by HENRI DAMONTI
For some years neither Master Duplessis’ work nor his home life had brought him any satisfaction. Accordingly, he was a notary ripe for any extravagance. But the extravagances known as mistresses, gambling, speculation, and polities hardly tempted him at all.
Helplessly and sadly, his wife watched him waste away. His daughter Martine, who was twelve, understood nothing, and occupied herself actively with a butterfly collection.
One day, in the local paper, under the heading “Miscellaneous,” Master Duplessis read the following announcement:
“l GUARANTEE UNUSUAL DIVERSIONS—NO ENTRANCE FEE—ONE TRIAL WILL CONVINCE YOU—APPLY NOW—BECOME A MEMBER OF OUR SOCIETY—DISCRETION ASSURED—ADDRESS box 322628.”
The notary was convinced that it must be something to do with a group of philatelists, or else, more probably, with a gang of degenerates. A pleasure-lover’s club. In that case his convictions would forbid him, he thought, to take any action in the matter. Three days later, while he was studying a donation with charges, the telephone rang.
“Master Duplessis?”
“Yes.”
“Your application has been accepted. We have just one place vacant. Your appointment is for next Saturday at 8:30, at 18, rue de la Manufacture, second floor. In case of any indiscretion on your part, the appointment will be legally canceled, costs of expenses to be paid by you.”
“Who is speaking?”
“Hello—Who is calling?”
The receiver clicked. The appointment had been made, but the voice was not unknown. To whom, then, did that voice belong? He did not speak about it to anyone.
One evening, it was a Thursday, while buying a pack of Gauloises, the notary suddenly recognized the voice. It belonged to Gilles, the son of the widow who kept the tobacco shop. Gilles was finishing his law course.
“What am I getting myself into? A hoax perpetrated by some students, who will make a laughingstock of me?”
All the same, his imagination leaped, he ate with a better appetite; in short, he was beginning to enjoy himself. On Saturday evening he left the house, under the pretext of discussing a brief with an attorney.
“Can’t he come to see you, this attorney?” his wife asked.
“He has a slight fever.”
The attorney really did have the grippe, and Master Duplessis was sure he would not take it into his head to telephone after dinner. By way of playing safe, however, he took his phone off the hook before leaving.
It was cold when the notary turned into the rue de la Manufacture. Before him, among the few passers-by, he recognized Dr. Labroque. Dr. Labroque divided his patients into three categories. To begin with, the sinners. According to this physician, the sinners were sick because they had disobeyed the Divine Will, by committing adultery and robbing their neighbors. The second category was that of the malingerers. A category similar to the first, but still more vicious and crafty—sinners in the rough. The real invalids were those who had ptosis and fallen stomachs, like himself. For ptotic patients he had a fatherly affection, never asking them for a centime in fees, only too happy to lavish his knowledge upon them.
In fact, Dr. Labroque was an excellent physician, at once suspicious and sympathetic. A bachelor, he had never met the ptotic woman of his dreams.
Suddenly Dr. Labroque turned.
“Ah, Duplessis! Good evening. Taking a walk?”
“Me?”
“I’ll bet you have an appointment ...”
“What makes you think that?”
“You have that look about you. Since we’re both going to 18, rue de la Manufacture, let’s walk together.”
Master Duplessis did not say a word. Who could have believed that Dr. Labroque, so fierce, so pious, was an accomplice in villainy?
On the second floor of number 18, Dr. Labroque tapped three times lightly on a door. After a silence, the door opened by itself upon a dimly lit room where five or six people sat around a table. The notary first recognized Gilles, the one who had telephoned him; then his own part-time housekeeper, Madame Renard. He also saw a girl in her twenties, almost pretty.
Madame Renard stood up and said, “Master Duplessis, our hobby club has voted unanimously to admit you as a new member. Be kind enough to take your place. And now let us pass to the business of the evening.”
Never had a housekeeper spoken to him in that tone. The hobby club, it seemed, furnished each of its members with a second life which he could lead simultaneously with his own. But it was a life in the past. It was a first-rate hobby; and who could say, thought Master Duplessis, that other similar hobby clubs had not existed throughout the world always?
Thus Madame Renard, the president, in her second life was maid of honor to Eugénie de Montijo, Empress of France. Dr. Labroque, sticking to his last, was a physician in Rome under Caligula, and trembled every day for his life. The strange young woman was about to marry a musician, and in her second life her name was Constance Weber.
