The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 2)

by André Couvreur

  The display-cases contained jewelry, diamonds, inestimable gems, Saxe trinkets and antique fans, each of which would have been worth a small fortune to collectors. It was, in sum, an incredible accumulation of treasures, and I was forcibly submissive to its attractions, by virtue of the fact that I was soon to share them. Their owner, however, did not appear to prize them as much as me, for he submitted them to us like a man in haste to finish with the exhibition.

  All the rooms were empty; there were no staff in the suite. I could not help remarking: “Who guards all these precious things, then?”

  “Oh, the most precious ones aren’t here,” said Monsieur Danator, smiling. “I have a horror of everything servile, so I dispense with it. I have something better…”

  He had just gone through a doorway giving access to a room of smaller dimensions, whose contents intrigued us. There were no ornament there, and no furniture—nothing but machinery with mysterious components, working in silence and projecting their life in brief electric sparks. In the middle there was a metal slab, like a table for surgical operations.

  “My power sources!” declared Monsieur Danator. “Here are my domestics. You’ll see shortly how the service is carried out, without anyone having to shout. My academician and I take care of all this.”

  We would have liked to examine that curious apparatus at close range, but Monsieur Danator blocked the doorway to prevent us passing through. It was necessary to give up, to go back through the drawing rooms, to end up via a complicated stairway, in the basements.

  As vast as the superstructure, with as many floors, built of stone and concrete, they extended deep underground; and without seeing them, we divined the presence of a series of kitchens, pantries and cellars were the preparation was in progress of a meal whose succulent odors whetted our appetite. There was still the same abandonment, however: not a single human being to be seen. It was all the more disquieting because, as we went further down, we reached a floor that was quivering under a profound onslaught.

  “What’s that noise?” I asked.

  “The sea! The sea, which I invite in now and again, when I have need of it. Then I open my floodgates.

  “To do what?”

  “How curious you are, my child! To aliment my breeding-grounds.”

  “Oh yes—the famous crustaceans you promised us.”

  “And others even more famous.”

  “Shall we see them?”

  “Not today. One day, perhaps, if I obtain from you...”

  “What?”

  “A collaboration...”

  “Oh, don’t count on me—I’m utterly ignorant.”

  “No great science in required for those endeavors,” sniggered Monsieur Danator, without any further explanation—but my astonishment prompted him to continue speaking. “Opening floodgates, cultivating crustaceans, and even simply sweeping the kitchens—that demands, in every case, considerable skill; and no one else has shown...”

  “My strengths?”

  I could not obtain anything more. We had, in any case, reached an iron door that opened automatically and gave us access to a sloping corridor along which Monsieur Danator preceded us. The subterranean rumble became louder; I had the impression that the sea, whose tide was rising, was directly underfoot. The illumination was becoming sparser, it was only emitted by green-tinged lamp-posts emerging from the wall, sometimes simulating a human arm and sometimes a leg that had been subject to the action of the waters, which leave a calcareous deposit on objects immersed therein for a long time.

  After a journey that seemed to me to be interminable, so sinister was it, Monsieur Danator stopped in front of another door, which was armored.

  “We can’t go any further. This is my laboratory. We’re underneath the mass of rocks that you noticed when we arrived. Light is behind it: fecund Light; but it’s for me alone. For you, the return to the other.”

  He pushed us into an elevator, which, in a matter of seconds, following an oblique trajectory, took us back into the open air, in the grounds.

  Oh, what a contrast! What a relief it was to emerge from those catacombs, all the more so as the place was a rose-garden delightfully adorned with the most splendid blooms. I was still so affected by the enigma of the subterranean workings that I started touching the delicate flowers, to convince myself that they were not artificial.

  O bliss! Their flesh was alive, their perfume natural; they owed their colors to the true sun.

  Pacified, reassured and emotional, I extended myself voluptuously in a rocking chair, from which the view, from that elevated spot, extended over the entire bay, the glittering sea and the ribbon of foam skirting the shore.

