It was Caresco.
They had scarcely had time to glimpse him than Marjah threw himself flat in the ground proclaiming: “The Superman! Glory to the Superman!”
The instinct of imitation, the dread of the legendary individual, and, for Miss Mary, the concern of rendering herself favorable, impelled them to follow their guide’s example. They prostrated themselves.
Caresco left them confounded by his presence for some time. Finally, encouraging them to get up, his voice took on, in speaking to then, a particular timbre of amenity, even of tender softness when he addressed Miss Mary.
“That’s enough. I bid you welcome! Get up, Messieurs…and you too, Mademoiselle, get up.”
That benevolent tone immediately put them at their ease. They were then able, their eyes having adapted to the light—which had, in any case, attenuated—to lend attention to the wholly hygienic simplicity of the room, the gleaming tiles, the varnished walls and the individuals who were accompanying the Superman.
Beside the table stood Dr. Hymen, sheathed in his invariable black frock-coat with the green shirt-front. His bushy hair, topped by the inseparable hat with the long nap and the flat rim, was plunged in his stiff hands with apparent phalanges. Seated on a dirty folding canvas chair, like those constructed at the beginning of the twentieth century for seaside holidays, his aspect made him a living antithesis, denouncing the effort of a maniac, incapable, in the midst of so much luxury of beneficent simplicity, of ridding himself of the familiar objects of his former poverty.
Beside him, leaning on the wall, there was another motionless silhouette, of an unidentifiable shape, of which one could not even make out, so rigid and insensible was its stance , whether it was an animate being or a thing. It required long observation to recognize the appearance of a body slid into a long dull sack, from which emerged a small, completely hairless head, without a vestige of hair or beard—or, rather, a round ball of flesh, for the eyes and nose had been replaced there by partitions of pink tissue, while the ears and mouth subsisted normally.
After several seconds of reflection, Choumaque concluded that the silhouette must be a mannequin, unless it was some unfinished automaton containing a precious mechanism in its stomach.
But Caresco’s voice rose up. His weary gesture designating Choumaque, he addressed himself to Dr. Hymen.
“Is that the other day’s subject? Well, he seems sufficiently successful to me. He’s the one, isn’t he, who possessed a deplorable vascular system, sclerotized by the imbecilic hygiene practiced in the other world? In truth, a very interesting case! We probably won’t encounter another, given that the subjects that arrive in Eucrasia are, in general, young and healthy.”
Dr. Hymen, thus addressed, made no more movement than the mannequin fixed to the wall. Caresco, observing the futility of his attempts to engage that rebarbative collaborator, turned to the philosopher.
“Come closer. Do you know that you possessed a very curious carcass? That I was obliged to replace all the arteries corrupted by your bad habits? That I opened your abdomen, resected the varicose veins, purged the lungs, the liver and the bladder and straightened the tibias? You owe me seventy years of existence. Where is the surgeon or biologist who could have rendered you such a service back there, in the country that was once mine? Aren’t you going to thank me? Seventy years!”
“The life of a sage is an extent without limits, Superman,” Choumaque risked, with a certain arrogance that made Hymen shiver.
Caresco did not even notice it, however, for he added: “People can say what they like, but there’s only ever been once surgical genius in the world, and that’s me. I’m the foremost—in that as in everything!”
His dark eyes, as he made that declaration, had lost their fugitive expression. He fixed them on his interlocutor with an insistence as hard and cold as the blade of a scalpel—to the point that Choumaque, simultaneously seized by terror and stirred by a vague admiration, murmured: “Yes, you’re the foremost.”
“I’m delighted that you recognize the fact. Come closer. What did you do in Paris?”
“I was a teacher of philosophy by profession, a Stoic and disciple of Seneca in intellectual terms.
