Tales from the Saragossa Manuscript Read online

  One is, of course, strongly tempted to conclude that both of these interesting features must have had some particular personal significance for the author. The fact that he subsequently veered away from both of them, leaving them unsettled in order to carry forward a much more mudane narrative – in which Avadoro replaces Alphonse van Worden as the central character – may reflect the fact that he found their literary embodiment too uncomfortable to sustain. On the other hand, he may simply have returned to his work in 1812 a man whose interests and convictions had changed very markedly since he left it in 1805.

  In any case, having projected Alphonse into this fascinating state of uncertainty and made him vulnerable to all manner of nightmares, the “restored” work simply abandons him there while following other trails, until tamely redeeming him at a much later date; this cannot be satisfactory from the point of view of the reader, and it is difficult to believe that the author found it satisfactory either – his decision to make a separate work out of Avadoro is much more reasonable than the pursuers of a “restored” text tend to imply.

  Viewed as an entity in its own right, Ten Days in the Life of Alphonse van Worden is undoubtedly incomplete – but the relevant extensions which are intriguingly implied by its concerns certainly do not include Avadoro. It seems entirely reasonable to regard the Ten Days as the beginning of what might have been a classic work of supernatural fiction, and one suspects that whatever explanation may eventually have been given of Alphonse’s adventures would have been much more concerned with the allegories and mysteries of cabbalism than the pranks of gypsy girls. Avadoro is a very different kind of work; although some of the tales embedded in it are supernatural they take the form of conventional cautionary anecdotes about the temptations of greed – temptations quite different from those which feature so phantasmagorically in the Ten Days. The frame narrative of Avadoro is determinedly mundane, and the explanation of what earlier befell poor Alphonse which is appended to the Polish edition is simply silly.

  Whatever kind of whole the “restored” text of The Saragossa Manuscript may be, therefore, it is definitely not the work whose beginning the Ten Days properly constitutes; that work does not exist and never can. It will undoubtedly be fascinating to have a complete collection of those various pieces which Potocki wrote within the loose framework of his putative Heptameron, but if we are to make sense of it we must be very wary indeed of viewing it as if it were anything more than a patchwork of loose ends.

  The loss of the classic work of supernatural fiction whose beginning Ten Days in the Life of Alphonse van Worden seems to be must be reckoned a tragedy; in many respects the text is way ahead of its time. It has touches of satirical wit and narrative audacity which bring it into very sharp contrast with the Gothic tales of terror with which it was contemporary. Its analysis of the psychology of temptation promised to be much more daring and perspicacious than anything which had gone before, and the philosophical conclusions which would have followed as corollaries from that account would surely have been fascinating.

  Perhaps, alas, it was too far ahead of its time actually to be written; had it actually become a significant intellectual journey into the exotic hinterlands of heretical mysticism it would surely have startled those who knew the author and – assuming that he was a Potocki – shocked his august family. We can only speculate now about how close the connection may have been between the motives which cut short the most interesting part of this literary endeavour and the motives which led Jan Potocki to cut short his own life, and the uncertainty of any such speculations can only serve to add an extra dimension to that great puzzle which is The Saragossa Manuscript.

  FOREWORD

  As an officer in the French Army, I found myself at the siege of Saragossa. A few days after the town was taken, having advanced to a lonely spot, I noticed a tiny house, quite well built, that I thought at first had not yet been visited by a single Frenchman.

  I was curious to go inside. I knocked at the door, but I saw that it was not shut. I pushed it open and entered. I called out, I looked around, found no one. It seemed to me that everything of value had already been taken; there remained on the tables and in the cupboards only objects of little importance. However, I noticed on the floor, in a corner, several notebooks of handwritten pages. I glanced at the contents. It was a Spanish manuscript. I knew very little of this language, but yet I knew enough to realize that this book could be amusing: it was about brigands, ghosts, cabbalists, and nothing was more apt to distract me from the tedium of the countryside than reading a bizarre novel. Convinced that this book would never be restored to its legitimate owner, I had no hesitation in taking it for myself.

  Subsequently, we were obliged to leave Saragossa. Having been separated, as ill luck would have it, from the main body of the army, I was taken with my detachment by the enemy. I thought my fate was sealed. After reaching the place where they were taking us, the Spanish began to strip us of our belongings. I asked to keep only one object, which could be of no use to them: it was the book I had found. They made some difficulty at first; finally they asked the advice of the captain who, having glanced at the book, came to me and thanked me for having preserved intact a work to which he attached great value, since it contained the story of one of his forebears. I told him how it had fallen into my hands. He took me with him, and during my rather lengthy stay in his household, where I was quite well treated, I asked him to translate this work for me into French. I wrote it down at his dictation.

  THE FIRST DAY

  The Comte d’Olavidez had not yet established foreign colonies in the Sierra Morena. This range that separates Andalusia from La Mancha was then inhabited only by smugglers, bandits, and a few gypsies, who were said to eat the travellers they had murdered – whence the Spanish proverb: Las gitanas de Sierra Morena quieren carne de hombres.

