Caresco, Superman

by André Couvreur

  “Do you think that’s solid enough, Hymen? Take your fingers away, so that I can fix it more securely.”

  He struck again. A few incoherencies emerged from the half-man’s pisciform mouth.

  “He’s waking up! He’ll be content, the little fellow! Isn’t that the thirtieth time I’ve worked on him? And it won’t be the last!”

  “No, no, it won’t be the last! And I bless you, O Superman!” trumpeted the captain’s voice, with a shrill bleat, as he emerged from his artificial sleep. He went on: “O celestial bliss! O supreme recompense of my adoration! Blessed be the one who has once again brought me another step closer to perfection!”

  “Take him away, and leave me alone with Carabella,” Caresco ordered Dr. Hymen, who pirouetted and pushed the pedestal away.

  When the machine-man had disappeared, Caresco sat down, and with the greatest mystery, beckoned to the courtesan to come closer. His exaltation had suddenly died away; an indefinable disgust tarnished his physiognomy. Thoughtfully, he bit his fingernails, without paying any heed to the blood that stained them. Then, interrupting with a curt gesture the manifestations of servility that Carabella was making, her moving hips splayed by prostration, he said: “Well, what about the stranger?”

  “I don’t have very much to tell you, Superman. She’s very mysterious, and doesn’t allow herself any effusion.”

  “Has she acquired a taste for adornment?”

  “She disdains the jewelry that clutters her coffers.”

  “Does she eat?”

  “Without pleasure.”

  “What does she say?”

  “She only talks about her brother.”

  “And amour?”

  “She remains insensible to it.”

  “The serum hasn’t had any effect on her, then!” Caresco murmured, twisting his brown beard. Then he said: “Carabella, you’re going to apply yourself to a delicate task.”

  “Speak! I submit myself to you as matter to Mind, as a creature to the Primal Being...”

  “Well, it’s a matter of planting in this Hardisson the seed of the joy that you respire so ardently. I want her to be intoxicated, like the others by the long delights that you cause to pant perpetually! I want her to feel, in the secrecy of her soul, the wonderment of our Beauty, and in the secrecy of her flesh, the impetuosity of our Voluptuousness! I want the obsolete memory of her homeland to vanish forever. That’s what I want!”

  “She has only to look around and let herself live.”

  “No, for in that virgin, nature, which I have tamed so thoroughly elsewhere, is still rearing up and rebelling. She is all nature, that daughter of the Red Land! And she complicates it with such purity, such temperance!”

  Astonished, Carabella dared to raise her large dark eyes toward her interlocutor. He noticed the interrogation in them.

  “But what need do I have to give you explanations? Content yourself with obeying. Attach yourself to her. Praise our way of life to her incessantly. Impregnate her with our transports. Impart to her the diapason with which you vibrated yourself when I possessed you with my Science! But above all, let her remain virgin to men. You’ll answer to me for her metempsychotic fortune...”

  He threw her a box wrapped in golden cloth, which she picked up, kissing it piously.

  “Take it. In the form of fruit confections, it’s a variety of my Essence of Happiness. Those sweetmeats have already reckoned with a few strangers. Make her take two a day, until the end of the month, and tell me the result. Better than that—I’ll monitor it personally.”

  “I shall obey, Almighty.”

  Dismissed, she departed in the same fashion that she had arrived. The airplane transported her to Miss Mary. The foreigner, who had not gone out that day, was sitting in a chaste indoor costume at a table in her room, occupied in writing a journal of her travels for her brother. She was telling dear Harry about her incredible adventures, how she had arrived in an extraordinary country where life was very different—magical and seductive, to be sure, but too facile for a soul like hers to delight in it. She added that nothing would be able to deflect her from the noble objective that she was determined to attain, of saving the fatherland. And her hand, as she wrote, trembled with a sublime fever.

  “That’s a strange occupation,” said Carabella, as she came in, “describing little signs on paper.”

