ON OCTAVE MIRBEAU

IN 1884, when Octave Mirbeau began writing Le Calvaire, I visited him in his cottage (for he had sent out for a typist as he was badly scarred from a gunpowder accident [prank] while he was in the army). Leo Tolstoy was there, too.

Now Mr. Mirbeau was an odd fellow. I recall hearing him sing to himself to the tune of Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody #2", mainly the finale that you hear in those Tom and Jerry cartoons. The lyrics were his own, of course. I do not wish to relate them now, as they were so grotesque and sexually explicit, they would give even the Marquis de Sade nightmares. The oddest thing, though, is the fact that he DID delight in chasing mice about with hammers and mallets. Odd fellow indeed.

Perhaps this was but a prelude to his "Torture Garden" and Diary of a Chambermaid".

Anyways, one Summer morning I awakened to find Mr. Mirbeau hovering above my bed holding a typewriter. Also, he was nude. This did not bother me so much as he was holding the machine so it covered his genitals. I did, unfortunately, have quite a difficult time typing on it and thus sent for a replacement. Tolstoy was not amused.

In time, a fond friendship grew between Mr. Mirbeau, Mr. Tolstoy and myself. On many occasions, I accidentally called Mr. Tolstoy "Mr. Dostoevsky". He would laugh and laugh and then hold me captive in the icebox. He said it was like Russia in Winter. I told him he had never been to Siberia. He said "Dostoevsky has!" then laughed heartily. We then joked about "Crime and Punishment", until I realised that I was really talking aboiut "War and Peace". He would then lock me in the icebox again.

After shadow-writing for Mirbeau, I left. I do not know what happened to them after that year and a half I spent in his cottage. Nor do I know who his typist was for his later works. I can only assume that a parcel I received three years later from an "Otto and Leo" was really from them. I could not tell. It was an envelope addressed to me: no letter, nothing inside.

Odd fellows indeed.

[That is all]