Calvary: A Novel

by Octave Mirbeau

Lying flat upon the dune, face downward, my elbows sunk in the sand with head buried in my hands, and staring into the space before me, I dream.... The sea is in front of me, immense and glaucous, streaked with violet shadows, plowed by mighty billows whose crests, rising and falling back and forth, are white in the sun. The reefs of la Gamelle from time to time uncover the dark points of their rocks and send forth a dull noise like a distant cannonade. Yesterday the tempest broke loose; today the wind has subsided, but the sea still refuses to quiet down. The waves come up, swell, roll, rise, toss up their manes of swirling foam, break into ripples and fall back upon the pebbles, flat and broken, with a frightful roar of rage. But the sky no longer threatens, streaks of blue appear between the rifts of clouds swiftly borne away, and the seagulls are soaring high in the air. The fishing boats have just left the harbor, they are receding in the distance, diminishing, separating, becoming indistinct and finally vanishing. To my right, dominated by sinking dunes, is the strand extending as far as Ploch, which one can see behind a rise in the ground in the midst of dreary verdure, the roofs of the nearest houses, the belfry of granite stone at the end of which there rises a lighthouse. Beyond the pier the eye can see limitless expanses of pink shores, silvery bays, soft-blue cliffs covered with mist, so faint in the distance that they look like columns of vapor, and the ever present sea and the ever present sky which blend together yonder into a sort of mysterious and poignant elimination of all things.... To my left the dune, where the broomrape spreads its corymbs of purple flowers, ends abruptly. The ground rises, becomes steep and the rocks pile up, topple over, form openings of roaring abysses or plunge into the sea, cleaving its body like the prows of giant vessels. Further on there is the beach again.

The sea, held back by the shore, ever turbulent and white with foam, leaps and beats impetuously against the side of the cliffs. And the shore continues jagged, indented and worn away by the eternal onrush of the waves crumbling into a chaotic mass or rising and shaping themselves into awesome shadows against the sky. Over my head flocks of linnets are flying, and above the rage of the waves the wind brings to me the plaint of cock-pigeons and curlews.

It is here that I come every day. Whether it be windy or rainy, whether the sea howl or hum peacefully, whether it be clear or dark, I always come to this place.... It is not, however, because the sight impresses and moves me or that the terrible or charming aspect of nature consoles me. I hate this nature; I hate the sea, I hate the sky, the cloud that passes, the wind that blows, the birds that circle in the air; I hate everything that surrounds me, everything that I see, everything that I hear. I come here by force of habit, impelled by an animal instinct which calls animals back to the place that is familiar to them. Like the hare, I have dug my seat in the sand and I always come back to it. Whether it is upon the sand or on the moss, in the shadow of the woods, in the depths of the caves or in the sun of the solitary strand—does not matter!

Where can a man who suffers find refuge? Where look for the voice that soothes! Where can he find compassion which dries the eyes that weep? Oh! I know these chaste dawns, these gay noon hours, these pensive evenings and starry nights!... These endless distances where the soul expands, where sorrows dissolve... Ah! I know them!... Beyond this horizon line, beyond this sea, are there no countries like the rest? Are there no people, no trees, no noises?

There is no rest, no silence for me!... To die!... But who can assure me that the thought of Juliette will not come to mingle with the worms to eat me up?... One stormy day I was face to face with Death and I prayed to be taken by him. But Death turned away from me.... He spared me, me who am useless for anything or to anybody, to whom life is more of a torture than the carcass of a condemned criminal or the chain-shot of a galley-slave, and he took another instead—a strong, brave and kindly man for whom poor creatures were waiting! Yes, one time the sea snatched me, rolled me on its waves and then cast me up alive again upon the seashore, as if I were unworthy to perish in it.