  Monsieur Danator having left us alone in order to go in quest of his son, the moment seemed propitious for me to have a brief conversation with Marcel. I invited him to sit down.

  “Well, my dear Marcel, you’re not saying anything. It seems to me, however, that something has changed since yesterday evening.”

  “Since this morning, my dear Made. It was one o’clock when we parted.”

  “I won’t quibble. But there was still the night, and the night brought me counsel. I’ve made the big decision, you see, and I’ve taken the course that you indicated to me. I hope that no one will have cause to regret it. Anyway, it’s too late...”

  Futile banter, sterile rancor! He wasn’t even listening to me. The furrows in his brow did not originate from our completed affection...

  “Tell me, Made, do you remember, in the course of the tour we’ve just made, that in order to get into the basements, we had to pass through a thick iron door, and that the door in question opened automatically in front of us and closed behind us of its own accord?”

  “Is that all my conversation inspires in you?” I said, vexed.

  “Let’s not waste time,” he said. “Perhaps we’ll get back to questions of sentiment one day. For the time being, I’d rather concentrate on the matter I’ve just submitted to you. Do you remember?”

  “Yes, we did indeed go through a door.”

  “Did you notice the gesture that Monsieur Danator made before going through it?”

  “The gesture? No.”

  “That man is fantastic...” Marcel reflected.

  “But his son is so charming,” I insinuated.

  “His son? Yes, his son...” My companion approved, with a smile that brought me back to the mystery of that heart, smitten with me, I was sure, but which was nevertheless surrendering me to another.

  The other in question, Adam, soon appeared in the frame of the rose-garden. He was dressed in white and chatting in a familiar fashion with his father, linking arms with him. With the aid of my resentment, I compared his slightly affected but nevertheless harmonious grace, and the perfection of his features, with Marcel’s still meditative and anxious expression: the latter the heir of many generations of civilization, weakened and tormented by thought; the former representing a new race in constant contact with nature, in which the sentimental imprint is merely the flower of the flesh, even in a poet. And I knew that in matters of amour, happiness does not adapt well to complication.

  At least, I strove to believe in that promising simplicity. But what followed in the course of that day demonstrated the risks of making such a rapid diagnosis, and that there were in that young man, along with an evident naivety, disconcerting symptoms of a singularly curious intellectuality.

  “We still have ten minutes before lunch,” said Monsieur Danator. “Time for a little tour of the grounds.”

  Adam, clutching me with an energy that recalled that of the dance, drew me toward a wood of fir-trees backing on to the mass of rocks. To tell the truth, it pleased me to feel myself so close to that beautiful young body, and also to imagine that our intimacy might annoy Marcel, who was following us in the company of Monsieur Danator.

  “You have a truly marvelous property,” I said. “But tell me, isn’t your father joking in affirming that you have no other domestics but that n
egro?”

  The question was quite precise, and I expected and answer as simple as the question. He did not give me one, and subjected me more impetuously to his grip.

  “It’s said, Made, that a man’s most beautiful day is that of his first communion. Here I am, then, arrived at my finest day, since it is given to me to commune for the first time, genuinely, with you. I can imagine what the rutting of the wild beasts of the equatorial regions must be like, and that of cetaceans in the depths of the sea, or even the fusion of energies in the Heavens that produce lightning. All that is, in fact, nothing but the enthusiasm of life: the life that is turbulent in every particle of matter, and couples in order to create a lion cub, a whale pup or a spark. Everything tends to create; that’s the law of the cosmos, is it not? And we’re going to dispose ourselves to create too.”

  Looking at my cleavage, he added: “Will we have the strength to wait?”

  “We’ll have to, Monsieur Adam. But set that subject aide and answer my previous question. I asked you about the lack of staff.”

  For the second time, I was surprised to hear him go astray.

