The penguins looked like gentlemen in evening dress with their hands behind their back.
A huge carpet covered with white, green and blue hieroglyphics covered the whole floor. Tiger skins and brocade cushions lay on semi-circular divans. There were no lamps and no windows, but a misty light from invisible colored lamps filtered through the light blue glass ceiling.
“We were admiring the sorceress’s cave,” Tito said, going up to Kalantan, who came in holding out one hand to him and the other to his companion.
“We’re the first. Are we too early?”
“Not at all. Someone has to be first.”
A fur as shaggy as a royal mantle acted as door curtain. No sooner had the flunkey dropped it than he had to raise it again to announce three names, preceded by three titles.
Three gentlemen came in.
One of them was tall, thin, clean-shaven and white-haired; his white sidechops gave him the austere appearance of a maître d’hôtel.
Kalantan introduced him: “Professor Cassiopea, astronomer, in charge of the world’s most powerful telescope.”
Bows. She then introduced the two Italians. “Dr Chiaro di Luna, Professor Où Fleurit l’Oranger, both journalists on a Paris newspaper.”
More bows.
Two other gentlemen had come in with the astronomer.
“The painter Triple Sec.”
He was young, blond, thin, and trebly dry. More bows.
“Dr Pancreas, of the Faculty of Medicine.”
Bows and handshakes.
On a sign from the hostess the five gentlemen moved towards a divan; the two Italians were invited to precede the three Frenchmen.
The divan was so soft and well sprung that once one had sat on it one’s knees were at the height of one’s shoulders. To avoid assuming ungraceful positions there was no alternative to either getting up again or lying flat.
The flunkey announced more guests.
A rich industrialist, an antique dealer with several deposed kings among his clientèle, a blonde of indefinable age between thirty and sixty, a cocotte of recent vintage, more men, more women.
One of the latter announced that M. — was playing in a tragedy of Corneille’s that evening and would be arriving later.
An old gentleman apologized for the absence of a colleague who had had to go to Marseilles to perform an operation. The painter realized at once what lay behind this excuse. The surgeon, who was the master of an important masonic lodge, was never free on Thursdays.
More guests arrived, and there were more introductions and more bows; and no one showed surprise at seeing anyone else there.
Four flunkeys brought in about a hundred multi-colored cushions and piled them round the ladies sitting on the divans. At one end of the big circular room a smaller circle formed: an assembly of men, women, cushions, pink female shoulders, women’s hair-dos, wisps of cigarette smoke; the overhead light tinted everything pink and blue, turning the shadows greenish and violet.
A great correctness of attitude gave a certain nobility to the promiscuousness of cushions, the huddle of limbs, the close proximity of austere elderly men in tails and women in revealing dresses.
Kalantan, the beautiful Armenian lady, was sheathed in darkness; her dark gray dress with greenish and bluish reflections clung to her form as if she were wearing tights; it was not trimmings or stitching that held the silk to the curves of her body. She was like a bronze nude or a basalt statue, but touching her would no doubt have revealed the adhesive softness of a vampire. There was not so much as a silk chemise between her dress and her skin; round her waist she had a green girdle, knotted in front, and the tassels at the two ends ended in two big emeralds. Her stockings were green, and so were her satin shoes and her fingernails.
A kind of trapdoor opened, and a pale young man with a girlish face, carrying a violin in one hand and a bow in the other, emerged from below. The hostess signed to him, he disappeared again, and the trapdoor shut.
Through the floor — and only then did its thinness become apparent — there rose the sound of soft, caressing music that seemed to come from great depths.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen you,” the painter Triple Sec said to the man beside him. “At the Grand Palais yesterday morning you said that a painting of mine was full of sublime falsities. The phrase struck me.”
“Good gracious,” said the gentleman with the austere face of a maitre d’hôtel, “do you mean to say you were standing next to your picture?”
“Of course he was,” said a woman with metallic blonde hair. The painter’s always near the picture just as the deceased’s close relatives are always near the hearse. If you want to say nasty things about a picture or someone who has just died, it’s better to keep your distance.”
“And do you like the false in art?” the painter asked.
The astronomer: Of course; only the false is beautiful. Crazy distortions, maddening contrasts, are the only means by which artists can produce any reaction in me. We’ve had enough of the truth, of life and realism. What I want of an artist is that he should be able to give me the illusion of walking city streets paved with stars with a pair of galoshes on my head, enabling me to splash about with my head in the puddles of the sky while rain and light come up to me from below. Instead of admiring flowers and plants, I want to see them buried, with their roots exposed to the winds; instead of effects I want to see causes, instead of consequences I want to see origins. I’m much more interested in the roots of daisies than in their corollas.
Surgeon: For an astronomer like you that’s a bit much.
Astronomer: Astronomers are nothing but poets manqués, because instead of studying qualities and their distortion they concentrate on the exact study of quantities, which is absurd.
Kalantan, the beautiful Armenian lady: Nevertheless you’re held in high esteem…
Astronomer: Yes, because we use huge telescopes, write numbers thirty digits long, calculate in sextillions and write unintelligible formulas. But what is the actual use of measuring the distance of the stars?
Kalantan: If only you made mistakes in your measurements and forecasts. The infuriating thing about you is your accuracy.
A gentleman with the face of a chronic cuckold came in. After the usual exchange of courtesies, he sat on the floor and went to sleep with a cushion between his legs, just like an emigrant with his bundle.
Kalantan: He always goes to sleep.
Retired cocotte: Who is he?
Kalantan: A big business man.
Tito Arnaudi: But how does he manage to look after his business?
Kalantan: He has a partner.
Surgeon: How he must fleece him.
Kalantan: No, the partner’s his wife’s lover, and she keeps an eye on the business and sees he doesn’t do any dirty work, at any rate so far as the business is concerned.
This information raised a laugh, based partly on amusement and partly on malice.
A flunkey brought in a big silver tray with about twenty champagne glasses full of fruit and offered one to each guest. Another flunkey offered each guest a small golden spoon.
“Fruit salad,” Pietro Nocera explained to Tito Arnaudi, helping himself to a strawberry that sparkled with tiny crystals of ice and was soaked in champagne and ether.
By now the smell of ether had spread through the room; the condensed vapor frosted the outside of the glasses.
A third flunkey went round with a small cubical silver box, one side of which was perforated; from it he shook into each glass some white powder that dissolved in the liquid.
The invisible violinist played laments as heart-rending as those of a troubadour imprisoned in a dungeon for some crime of love. The weak, tremulous light, the velvety carpets, the soft cushions, the circular walls, the men in black, the almost silent women gave an air of solemnity to the pagan ceremony; the men sat with legs crossed in the Turkish fashion, holding their glasses and sedately and impassively sipping the subtle, alcoholized mixture of sweet and pungent fruit.