  “It’s called writing,” Miss Mary observed. “Don’t you know how to write, courtesan?”

  “I leave that concern to scholars. What use are the torments of the intellect to us? Have we not a thousand more ingenious ways to communicate?”

  “Possibly. But that ignorance will always keep you apart from the beautiful legends of history and the pleasure of acquaintance with the thoughts of great writers.”

  “All that is of very mediocre interest. Happiness is found within oneself.”

  As she spoke, Carabella held out her box of confections to the neophyte. Miss Mary took one and put it in her mouth with an unthinking gesture, so absorbed was she in her dream, in flight toward the Red Land. After which she took up her pen, determined not to allow herself to be distracted any longer, and to enclose herself in her dolorous intimacy with the energetic Harry.

  Almost immediately, however, a languor invaded her; entirely new images interposed themselves between the letter and the intelligence that was dictating its terms. Like a river alimented by the new water of glaciers, she expanded in a wave of spring-like descriptions.

  Without abandoning her subject, she continued to relate the astonishments of the island, but in a different fashion. She cited the beauty of its people, the mildness of its climate, the magnificence of its monuments, the splendor of its incomparable locations. Iridescent colors, sunlight, the glinting of metals, all the pomp of flames, jewels, gold and harmonies of flesh flowed kaleidoscopically from her pen. She knew that she was not expressing the true thoughts of Miss Mary, because another woman had taken her place—but that other woman experienced a strange pleasure in being, and was delighted to feel that Carabella was behind her, sharing her intoxication. If she thought for a moment about Marcel, it was no longer to pose the problem of his expatriation, but to confide to Harry that the Frenchman was vigorously built, like the young men of the Red Land, and that he also had a native elegance and clarity of eye that rendered him entirely likeable and charming.

  “You mustn’t tire yourself out, divine neophyte,” said Carabella, forcing her to stop work.

  Then, putting her arm around her waist—which she permitted without resistance, Carabella took Miss Mary to lean on the balustrade of the terrace, before a prestigious panorama illuminated by the sunset. At the same time, she gave her the second fruit pastel prescribed by Caresco.

  “Contemplate the day’s end, divine one. All the jewels of the setting sun are accumulating on the horizon. And when they have disappeared, when the star is lying in its mantle of shadow, you’ll see the delightful spectacle that the Superman is giving us to enjoy this evening.”

  Indeed, as soon as darkness had fallen, the moonless firmament lit up again. On the black screen of space there appeared, in a phantasmagoria of lights fixed at precise points in communication, a succession of pictures, each more extraordinary than the last. Unfolding in the auroras there were sumptuous processions; and then Pactoluses of fire, drawing, in waves of caresses, enfevered nudities; and then languid twilights in which human splendors were interlaced, embracing one another, shaking the spirals of their golden hair.

  “It’s the Passion!” murmured Carabella, intoxicated. “It’s the Passion deploying. Look, Virgin! All of our amour is passing before your eyes! I recognize the guests at these divine feasts; I have savored with them the temptations of cleavages; I have drunk the philters of their breath! O sublime Beauty! O harmony of Forms! O divine architects of ecstasy! Do you understand them, Virgin; can you feel them? Is not that poetry worth more than the most beautiful epics of war?”

  “I confess that I find it admirable,�
� said the neophyte, who, gripped more tenderly by Carabella, felt the suggestion of the images invading her, impregnating her nerves.

  But when Carabella wanted to test her fervor further; when, having drawn her into the room, barely lit by a rosy omnial glow, she tried to imitate the gestures that had been falling from the sky a few moments before, and approached the warm pulp of her lips to the virginal mouth, the latter suddenly turned away.

  “What do you want with me? Go away! I don’t understand! Go away!”

  The foreigner stiffened. War, rifles, cannons, dying soldiers, Harry holding the lacerated flag—all of the other poem assailed her again. And those memories emitted such a perfume of health and the ideal that she felt disgust as she breathed the perfumed breath of the courtesan. She shoved her to the door.

