The Opium Pipe

By Théophile Gautier

Translated by Samuel Lees

for Paula

The other day, I discovered my friend Alphonse Karr reclining on a sofa with a lighted candle, though it was still early; in his hand he held a stem of cherry wood equipped with a porcelain bowl into which he dropped a brown paste that resembled sealing wax. The brown paste hissed and sizzled in the flute of the pipe. He inhaled the smoke through a small mouthpiece of yellow amber, which then diffused throughout the room with a delicate odour of oriental perfume.

Without a word, I took the device from his hands, and positioned myself at one end. After a couple of puffs, I experienced a kind of dizziness that was not without charm, somewhat resembling the sensation of being drunk for the first time.

Having work to do that day, and not being able to afford the luxury of intoxication, I hung the pipe from a nail and we went down into the garden to say hello to the dahlias and play for a bit with Schutz, a joyous animal who had no other purpose in life than to be a black patch on a carpet of green grass.

I went home, had dinner, and then went to the theatre and sat through some play I cannot remember, before coming home again. I went to bed, as it could not be put off any longer, to prepare, by this death of several hours, for the death from which we never wake.

The opium I had smoked, far from making me feel drowsy, as I had expected, plunged me into a state of nervous agitation, such as only strong coffee produces. I tossed and turned in my bed like a carp on the grill or a chicken brochette, with a constant pulling of the covers, to the great annoyance of my cat who was curled up in a ball on the corner of my eiderdown.

At long last, sleep sealed my eyes with its gold dust. My eyes became hot and heavy and I fell into a coma.

After an hour or two of complete darkness, I had a dream.

It went like this:

I found myself back at the home of my friend Alphonse Karr, as I had been that morning in real life. He was sitting on his sofa of yellow lampas, with his pipe and candle, only the sun no longer made the red, blue and green reflections of the stained glass flit across the walls like butterflies of a thousand colours.

I took the pipe from his hands, as I had done several hours ago, and began slowly to breathe the intoxicating smoke.

I was overwhelmed by a sudden languor that was full of bliss, and I felt the same dizziness I had felt while smoking the real pipe.

Until now, my dream had been confined within the narrow limits of the real world, reflecting the day’s events like a mirror.

I was ensconced in a pile of cushions. I tilted my head back listlessly to pursue the bluish spirals that dissolved into a hazy mist after swirling around in the air for several minutes.

My eyes naturally alighted upon the ceiling, which was black like ebony with golden arabesques.

Gazing at the ceiling with the rapturous attention that precedes visions, it appeared blue, but a cold blue, like the cloak of Night.

― So you decided to have your ceiling repainted in blue? I remarked casually to Karr, who seemed not to have heard me, for he remained silent and manifested no emotion. In fact, he had picked up another pipe and was expelling more smoke than a chimney in winter, or a steamship in any season.

― Not at all, my son, he replied, lifting his nose from the clouds. But it seems to me that you have painted your own stomach red with a bordeaux more or less Laffitte.

― Alas! you speak the truth. But the only thing I’ve had to drink was a measly glass of sugary water, in which all the world’s ants have gone to slake their thirst: a swimming school for insects.

― Apparently the ceiling was bored of being black; it has slipped into something blue. I cannot think of anything more capricious than ceilings. They are second only to women. It is a fantastical ceiling, that is all; there is nothing more commonplace.

That said, Karr plunged his nose back into the clouds with the satisfied expression of someone who has just given a clear and luminous explanation.

And yet somehow I was not entirely convinced. I found it difficult to believe in such fantastical ceilings, and I kept my eyes fixed on the one above my head with some apprehension.

It grew more and more blue like the sea at the horizon and the stars began to open their eyes with golden lashes. These lashes, of an extreme rarity, stretched into the room, filling it with threads of iridescent light.

Black lines cut across the azure surface. I soon realised that they were the beams of the upper floors of the house which had become transparent.

Despite the ease one has in dreams to accept the strangest things as natural, this was all beginning to seem a bit suspicious, and I thought that if my mate Esquiros the Magician were here, he would be able to provide me with a more satisfactory explanation than the one offered by my friend Alphonse Karr.

As if this thought had the power of conjuration, Esquiros appeared suddenly before us, like the black dog of Faust who emerges from behind the fireplace.

