Excerpted from The Debutante and Other Stories by Leonora Carrington to coincide with the launch of Tali Lennox's painting 'Peter & the Wolf', which forms a detachable sleeve commissioned by Sendb00ks.
The governess went into the big drawing room. She lowered her weak, colourless eyes under the gaze of her mistress who was working at her embroidery, sticking the cloth as if she wanted to hurt it.
“You may sit down,” she said. “I want to talk to you for a few minutes, Mademoiselle Bleuserbes.”
The governess sat down in a tall chair, embroidered with gazelles and birds.
“You have now been in my service for three years. You are an educated and intelligent woman, you are honest, and you control your emotions. You mustn’t think that these qualities have escaped my notice. On the contrary, I am very observant, even if I don’t interfere with your work.”
She gave the governess a cold look.
“But … I don’t suppose you realise that I’m not satisfied with the effect all your efforts have had on my daughter.”
“Madam,” said the governess in a voice as colourless as her eyes, “your daughter is a very difficult child.”
“I wouldn’t be paying you so much for teaching her if she wasn’t difficult,” the lady said drily.
The governess blushed.
“Besides, a little girl of thirteen can’t possibly make such an enormous amount of work. Now, I want to know certain things, and I insist on receiving precise answers.”
The governess’s lips turned blue.
“Yes, Madam,” she said in a very low voice.
“I gave my daughter a doll a week ago. Was she pleased?”
A heavy silence reigned for some moments.
“No, madam.”
The lady looked at her embroidery with stony eyes.
“All right, what did she say. Tell me please her words exactly.”
“Your daughter, Madam, said, ‘Isn’t it enough that the world is full of ugly human beings without making copies of them?’ Then she took the doll by the legs and broke her head against a rock.”
“Tell me, Mademoiselle Bleuserbes, does this conduct seem natural to you in a little girl of good family?”
“No, Madam.”
“And you’re responsible for this little girl and for her conduct. I shall give you a few more months to prove that you can make a normal little girl of her. Otherwise…”
Mademoiselle Bleuserbes silently clenched her hands on her scrawny chest.
“Where is my daughter at the moment?”
“She is in the garden, Madam.”
“And what is she doing in the garden?”
“She is looking for something.”
“Please be good enough to tell my daughter that I want to see her immediately.”
The governess hastened from the room. Soon after she returned with her charge: a girl very tall for her age.
“You may go, Mademoiselle,” the mother said. “Come here, Jemima.”
As the girl came forward, her mother could see her eyes sparkling through her hair.
“Push back the hair from your face and look at yourself in the mirror.”
Jemima shrugged her shoulders and looked at herself in the mirror, without great interest.
“Whom do you see in the mirror?”
“Myself.”
“All right, tell me if you think you’re beautiful.”
“More than most people.”
“Right, you are quite good looking, and you could become a very beautiful woman. But if you continue to behave in this ridiculous way . . .”
They looked at each other without speaking. The expression on the mother’s face was very cold.
“Why do you want to be different from other little girls your age?”
Jemima suppressed a smile. “I don’t understand, Mother.”
“You understand me very well, Jemima. Why do you want to hurt your mother who loves you like her own flesh?”
Jemima closed her mouth into a cold, hard line.
“Your mother who does everything for you, and to whom you owe eternal gratitude. Your mother whom you’ll never ever replace, your mother who only wants the best for you.”
The girl spat on the beautiful carpet and disappeared so quickly that she was gone by the time her mother realized what she had done. She was stunned and put her hands to her forehead.
“Ferdinand,” the mother murmured, “what did you do to me when you gave me that she-devil?”
Outdoors, the girl hid herself in the branches of a great tree. There, in the green shade, she gave way to a fit of laughter. The tears ran down her cheeks, and she thought she’d choke on her own uncontrollable mirth. She came to, shaking, her face wet with tears and sweat. She saw her father Ferdinand walking in the garden with a man she didn’t know. It seemed to her that this man had the head of a wolf. Intrigued, she bent forward to see better. “It’s the changing shadows that produce the impression,” she said to herself. “But I’m sure he’s got the head of a wolf. He’s devilishly beautiful, damn it, more beautiful than other men.”
They walked towards her while they talked, and she saw with regret that he had a human head and not a wolf’s head after all. But she continued to listen and look at the man with interest. With his untidy grey hair and thin face, he really did look more like an animal than a man; close-up, his yellow eyes had a hunted look. His clothes were very correct.