  The second attempt of Caresco’s genius had failed. Nature remained the stronger, even though the strength of Miss Mary’s modesty had been weakened in advance of the assault.

  CHAPTER XII

  That morning, Marjah was alone when he came to collect the philosopher and his pupil. As soon as he came into their apartment he adopted an unaccustomed attitude of importance. After bringing them together he explained the gravity of his attitude.

  “Today, Messieurs, I am going to acquaint you with the Sacred Region of the island. The Superman has put all his wisdom, all his science and all his bounty into it. There are no palaces there; there are temples, all of which are utilized for the religion of Life that we practice. I beg you to cross their thresholds with the same devotion that I experience myself in going into them.”

  Furnished with these holy recommendations, Choumaque and Marcel took their places in a rapid airplane, which Marjah guided with the greatest skill. The weather was exquisite, and skillfully distributed currents of fresh air contested without difficulty with the sun’s heat to maintain a temperature of gentle warmth. Choumaque and Marcel had sat down at the front, vibrant with the light through which they were soaring.

  “What a pity that Miss Hardisson isn’t with us!” murmured Marcel. He had not seen her the previous day. On the few occasions when he had seen her approach, in the silence of the intermediate park, always under the equivocal surveillance of Carabella, she had seemed saddened by the uncertainty in which her appearance before Caresco had left her.

  “It’s probable,” Choumaque observed, “that we’re going to find ourselves in the presence of spectacles that a young woman whose initiation has not taken place cannot know...”

  “Don’t you think, Master, that she is being deliberately kept away from me?”

  “That’s an observation that manifests a great conceit, or a great suffering…and I hope that the latter reason is the true one.”

  Scarcely had Marcel expressed his anxiety, however, than he was given cause to change his mind. Cries departing from the ground attracted their attention, and on leaning over they saw Miss Mary and Carabella, who were making signs at them to stop.

  “Superman’s orders!” said the courtesan, when they had landed. “I am to inform you, Marjah, the neophyte is to accompany you to the sacred regions.” She leaned over toward the High Priest and murmured a few mysterious words in his ear, as she slipped a little box into his hand. Doubtless she was passing on the orders imposed by Caresco, for the eunuch’s face, as he listened, was infused with a sacerdotal gravity.

  Marcel was delighted to see Miss Mary again. The excursion, undertaken with regret, was about to be converted into an intoxicating adventure. His hopes were dented, however, on observing that the foreign woman was listening to what he said in a reserved manner. He admired the pride of her attitude, her commanding presence, the freshness of her cheeks and the reflections of sunlight in her hair.

  “Miss Mary!” he murmured. “Miss Mary! How sweet it is to pronounce your name! My heart recites it in secret, although my lips tremble to pronounce it aloud. Know what a disaster your departure will cast into one heart! Do you still intend to remove from this island the sole attraction that, for me, can exist here? Tell me, Miss Mary, are you still intending to leave?”

  She did not reply. That music found no echo in her.

  The sight of the panorama soon extracted them from those alternatives. They were approaching an enormous mountain of which the summit, having the circular form of an extinct crater, was lost in the eternal snows. Lower down there was red rock, carved in a picturesque fashion by sharp gashes, gigantic crevasses forming gulfs whose depths were invisible, plunging as far as the intersection of the island’s two gigantic legs, lost in the blue sea that was enlivened by a silvery sparkle.

  “That’s the Mount of Venus,” Marjah confirmed. “It’s the sole reminder of the cataclysm that occurred thirty years ago. The Superman decided to retain all of its savage horror. It’s well-known—but only mentioned in whispers—that in one of those fissures there’s a cave into which only he goes. It’s said that he works there, that he meditates these. Approaching it is forbidden, within a perimeter of two kilometers.

