MAINTENANT III:

OSCAR WILDE LIVES!

It was the night of March twenty-third, nineteen-thirteen.

If I were to describe the state of my soul on that late winter s eve, it s that those were the most
memorable hours of my life. I want to present to you the eccentricities of my character, the nature
of my quirks; my detestable nature, a nature that I would not exchange, however, for any other,
although it has always prevented me from having a steady course: it made me sometimes honest,
sometimes a cheat, and vain, and modest, coarse and distinguished. I want to allow you to guess
these things so that you don t entirely despise me, as you soon will perhaps be tempted to do when
you read this.

It was the night of March twenty-third nineteen-thirteen.

Certainly we are not physically similar: my legs must be much longer than yours, my head is perched
higher, happily balanced: our bust measurements differ, too, which will probably prohibit you from
crying and laughing with me.

It was the night of March twenty-third, nineteen-thirteen.

It was raining. The clock had just struck 10:00. I lay in my bed fully clothed, and I hadn t bothered
to light the lamp because that night I was feeling cowardly before such a great effort. I was
frightfully bored. I said, Oh Paris, what a hatred I bear for you! What are you doing in this city? Ah!
It s yours. Certainly, you think you have succeeded! But you need to be twenty to do this, poor dear,
and if you attain glory, you will be ugly like a man. I cannot understand how Victor Hugo could, for
forty long years, work. All literature, it s ta ta ta ta ta ta ta. Art, Art, what hinges me to Art ? Shit, in
the name of God ! I become very crude in those moments, and yet I feel that I am not surpassing
any limit, since I m still stifled. Despite it all, I aspire to success, because I feel that I would know
how to make use of it amusingly, and I find it funny to be famous; but how do I take myself
seriously? Meaning, since we exist, we cannot laugh ceaselessly. But, what a novel obstacle, I also
desire the marvelous life of a failure. And as the sadness mixes with pleasantry, it s Oh la la!
Followed quickly by Tra la la! I think again: I ll eat my capital, that will be fun! And I can guess,
because, approaching the age of forty, I will see myself to be, by all accounts, ruined, which will give
me such sorrow. Ohé! I added immediately as a way of concluding these little verses; because I
must laugh again. Looking for a distraction, I wanted to rhyme, but inspiration, which enjoys
distracting the will with a thousand diversions, left me lacking. Digging into my brain, I found this
quatrain of known irony, which disgusted me quickly enough:

I was lying amid my sheets

Like a lion on the sand,
And, for admirable effect,
I let my arm hang down
Incapable of originality, but without renouncing my work, I tried to give some luster to old poems,
forgetting that verse is an incorrigible child! Naturally, I no longer had any success. All remained
simply mediocre. Finally, my last wild idea, I imagined the ​prosopoem​, a future thing, the completion
of which I put off until days of happiness and - how pitiful - inspiration. It concerned a piece
beginning with prose which awoke imperceptibly to pure poetry through reminders -- rhyme -- first
far off, then closer and closer, birthing pure poetry.

Then I fell back into my sad thoughts. What hurt me the most was telling myself that I found myself
still in Paris, too weak to leave; that I have an apartment and even furniture --at that moment, I
would have gladly set my house on fire-- that I was in Paris when there were the lions and giraffes;
and I thought that science itself had birthed its mammoths, and that we already only saw elephants,
that in a thousand years a unifications of all of the machines in the world would not make more
sound than scs, scs, scs. That scs scs scs pleased me slightly. Here I am, on my bed, like a slug;
nothing could displace me from my terrible laziness, but I hate to stay like this for a long time, when
our era is welcoming to traffickers and rogues; me, for whom a tune of violin music is enough to
give me the rage to live; me, who could kill myself with pleasure, who could die from love for all
women; who cries for all cities, I am here, because ​life does not have a solution​. I then party in
Montmartre and do a thousand eccentric things, because I need to; I can be pensive, bodily; shifting
into a sailor, gardener, or hairdresser; but, if I want to taste the pleasures of the priest, I must give
shine to my forty years of existence, and lose incalculable enjoyments, during which I have become
uniquely wise. Me, who still dreams in catastrophes, I say that man is not so unfortunate because a
thousand souls live in a single body.

