The paintings on the wall, even the furniture, suggested something hovering between the two sexes.
Herma introduced me to the guests. Monsieur le Chef de Police, attired as a lady in a scarlet dress embroidered with silk, lisped compliments to my beauty.
“He lisps only when he visits me,” Herma whispered into my ear. “You ought to see him on horseback in parades. He is magnificent.”
“Mademoiselle Fifi,” Herma said, pointing to a young dandy who was leaning against a column, “allow me to introduce you to Prince Lucifer.”
Mademoiselle Fifi combed her heavy black beard with her fine sensitive fingers, whose long nails reminded me of a mandarin’s.
“She was a charming girl. She has transformed herself into a man. I think she erred. As a man, she is too effeminate…”
“Effeminate, Herma! With that beard?”
A pale youth, dressed in the height of fashion, gazed at himself lovelorn in a tall mirror. He played with his locks, turning now to the right, now to the left, but always absorbed in himself.
“Whom do you love?” I asked.
“Myself,” he said. “It is the oldest and the deepest of passions.”
Near him a young girl threw kisses at herself in a glass. She never looked at the boy. He never looked at her. Each was too absorbed in the image cast back by the mirror. The girl did not look up when I addressed her. Her heavy-ringed eyes were fastened hungrily only upon her own reflection.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“I do not know,” Herma answered. “We call her Narcissa.”
We approached an elderly gentleman who knelt and kissed my shoes.
“How beautiful are feet encased in shoes!” he exclaimed. He rose. “Do you not think, Monsieur le Prince, that Eros had the shape of a shoe? Le tout ensemble, I mean. Not the particular. I have studied the nature of love, monsieur, all my life. Mademoiselle, would the Prince be interested in my book?”
Herma looked at me.
“Nihil humanum– —”
He knelt again and kissed my feet.
“May I present monsieur with my shoes in exchange for his book?”
“I shall place them in a golden case, monsieur. I shall worship them as one worships a god.”
“Monsieur le Comte, vous vous trompez. Eros is not a shoe but a flame,” said a rosy-faced figure whose sex I could not determine.
“A flame in the shape of a shoe, monsieur.”
“No monsieur. A flame in the shape of– —”
We passed on.
“Baroness de Boncourt,” Herma bowed. Even in her sitting posture, she was taller than I. Her hair was a deep violet. It seemed to me that I was standing in front of a pole surmounted by strangely colored hay.
“Baroness de Boncourt,” Herma confided, “knows all the ways of love except one.”
“Which is that?”
“The way in which Adam knew Eve.”
Herma whispered, “That enormous man who sits upon the floor, Turkish fashion, is Baron de Patrin. You understand, that all these names are fictitious. I do not know who these people really are. I don’t want to know.”
I nodded.
“Well, Baron de Patrin preferred to be neither man nor woman in order to love mentally, undisturbed by the flesh or the whim of a partner, some pale wraith of his fancy. He is a capon. Some call him Fra Abelard. I call him the lover of ghosts.”
“In what respect does he differ from young Narcissus?”
“He loves not himself but his dream.”
“Has he succeeded?”
“Alas, he has forgotten love entirely. He has grown, as you see, terribly stout and now he grumbles continually something about the meaning of life.”
“What is the meaning of life?”
“Listen!”
Baron de Patrin muttered to himself: “Life is a wind circular and spiral and all things are specks of dust, square or triangular.”
“He repeats that ceaselessly.”
“Perhaps he is right, Herma.”
“Lucifer, vous êtes adorable. You do not laugh at these people. You do not look at them superciliously. I love you.”
“I have lived long enough to know that life is a comedy too profound for laughter.”
“And for tears.”
“Yes, my child.”
“Lilith calls me a child, too, but I feel as old as the universe.”
“Only youth is capable of such an adorable arrogance.”
“Lilith, too.”
“Do not speak of Lilith.”
“Ah, you are jealous, that makes me happy!”
In the center of the room, upon a platform, was a wide armchair, gilded and surmounted by a crown.
Herma seated herself upon it and asked me to sit at her right. She raised a long ebony scepter, and majestically struck the floor three times.
“Mesdames et Messieurs, the early part of this night we shall devote to the Muse! Monsieur Michel Jean Sedaine, incomparable poet and playwright, will read his new masterpiece.”
Her voice had become deep and slightly cracked like a young adolescent’s. She had assumed her masculine expression. When was she woman, when man? What emotions stirred one being or the other into life?
Monsieur Sedaine’s poem was long and declamatory and his voice one-toned as the weary beating of a drum. He strutted about, waved his arms, struck his chest.
“How ridiculous is the Muse, Herma!” I whispered.
She looked at me reproachfully.
Monsieur Sedaine was applauded. He was followed by other men and women who recited madrigals and sonnets about love, sentimental and lachrymose, and passion. Suddenly, Herma jumped off the throne. “La Reine Lilith, mesdames et messieurs!”
Like a resurrected queen of Egypt, dazzling with rare jewels, her eyes half-shut, her mouth slightly pouting, her fingers outstretched and arms pressed against her sides, entered, making small rhythmic steps—Salome!
I jumped up. “Salome!”
She opened her eyes wide, looked at me, and drooped her lids again. Behind her, two immense negroes, naked to the waist, carried her train.
Herma knelt and kissed the hands of Salome.
“Rise!” Salome ordered.
Herma rose and helped Queen Lilith to the throne. A harp, invisible, played one of the compositions that I had heard in the enchanted palace in Persia.
Salome seated herself.
“Dim the lights!” Herma commanded.
We remained in semi-obscurity and for a long time there was perfect silence.
“Your Majesty,” Herma asked, “shall the inspired ones continue their reading?”
“Yes.”
Herma called upon another poet. She seated herself upon a golden stool at the feet of the queen. I remained standing.
“Salome,” I whispered while the recitation proceeded, “my supreme, my incomparable love, have you forgotten Cartaphilus?”
She made no answer but patted the head of Herma who assumed, under her touch, a masculine personality.
“Salome,” I continued, “do not torture Cartaphilus as you tortured him in the Palace of Pilate.”
“Herma,” Salome whispered, “you are very beautiful tonight.”
“Lilith, my queen!”
“Salome, magnificent and wise beyond compare, spurn not Cartaphilus!”
“Herma, I dreamed of you last night. You were he who– —”
The poet finished his verses. The audience exclaimed: “Bravo! Bravo! Bravissimo!”
Herma called upon another poet to recite.
“Salome, what have we in common with these people? Are they not mere dust? We are the Eternal Flame that the stars are made of.”
Salome’s eyes were riveted upon the slim body of Herma.
“Herma,” she chanted, “you are not of the earth. You are the daughter-son of Hermes and Aphrodite. The nymph Salmacis is united with you, making one…”
I touched Herma’s small breasts with my arm. Under my touch Herma assumed a feminine aspect. Her breast buds swelled and throbbed.
Salome looked at her, and her breast blossoms withered. Herma was a boy.