The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul

by Albert Robida

  Robida’s use of some of Verne’s characters as villains seems particularly striking, not simply because Verne cast those same characters as heroes, but because Verne was very reluctant to use villains at all. One of Verne’s most admirable qualities as a writer, in fact, was his reluctance to employ the cheap melodramatic currency that can be derived from giving heroes explicitly evil enemies to fight. Unlike the majority of writers of his era, Verne was not a jingoist who was prepared to trade on popular xenophobia by using foreigners as villains; indeed, he was remarkably cosmopolitan in his choice of heroes, and was always willing to entertain apologetic arguments for seemingly-heinous behavior. The challenges of bad weather and incipiently hostile terrain, together with the well-known tendency of even the best-laid plans to go awry, provide most of the challenges for the bold pioneers in his romances of exploration, and it is fairly rare for him to equip one of his heroes with a vicious adversary whose eventual thwarting will provide a suitable sense of climax (Michel Strogoff’s treacherous rival, Ivan Ogareff is exceptional in this regard). Robida’s transformation of Verne’s own characters is, in part, a wry observation of this fact—a suggestion that the Vernian world-view is a trifle rose-tinted, and that the kinds of people who do the kinds of things that Verne’s characters do are very often less noble, and carry more social and psychological baggage, than Verne’s characters tend to do. The narrative voice slyly suggests, on more than one occasion, that Verne has been a little too trusting in accepting the tales that his heroes told him, accepting their self-serving distortions at face value.

  On the other hand, Robida does seem to have approved of Verne’s ambitions in this general regard, and his approval seems to have increased considerably during the writing of Saturnin Farandoul. Although he was by no means unwilling, at any stage of the novel, to evoke human villains to serve the purposes of his plotting, he became more careful in its later stages to give narrative space to their apologies and excuses. Even the evil Siamese mastermind Nao-Ching is allowed to plead, albeit somewhat hypocritically, that he is only trying to support his family, and is left conscientiously unpunished for his treacheries. After the violent suicides of Valentin Croknuff in part one and Phileas Fogg in part two, none of Farandoul’s principal adversaries suffers a narrative death-penalty in consequence of opposing the hero.

  Neither Farandoul nor his author display any conspicuous pacifist tendencies in part one of the novel, when Farandoul briefly entertains Napoleonic ambitions of world-conquest, but after the brutal war that forms the climax to part two, Farandoul undergoes a gradual but decisive transformation, forsaking his early bellicosity entirely after a brief battle early in part three and becoming completely uninterested in revenge. In part one he is very willing to subject captured pirates to summary junction, and in part two he is still reluctant to let any affront go unpunished, but by part four he is quite content to let Nao-Ching go about his treacherous business indefinitely, and in part five it does not even cross his mind to make any attempt to hunt down the pirates who have subjected him to so much injury by stranding him at the North Pole with no apparent means of escape. This is a significant progressive change of attitude, in seeming response to the darker episodes described in the text.

  Verne was, of course, well aware of the fact that the world in which he lived had a dark underside, whose primary expressions were the ugly politics of colonialism and warfare, and his later works include several narratives set against the background of actual or threatened wars, but before 1879 the only story he had written in which warfare formed a significant background element was Michel Strogoff. Robida was evidently more anxious about warfare, and the potential of technology to sophisticate warfare, than his model; he was, of course, to go on to produce a savagely satirical account of La Guerre au vingtième siècle (1883; rev. 1887; tr. as War in the Twentieth Century), which became his most famous work. The groundwork for that exercise was, however, laid in Saturnin Farandoul, in the climactic “duel” in part two between Farandoul and Phileas Fogg, which takes the form of a deliberately reignited Civil War, in which one takes command of the northern states and the other of the southern states of a fledgling American nation. Each aided by an ingenious inventor, Farandoul and Fogg rapidly escalate the methods of that warfare to take in several kinds of new bombs—including some distributing poison gas—submarine warfare and aerial warfare.

