The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 2)

by André Couvreur

  Monsieur Danator was too far away from us to have overheard our conversation, but one might have thought that he had divined that he was its object, for he was looking at us with an astonished expression. Once again, I had a disagreeable impression of the individual in question, whose clean-shaven face had a complicated bone-structure, in which the brows and jaws formed protrusions outlining the skeleton beneath the taut skin, while the ears, projecting and pointed, were animated by incessant movements, like those of wolves. But the eyes astonished me even more; pierced, as if by a drill, between reddened eyelids, they advertised an extraordinary cerebral feverishness. And he was bald to boot—the full extent of the fellow’s cranium was bald. Even though he never took off the Basque beret with which he covered it, one could see that the polish of his scalp extended all the way to the occiput.

  No, that caricature would not become my father-in-law! Me, apply to him the polite appellations that daughters-in-law employ in familial extravagance…!

  Seeing that he was observed, Monsieur Danator looked away, and Marcel, pointing at the young man who was escorting his partner to her seat now that the dance was over, continued: “Setting aside the singularities of the papa—and it’s not with him, after all, that you’ll be exchanging affection—the son presents himself as the most enviable of husbands. I’ll add that, without having been able to appreciate the extent of his education, I don’t believe he’s an imbecile. He often indulges in witty repartee...”

  “Oh! In poor taste, and, quite often, with a vulgarity of language...”

  “I agree, Made. It’s necessary to excuse him, however, because he’s a fervent imitator of his father, and Monsieur Danator has a predilection for lewd jokes…and then, it’s becoming respectable. That doesn’t prevent him from having a well-nourished memory; from valiantly playing the part of Theramenes;5 from singing operettas pleasantly; from having a weakness for crustaceans, which is a symptom of Epicureanism; and even from risking a few light-hearted swerves in the direction of Parnassus. A poet: what more do you want in order to accept a share in his Pactolus?”

  “It’s just that it would be necessary for me to sleep in his Pactolus.”

  “So what?”

  “And call him Adam.”

  “That’s not so ridiculous.”

  “Adam, not ridiculous? Can you see me, in society, being announced as Madam Adam Danator?”

  “In society, people would be looking at your pearls, not listening to the syllables of your name.”

  “And to kiss him, saying ‘I love you, Adam’ But I’d burst out laughing simply at the thought of being Eve!”

  “Eve would have châteaux and would be grateful to her primal man.”

  “Come on!” I said, bitterly. “I can see that you’re treating the matter far more lightly than I am.”

  Was I mistaken? My reply seemed to sadden him. But one never knew, with him. To penetrate his thoughts required a divination that is not my strong suit. When he emerged from his biological studies, where renown reckoned him to be a first-rate scientist, he armored himself with a paradoxical, mocking wit, and seemed not to believe in anything. I’d only ever been able to catch glimpses of the secrets of his soul, so fugitive and so misleading.…

  I thought, therefore, that it would be futile to confess to him what still put me off Adam Danator. It was the confused but oft-repeated impression that the handsome young man in question lacked personality; that he was like a reflection of someone else; that his ideas were never fitted exactly to the frame of a conversation; that his repartee, although casual, lacked individuality, as if he were reciting his sallies rather than forging them with his own mind. In truth, it would have been quite difficult for me to explain all that to Marcel, and even now that I hold the key to my stupefying conjugal adventure, I have difficulty identifying the exact significance of that psychological eccentricity.

  My suitor had rejoined his father and was sitting down before a lemon squash ordered in advance. I saw Monsieur Danator take a small flask out of his pocket and pour a few drops from it into his son’s drink. They didn’t say a word. The two men, eloquent enough in society, always maintained the most absolute silence when they were reduced to their own company. Adam swallowed the contents of the glass in a single draught, grimacing slightly.

  “It appears to me that his good health nevertheless requires a little care,” I observed to Marcel.

  He responded with the same enigmatic gesture that he had made before. Then he moved his chair to give passage to the young man, who was coming to ask me to dance.

  “It’s another waltz. Papa has ordered waltzes, Mademoiselle Ribaire...”

