"Ah? by Sosth&ne?” I ask.
"Yes.”
Sighs.
I was going to hear it all.
I pet her.. pet her..
"He and his troupe were on the Australian clipper… the giant liner Concordia.. He was returning in triumph from the Chicago Fair!.. the women passengers were all crazy about him!.. If only you’d seen him!.. with his big troupe of Brahmans!.. You can’t imagine how handsome he was!”
Suddenly she starts covering me with kisses!.. she goes for my cheeks, my eyes.. she laps both my eyelids!.. You can’t imagine how greedy she is!.. she bites my nostrils!..
"Like you!.. Like you!.. Yes, like you!”
Good-looking as Sosthene, that’s not very!.. according to what I saw!..
At any rate it excites her!..
"Sweetie!.. Sweetie!"… she’s lapping me again..
"What were you doing on the ship?”
"I was a manicurist, my angel! Let me see your hands! Oh! what hands!.. How lovely they are! ”
Ecstatic right away! She gets pleasure out of everything!.. she fondles them.. turns them over..
"Oh! what luck!.. what awful luck!”
She saw it right away!
"No heart! my! my!.. No heart! ”
And she snuggles up again all palpitating!.. she hugs and pets me!
"Take the Flower of San Francisco!”
I can’t get away from the flowers!
It’s an offer.
She lies in my lap, she writhes, she convulses! What can I do?
She gets up again… she dashes to the other cupboard.. She brings back a bunch of photos!.. There she is in tights, it’s she in 1901!.. the program.. the year! enthroned in a chariot of roses.. "The Beautiful Fairy”! the attraction!
"The Chicago World’s Fair!” she exclaims.
Ah! that’s something! "The Beautiful Fairy”!
She starts necking again.
"Don’t you know how to love?”
I distress her.
She pecks me, she shakes me, rolls me around.
"Not at all?”
Really I’m not interested.. I’m more the curious type.. I ask her why all the trunks?.. All that equipment? All that dragon business?.. the buddhas?
"Don’t you know the magic trunk?”
I astound her!
’'He’s the one who discovered it all! Of course! Didn’t you know?.. The secret of the magic trunk?.. Oh! it’s prodigious, you know! You’ll see!. Nothing inside!. You open it this way!. Nothing at all!. Then he invokes the Spirits!
.. You see! armfuls! armfuls of roses! they come up from the bottom!.. That’s it!.. and the fragrance!.. You think you’re dreaming.. Marvelous!.. marvelous!. and then The Beautiful Fairy! That’s me!”
The memory of it sent her into ecstasies..
"It was one of his ideas! I loved him so! from the very first day! immediately! then and there! our idea!. right from the start!.. I couldn’t leave him… He carried me off for his troupe… He made me change ships… We were married in Brisbane!.. He loved me.. I loved him!.. We took another ship.. We had to! The Corrigan Tweed!.. A four-master!.. Oh! I regretted nothing! Because he loved me he made me flower of the trunk!.. Sosthene!.. what love!.. What years!.. For twenty years I was Queen of Magic! I appeared in the heart of the roses!.. look! I popped out of the trunk! Just like that! pop!.. when he uttered the word! Pop! The Rose of San Francisco! Look! just like that! it’s printed there all over!”
She showed me her clippings again.. always in tights.. a whole album! no one else! always her! never anyone but her!. in a chariot!.. without a chariot!.. languid.. triumphal!.. in a palanquin! in a rickshaw!.. Always her! with a smile!..
"How the spectators adored me! You’ve no idea!.. They called me the loveliest of the roses!.. Afterwards in Cairo!.. then in Nice!. and then after that Borneo!. Sumatra! the Sunda Isles.. and then India!.. and then Hamburg!.. two years!.. Here, look, in London.. the Empire!.. Look, 1906!
the Crystal! and then Paris!.. the Olympia!. and then we went back to India!. again! Then Sosthene went wild!.. We were welcomed everywhere with our Brahmans!.. And, darling, such gifts!.. it turned his head!.. he saw red! If you had seen!.. The lovers I refused! and the diamonds!.. They all wanted me to divorce him! the Rajah of Solawkodi… He wanted to build me, just for me, a little opal temple!