  While they circled around the monstrous block, in order not to pass over the forbidden zone, Marjah, while maintaining control of the airplane, gave further explanations. He told them that the volcano, after several eruptions, had now become extinct and cooled. He had seen it still smoking twenty years before. Sometimes, one heard rumbles that revealed intimate convulsions, the muted work of the central fire continuing beneath its icy carcass—but since the Superman went there frequently, since he worked there in secret machines, the eunuch considered that there was no danger to the people.

  Nevertheless, what Marjah also knew, but dared not recount, was a dark legend repeated clandestinely, reaching ears like the distant echo of an indistinct sound, so strange and so troubling that it had stirred his natural asexual apathy. Was it not said, in fact, that sometimes, individuals—especially young virgins—disappeared into that lair, abducted by Caresco, and never came back?

  To be sure, the religious fatalism of the people, their absolute faith in the Superman, could not admit that they were subjected there to a dire fate. They even went so far as to believe that the virgins thus removed from the community were particularly favored, and that the Master had organized a different life for them inside the mountain, in which they enjoyed an even more fortunate destiny. But that was only a supposition, contradicted in reality by the appearance of lassitude, and even distress, the Caresco offered to the eyes of his faithful followers when he returned from the mysterious cavern alone.

  The aerial craft was flying lower now, at a rapid speed. It soon came close to an agglomeration of buildings in the vicinity of a vast entrance on pink porphyry representing, with an incredible crudity of realism, the union of the two sexes. Choumaque and Marcel looked at that new symbol without overmuch offense; one might have thought that they were already impregnated with the morality of their new fatherland, accepting its licentious spectacles as well as the entirely natural manifestations of the religion of Life presiding over social organization. As for Miss Mary, her eyes did not turn away from it; she was following an internal reverie.

  They became interested thereafter in a sequence of edifices that extended as far as the eye could see. They sensed that Caresco had lavished every luxury and wealth upon them. There were golden domes speckled with coral vibrions and ovules; towers of pink and green marble; gigantic campaniles in milky hues; then spacious gardens enameled with a prodigality of flowers forming, even at a distance, a harmonious polychromy; and, further on, shady parks with sinuous streams and blue lakes, shining in gaps in the verdure in which the iridescent foliage seemed fresher than anywhere else. All of it spoke of the unparalleled splendor of that area, delimited into two precise regions, following the straight lines of the terrestrial legs sinking into the sea.

  The airplane touched down gently, and they got down, near two coupled organs, one of which—the male—was pierced with a central channel that constituted the entrance. As soon as they had passed through it, an immense room that Marjah
called the Hall of Sensuality appeared before them. As it was dark in its center, they contented themselves with moving along the moderately illuminated walls, and eventually came out into a vast park filled with verdant arbors disposed like beds, or altars.

  There, two paths were offered, the one to the right decked with pennants in pale blue and orange, the one on the left with yellow and mauve pennants, floating in the breeze. Two large avenues carved in the rock succeeded those decorations, indicative of fecundity to the right and sterility to the left. Strewn with extremely fine green gravel, they were being raked at that moment by automatic machines evenly propelled without the assistance of any human direction.

  They hesitated over which route to take, but Marjah made the decision: “Let’s visit Fecundity first.”

  Almost immediately, the found themselves in front of a group sculpted in onyx the color of flesh, with an incomparable artistic perfection. It represented, surging from the ground, a naked mother holding a baby in her arms to which she had just given birth, holding it out toward a man with a long curly beard, whose nudity indicated, by the presence of a nenuphar lily-pad over the location of the sex organ, a definite sterility. The play of an interior light made the head of the infant shine, even by day, expanding to reflect from the parents in an apotheosis. They admired the group, and circled around it, searching in vain for a signature.

  “I thought that artists were only modest in France,” observed Choumaque, with a sardonic smile.

  “That is the symbol of the family,” said a voice behind them. “The child, constitutive of the hearth, radiates joy and happiness upon the mother and the father—of whom, nevertheless, it is not the descendant.”