Caresco had started laughing again. “You see, philosopher, how I’m able to protect myself. A bolide brushes my atmosphere, and I’m immediately alerted! What is a meteor, however: a pebble and gases! You understand that no attack from your old world has any possibility of making an impact here? God…yes, God, the other one…God is not better guarded than I am. But do you even believe in God?”
Before Choumaque had time either to affirm or deny his faith, however, Caresco went on: “Well, if you repudiate the Omnipotent, convince yourself of the existence of a Jehovah reigning here! That I affirm with all the liberty of my intelligence…for I’m not mad. No, I’m not mad!”
As he certified his reason, he stepped away from the table at which he had been sitting, came to Choumaque and parted his eyelids. He was searching for something, a sign, in the mysterious lair of life. In a low, voice, confidentially, he asked: “Have you never been mad? Has there never been madness in your family?” After which he seemed to forget his question.
The philosopher had time to remark in his interrogator the curious disposition of the black pupils, one of which was extraordinarily dilated.
“Let’s see,” the surgeon went on, “what are we going to do with you? As it’s the rule here that every individual useless to the race...”
“But I’m still capable,” Choumaque objected, with such a hesitation that the Thought-reader agitated again.
“No! I forbid you to create. You’d yield bad products, and I don’t want that!”
“Are you going to make me a eunuch?” asked the philosopher, frightened.
“No, for we have what we need here to sterilize you. But as it’s the rule here that an individual useless to the race must be useful to the community, I charge you, once a week, to reason philosophically before my assembled people. The theme of the dissertation will be: Happy peoples have no history.”16
“That principle is contrary to my doctrine, for I deem, with Seneca, that the happy life is for the person whom reason has caused to understand the inappreciable benefits of desire and misfortune...”
“I have spoken!” cried the despot, violently, thumping the sonorous table.
Now Caresco addressed himself to Marcel.
After having listened to the information that Dr. Hymen transmitted to him in an unknown language, without dwelling too much on an interrogation that would have taken up time utilizable for other, more pressing, tasks, he designated the role that he intended him to play henceforth in Society:
“You’ve been a naval officer, my friend,” he said, without employing the informal mode of address that he had consented to apply to Choumaque—although that difference passed unperceived in the solemn emotion of the moment—“and we possess, moored in our waters, an ironclad, in truth very obsolete and quite useless, but which we conserve as an object of risible curiosity, for comparison to the ingenious machines that have guaranteed us the absolute conquest of the air. You will take command of it. That means that you will supervise its maintenance and its neatness, for it will never put to sea. Such will be your ceremonial title. But I intend you for better employment. Let’s see what you can do for the race...”
Hymen passed him the notes that he had made. It was the report of the medical examination that Marcel had undergone, to which everyone who arrived in the realm was subjected.
The potentate continued, peaking to himself: “Well, this perfect! He’s very well equilibrated, the mariner! No defect; his blood is rich in globules. He’s of the blond type of the Celtic race, which we like. A place as a Sower is entirely indicated for him in our Palace of Reproduction...”
Then, turning to Hymen, who accepted the instruction without bothering to ask Marcel’s opinion, he declared: “Inoculate him with my genetic serum number six, and confide him to the brunette women. You’ll have the responsibility of classifying the products. It’s an experiment...”
Marcel, embarrassed, looked at Miss Mary. His heart sank in the dread that the young woman might be scornful of the usage that the potentate wanted to make of his person. He feared that the strange destination in question might be an obstacle to the sharing of the love for her that had been engendered within him. But as he wanted to avoid his sentiments being betrayed by the Reader, whose attention he felt fixed upon him at that moment, by a kind of nervous envelopment, he hastened to repress them as far as possible, and slid along the natural slope of his mind, drawn away by facile diversions, toward the pleasant features of the island, the voluptuous bodies of the women whose superb flesh he had already admired, which were being reserved for him.
In any case, his attention was soon reclaimed by Caresco.
