Carmen (16 page)

But you’re the subject of my song.

She leaves, singing “My Old Husband” as she goes
.

It’s time…

But wait…

It’s time, my love.

No, no, we should await the dawn.

It’s late.

A love so timorous!

But soon!

You’ll get me killed, my love!

But soon!

And if my husband wakes

Alone?

Your husband is awake!

Now don’t rush off—where would you go?

You both belong here at this grave.

Run off, my dear! Away!

No, wait!

Where could you run, my handsome friend?

Lie down!

ALEKO
stabs him
.

Aleko!

Oh, I die…

Oh! Aleko, you’ve murdered him!

Just look, you’re covered in his blood!

Oh, how could you?!

It wasn’t much.

Now go drink in his love for you.

No, that’s enough! I’m not afraid!

I hate your bloody threats of death!

I curse the murder in your soul!

Then die yourself!

He strikes her
.

              I die in love…

Enchanted by a magic force

Within my foggy memories

These visions now have come to life

Of days of light, of days of grief.

And there, where on and on the scourge

And awful growl of war resound,

Where Russians drew the boundaries

Of Istanbul, and where our old

And double-headed eagle yet

Will crow the glories of our past—

I used to meet them on the steppe

On paths to long-abandoned camps,

The peaceful wagons Gypsies drove—

Those children humble freedom loves.

Amid unhurried throngs of them

I oft-times wandered through the wastes

Or shared with them a simple meal

And fell asleep before their fires,

And trekking slow I loved to hear

The joyous clamor of their songs,

And tenderly and oftentimes

Repeat fair Mariula’s name.

But yet you’ll know no happiness

For you are nature’s poorest sons!

And ’neath the tatters of your tents

You live out dreams of anguished pain,

Your hearths in all your wandering

Have not been spared calamity,

And fatal passions know no bound,

Nor any shield against the Fates.

—
Passages from
Alexander Pushkin’s
poem “The Gypsies” (1827), here translated by
Ian Dreiblatt. Mérimée
began to study Russian toward the end of 1847 and eventually translated a number of works from Russian, including poems and stories by
Pushkin
and fiction by
Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov
, and
Ivan Turgenev
. In 1852, he published a prose translation of “The Gypsies,” which shares many aspects with
Carmen,
as well other Gypsy narratives—for instance, the motif of a man from the outside who joins the Gypsy community, seduced and (usually) ultimately destroyed by a Gypsy woman
. Pushkin
and
Mérimée
never met, but they admired each other’s work, and
Mérimée
in particular championed the Russian author in France, writing that “
Pushkin’s
lyric poems are the most perfect thing I know since the Greeks.”

In a vast space left free between the crowd and the fire, a young girl was dancing.

Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or an angel, is what Gringoire, sceptical philosopher and ironical poet that he was, could not decide at the first moment, so fascinated was he by this dazzling vision.

She was not tall, though she seemed so, so boldly did her slender form dart about. She was swarthy of complexion, but one divined that, by day, her skin must possess that beautiful golden tone of the Andalusians and the Roman women. Her little foot, too, was Andalusian, for it was both pinched and at ease in its graceful shoe. She danced, she turned, she whirled rapidly about on an old Persian rug, spread negligently under her feet; and each time that her radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her great black eyes darted a flash of lightning at you.

All around her, all glances were riveted, all mouths open; and, in fact, when she danced thus, to the humming of the Basque tambourine, which her two pure, rounded arms raised above her head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffing out, her bare shoulders, her delicate
limbs, which her petticoat revealed at times, her black hair, her eyes of flame, she was a supernatural creature.

“In truth,” said Gringoire to himself, “she is a salamander, she is a nymph, she is a goddess, she is a bacchante of the Menelean Mount!”

At that moment, one of the salamander’s braids of hair became unfastened, and a piece of yellow copper which was attached to it, rolled to the ground.

“Hé, no!” said he, “she is a gypsy!”

All illusions had disappeared.

She began her dance once more; she took from the ground two swords, whose points she rested against her brow, and which she made to turn in one direction, while she turned in the other; it was a purely gypsy effect. But, disenchanted though Gringoire was, the whole effect of this picture was not without its charm and its magic; the bonfire illuminated, with a red flaring light, which trembled, all alive, over the circle of faces in the crowd, on the brow of the young girl, and at the background of the Place cast a pallid reflection, on one side upon the ancient, black, and wrinkled façade of the House of Pillars, on the other, upon the old stone gibbet.

Among the thousands of visages which that light tinged with scarlet, there was one which seemed, even more than all the others, absorbed in contemplation of the dancer. It was the face of a man, austere, calm, and sombre. This man, whose costume was concealed by the crowd which surrounded him, did not appear to be more than five and thirty years of age; nevertheless, he was bald; he had merely a few
tufts of thin, gray hair on his temples; his broad, high forehead had begun to be furrowed with wrinkles, but his deep-set eyes sparkled with extraordinary youthfulness, an ardent life, a profound passion. He kept them fixed incessantly on the gypsy, and, while the giddy young girl of sixteen danced and whirled, for the pleasure of all, his revery seemed to become more and more sombre. From time to time, a smile and a sigh met upon his lips, but the smile was more melancholy than the sigh.