  “The union of beings as I conceive it is not the banal and comical act in which the generality indulges. Personally, I want it ornamented with the most beautiful flowers of the ideal, in close accord with my personal morality. My Creator has endowed me with a powerful conscience: let virtue be similarly the lot of my companion. Oh, that doesn’t weaken the transport of the senses! I can even tell you, although I’m a novice in such matters, that you’ll experience delightful emotions in my arms. I intend, moreover, to give them to you well before our marriage. I am documented, Mademoiselle; I have ploughed my way through technical works; the religion of the Kama Sutra has no secrets for me. You’ll see…you’ll see, Mademoiselle...”

  His persistence on that particular subject was extremely annoying. I would have pulled free of him at that moment if the sound of a siren, blasting forth over the property, had not made me shudder. I interrogated him regarding that sinister sound, evoking the terror of the Boche aircraft launched forth to destroy Paris and the precipitate flights into the cellars. Doubtless carried away by its suggestion, however, Adam did not reply. He had, moreover taken on a new expression, of an animal anticipating its fodder; his nostrils were quivering, his lips advancing like chops. Stranger still, his eyes had changed color; from the green they had been before, they had become bright chestnut.

  “Feeding time!” cried Monsieur Danator.

  We headed back to the villa, and as the peculiarity of the modification of my fiancé’s eyes had piqued my curiosity, I noticed that they were blue again once we were out of the wood, and that they were flecked with gold when we reached the vast room decked out in Cordovan leather where the table was set.

  That’s curious, I reflected. He’s a chameleon in terms of his eyes...

  The negro was waiting for us. Solemn in his masquerade costume, he was to serve us on his own. In fact, we could have done without his assistance, for he had no other mission than changing the plates and pouring the drinks, while the rest of the service was accomplished automatically, the dishes emerging from a golden centerpiece laden with flowers and reaching us individually on little carts, from which we only had to collect them. That permitted each of us to be nourished in a different fashion.

  “My means would allow me to employ more servants than there were in the court of Louis XIV,” Monsieur Danator explained, “but I have a horror of wage-slaves and a dread of spies, and it pleases me to show you how mechanical genius can simplify existence. You will one day be propagandists for these customs, my good friends, once I have sold my system to America, where the servant problem is much more acute than in the Old World. I shall obtain a profit from it at least as considerable as that from my oil wells—and those new resources, as well as aiding me to perfect my work, will permit me to spoil my dear Adam, my dear Made and the numerous children that will certainly result from their coupling to an even greater extent. Now, let’s eat!”

  Oh, that feast...

  The hors-d’oeuvres first; I would never have imagined that they could exist in such superabundance. The golden centerpiece disgorged them incessantly. There were mollusks extracted from their shells and bathed in unexpected sauces, energetically spiced with nutmeg, cloves and salep; then there were compositions of garden cress, celery, Siberian groundsel and herb Bennet. Perhaps, on another occasion, I would have refused those delicacies, but I don’t know what gastronomic enthusiasm had taken hold of me, in accord with a nervous excitement, a very particular animal affection that I had never felt before, which made me desire that Adam, who was sitting next to me, should feel the same satisfaction in them as I did.

  Frequently, by means of signs, Monsieur Danator instructed his academician to serve me a generous wine, and I emptied my glass as soon as it was filled. By contrast, Adam drank nothing but water. That beverage, however, seemed to stimulate him as much as my draughts stimulated me, and as if he shared my intoxication, his feet soon imprisoned mine, without my trying to withdraw them.

  “Oysters à la Danator!” announced our host.

  The little vehicles brought us each a copious portion of a grated dish, scented with garlic, browned to perfection, of a succulence that had not been predicted in error. A sauce accompanied it: white for Adam, brown for me and green for the other guests. I did not imagine that there might be principles within that sauce diversified other than by color; I though it simply a culinary whim, and I would, in any case, have been quite incapable of asking myself why Adam, Monsieur Danator and Marcel were eating in a completely different fashion from me.