“Your turn, virgin,” said the Superman. “We have made a unique exception in your favor. We have allowed you to penetrate our realm, with the promise of facilitating your departure as soon as it pleases you to leave. Never has such an irregularity been committed for anyone. It required, for me to decide upon it, my humanitarian weakness to impel me to help an unhappy child. It also required the incredible popularity with which you have troubled the old world, which has given me the desire to make your acquaintance. Do you know that you’re almost as famous as I am, virgin?”
“A cruel celebrity, alas!” murmured Miss Mary.
“Well, let’s see! What do you desire?”
The spectators of the scene had not failed to notice the extreme mildness, so contrary to his unusual abruptness, with which Caresco had begun the conversation. There were also obliged to remark the particular glint in his eyes, which had suddenly become gleaming, although an indefinable antiquity ordinarily tarnished its silvering.
Miss Mary had thrown herself to her knees. Arms extended, hands joined, with all the imploration of her lovely face turned toward the potentate, she declared the magnificent hope that was within her.
“Have pity, Superman! Pity for my poor homeland, which the coalition is strangling! Pity for the life and liberty of my brethren! You know their history, Superman, you know how I have dragged myself from country to country to obtain their help; how the egotism of governments responded to me by sending me away, by mocking me. Now, I have no further resource but you. For pity’s sake, Superman, don’t turn away from the frightful agony of a nation!”
“What do you want me to do, delightful virgin?” Caresco asked, lifting her up and retaining her hand in his, beginning to caress it softly.
“Only speak!” affirmed the young woman, more excitedly. “Manifest your determination to see the arms fall, and the coalition will have no alternative but to flee! Do better: direct toward the Red Land an airplane equipped with just one of your explosive devices, and let everyone know that you are protecting us. Will that not be sufficient to disperse the blood-drinkers? Oh, do that, Superman, do that and God will not be better than you. God will not be so powerful!”
“Am I not God?” muttered the Superman, unintelligibly, shrugging his shoulders. And as she looked at him, astonished, he went on: “But are your people not destroyed? Your people are no longer counting on you. The inhabitants of the Red Land believe that you are dead.”
“The English press has, indeed, spread that rumor, aggravating it with abominable insults—but my brother, General Harry Hardisson, knows where I am, and who I have come to implore.”
“Your brother is dying,” Caresco declared, coldly, without paying any heed to the dolor that contracted the young woman’s features. Then, passing from tenderness to cruelty, the thrust away the hand that he was still holding, violently, and said: “I’ll think about it. Go!”
They withdrew—but before they left the Temple of Surgery, Dr. Hymen took them, grumbling all the while, into a neighboring room, where he inoculated all three of them with a few drops of a serum, which, renewed every day, would protect them from the attacks of all possible diseases and give them an incomparable vital force.
For Choumaque the sanitary precaution was even stricter, for Caresco’s instructions enabled him to benefit from another liquid destined to permit him to
love fecund women without the integrity of the race being threatened in consequence.
CHAPTER IX
I’m sterile, Choumaque said to himself, as soon as he returned, a trifle intoxicated by the various inoculations, to his apartment in the Caravanserai. I’m sterile, but it isn’t a blot on my character. In order to support the rigors of Stoicism more easily, I’ve never wanted to encumber myself with the joys of a family. I shall therefore await, with the constancy of a Sage, the results of this curious practice...
Was it an effect of the serum? Was it not instead simply the action of benevolent nature continuing, in that new land, in the same fashion that she behaved everywhere? At any rate, when the philosopher had finished his reflections, strange frissons ran through his nerves, and after having made the tour, flowed into his brain in delightfully colored and tempting images.
The professor knew them well, those images, those burning visions that instinct caused to pass before his dazzled eyes. They had once haunted his poverty, when he brought back to his solitary room the cinematography of the amorous street, the memory of the couples who clung to one another as they walked, the shirts that delicate hands lifted up in rainy weather, uncovering the stocking of a muscular leg and allowing the suspicion, in their diabolical coquetry, of the hidden treasures of adorable Parisiennes.
