The Twilight of the Souls

by Louis Couperus

"O God, what a rotten, filthy life!..."

Then he would fling himself on a couch, under his sword-rack, and wonder whether it was because he had drunk champagne yesterday, or because of something else ... something else ... a strong feeling of discontent. He did not know, but he made up his mind on one point, that he must knock off champagne: the damned fizzy stuff didn't suit him and he wouldn't drink it again. Indeed, he wouldn't drink much at all: no beer, no cocktails, for it all flew straight to his temples, like a wave of blood, and throbbed there, madly. And so it came to a secret abstemiousness, of which he never spoke and which he calculated so cunningly that his friends, though they knew that he was no great drinker, did not know that he could not support a drink at all. Sometimes he was fierce about it, allowed the drink to be poured out and emptied the glass under the table or broke it deliberately, knocked it over. That beastly drinking drove him mad; the other thing, on the contrary, kept him calm and cool, cleared his blood and his brain. It was after drinking, especially, that he felt depressed; after the other thing, he felt as if he were starting a new life. He was like that as a young officer, like that for years at Deventer, Venlo and the Hague; and his sudden rough outbursts—of insolent gaiety rather than anger—had given him his name as a big, blustering, brainless sort of ass: a pane of glass smashed, without the slightest occasion; a quarrel with a friend, without occasion; a duel provoked for no reason and then a reconciliation effected, with the greatest difficulty, by the other officers; a need sometimes to go for houses and people like a madman and destroy and break things, more from a sheer animal instinct of wanton gaiety than from anger. When he was angry, he knew what he was doing; a kind of soft-heartedness prevented him from becoming really angry; it was only that madness of his which allowed him to go really far, letting himself be carried away by a strange intoxication, the same intoxication which he felt on horseback, when riding in a steeplechase: a longing to rave and rage and go too far and trample on everything under him, not out of malice but out of madness. That again cooled him, made him feel clear and calm: it was only the confounded drink that drove him mad....

But, as he grew older, he quieted down and mastered his hot blood, so that he was satisfied with a quiet liaison with a little woman whom he went to see at regular intervals; and suddenly, in his secret fits of gloom and blackness, it was borne in upon him that he must get married, that it was that confounded living alone in rooms which gave him the deep-lying discontent which he never spoke about, for it would never have done to let the others notice things which they would think queer and of which he himself was at heart ashamed. And then, as he lay quietly, under his sword-rack, he would think, ah, to get married, to have a dear little wife ... and children, heaps of children ... and not to dissipate your substance for nothing!... But children ... Lord, Lord, how jolly, to have a whole tribe of children round you!... All that was kindly in him and friendly, not to say very romantic and extremely sentimental, now made him wax enthusiastic, under the sword-rack, the great, strong fellow who made the couch crack under him with his weight: Lord, Lord, how jolly! A whole tribe of children: not two or three, but a tribe, a tribe!... He smiled at the thought; after his riotous youth, it was a pleasant prospect: a nice little house, a home of his own, a dear little wife, children.... He talked to his mother about it; and she was delighted; because she had long been thinking that he ought to get married.... He was thirty-five now; yes, really, it would be a good thing to get married.... And she looked about and found Adeline for him: a good family, of French descent; connections in India, which was always nice; no money, but the Van Lowes never looked at money, though they hadn't so very much themselves, comparatively, professing a laughing contempt for the dross which, all the same, they could very well do with. A dear little girl, Adeline, young—she was thirteen years younger than her husband—fair-haired and placid: a regular little mother even as a girl. And Gerrit, though he had had a brief vision of other women, other girls, had thought:

"Oh, well, yes, a bit bread-and-buttery; but you want a different sort for your wife than you do for your mistress!"

And, after all, she was round and plump, a little round ball, even as a girl, and nice to hug, even though she was a bit short and though her figure was badly deficient in the lines that set his blood tingling. He never for a moment fell in love with Adeline; but he saw her for what she was: his wife and the mother of his children, the little tribe for which he longed, because it was such a pity and almost mean to go dissipating your substance for nothing, especially when you were getting a bit older and sobering down. He would have a healthy little wife in Adeline; she would give him a healthy little tribe.... She, in her placid way, had come to love him, very simply, because he was big and good-looking and because he was offering her, a penniless girl, a modest position. They had got married and were still living in the same little house, quite a small house, but big enough to harbour what Gerrit had looked for from the start, one citizen of the world after the other.

