In 1965

by Albert Robida

  In the clockmaker’s window I perceive round clock-faces like ours, with the hour indicated by unknown signs. I count the signs; there are twenty of them. The centaurs employ decimal time.

  Seeing me studying the clocks with interest, my friend rummages in his pocket and pulls out a large watch very similar to ours, except that a mobile part of the dial, rotating at will, is black, and serves to indicate the hours of darkness. I take out my chronometer in my turn, in order to have him admire it. Unfortunately, it has stopped; the sea-water has damaged it.

  My friend seems very surprised, however.

  That’s curious; in fact, he seems quite intelligent, this little animal, he seems to be saying to himself.

  But we stop in front of a large white house surrounded by a beautiful garden, and the centaur invites me to go in. At the sight of me, a centaur gardener, astounded, stops watering the flowers; a lady appears on the perron, and four or five centaurins of various ages run and trot around me, uttering exclamations of astonishment.

  The benevolent centaur introduces me ceremoniously to the lady centauress, whom I deduce to be his wife, and he invites the children to be quiet. When he thinks that the children have contemplated me sufficiently, he makes a little speech and takes me into the house.

  I understand that he said to me: “You are at home here, unfortunate castaway; you may install yourself; I shall be delighted to offer you hospitality.”

  The house isn’t bad; evidently my hosts are well-to-do bourgeois. The benevolent centaur gives me a tour while his wife prepares refreshments in the garden. In the large and well-ventilated bedrooms, the beds appear to me to be bizarre; they’re thick mats made of a soft vegetable tissue, like wool, with cushions piled on top. The centaurs lay their equine hindquarters on the mats and the upper body on the cushions.

  The furniture seems expensive: large chests, massive tables, majestic wardrobes, everything shining under the polish. There’s an absolute lack of chairs and armchairs, since the centaurs don’t sit down in the same fashion as us.

  There are family portraits in the drawing room, not life-sized, fortunately, for the walls wouldn’t be sufficient. They are centaurs with grave and majestic expressions, important bourgeois, perhaps magistrates, and gracious centauresses or little centaurins with pretty faces.

  We are summoned into the garden, where the young centaurins are waiting for me impatiently, sitting on the ground around a table laden with plates of cakes, cups and various utensils. I believe, God forgive me, that we’re about to take tea!

  Lady centauresses, probably neighbors who have come to see me, are laughing and chattering. Further introductions: “Charmed, Mesdames!”

  My hostess hands me a cup of hot liquid. I taste it; it’s tea—or very nearly. Not bad, with a dab of syrup instead of sugar.

  They chat, and chat, and chat—about me, naturally, since I’m the great curiosity of the day. I tell the story of my shipwreck. I talk about Bordeaux, Paris, Europe... Those names mean nothing to the ladies; they don’t understand, but they laugh. They tell me a host of things that I can scarcely grasp; they laugh, we laugh. The children play. The youngest, a beautiful blond and rosy-faced child, is one perpetual laugh.

  “He’s five years old,” the centauress tells me, by raising five fingers.

  “A charming child, Madame, and very strong for his age,” I reply, trying to take him on my knees. Oof! I can’t lift him: I forgot his young colt’s hindquarters.

  The time passes very agreeably. It’s very comfortable in that house, with those worthy people. If only I had a cigar! But I haven’t seen any centaur smoking.

  The maid arrives—at least, I think it’s the maid, a little centauress in a white tunic or apron—and hands a piece of paper to my host. He gets up urgently and makes a sign to me. There are visitors for me.

  “I’m yours, my dear friend,” I say, putting down my cup of tea. “All my apologies, Mesdames, very sorry to be quitting such charming company.”

  V. A few centaur scholars want to classify

  Captain Zephyrin in the family of monkeys.

  The aforesaid Zephyrin’s projects of vengeance

  In the drawing room, four individuals are waiting for us, grave middle-aged centaurs with gray beards and spectacles. At the sight of me they get up very quickly from their cushions and utter exclamations. By dint of hearing them repeatedly, my ears have already retained a few words of the centauran language.

