Hidden Faces by Salvador Dalí

Author:Salvador Dalí
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2024-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Veronica Stevens turned her face toward America, but unlike Lot’s wife she did not look back, for by her virginal nature she already possessed the same biological incorruptibility as the country, strong and intact, toward which she was travelling and which was her home.

On the eleventh of June, after several months’ absence and on the morrow of his arrival from London, the Count of Grandsailles was awakened by his valet Grimard in his Hotel Meurice apartment. Grimard announced that the Prince of Orminy was waiting in the drawing-room and wished to see him.

‘Have him come in,’ said Grandsailles, raising himself and settling his back against the pillows, and as soon as Grimard had drawn the portières the Count found himself facing the yellow-toothed, somewhat horsy smile of the Prince, impeccably dressed in riding-clothes, with a polo whip in his hand.

‘I have just spent the blackest white night of my life,’ said d’Orminy phlegmatically, folding back the comforter and sitting down on the edge of the Count’s bed. ‘You see, from Olga’s apartment on the Rue de Rivoli it’s like a magnificent loge overlooking the Place de la Concorde to view the entry of the troops.’

‘Imagine anyone being so reserved – Grimard, charming fellow that he is, didn’t breathe a word about the Germans being here when he woke me up!’ Grandsailles exclaimed, trying to take the whip from d’Orminy’s hands.

‘Well, old man, I saw Hitler’s first soldier arrive,’ d’Orminy began. ‘He was of medium height, rather slight of build. It was about four-thirty in the morning; at that time the Place de la Concorde was completely deserted, there wasn’t a cat in sight. Well, suddenly a cat, a grey cat, began to cross it, almost crawling, anxious, now and then looking toward the Rue Royale. Suddenly he broke into a run. Immediately there appeared a motorcyclist whom we had not heard, he made a wide circle in low speed, then stopped near the centre; there he got off, parked his motorcycle, pulled out a pair of signal flags that he carried rolled up in his pocket. He raised his arms, and, as though it were his daily occupation, gesturing like an orchestra leader, gave the entry order and began to direct the traffic.

‘Then the advance guards of the Nazi motorized divisions began to arrive, solidly and uninterruptedly, tanks to the right, trucks to the left… my dear fellow, it was like filling a bath-tub, and it’s been running right up to this moment, just as monotonously – you know? It was funny,’ he continued, trying with his whip to hit a single fly that was in the room and that kept coming back insistently to the same spot on the eiderdown quilt, ‘it was funny to see that little chap, an enemy – for he was an enemy, all right – all alone in the middle of the great square in the heart of Paris, within gunshot of any of the surrounding windows… I can’t have been the only one to observe him and to think of this….

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