He thought it rotten now to be alone; and, when Mamma had asked Adeline and the children to the little villa at Nunspeet, he had grumbled that they were leaving him all alone, but gave in: a few weeks in the country would do the wife and the children good; and he ran down once or twice to Nunspeet on Sundays. But the loneliness was bad for him; and the house that had suddenly become lifeless and silent oppressed him with a gloom which weighed upon him so heavily that he could not throw it off: a cursed heavy weight which bore down on his chest. Add to this that, in order not to be alone in the evenings, he allowed the other fellows, at whose mess he dined these days, to persuade him to go with them and have a drink at the Witte ... and it was those confounded drinks which finished him, simply finished him.... He was home by one, at the latest; but he felt, after those drinks, as if he had been up all night: he could not sleep; if he fell asleep at last, he kept on waking up; his heart bounced as if it were trying to reach his temples; he turned about and turned about, dabbed his face and wrists, lay down again, ended by splashing cold water all over his body; then he crept into bed again, huddling himself up, with his knees drawn up to his chin, like a child; he stuffed the sheets into his ears, hid his watch, so as not to hear it ticking louder and louder, and at last went to sleep. When he woke in the early morning, whole landscapes of misty mountains pressed upon his brain, as though his poor head were the head of an Atlas supporting the world on his neck; persistent, slow-rolling, rocky avalanches crumbled all the way down his spine; and, with his legs stretched out wide in bed, he was so horribly depressed by that waking nightmare that he felt as if he could never make a move to get up, as if he could not stir his little finger. Then, at last, with a groan, he got up, cursing himself for drinking the damned stuff, took his bath, did his dumb-bell exercises, full of wondering admiration for his powerful arms and ingenuously thinking, if he was so strong in his muscles, why couldn't he carry off a drink or two?... Then he would look at his arms with the smiling vanity of a woman contemplating her beautiful curves; and, though his eyelids still hung heavy and round, too weary to roll up, the waking nightmare vanished under the influence of the water and the exercises and the misty mountains rose higher and higher till they vanished out of sight and the avalanche of rocks just tickled his back with a last gritty hail of pebbles. Then he became himself again: his orderly was waiting outside with his horse; in barracks he was the zealous captain, who carefully performed his military duties; none of the officers saw anything the matter with him....

But, though, of course, there were always the other fellows, loneliness seemed to envelop him, an almost tangible loneliness that pressed upon him, something that alarmed him. What was it this time, he would ask himself: was he ill, or had he the blues? Blast those moods, which you couldn't understand yourself! Was he ill, or had he the blues? Was it that beastly worm, rooting away in his carcase with its legs and eating up his marrow, or was he just thinking it rotten that his wife and children were away?... His brain was whirling with it all: first that rotten feeling and then the beastly worm. Sometimes it became such an obsession with him that, during his afternoon rides when he let his horse gallop wildly, he would see the thing wriggling along in front of him.... Then he would think of Ernst; and he felt sorry for the poor chap. What a queer thing it was, a diseased soul; and could he ... could he himself be diseased ... in his soul ... or at any rate in his body?... If he told people what he suspected, nobody would believe him. Outwardly he was such a sturdy fellow, such a healthy animal. But if only they could take a peep inside him!... That wretched worm thing had been at it again, rooting away in his carcase with its beastly legs, its hundreds of legs, never leaving him in peace. Was it just a queer feeling, was it an illusion, like Ernst's hallucination ... or could it really be a live thing?... No, that was too ridiculous: it wasn't really alive.... And yet he remembered stories of people who always had headaches, headaches which nothing could cure; and, after their death, a nest of earwigs had been found swarming in their brains.... Imagine, if it should be some beastly insect! But no, it wasn't alive, it wasn't alive: he only called it a worm or centipede because that described the beastly sensation.... Should he go and see a doctor, some clever specialist at Amsterdam?... But what was he to say?

"Doctor, there's something crawling about inside my carcase like a beastly centipede!"

And the doctor would tell him to undress and would look at his carcase, still young and fresh, notwithstanding his earlier rackety life, with the muscles in good condition, the joints flexible, the chest broad, the lungs expanded, and would stare at him and think ... he would think ... the specialist would think that he was mad! He would ask questions about his brothers and sisters ... and he would want to see Ernst ... and he would draw all sorts of learned conclusions, would the clever specialist.... No, hanged if he would go to a doctor; he would be ashamed to say:

"Doctor, there's something crawling about inside my carcase, like a beastly centipede."