  “Extraordinary! Strange! A funny little beast!”

  My host makes ceremonious introductions, and then embarks on explanations; the visitors take notebooks from their pockets with pencils of a sort, and scribble notes. They circle around me and bend down to examine me, studying my features in detail and the architecture of my body.

  I understand that the messieurs are the scholars of the country, come to make a scientific study, from the viewpoint of natural history, of the strange animal deposited by the sea on the shore of their island.

  One of the centaurs, a rather thin brown bay, draws my full-length portrait, facing and in profile, while holding a lively discussion with his colleagues. The messieurs don’t all seem to be of the same opinion. Evidently, they don’t know in what animal family to classify me.

  My host goes to open one of the large cupboards in the drawing room. Why, it’s a bookcase, full of books and scrolls of parchment. He takes out several large volumes, which he carries to the table. My four scientists lean over in order to riffle through them, and I stand on tiptoe in order to see.

  There are pictures. Of course, it’s something like an encyclopedia of natural history, with colored plates, a true masterpiece of centauran typography. I recognize a certain number of animals. One of the scientists, the most earnest, the one with the most badly-fitted cravat, pauses over an engraving and indicated it triumphantly to his colleagues, also indicating me with a gesture.

  The wretch! The engraving is an illustration in which various species of monkeys are represented!

  And he says—at least, I think I understand him to do so: “Look, Messieurs, that’s exactly it; this bizarre individual, a stranger to our climes, belongs to the family of monkeys. He’s a specimen of a previously-unknown species, a remarkable variety, which seems slightly superior to the others...”

  The discussion becomes animated; with the illustration of monkeys in hand, I’m examined, turned back and forth, compared to the images...

  I can’t let that pass without protesting. Oh, no! So I become red-faced with annoyance.

  “Damn it!” I cry “Double damn it! What do you take me for? I could call you utter asses, Messieurs Scholars! What, a monkey! Me, a variety of monkey? I’m a HUMAN, don’t you know that, a HUMAN? And I’m more human that you are, who seem to me to the quite simply grafted on to donkeys!”

  My centaur friend tries to calm me down. He doesn’t accept the advice of the fake scholars and runs to fetch another volume, through which he riffles rapidly.

  I perceive more illustrations. It’s not natural history this time. Yes, it looks more like a mythology, a collection of fables and traditions. The depictions are bizarre. There are centaurs and centauresses, but centaurs provided with huge wings, or holding various attributes. One is brandishing lightning, like Jupiter, another is causing the sun to rotate by means of a machine similar to a rotisserie, and there’s also a centauress galloping through the clouds with a crescent moon on her head.

  Having passed rapidly over a series of images representing a heap of monstrous creatures—fantastic dragons with claws and horns, chimerical mammoths, fabulous snakes, plesiosaurs and pterodactyls designed in a fashion that is perhaps somewhat fantasized—my friend finally stops, triumphantly at a page on which a being is depicted who, this time, is neither a monster nor a monkey, but purely and simply human, vaguely and imperfectly represented, but incontestably human, with two arms and two legs, a biped like you or me, with nothing equine about him.

  The old scholar shrugs his shoulders. He d
oesn’t want to let go. By his scornful expression, I understand perfectly well that he’s objecting.

  “Dreams! Fabulous traditions! Nursery tales, all that! Stories dating from the origins of the centaur race! Science, Messieurs, veritable science, which is only supported on positive realities, on verified facts, can’t admit this ancient nonsense. These creatures, invented by poets, have never existed, and the animal phenomenon here present, in spite of the partial resemblance that he presents to a centaur, is nothing but a variety of the simian species, a superior monkey if you like, but a monkey!”

  I interrupt him violently, and I brandish the book containing the portrait of the prehistoric man.

  The old scientist puts his hand over my mouth.

