allow me to introduce you to my friend Rene. M. Rene Teleny — M. Camille Des Grieux.’
I bowed, blushing. The pianist stretched forth his ungloved hand. In my fit of nervousness I had pulled off both my gloves, so that I now put my bare hand into his.
He had a perfect hand for a man, rather large than small, strong yet soft, and with long, tapering fingers, so that his grasp was firm and steady.
Who has not been sentient of the manifold feelings produced by the touch of a hand? Many persons seem to bear a temperature of their own about them. They are hot and feverish in midwinter, while others are cold and icy in the dog-days. Some hands are dry and parched, others continually moist, clammy, and slimy. There are fleshy, pulpy, muscular, or thin, skeletal and bony hands. The grasp of some is like that of an iron vise, others feel as limp as a bit of rag. There is the artificial product of our modern civilization, a deformity like a Chinese lady’s foot, always enclosed in a glove during the day, often poulticed at night, tended by a manicure; they are as white as snow, if not as chaste as ice. How that little useless hand would shrink from the touch of the gaunt, horny, clay-colored, begrimed workman’s hand, which hard, unremitting labor has changed into a kind of hoof. Some hands are coy, others paddle you indecently; the grip of some is hypocritical, and not what it pretends to be; there is the velvety, the unctuous, the priestly, the humbug’s hand; the open palm of the spendthrift, the usurer’s tight-fisted claw. There is, moreover, the magnetic hand, which seems to have a secret affinity for your own; its simple touch thrills your whole nervous system, and fills you with delight.
How can I express all that I felt from the contact of Telen^s hand? It set me on fire; and, strange to say, it soothed me at the same time. How much sweeter, softer, it was, than any woman’s kiss. I felt his grasp steal slowly over all my body, caressing my lips, my throat, my breast; my nerves quivered from head to foot with delight, then it sank downwards into my veins, and Priapus, reawakened, lifted up his head. I actually felt I was being taken possession of, and I was happy to belong to him.
I should have liked to have said something polite in acknowledgment of the pleasure he had given me by his playing, still, what unhackneyed phrase could have expressed all the admiration I felt for him?
‘But, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘I am afraid I am keeping you away from the music’
‘I, myself, was just going away,’ said I.
‘The concert bores you then, does it?’
‘No, on the contrary; but after having heard you play, I cannot listen to any more music tonight.’
He smiled and looked pleased.
‘In fact, Rene, you have outdone yourself this evening,’ said Briancourt. ‘I never heard you play like that before.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘No, unless it is that you had such a full theatre.’
‘Oh, no! it is simply because, while I was playing the gavotte, I felt that somebody was listening to me.’
‘Oh! somebody!’ echoed the young men, laughing.
‘Amongst a French public, especially that of a charity concert, do you really think that there are many persons who listen? I mean who listen intently with all their heart and soul. The young men are obliging the ladies, these are scrutinizing each other’s toilette; the fathers, who are bored, are either thinking of the rise and fall of the stocks, or else counting the number of gaslights, and reckoning how much the illumination will cost’
‘Still, among such a crowd there is surely more than one attentive listener,’ said Odillot, the lawyer.
‘Oh, yes! I dare say; as for instance the young lady who has been thrumming the piece you have just played, but there is hardly more than one — how can I express it? — well, more than one sympathetic listener.’
‘What do you mean by a sympathetic listener?’ asked Courtois, the stockbroker.
‘A person with whom a current seems to establish itself; someone who feels, while listening, exactly as I do while I am playing, who sees perhaps the same visions as I do — ‘
‘What! do you see visions when you play?’ asked one of the bystanders, astonished.
‘Not as a rule, but always when I have a sympathetic listener.’
‘And do you often have such a listener?’ said I, with a sharp pang of jealousy.
‘Often? Oh, no! seldom, very seldom, hardly ever in fact, and then — ‘
‘Then what?’
‘Never like the one of this evening.’
‘And when you have no listener?’ asked Courtois.
‘Then I play mechanically, and in a humdrum kind of way.’
‘Can you guess whom your listener was this evening?’ added Briancourt, smiling sardonically, and then with a leer at me.
‘One of the many beautiful ladies of course,’ sighed Odillot, ‘you are a lucky fellow.’
‘Yes,’ said another, ‘I wish I were your neighbor at that table d’hote, so you might pass me the dish after you have helped yourself.’
‘Was it some beautiful girl?’ said Courtois questioningly. Teleny looked deeply into my eyes, smiled faintly, and replied: ‘Perhaps.’
‘Do you think you will ever know your listener?’ enquired Briancourt.
Teleny again fixed his eyes on mine, and added faintly:
‘Perhaps.’
‘But what clue have you to lead to this discovery?’ asked Odillot.
‘His visions must coincide with mine.’
‘I know what my vision would be if I had any,’ said Odillot.
‘What would it be?’ enquired Courtois. ‘Two lily-white breasts with nipples like two pink rosebuds, and lower down, two moist lips like those pink shells which, opening with awakening lust, reveal a pulpy, luxurious world, only of a deep coralline hue, and then these two pouting lips must be surrounded by a slight golden or black down — ‘
‘Enough, enough, Odillot, my mouth waters at your vision, and my tongue longs to taste the flavor of those lips,’ said the stockbroker, his eyes gleaming like those of a satyr, and evidently in a state of priapism. ‘Is that not your vision, Teleny?’
The pianist smiled enigmatically:
‘Perhaps.’
‘As for me,’ said one of the young men who had not yet spoken, ‘a vision evoked by a Hungarian rhapsody would be either of vast plains, of bands of gipsies, or of men with round hats, wide trousers and short jackets, riding on fiery horses.’
‘Or of booted and laced soldiers dancing with black-eyed girls,’ added another.
I smiled, thinking how different my vision had been from these. Teleny, who was watching me, noticed the movement of my lips.