His face beamed with an air of triumph. Rubbing his hands together, he said:

― I can see as far as the antipodes and I have found the talking mandrake.

I was surprised by this apparition and I said to Karr:

― Oh Karr! can you believe that Esquiros, who was not here before, came in without opening the door?

― There is nothing simpler, replied Karr. One comes in through closed doors, it’s standard practice. Only ill-bred people open doors. You know well that it is a great insult to call someone a « Grand enfonceur de portes ouvertes.* »

I could not find any objection to make against such a reasonable argument, and I was convinced that indeed there was nothing strange or inexplicable about the sudden appearance of Esquiros.

He looked at me in a strange way, fixing upon me a pair of crazed eyes. They were fiery and round like shields heated in a furnace. His body dissolved and disappeared into the shadows, until there was nothing left of him but a pair of bright burning eyes.

Webs of fire and torrents of magnetic effluvia swirled around me, trapping me in their coils and steadily tightening around me. Sparkling threads reached my pores and implanted themselves into my skin like the hairs on one’s head. I was in a state of total somnambulism.

I saw little white flakes floating across the blue space of the ceiling like tufts of wool carried by the wind, or like a dove necklace stretching in the air.

I tried in vain to work out what they were, when a deep, curt voice with a strange accent whispered in my ear ― They are spirits!!! The scales fell from my eyes. The white vapours took a more definite shape, and I clearly perceived a long line of veiled figures who followed the molding of the ceiling from right to left, with a very pronounced upward movement, as if an imperious breath were lifting them up and served them as wings.

In the corner of the room, the form of a young girl sat on the edge of the ceiling, wrapped in a large muslin robe.

Her naked feet floated listlessly, one crossed over the other. They were charming, and so small and transparent that they put me in mind of the beautiful jasper feet that emerge pure and white from beneath the black marble dress of the antique Isis of the museum.

The other ghosts tapped her on the shoulder in passing, saying:

― We’re going into the stars, why don’t you come with us?

The spirit with the alabaster feet replied:

― No! I don’t want to go into the stars. I would like to live another six months.

The whole procession passed, and the spirit remained alone, balancing her pretty little feet, and tapping the wall with her pink heels, soft and pale like the heart of wild bellflower. Though her face was hidden behind a veil, I knew that she was young, adorable and charming, and my soul flew to her side with arms stretched out and wings open.

The spirit understood my distress by sympathy or intuition, and said in a voice as soft and crystalline as a harmonica:

― If you have the courage to kiss on the mouth the girl I once was, and whose body is sleeping in the black town, I will live another six months, and my second life will be devoted to you.

I got up, and asked myself whether I was the victim of some illusion, and if all this was just a dream.

It was the last glimmer from the lamp of reason extinguished by sleep.

I asked my friends what they thought of it all.

The imperturbable Karr claimed that the affair was common, that he had had several of this nature, and that I was very naive to be surprised over so little.

Esquiros explained everything in terms of magnetism.

― Right, I’m going, but I’m wearing slippers…

― That doesn’t matter, said Esquiros, I sense a cab at the door.

I went out and saw that there was indeed a cabriolet with two horses waiting. I climbed in.

There was no driver. ― The horses drove themselves. They were completely black, and galopped so furiously that their croups rose and fell like waves, sending out a rain of sparks behind them.

They took first the rue de La Tour-d’Auvergne, then the rue Bellefonds, followed by the rue La Fayette, and then some other roads whose names I do not know.

As the cab went along, everything around me assumed a strange shape. The houses looked mean, squatting on the edge of the road like old weavers, wooden fences, and streetlights that could be mistaken for gibbets. Then the houses disappeared altogether, and the cab rolled on into the open country.

We were moving across a dismal and dreary plain. The clouds hung low in the sky and were the colour of lead. A never-ending procession of flimsy trees ran by, in the opposite direction to the carriage, on either side of the path. It was like an army of broomsticks in retreat.

There was nothing as sinister as this grey expanse that the frail silhouettes of trees lined with black reticulations. ― Not a single star shone; not one of their gold points penetrated the pallid depths of the night.

At last, we arrived at a town, unknown to me. The houses, dimly visible in the shadows, were of a strange architecture, and seemed so small as to render them uninhabitable. The cab, though much larger than the road, did not slow down. The houses lined up on either side like terrified bystanders clearing out of the way.

