The World of the Variants

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  I decided to make amicable gestures. The old man continued watching me with those round eyes which, even in certain monkeys, express stupor. Successively, I sketched gestures borrowed from the aborigines of the Brazilian jungle, the Australian desert and the forests of Borneo. It was the last that succeeded. The old man replied to them with vaguely analogous gestures.

  After a further inspection of the surroundings, deciding to risk everything, I descended from the hillock and advanced toward the bush.

  III.

  The old man hesitated until I had crossed half the distance that separated us; then he came to meet me. There was scarcely any surprise in the configuration of his features, which expressed the sentiments of peacefulness and hesitation.

  When we were a few paces from one another, he proffered a few incomprehensible syllables and uttered a cry for help. Then, looking back, I saw the other two individuals coming forward and I recognized, with a certain satisfaction, that they were women.

  One of them looked old, her face dry and sinewy, furrowed with horizontal wrinkles; she must have been approximately 20 or 25 years younger than the old man. She had slate-colored eyes, and the violet-tinted skin that must have been characteristic of the race.

  The other, scarcely emerged from childhood, had a bizarre charm, infinitely more exotic than it is possible to imagine. The violet tint of her skin was fainter, more delicately nuanced; her eyes were wide open, full of a fire that I only saw in her, and a youth that was simultaneously a matter of her own age and that of her race. Black hair ran down over her shoulders, in a manner that was rather seductive; her mouth was wide, with a rich scarlet tint; her teeth were sparkling, formed like little seashells. A photograph would have made her slightly coarse and scarcely harmonious features stand out, but those primitive imperfections were attenuated by a youthful energy and plenitude of life that I can’t pin down, and which made her graceful.

  All four of us stood there, looking at one another, for some time. Nothing could have been more appropriate to dispel mistrust—even the wildest beasts are reassured by immobility; in the forest or on the steppe, it’s rare that an attack occurs when it has been sufficiently deferred at the first encounter. In any case, I did not believe that the old man or his companions would have had any other intention than to defend themselves. More instinctive than me, they were more rapidly reassured than I was, and the man informed me of his state of mind by means of a silent chuckle, in which I thought I could detect joy.

  He started uttering syllables again, which he accompanied with an agile mime. The syllables disconcerted me. They were grimly guttural, bristling with aspirates; they seemed to come from even lower down than the larynx. So far as I knew, no language included their like. Their rhythm caused them to resemble a primitive chant. As for the gestures, they undoubtedly expressed benevolence—and, at intervals, pointed westwards.

  I replied as best I could. Like all white men, especially those of my own race, I was no great scholar of gesticulatory science and I had little natural talent for its practice.

  While indulging in this palaver, I studied the accoutrements and weapons of my aborigines. Their upper bodies were covered by a sort of fur tunic with very short sleeves, made of a light summer fur. The garment hung down to mid-thigh. Their feet were bare. Their hair grew at hazard, although vague attempts at combing seemed to have been made. Their necks were ornamented by necklaces of teeth and small green, red and yellow stones; they wore bracelets on all four limbs.

  As for weapons, I had recognized them as soon as I saw them; they were as characteristic of their genre as the mammoth. Firstly, there were flat harpoons made from deer antlers, with two rows of barbs, similar in all respects to those of the era separating the Paleolithic from the Neolithic, otherwise known as the Tourassian epoch.14 In addition, the old man carried a double-edged throwing-spear and a staff of authority on which a carved image of a mammoth was visible. All three had clubs ornamented with designs surprisingly reminiscent of the designs that are found in Magdalenian strata.

  If an archeologist were to discover such weapons in a cave, no doubt would seem possible to him: he would declare that he was confronted with remains of the Tourassian epoch. Was it necessary to conclude that my indigenes were entitled, in the same way as the mammoth, to be considered as prehistoric creatures? A priori, yes. But they might also be human beings of another time, trapped, by virtue of unknown circumstances, in a territory where a few vestiges of primitive times persisted. Even so, their strange characteristics, their language and their armaments inclined me to admit the former hypothesis.

  It soon became evident that they wanted to take me westwards, I gave way to the old man’s wishes with a good grace, and we continued miming as we went.

  During the march, a kind of familiarity developed in my companions. They touched me occasionally, with a naïve curiosity, sometimes on the arm, sometimes the shoulders, and also the beard; the youngest one then emitted a fearful and puerile little burst of laughter. They also felt my rifle and the sheath of my marine telescope, but more respectfully than my person. They certainly thought me inoffensive, at least so far as they were concerned.

  We arrived at a rock-face in which a large cave opened. The old man started talking and gesticulating again; I was able to understand that he wanted me to wait, and I leaned against an outcrop while my hosts disappeared into the semi-darkness. It was not long before they reappeared, laden with dry wood and strips of meat. The old man and the adolescent girl built a fire. The old woman rubbed a flint against another piece of stone, probably marcasite.15

  A few moments later, the fire was well alight on the threshold of the cave—a fire that I contemplated with a pleasure increased by the aroma of roasting flesh; for three days I had had nothing but pemmican to eat. When the meal was ready, it was served on a flat stone, and I was invited to take part in it. It was one of the best meals of my life, and I speak as a man for whom the culinary art is no mere bagatelle. We washed down the roast with water that the young woman brought from a kind of cistern, and then we sat still, looking at one another. The two women were frankly cheerful; the old man manifested a placidity so absolute that he soon closed his eyes and dozed off.