  My delight at the dish, however, became such that I welcomed without drawing away—on the contrary, by drawing even closer—an excessive impertinence on Adam’s part. Was he not my fiancé, after all, and could I forbid him to plunge a hand under the table to establish whether I had a well-turned calf? I only feel offended now, on writing these memoirs and recalling the sudden disintegration of my moral sensibility, which made me grant to a newcomer things that I would never have tolerated the day before from a man to whom I was ready to sacrifice everything.

  I ought to have blushed all the more because, although the centerpiece isolated Adam and me from Marcel and Monsieur Danator, sitting opposite, it was impossible that my fiancé’s conduct escaped the notice of the latter. He had, it is true, begun to talk science, but I divined that he was observing us and that such big technical words as biogenesis and karyogenesis were emitted more to render his voice complicit in his son’s libertinage than to continue a scientific discussion with Marcel. Well, believe it or not, I did not seek to understand the reason for his excessive indulgence for the impassioning effects of nature on Adam and myself.

  Dishes succeeded one another automatically. We were brought roasted thrushes perfumed with amber, truffles in champagne, gingery sweetmeats, nutmeg ice-cream. All those unexpected spices, although exquisite, augmented my thirst, and the negro contented it. Careful as he was not to leave my glass empty, however, there came a time when my neighbor’s water came to seem desirable. I picked up his glass to slake my thirst.

  “But it’s sea-water!” I exclaimed, pushing it away.

  “Not at all!” Monsieur Danator explained. “I’ve been giving him, for the sake of his health, ever since he was born, salts of sodium and calcium. He’s acquired a taste for them, the dear boy, and now, he can no longer do without them.”

  In order to get rid of that disagreeable taste, it was necessary for me to revert to the good offices of the academician, and a few full glasses, newly ingurgitated, saturated me to the point at which Adam was able to resume his documentation of the anatomy of my leg.

  “The negro!” I protested, this time. “The negro!”

  Well, yes, it was a strange inspiration I had then, to invoke the presence of the negro. It’s well known, in accordance with a well-known saying, that the specimen of humanity in question is linked to the idea of p
ersistence, so Adam persisted. I was obliged, in order to avoid a scandal, to renounce protesting. Putting up my hands to cover my face, red with confusion—unless it was with guilty satisfaction—I waited, sighing, for him to finish informing himself as to my musculature. He only decided to do so after having extracted a little stifled cry from me. I would find it difficult to specify, so troubling was that moment, whether it was a cry of indignation or corporeal delight.

  Take note of my new-found guile. I had just been subjected to a veritable assault, I had even participated in it, but I had waited until it was consummated to raise a protest!

  “Have you quite finished pawing me in that fashion?” I whispered, then.

  I swear to you that, at that moment, I hated my fiancé. I sensed, in my intoxicated body, the rigorous soul of a Lucrece.14 And that reparatory force, took me back toward my Marcel. Yes, I would have thrown myself at his knees in repentance; I would have covered his hand—so pure and so respectful a hand—with tears. I needed, like holy water, like limpidity of his protective gaze.

  To find that gaze, to obtain that sweet benefit, I sought it through the flowers of the centerpiece. Alas, I only encountered the leering eye of Monsieur Danator. Immediately put off the scent, however, the latter resumed talking science, with an affectation by which I was not deceived. Then he stood up, to address the compliment to me that every father-in-law addresses to the newcomer to his hearth at the end of an engagement meal.

  I vaguely remember that he associated science and nature in his toast, and made them the foundations of our happiness, and that he then extended himself in ingenious comparisons relative to the fecundatory power of sea-water. That the circumstance in question might have any connection with our marriage, I would have been incapable of recognizing even in a normal state, and Marcel was doubtless no better off, although he was approving his host’s statements, with brief nods of the head.