  “He speaks,” he says, “but are the bizarre sounds that emerge from his lips really a language? There’s no proof of that. Do you understand any of it? No! Me neither! And besides, look at the sheep”—he points at a species of sheep in the encyclopedia of natural history—“the sheep goes baa, baa…do you understand what the sheep is saying? The dog”—he points at a dog—“goes woof, woof; the cat”—he point to a cat—“goes miaow, miaow…do you understand? Can one claim in consequence that the cat, the dog and the sheep are talking? No, Messieurs! All that I can concede to you is that, at least at first sight, this monkey seems to be a remarkable and interesting species, but I shall reserve judgment until further and more serious study as to exactly how far the intelligence that it seems to possess might extend. For myself, I strongly doubt that it goes any further than pure and simple instinct...”

  As he says that, the wretch palpates my head and taps my cranium with his finger in a disdainful fashion. I have a great deal of difficulty mastering my anger. Let’s not forget that I’m on unknown shores, among people whose existence humans were still unable to suspect yesterday.

  My friend the benevolent centaur tries to calm me down. The scientist who has drawn my portrait defends me ardently. He too brandishes the book in which the old popular traditions are collected.

  “Who knows, Messieurs” he says, raising his hand, “whether some of these fables or traditions are quite simply memories altered to a greater or lesser degree since their origin? It’s a defensible hypothesis. Let’s not reject anything, and before reaching a conclusion, let’s study this individual scientifically, let’s research his intellect. Without any doubt, he differs from us considerably, to his disadvantage, but if, in the unexplored ocean that surrounds our homeland, there exists a distant land, a island, inhabited by a biped rather than a quadruped variety of the centauran race, what an immense discovery that would be, Messieurs!”

  The old scholar shrugs his shoulders again in a scornful fashion, calls his colleague a poet and sticks the plate depicting monkeys under his nose.

  My host palpates my knees and points to my feet while tapping his hoof.

  “His feet are curious,” he says. “Look, Messieurs, they’re shod; I perceive the traces of nails...”

  I’ve understood his mistake.

  “But no,” I say, “you’re making an error, my dear friend.”

  And briskly, I take off my shoes, and I display my bare feet.

  General astonishment; the centaurs are unfamiliar with footwear; their four equine feet have no need of it, and they thought that the leather of my ankle-boots was my personal and natural hide.

  “They’re hands!” they all cry.

  “That’s exactly what we see here,” says the benevolent centaur, indicating the picture representing the prehistoric man.

  “Pardon me,” says the old scholar, my enemy, “I’ve made up my mind about this quadrumane; it’s entirely and definitively a monkey.”

  One of the messieurs nods his head in approval, while the other two, along with my friend, respond with signs of negation.

  The discussion becomes heated, while I dart furious glances at my two enemies. The wretches! To classify me among the monkeys—me, Zephyrin Canigousse, long-haul captain, baccalaureate in letters…or almost, as I seem to remember that I was refused...

  Against the two imbeciles who believe me to be a monkey I have three friends to defend my cause. For them, I’m the representative of an unknown race, intermediate between the centaur, the king of creation, and the animals.

  Suddenly, my friend the stout centaur slaps his forehead. He rummages in his pocket and brings out my hundred-franc banknote, which he holds out to my enemies victoriously.

  “Look!” he seems to be saying. “The pictures on this blue paper prove that the castaway here present isn’t a unique individual. He’s a specimen of a race living somewhere—I don’t know where—on an island in the ocean, a race presenting certain indications of intelligence, since it seems to know the Arts, as this image demonstrates, which might perhaps represent the castaway’s family, his wife and children, because it seems quite precious to him.”

  The others continue to shake their heads. They’re not convinced. Now they seem to be interrogating my host as to what he intends to do with me. It appears that I belong to him; he’s paid a certain sum to the fishers that picked me up on the beach like flotsam. He shows them the bedroom where he has offered me hospitality, and he puts his hand on my head as a sign of protection. Worthy friend!

  The others emit different opinions. One of them makes a proposal, which he explains at length. I don’t grasp it very well. Finally, he takes a pencil and draws some kind of plan on a piece of paper.