“There’s a strange disease that’s attacked my hens,” Ferdinand said, and stretched out on the grass near Jemima’s tree. “My chickens have an illness that makes them lose their heads.”
His companion threw him a questioning look.
“I suspect a fox is making mischief for me. That animal is the most perverse in the world. I’ve put my most ferocious dog to guard the henhouse, but in spite of this, every morning another chicken succumbs. I’ve even left a servant there all night with a gun. That gave the fox second thoughts, and he didn’t come for some time. Now that there’s nobody there except the dogs, he’s started up again, and there are decapitated hens and roosters every morning.”
The wolf-man thought about this for a few moments. Jemima looked at his face anxiously: “What will he say, what will he say, the wolf-man?”
“I know a lot about the habits of animals,” he said finally. “Perhaps I could see a few of the poor chicken corpses? I’m surprised nobody heard the dogs bark. A fox has a very strong smell. . . .” It seemed to Jemima, pale and trembling in the shadow of the leaves, that the wolf-man was looking straight into her eyes, although she thought she couldn’t be seen.
“You can study them as much as you like during your stay here, my dear Ambrose.”
“You’re too kind, Ferdinand, dear friend. But your house, and especially your garden, inspire laziness rather than study.”
He had an expressionless voice, as if he’d only just learned to speak, as if he were pronouncing words to learn them rather than to make sense. The human language is strange on his lips, Jemima thought.
Soon after, the two men got up and went off towards the house. Jemima climbed down from her tree and went towards an old shed nobody but she used. She entered through a hole in the wall. Inside, a great number of objects threw distorted shadows on the ground at her feet. Fifty or so different kinds of poultry ornamented the walls, all more or less successfully treated with some crude preservative. Each head had lost its tongue, and these now rested in a bottle filled with a liquid. Jemima shook the bottle lovingly, and saw that a dozen or so of the tongues had sprouted little white roots.
In a dark corner of the hut something moved. Jemima began to speak. “Yes, we’ll soon be having supper. There’s something very good today. We’ve got a tart dough made by the cook, flies and wasps caught by me. I hope everybody’s going to like it.”
She took a red tablecloth and spread it on the ground, then brought a large tart out of an iron box. From an innermost recess she brought out a cage which she opened, and a very large bat jumped heavily onto the tablecloth. She was very fat, and seven little bats were suckling at her seven nipples. Jemima whistled on two fingers, and three black cats jumped in at the window. Everybody began to eat.
“The flies taste good today,” Jemima said with her mouth full. “I fed them myself with sugar, cream, and well-rotted meat. It gives them a taste fruity and delicate. We shall drink some wine since today is a holiday for us.”
The wine came out of the same box as the tart. Chateau des Fines Roches, 1929. All the animals drank from the same bowl as Jemima, they liked the wine very much. She took a musical instrument and made some melancholy but wild music.
“Dance, Jemima, dance,” Jemima sang. “Dance, you heavy and beautiful creature.”
The bat jumped up and down on the tablecloth, with her seven little ones still hanging from her nipples. She beat her wings, and seemed to be in a delirium of joy. The three cats sat looking on immobile, with only their tails moving in rhythm like snakes; the setting sun shone through the hole in the wall, throwing a patch of light on the ground, and suddenly a shadow appeared in the patch of light, perhaps the shadow of a wolf’s head, but when Jemima turned, there was nobody there. The cats jumped out of the window with long cries. Soon Jemima heard her governess calling her in the garden. She left the shed by the hole, murmuring imprecations against all old whores of dirty governesses on earth and everywhere else as well. As she was passing a group of trees already stirring with nocturnal inhabitants, lots of little insects got caught by their wings in her hair and she ate them, spitting out their scaly feet.
“Where have you been, Jemima?” the governess asked. “You’re late for supper. Tell me, where were you?”
“Nowhere,” Jemima said.
Mademoiselle Bleuserbes sighed.
“Go and change your dress and wash your hands and face. Hurry up, please.”
Jemima went upstairs to her room, which had been hers since she was born. All her toys, books and clothes were here, and this was also where she [illegible] her meals. Her supper was already on the table: a cup of milk, some biscuits and fruit. She looked at the food with a contemptuous smile, poured the milk into a flowerpot, and ignored the biscuits. Then she dressed with great care. Mademoiselle Bleuserbes was astonished to see her pupil so tidy and carefully dressed. They went down to the drawingroom where Ferdinand and Wolf (that was what Jemima called him) were having supper. Amelia, her mother, a little apart from the men, was arranging flowers. Ferdinand kissed Jemima and presented her to Wolf.