It is the night of March 23​rd​, nineteen-thirteen. For an instant, I heard the whistle of the tugboat, and
I said, Why are you so poetic, since you are not going further than Rouen, and you are in no
danger? Ah! Let me laugh, laugh, laugh like Jack Johnson!1

Without doubt, that night, I had the soul of a fallen angel, because, I am sure, no one -- since
I had no friends -- has loved as much as I have: each flower transformed me into a butterfly; better
than a ewe. I crush the grass with ecstasy; the air, oh the air! Did I not spend entire afternoons just
breathing? Approaching the sea, does my heart not dance like a buoy? And once I cleave open the
wave, my body is that of a fish. In nature, I feel leafy; my hair is green and my blood circulates green;
often, I love pebbles; The Angelus2 is dear to me; and I like to listen to memories when they
complain and wheeze.
I descended into my navel, and I must have become in a fairy-like state; my intestines
suggested it; my cells danced foolishly; and my shoes appeared miraculous. What incites me still to
think in this way is that in this minute I heard a faint sound of a sonnet, of which the timbre,
ordinary in appearance spreads across all of limbs like a miraculous liquid. I get up slowly, then
1

​Aboxer with whom Arthur Cravan fought in a rigged match in order to gain passage to the
United States.
2
​The final toll of the church bell at the end of the day for evening prayer.
hastily, as I go to open the door, happy at the unexpected distraction. I open the door: an immense
man moves toward me.

Monsieur Lloyd.
It s me, I say, Would you like to take the time to come inside?.

And the stranger strode onto the doorstep with the magical airs of a king or a pigeon.

I will turn on the lights…Please excuse me that I receive you like this…I was alone, and…
No, no, no; don t disturb yourself in any way.

I insisted.

I beg you , said the stranger, Welcome me into the dark.

Amused, I offered him an armchair, and faced him. Soon, he began:

Can your ears hear unheard things?

Pardon, I babbled, a bit disconcerted, Pardon me, I don t precisely understand what you mean.
I said, Can your ears hear the unheard?
This time, I simply said: Yes.
So, taking a bit of time, this stranger declared: I am Sébastien Melmoth.

Never could I describe what happened in me then: in a subtle but total sacrifice of myself, I wanted
to throw my arms around his neck, kiss him like a mistress, give him something to eat and
something to drink, to sleep with him, to dress him, find him women, and finally take out all the
money I had in the bank in order to fill his pockets. The only words I could find to articulate my
innumerable sentiments were, Oscar Wilde! Oscar Wilde! Understanding my trouble and my love,
he murmured, Dear Fabian. Hearing him say my name so familiarly and tenderly moved me to
tears. Then, with a change of spirit, like an exquisite drink, I breathed in the sweetness of being an
actor in a unique situation. The second afterwards, a wild curiosity beckoned me to make him out
more clearly in the darkness. And, driven by this passion, I said without discomfort, Oscar Wilde, I
want to see you; let me light up my room.

Sure, he replied in a very sweet, soft voice.

And so I went into the next room to look for a lamp; but, by its weight, I realized it was empty; and
it was with a candle that I rejoined my uncle. Then, I saw Wilde s face: an old, white-haired, bearded
man. It was him!

A unspeakable pain strangled me. Although I had often, in fun, calculated what age Wilde would be
today, the only image which enchanted me, refusing the point to which the man had aged, was the
one which showed him young and triumphant. What! To have been a poet and an adolescent, noble
and rich, and to be nothing anymore but old and sad. By the Fates! Is it possible? Holding back tears
as they approached, I seized him. I kissed his cheek, placing my black hair next to his blonde hair,
and, for a long, long time, I cried.

The poor Wilde did not turn me away; instead, my head in his arms was softly ensconced; and I
pressed myself against him. He didn t say a thing, except that, one or two times, I heard him
murmur, Oh my God! Oh my God! and God has been so terrible! By a strange aberration of
the heart, the last word was pronounced in a strong English accent, while i was still sunk deep into
my atrocious suffering, and made me desire to laugh diabolically; and all the more, for a hot tear of
Wilde rolled on my wrist at that same second, which made me give this horrible projection:. The
tear of the captain! This word pacified me, detaching myself hypocritically from Wilde, I went to sit
back down to face him.

I began then to study him. I first examined his head, which was tan with deep wrinkles and almost
bald. My main thought was that Wilde looked more musical than shapely, without considering to
make a more profound definition of the word, more musical than shapely. I looked at him and his
outfit. He was handsome. In that armchair, he seemed like an elephant, his ass crushing the seat
where he was confined; before his enormous arms and legs, I tried with admiration to imagine the
divine considerations which must inhabit such limbs. I considered his shoe size; his feet were
relatively small, a bit flat, and they possessed the dreamy allure and cadence of the pachyderms, and,
built in such a way, made a mysterious poet. I adored him because he resembled a large beast; I
imagined that he must simply shit like a hippopotamus; and I admired this notion because of its
candor and aptness; because, without friends with a bad influence, he must have had to endure
everything from harmful climates and came back from either the Indies or Sumatra, or even further.
Very certainly, he would want to die in the sun, perhaps in Obock, and it is somewhere there I
poetically depicted him, in the madness of the African veldt and amidst the music of the flies,
making mountains of shit.