The young girl, stopped at length, breathless, and the people applauded her lovingly.

“Djali!” said the gypsy.

Then Gringoire saw come up to her, a pretty little white goat, alert, wide-awake, glossy, with gilded horns, gilded hoofs, and gilded collar, which he had not hitherto perceived, and which had remained lying curled up on one corner of the carpet watching his mistress dance.

“Djali!” said the dancer, “it is your turn.”

And, seating herself, she gracefully presented her tambourine to the goat.

“Djali,” she continued, “what month is this?”

The goat lifted its fore foot, and struck one blow upon the tambourine. It was the first month in the year, in fact.

“Djali,” pursued the young girl, turning her tambourine round, “what day of the month is this?”

Djali raised his little gilt hoof, and struck six blows on the tambourine.

“Djali,” pursued the Egyptian, with still another movement of the tambourine, “what hour of the day is it?”

Djali struck seven blows. At that moment, the clock of the Pillar House rang out seven.

The people were amazed.

“There’s sorcery at the bottom of it,” said a sinister voice in the crowd. It was that of the bald man, who never removed his eyes from the gypsy.

She shuddered and turned round; but applause broke forth and drowned the morose exclamation.

It even effaced it so completely from her mind, that she continued to question her goat.

“Djali, what does Master Guichard Grand-Remy, captain of the pistoliers of the town do, at the procession of Candlemas?”

Djali reared himself on his hind legs, and began to bleat, marching along with so much dainty gravity, that the entire circle of spectators burst into a laugh at this parody of the interested devoutness of the captain of pistoliers.

“Djali,” resumed the young girl, emboldened by her growing success, “how preaches Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator to the king in the ecclesiastical court?”

The goat seated himself on his hind quarters, and began to bleat, waving his fore feet in so strange a manner, that, with the exception of the bad French, and worse Latin, Jacques Charmolue was there complete,—gesture, accent, and attitude.

And the crowd applauded louder than ever.

“Sacrilege! profanation!” resumed the voice of the bald man.

The gypsy turned round once more.

“Ah!” said she, “ ‘tis that villanous man!” Then, thrusting her under lip out beyond the upper, she made a little pout, which appeared to be familiar to her, executed a pirouette on her heel, and set about collecting in her tambourine the gifts of the multitude.

Big blanks, little blanks, targes and eagle lizards showered into it.

All at once, she passed in front of Gringoire. Gringoire put his hand so recklessly into his pocket that she halted. “The devil!” said the poet, finding at the bottom of his pocket the reality, that is, to say, a void. In the meantime, the pretty girl stood there, gazing at him with her big eyes, and holding out her tambourine to him and waiting…… It was the young gypsy who was singing.

Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It was indefinable and charming; something pure and sonorous, aerial, winged, so to speak. There were continual outbursts, melodies, unexpected cadences, then simple phrases strewn with aerial and hissing notes; then floods of scales which would have put a nightingale to rout, but in which harmony was always present; then soft modulations of octaves which rose and fell, like the bosom of the young singer. Her beautiful face followed, with singular mobility, all the caprices of her song, from the wildest inspiration to the chastest dignity. One would have pronounced her now a mad creature, now a queen.

The words which she sang were in a tongue unknown to Gringoire,
and which seemed to him to be unknown to herself, so little relation did the expression which she imparted to her song bear to the sense of the words. Thus, these four lines, in her mouth, were madly gay,—

And an instant afterwards, at the accents which she imparted to this stanza,—

Gringoire felt the tears start to his eyes. Nevertheless, her song breathed joy, most of all, and she seemed to sing like a bird, from serenity and heedlessness.

The gypsy’s song had disturbed Gringoire’s revery as the swan disturbs the water. He listened in a sort of rapture, and forgetfulness of everything. It was the first moment in the course of many hours when he did not feel that he suffered.

—From
Victor Hugo’
s
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(1831), taken from
Isabel F. Hapgood’
s 1888 English translation. Pierre Gringoire is a poor street poet, and Esmeralda a young Gypsy girl; when she shows compassion to the hunchback Quasimodo, she wins his undying love and loyalty. Later in life, relations between
Mérimée
and
Hugo
cooled, but when they were younger, they had been friendly: in fact, the Danish critic and scholar
Georg Brandes
recounts in
The Romantic School in France
that once
Mérimée
demonstrated to
Hugo
(and
Hugo’
s cook and entire family) the proper way to make
macaroni à l’italienne.
Hugo
, in turn, made an anagram out of
Mérimée’
s name, dubbing him “M. Première Prose.”