Prayer to the Dark One #2
And now, Gérard, we’re really getting to the heart of things, let’s put the rest aside so you can talk to me about what—or who—really matters here: the Queen of Sheba.
Tell me how it happened, how on earth you found her in the gentle nation of Yemen, or in a certain state of mind that might be symbolized by the gentle nation of Yemen, where in fact you’d never set foot.
Describe her dwelling to me, you who visited her palace in dreams and came back amazed, rambling endlessly about a tower of unsettling symmetry that reached as deep below the ground as it did from the ground up, where she reigned in infinite peace while her worshippers wore themselves out climbing up and down endless stairs.
But there is no such palace, Gérard, nor any symmetrical tower, the queen only exists in the depths of your spellbound soul, living in you constantly as if you were satanically possessed.
You say she appeared to you glimmering, that her image pulsed like a living thing.
You could only lay eyes on her for an instant.
Her hair gleamed with ever-shifting reflections, and she wore a long tunic with ancient folds, tied at the waist with a braided wool-and-silver cord.
Her glowing presence transcended language and, for lack of better words, you called it the queen’s kiss.
The queen’s kiss is a gift that burns. It leaves a red scar on the foreheads of initiates, the ones who survive, unforgetting.
The queen’s kiss is a desired wound—a stigma—and is linked to some people’s tendency toward sadness and sacrifice.
It gives, but also demands, it’s an irrefutable call to fulfill your destiny, Oedipus is under its influence when he kills his father and weds his mother; Dostoyevsky is driven to write and compulsively gamble; Joan of Arc is persuaded to lead a holy war; you receive the two-faced mask of lucidity and madness.
The ancient queen’s kiss is the abrasive mark of Cain, of a noble yet wretched race.
I believe you oversee the power of all the kisses in history, private or public: the kiss of Judas, betraying the Messiah; a kiss between two strangers who meet at random and celebrate the end of World War II; the last kiss Juliet gives Romeo, sealing the lovers’ deaths.
And before all that, the Queen of Sheba’s kiss, ardent and scorching, the stamp of genius, fame, talent, madness, or death, which could be redemptive or lethal but, in either case, is a kiss of being in love.
How does the queen choose her followers?
Impossible to know. She prefers religious devotees, but sometimes she favors unlikely choices, like those who beg for it with heart and soul, for doesn’t the Song of Songs say, Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine?
The kiss of your mouth, drunken, as red as the furious sun.
Inner rays that burn and dazzle; for Teresa of ávila, a kiss from the void.
How can someone know whether they’ve received the kiss? What are the symptoms? Redness and hives along the forehead, a feeling of vast gratitude, a sudden sense of happiness or fear without apparent cause, a constant state of daydream, sharp sensitivity to light?
Did you ever kiss Jenny, Gérard? I mean Jenny Colon, the actress and opera singer with whom you crossed paths, not very seasoned in bel canto, this Jenny, but she had a slim waist, tailored clothes, exotic hats, and hair parted in the middle that framed her doll’s face in luxurious ringlets.
You fell hard in love, though you didn’t know her, Gérard, that wasn’t what mattered to you, you didn’t shrink at such a trivial obstacle.
You were drawn to the theater world, with its unfurling feathers, lace, wigs, and plumes, and night after night you quivered as you watched Jenny from your seat in the audience.
Afterward, you’d write her torrential letters you didn’t always send, so many they’d accumulate in your pockets among the lint and coins.
They held such ardent messages that this vaudeville diva must have been horrified, she’d have the fright of her life after the show on finding such letters in her changing room, signed by a stranger who described otherworldly dreams that she’d inspired, in which, for example, they’d embrace in the house of death.
Come to my arms, my beautiful Jenny, I don’t offer pleasure but eternal peace .
. . and so on, in that vein. Today you’d be called an abuser, Gérard, and your mystical, romantic fits would be termed harassment.
You worked yourself up to a fever pitch by merging real perceptions with fantasy.
You insisted on trying to see the Queen of Sheba with your own earthly eyes, and went out looking for her in the concrete spaces of theater, fairs, brothels, even slave markets.