  I accepted, and we ventured forth to the strains of an old tune delivered as if under protest by the orchestra, which still contrived to give it a tango rhythm. He took me by the waist in the most decent fashion and we set about whirling. He moved with a extraordinary fidelity to the beat; his step never went a centimeter beyond what was required; but what was lacking between us was the accord, the harmony, that results from a kind of unconscious inspiration and inebriates a couple with the rhythm. In fact, I only had to let myself be transported. If, by virtue of an embarrassment resulting from an encounter with other dancers, my feet got out of position, he took no notice and persisted in drawing me onwards, which reestablished the momentum. In the same way, he paid little heed to his neighbors; he jostled them and went on regardless, like a mechanical toy whose spring was unwinding.

  What did I experience in dancing with him?

  First of all, it’s necessary to understand what a young woman can feel in contact with her dancing-partner. Certainly, it’s a question of species. For some, I’m sure, dancing is merely an exercise, a kind of sport, much like running, swimming or cycling. For others, it’s physical means of contenting sentimentality. For others still, to whom it would never occur that pleasure might be supplemented to duty, it’s a pre-conjugal chore. But for me, whose dark hair and a slight down on the lips betray the exigencies of nature, I must confess that the grip of a dancing-partner, whoever he might be, has never failed to cause me a certain indefinable disturbance. So, for the sake of decency, scorn for bodily weakness and the desire to preserve myself for the ideal of a chosen companion, I had resolved never dance again. If I was breaking the rule at that moment, it was only because of the irritation resulting from my conversation with Marcel.

  Oh, that accursed temperament! I would have like so much to provoke Marcel’s jealousy without any injury to my virginal resolutions! Well, even so, I had the disappointment of weakening again in the grip of that young man. It was, however, rude—his grip, that is. To adapt me to his gyratory movement, he went so far as to make me suffer; while he retained an even respiration, I ran out of breath, suffocating; no fluidity can be exchanged with a dancer who directs his gaze blissfully toward the variegated canvas of the dance-floor, whirling without any apparent care except avoiding false steps, and not even replying to my plea to moderate his pace…and yet, in his arms, I became once again the perturbed woman that I only wanted to be with Marcel...

  Oh, that accursed temperament!

  At the same time as the orchestra, my waltzer stopped dead, as if at the flick of a switch, without a gasp, without a drop of sweat, cool and calm, as radiant as he had been before the gymnastics.

  We went back to the table where Marcel was waiting for me. Adam hesitated for a moment, wondering whether he ought to go back to his father or stay. But Monsieur Danator came in his turn to sit down with us, bringing two bottles of extra-dry that he had just ordered.

  In that seaside resort, as in all seaside resorts, and, in a more general sense, in all collectivities, where everyone’s slightest gestures are observed and interpreted in the most unfavorable fashion, the ostentatious movement of the Danators to join us would have been considered to be the consequence of an invitation that I had carefully refrained from offering. What! Those gentlemen, always so reserved, so haughty, who only appeared on the beach an
d in the Pergola as if they were slumming, and departed again almost immediately in their limousine for the inaccessible retreat in Ciboure, were lingering at the nocturnal festival and swilling champagne in the company of that little adventuress Ribaire and her boy-friend Marcel Germaud! Could one imagine such a solicitation? Which of the two, then—the father or the son—was chasing after that slut without a sou? For no one knew as yet about the marriage proposal that had been made to me, and could only think in terms of gallantry.

  All gazes were, therefore, directed at me, and the most fiery, the most hateful, was bulging from the orbits of Mademoiselle de Laricarière. For want of being able to flirt with Adam, she was leaning, while laughing in bursts, toward her temporary squire, Guy Frappart, a middle-aged man, monocled, with dyed hair, the owner of a large canning factory, and a cynical poisoner. He detested me because he had paid insolent court to me for indecent motives, which had earned him a sharp rejection. He had also attempted in vain to get into Monsieur Danator’s good books in order to interest him in a few business proposals, with the result that the pleasure he was taking in his neighbor’s jokes was simultaneously responsive to my intransigence and his lack of success with the billionaire.