After a couple of turns, I felt the carriage melt beneath me, and the horses vanished into thin air. I had arrived.

A reddish light filtered through the gaps in a bronze door. I opened it and found myself in a room paved with black and white marble beneath a stone vaulted ceiling. An antique lamp, placed on a pedestal of violet stone, illuminated with its pale light a reclining figure, which I took at first to be one of those statues that sleep, their hands clasped, with a greyhound at their feet, in gothic cathedrals. But I soon realised that it was a real woman.

She was bloodless and pale, of a similar tone to yellowed virgin wax. Her hands, as pale and white as sacramental bread, were crossed over her heart. Her eyes were closed, and their lashes extended to the middle of her cheeks. Everything about her seemed dead, except her mouth, which was as fresh as a pomegranate in flower, and sparkled with a rich purple life, vaguely smiling as if in a happy dream.

I leaned in towards her, pressed my mouth against hers and gave her the kiss that was to revive her.

Her lips, moist and warm, as if breath had only just abandoned them, throbbed under mine, and returned my kiss with an incredible passion and energy.

There is at this point a gap in my story. I do not know how I got back from the black town: probably riding a horse on a cloud or on the back of a gigantic bat. ― But I clearly remember that I found myself in the company of Karr in a house that was neither mine nor his, nor anyone I knew.

And yet all the interior details and everything about the layout were extremely familiar. I can see clearly the chimney in the style of Louis XVI, the folding screen decorated with foliage, the lamp with the green shade and the shelves full of books at each corner of the chimney.

I sat in a large chair, and Karr, his heels pressed against the mantlepiece, sat on his shoulders and almost on his head and listened to me with a resigned and pitiful air as I regaled him with the tale of my exploits, which I myself considered to have been a dream.

All of a sudden, the doorbell rang loudly and the servant announced that there was a lady who wished to speak with me.

― Bring the lady in, I replied, slightly affected and anticipating what was to happen.

A woman dressed in white, a black mantle covering her shoulders, came in with a light step and stood in the crepuscular light of the lamp.

By a very strange phenomenon, I saw three different faces pass across her features. One moment she resembled Malibran, the next M…, then she who likewise did not want to die, and whose last words were: « Give me a bouquet of violets. »

But these resemblances soon faded like a shadow on a mirror. Her features became fixed and condensed, and I recognised the dead girl whom I had kissed in the black town.

Her outfit was very simple, and she wore no other ornament than a gold ring in her dark brown hair, which fell down her velvety cheeks in ebony bundles.

A pair of small pink marks coloured her cheeks, and her eyes sparkled like globes of polished silver. She had the beauty of an antique cameo, and the blonde transparence of her flesh added to this resemblance.

She stood before me and asked me, a somewhat strange request, to tell her her name.

I replied, without a moment’s hesitation, that her name was Carlotta, which was true. She told me that she had been a singer, and that she had died so young that she knew nothing of the pleasures of life, that she had an insatiable thirst for life and love and that before sinking forever into motionless eternity, she wanted to enjoy the beauty of the world, to dive into the ocean of earthly pleasures and intoxicate herself through sensuality.

And, saying all this with a poetry and eloquence of expression that I have not the power to render, she tied her arms in a scarf around my neck, running her slender fingers through the locks of my hair.

She spoke in verses of breathtaking beauty, that could not be matched by any living poet, and when her verses were no longer enough to contain her thoughts, she gave them wings of music, strings of notes more pure than the most perfect pearls, sustained and tremulous, sounds that transcended all human limits, the most tender thing of which the soul and spirit can dream, the most adorable, the most loving, the most ardent and the most ineffable.

― To live six months, another six months, was the common refrain of her songs.

I knew precisely what she was going to say, before the thought had crossed her mind or made its way from her heart to her lips, and I finished off the verses or songs that she began. I was just as transparent to her, and she read me effortlessly.

I do not know where these ecstasies, which were no longer moderated by the presence of Karr, would have ended, when suddenly I felt something furry and rough passing over my face. I opened my eyes and beheld my cat rubbing his moustache against mine in the way of good morning, as the wavering light of dawn filtered through the curtains.

And thus ends my opium dream, which left no other trace but a vague melancholy, the usual sequel to these kinds of hallucinations.

*

Notes

enfonceur de portes ouvertes ― someone who boasts about doing something that is easy as if it were difficult, literally someone who pushes-open open doors