That’s when you suffered your worst failures, on discovering that love out in the world was more unreal, that nothing was more real than disappointment.
There are rumors of a monumental bed you acquired, a story that could be funny, Gérard, if it weren’t for the fact that with you all humor ends in terror.
It seems you moved a bed into the home you shared with friends, without their permission, a flamboyant canopy affair in the Renaissance style, on which you dreamed of consummating your passion with your adored Jenny.
You hadn’t even said hello to her and already assumed you’d get her into your bed, you were as out of control as that nobleman on the green horse, Gérard, you don’t know that story and I won’t recount it here, I’ll just give you the spoiler: In matters of seduction, haste is a bad counselor.
The way Gautier tells it, that giant bed stayed in the middle of the house like a dead cow, and the supposed lover never showed up.
The monstrosity gathered dust and went forgotten while you fell further into gloom.
There were others after that, all one and the same.
The configuration changes with each fold or unfolding.
A woman transfixes you at the fair in Maux, where she’s exhibited in a cage.
They call her the Sheep, and she’s beautiful; merino sheep’s wool springs from her scalp instead of hair, covering her entirely and spilling all the way to her feet in silky blond waves, like golden fleece.
In her you see the Abrahamic sheep, escaped from the sacrificial altar, an unlikely allusion to the Old Testament.
She stares fiercely at you from behind bars and defeats you: She’s really a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
She has cleft hooves (a goat foot?) and very white hands.
She has a woman’s breasts and the beard of a male goat.
She talks, sings, and weeps like a human being, growls and pants in a goatish way.
Do you see the Sphinx in her, Gérard? In this merino woman, have you found Cyrene, the nymph who commanded flocks of sheep?
Later your heart is stolen by one Sophie Dawes, the .
The banished bastard daughter of the Duke of Bourbon, prostitute of noble birth, Sophie has a knack for taking princes and many counts as lovers.
She passes before you on horseback, the one time you see her—a tall, aloof apparition—and you’re forever under her spell.
One night in Naples, the Queen of Sheba appears to you without warning.
The blow strikes you in two. A certain quiver in the air tells you it’s her: She’s with you again.
She moves strangely, it’s more than a walk, she moves with a spider’s weightlessness thanks to the many feet hidden under her skirts.
She’s regally adorned, as befits a sovereign of Yemen or a sorceress from Thessaly.
You follow her, get lost in squalid neighborhoods in hot pursuit, and finally manage to talk to her and offer your soul.
She replies in a language you’ve never heard before, and her incomprehensible words make you turn and flee.
You leave that phantom that so compels and scares you, and wander the deserted city until the first bells ring.
You carry all the world’s sadness on your back.
In Vienna, you’re struck with a new revelation.
The ancient queen appears to you in the form of Marie Pleyel, a pianist of great renown.
A virtuosa since she was eight years old, her concerts verge on perfection.
You encounter her when she’s already the most famous pianist in Europe.
You fall in love immediately, spend whole nights in tears, write ardent letters identical to the ones you wrote to Jenny; you do the whole number all over again.
Pleyel condescendingly refers to you as Little Gérard, incapable as she is of taking pity on anyone.
Anyone but you, I’d say, because you come out of that battle mortally wounded, in the heart and in your pride.
You bleed from that wound while the pianist assures her fans that Little Gérard is harmless.
You decide to run, falling back into the vicious cycle.
To yourself and others, you justify your retreat by explaining that you were wrong, all you loved in Pleyel was the memory of an ancient passion, by mistake you saw in her the idolatrous object you’d been chasing forever.
It won’t be the last time you’re confused.
Each of your girlfriends has the same qualities, they’ve all lived the same life.
You say it, recognize it, repeat it. But in your feverish exaltation you always forget and start again, like a broken record.
You emerge from one to fall into another.
Let’s say you’re a Don Juan, but of a very confused, foolish kind.
I wonder, Gérard, whether in the end you might have died a virgin. It wouldn’t be so strange.