  As for me, I was strangely happy. The good meal had given me that corporeal security that no moral comfort can replace. The presence of my own kind dispelled the odious impression of solitude that had formerly weighed upon me like the walls of a sepulcher. Even the sensation of being in a quasi-fantastic environment did not displease me at all; it adapted itself to the invincible spirit of adventure that had orientated my existence. Even so, a certain anxiety was reborn. There were doubtless other humans in the vicinity; would they be as benevolent as the old man and his companions? Might they not be prowling slyly around me at this very moment, ready to kill me?

  The two women had drawn closer together. The old one tried to make herself understood, gesticulating frenetically; the young one watched me with her fiery eyes, and I surprised myself by wishing that there might be no other male than the old one in our domain…

  The essential components of the world are here! I said to myself. To populate the planet, one man and one woman are sufficient…

  That idea pleased me, although, in sum, it did not appear to correspond to any reality.

  Suddenly, the old woman uttered a faint cry, and the old man woke up. While cocking an ear, he looked around. Heavy footfalls were shaking the ground.

  IV.

  The approaching footfalls grew louder; rude tusks emerged from the eastern extremity of the rock-face, followed by a trunk, a head like a block of stone and an enormous clay-colored body. It was a mammoth, but not the one I had seen earlier: a ruinous mammoth, balding and wrinkled, with gray hair and a white mane; a mammoth 200 or 300 years old, progressing heavily, its eye vitreous and its limbs stiff.

  At the sight of it, the man and the two women crouched down, extending their arms in a manner that did not reveal any great emotion—neither
joyful nor fearful—and which seemed to me to be ritual. I thought about totemism. By virtue of having existed long before these aged humans, the mammoth probably represented the supreme totem.

  It is good to imitate one’s hosts; I copied my companions’ gestures.

  More footfalls became audible; I was not surprised to see a second mammoth appear, this time similar to the one I had seen earlier—and which, I subsequently learned, was the same one. The ritual gestures were repeated, more sketchily. While I was meditating on these circumstances, the two women got up with a sprightly vivacity. The younger one ran toward the place from which the mammoths had emerged.

  It was not long before lighter footsteps became perceptible. A human form was outlined at the angle of the rock, quickly followed by two others: a man, a woman and a child. The man and the woman considered me with indescribable amazement, mingled with menace. The male detached a harpoon and sketched an aggressive gesture. A few words from the old man stopped him; his astonishment became manifestly peaceful. He was a coarse individual, with a hatchet-face, bold eyes and a heavy jaw. His limbs and their tendons testified to the strength and flexibility of anthropoid apes, with a rhythmic quality that those forest-dwellers lack. The woman was better-looking; she displayed a proud torso with no excess weight, agile limbs and the same black fiery eyes as the girl. As for her face, you would have found it neither disagreeable nor seductive.

  Like my first companions, the newcomers were of a race considerably superior to our black races; for my part, I preferred them to redskins and yellow people. The child, who turned out to be a little girl, seemed to be about five years old; her complexion was a violet so clear that it seemed almost white at a distance.

  I did not know whether to be glad or sorry at the arrival of these individuals. The man gave rise to equivocal impressions within me; he disturbed the dream that I had sketched out. I saw in him a sort of rival and awkward sensations were stirring in the depths of my unconscious.

  Having drawn closer, however, the newcomers were examining me, each in a different manner: the man impassively, the woman with a certain interest, sometimes tinged with unease and sometimes with a fugitive pleasure.

  There was a conversation. The old man and the old woman spoke in turns; they were, I suppose, telling the story of our encounter.

  The Sun reached the low point of its course; the time for sleep had come. The old man went into the cave, signaling to me to follow him. As I went forward, a phenomenon became manifest that was as strange as anything I had seen thus far: the cave was luminous. I had not noticed that from outside, having taken the light for a reflection; it was as bright as moonlight in a clear tropical sky.

  Dry grass had been spread around in the depths of the cave. We installed ourselves there, each of us at our convenience, while the mammoths lay down, one next to the western wall and the other next to the eastern wall.

  I didn’t go to sleep straight away. I was nervous. The phosphorescence, these fabulous companions, my solitude, so many enigmas—everything excited me. My life hung on a caprice: a blow to the head from a club, or a thrust of a harpoon in the heart—I would scarcely have time to perceive that I was being slain. The excess of my weakness was precisely what tranquilized me, eventually. Anticipation became so vain that it was childish. I let myself go, and fell into a sleep as profound as death.

  It would be pointless to recount the minuscule adventures of the days that followed. I became accustomed to my hosts in less than a week, and I learned that there were no other humans in the territory. Thanks to the women, whose curiosity was less torpid than that of the men, I learned to speak the unknown language. I had no lack of leisure time; they lived without great effort by hunting and gathering root-vegetables, wild fruits, mushrooms and edible plants. Only the terrible guttural pronunciation cost me considerable trouble; the rest went smoothly; my friends’ language presented few refinements. Because her diction was clearer and her zeal more lively, the young woman played a preponderant role. The adolescent girl deferred quite naturally to her companion.