It was explained to the notary that at the moment he had a choice between two vacant posts. That of a scribe attached to a temple of Rameses II, or that of a notary in Florence toward the middle of the fifteenth century. Secretly fascinated, Master Duplessis did not hesitate; he chose to be the Florentine notary.
“But how can I be a notary now and a notary in the fifteenth century?”
“It happens automatically,” said Madame Renard.
“Anyhow, you’re about to try it out,” added Dr. Labroque. “So drink this unimportant little liqueur.”
On the instant the notary saw himself become Messer Giovanni Dorlano, a notary close to the palace of the Medicis. Giovanni was arguing with his young wife about the necessary betrothal of Giovanna, who was sixteen and the issue of a previous marriage.
Master Duplessis stared with bewilderment at his new bedroom, decorated with chased coffers and magenta velvet, and his Florentine wife, young, graceful—so much younger than his spouse in ordinary life. . . .
“You have no choice, Messer Giovanni. She must be married.”
“But to whom?”
“To whom? How dreamy and absent-minded you are nowadays. . . . The abbé remarked on it to me again today.”
“You seem to be seeing a lot of that abbé.”
Master Duplessis was surprised by this remark. Without realizing it, he had ceased to be a notary of the atomic age, in order to become jealous of a little abbé and madly in love with a young woman with green eyes.
“He was with me last night at the fireworks, since my husband had other things to do. ...”
“But you know very well that I’m looking over some property deeds for the Prince. ...”
“Why don’t you marry the Prince?”
“Don’t raise your voice, I beg you,”
Just as the notary was about to become really angry he found himself again at 18, rue de la Manufacture, facing his housekeeper, Madame Renard.
“Well, how do you like Florence?”
“There’s nothing more beautiful.”
“Then it’s perfect.”
“Do I pay now?”
“Each member pays at the end of the entertainment. We meet every month to settle certain difficulties. Don’t let me forget. Your entertainment will last for one month.”
Master Duplessis returned dreamily to his domicile. His wife was not yet in bed. He said in a loud voice, “I believe you’re right. She must be married.”
“Who?”
“What do you mean, who? The girl.”
“Martine? She’s twelve years old. I was absolutely right, you’re crazy.”
“Excuse me. I was thinking of a problem given me by a client.”
In truth, already he was thinking of nothing but living in Florence. Soon he discovered that he could live in Florence and at the same time carry on his work as before. In Florence he got up early, rattled off a little mass as quickly as possible, and served himself a good slice of roast pig, which he washed down with a wine from his own vineyard. Then he thoroughly scolded his four clerks who were already at work, and went to take the air, as he did every morning. On his return, his wife Maria welcomed him; attentions were heaped upon him, he was happy. Moreover, Messer Dorlano was a member of the Prince’s secret council, and his opinions upon all that concerned the properties and the economic life of Florence were often more weightily considered than those of the rich bankers of the city or of the Prince’s French astrologer.
Messer Dorlano let the days pass, and occupied himself less and less with Master Duplessis’ work. Master Duplessis was asked to become a candidate in the municipal elections. He refused. The same day, by chance, he met Dr. Labroque again; he found the physician pale and weary.
“I should like to talk to you, Duplessis, about what has happened to me. It’s terrible.”
“Are you sick?”
“It’s worse. . . . You know that—”
Dr. Labroque interrupted himself, casting a glance to the right, wiped his forehead, and continued: “You know that I also live in Rome. ...”
“Yes, I know.”
“Three days ago I was thrown into prison.”
“You?”
“I’m chained in the most horrible prison in Rome. I’m about to croak of hunger and thirst. I’m hungry, Duplessis, I’m hungry—”
“But see here, Doctor, don’t shout. Go home and have something to eat. . . .”
“I’d be hungry just the same. And the chains hurt me. Good-bye. I must leave you—an emergency. It’s a malingerer, but I’m going to see him anyhow. . . .”
Then the physician seized Master Duplessis by the sleeve and whispered, “Caligula is mad . . . raving mad. . . . Save me, Duplessis. . . . Get me out of prison. . . . I’ve been tortured. Down through the centuries, there’s no problem more important than that of torture, aside from that of ptosis.”
This meeting dismayed the notary, coming just on the day when Giovanna was promised in marriage and when the Prince, always benevolent, had given him an extraordinary ring and some aromatics from Smyrna. He congratulated himself on having chosen a city as delightful and as calm as Florence in the time of the Medicis. Unfortunately there was only a week left of his diversion, and Maria was more beautiful than ever.