The solid mass of clouds breaks up, becomes whiter. The sun showers the sea with rays of brilliant light, the changing green of the sea grows softer, becomes golden in some places and opalescent in others, and near the shore above, the bubbling line is variegated with all the shades of pink and white. The reflections of the sky which the waves endlessly divide, which they break up into a multitude of small fragments of light, glitter upon the agitated surface. Behind the harbor the slender mast of a cutter, which men are towing on the bowline, glides along slowly, then the hull appears, the hauled-up sails swell out, and gradually the vessel moves aways, dancing on the waves. Along the beach which the ebb tide uncovers, an angler is walking hastily, and ship-boys come running to the shore bare-legged, wade in the mud puddles, pick up rocks covered with seaweed, in search of loaches and crabs.... Pretty soon the vessel is nothing but a greyish speck on the horizon line which grows thinner, enveloped in a vacuous fog.... One can see that the sea is getting calm.

It is already two months that I have been here!... two months!... I have walked on the roads, in the fields, through the heaths; I know all the grass blades, all the rocks, all the crosses watching over the crossroads.... Like a tramp I have slept in the ditches, my limbs made numb by the cold, and I have crawled to the foot of the rocks, upon beds of humid foliage; I have wandered over the beach and the cliffs, blinded by the sand, lashed by the spray, deafened by the wind; with bleeding hands and bruised knees I have climbed rocks inaccessible to men, haunted only by sea ravens; I have spent sorrowful nights on the sea and I have seen sailors crossing themselves in the terror of death; I have rolled from the tops of huge boulders, and with the water up to my neck, swept by dangerous currents, I have fished sea weeds; I have climbed trees and I have dug the earth with a mattock.

The people here thought that I was out of my mind. My arms are broken. My flesh is bruised. And yet not for a minute, not for a second has my passion deserted me, it has possessed me even more than in the past. I feel how it strangles me, how it squashes my brains, crunches my chest, gnaws my heart, dries up my veins.... I am like a small animal attacked by a polecat; no matter how much I roll on the ground desperately struggling with its teeth, the polecat holds me and won't let me go. Why did I go away?... Couldn't I hide myself away in a room at some furnished house?... Juliette would come to see me from time to time, nobody would know that I existed, and in my obscurity I could enjoy my heavenly as well as abominable bliss.... Lirat had spoken to me of honor, of duty, and I believed him!... He had said to me: "Nature will console you." And I believed him! Lirat had lied to me. Nature has no soul. Entirely given over to her eternal labor of destruction, she whispers to me nothing but thoughts of death and crime. Never has she bent over my burning forehead to cool it or stooped over my panting breast to calm it. And infinitude has only brought sorrow closer to me! Now I can no longer resist, and vanquished, I abandon myself to grief, without even making an effort to drive it away occasionally.

Though the sun rise in the splendor of silver gilt dawns, though it go down in purple glory, though the sea display its gems, though everything glitter, sing and emit sweet odors, I don't want to see anything, I don't want to hear anything.... I only want to see Juliette in the fugitive outline of the clouds; I only want to hear Juliette in the errant plaint of the wind, and I am ready to kill myself just to grasp her elusive image in the things about me!... I see her at the Bois smiling, happy with her freedom. I see her promenading in the stage boxes; I see her especially at night, in her bedroom. Men enter and go out, others come in and leave, all sated with love! By the glimmer of the night lamp, obscene shadows dance and grimace around her bed; laughter, kisses and dull spasms are stifled in the pillows, and with a swooning look, with trembling mouth, she offers everyone her luxurious body which never tires of pleasure. With my brains on fire, sinking my nails into my throat, I shriek: "Juliette! Juliette!" as if it were possible for Juliette to hear me across the space: "Juliette! Juliette!" Alas! the cry of the sea-gulls and the rumbling noise of the waves beating against the rocks are the only things that answer: "Juliette! Juliette!"

And evening comes.... The fogs float up, pink and weightless, enveloping the shore, the village, while the jetty, almost black, assumes the appearance of the hull of a huge vessel without masts; the sun inclines its copper-colored ball toward the sea, tracing a path of rippling, crimson light upon its limitless extent. Near the shore the water grows darker, and sparkles flare up on the crests of the waves. At this sad hour I return through the fields, meeting again the same carts pulled by oxen covered with cloths of grey flax, seeing the same silhouettes of peasants who, bent over the niggardly soil, struggle grimly with the heath and the rocks. And upon the heights of Saint-Jean where the windmills rotate their sails in the blue of the sky, the same calvary stretches out its supplicating arms....