  Fearing that the man might become jealous, I tried at first to have recourse to the old man and the old woman, but I soon perceived that I was under a misapprehension. The young male wandered around, hunting, carving flints or antlers, occupying himself with some engraving or design, endowed with the naïve but sure talent of our Magdalenian ancestors. I became convinced that he did not avail himself of his companion and did not covet the young girl. I thought at first that it might be some physical injury, but then I concluded—and was not mistaken—that the sacred instinct did not torment him outside certain seasons. The fact is that he only became amorous in the month of September. I assume, however, that an occasional awakening might have been provoked by a strange female.

  These mores found their correspondence in the women. They too, as I was to learn, only became emotional at times prescribed by millenary instincts, but could be abnormally animated by courtesy of an unexpected circumstance.

  I did not know any of this at first, and I maintained a reserve that was not without its merit. My mores, alas, had the irregularity—or, if you prefer, the excessive regularity—of men of our era; they did not conform to any seasonal regularity. I am, however, the kind of man who would never betray a friend or a host. The singular individuals who had welcomed me into their company and were sharing their nourishment with me merited my respect. Without their possessing our sentiments in their entirety, I credited those sentiments to them in a certain measure; thus, I assumed that they would not grant the young girl to a stranger and I thought that the male possessed the young woman. I acted in consequence, in spite of the temptations to which the most virtuous among us are subject.

  The longer I lived with the young women, the more attractive I found them. The relative coarseness of their features vanished before the extraordinary youthfulness that radiated from them. Any return to Europe seemed to me to be chimerical. That life had an indescribable, and in some respects prodigious, charm. I felt rejuvenated, in myself and in my species. Given all that, it was impossible that my female companions should not become very desirable. How could I have escaped the most natural seductions?

  They increased, and took on an intoxicating, sometimes intolerable, acuity. I often found myself alone with one or other of them, especially the young woman. She followed me around; more curious than the others, she was passionately interested in the things that I could tell her, however rudimentary. When we were tired we sat down side by side. She had a tendency to petting, like an animal, which my relative gentleness encouraged and developed. She leaned against me, her face brushed mine; she bit the nape of my neck or my ear, and sometimes I could not help putting my arm around her waist, which seemed to astonish her.

  One day, when we were resting in that fashion in the shade of a bush, I embraced my companion more passionately, while interrogating her about the caves to which my hosts retired during the winter. Her fiery eyes misted over, her hair flowed over my breast, and her hips had that rhythmic movement which is so dangerous to watch. I felt for the first time that she shared my disturbance…and I was invincibly drawn to lean over her red lips, when a shadow extended over the grass.

  Awah, the male, had arrived. Leaning on his heavy ash-wood club, he seemed enigmatic and formidable.

  V.

  Instinctively, I had cocked my revolver, but I disarmed it immediately. I did not dispute the rights of my hosts, much less those of Awah over the women, and I admitted my culpability. I replaced my weapon in my belt, and awaited events with a fatalism that was a consequence of the singularity of the circumstances.

  Awah, meanwhile, remained silent and continued to observe us. There was nothing astonishing in that; the young man was exceedingly taciturn. When he was not hunting or sleeping he occupied himself in carving, sculpting, engraving or fabricating weapons.

  After a long moment I said: “Is Awah discontented?”16

  He was in no hurry to reply, and I continue
d: “Does Awah not want me to be alone with Touanhô?”

  That question doubtless seemed bizarre to him, for his brow furrowed deeply, as if he were carrying out some difficult task. “Why should the ally not be alone with Touanhô?” he asked, in his hollow voice. “The ally should not go into the Caves of the Dead before having given blood. Then the ally will be a Son of the Mammoth.”

  I remained silent in my turn, trying to understand. Memories of my vagabond life enlightened me, and I replied: “The ally will give blood.”

  Without making any reply, Awah took out a flint knife hidden in the folds of his fur garment and headed toward us. His face was impassive but grim. I wondered whether he might have employed a savage ruse, and whether he might be going to kill me slyly. My fatalism had not abandoned me. I stood up and I let Awah raise my arm and plunge the dagger into my shoulder. It was neat and precise; a trickle of blood spurted out. Awah started sucking the wound; then he invited Touanhô to do likewise, which she did without repugnance, and even with a kind of sensuality.

  “The ally is no longer an ally,” the young man said, covering the wound with leaves. “He is a Son of the Mammoth, like Awah and Touanhô! He may go into the caves.”

  He did not waste time in talk or in needless actions. Having replaced his dagger in his bosom, he drew away with a gait as flexible as that of a leopard in the forest.

  That scene, which had left me almost unmoved, was followed by a sort of vertigo, due to loss of blood. Touanhô noticed my weakness and took me back to the cave, where I slept until the hour that would have corresponded to dusk outside the polar regions. Then I shared the evening meal with the others and went back to sleep.