“Kalantan, Kalantan, Kalantan,” the dazed and sleepy Tito kept repeating to himself in the car belonging to the Armenian lady with a villa as white as an ossuary and as round as a Greek temple as it speeded him to his hotel in the Place Vendôme by way of the Place de la Concorde and the Rue Royale.
At that early hour Paris was crowded with people on the way to work: clerks employed in the suburbs and wearing shoes that were still too shiny hurried towards the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Gare d’Orléans and the Gare des Invalides; working girls with freshly washed faces, everyone was hurrying as if to forestall the course of the sun. Outside Maxim’s a dog and a beggar were non-competitively scavenging in a pile of oyster shells and lemon peel.
“Kalantan, Kalantan, Kalantan,” he kept muttering, his lips hidden by the coat collar that he had turned up to his nose, while the car turned into the Rue Saint-Honoré in the gray, cool air of morning — Kalantan, a sweet name for a serene lover, not for a poisoned and poisonous woman… Kalantan, Kalantan, a long drawn out name made to be pronounced without moving one’s lips, if one spoke it with one’s soul; a name made to be repeated slowly a thousand times over the brow of a pale and a pure woman… Kalantan, a name that shares the sounds of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s line O mano mansueta in man d’amante… Kalantan… in man d’amante… Kalantan, Kalantan.
The car drew up outside the Hotel Napoléon as gently as if it had been stopped by a puff of air, and a page boy opened the door. Tito got out and handed fifty francs to the chauffeur, who refused it.
“Take it, it’s offered to you by a sentimentalist,” Tito said. “I know, in man d’amante. I’m a sentimentalist. It’s disgusting of me, but take it all the same.”
The chauffeur pocketed it in a dignified manner and the car glided away with a mocking toot of the horn.
Tito found two letters waiting for him, one from Italy, the other from his newspaper.
He read the latter first. It was from the editor:
“Marius Amphossy, the Jamaican murderer of school mistresses, is to be guillotined at four o’clock tomorrow morning in the Boulevard Arago,” it said. “Write me a colorful article about it. Two columns. There have been no executions in France for seven years. The new President had discontinued commuting death sentences. I’m counting on you. The article must be at the printer’s at six a.m. We’re coming out with a special edition at eight a.m. Regards…
He crumpled up the letter and opened the other one.
Thank you for your postcard, it said. How nice of you. Do you still remember Maddalena? But I’m not Maddalena any longer, I’m Maud. I was released after ten months in the reformatory and met a number of men, one of whom is a café chantant manager. He said my legs could take me a long way, and he taught me dancing and got me engagements at the best variety theaters in Italy. I shall be coming to Paris next month to the Petit Casino. Would you like to see me?
Maud
He ordered lime tea and some drops of orange-flower water from the liftman who took him to the fourth floor. The waiter who brought it had to knock three times before entering, because he was in bed, fast asleep.
When he awoke the lime tea was stone cold, the orange-flower water had evaporated, and his watch had stopped.
He rang the bell and the waiter appeared.
“What’s the time?”
“Four a.m.”
“What did you say?”
“Four a.m., sir.”
“What day is it?”
“Thursday.”
“And what time did I come back?”
“Seven a.m., sir.”
“What day was that?”
“Wednesday.”
“And what is it today?”
“Thursday.”
“And what’s the time?”
“Four a.m., sir.”
“So I slept —”
“From eight o’clock yesterday till four o’clock today, sir.”
“Making altogether —”
“Twenty hours, sir.”
“That’s a lot.”
“I’ve seen cases worse than yours, sir. Can I take away the tray? I see the lime has done you good, sir.”
“Why?”
“You’ve slept, sir.”
“But I haven’t even tasted it.”
“That’s not necessary, sir. It’s a spécialité de la maison.”
“Very well then. Take the specialty away.” The tray, followed a pace behind by the waiter, left the room.
He read the editor’s letter without turning a hair. At this moment, he said to himself, I ought to be at the Boulevard Arago watching Mr Marius Amphossy having his head cut off. But is it absolutely essential for me to be present? The article has to be written, that I admit. But have I got to be there? How lovely the Armenian lady was. Kalantan — the name reminds me of the sound of a distant bell, tolling for the death of Marius Amphossy, the Jamaican murderer who specialized in schoolmistresses. And if I went there, what would I see in this pitch black darkness? But I shall have to write something. For the special edition with a full report of the beheading. It has to be at the printer’s at six o’clock…
As he muttered these last few words he got out of bed and collapsed with part of his body on the chair and the rest on the desk.
Large sheets of paper of a spectral whiteness awaited his pen.
He looked like a suicide about to write down his last wishes.
I’ve never understood why death sentences are always carried out early in the morning, he said to himself. Why do the executioner, the priest, the sentenced man, who would so much like to go on sleeping, have to be disturbed so early? Wouldn’t apéritif time be far better?
He began writing:
THE EXECUTION OF MARIUS AMPHOSSY
JAMAICAN MURDERER OF SCHOOLMISTRESSES
But instead of beginning his report of the grim ceremony he soliloquized as follows: What an appalling thing it is to be a journalist in summer, when the Chamber of Deputies is on vacation, and the criminal court is closed. There’s nothing to fill the paper with, so the editor orders two columns to be written about an insignificant trifle such as this. But in Italy it would be worse. When news is scarce there, long articles are written on the death of Giovanni Orth, the intelligence of ants, the birth of triplets (a Calabrian speciality), plague in Manchuria, the tricks played by lightning, and stolen necklaces (in North America). Articles are produced about the possibility of life on Mars, on the age of the earth and on D’Annunzio’s real name (D’Annunzio or Rapagnetta?); or they describe the catching of an “enormous whale,” even if it’s only a shark or a dogfish. Newspapers believe all rather large fishes to be whales. Idiots.
His watch said a quarter past four. He re-read the title of his article.
But his ideas refused to germinate. They were inert, lifeless, compressed like sardines in a tin. After twenty hours’ sleep the gastronomic comparison made him feel queasy. His ideas were shut up as if in a box of cocaine, as if in that light, seductive little metal box that was lying there in front of his eyes near the inkstand — oh, the satanic complicity between cocaine and ink.
He knew that under the influence of cocaine ideas that had shriveled opened up, unfolded, expanded like dried tea leaves when boiling water is poured on them.
He took a sniff and began to write.
He wrote one page, two pages, three pages without stopping, hesitating, or correcting, and without his mind wandering. In his mind’s eye he visualized the dreadful scene. He interwove memories of reports of executions he had read with ironic and compassionate comments. He described the sinister blade of the guillotine gleaming in the gray light of a rainy morning; the rare passers-by who stopped to watch the executioner and his assistants making the preparations for their gruesome task; the gray prison, solemn with a funereal solemnity; the soldiers of the Garde Républicaine drawn up in a grim square round the place of execution.