The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 2)

by André Couvreur

  And the church. Ah, the distant music, blessed waves, the manna of amour! I seized the scraps of a funeral march played on the organ, and choirs dominated by women’s voices. The music I never thought I would welcome, to the point of intoxication, to the point of ecstasy, when I attended funerals like mine, among those intellectuals devoid of pity and piety, who transport their sociability of general repetitions under sacred vaults…the same trimmings, the same small talk, the same handshakes, the same false enthusiasms, the same criticisms, with the difference that, the performance taking place far from the footlights, the implacable light of the heavens renders more obvious the ravages of the years in some actress idolized in the Americas and the fake tint of the moustache of some tenacious Céladon of letters.

  But no, it’s consoling; I don’t sense the sacrileges: not Lucienne’s deceptive affliction; nor Jojo’s interalcoholic dignity; nor the certain presence of the handsome Guy, hidden in the crowd, lying in ambush, tracking his prey, my wife and her inheritance. I no longer even have the anguish of missing out, in a few hours’ time, on the Titon chair. Pettiness of pettinesses, vanity of vanities, everything is wretched before the sublime waves that I will no longer perceive. They reawaken simultaneously the other harmonies of my heart, the laughter of Ninette and the sobbing of the Vestal. They evoke the sound of bells scattered far away, above the foliage of the old village cemetery where my ancestors rest.

  And there is an infinite softness and sadness!

  But a silence falls. The absolution is being given. The incense is surrounding me with its opal swirls. Requiescat in pace...

  Footfalls; more jolts. The voyage recommences.

  Where am I going? Toward what field? Will I be accorded the neighborhood of poets, where glory consecrates Pauvre Lélian, the delightful Banville?57 Yes, probably, I’ll be taken to Montparnasse. A new sense of topography convinces me of it. My convoy follows streets, a boulevard. It advances in an uninterrupted fashion, and quite briskly.

  Men are saluting. Women are making the sign of the cross. The dead have the right of way. Tornada had always promised to obtain me a pass; he’s making that promise good, a little late.

  A locomotive whistle. The Gare Montparnasse; I’m approaching the desired place. A right-angled turn, on to paved ground. I’m going into the necropolis of Lélian and Banville.

  We stop. The hearse is unloaded. I’m deposited gently, horizontally, in the edge of the mass of soil that will be filled in on top of me. My Valley of Jehosophat.

  Ah! Let them hurry, then, since alea jacta est.58

  Finally! The last maladroit gesture of men was foreseeable. Once again, the brutes are lowering me head first.

  The noise of a locomotive? No, it’s Lucienne wailing her grief. The Conservatoire has served her well.

  And the bump at the bottom of the hole. It’s really the end, definitively the end. I have nothing more to do but agonize. Oh, let them leave me alone, leave me alone!

  But the living are pitiless! They continue to torture the dead! Their ostentation is an incurable disease.

  There they go, making speeches above my abyss. They talk. They’re not talking for me, but for themselves, and that’s why it’s taking so long. By the duration of the respite, I divine the palaver that follows at the pulpit…is there actually a pulpit?

  Here comes Hector Lentrain, in his embroidered green coat... Here comes the president of the Societé Esotérique... Here comes the editor of the Revue... Here comes X, the unknown, the delegate of the Ministry, or the Minister himself, tomorrow’s unknown...

  And here come the outbursts of male voices, my verses, roared by a Societarian...

  Swaggerers! Curs! Liars! Imbeciles!

  But what now? Another locomotive whistle? Lucienne again, or rather...

  What! What can I hear? Is it credible?

  For I hear a volley sprung from a throat in delirium! What deaf man could it not reach? What wall could it not cross? What coffin could it not pierce?

  “Stop, you load of morons! Stop!”

  O my God! It’s Him!

  And I laugh. I laugh madly. I laugh, with an immobile Homeric delight.

  Chapter XI

  It’s Him! He has me brought out of the hole. He has me transported, not far. Hammers rebound on the edge of my case. One would think that they were exploding bombs. It deafens me, pounds my encephalum. What does it matter? It’s necessary to be reborn as one is born, in dolor.

