The Passion Trilogy – The Calvary, The Torture Garden & The Diary of a Chambermaid. Octave Mirbeau
fainter and fainter and dies out. … She is gone! …
And here I, too, am on the street. … A cab passes by—114, Rue de Sèze!
My mind was made up quickly. … I figured that I would come there before she could. … She perfectly understood that I was not taken in by that story of Gabrielle's illness. … My anxiety, my eagerness no doubt inspired her with the fear of being spied after, followed, and most likely she would not go to the place immediately. But why did just this abominable thought flash through my mind like lightning? … Why only this possibility and no other? … I still hope that my presentiments have deceived me, that Madame Rabineau "is nothing," that Gabrielle is really sick!
Some kind of a small hotel hedged in between two tall buildings, a narrow door hollowed out in the wall at the end of three steps; a dark façade, whose closed windows let no light penetrate. … It's here! … It is here she is going to come, where she already came perhaps! … Rage drives me toward this door. … I should like to set this house on fire; I should like to make all those detestable ladies hidden there shriek and writhe in agony, in some hellish blaze. … Presently a woman enters, singing and swaying her body, her hands in the pockets of her light jacket. … Why did not I spit in her face? … An old man has come out of his coupé. He passed close to me, snorting, panting, supported under his arm by his valet. … His trembling feet are unable to carry him, between his flabby, swollen eyelids there glimmers a light of beastly dissipation. … Why did I not slash the hideous face of this profligate old faun? … Perhaps he is waiting for Juliette! … The door of the Inferno opened before him—and for an instant my eyes plunged into the pits of hell. … I thought I saw red flames, smoke, abominable embraces, the tumbling down of creatures horribly twisted together. … But no, it is only a gloomy deserted hallway, lit by the pale shine of a lamp; then at the end of it there is something black like a dark hole, where one feels impure things are stirring. … And carriages are stopping in front of the building, dumping out their haul of human dung into this sink of love. … A little girl barely ten years old follows me: "Nice violets! Nice violets!" … I give her a gold piece. "Go away from here, little one, go away! … Don't stay here. They will get you! … "
My mind is over-exerted. A thousand-toothed sorrow gnaws at my heart, a thousand claws sink into it, tears it to pieces in a frenzy of grief. … A desire to kill is kindled in me and makes my arms go through murderous motions. … Ah, to rush, whip in hand, into the midst of this lustful crowd and lash their bodies until ineffaceable marks are left on them, cause their warm blood to spurt, and scatter pieces of their living flesh all over the mirrors, carpets, beds! … And nail that Rabineau woman to the door of this house of ill-fame, like an owl on the doors of farm barns, nail her stripped, disemboweled, with her vitals out! … A hackney coach has stopped: a woman steps out. I recognize the hat, the veil, the dress.
"Juliette!"
On seeing me, she utters a cry. … But she regains her composure quickly. … Her eyes defy me.
"Leave me alone," she cries out to me. "What are you doing here? … Leave me alone!"
I almost crush her wrists, and in a suffocating voice which rattles:
"Listen now. … If you make another step … if you say another word … I'll knock you dead right here—on this sidewalk, and tramp you to death under my feet."
With a heavy blow I strike her in the face and with my nails I furiously claw her forehead and cheeks from which blood is gushing.
"Jean! Oh! Jean! … Have mercy, please! … Jean, mercy; Mercy! … Have pity on me! … You are killing me. … "
Rudely I drag her toward the carriage … and we get in. … Huddled up in two, she sits there right close to me, sobbing. … What am I going to do now? … I don't know. … In truth I don't know. I don't ask myself any questions. I don't think of anything. … It seems as though a mountain of stone has descended upon me. … I feel the heavy rocks on which my neck has crashed, against which my flesh has been bruised. … Why, with all the black despair in which I find myself, do these high walls rise up towards heaven? Why these dismal birds flying about in unexpected sunshine? … Why is this thing crouched down beside me crying? … Why? … I don't know. …
I am going to kill her. … She is in her bedroom without lights, in bed. … I am in the dressing room pacing up and down … I am walking back and forth with constrained breath, my head on fire, with clinched fists eager to inflict punishment. … I am going to kill her! … From time to time I stop near the door and listen. … She is crying. … And in a minute I will enter. … I will enter and pull her off the bed, drag her by the hair, knock her senseless, break her neck against the marble edges of the fireplace. … I want the room to be red with her blood. … I want to see her body beaten into lumps of battered flesh which I shall throw out with the rest of the rubbish and which the garbage man will take away tomorrow. … Cry, cry! … In a minute you'll howl, my dearest! … Haven't I been stupid! … To think of everything but that! … To fear everything except that! … To say to myself: "she will leave me" and never, never: "she will deceive me. … " To have failed to divine the nature of this den, this old man, all this filth! … Really I had never thought of it before, blind fool that I was. She must have laughed when I implored her not to leave me! … To leave me. … Ah! yes, to leave me! … She did not want to, of course. … Now I understand it. … I inspired her neither with probity of heart nor with decency of conduct; I was to her just a label, a trade mark … a mark of superior value! … Yes, when they saw her in my arms and therefore priced her more highly, she could sell herself for much more than she would have received if, like a nocturnal ghoul, she had roamed the sidewalks and haunted the obscene shadows of the streets. … She had swallowed my fortune in one gulp. … Her lips had rendered my mentality sterile at the first touch—. Now she is gambling with my honor, that is consistent. … With my honor! … How could she know that I had none left? …
But am I really going to kill her? … When one is dead, everything is forgotten! … One bares one's head before the coffin of a criminal, one bows in sadness before the dead body of a prostitute. … In the churches, believers kneel down and pray for those who have suffered, for those who have sinned. … At the cemeteries reverence watches over the graves and the cross protects them. … To die is to be forgiven! … Yes, death is beautiful, holy, noble! … Death is the beginning of the great eternal light. … Ah, to die! … to stretch oneself out on a mattress softer than the softest moss in birds' nests. … To think no more. … To hear the noise of life no longer! … To feel the infinite sweetness of nothingness! … To be a soul! …
I shall not kill her. … I shall not kill her because she has to suffer … terribly, always. … Let her suffer in all her beauty, in all her pride, in her exposed carnality of a prostitute! … I shall not kill her, but I shall disfigure her to such an extent, I shall make her look so repulsive that people, frightened, will flee at the sight of her. … And every evening I shall compel her to appear on the streets, at the theatre, everywhere with her nose crushed, her eyes bulging out from under eyelids fringed with black rings, without a veil! …
Suddenly sobs from my throat. … I fling myself on the couch, biting the cushion, and cry and cry! … Minutes, hours pass and I am still crying! … Ah! Juliette, vile Juliette! … Why did you do that? … Why? … Could you not say to me: "Here now, you are not rich any more and all I want of you is money. … Leave me!" That would have been cruel, it might have meant my death. … But what of it? … It would have been better. … How can I look into your face now? … How can our mouths ever touch each other? … There is now between us the thick wall of that wicked place! … Ah! Juliette! … Wretched Juliette! …
I remember her going out. … I recollect everything! … I recall how she was dressed in her gray dress, the shadow of her hand dancing strangely on the back of her neck. … I see her as clearly as if she were before me now, and even more so. … She was sad, she was crying. … I am sure it was not mere imagination on my part … she was actually crying, for my cheek was wet with her tears! Whom was she crying over, me or herself? Ah! … who knows? … I remember. … I said to her: "Don't go out, my Juliette! … " She replied: "Embrace me