“I’m not surprised. Hymen, who radioscoped your brain, told me that you had the bump of ethics. But that isn’t a recommendation, you know? A philosopher is a windbag, babbling about a heap of theories, each more stupid than the last. The great philosophers, those whose theories are retained, who have created schools and whose names are cited—Kant, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Auguste Comte, and that exceptional Emperor of Germany, Wilhelm II, on whom I operated for a cerebral hemorrhage, which resulted from a deplorable arterial system that drove him to the craziest eccentricities, to name but a few—all those brains that imposed themselves on the attention of their contemporaries, were nothing other, mark my words, than diseased brains. They went astray, meekly. There has only ever been one scientific genius to give the exact measure to philosophical truth—no one else but me! What can you say about life, when you don’t know the first thing about it? You, with your deplorably-vascularized meninges, have been able to make up some fantastic theory? Come on, confess...”
“Certainly,” Choumaque conceded, swelling up with pride. “Certainly, I haven’t allowed myself to be petrified by the doctrines of old authors. I’ve created my own theory, the theory of equilibria, purely based on current observation, and based on the certainty that, in all of human existence, the quotient of happiness and unhappiness experienced balances out exactly. Life consists of perpetual oscillations between joy and sadness, in such a way that, in the end, at death, the curve of those oscillations is as pronounced on one side as the other, and that the addition of chagrins produced as sum equal to that of consolations. A dying man cannot, therefore, say to himself: I have been favored by the good things of the world, or: I have been dispossessed of...”
“That’s false!” howled Hymen, suddenly waking up. “What do you make of poverty, stupid orator? What good would it have done, then, for us to create this marvelous island and to have preached compensatory metempsychosis here?”
“Precisely none. I deem that, if misfortune exists, those who are afflicted by it experience, on the other hand, moments of felicity that compensate them amply, setting aside the exaggerations of pity and the staging of nervous states. Are you sure that a poor man suffers as much as he appears to be suffering—as much as you would suffer if, by chance, you were to fall into his situation at a stroke?
“Seneca reports that Apicius, a rich Roman, killed himself because he only had ten million sesterces left; a poor man would have been content to possess a thousand in order to live happily.
“Give a poor man the foodstuffs that a rich man has disdained as being unworthy of his jaded appetites, and that poor man would rejoice a hundredfold, while the rich man would not rejoice at all. Attribute to the poor man a total satisfaction of a hundred, and that will compensate him for the cruelty of a hundred subsequent privations: equilibrium.
“Force an idler to accomplish some effort that a laborer carries out insouciantly, and that idler will feel a hundredfold a vexation that is non-existent for the laborer; attribute to the former a displeasure that will recuperate the value of a hundred other banal satisfactions: equilibrium.
“Without that intelligent idea, society would no longer be possible. It would require, to explain its apparent injustice, the paradisal compensations of religions, or your metempsychosis. Do you see what I mean?”
He had addressed himself specifically to Dr. Hymen, with the result that, having subsequently glanced at Caresco, he observed that he had not been listening. As he concluded, however, the potentate put his head in his hands and said, as if to himself: “The philosophy of a concierge! He’s drawn his doctrine from his grocer’s scales. Two sous’ worth of sugar for two sous’ worth of salt! Everyone brutalized! That’s what the centuries of civilization have produced, while I, personally, in twenty ye
ars, have been able to reformulate a social organization and create a world! The poor fools!”
Nonplussed, Choumaque dared not say any more. Besides which, a strange attraction was forcing him to look at the mannequin. He would have sworn that his thoughts were being drawn off and absorbed by that indefinable object—or, rather, divided between him and a counterblast to his philosophical stance. When Caresco expressed himself again he had to struggle against that influence in order to understand him.
“Let’s see! Come closer! Why are you running away from me? I sense that you’re fleeing from me. Listen to me: you’ve arrived in my realm, stuffed with the outdated ideas of the other world, where everything is subjected to old prejudices, constraints on ideas that are, in a way, atavistic. In those circumstances, tell me what you think of my island?”