  This whole affair is conducted in a blatantly farcical spirit, but the comedy has a very distinct black edge; not one violent death is explicitly described, but the accounts offered of the devastation of cities leave no doubt as to the horrific casualties that must be incurred, purely as an unconsidered side-effect of the main protagonists’ slightly-injured pride. This is not only point in the story at which Farandoul seems every bit as bad as his adversaries, in terms of his blithe disregard for the fate of bystanders, innocent and otherwise, but it is a turning-point, and he becomes noticeably more scrupulous thereafter. So does his author, who similarly becomes increasingly reluctant to kill or main anyone and spends most of part three engineering escapes from ingeniously horrible condemnations to death.

  Part two is the phase of the narrative in which Robida’s misanthropism shows through most frankly in its fullest black depth, and although a certain laconic cynicism continues to underlie the entire narrative, perennially poking sharp reminders through the narrative surface, there are also increasing signs of moderation and repentance from then on. Robida’s criticisms of colonialism are not as carefully muted as Verne’s, and are by no means entirely restricted to the explicit war against English imperialism depicted in part one, again coming through repeatedly as the hero’s adventures continue, but they do change in tone, becoming more plaintive and more resigned as the story progresses.

  Jules Verne was not the only direct influence on Saturnin Farandoul, and the opening phase of the narrative, in spite of its corollary evocation of Captain Nemo, actually owes considerably more to another novel with which Robida would have been familiar by virtue of its lavish illustration: Leon Gozlan’s Les Emotions de Polydore Marasquin ou Trois mois au royaume des singes (1856; tr. as The Emotions of Polydore Marasquin, A Man among the Monkeys and Monkey Island). Gozlan’s novel, squarely situated in the satirical tradition of traveler’s tales, tell the story of a castaway on an island inhabited by a profuse population various kinds of monkeys, whose Western colonists have been driven off by pirates. When Marasquin puts on the skin of a gorilla shot by the departed colonists he acquires—albeit very precariously—the top position in the simian pecking order, and becomes the island’s effective ruler until the deception comes unstuck. Although Robida borrows that plot device explicitly in part two of Saturnin Farandoul, the more important influence of Gozlan’s novel is seen in its similar employment of hypothetical “monkeys” as quasi-human characters possessed of a particular kind of primal innocence. It is the fact that Saturnin Farandoul has been raised as a feral child by a population of inoffensive monkeys that fits him for his heroic role when he re-enters human society, and also ensures that he can never properly fit into that society.

  Whereas Polydore Marasquin was a fake while dressed in his monkey-skin, Saturnin Farandoul really is a quintessential Rousseauesque “noble savage,” born into such natural freedom (and goodness) that civilization can never be anything to him but a set of shackles, which perpetually threaten to turn him into the same kind of morally-defective, money-grubbing, luxury-loving, war-mongering boor that civilization has made of almost all its native victims. Farandoul does not try very hard to resist that fate—indeed, he tries actively to embrace it at first—but he proves, by slow degrees, not only to be immune to it himself but also to have alienated his immediate companions to such an extent that they, too, can no longer be content with such hideously vulgar ambitions. In this respect, he not only anticipates Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan but eventually outstrips him in sharing the wealth of his fortunate heritage.

  In making this translation I have ma
de the usual trivial alterations to the 1880 text, unifying the spelling of surnames, sometimes substituting modernizing place names, and occasionally tidying up continuity errors, adding a phrase or two where it seems highly likely that text has been dropped by way of trimming it to fit available space. In all these instances I have added footnotes any substitutions that seemed at all problematic.

  The only major modification I have made to the text is that I have cut the synopses that Robida placed at the beginning of each chapter, which often operate as spoilers by telegraphing humorous plot-twists that would be better encountered without forewarning. I suspect that Robida used these synopses as a set of notes to remind him what ground he needed to cover in each chapter rather than intending them as a service to his readers, but whatever his motive was, I feel quite strongly that the text is better off without them.

