THE PEACOCK FEATHERS

There was a white house with enormous windows always open and staring at the sea over the heads of the palm trees. She had been born in a place like that.

The white path sprouted out of the heart of the house and led downhill to the sea. It was edged with bristly cactus, long-lingered, writhing, thick and furry, unmoved by the seabreeze. Over the ageless cactus the bamboo shoots trembled close together, perpetually wind-shirred.

There was a lady in the white house who had collected birds from all parts of the world, birds of changeful plumage, vitreous cries and velvety manners who paced the thin alleys during the day and were very still at night. Every night the sound of the sea was covered by that of music.

That night the sea was almost asleep, and the birds and the breeze were silent. A woman’s fluted voice slid out into the garden, down the path in a circle, trilling into space. The white house was full of people who were gathered near the windows to breathe an air which was bristling with the current of close-set tropical stars.

The women sighed in their very tight silk dresses as the a voice of the singer brushed their breasts. The men were bent a little forward with attentiveness.

The husband of the singer stood by the enormous open door, one foot on the gravel of the path. He alone did not look at the singer. Out of the darkness of the garden there came a peacock who waddled slowly into the long column of light, with his fan tail open.

He paced up to the open door thoughtfully. The husband looked at him; the peacock paced up towards the voice and listened. He never moved from there until the singing died down. Only when the clapping carne, he closed his fan tail and went back into the darkness.

The next day the peacock was dead.

The lady of the house had the peacock’s feathers brought to her and with a note she had them delivered to the singer.

The singer received them with a cry: “Oh, they bring bad luck, I know they do! Yet they are too beautiful to throw away. And besides,” she said to her husband, “I think it was quite touching last night how that peacock listened to my singing.”

And she wrote the lady a note of thanks.

The peacock feathers were placed in a flower vase, against the orange walls of her room.

Her husband did not notice them. He was trying not to no­tice anything about her now. Once he had loved her for her voice and had walked into a concert hail with the same still ensorcellment of the peacock. He had gone to the artist room where she was receiving profuse tribute from a crowd. He had asked her to came out with him alone to a quiet place where they might talk of music. During his travels he had unearthed some very old Italian songs which were quite unknown. She laughed and said: “But there’s a big supper being given for me tonight by a group of friends. Why don’t you join us?’’

He had gone away with the same slow pace of the peacock when he had heard the applause. They met again in a place in Italy when she was singing and he had come up to her alter the song and told her that he loved her.

Now they had been married many years and he never listened when she was singing for alter each time there were many people around her and she loved all they said to her and believed them. She sang to them, and for them, for the things they said when they crowded around her and drank to her triumph.

That day, when the peacock feathers were only in the flower vase a few hours, he sat down and wrote her a farewell note and walked down into dark gardens and into silence.

She looked at the feathers and s aid: “They are the cause my misfortune.”

But she went on with her singing. In Egypt she met a young musician and she sang his compositions so that he would love her. He was at the beginning of his career. She did not let him work any longer but demanded all his time for herself, and he soon ceased composing, and merely followed her wherever her concert tours took her. She was tired of his adoration and began to sing the songs of other young composers. Then, at a very big concert, in front of everybody, he killed himself while she was singing, and ruined her triumph.

It is the fault of the peacock feathers, she thought.

She would have thrown them away but for the fact that a poet had said to her: “You can well afford to defy destiny because you are beautiful and talented.” And so she dared the peacock feathers to do her harm.

She wrote her memoirs, as she was sure she would be admired for them. She had known so many years of brilliant living and had always been surrounded by celebrities. In her memoirs she tried to make herself sensitive and tender-hearted. She wrote mincingly and studied her effects carefully. Yet when the memoirs were read they revealed calculatedness, and there were many people who satirized her.

As she had written them with a pen made out of one of the peacock feathers she thought: It is the fault of the peacock feathers.

Once, in a Hindu home, she was offered a long pipe. The smoking of it gave her marvelous dreams. She saw ships of sapphire sailing on seas of coral, and she at the prow singing. She felt herself raised on a light cloud of cotton into a sphere where her voice flowed like liquid light. Circles of strange personages listened to her with astonishment. Then she descended into dark caves where warmth and perfumes dissolved her and she was loved by resplendent men whose love had a thousand-and-one ways of penetrating her. But when she ceased smoking she was empty of all energy and looked haggard. Her voice altered too and she last her power over her audience who once listened to her with the same rapt fixity of the peacock. In spite of that she could not stop smoking, because of the lulling effect on her, and she said it is the fault of the peacock feathers.

Now her life was destroyed but she kept the feathers with more care than ever so as to be able to say to those who observed her ruin: It was the fault of the peacock feathers.

 

 ANAÏS NIN