Those visions, he always rejected, being neither rich nor sufficiently endowed by nature to convert them into an impetuous reality—and he consoled himself by shoring up his temperance with his compensatory philosophy. But this time, they took on an extraordinary intensity; they overflowed in processions of superb nudities, coming to offer themselves to him; and their seduction was all the sharper because he knew that he could content them more easily, simply by pushing one of the buttons on the utilities panel.
He looked at that panel intently. Was it not the moment to appreciate, out of simple curiosity, what it could furnish him, to respond to his desire? Among all the subscriptions that ornamented it, one—amour—even though it was engraved in the same fashion as all the rest, seemed to stand out more clearly, in five inviting letters magnified by fever.
No, he said to himself, I ought to resist, for reason informs me that the joy in question will one day be equilibrated by a disappointment. I’ll be no further forward, truly, when, after having yielded to the shock of the little epilepsy, I feel my back curved tomorrow and my marrow weary! Let me recall my last gallant enterprise, when, two months ago, I didn’t want to disoblige a streetwalker who clutched at my arm desperately, O Venus! What a hard time she had earning her money, poor thing! Am I going to behave badly in this country too, and start with a fiasco? Let’s wait for the effect of the rejuvenation that I owe to Caresco. Let’s be virtuous! Virtue is something noble, sublime, invincible and indefatigable, Pleasure is something crawling, servile, enervated and tottering...
In the course of this monologue however, he had almost involuntarily put his finger on the button. There was a click; a mechanism was engaged, and the pigeon-hole opened.
“It’s not possible for a woman to come out of there!” said Choumaque, amazed by what he had done.
Indeed, all that he saw appear was a metal plate—from which, however, a voice emerged: “What do you want?”
“What you can give me,” replied the philosopher, not daring to deny his action.
He had not finished his sentence when he heard a sound behind him. He turned round and saw a marvelous woman emerge from the rock beside the basin, which had just moved sideways. She came toward him, smiling and brunette, adorned with translucent veils characterized by the courtesans’ red stripe. Pale flowers hung down with her hair as far as the marmoreal firmness of her breasts. It seemed to Choumaque that he had never seen any as magnificent.
Sighing with emotion and hitching up his belt, he listened to her.
“Philoxénie, the friend of strangers, comes to you! Philoxénie is yours! Appreciate her! Savor the camber of her bosom, feel the satin of her shoulders, breathe the perfume of her arms! You’ll see that they are sweet!”
“I don’t doubt it,” said the philosopher, “but Mademoiselle, give me time to collect myself…I’m so surprised...”
“It’s not necessary to suffocate yourself for so little, neophyte. Am I emotional?”
“Indeed, I can comprehend your calmness…you’re obeying a service commanded…”
“Not at all. I’ve come here because I like your original head, red and black at the same time, because I have the habit of pleasing newcomers, and of pleasing myself with them; because love is good with everyone; because it’s necessary to take advantage of every opportunity to give oneself voluptuousness…come on! One doesn’t resist Philoxénie, the lover of strangers! No more procrastination…let’s talk otherwise...”
Already she was enveloping him with a caress. The philosopher, however, determined to send her away, defended himself, weakly, against her hands. The contest was still going on in his mind between respect for his doctrine and Philoxénie’s advances—but it was so unequal, so ill-armed on one side, so powerful on the other, that the result was virtually certain in advance.
His frightened mind murmured to him: “Beware! Don’t imitate your master Seneca, who, while proclaiming the necessity of taming the flesh, had unfortunate penchants for women, most notably for Julie, to which he succumbed. Be stronger than your master, Choumaque! Can you even be sure of rising to the occasion…?”
But the courtesan’s flesh, as odorous as a fruit swollen with sap, and the divine harmony of her loins, now undressed, replied: “What does Seneca matter? Isn’t the delightful contentment of the senses preferable to anything? Go on! Let pleasure envelop you in its mesh, and don’t think any further ahead...”