  And that’s not all. The traveller who ventured into this wild country would, it was said, there find himself assailed by a thousand terrors capable of chilling the boldest spirits. He would hear wailing voices mingling with the rushing of mountain streams and the whistling of the storm, deceptive lights would lead him astray, and invisible hands push him towards bottomless abysses.

  In truth, a few ventas, or isolated inns, were scattered along this ill-omened road, but ghosts, more devilish than the highwaymen themselves, had forced the latter to retire to areas where their rest was troubled no more except by the reproaches of their conscience – with such phantoms do innkeepers come to some arrangement: the one at the Andujar hostelry would swear by St James of Compostella to the truth of these marvellous accounts. Indeed, he would add that the archers of St Hermandad had refused to undertake any expedition to the Sierra Morena, and that travellers took the road to Jaen, or to Estremadura.

  In reply I told him that this option might suit ordinary travellers, but that since the King, Don Felipe Quinto, had been so gracious as to honour me with a captain’s commission in the Walloon Guards, the sacred laws of honour forbade me from reaching Madrid by the shortest route without asking if it was the most dangerous.

  “My noble young sir,” resumed my host, “Your Lordship will permit me to point out to him that if the King has honoured him with a company in the Guards before age has honoured Your Lordship’s chin with so much as the lightest growth of hair, it would be expedient to display prudence. Now, let me tell you, when evil spirits take over a place…”

  He would have said more, but I dug in my spurs and did not stop until I thought myself beyond the range of his remonstrances. Then I turned round and saw him gesticulating still and pointing out to me in the distance the road to Estremadura. My manservant, Lopez, and Mosquito, my zagal, were giving me pitiful looks, whose meaning was roughly the same. I pretended not to understand and rode on into the heathland, where the colony called La Carlota has since been built.

  In the very spot where the post house stands today, there was then a shelter, well known to muleteers, who called it Los Alcornoques,
or the holm-oaks, because in this place two fine trees of this species cast their shade over an abundant spring that collected in a marble drinking-trough. This was the only water and the only shade to be found between Andujar and the inn called Venta Quemada. This inn was built in the middle of nowhere, but it was big and spacious. It was actually an old Moorish castle, destroyed a long time ago in a fire, and since restored and turned into an hostelry, which was how it came by the name of Venta Quemada. It was run by a man of means. So travellers would leave Andujar in the morning, dine at Los Alcornoques on provisions they had brought with them, and then spend the night at Venta Quemada. Often they would even spend the following day there, to prepare themselves for the mountain crossing and to renew their supplies. This was also the plan for my journey.

  But as we were already approaching the holm-oaks, and I was talking to Lopez of the light meal we were planning to have there, I noticed that Mosquito was not with us, nor the mule loaded with our provisions. Lopez told me that the boy had stopped some hundred paces behind to retie something on his mount’s harnessing. We waited for him, then went on a few paces, then stopped to wait for him again; we called him, we retraced our steps to look for him: all to no avail. Mosquito had disappeared and taken with him our dearest hopes – in other words, our entire dinner. I was alone in not having eaten at all, for Lopez had been constantly gnawing on a Tobosa cheese, with which he had provided himself, but he was none the merrier for that, mumbling beneath his breath that the innkeeper at Andujar had warned us, and that evil spirits had surely carried off the luckless Mosquito.

  When we arrived at Los Alcornoques, I found on the drinking-trough a basket filled with vine-leaves. It looked as though it had been full of fruit and was left behind by some traveller. I searched it with curiosity and had the pleasure of finding in it four lovely figs and an orange. I offered two figs to Lopez, but he refused them, saying that he could wait until the evening. So I ate all the fruit, after which I would have quenched my thirst at the nearby spring. Lopez stopped me, alleging that the water would be bad for me after the fruit, and that he had the remains of some Alicante wine to offer me. I accepted his offer, but hardly was the wine in my stomach when I felt extremely unwell. I saw the earth and the sky spinning above my head, and I would certainly have fainted had Lopez not rushed to my aid. He helped me recover from my attack and told me that it was no cause for alarm, being simply a result of tiredness and lack of food.

  Indeed, not only had I recovered, I was in a state of health and excitement that had an extraordinary quality about it. The countryside seemed to me enamelled in the most brilliant colours; objects scintillated before my eyes like stars in summer nights, and I felt my arteries throbbing.

  Seeing that my indisposition had passed without sequel, Lopez could not help resuming his complaints.

  “Alas,” he said, “why did I not pay attention to Fray Geronimo of Trinidad, monk, preceptor, confessor and oracle of our family. He is the brother-in-law of the son-in-law of the daughter-in-law of my mother-in-law’s father-in-law, and being the closest relation we have, nothing is done in our house except on his advice. I refused to follow it and have been justly punished. He told me that the officers of the Walloon Guards were an heretical lot, this being easily recognizable from their blond hair, their blue eyes, and their red cheeks, whereas the old Christians have the colouring of Our Lady of Atocha, as depicted by St Luke.

