"La Machine à Courage"

(A chapter from Georgett Leblanc's "The Courage Machine" (translated by Solita Solano and Margaret Anderson and still unpublished in America). Preface by Jean Cocteau.

Sample

After all that I had lived through in New York I needed trees, air, grass - all the health of the earth to regain my own.

We had been told of a house for rent in Bernardsville, New Jersey, for the end of the summer. Margaret borrowed our railroad fare and we set out to inspect them. A real estate agent was waiting for us, but he showed us only great estates, renting for hundred s of dollars a month. Finally he turned his car into a long avenue of cypress trees. At the far end was a large grey house, gay and rambling, with a rose garden, an old park and wooded hills that blended with the sky. "One hundred and fifty dollars a month", said the agent, "but it's not much of a place - there are only four servants' rooms".

The next day Dodd Mead advanced me a hundred dollars and a pawn
shop furnished the remainder of the first month's rent. We were
again penniless when we moved into the house in Bernardsville, but
as we entered the sun was shining on the Victory of Thamothrace in
the hall and we hailed it as a good omen. The principal grocery
in the village telephoned for our patronage and Allen gave a col-
ossal order. Immediately everything in the town was at our dis-
posal, including a Steinway piano.

The first evening in Bernardsville we gathered on the main
terrace. Vistas had been cut in the woods around the estate to make
horizons and I could see distant blue hills which lay like smoke
across the valley, with a rising red moon at the end of the cypress
avenue. The silhouette of the trees, reaching into distance, seemed
to touch the moon.

space

Allen had heard of a young composer, George Antheil, the favorite pupil of Ernest Bloch. We invited him to spend a day with us and he answered, "I will come with pleasure since you are interested in modern musics". His plural intrigued us.

An astonishing young person arrived, short, square-shouldered,

and with the spotty complexion of adoloscence. But he carried within
that silent assurance which is the mark of a precocious self-aware-
ness. The disproportion of his body and head, the fixed intense ex-
pression of his eyes, his fierce preoccupation with his own thought
gave me an impression of genius.

He shook hands with each of us without curiosity, as if he had
left us the day before. Then, seeing the piano across the room, he
rushed at it. For two long hours we listened to him, mesmerized. In
his music was his explanation and his raison d'être. When he played
his face changed completely, he was no longer red and ugly; an even
pallor spread over his features and they became almost classic. When
he had finished playing he told us the tragedy of his existence -
the tragedy of those who live in a family which has either finished
living or has never lived at all. He said with simplicity that when
he received our letter he told his parents he was coming to live with
us. He had brought all his possessions in a cardboard valise -
manuscripts, music paper, pencils, india ink and rulers. In the
midst of these treasures were one shirt and two pairs of socks. Since
he had neither pyjamas nor rose de chambre, he accepted one of our
bathrobes and a pair of sandals.

He worked almost all day and half the night, stopping only when
fatigue or sleep overwhelmed him. He never seemed to eat. This up-
set us until Allen discovered that a sack of green apples was almost
empty and cans of baked beans were missing from the pantry. Eviden-
ly George was simplifying his life and we no longer worried about his
materiality. But he would choose a theme of five or
six notes and repeat it insatiably for hours on end. He seemed to
hypnotize himself with certain vibrations; then he would rush to his
room and write until the following morning.

Each of us worked alone during the day, not meeting (except for
lunch) until tea-time. We dined at nine and then our great hours
began. I sang Melisande with Allen, whose fluid voice created a
Pelléas that surpassed any I ever heard in a theatre. George played
his "Ballet Mechanique" which had the honour of being hissed in Paris
two years later. Allen, who lived more at the piano than he did in
life, played Debussy and Ravel, Chopin, Schumann, Bach, and his
piano transcription of Scriabin's "Poème de l'Extasse". Margaret

listened in her own lyrical manner. Sometimes, worn-out by vibrations, she rested her beautiful head on the window-sill, and, capped with moonlight, slumbered in a halo.

When I think of those rare moments, two memories outshine the others : an early dawn when Bach's deepest pages became for me almost a discovery; and a hot heavy night, filled with the life of flowers, which we dedicated to Strauss's "Rosenkavalier". I remember the adorable waltz as a pool of light where lovely dancers turned and turned, exhausted with dizziness and grace.

Two o'clock in the morning was supper time, and the hour of stories and laughter. Sometimes we had guests - a young poet, Mark Twybyfill, read his latest poem, "Conversation is in Heaven"; a young lawyer played a flute to satisfy his poetic dreams, scattering little sounds of rapture pitifully into the great night. Then Allen would intone a hymn of parting and we separated. In the rising dawn there remained only the soft and muffled cry of an owl.