The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 2)

by André Couvreur

  “I don’t doubt your erudition, Adam,” I interjected, “but our love...”

  “I’m getting there. The bulls are selected with a great deal of care, and the cows employed in reproduction...”

  “What! It’s by means of base comparisons, Adam, that you intend to talk about the sentiment that animates us!”

  “Nothing is base in nature,” he protested, gravely, “And the original act is as respectable among the bovine species as in our own. You can, in an instant, observe the influence of the female on the male—comparable to the influence you exercise on me—when you see that it is sufficient for the bull, engaged in the ardors of battle, to see a cow appear, immediately to renounce the combat and follow her to the bull-pen, while covering himself with shame. I love you as much, Made, and for the same reason.”

  No! That, amorous dialogue? I was extremely offended. What a frightful fiancé, to debase me to that extent! To dare to talk like a zoologist who makes all acts of nature parallel and assimilates women to female animals! What! He was coolly comparing me to a cow! What was he, then? My vexation did not even award him the superiority of the powerful spouse over the udder-bearer…their child, at the most: but it was a golden calf, and I refrained from an acerbic response.

  Anyway, he did not even suspect my indignation. Having completed his declaration, he returned to his contemplation of the arena. I thought that he might be composing some verse, and respected his silence.

  Oh, how I would have wished the same mutism on Monsieur Danator! He expressed his impatience to see a performance that was making him wait too long by howling. I was upset, humiliated—but I will note in passing that it was usually at moments when the father was most subject to the ambience that the son was most detached from me. And yet, the crowd was fully assembled; the terraces and the benches were swarming; the president of the ceremony, having arrived at his box, next to ours, a moment before, had already waved his handkerchief to signal the beginning of the combats.

  “They’re not starting, then! Give us back our money!” shouted Monsieur Danator, gesticulating.

  That small stub of a man was making such a fuss that the president repeated his signal. This time, it was obeyed. In accordance with the ritual, two mounted alguazils wearing costumes from the time of Philip II initially came forward to salute, and then returned to introduce the cortege. A brass band, striking up the overture to Carmen, acclaimed the entrance of the masquerade of the toreros, with Chiquitetto to the right of the front rank. Then the espadas followed in their quadrilles; then the picadors, without their spears, upright on their blinkered horses; then two trios of caparisoned mules, drawing the special armature for the removal of dead beasts; then, bringing up the rear, the arena servants. The cohort steered toward the president’s box, offered him the homage of the toreros; the sumptuous mantles were exchanged for capes, and the handkerchief, waved again, gave the order to the bull-pen to release the first bull.

  That was all that I wanted to see of the frightful action. I closed my eyes. But Monsieur Danator’s enthusiasm kept me informed. It was no longer shouts that he was emitting; they were yelps.

  “Olé! Toro! Olé!”

  Dear Adam! How I thanked him secretly for retaining his impassivity. I hoped that he was disapproving, and to show that I approved of his disapproval, I grasped his hand—but the contact was icy; I obtained no reciprocity.

  “Come on, Adam, what do you think of it? Are you enjoying this spectacle, or, like me are you experiencing nothing but horror?”

  Nothing. He did not descend from the summits of his interior lyricism. Perinde ac cadaver,16 as the Latinists say. That sang-froid disconcerted me.

  Monsieur Danator’s frenetic cries rose above those of the crowd, informing me that the bull had just been put to death. I dared to risk a peep at the sacrificed beast, which the team of mules was removing from the arena. During the few minutes of respite which followed that first encounter between savages and a civilized animal, had the satisfaction of seeing Adam revive. Now he squeezed my hand. He even quoted me a few lines of verse, the fruits of his meditation:

  And the bull is dragged away

  When it has had its day

  Regretting its mortal pain

  Never to see Pamplona again!

  My God, it didn’t match up to Corneille, but it demonstrated that beneath his marmoreal appearance, Adam was vibrant, and I started applauding.