  My coffin bursts open under the final thrust of a lever. My shroud is removed.

  O light, I find you again! Blessed, blessed art thou, light that grows, that inundates me, that dazzles me as my lid is removed. Blessed also that tormented, grimacing, convulsive visage, pierced by sharp eyes, clad in immeasurable, disordered hair. Blessed that interior of a cemetery warden’s house, with its paintings on the walls, a family table on which the places are laid, a mantelpiece where triumphs under a glass globe, a wreath of orange blossom. Is there any reason, because one subsists on the death of others, to renounce wearing orange-blossom one day or another? Blessed, in its magnificent humility, be that décor of my resurrection!

  Behind Tornada, who is brandishing a little Pravaz syringe full of 444, his miraculous anti-Methuselah juice, are ten rows of heads, a hundred pairs of eyes, who are contemplating me avidly, awaiting the surgeon’s action. There are Lucienne’s anxious eyes, Jojo’s nebulous eyes, the handsome Guy’s lockpick eyes, the frenetic eyes of my pall-bearers, shining in advance at the relief this adventure will give them. And under the eyes, furbelows, make-up, badly-dyed moustaches, chasubles, undertakers’ top hats, Presidential shirt-fronts, Directorial frock-coats, the worn waistcoats of poets, and God only knows what else...

  There is the society of Parisian funerals, and, overflowing in the pathways, the anonymous crowd, densely-packed and swarming, the crowd of gratuitous distractions, bewildered by the enormous miracle: Tornada resuscitating Étienne Montabert!

  “Ping!” says my savior, plunging his needle into my buttock, through my gala outfit.

  How simple it is! How trivial it is! What genius!

  I open my eyes completely. I yawn. I stretch. I laugh stupidly at the wonderstruck crowd.

  And I jump out of the quilting.

  Here I am, standing up, a trifle nebulous, a trifle woolly-headed, like Jojo, but upright. Two small adored arms wind around my leg: the Vestal, weeping.

  But Lucienne? Lucienne is also before me, shriveled, tragic. A prodigious self-composure takes possession of her. First, she darts a glance at Jojo and the handsome Guy, which I understand as: “Quick! Take the stuff back!” Then her visage is transformed, adapting, illuminating.

  Oh, has she not persisted in her career? She would have damned all the pawns of the footlights assembled there to bury their poet...

  She kisses my hands, she inundates them with tears. She has rediscovered her tears!

  “Oh, my love…my love! You live again for your Lucette! You’re reborn! I’m mad with joy!”

  Am I going to chastise her immediately, cry out her infamy, crush her, trample her underfoot in public?

  I hesitate—but Tornada has fewer scruples than me. Tornada has had enough.

  First he turns to the audience. “Outside, prostatics! Get out! We have laundry to do! Go! Move!”

  And as the idlers resist, he plunges into the heap, head down and arms extended, shoving chasubles top hats, short-fronts, frock-coats, badly-dyed moustaches and seraphic maquillages toward the door.

  Once the room is cleared and the door is bolted, he comes back to Lucienne, and with a sharp slap on the wrist makes her let go of my hand.

  “Yes, my dear, he lives again! Sturdier than ever! And with a virility—I say no more than that—to disconcert Priapus! But the misfortune is that it’s no longer for your phial!59

  “Oh! What does that mean, Monsieur?”

  “It means that if you don’t make yourself scarce right now, along with your boyfriend, I’ll shoot you full of 222 a
nd leave you that way.”

  He brandishes his syringe: the syringe of Damocles; no resistance possible. Lucienne bows her head and leaves.

  Alas, I was on the point of calling her back—but Tornada had other auxiliaries for his marvelous cure. He put Ninette into my arms. He pushed the Vestal toward me, whose humble passion he had divined. I was twice saved.

  It only remained for him to explain his delay.