“This is Jemima. I want you to meet Ambrose Barbary. He’s asked me to send for you so that you should make his acquaintance.”
Jemima’s hands were shaking and damp, her face burned when she looked into the wild eyes of Wolf.
“Ambrose Barbary can tell you a lot of interesting things about the wild animals you like so much. He has studied their habits closely and is a very cultivated man.”
Wolf smiled, displaying his pointed teeth.
“I’m afraid Jemima isn’t yet ready to talk with cultivated people,” said Amelia with a sour smile. “I’m afraid Mr. Barbary will find our daughter very ignorant.”
Jemima turned a quick look full of hatred on her mother, but she was studying her flower arrangement. Wolf broke into a fierce laugh.
“I can’t believe that your daughter is ignorant. She has such very bright eyes. Come, Jemima, and drink a little from my glass to show that we are friends.”
Jemima drank, looking at her mother in triumph.
“I have a present for you, little girl,” Wolf continued. “But I don’t want you to look at it right away. Open the parcel when you’re in bed. I know that little girls love presents.”
He looked very closely at Jemima as he was speaking.
“Here it is. It isn’t a very big parcel, but I think you’re going to like it.”
Jemima took the parcel in her hands and felt something soft, something hard. She was burning with curiosity.
“Tomorrow you can tell me whether you like my present,” Wolf said. “We’ll go for a little walk together before breakfast. You get up early, don’t you?”
“At six o’clock.”
“I’ll be waiting for you near the large cypress on the lawn at six thirty.”
“It’s time for bed, Jemima,” said her mother.
And Jemima went off to her room. When she was alone, she hurriedly opened the parcel . . . and let out a stifled cry. What she held in her hand was the head of a rooster, its eyes fixed in death. This was no ordinary rooster. Jemima had never seen such a bird. It was five times larger than any other rooster, and white, completely white. Even its comb and beak were white. Jemima bent her head and kissed it three times. “Oh creature from countries I long to see, beautiful creature, incomparable rooster.” She remained thus a long time looking at the rooster in her hands. It was almost midnight before she went to bed, the rooster’s head pressed tight to her heart. All night she had nightmares in which Wolf’s head appeared, but attached now to a long, grey, furry body. Sometimes he was a wolf, sometimes a fox or other animal, sometimes the body of all animals mixed with his own.
At four o’clock Jemima jumped out of bed and ran to the window. The moon was still floating in the sky. She saw a shadow gliding hither and thither in the garden. She recognized it though it changed into plant, bird, animal, man. She went silently down into the garden with the rooster’s head in her nightgown and followed the shadow without being noticed, making sure no trace of her scent traveled ahead of her. She knew she was following Wolf, but couldn’t distinguish the precise form of his body. When she saw it in the moonlight, she saw a man. He was walking about aimlessly. From time to time he bent down and picked some plant which he ate immediately. Suddenly he stopped, and Jemima saw the vegetation around him move like live arms. He was talking with the plants, and they replied with gestures. Jemima sighed, and Wolf discovered her.
“Was it curiosity that led you here?” Wolf asked.
“I wanted to be with you. I followed you. You’re so beautiful.”
Wolf came close to her and touched her hair.
“As harsh as bramble thorns,” he murmured. “There are claws hidden in your hair.”
“Thorns and claws,” Jemima said in a neutral voice.
“Did you notice I was being followed by shadows?”
“They’ve gone.”
“They’re dangerous shadows for us. For you . . .”
“I don’t understand any of that. Tell me what you were eating just now.”
“Plants. If I eat enough of them, my skin will turn green. Then I shall be even more beautiful, and you’ll throw yourself at me.”
Jemima touched his face with her fingertips. His skin was very smooth. She had the feeling that his face was changing colour while they talked. Then the sun came up, yellow like the eye of a tiger. The nocturnal animals shivered in the new light and went to hide themselves. Jemima looked about her in great surprise. Everything had changed in a few seconds, and she was alone. The last picture she had of Wolf was like a whiplash. She felt sure that he’d been covered in fur glowing in all colours of the sky. He’d disappeared so totally into the vegetation that she thought she’d seen leaves right through his body, that he himself had then been changed into a plant.