  “You see!” said Monsieur Danator, triumphantly. “You see that brain, always in gestation! Never judge my Adam by exterior signs. He’s not a demonstrative man. On the contrary, it’s when he experiences the most that he least demonstrative, and if he sometimes seems as if he’s far away from you, make no mistake: that will be the moment when he’s closest of all. In him, everything happens here and here.” He touched his forehead, and then his heart. Immediately, he added: “I’m designating, there and there, the organs in which it is customary to locate the sentiments, but in truth, the brain, with its asymmetrical arabesques, is a jelly, as I shall prove, as futile as its is ridiculous; and the heart, as I shall similarly demonstrate one day, is a gizzard that one can do without.”

  After concluding that psychophysiological digression, Monsieur Danator redirected his interest to the arena again. A second bull had just appeared there. Again I closed my eyes, but I might as well have looked, for the combat presented nothing that could have offended my sensibility. I gathered from the protests of the crowd, and the blasts of a whistle of extraordinary stridency, sufficient to perforate my eardrum, employed by Monsieur Danator, that the animal was not in a bellicose humor; it scarcely reacted to the provocations of the banderillas and disdained the toreador’s red cape. They were obliged to get rid of it by resorting to the seductions of a cow, which drew it away for the butcher’s stall.

  However, the third engagement, with followed it immediately, was even worse. This time, the matador’s adversary scarcely came out of the bull-pen. It gazed at the sunlit sky, wonderingly, at the excited crowd, indulgently, and at the men charged with destroying it, stupidly. Then it ran away from the first banderilla like a cab-horse, and the cow returned for a second time, to inspire it with the idea of a prudent retreat.

  The storm that followed that second failure was unimaginable. Monsieur Danator joined in with insults that I dare not be reproduced here. As I’ve already said his excessive emotions was always translated by means of a vocabulary of obscenities; he gave it free rein, his fist raised, his lips drooling, and his entire being epileptic. He was still quivering when the fourth bull arrived, bounding.

  It was an Andalusian of such massive beauty that I could not help admiring it. I did not regret it subsequently. Short in the leg, with a thick muzzle and a powerful neck, clad in a shiny pelt, it reacted with an unparalleled violence, terrorizing those who pursued it, forcing them to seek refuge behind the barriers. It was rapidly introduced to the presence of the picadors, but the first one that it tried to gore, frightened by the violence of the attack and awkward in judging his defense, unleashed such a thrust with his spear that the instrument, insufficiently padded, penetrated the deep tissues and killed it outright.

  Then there was a collective delirium. Never, I’m sure, in all human revolts was such fury let loose as by that third spoiled fight in a program of six. The spectators invaded the arena assaulting the performers. Others, after having broken up the terraces and the barriers, set fire to the debris. The smoke rose up into the sky, while the madmen danced around the blaze.

  The president ran away; the police joined in with the rioters. I was grazed by a photographer’s tripod intended to punish a stable-hand who sought refuge in our box. When I turned to my companions, frightened and trembling, for protection, Monsieur Danator was no longer there; he had abandoned us to join the incendiaries.

  “Adam! Let’s go!” I begged.

  But what did his attitude signify? One might have thought that he hadn’t heard me. He plunged his hand into his pocket and brought out
some candy, which he chewed tranquilly. Philosophy or insensitivity? Gluttony or cerebral fatigue? I wanted to know.

  “Come on, Adam, answer me! You sit there stuffing your face while I’m in danger: do you know that you’re going to make me doubt your love? Didn’t you see, then, that I was nearly wounded? That that photographer’s tripod nearly cracked my skull? And you’re nibbling! And all these crazed people leave you cold! What if the fire reaches our box? What if they start fighting here? What if they surround me, trample me?”

  Nothing. Not a sound, not a gesture. He chewed. At the most, he smiled vaguely. Oh, his father had warned me that his emotions never got off the launching-pad...but to that extent!

  “How strange you are, Adam. You haven’t even thought of offering me a sweet.”

  He didn’t flinch. Irritated, I snatched one of his delicacies and put it into my mouth. What horror! Beneath its tempting appearance, I bit into a sickening composition that left me an aftertaste of rotting fish.