  Ah! Damn! I’ve understood…it’s a cage that he’s drawing! The rogue is proposing to my host that he put me in a cage and exhibit me like a curious beast. The villain! I leap up. I’m on the point of slapping him in the face…but he’s too tall, for one thing, and for another, with a single blow of the hoof, a kick, he could send me flying to the other end of the room...

  Let’s contain ourselves; the situation isn’t looking very god for me, in spite of the support of the benevolent centaur, but with prudence and energy, one can fight, one can get out of it...

  I don’t allow myself to be beaten. And now, in fact, a vast project is germinating in my mind that ought to give me glory and fortune. In sum, such as I am, a poor defenseless castaway, alone and naked, with three sous in my pocket, I’m a great man! I’ve discovered a sixth continent of the world, absolutely unsuspected before, a large island, a continent inhabited by a race of centaurs—a race that once existed in Europe, as ancient traditions attest, which are treated as fables in colleges, a race vanished as a consequence of cataclysms mentioned vaguely by history or legends.

  Well, I’ve rediscovered them, those fabulous centaurs! I have them, they exist at a point on the globe where I, the first of the human race, have set my foot! It’s an immense discovery!

  If I can return to Bordeaux with only two living and talking specimens of the centauran race, I’ll become an illustrious navigator, a new Christopher Columbus, and I’ll pass under triumphal arches, and all the Academies in the world will weave crowns for me...

  And I’ll exhibit my two centaurs in a cage similar to the one that my enemy has just designed for my intention…one franc, per person, fifty centimes for children, twenty-five for unranked military personnel...

  And I’ll make a dazzling fortune rapidly, millions heaped upon on millions in my coffers; I’ll build myself an enormous and splendid mansion at the mouth of the Gironde, in order to get a good view of the ships passing by…I’ll buy land, vineyards, two or three great vintages to show off my cellar...

  That’s it! That’s what I’ll do! And the two centaurs that I’ll take to Europe, to have them exhibited in a fine, strong case, well, they’re the two scientists, my enemies, who take me for a monkey!

  VI. Excursions and distractions

  with the Kapalouia family

  For two months I’ve been living with my protector, the stout centaur, treated very amiably—I might almost say considered as one of the family. I go out, I see society, I’m taken on excursions, I dine in town.

  My frie
nd is a worthy centaur; thanks to him I have every facility for studying the country and its inhabitants, their customs and mores. Thus, I’m collecting notions and information regarding the race, with a view to the account of the voyage I shall write when I return to my homeland, for I have my idea, on the quiet, and I’m gradually ripening the project that will give me glory fortune and revenge.

  I learn the centauran language; it’s almost easy when one knows Basque, the oldest language in the world, which was spoken long before Adam and Eve.

  My friend’s name is Monsieur Kapalouia, a majestic name that goes well with his corpulence and yet which means if I’m not mistaken, “little cherry.” His wife answers to the pretty name of Azuli, which can be translated as “blue moonlight seen through dark clouds.” What fine things can be expressed in so few syllables!

  They have five children, three centaurins and two centaurines. Mademoiselle Rakif, or “beautiful star,” is fifteen years old, a lovely centaurine already engaged to an officer, Monsieur Pilo-pilo, or “cabbage heart,” who commands a garrison of eighty centaur archers, the ones I saw shooting at targets on the day of my arrival. And, in fact, I recall that on that day, Captain Pilo-pilo was extremely polite to Monsieur Kapalouia, his future father-in-law.

  Then come two boys, Karfalo and Topa—“rainbow” and “light pastry”—twelve and ten years old, brown bays, both quite pleasant although restive and turbulent. Then Mademoiselle Mirako, or “little stork,” nine years old, and Glouglou, “rat-whiskers,” five and a half, a charming, expansive child, always singing and capering, who is already as tall as me, on the slender legs of a young colt.

  The centaur Kapalouia is rich; he’s the owner of several vast farms in the vicinity of Birka—I’ve forgotten to tell you that the place in which I landed is called Birka. It’s a small town of three thousand souls, built on the shady banks of a river that ours into the sea a short distance from the beach where I as picked up.