.. Do you know opal, darling?.. Oh! my beloved! take me! Why are you so tired?’'
What could I answer?
"A little opal temple!.. Can you see it?”
She was smiling blissfully!.. beaming with the memory.. A kiss for the beauty! she’s got to continue!..
"So Sosthene went mad! as I’ve told you!”
"Why?”
I wasn’t listening closely..
"Jealous! my angel!.. Jealous!.. Imagine, he was still in love with me! What jealousy, my darling!. A madman!.. He couldn’t sleep because of the Rajah!.. He couldn’t even eat a sandwich!.. or sleep!.. He made love all the time!.. He began to make me suffer!. On purpose!. The flowers weren’t enough for him… He put me to magic death!.. Do you know what magic death is?”
No, I didn’t!
"He’d plunge me into a deep sleep.. catalepsy!.. And then all the indecencies!.. All the miseries!.. so I'd suffer!
.. suffer more! always more! and it was never enough!.. He was never satisfied.. He’d lend me to his Brahmans!.. A whole night long for their black magic!.. then to the Davides of Bengal!. for their great orgy!. with burns and everything!.. I’d come back in the morning dead… I could see he was possessed!.. And I loved him more and more!.. Like you! Yes, like you, sweetie!.. Oh! my love, be a bit tender!.. Don’t you know how to caress?”
"Tell me more! ”
"He dug needles into me!.. During the act!.. Blood flowed from the wounds! He sucked it all! Look, like that! Pff! Pff! He walked over my feet! And me so sensitive!..
And then when it was time for the trunk he really locked me in!.. I really stifled!.. He even thought up something better!
.. That was his prize act!.. He sawed off my head every evening.. and two matinees besides.. Then I really used to die of fright!.. He’d carry me off to his dressing-room. He’d take me in that state! in Rangoon I was really dead! Ah! the sound of the saw!.. listen! rrr!.. rrr!.. rrr!.. the blood flowed down to the orchestra!.. The spectators would faint!
.. His eyes looked like this! ”
She imitated Sosthene’s eyes. how frightful they were. extraordinary! you couldn’t look at them! you’d die of fright!
"He’d have me brought back to the stage!.. They’d carry me on a stretcher with his Brahmans! What a triumph! Imagine!.. And then when we got back to the hotel he’d make love to me! you don’t know what it was like! He’d strangle me again very gently!.. I’d get scared again.. The temple was driving him crazy! Here, you do it to me too!”
Her neck was soft and full of folds.. I squeezed a little.
"Squeeze, my pet!.. Squeeze!.. Your tongue!.. Your tongue! ”
I had to stick my tongue out at the same time!.. It was complicated!..
I did my best.
"Then what happened?”
I wanted to know the details!..
"Around the world again twice!.. Two months in Berlin!
.. Six months in New York!.. I didn’t recognize him any more, he had changed so!.. He was mean and insulting with almost everyone… He who had always been so pleasant, who spoke with such refinement. He slapped a lady in Copenhagen. our orchestra leader in Hamburg. and then the manager. Those scandals did us a lot of damage!. the impresarios canceled us. they black-listed us. Nobody wanted us any more!.. and our magic trunk… we were stuck in Singapore… I’d got so thin that I was impossible in tights!.. it even made a horrible noise every time he beat me!.. the skeleton!.. it was awful for the neighbors!.. We were put out of hotels!.. We went back to India.. Then came the final catastrophe!.. he who had never gambled.. I mean baccarat! He started gambling! he plunged recklessly… he played everything.. The fiend!.. He played the races! heads or tails! whist! roulette! anything!.. He’d win!.. He’d lose!