“I haven’t been able to form an idea of it in three days,” Choumaque replied, prudently.”
“Have you at least formed a first impression?”
“Yes, an impression of admiration.”
“Admiration for what?”
“For your cult of beauty.”
“Ah! You admit that! The beauty of my people is unrivaled, is it not? And when, by chance, nature deceives me—when my subjects are born disgraceful; when, like you, they possess a few deformities capable of rendering their appearance painful to others—I correct them; I remake them; I adorn them with a pleasant façade.
“But that’s not all. I wanted my people to be extraordinarily happy. I gorge them on pleasures, with no possible weariness; for, in addition to the fact that I know their tendency to wear themselves out, I can, when they begin to flag, charge them with a fluid that restores their appetite—unless I prefer to plunge them in sleep. Here, therefore, is a land of perpetual enjoyment.
“Have you not learned, short as your sojourn among us has been, that I, the first among Pastors, regulate life scientifically, and that everything is admirably ordered in such a way that, in my realm, creation is perfect? Defects and monstrosities cannot grow in our soil. In fact, in order that that should be the case, I’m obliged to create.
“Yes, you’ll see my stud-farm, philosopher, you’ll observe what beautiful products I engender, in the milieu of my Palace of Reproduction. You’ll see how I prepare there for individuals to be born into the best conditions of health and beauty, and how, subsequently, I protect them, step by step, in youth and in maturity, assuring them all the intoxications and sensualities that humans can desire.
“My citizens do not have to think; they do not have to feel tormented by paltry anxieties; they do not have to stir, as you do, philosophical systems that darken the mind; they only have to enjoy, always to enjoy! To enjoy beyond human limits, since I have prolonged their existence by my scientific methods, and have conserved their youth in of age, their strength in decrepitude!
“And when finally, they have to die, they disappear abruptly, without suffering—for no one has ever been seen to suffer in my realm—and without regret, for they know that as soon as they have quit the world, their lives will recommence, improved, more replete with benefits!
“Do you see my genius, philosopher, in having them inculcated, from the earliest age, with the true faith, reassuring for everyone, which explains desirably everything that we all seek to know? The anxious gazes that the dogmatized individuals of the old world cast at the afterlife, my subjects do not cast, for they believe in metempsychosis. Behold, then, the unique religion, that of life, that of enjoyment!
“Tell me, philosopher, am I not an admirable creator? Have I not caused to spring from this rock, by stamping my foot, along with individuals, the mot prodigious institutions? Am I not the greatest of philanthropists?”
As he made his own eulogy, Caresco’s voice had taken on such a tone of exaltation that Choumaque, initially disposed to respond with a few objections, dared not utter them, and began to fear that enigmatic man, so powerful that a single gesture of his could doubtless cause death as easily as it organized birth and repaired the errors of nature. He therefore renounced any riposte, and said: “Yes, Superman, you are the foremost of philanthropists.”
At that moment, the hirsute object leaning against the wall, and which, given its unchanging position could previously have been taken for a mannequin imprisoned in a sack, suddenly began to shake. The orifice that served as its mouth emitted sounds incomprehensible to the visitors, but of which Dr. Hymen and Caresco seized the significance, for the former uttered an ironic gurgle, while the latter became furious.
“You’re lying, vile windbag! You have the impudence to mock me! I have consented to receive you in this privileged land: don’t make me repent that, for if I prevent suffering, I can also impart it!”
He thundered as he spoke. With a blow of his hairy fist, he knocked the flesh with which he was toying sideways.
Choumaque’s emotion was translated by a tremulous gesture toward his belt.
Do you know what this is?” Caresco went on, pointing at the mannequin-man. “Well, it’s my thought-reader…yes, my reader, one of my finest endeavors, for I’ve modified the encephalum in such a way that all his faculties are either annihilated or utilized for incursions into the souls of others. That being has therefore been able to penetrate your brain, while you were talking to me, and to discover your true sentiments there. He’s just warned me that you’re hiding them from me. That’s how I know that you don’t believe that I’m the foremost of philanthropists, although you affirm it. Dare you lie again, now?”