  Once the venom had been spat out, however, we were forgotten; the fête went on, the orchestra launched enthusiastically into a foxtrot and Monsieur Danator, uncorking the extra-dry, sent a jet of foam on to the floor, like one of Molière’s physicians. He grimaced his joy at having so fortunately missed his aim. After which, having filled our glasses, he occupied himself with supplying his son with another orangeade, into which he immediately poured a few drops from his flask—a touching solicitude, but one that diminished my suitor.

  “Don’t be astonished,” said Monsieur Danator, as if in reply to my interior observation. “I need to pay as much attention to him as a new-born baby. That’s because he is, like all poets, always in quest of a caesura or a rhyme, so he forgets the contingencies. But you should see his verses! They’re incomparable, exquisite in their imagery and musicality! I don’t think Hugo could do any better. Oh, there will be, for his wife, a fine mission with regard to my little Pindar…to assist him to create! Drink, Adam!”

  He held out the glass, but—a further surprise—the polite Adam brought a cooked crab out of the pocket of his smoking jacket, cracked its shell, and started sucking at it avidly.

  “Adam!” protested his father, impetuously.

  But the other continued devouring his prey regardless, with a savage appetite and an animal joy, showing off his shiny teeth. Then, Monsieur Danator gave him a stare charged with such menace that Adam recovered his sense of propriety and immediately abandoned his crab, dropping it into his trouser pocket. All of that happened very rapidly, in less time than it takes to write, but I took note of it because all such details would ultimately become valuable to me in understanding the whims of the man who wanted to be my husband.

  Furthermore, Adam apologized immediately.

  “Forgive me, Mademoiselle, for having allowed myself to be carried away by my seafood delicacy. Papa is very strict with me, but you will be more indulgent than him, on learning that I adore crustaceans, and that not a day goes by without me saying to Heaven, in my prayers: ‘Thank you for the crayfish!’ It even happens that I am greedy enough to extract them from dinner plates and regale myself with them outside meal times. That annoys my father, because I no longer have an appetite when I sit down at table—but if you knew how tastily crabs are prepared at the villa! Our below stairs got the recipe from a great popular writer, who got it himself from Alexandre Dumas père—and you can’t be unaware that the latter was a fine cook, and gladly tickled the stove in between two pages of a novel or two scenes of a play. It was a salutary relaxation for him; he returned all the more willingly to his literary creations when he had created a culinary recipe. Thus, great minds constrain their genius to occupations that seem inferior, but which are really not, for there is poetry in a dish that is able to excite the gustatory papillae...”

  “Enough, my little Epicurean!” Monsieur Danator interjected. “Drink your orangeade!” He handed the beverage to his son, who drank it meekly. Then, turning to me, the scientist said: “When you give us the pleasure of coming to lunch at Immaculate Conception, you’ll see that my Eliacin doesn’t make reckless promises.6 I flatter myself on having a table where one is able to pig out.” He clicked his tongue.

  I detested his vulgarity. In general, the argot and puns of which Monsieur Danator frequently and triumphantly made use, were odious to me.

  Perhaps he understood that, for, putting on his utmost grace, he said: “I invite you too, Monsieur Germaud. You shall taste our crustaceans. I’ve obtained from the State the privilege of importing the sea into my home, in order to cultivate marine invertebrates while carrying out interesting experiments upon them. But aren’t you in the same boat as myself, in a small way?”

  “A small way?” I protested. “But Monsieur Germaud is one of our greatest scientists! He’s an assistant at the Museum. His work, which will soon earn him a promotion to the teaching staff, is widely cited. You must certainly know about his celebrated experiments in biogenesis.”

  “Biogenesis?”

  “Yes, biogenesis…all those troubling incursions into the realm of life. It’s impossible that you’re unaware of the discoveries of Dr. Stéphane Leduc of Nantes, and several other scientists, who cause plants to grow, and it seems, even rudimentary animals, simply by introducing chemical compounds into pure water.” 7

  “I have indeed heard vague rumor of them, but do explain...”