The following day, while his present-day wife was announcing that her father, Paul de Rédy, the president of the corporation of barristers, was coming to dinner Saturday night, which was tomorrow, Maria, pressing herself against him frantically, told him that pilgrims from Pisa had brought the plague; it’s true I assure you, I heard it from the wife of Pietro the one-eyed, a child has already died of it.
What did he care about dinner Saturday night with his father-in-law, while the plague threatened Florence? . . . Fifteen years earlier, Messer Dorlano had done as all the other merchants of Florence had done. He had ridden horseback to his summer residence well outside the city, taking with him his wife, his child, and a casket containing his silver and his most beautiful jewels. One month later he had returned to his hearth, happy to have lost nothing in the disaster but a few cousins and two old domestics who were useless anyway.
“Maria, have my horse saddled. You’ll join me tomorrow with Giovanna.”
“I’ll go give the order. But I forgot to tell you that the abbé wants to speak to you urgently.”
‘“What does he want of me?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid.”
“I never liked that abbé.”
A moment later Messer Dorlano knew why. Without preliminaries, in a low voice, the abbé informed him that the glorious Prince now governing Florence had succeeded in foiling a conspiracy against his life, that the principal malefactors had been unmasked and arrested, but you, Messer Dorlano . ..
“What have I to do with this conspiracy? Leave me in peace. The plague is enough. Good evening, abbé.”
“Messer Dorlano, the Prince is persuaded that you are the instigator of the conspiracy.”
The notary was stunned by this news. Placed as he was, he knew very well that the Prince invented at least one conspiracy a year, hanged a few merchants taken at random, and since the poor wretches had confessed previously under torture, the Prince’s spirit was quickly appeased.
“If I flee the plague for my villa, that will confirm the Prince’s suspicions,” he thought; “and if I stay here, I won’t escape the plague. . . .”
Master Duplessis left his office for the local library. “I must find a history of Florence and the Medicis; perhaps there will be something about me in it. ...”
But on the doorsill of the library an immense weariness overtook him, and he felt himself forgetting why he had come.
“If I haven’t conspired, they can’t do anything to me. I’ve always been loyal to the Prince.” The open air made him feel a little better. Wanting to confide in someone, he went to see Dr. Labroque.
“But my dear Labroque, you look twenty years younger.”
“Duplessis, I’m the happiest man in the world. The monster, the abominable tyrant, Caligula, has just been killed. Embrace me, Duplessis, I live again. And now, I’ve found a place as ship’s doctor aboard a galley that sails this evening. It’ll be a cruise; and for ptosis, a sea voyage . . . Come with me, Duplessis. I’ll tell Quintus Marcus you’re a friend of mine. . . . But what am I saying? How could you know my friend Quintus Marcus?”
That evening Master Duplessis found his housekeeper helping his wife prepare dinner.
“Madame Renard, something terrible has happened. ... I’ll talk fast, my wife might hear us—I’m implicated in a conspiracy in Florence. ...”
“Ah?”
“I know the Prince is looking for me—”
“Ah, yes?”
“What can I do?”
“I don’t know, Master. There’s nothing to do. You chose to live in Florence. There are those who live, there are those who die. Let me be, your wife is coming back.”
Accordingly, he decided to see the Prince, and put off going to the country until tomorrow. He found the Prince in the chapel of his half-deserted palace. At that instant, Master Duplessis was saying to his father-in-law, “Won’t you have some more of this fish? It seems perfect to me.”
The Prince, on his knees, turned toward the notary. “Notary, I’ll have you hung from a hook.”
“Prince, I beseech you to listen to me. I’m innocent.”
“One can be innocent, and be hung from a hook.”
“I’ve never betrayed you. ...”
“Come now . . . Leave me, notary. I have a fever, I am coughing. Captain Rogni is looking for you. He has an order to kill you. Yesterday I gave him a gold-hilted dagger. He wants to try it out on you. Afterward he’ll hook you up. Leave me.”
The notary plunged into an interminable discussion with his father-in-law on the Berlin problem, decolonization, and the future of Europe. He took advantage of it to wander through the deserted streets of Florence. In the afternoon he had sent off Maria and his daughter, and had asked a friend, the banker Grassi, to look after them. Now Messer Dorlano, with dry mouth and heavy head, could barely hold up his torch.
“No one will come looking for me in the plague of Florence, and tomorrow the Prince will have forgotten his delirium.”