What substantiated this idea for me was that this new Wilde was silent, and I had met a postman,
equally mute, who would have been an imbecile, but who seemed to be saved, because he had spent
time in Saigon.

In the long run, I pinned him down better, seeing his heavy eyes, his few sick eyelashes, with pupils
which had become brown, although I cannot know, without lying, how to testify their true color,
eyes with a stare that never fixed on a single point but spread out in a large broadcloth.
Understanding him more, I couldn t prevent myself from considering: he was more musical than
shapely; with such an appearance, he could neither be a moral nor immoral being; I was astonished
that the world had not earlier come to the decision that it had before it a lost man.

This puffy figure was unhealthy; his wide, bloodless lips, his teeth rotten, scrofulous, repaired with
gold fillings; a large white and dun beard -- I noticed almost always this latter color, not being able to
bear the white-- masked his chin. I pretended that the hairs were silver when it wasn t, because there
was something burnt about them, that the tuft they made seemed to be dyed y the burning tint of
his skin. The tuft had grown indifferently, just as oriental ennui is wont to tarry on.

It wasn t until later that it became clear to me that my guest was constantly smiling, not with
European nervousness, but in an absolute way. Finally, I was interested in his clothes; I saw that he
was wearing a black suit, rather old, and I felt his indifference for hygiene. A radiant diamond, which
I couldn t help but covet, glistened from his left little finger, and Wilde gained by it a great prestige. I
had gone looking for a bottle of cherry brandy in the kitchen, and I had already poured several
glasses. We smoked excessively. I began to lose my filter and became noisy; it was then that I
allowed myself to pose this vulgar question: Has anyone ever recognized you?

Yes, a couple of times, especially in the beginning, in Italy. One day, in the train, a man across from
me looked at me so much that I thought I might have to unfold my newspaper to withstand it, in
order to escape his curiosity; for I was sure he knew me to be Sébastien Melmoth. -- Wilde
persistently called himself this -- And, more dreadfully, the man followed me when I got off the
train, -- I think it was at Padova-- sat across from me in the restaurant and, having recruited (I know
not by what means, because, like me, the man seemed to be a stranger) some companions, he had
the horrible courtesy of saying my poet-name aloud, pretending to be familiar with my body of
work. And everyone fixed me with their gazes to see if I would be troubled. I had no other choice
than to leave the city by night.

I even met men with deeper eyes than other men, and they all clearly said with their stares, I salute
you, Sébastien Melmoth!

I was greatly interested and added: You are alive, but everyone thinks you re dead; M. Davray, for
example, said he touched you and that you were dead.

I believe that I was dead, said the visitor with a natural atrocity, which made me fear for his sanity.

As for me, I always imagined you in the tomb between two thieves, like Christ!

I then asked for some details on a charm, attached to his watch-chain, which was none other, as he
told me, than the gold key of Marie Antoinette, which opened the secret door of the Petit Trianon.3
We were drinking more and more and, remarking that Wilde was getting remarkably relaxed, I got it
into my head to make him drunk, for now he burst out into great roars of laughter, and was folded
up in his armchair.

I said: Have you read the essay that André Gide, that moron, wrote about you? He didn t
understand that you were mocking him in that allegory that ended with, And I call myself your
disciple. The poor guy didn t get that it was him! And, later, when he met you again on the terrace
of a café, did you know the passage where that old miser implies that he gave you charity? What did
he give you? A Louis?

A hundred sous, my uncle forced out, with irresistible humor.

I pursued further have you completely given up on writing?

3
​A
secret door in Marie Antoinette s bedroom allowed her to escape when revolutionaries came to
arrest her.
 Oh no! I have finished writing my Memoires. My god, how funny. I had another volume of
poems that was almost finished, and I wrote four plays for Sarah Bernhardt! he exclaimed, laughing
loudly.
I love theatre, but I m never happy except when all my characters are seated and they can chat.

Listen to me, old man. I had become very familiar. I have a proposition which I think would be a
wise decision. You see, I publish a little literary review and you ve already been discussed,
wonderful, a literary review, because I want your posthumous works to be published, but, if you
prefer, I would be your impresario, and you could have a contract for me with lectures in music
halls. If talking would bore you, I will do you up in some exotic dance or pantomime with girls
instead.

Wilde became more and more amused. Then, suddenly, melancholically, he said, And Nelly?
(she s my mother.) I had a strange, visceral response to this question because, on many occasions, I
inquired about my mysterious birth that was without explanation; vaguely brought to light, I thought
that Oscar Wilde could perhaps be my father. I recounted all I knew about her; I added, too, that
Mrs. Wilde, who would die soon, had visited him in Switzerland. I mentioned Mr. Lloyd, my
father?-- , and what he said about Wilde: That is the flattest man I ve ever met. To my surprise,
Wilde, at this memory, looked chagrined. I asked about his son, Vivian, and my family, which I
thought would interest him, but I sensed that I wasn t holding his interest anymore.