She wept with despair. She noticed she was wearing nothing but a nightgown, so crumpled it hardly covered her body. Her feet were bare and covered in earth. She had never experienced such acute loneliness, and the tears that flowed into the corners of her mouth tasted bitter like poisonous plants. She wiped her face with her hair and went back into the house. There she washed her feet to get rid of the traces of her strange expedition. But her feet had changed. She bent down to see better and to satisfy herself that a metamorphosis had really occurred. Fine, soft fur had grown between her toes, a fur that stopped on the instep where she found little hairs barely visible to the naked eye. With gaping mouth she looked at her two feet and murmured, “I’m of the same blood. Will I be as beautiful as he? I have to take care of this beautiful fur so that it grows more. What wonderful changes will I see in just a few days?” She laughed and cried gently for a long time without lifting her eyes from her feet.
The whole day the sun beat down hard on the garden. Jemima did not leave her room. She hid her three treasures from curious eyes—her two feet and the rooster’s head. Her governess went in from time to time, but Jemima said nothing to her efforts at conversation.
Mademoiselle Bleuserbes was very disturbed by her pupil’s new capriciousness. She burned with curiosity and tried to make her pupil speak.
“Are you ill? Why are you looking out of the window all the time? You might as well go out and play in the garden. Answer me immediately, Jemima, are you ill?”
But the girl said nothing, keeping a scornful silence.
“If you don’t have the courtesy to reply when I speak to you, you won’t have any jam at teatime.”
Jemima burst out laughing. The governess left the room in a rage.
Jemima continued her long vigil by the window, trying to catch sight of the wolf. Every shadow that moved in the garden made her tremble. She hoped to see his face once more, even from afar.
By the time the sun set she was desperate. She went into the garden and walked left and right, circled the house looking in every window, asked the trees and stones. “Where is he? Where is he?” Finally she ran into the forest, hoping to find him there. The brambles tore at her legs, but she didn’t even notice. When night fell she approached the house again, meeting a servant who cried out at the sight of her bloody face and her crazed look.
“Where’s the gentleman who stayed here last night?” she called in a hoarse voice. “Answer me immediately, I’ve got to know.”
The servant shook her head. “Goodness, Miss, I don’t know . . .” She wanted to run off, but Jemima took her by the arm, pressing her nails into her skin until the girl cried out with pain.
“Somebody left a while back . . . a tall man with grey hair, but please let me go, you’re hurting me . . .” Jemima’s face suddenly looked like a death’s head.
“Gone? Gone?”
“With his luggage. Now let me go in peace.”
Jemima didn’t see her any more, she wanted nothing. She only felt the blood running from her mouth. She was alone. Heavy, black shadows floated in front of her and were lost on the road to the mountains. Looking the other way towards the house, she saw her mother combing her hair. She looked on indifferently at the flabby, blurred body like a fat cloud.
“Cow,” murmured Jemima, “what a cow.” Then she sighed and began to follow the line of trees until she was stopped by a blast of wind so icy that she began to sob with pain. At that moment she heard quick footsteps behind her, and a wolf dashed by near her legs with a cry like the voice of the wind.
“This is the right road,” she thought, and she made her way right through the wind, which swept behind her. Higher up, snow came down heavily, and Jemima cried icy tears. She found herself in a forest with trees more enormous than cathedrals. The clouds trailing among the branches were entwined together into black knots. Birds fell dead to the ground, and even the rocks bled torrents of ice. Jemima put her hands in her hair and found that it had become hard as wood and resonated like a primitive musical instrument. Several emaciated animals passed, ignoring her.
She decided to climb a tree to look around. Once at the staggering height of the top branches, she could see a great distance. There was nothing but miles of forest and a gigantic castle. The towers of this castle stuck out above the highest trees and seemed to have been built up on a mountain. She looked at it for a long time, until she suddenly noticed a little hand near her own. The little hand horrified her, and she didn’t dare move. Somebody at her shoulder laughed, and she knew it came from the owner of the hand. Trembling, she turned her head slowly and saw a little boy or little girl; it was impossible to guess to which sex this pale, fragile being belonged. It must be mad to look at me like that, Jemima thought, and fear grabbed her by the throat.
“That’s my father’s castle,” the child said. “I am Mimoo, his darling little boy, and I give you permission to look at my father’s castle.”
“You’re a boy, are you?” Jemima said, trying to move away from the disagreeable smell of his body.
“As you like. I can see you aren’t very intelligent, but that doesn’t matter. It’s too much to ask for intelligence and company all at once. How old are you?”
“I’m thirteen. And you?”