  It was all becoming increasingly strange, and I would have exercised my curiosity further if Monsieur Danator hadn’t rejoined us. Calm and self-controlled, before any resumption of conversation, he interrogated us with an inquisitive gaze, as if he wanted to divine what we had just been saying to one another. Then he tried to be charming.

  “Well, young lovers, have you reached an understanding while Papa Danator was teaching those jokers a lesson?”

  “To reach an understanding one has at least to talk—and your son is scarcely chatty,” I admitted.

  “Great sentiments in him, are mute, as I’ve observed, my child. Anyway, why talk, when actions can replace words so effectively?”

  “In terms of actions, Monsieur Danator, he has shown himself equally discreet.”

  “And rightly so. Discretion is a quality that I’ve taught him since he emerged from the waters...”

  I must have mimed my astonishment at those words, for he immediately put his head in his hands in the fashion of an aggravated man. “What am I saying? Chase away the physiologist and he returns at a gallop!” And to correct his slip of the tongue, he explained at length that a child in his mother’s womb—he said “belly”—floated in a liquid that he called “the waters” and was nourished there by blood thanks to a special cord known as the umbilical cord. From there to deducing that, by virtue of tugging on that cord, a man acquired, while in the fetal state, the soul of a concierge, was merely a matter of hyperbolic wordplay, in which Monsieur Danator never failed to indulge.

  Nevertheless, the explanation left me pensive. Fortunately, I was extracted from my thoughtfulness by the good grace with which Adam, entirely returned to reality, occupied himself with me from then on. Although he had seemed non-existent a moment before, an interior light was manifest in him now. He made a thousand gallant remarks, helping me on with my topcoat and offering me his arm to take me to the automobile. He even protected me from the crowd, which was still overexcited, with a presence of mind and an authority that revealed that he was once again entirely aware of contingencies. His father followed close on our heels, and that vigilant bodyguard augured well for the defenders that I would later find in them.

  “To Saint-Jean-de-Luz—the tennis courts!” said Monsieur Danator to the chauffeur, who took the wheel this time.

  He insisted that we should take the back seat, while he installed himself facing us. Then he closed his eyes and appeared to go to sleep—but I don’t believe that he was asleep, because I had the intuition that his thoughts were watching us and that, if he was pretending to sleep, it was in order that we should think that we were isolated and better able to indulge in amorous conversation.

  At least insofar as Adam was concerned, the conversation did become very affectionate. As the auto, now sagely driven, took us through the countryside, he took advantage of the slightest aspects of the route and the merest incidents to adapt his language to them, to extract comparisons therefrom and elevate them to the level of lyricism.

  To be sure, I observed that his conversation still departed from a natural bases—that when, for example, he described our future hearth, it was because the inspiration was provided by a mother hen protecting her chicks; and he then embarked upon dense documentation of the prolific virtues of the cock, which rendered homage to his companions thirty or forty times a day; and from there he arrived at the ardors of the rat, and from there at scientific observations of the pullulation of seed-germs in nature, and the power that a man would possess who was able to surpass them, in order to create his peers by means of banal fecundatory force, and cause life to emerge from an alembic…and all those physiological considerations seemed to me to lack pertinence; but he gave them a kind of comparative enterprise, a kind of poetry, that removed them from the terrain of pedagogy and ended up enchanting me.

  At the same time, he had taken my hand, and I felt a generous warmth circulating in his; he contemplated me with such adoration that if I hadn’t been seduced by his words, I certainly would have been by the eloquence of his eyes.

  O Marcel, Marcel, absurd in your disdain, how clearly I perceived that I would rapidly relegate you from my heart, and that young women are crazy who persist in a dream when so many other dreams can be born with the aid of so many inspirers!

  Unworthy Marcel! No, you would no longer count for anything now that Adam, passing on from amoro-scientific lyricism to more positive demonstrations, renewed, thanks to paternal slumber, the exquisite knaveries of the day before and pushed audacity to the discovery, I believe I remember, of the contour of my knee, and that once again, my whole being quivered with pleasure...

