Against the Grain | Page 7

assigned the task of keeping the house in order and of
procuring provisions, the woman that of preparing the food. He
surrendered the second story to them, forced them to wear heavy felt
coverings over their shoes, put sound mufflers along the well-oiled
doors and covered their floor with heavy rugs so that he would never
hear their footsteps overhead.
He devised an elaborate signal code of bells whereby his wants were
made known. He pointed out the exact spot on his bureau where they
were to place the account book each month while he slept. In short,
matters were arranged in such wise that he would not be obliged to see
or to converse with them very often.
Nevertheless, since the woman had occasion to walk past the house so
as to reach the woodshed, he wished to make sure that her shadow, as
she passed his windows, would not offend him. He had designed for
her a costume of Flemish silk with a white bonnet and large, black,
lowered hood, such as is still worn by the nuns of Ghent. The shadow
of this headdress, in the twilight, gave him the sensation of being in a
cloister, brought back memories of silent, holy villages, dead quarters
enclosed and buried in some quiet corner of a bustling town.
The hours of eating were also regulated. His instructions in this regard
were short and explicit, for the weakened state of his stomach no longer
permitted him to absorb heavy or varied foods.
In winter, at five o'clock in the afternoon, when the day was drawing to
a close, he breakfasted on two boiled eggs, toast and tea. At eleven
o'clock he dined. During the night he drank coffee, and sometimes tea
and wine, and at five o'clock in the morning, before retiring, he supped

again lightly.
His meals, which were planned and ordered once for all at the
beginning of each season, were served him on a table in the middle of a
small room separated from his study by a padded corridor, hermetically
sealed so as to permit neither sound nor odor to filter into either of the
two rooms it joined.
With its vaulted ceiling fitted with beams in a half circle, its bulkheads
and floor of pine, and the little window in the wainscoting that looked
like a porthole, the dining room resembled the cabin of a ship.
Like those Japanese boxes which fit into each other, this room was
inserted in a larger apartment--the real dining room constructed by the
architect.
It was pierced by two windows. One of them was invisible, hidden by a
partition which could, however, be lowered by a spring so as to permit
fresh air to circulate around this pinewood box and to penetrate into it.
The other was visible, placed directly opposite the porthole built in the
wainscoting, but it was blocked up. For a long aquarium occupied the
entire space between the porthole and the genuine window placed in the
outer wall. Thus the light, in order to brighten the room, traversed the
window, whose panes had been replaced by a plate glass, the water, and,
lastly, the window of the porthole.
In autumn, at sunset, when the steam rose from the samovar on the
table, the water of the aquarium, wan and glassy all during the morning,
reddened like blazing gleams of embers and lapped restlessly against
the light-colored wood.
Sometimes, when it chanced that Des Esseintes was awake in the
afternoon, he operated the stops of the pipes and conduits which
emptied the aquarium, replacing it with pure water. Into this, he poured
drops of colored liquids that made it green or brackish, opaline or
silvery--tones similar to those of rivers which reflect the color of the
sky, the intensity of the sun, the menace of rain--which reflect, in a
word, the state of the season and atmosphere.

When he did this, he imagined himself on a brig, between decks, and
curiously he contemplated the marvelous, mechanical fish, wound like
clocks, which passed before the porthole or clung to the artificial
sea-weed. While he inhaled the odor of tar, introduced into the room
shortly before his arrival, he examined colored engravings, hung on the
walls, which represented, just as at Lloyd's office and the steamship
agencies, steamers bound for Valparaiso and La Platte, and looked at
framed pictures on which were inscribed the itineraries of the Royal
Mail Steam Packet, the Lopez and the Valery Companies, the freight
and port calls of the Atlantic mail boats.
If he tired of consulting these guides, he could rest his eyes by gazing
at the chronometers and sea compasses, the sextants, field glasses and
cards strewn on a table on which stood a single volume, bound in
sealskin. The book was "The