  You know, my antique, that the Baronne…yes, the Callipygian Venus…Quincampoix, in sum…had stolen my portfolio, with my formula? Well, you’ll never guess what happened next. Can you imagine that the slut had taken it all to her lover, a laboratory supervisor, who was, naturally, going to exploit my discovery on a large scale. But the gods were on my side, my antique! Aesculapius was protecting me. He shoved the receiver under an autobus! Then, as the wretch had no other papers on him but mine, you can understand the consequence: Tornada is in the Morgue! I run there! I mouth off! They fetch the police. They take me to jail. I mouth off again! I’m embarked for Charenton! And I’d still be there—and you in your hole—if the Director, fortunately, on whose wife I operated for a fistula...”

  He stopped dead and consulted his watch. “Damnation! We’re rabbiting on…do you know what time it is? Two thirty-five! And they’re voting at three for the Titon chair! Gee up, my antique! At the trot! Take my old banger and go show them that you’re no longer a corpse! That’ll dispose them in your favor—a candidate who emerges from the grave to offer himself, at least proves that he’s keen!”

  “Oh, now...” I said, sickened by that whole society.

  “But yes! But yes! You must! As long as there are Academicians under the heavenly skullcap…the other skullcap…the numbskulls’ skullcap…the Cupola, in sum…you understand me? To provide for Ninette?”

  He shoved me toward the door. He installed me in his car. And as the auto pulled away, he added: “And tell them from me…yes, tell them that I’ve found a remedy…you can even be precise: a clyster, against raging megalomania!”

  I was elected.

  I’m here—after so nearly not being here any longer!

  Notes

  1 Included in Vol. 1 of the series, ISBN 978-1-61227-279-5.

  2 translated as “An Invasion of Macrobes” in Volume 1 of the series,q.v.

  3 translated as Caresco, Superman, ISBN 978-12-61227-254-2.

  4 The French roulé ma bosse, which translates literally as “rolled my lump” is used metaphorically in a manner closely akin to the English expression “like a rolling stone,” but the latter will not sustain the double entendre that permits the parenthetical observation.

  5 An Athenian rebel against tyranny, controversial among historians but inevitably admired by French Romantics.

  6 In Racine’s Biblical tragedy Athalie (1691) Eliacin is the name under which Joas, the endangered sole survivor of the royal family supposedly eliminated by the eponymous villain, is hidden by the high priest Joad. Athalie takes him in, but he subsequently becomes the leader of a rebellion against her, intent on restoring the Jewish faith for which she has substituted the worship of Baal.

  7 Stéphane Leduc (1853-1939), a professor in the École de Médecine at Nantes, published Les Bases physique de la vie et de la biogenèse in 1906. He made a sustained attempt to understand the physical and chemical origin of life, concocting ingenious chemical cocktails that produced systems imitative of the elementary properties of life, but never succeeded in producing actual living organisms.

  8 Moriz Benedikt (1835-1920) was an Austrian neurologist whose Krystallisation und Morphogenesis (1904) and Biomekanik und Biogenesis (1912) are relevant to the present discussion. Raphael Dubois (1849-1929) was a pharmacologist interested in phosphorescence and bioluminescence, who attempted to bring the phenomena of radioactivity and biology under the same theoretical umbrella with the aid of the notion of “bioproteon.” Dr. Jules Félix (1872-1920) published La Vie des minéraux: la plasmogenèse et le biomécanisme universel in 1910. Le Foll is a surprisingly common surname, but the other reference is probably to the medical researcher who signed his works G. Le Foll.

  9 “Fortunate is he who is able to know the causes of things.” (verse 490 of Book II of the Georgics)

  10 Gueule [gules] refers here to the heraldic color red, but when the word is repeated later in the sentence its primary significance is to a more literal meaning [mouth], further illustrating Danator’s fondness for puns.

  11 The Chemin des Dames was the scene of a battle during the last significant German push in the Great War, where exhausted British and French troops were crushed by two panzer divisions, but Danator is, of course, exploiting the double entendre in his scabrous wordplay.

  12 The pun linking chanson [song] to échanson [drink-dispenser] is not reproducible in English.

  13 The author presumably does not expect the reader to understand the remark either, but at the risk of being inapposite, Reynier de Graaf (1641-1673) was one of the pioneers of reproductive biology, the first to employ a microscope in the study of the genitalia and their secretions. The term vibrion, in this context, refers to spermatozoa.