  “We’re here!” Our chaperon had suddenly woken up.

  Before crossing the bridge that separates Ciboure from Saint-Jean-de-Luz, the auto took a right turn and dropped us off at the tennis courts.

  It’s a pleasant location: a rustic chalet permits people to eat there; shade and cheerful lawns extend, via a gentle slope, to a little hill crowned with woods. Elegant society meets up there in the afternoon for a cup of tea, while gossiping. For myself, I didn’t know the place very well, but I knew that one didn’t get in as one goes into a mill, and that a preliminary introduction was necessary. I therefore imagined that the Danators must be aware of those prescriptions and had taken out a subscription. Not at all; as soon as we appeared, we realized that a petty conspiracy had been woven against us by Mademoiselle de Laricarière and Guy Frappart. The latter disappeared, and the manager was soon on our heels.

  “This tennis club is private, Messieurs; you aren’t members.”

  “I’m Monsieur Danator.”

  “Even so...”

  “I’ll pay.”

  “It’s not a question of that…it’s necessary to be introduced.”

  “I thought that my name...”

  “Insufficient, Monsieur.”

  We retired piteously—but vengeance was to follow.

  A few minutes later, we were installed in the dance-hall at the Pergola. The sun was completing its trajectory magnificently over the calm sea. The hour was peaceful. Adam had the tact to shut up and admire, while nature expressed itself magically, and I was grateful to him for it, Monsieur Danator patiently absorbed three cocktails in succession. What was he waiting for?

  His vengeance.

  His face suddenly expanded when he saw the man who had had us thrown out of the tennis club arrive. In accordance with his custom, Guy Frappart arrived to play a few hands of baccarat before dinner. Malevolent rumor alleged that he dissipated in that fashion, in a few summer months, the profits of his canning business; but in truth, the cards favored him, and he remained very much the master of his money.

  “Come on—we’ll have some fun,” said Monsieur Danator, immediately. He led me into the gaming hall. “You’re going to see how I can play, my dear. I’ll give you the profits; there’ll be enough for several dresses.”

  I know nothing about baccarat, and I’m unable to describe the bets that were laid during that game,
which remains famous. I can only remember the physiognomy of that vast square room, with two tables fitted with green baize, around which people were sitting elbow-to-elbow, carried away by the same demon, their souls focused on the card that was about to be dealt.

  I heard Adam call “Banco!” without even paying any attention to the chips put out or to the wads of bills brought out of or put into pockets. I saw him sit down in the banker’s seat thereafter, facing the croupier, while his father stood behind Monsieur Frappart and suggested crazy sums to him, which he lost with the cool carelessness of an inexhaustible aristocrat. But that was only bait, to sharpen an appetite in the host of appetites.

  The majority of the players sided with Guy Frappart, convinced that they would soon see his luck change. Every hand was another wager lost, and yet he persisted in making ridiculous bets, contrary to all the principles of the game.

  “You’re wrong! You’re going to lose!” Monsieur Danator said, every time, tapping the merchant of tinned goods on the shoulder—but the other persisted, stubbornly. With that young fool, one was bound to win back the money. And he bet, and doubled up, vertiginously...

  Then, while Adam dealt the cards and Frappart covertly consulted his own, Monsieur Danator’s piercing gaze passed over the table to enter, one might have thought, into his son’s brain, as if to encourage him to draw or not to draw, to take possession of the compensating point or disdain it.

  “Two!” declared Frappart.

  “Three!” Adam let fall,

  And the chips flew toward my fiancé’s pile, inflating it, compelling the stupor of the entourage.

  On the third bank, Adam wagered ten thousand louis: two hundred thousand francs!

  “Banco!” cried Frappart, already dispossessed of a sum at least as large—but he turned toward Monsieur Danator and said: “Will you take a check?”

  “Of course...”

  And in defiance of all the probabilities of the game and the most elementary prudence, Adam having given him a favorable supplementary card, he lost. Oh, what distress there was on his face as he wrote his check!