  I put a stop to this torrent of impertinent remarks by ordering Lopez to give me my double-barrelled shotgun and to stay with the horses while I climbed some rocky eminence in the vicinity in an attempt to discover Mosquito’s whereabouts, or at least his trail. At this suggestion Lopez burst into tears, and throwing himself at my knees, he called upon me, in the name of all the saints, not to leave him alone in a place so full of danger. I offered to look after the horses myself while he went exploring, but this alternative seemed much more terrifying to him. However, I gave him so many good reasons for going in search of Mosquito that he let me depart. Then he drew a rosary from his pocket and began praying by the watering-trough.

  The heights I wanted to climb were further than I had thought. It took me an hour to reach them and when I got there I saw nothing but the wild deserted plain: no sign of man, or beast, or habitation, no road but the one I had been following, and not a soul was travelling on it; and all around, the utmost silence. I broke it with my shouts, which re-echoed in the distance. Eventually I retraced the path to the watering-trough, where I found my horse tied to a tree. But Lopez had disappeared.

  I had two choices: to return to Andujar, or to continue my journey. But the first option did not even occur to me. I leapt onto my horse, and at once setting it at a brisk trot, in two hours I reached the banks of the Guadalquivir, which is not that quiet splendid river whose majestic course embraces the walls of Seville. The Guadalquivir as it leaves the mountains is a bottomless boundless torrent, ever roaring against the rocks that contain its strenuous waters.

  The valley of Los Hermanos begins at the place where the Guadalquivir spreads out across the plain. It is so called because three brothers, united less by blood kinship than by their taste for brigandage, for a long time made it the scene of their exploits. Of the three brothers, two had been captured and their bodies could be seen strung up on a gibbet at the entrance to the valley; but the third, called Zoto, had escaped from the prisons of Cordoba, and was said to have taken refuge in the Alpujarras mountain range.

  Very strange tales were told about the two brothers who had been hanged. They were not referred to as ghosts but it was claimed that their bodies, animated by some evil spirit, would free themselves at night and leave the gibbet to go haunting the living. This was considered such a sure fact that a theologian from Salamanca had written a dissertation in which he argued that the two hanged men were a kind of vampire, and that the one theory was no more incredible than the other – this the most incredulous freely granted him. There was also a certain rumour that these two men were innocent, and having been unjustly condemned, were taking their revenge, with heaven’s licence, on travellers and other passers-by. Since I had heard much talk of all this at Cordoba, I had the curiosity to approach the gallows. The spectacle was all the more disgusting as the hideous cadavers, caught by the wind, swung about in the most extraordinary manner, while frightful vultures pulled at them, tearing off strips of flesh. I averted my eyes in horror, and rode headlong down the mountain road.

  It must be admitted that the Los Hermanos valley seemed to lend itself very well to the exploits of bandits, and to serving them as a refuge. The traveller was stopped in his tracks sometimes by rocks broken loose from mountaintops, sometimes by trees uprooted by storms. In many places the path crossed the riverbed or passed in front of deep caves whose forbidding aspect inspired caution.

  At the end of this valley I entered another and saw the Venta that was to be my shelter for the night. But from the moment I laid eyes upon it, I expected nothing good of it. For I could see it had no windows or shutters; there was no smoke from the chimneys; I saw no sign of activity nearby, nor did I hear the dogs give warning of my arrival. From which I concluded that this tavern was one of those that had been abandoned, as the innkeeper at Andujar had told me.

  The closer I came to the Venta, the deeper the silence seemed to me. At last I arrived and I saw a box for collecting alms, accompanied by an inscription worded thus: “Gentlemen travellers, have the charity to pray for the soul of Gonzalez of Murcia, late the keeper of Venta Quemada. Above all else, continue on your way and do not stay the night here, under any pretext whatsoever.”

  I at once decided to brave the dangers with which the inscription threatened me. It was not that I was convinced there are no ghosts, but it will be seen later that my entire education had been directed towards honour, and for me this consisted of never showing any sign of fear.

  Since the sun was just setting, I wanted to take advantage of the remaining light to examine every nook and cr
anny in this building, less to relieve myself of anxiety regarding the infernal powers that had taken possession of it than to search for food, for the little I had eaten at Los Alcornoques had served to allay but not to satisfy the imperative need I felt of some sustenance. I walked through many rooms and chambers. Most were covered with mosaics to the height of a man, and the ceilings were of that fine carpentry in which the Moors displayed their magnificence. I visited the kitchens, the attics and the cellars – these were carved out of the rock, a few communicated with underground passages that seemed to penetrate deep into the mountain – but nowhere did I find anything to eat.

  Finally, as daylight was completely fading, I went to fetch my horse, which I had tied up in the courtyard. I led it to a stable where I had seen a little hay, and I went to settle down for the night in a room where there was a pallet, the only one left in the whole inn. I would have very much liked to have a light, but the good thing about the hunger tormenting me was that it prevented me from sleeping.