I recollect the history of France, elder daughter of the Church. I would have made, a churl, the voyage to the holy land; I have in my head roads in the Swabian plains, views of Byzantium, ramparts of Solyma: the worship of Mary, tender feeling over the Crucified awaken in me amid a thousand profane faeries—I am sitting, leprous, on broken pots and shards, at the foot of a wall pitted by the sun—later, a trooper, I would have bivouacked under nights of Germany.

Ah! again: I dance the witches' sabbath in a red glade, with old women and babes.

I do not recall back past this land and Christianity. I would never finish seeing myself in that past. But always alone, without a family; what's more, what language did I speak? I never see myself in the councils of Christ, nor in the councils of Lords—representatives of Christ.

 

What was I in the last century: I only find myself today. No more vagabonds, no more vague wars. The inferior race has covered everything—the people, as one says, reason, nation and science.

Oh! science! Everything has been redone. For the body and for the soul—the viaticum—there is medicine and philosophy—old wives' remedies and folk songs arranged. And the diversions of princes and the games they forbade! Geography, cosmography, mechanics, chemistry!...

Science, the new nobility! Progress. The world marches on! Why would it not turn?

It's the vision of numbers. We go to the Spirit. It is very certain, it is oracle, what I tell you. I understand, and unable to explicate without pagan words, I would like to stay silent.

 

Pagan blood returns! The Spirit is near; why does not Christ help me, by giving my soul nobility and freedom? Alas, the Gospel has passed! the Gospel! the Gospel.

I await God like a gourmand. I am of inferior race for all eternity.

I am here on the Armorican beach. Let the towns be lit in the evening. My day is complete; I quit Europe. The sea air will sear my lungs; far-off climates will tan me. To swim, grind herb, hunt, smoke above all; drink liquors strong as boiling metal—as did those dear ancestors around fires.

I shall return, with limbs of iron, dark skin, furious eyes; on the face of it, they shall judge me of a strong race. I shall have gold: I shall be idle and brutish. Woman treat those ferocious cripples back from hot regions. I shall be mixed up in political affairs. Saved.

No I am accursed, I have a horror of the nation. Best, is a very drunken sleep on the beach.

 

One does not go—take again the ways of here, laden with my vice which has sent its roots of suffering to my side, from the age of reason—which rises to the sky, beats, upsets, drags me.

The last innocence and the last timidity. It is said. Not to carry to the world my disgusts and my treasons.

Let's go! March, fardel, desert, ennui and wrath.

To whom hire out? What beast must be adored? What holy image does one attack? What hearts shall I break? What lie must I keep—in what blood tread?

Rather, guard myself from justice—the hard life, simple brutishness—lift, with withered fist, the coffin lid, sit down, suffocate. So no oldness, nor dangers: terror is not French.

—Ah! I am so forsaken that I offer to no matter what divine image impulses toward perfection.

O my abnegation, o my wonderful charity! down here, for all that!

De profundis, Domine, am I a fool!

 

Still quite a child, I admired the intractable convict on whom reshuts always penal servitude; I visited the inns and furnished rooms which he would have consecrated with his stay; I saw with his idea the blue sky and the blossomy work of the country; I got wind of his fatality in cities. He was stronger than a saint, more commonsensical than a wayfarer—and he, he alone! for witness to his glory and his reason.

On roads, in winter nights, without room, board, clothing, a voice clutched my frozen heart: "Feebleness or force: there you are, it's force. You know not whither you go, nor why you go; enter everywhere, answer all. They will no more kill you than if you were a corpse." In the morning I had a look so lost and a face so dead, that those whom I encountered had not perhaps seen me.

In the cities the mud appeared to me suddenly red and black, like a glass when the lamp moves about the next room, like a treasure in the forest! Good luck, I shouted, and I saw a sea of flames and of smoke in sky; and, to left, to right, every wealth blazing like a billion thunders.

But orgy and the camaraderie of women were forbidden me. Not even a companion. I saw myself before an exasperated crowd, faced with the firing squad, weeping with unhappiness that they had not comprehended, and pardoning!—like Joan of Arc!—"Priests, professors, masters, you deceive yourselves giving me over to justice. I have never been of this people; I have never been Christian; I am of the race that sang in torture; I do not comprehend the laws; I do not have the moral sense, I am a brute: you are deceived... "

Yes, I have my eyes closed to your light. I am an animal, a negro. But I can be saved. You are faux negroes, you maniacs, savages, misers. Merchant, you are negro; magistrate, you are negro; general, you are negro; emperor, old itch, you are negro; you have drunk of an untaxed liquor, of Satan's make—this people is inspired by fever and cancer. Cripples and old folks are so respectable they ask to be boiled—the cunningest thing is to quit this continent, where madness wanders to provide hostages to these wretches. I enter the true realm of the children of Ham.

Know I still nature? know I myself?—No more words. I bury the dead in my belly. Shouts, drum, dance, dance, dance, dance. I do not even see the hour when, the whites disembarking, I shall fall into nothingness.

Hunger, thirst, shouts, dance, dance, dance!

 

The whites disembark. The cannon! One must submit to baptism, wear clothing, work.

I have received in the heart the coup de grâce. Ah! I had not foreseen it!

I have not at all done ill. The days will be light for me, repentance will be spared me. I shall not have had the torments of the soul nearly dead to the good, where light returns severe as funeral candles. The lot of sons with money, premature coffin covered with limpid tears. Without doubt debauchery is foolish, vice is foolish; one must toss rottenness aside. But the clock will only have arrived at striking only the hour of pure pain! I shall be carried off like an infant, to play in paradise forgetful of all misfortune!

Quickly! are there other lives?—slumbering in wealth is impossible. Wealth has always been public weal. Divine love alone grants the keys of science. I see that nature is only a spectacle of kindness. Farewell chimeras, ideals, errors.

The reasonable song of angels arises from the saving ship: it is divine love—two loves! I can die of earthly love, die of devotion. I have left souls whose sorrow increased at my departure! You choose me among the shipwrecked, those who remain are not they my friends?

Save them!

Reason is born unto me. The world is good. I would bless life. I would love my brothers. These are no longer the promises of childhood. Nor the hope of escaping oldness and death. God makes my strength, and I praise God.

 

Ennui is no longer my love. Rages, debaucheries, madness, of which I know all the impulses and disasters—all my fardel is laid down. Let us appreciate without vertigo the extent of my innocence.

I would no longer be capable of asking the comfort of a drubbing. I do not believe myself embarked for a wedding with Jesus Christ for father-in-law.

I am not the prisoner of my reason. I said: God. I want freedom in salvation: how pursue it? Frivolous tastes have quit me. No more need of devotion nor of divine love. I do not regret the age of sensitive hearts. Each has his reason, contempt and charity: I retain my place at the summit of that angelic scale of good sense.

As for established happiness, domestic or not... no, I cannot. I am too dissipated, too weak. Life flowers by work, old truth: me, my life isn't weighty enough, it flies away and floats far above action, that dear point of the world.

How I am becoming an old maid, for want of courage to love death!

If God granted me calm celestial, ærial, prayer—like the old saints—the saints! mighty ones! the anchorites, artists no longer required!

Continual farce! My innocence would make me weep. Life is the farce to lead by all.

 

Enough! here is the punishment—March!

Ah! my lungs burn, my temples growl! night rolls in my eyes, by this sun! my heart... my limbs...

Where are we going? to battle? I am weak! the others advance. Tools, weapons... time!...

Fire! fire on me! There! or I surrender—cowards!—I shall kill myself! I shall hurl myself under the horses' hooves!

Ah!...

—I shall grow used to it.

That would be French life, the path of honor!