Suddenly, then, he remembered a meeting he had had three months ago with the Prince’s nephew, Duke Orlando. The Duke had really come to ask him to become a member of a secret society. He had given an evasive reply.
“Well, are you dreaming? I’ve just checked you, and I warn you, your queen is in danger.”
Master Duplessis hardly heard the remarks of his father-in-law as they played chess. At that moment he was entering his house in Florence with a beating heart, convinced that he had had other interviews with Duke Orlando, and that the conspiracy was not an invention of the Prince.
“I, who had everything to be the happiest notary in Florence, the prettiest wife, the best wine, one of the most enviable fortunes, why should I have got myself mixed up with princes, prisons, and conspiracy?”
“My dear boy . . . You’ve just lost your turn. You’re not yourself. What does a notary think about while playing chess?
Just imagine, Amédée, I saw a strange advertisement in the paper . . . they promise unusual diversions. I have a good notion to answer it. . . .”
“I don’t advise you to.”
“Ah, if we listened to the notaries. ... In fact, I’ve already answered it. . ..”
Then Messer Dorlano shut himself up in his room. The domestics had fled, after making fires in all the fireplaces in order to frighten away the demon of the pestilence. The notary thought, “I’ll leave in the morning. Ill go to France. I know a captain in Genoa, who . . .”
This decision gave him a little courage. About eleven o’clock at night, Master Duplessis remembered that tomorrow night at this time his month’s diversion would be up. In order to avoid any nasty surprises, he decided to stay in his room, firmly resolved not to go back to Florence again. In spite of all his efforts, he felt himself once more hurled into the skin of Messer Dorlano, counting his emeralds, shivering, his head wrapped for some unknown reason in a warm towel. Unable to sleep, he fell to praying.
In the morning Madame Duplessis found her husband feverish. She called Dr. Labroque.
“Doctor—I have to talk quietly. At the moment I am shut up in a house in Florence where the pestilence is raging. The Prince is looking for me. What shall I do?”
“But nothing at all, my dear fellow. You’ll just have to wait. To begin with, you haven’t got the pestilence, just a good grippe. A little penicillin, and tomorrow you’ll be on your feet.”
“You don’t understand. I tell you they want to kill me. .. .”
* * * *
“Why did you chose Florence? I know a carpenter who spent two months as scribe to a Pharaoh. He came back very pleased. Try to perspire, and talk a little less.”
Messer Dorlano buried himself under the covers. He distinctly heard all the bells of Florence calling God and all the saints to the aid of the city of the Medicis. Then suddenly the door opened. “I’m lost,” thought the notary, “here is my assassin. Virgin Mary protect me. O sweet saints of Paradise have pity on Messer Giovanni Dorlano, Maria how beautiful you were and how I loved you. . . .”
“Messer Dorlano, Messer Dorlano—”
“Who calls me?” asked the notary, hidden in his eiderdown.
“It’s I, the abbé. The Prince is dead.’”
“What?”
“You heard me. The Prince is dead.”
“It’s a trap. Behind me, Satan.”
It was no trap. The Prince had died, not of the plague, but of the golden dagger of Captain Rogni.
At dawn the happy notary left for the country. He had been saved from the plague and the Prince. At that moment in the twentieth century, his wife was handing him a steaming bowl of coffee. Decidedly, he felt better.
“I must be sure,” Master Duplessis told himself, “to choose a less troubled era for my next entertainment. Why not be a friend of Cardinal Richelieu, or the Caliph Haroun El Rashid himself? ... I must speak to Madame Renard about it. Even if it costs more . ..”
The occasion did not arise, for a troop of brigands was lying in wait, a league outside Florence, for the unfortunate merchants who were fleeing the city. At the moment when he was enjoying his coffee and reading the death notices in the local paper, the tallest of the brigands, a redhead with a terrible reputation, stuck a knife in his throat. The notary had neither time to cry out, nor to return to the present.
The notary’s disappearance made a sensation; but no more so than the dozens and dozens of persons who disappear every day here and there. People suppose they have gone to Patagonia, or holed up in a distant convent, while in reality, as members of a hobby club, they have been impaled in the Ming dynasty or riddled at Waterloo.
This incomprehensible disappearance did not prevent the hobby club, presided over by Madame Renard, from meeting again on the following Saturday and welcoming Master Duplessis’ father-in-law as a new member. The president of the corporation of barristers, Paul de Rédy, chose to become Tamerlain.
Who would have dreamed that so honorable a man could have such tastes?