His eyes fluttered, when he sensed a breath as fresh as the azure breeze brush his beard, and the warm pulp of a kiss pose itself upon his mouth.
He stammered: “No, no! I don’t want to! My doctrine forbids me! Lust is despicable!” At the same time he ardently twisted the mantle of scattered hair that he wanted to draw away.
He was impregnated by the effluvia he was resisting. He took hold of the feline body that he was trying to push away. He bit avidly into the fruit that reason told him to reject, and everything, alas—all his resolutions, his doctrine, his Stoicism, Seneca and Julie, everything—crumbled with Philoxénie on to the scarlet bed, leaving him astonished by the new force that he owed to Caresco.
When he had escorted her to the door, with a thousand confused thanks, the rock opened again. The Superman appeared. He was wearing a black costume, embroidered with silver vibrions, admirably outlining his elegant slimness. Irony was painted on his face.
“Ha ha! Already, philosopher! Already, I catch you in contradiction with yourself!”
“That’s true; but on whom should the responsibility for that victory of instinct over my principles fall, Superman, if not on you, who have slipped mandrake into my veins?”
“Are you complaining?”
“Certainly. Already, in the old world, I deplored the fact that humans did not know happiness because they did not know beneficent suffering. What should I say in yours, great Gods? In yours, where, at the first step I take, you force me to taste a cup of intoxication for which I had no desire? Don’t alter the life that mingles afflictions and benefits intelligently in the crucible of our sensibility, and then, Superman, your subjects will experience the joy to which dolor alone gives value.”
“To have been able to dominate nature,” Caresco exclaimed, “to the point at which she is a tributary of my thought; to have directed my citizens toward happiness with threads so tenuous that they do not even see the keyboard by means of which I move them—a keyboard so powerful that the forces of creation cannot paralyze its effect—to have remade the world as a magnanimous pastor…and then to be judged by a tavern orator! Go ask my people, then!”
“Your people? What importance do you want to attach to their opinion? I scarcely know them, but already I s
ense that they are so insignificant, so unworthy of the interest you take in them. They wallow in their pleasure and their insouciance. From the first day of their lives your subjects are marked with your seal, and it’s not on them that you can base your claim to have beatified nature. It would be necessary, for your theory to be conclusive, for experiments to be carried out on a character in revolt.
“Is that how it is? The people you brought from the old world to constitute this island were individuals already enfeebled, worn down by tribulations, defeated by vicissitudes, entirely disposed to submit to your imprint. In them, nature was no longer manifest, with its beautiful expansion of resistance; in them, it was not longer able to baulk at the laws of fluctuation that I still consider to be ineluctable.
“The day on which you have dominated a truly strong and new soul; when you have reduced that soul by all your processes of seduction to the same softness as your other subjects; when you have convinced that soul of the idea that the existence to which you are leading it is the happiest existence; the day when you have suppressed therein ambition, hope, anger, love and hatred—all conditions that I, Choumaque, believe to be essential to happiness—on that day, Superman, I will declare that the great theoreticians of ideas, and even the creator of the doctrine of equilibria, are only valets be comparison with the master that you are, and I will erect a golden statue to you in my heart!”
At these words, Caresco began to laugh loudly. He seized the professor by a flap of his garment and drew him toward the bed, where he sat down. Then, still holding Choumaque, whose Stoicism he was disturbing, and tugging him with every convulsion of his laughter he exclaimed:
“You’ve said it, philosopher! That’s precisely the experiment I shall attempt! And do you know on whom? Oh, not on you, to be sure, nor on your pupil Marcel...” He became grave in order to pronounce the words that followed, and new and vivid emotion was detectable in his voice. “…But on the Hardisson woman, the strong virgin. I was warned; I knew her character in advance, forged of pride and revolt, of which you demanded proof just now...
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