  For the benefit of readers who might like to know what the text originally looked like, however, I have aggregated the excised text in an appendix similar to the contents section that the publisher added to the paperback version.

  Brian Stableford

  PART ONE: OCEANIA

  THE MONKEY KING

  I.

  In the mid-Pacific region of the 10th north parallel and 150 degrees of western longitude—which is almost the same as that of the Polynesian isles of Pomotou 1 —the great Ocean, so fecund and so tempestuous, belied its name even more than usual on that day. In the utterly disordered sky, masses of purplish-black cloud streamed from the distant horizon at an incalculably rapid rate of knots. The waves climbed to heights unknown in our paltry European seas. Howling and roaring, they hurled themselves one after another and one upon another, as if the furious sea were mounting an attack, which burst forth in frightful waterspouts, under whose weight the highest waves loudly collapsed in whirlwinds of foam.

  A few fragments of the masts and timbers of ships and barrels, floating here and there, indicated that the god of storms would not be returning to his deep caverns with an empty bag, alas. Amid the debris, however, one peculiar item of wreckage was discernible, sometimes thrust up to the crests of the waves and sometimes disappearing in the hollow valleys between the monstrous billows.

  This wreck was a cradle, and the cradle in question contained an infant, well-swathed and well-secured. The child was sleeping like a log, apparently finding no difference between the rocking effect of the Ocean and that employed by his nurse.

  Hours had passed. Miraculously, the cradle had not sunk; the ocean continued to swing it to and fro. The storm had calmed down; the sky, clearing little by little, allowed a long line of rocks to become visible upon the horizon. The frail craft, evidently carried by a current, was steering towards an unexpected port!

  Little by little, the coast became more visible, its sheltering cliffs cut through by little creeks calmly stirred by the waves. In order to get that far, though, it was necessary to pass through a chain of coral reefs, on which the waves broke into cascades of foam, without the little vessel breaking up.

  In the end, the cradle came through and ran aground, still accompanied by fragments of mast. One last roller carried it up the beach and left it behind on the dry sand—and the brat, abruptly awoken by the cessation of movement, cried out for the first time with all his might.

  It was evening. The Sun, which had not appeared all day, finally showed through, and, having arrived at the end of its course, proceeded to extinguish its last fierce orange rays in the waves of the open sea. To take advantage of this hour of delicious calm after a stormy day, and also to take a little exercise after the evening meal, an honorable family of monkeys was taking a walk on the damp beach, admiring the splendors of the setting Sun. 2

  The entire natural world seemed to be their personal domain. They were enjoying an admirable view with a tranquil proprietary right that no anxiety could trouble. All the beauties of the tropics were displayed there, as if in a magical frame: all the glorious flowers that the equatorial Sun could bring into bloom, marvelous plants, giant trees and interlacing lianas by the thousand.

  Four little monkeys of various heights gamboled on the grass, swinging from descending lianas as they went past, and chasing one another around the coconut palms under the protective eyes of their father and mother. The latter were more serious individuals, content to mark their joy at the good weather’s return by quietly shaking their hindquarters with perfect panache. The mother, a lovely she-monkey with an elegant figure and a graceful demeanor, carried in her arms a fifth offspring, which she suckled as she walked, with a candor and a dignified serenity that would have tempted the chisel of a Praxiteles.3

  Suddenly, their tranquility was disturbed. The father, at the sight of an object extended on the beach, turned two or three somersaults—a gesture which, among the monkeys, signifies the most colossal astonishment. Without ceasing to nurse her infant, the mother and the four little monkeys likewise turned half a dozen simultaneous somersaults before coming to rest on all fours. The reason for their alarm was that the object perceived by the monkeys was stirring and struggling, desperately twirling its arms and legs, as a crab does when one plays the practical joke of setting it down on its back.