He only interrupted me once during my long discourse when I overstated my hatred for the time in
Switzerland. Yes, he said, How could anyone like the Alps? To me, the Alps are just big black
and white photographs. When I m around high mountains, I feel erased; I m afraid of my sense of
self; my only desire it to go far away. When I went down to Italy, little by little, I regained possession
of myself; I rediscovered that I was a man.

As the conversation began to die down, he said, Tell me about yourself. So I gave him a portrait
of the accidents of my lifetime; I gave a thousand details about my childhood as a horrible child in
all of the high schools, colleges, and trade schools of Europe, my hazardous life in America;
anecdotes abounded; and Wilde laughed gaily and without ceasing, except to enjoy some
convulsions as my charming instincts surfaced. He continually said, Oh dear, oh dear!

The bottle of cherry brandy was empty, and the thug within me was born. I brought out three liters
of ordinary wine, the only drink left, but when I offered it to my guest, he, very flushed, raised his
hand as a gesture of refusal.

Come on, have a bloody drink! I said with my American boxer accent, which shocked Wilde a bit:
In the name of God! You ve lost your dignity!

Finally, he accepted and emptied his glass saying, All my life, I have never had this much to drink.
Shut up, you sober old man! I yelled, pouring him another glass. Crossing all boundaries, I started
asking questions like, You old bastard! Tell me where you came from; how did you find out where
I live? I yelled, Hurry up, hurry up and respond! You haven t finished your sham. Oh no! I m not
your father! And the insults became abominable belches: like, Ah! So there! You next-to-nothing
comedian, ugly face, scrape off the horse manure with a shovel, you re a public urinal filled with piss,
slug, old maid, obese cow!

I don't know whether Wilde enjoyed this enormous joke where the spirit had buckled up, with an
easy loop, when one is intoxicated, and which allows one to maintain, in the middle of all of these
apparent trivialities, all of one s nobility. That night, without doubt, I entered into a certain
self-indulgence, because, in such cases, the elegance that I described has no aim but as an intention,
something so light as to tempt always a jongleur, when, at the same time, it won all of the prizes of
simple vulgarity.

And always Wilde told me, laughing,, You are so funny! Loud Aristides, what is it that you ve
become? Which, suddenly, made me imagine, You speak, Charles! You said that, buffoon!

At a given moment, my visitor would dare to say, I am dry. And then I poured another glass.
With great effort, he then got up; but, quickly, with a push to his arm, I would flatten him – that s
the best way to say it – back in his armchair. Without resistance, he sat back down. It was 3:15 in the
morning. Forgetting to ask his opinion, I cry out, To, Montmartre! We must make a night of it!
Wilde didn t seem able to resist, his face was brimming with happiness, but then he said, weakly, I
can t, I can t

I m going to to demolish you and bring you into the bars, there I pretend to lose you, and I will
yell out, very loudly, Oscar Wilde! Have another whiskey. You would see how astonishing we
would be! And I would have proven to you that society has nothing against this beautiful organism.
And I say again, like Satan: Oh, aren t you the King of Life?

You are a terrible boy, said Wilde in English. My God, I want to, but I can t, in truth, I can t. I
beg you, don t test a tempted heart again. I am leaving you, Fabien, adieu.

I didn t oppose his departure, and, standing, he shook my hands, took his hat, which he d left on the
table, and moved toward the door. I walked him to the staircase and, a bit more lucid, I asked, Why
did you come here?
No reason, keep silence on all that you saw and heard... or else, say all you heard in six months.

At the door, he took my fingers, kissed me, and whispered again, You are a terrible boy.

I watched him moving off into the night and, since life, in that moment, forced me to laugh, I stuck
my tongue out at him from afar, and I made as if to give him a big kick. It wasn t raining anymore,
but the air was cold. I remembered that Wilde hadn t had any overcoat, and I thought that he was a
very poor man. A flood of feelings rushed against my heart; I was sad and filled with love; I looked
for consolation, I raised my eyes: the moon was too beautiful and swelled my pain. I thought now
that Wilde could have misinterpreted my words; that he could not understand that I could not have
been ​serious​, that perhaps I had hurt his feelings. And, like a madman, I ran after him, and at each
crossroad, I sought him with all the strength of my eyes and said, Sébastien! Sébastien! With all of
the power in my legs, I ran through the boulevards until I at last knew I had lost him.
 Wandering the streets, I slowly went home, and I never took my eyes off the sympathetic moon like
an ass.