Alexandre Dumas On Mosquitoes
My own battle with Italian mosquitoes drove me into a pharmacy in Rome, Googling the Italian for mosquito.
Mosquitoes are the bane of my summertime existence, and I felt a great sense of camaraderie reading Alexandre Dumas’s hilarious recounting of a duel to the death with a mosquito whilst staying in an Italian inn. If you’ve ever lived in a country where a mosquito net is required, I’m sure you’ll find this amusing, too. This rather long excerpt comes from Travels in Switzerland*, a travel memoir written by the future The Three Musketeers writer as he traveled in, you guessed it, Switzerland…but also a little into France, Italy, and Germany. Two hundred-year-old travel memoirs are my new favorite thing.
“Mosquitoes. You must have heard tell of this endearing little creature which resides near lakes and swamps. He is a near relation of our northern familiar; only, instead of fleeing the haunts of man like the latter, he has a taste of civilisation, society rejoices him and light attracts him. Do what you will, it is impossible to keep him out: he gets in through holes, chinks and cracks, however minute. The best way to evade him is to spend the evening in the room next to the one in which you intend to sleep, then, when you want to go to bed, all you have to do is to blow out your light and step smartly into your bedroom.
Unfortunately for you, the mosquito has the eyes of an owl and the scent of a hyena; he sees you in the dark, he follows your trail, unless, to make doubly sure, he does not hide in your hair. You think you have tricked him, you grope your way in the dark towards your bed, knocking over in your progress a table of porcelain cups for which they will charge you double the price tomorrow; you make a slow and laboured detour to avoid cutting your feet on the broken bits, you gain your bed, you carefully raise the mosquito net, slide into it like a snake and congratulate yourself that, thanks to these precautions, you can look forward to a night’s repose.
Your error is sweet, but short-lived. Five minutes later you hear a hum near your face. You have shut in your enemy with you; prepare yourself for a mortal duel; the trumpet he has sounded is for a combat to the death. Soon the noise ceases; the crucial moment has come. Your enemy is…where? All at once you feel his bite, your hand comes up too late and you hear him singing his victory chant. The infernal buzzing goes on round your head in fantastic circles, while you make futile efforts to seize him. Again the noise ceases. Your anguish begins all over again; you hit wildly wherever he isn’t until a fresh bite tells you where he was. The diabolical buzzing recommences, and sounds now to you like mocking laughter. You reply with a sort of roar; you make up your mind you will have him or die; you stretch your two hands to their utmost capacity, and tense yourself. The buzzing ceases. You hold your breath, and wait. Not for long. A sudden pain stabs you. This time it is on your eyelid. Your thoughts, in their lust for vengeance, do not allow calculation. You give yourself a blow that would fell an ox, you see a million stars. Never mind; it is worth it if your vampire is dead.
For an instant you wait and hope. The satanic hum begins again. This time you give a lunatic yell, throw off your useless net, leap out of bed indifferent to precautions against attack, beat every likely spot on your body with your hands; then, after three hours combat, feeling that you are on the verge of losing your head and going mad, you fall into bed exhausted, worn out by the unequal duel, where at last through sheer weariness you fall asleep.
When you wake it is broad daylight. The first object that catches your eye is your enemy of the previous night, motionless on the curtain of your bed, his red body gorged and bloated with your blood. An unholy joy possesses you. You approach stealthily, and with one murderous blow you kill him outright as Hamlet did Polonius: for the creature is so intoxicated that it does not even try to fly away. Just then your servant enters the room, and gazing at you with astonishment, asks you what you have been doing to your eye. A look in the mirror makes you recoil; it is not yourself you see there, but a monster, a Vulcan, a Caliban, a Quasimodo.”
Happy summer, and may all your encounters with mosquitoes find you the victor.
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