The little boy burst out into a laugh, which was strangled by a nasty cough.
“Thirteen?” he exclaimed. “Thirteen. You must be a giant. Maybe that’s why you’re so stupid. It’s known all giants are stupid. I’m twenty today. You’re allowed to kiss me.”
“I don’t want to.”
Mimoo’s face came close. “You’re wrong. Don’t you think I’m handsome?”
Jemima examined his little girl’s face and found it pretty, but repulsive.
“Perhaps I do and perhaps I don’t. But I don’t want you to touch me.”
“Mummy and I look very young for our age, we’re proud of our delicate beauty. Daddy isn’t like us. He’s ugly like everybody who lives around here. He’s as ugly as you, like an animal. We on the other hand, I mean mother and I, look like angels. I’m glad not to look like my father.”
Jemima clenched her hands on her chest where her heart beat wildly.
“How is your father? Tell me quickly, or I’ll throw you into the forest.”
Mimoo looked at her in slight surprise.
“How brutal you are! But one’s always got to be tolerant of inferior animals.
My father is like all animals of the forest, no more. A fox, a wolf, a cat, an eagle, a stag, a horse, a rooster . . . anyway, you get on my nerves.”
“Take me to your father’s castle. I’m very cold, and I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“You’ll be even colder up there. And anyway, it’s more fun here.”
“I want to go to your father’s castle, and if you don’t want to come with me I’ll kill you first and then go by myself.”
Mimoo laughed softly. “Tell me your name and promise to play the games I play and I’ll take you there.”
“Jemima,” said Jemima impatiently. “And I promise. Let’s go quickly or I’ll die of cold.
They both climbed down the tree, and Jemima felt as if she were descending into a cave in the middle of the earth. At the foot of the tree stood a bicycle made of wood, like the first bicycles ever made, with a huge wheel in front and a tiny wheel behind. It was only now that she realized that Mimoo was dressed in a flimsy nightdress, and that his feet were bare. He jumped on his bicycle and took Jemima’s hand, dragging her along behind him. The bicycle went slowly, jumping from side to side. The forest was frozen in a deathly silence. Since being with Mimoo, she hadn’t seen a single living creature except for a hyena walking behind them sniffing the air.
“Are you afraid of that hyena,” she asked. “Why are you looking at it with such bulging eyes?”
“If I went to sleep it’d eat me. That’s why it is following us,” he said with a light laugh. “I don’t fancy being put into its dirty stomach.”
“Hyenas only eat rotten meat,” Jemima said.
“You’re a complete idiot,” Mimoo said. “Idiot, idiot,” he sang. “She’s an idiot, she’s blind, the poor child.” And he almost fell off his bicycle, he was laughing so much.
“His smell… it’s the smell of… meat, of rotting meat…” she thought, but decided to say nothing.
As they approached the castle, the cold became even more intense, but Mimoo didn’t seem to notice. His little face, as white as snow, wore a peaceful expression. Large lamps lit up the bridge that spanned the moat of the castle. Jemima, who had thought that Mimoo’s long curly hair was blond, now saw that his hair was white and sparse like the hair of an old woman. This blur of hair floated about his face like smoke from a cigarette. Then, in the light of the lamps, she noticed his hands: shriveled like the paws of a monkey, with nails bitten to the quick.
They entered the courtyard of the castle by a vast gate and then went into the castle itself. Here nothing moved, and there was no living being anywhere. Even the furniture looked withered. Jemima put her hand on a chair and was horrified to see it crumble to dust before her eyes. She stood still, her hands pressed to her throat to smother a cry. She thought she would go mad with terror. Mimoo looked at her with interest, and a little smile played about his lips.
“We’ll go play in the garden,” he said. “Remember, you promised.”
The garden was in the middle of the castle. A big crow was tapping the earth with its beak. Jemima went to look and saw a flat stone that carried the following inscription,
Our darling little Mimoo. Died 10 June 1900.
She turned on Mimoo with a cry of rage. “Corpse, you dirty corpse!”
Now she understood everything, and the crow flew around Mimoo’s head with hungry cries. Jemima started to run through the huge castle and was soon lost in a labyrinth of rooms like enormous coffins. The rooms were empty and endless, one after another, and enclosed a suffocating cold. Finally, worn out with fatigue, she lay down on an enormous stone and read the words carved on it in deep gothic letters,
Here lies Ambrose Barbary and his wife Lucinda. Wolf, dear Master, do not walk too often in the footsteps of the living.