  It was our recent acquaintance, the young and charming castaway who, having been awakened by the landing, was giving vent to unfathomable feelings. Papa Orang-utan—for it is a family of orang-utans that we are introducing to our readers—made a cautious tour of the disquieting object before allowing his family to approach it. Having judged it unlikely to be dangerous, he signaled to the mother with a reassuring gesture and showed her the cradle, scratching his nose in a puzzled manner.

  What could the unknown animal be which the sea had brought and cast up on the beach? That was what the reunited family were asking themselves as they encircled the cradle to discuss the matter. The little ones, full of surprise, had no idea at all, but sought to read the results of their parents’ reflections in their faces.

  Eventually, the father, taking every possible precaution to avoid being bitten, delicately picked up the little castaway, who was still gesticulating wildly. He plucked the child out of the cradle by one leg and passed him to the she-monkey—who looked at him for a long time, placing him beside her last-born for comparison, reflected carefully, and showed by a few significant shakes of the head that she considered this new species of monkey greatly inferior in physical beauty to the family of orangs.

  The little castaway continued crying, despite the antics of the young monkeys, who were fully reassured by now and wanted to welcome this new comrade into their company. The she-monkey understood the reason for these cries. Passing her nursling to the father, she took hold of the infant’s head and generously offered her maternal bounty to the child.

  What joy for the little castaway! For many hours he had wandered without nourishment on the crests of the waves, tormented by a hunger he could at last appease! He drank so much that, having suddenly become comfortable again, he ended up falling asleep on the breast of his exotic nurse.

  Meanwhile, the little monkeys had been rummaging around in the cradle, to make sure that it did not contain a second example of this peculiar species. They had found nothing there but a kind of bag sealed by a leather thong. This bag intrigued them enormously at first sight, but their perplexity was even further increased by the sight of the piece of paper that the eldest of the little monkeys took from it. They turned it over and over without result, then passed it to their father in the hope that he might explain it. After examining it for a quarter of an hour, he too could make nothing of the bizarre symbols with which it was covered.

  The thing was very simple, though; let us admit right away that the bag found in the cradle was a tobacco-pouch—probably the paternal tobacco-pouch, which the unhappy parents had confided to the hazards of the tempest along with their child, at the moment when their ship sank. As for the paper covered with hieroglyphs that had so intrigued the naïve orangs, it will clarify for us the status of the young castawa
y, for it was nothing other than his duly-registered birth certificate.

  The infant’s name was Fortuné-Gracieux-Saturnin Farandoul.4 The names of the parents and witnesses are irrelevant to our story, so we shall pass over them in silence, but we must cite two further items of information revealed by this document: firstly, that Saturnin Farandoul was a French citizen; and secondly, that he was aged only four months and seven days. Thus did the youngster make his debut in his career as a castaway.

  After mature reflection, Papa Orang-utan evidently came to a decision in the matter of the newly-discovered infant. He made a gesture signifying that five might just as well be six, and got up. The child was adopted; the family, thus augmented, ambled back along the path to their abode. It was a good night for all concerned. The Moon illuminated the tranquil sleep of our hero in the bosom of his adopted family, in the deep forest. The Sun rose to find Farandoul perfectly comfortable in his new social estate, and his adoptive parents quite content with their lucky find.

  In her hut, made of branches covered with large banana leaves, the good she-monkey studied her nursling while he feasted greedily upon the banquet offered to his lips by beneficent Nature. In addition to the little monkeys, fascinated by the appearance of their new companion, there was a large crowd in the hut, dominated by she-monkeys.

  What astonishment there was on every face! With what curiosity they followed the least movement of little Farandoul! At first, the young she-monkeys could not suppress a thrill of fear when the nursing mother jokingly extended the infant towards them, but the gentleness of Farandoul won every one of their hearts, and the entire audience was soon competing for the privilege of petting him. The hut never emptied; male and female monkeys came from the neighboring forests carrying gifts of fruit and coconuts, which Farandoul pushed away with his hands and feet in order to thrust himself back upon the quasi-maternal breast.