Such noisy laughter concluded that remark that the philosopher was offended by it. Knowing now that his slightest impressions were discovered and could be translated to the Superman, he strove to change their direction, by darting a glance at Marcel and Miss Mary. He saw that the latter was very attentive, impatient to make the request that she intended to address to the despot. That spectacle cheered him up.
In any case, Caresco had immediately calmed down. He continued: “So, you don’t have faith in my beneficent endeavor? You’ll be convinced in time. In the meantime, would you care to explain to me how you conceive happiness?”
In order to put on a better pretence of listening, the potentate put his head in his hands—but peering through the gaps in his fingers, his eyes did not remain inactive. Miss Mary sensed that she was being ardently examined, that the cold gaze was running over her like a jet of icy water that was suffocating her. Dr. Hymen got ready to go to sleep again as soon as the philosopher started speaking.
“Superman, can you conceive of life without death, a point without space, day without night, number without unity, the sea without a drop of water, movement without inertia? No, you can’t, for if one did not die, there would be no reason to think that one is alive; if space did not extend, one would not be able to posit a point to limit it; if night did not follow it, day would not commence; and in the same way, plurality exists by courtesy of unity, the sea by courtesy of billions of drops of water, and movement by contrast with immobility. That, you won’t deny.
“Well, I affirm that misfortune is necessary to happiness, just as each of the previously cited states is indispensable to the observation of its opposite. In brief, it is necessary to know dolor, not only in others but in oneself, in order to experience joy. Now, your great humanity, aided by your profound science, has succeeded in suppressing effort and suffering among your subjects. You heap them with all the satisfactions of the senses, all the enjoyments of animality—but how do you expect them to appreciate their value, and in consequence, to judge themselves favored, if they never know their price?
“At the most, they will remain in a mixed, neutral state, which will be that of perpetual, inherent, intrinsic felicity—but an unconscious, unconceived, unmeasured felicity. And that’s why I say that your subjects are not happy, because ill-being is necessary to well-being. On the few occasions when I have had the opportunity to interrogate one of your indigenes in that regard, they have replied to me: ‘Yes, I’m happy,’ but they�
�ve told me that in the tone of a lesson learned, an article of faith, like a person to whom the question is indifferent, because they’ve never been given to reflect on it...”
Caresco no longer had any need to address himself to the thought-reader to be persuaded that Choumaque was now expressing himself sincerely. The discussion, although philosophically mediocre, interested him because it turned on his personality. He ceased contemplating Miss Mary through the mesh of his fingers and addressed himself to the philosopher.
“You contend that one has to suffer in order to be happy? Do you realize that with your theory, you devalue the productivity and progress that are the very principles of happiness?”
“On the contrary, I encourage them, but while wanting them to evolve slowly, through successive stages, in order that people might savor the results obtained for their improvement, instead of allowing the ideal to be imposed upon them all at once, as you have done, Superman!”
“So I, alone, obtain the best profit? I am, therefore, an egotist.”
“A prodigious egotist—I dare to define you thus.”
And that was, indeed, an improbable audacity, which made Dr. Hymen’s hat leap up, and of which even things seemed to feel the repercussion, for the lights suddenly went out.
In the darkness, Choumaque thought that his last moment had arrived—but the sudden obscurity was only due to an omnial interruption necessitated by an external event. In fact, the sound of a bell rang out, and hearts remained in suspension, in the expectation of a phenomenon.
Soon, a segment of the wall illuminated. A fiery globe was depicted there, followed by a flamboyant tail of long sparks, which did not take long to disappear. Dr. Hymen’s voice murmured: “It’s nothing…it’s a bolide...”
And the lighting reappeared, rendering every person and every object the precise animation that they had had prior to the eclipse.
Caresco, Superman Page 12