  14 I have retained this spelling rather than translating the name to Lucretia because—as the author is clearly aware—that is what Shakespeare does in The Rape of Lucrece.

  15 i.e., mistakenly, or wrongly.

  16 “Like a corpse,” but in a specifically religious context, describing metaphorically the absolute submission of a monk to his rule or a priest to his superior.

  17 In public.

  18 It is not obvious that “Made,” being a contraction of Madeleine, would be pronounced “Mad” rather than “Maddy,” and one might expect that if it were, the author would have written “Mad” rather than “Made,” but it is necessary to remember his propensity for wordplay; although “Made” would not be pronounced by a French person in the same way as the English “made,” the author was undoubtedly aware of that English significance, just as he was well aware that the first syllable of his heroine’s surname has an English meaning that has a particular relevance to the myth of Adam.

  19 Faire chou blanc—literally, “make white cabbage,” or sauerkraut—simply means to fail in French slang. Given the presumable nature of what Danator is examining, however, an echo of the literal meaning is surely intended, as it must be when the phrase crops up again during the story’s climax.

  20 The word I have translated as “de-chalk” is décrétacer, which is improvised by the author; the context makes it clear that it is derived from the Latin word for chalk, from which the geological term cretaceous is derived.

  21 This awkward overly literal translation is necessitated by yet another pun. In France faire vos humanités means to pass the humanities section of the baccalaureate examination, but employing the word “pass” here instead of the literal “made” would obliterate the double entendre in Danator’s reply.

  22 Dessaler [desalt] has a metaphorical meaning akin to the English phrase “to teach someone a thing or two,” and someone said to be dessalé is held to have acquired a certain worldly wisdom. Again, of course, the author is exploiting an innovative double entendre, which will be deployed again in the story’s denouement.

  23 It’s a pun because the word Danator uses for marriage, hymen, also has the more literal meaning that it has in English, in which context lit [bed] becomes metaphorical.

  24 The bock, more usually known in English as a douche, was the most widespread method of contraception employed in France, especially in brothels, when this story was written; similar devices were used to administer enemas. The reason why the apparatus was popularly called by the name of a strong lager is presumably obvious enough not to require spelling out.

  25 The Greek term eucrasia, from which the author derives eucrasique, here transcribed as “eucrasically” is nowadays used simply to refer to a normal state of health, but its original meaning referred to a supposed perfect balance of the [fictitious] bodily humors.


  26 En cinq sec is a colloquial expression akin to “in a trice,” sec having much the same abbreviating effect as in other colloquial phrases such as payer sec [pay cash] or boire sec [drink neat] rather than retaining its usual meaning of “dry,” which is co-opted for the subsequent wordplay.

  27 I have transcribed “neurôme” directly rather than substituting “neurone,” even though Couvreur’s term became rapidly obsolete, having never really been standardized, because it reflects an anatomical model of the connections in the brain that is subtly different from the one that has now superseded it.

  28 Actually, as almost everyone knows, it was Lot’s wife who was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back toward Sodom, while his daughters went on to a markedly different destiny in consequence.

  29 The actual quote from Ernest Renan’s Dialogues et fragments philosophiques (1876) is “la bêtise humaine est la seule chose qui donne une idée d’infini” [human stupidity is the only thing that gives an idea of infinity] but Tornada is only one of many later commentators to have offered slight variations of the observation.

  30 Morons. The members of the Académie, for which the narrator is here revealed as a candidate, are often familiarly known as “les immortels” [the immortals], which provides a fundamental justification for the title of the story, while Tornada’s alternative designation supplements the wordplay on which the previous note comments.

  31 Nor will the English reader, without knowing that the French masculine noun foie [liver] is phonetically identical to the feminine noun foi [faith].

  32 Artemisia of Halicarnassus, also known as Artemisia of Caria, who lived in the fifth century B.C., was notorious for siding with the Persian invaders of her homeland and fighting for Xerxes I as a naval commander, notably at the battle of Salamis, where she might or might not have escaped capture by hoisting false colors, according to which historian one believes.