  He was encouraging me to talk about a subject about which I was passionate. Marcel, who had deployed his powerful intelligence in that regard, had nourished my appetite for it on many an occasion. Thus, forgetting that I was addressing a man who must secretly be laughing at the poverty of my knowledge, I let myself go.

  “They are, in fact, very disturbing, these experiments that lead one to think that the scepter of creation might one day pass from the hand of the good God to you or me...”

  “Let’s say to me,” sniggered Monsieur Danator, “because you...”

  “I have no pretentions,” I conceded, “inasmuch as I have Faith—Faith, it is true, is not eroded by these facts, given that divine power floats high above the miserable interpretations of this world, but paleontology confirms that the first creatures appeared in the waters of the sea, in an epoch when our globe had a much higher temperature than it does today, when physical phenomena were predominant. Under the influence of those phenomena of heat and electricity, solutions of colloids and crystalloids formed, which, separated by membranes through which exchanges were effectuated and subject to osmotic influence, constituted living beings. Such is the work of nature. But the genius of humans can repeat these processes in the laboratory, Benedikt, in Vienna; Raphael Dubois, in Lyon; Jules Félix, in Brussels, and others, notably Le Foll,8 by putting certain salts in water, have obtained these so-called osmotic crossovers, which are, in sum, organic beings similar in all respects to plants or to animals, disposed like the tissues of our bodies. But the palm still goes to Professor Leduc, who specified the dynamics of life, and for whom it’s child’s play to reproduce the phenomena and structure of living tissue.”

  I had finished reeling off my little scientific speech, and I was rather proud of it, but Monsieur Danator asked: “Are the plants and animals that all these worthy people have produced capable of reproducing themselves?”

  “Reproducing themselves?”

  “Yes—by coupling with one another?”

  The question was too inappropriate for me to respond to it. I understood his meaning well enough: he was asking me whether the osmotic growths were capable of renewing life in the natural fashion that drives creatures to combine their seeds under the force of amour. But how could I appear to understand such an indecent question? I lowered my eyes modestly.

  “I see, then, that nothing has been accomplished,
” sniggered Monsieur Danator. “Well, you can tell this Leduc of Nantes, if you ever run into him, that one doesn’t call oneself a Duc when one is only good for scrubbing the laboratory sink…and this Benedikt of Vienna that it’s a blessing that I don’t have his backside within range of my foot…and this Dubois of Lyon that he’ll never be the wood with which a scientist lights his fire, and this Félix of Brussels that Virgil, if he were alive today, would never have written Félix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas!9…and this Le Foll…oh, yes, mad is he who has who is proud of that…and to the others, all the others, you can say crap! because, you see, even if their artificial growths scar their wounds, they haven’t realized the function that completes the synthesis of life—which is to say, sequential reproduction!”

  He gulped a mouthful of champagne, belched copiously and concluded: “From M’sieu le Duc de Nantes with the coat-of-arms bearing academic palms of a field of gules10 to Le Foll bearing a fool’s bauble over a green-clad merchant’s mouth, they’re all peasants of science. You tell them that, Germaud! And you’ll get to eat oysters à la Danator, and lick your chops over them.”

  He formed a kind of cup with his hands. “You line a dish the size of a field with a layer of butter, a layer of oysters, a layer of grated cheese and a layer of breadcrumbs; then more butter, oysters, grated cheese and breadcrumbs, and so on, ad libitum. You bake it in the oven for twenty minutes, after sprinkling more breadcrumbs on it…and then, my children, it flows like the milk of Paradise between your jaws. Get away, like the meconium of the infant Jesus! All washed down with a top-notch Johannisberg. People quit my table shouting ‘Long live Papa Danator!’”

  Thanks to the influence of the extra-dry—I was on my third glass—I wasn’t shocked by the fellow’s insensate language and convulsive gestures. My resentment against Marcel had also melted into a mild optimism. I could have thanked him for understanding my need for luxury and encouraging me to satisfy it.