Caresco, Superman

by André Couvreur

  Caresco, it is true, in order to palliate that constant bliss, to make a different flame shine within it nevertheless, had dictated the belief in metempsychosis, in a life always in movement, evolving toward perfection. But what obstacle held it back? Furthermore, once arrived at the goal of happiness, had he not said that the individual returned to the primal state, the cellular state, in order to recommence climbing all the steps of transformism? And was not that doctrine the very expression of incoherence?

  No: another motive must have given birth to that nonsense—and Choumaque wondered whether Caresco had not imagined it in order better to enslave his people, in order not to be opposed in the frantic passion for omnipotence that, for three-quarters of a century, had been seething in the surgeon’s tormented brain.

  That problem, apparently insoluble, puzzled the philosopher of equilibria.

  “And what do you think of Caresco?” he asked Marius.

  “Caresco! What a genius! What a god!” the painter exclaimed. But immediately, all his old southern abandon got the upper hand, and he looked around to see whether anyone was nearby who might be spying. And, speaking in a very low voice—so low that Choumaque could hardly hear him, with a need for confidence as forceful as a natural secretion, he added: “Jut between us, darling—but keep it strictly to yourself—I think he exaggerates. He isn’t the Superman; he ought to be called the surfeit. Let’s hope that he’s not listening to us right now. His genius is a joke—remember what I said, and not a word, eh?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Here,” confided Marius, shivering gloriously at his courage, “there are a thousand scientists and artists who, like me, work anonymously...”

  “I know. I’ve been through the Palace of the Brain.”

  “Well, darling, Caresco attributes all their inventions to himself. He wants to have the glory of them. Has he not claimed to me—me, the renovator of the fresco—that it’s him who had conceived the method? It’s the same for all the other discoveries…he pockets them, with the spirit of his race. He’s simply an assimilator. Don’t repeat that, eh? He has nothing of his own but his marvelous skill during his operations. That, old chap, is....”

  He did not finish his sentence. He replaced the word that did not emerge with a mime expressive of terrified admiration, by a circulation of his arm designating the immensity.

  “How do you know that? Are you, then, very close to him?”

  Marius stopped walking and planted himself on his two long feet, emerging from his narrow trousers. Then, seizing Choumaque by the fat of his shoulders, looking into his eyes, he said: “Zéphirin, you’re a brother eh? We’ve cuckolded one another. Have you got guts? Would you like to risk your life to see something unforgettable, at the same time as I’m risking mine to show it to you?”

  He had put his hand over his heart, in a gesture of immense fraternal protestation—and Choumaque, who knew that such manifestations generally accompanied the most anodyne of proposals, immediately accepted.

  “Well, I’m going take you to see Caresco operate.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “By taking you with me into the room next door to the laboratory in which he operates. I’m doing a big painting at present, and the other day, while brushing a frieze, I put the paintbrush on an asperity that, when it’s touched, renders the wall separating the two rooms transparent. Oh, darling, what I saw is tremendous!”

  “Let’s go,” said Choumaque, whose curiosity was awakening, although he was still suspicious of his friend’s imagination.

  They went to an opening that plunged into the earth. The tube carried them away with the lightning rapidity of atmospheric pressure. They had to change vehicles once, which delayed they journey by two minutes. Marius manifested some impatience. He feared missing the bloody moment.

  Finally, they reached the Palace of Surgery, and followed the secret passages that Marius knew well, and in which, fortunately, the gloom favored their audacity.

  And for once, the Southerner had not exaggerated.

  When, after having gone to the transparent wall, they perceived the operating theater next door, Choumaque was horrified to have to spend a quarter of an hour of his existence there. They arrived in the middle of the work. Around the table on which the philosopher had been lying a week before, two men were agitating, their arms bare, their torsos sheathed in smocks that were nothing but red rags.

  One of them, Caresco, his face brown and ardent, his hooked nose curved over his shiny beard, his forehead streaked by a spray of blood, was holding his famous instrument in his hand and plunging it frightfully into violet-tinted living flesh. He crushed, he twisted, he tore away and he cut with a ferocious insouciance, without a muscle in his face quivering, his eyes perpetually dull.

  Facing him on the other side of the table, Dr. Hymen, his eternal hat on his head, implausibly hirsute, was sweeping the operational area by means of large compresses, white at first, which became rutilant as soon as they were dipped in the human broth, and his slanting nose was palpitating with pleasure.

  What gripped the spectators even more than those tragic attitudes, however, was the extraordinary aspect of the subject on whom the surgeons were working. It was reduced to a round ball that might have been a head, all the orifices of which save one—the mouth—had been filled in: a ball to which a kind of stump was attached, a morsel of trunk, in which the palpitating heart was at that moment laid bare, visible in the broad gap left by the excised ribs.

  And, in fact, that was all that remained of a man, for on the ground, thrown down in a frightful pell-mell, lay the other parts of his body, in pieces, horrible shreds, sticky tatters: the legs, the arms, the abdominal viscera, almost the whole of the vertebral column and one lung.

  “Hole in the air! He’s working on his human monad!” exclaimed Marius, enthusiastically. “Isn’t it marvelous? Look at that tranquil butchery! O great Caresco! O Superman! Realizing the admirable conception of an individual of whom nothing remains but a brain devoid of senses and almost devoid of organs! Reducing the head to one orifice that permits respiration and alimentation, and only conserving, in a section of trunk, one lung, a heart and a parcel of gut! O genius! Will you succeed, this time?”

  Every fiber of Choumaque’s being was shivering with fear. He scarcely remarked the real transport of his petrified friend, touched, like everyone else, by the fanaticism of the despot, even though his conversation of a little while ago had claimed the contrary. The only exclamation of which he took note was the last.

  “What do you mean, will he succeed this time? This isn’t his first attempt, then?”

  “Personally, in the month that I’ve been working here, I’ve already seen the attempt fail seventeen times. When he’d finished, when all the organs had been sewn up again, enclosed in the flesh, and the skin had been coated with a varnish that protected the whole, at the moment when he wanted to extract what remained of his subject from the provoked sleep, the subject was no longer breathing, no longer moving, and the heart had cased to beat. The machine hadn’t started working again, you see.

  “He became furious then, foaming at the mouth...then he took the semblance of a cadaver and threw it at Hymen’s head, accusing him of having spoiled his operation. That’s why Hymen keeps his top hat on in all circumstances, in order to ward off the blows by lowering his head.”

  “And who does he take for these horrible experiments?”

  “Slaves. There are too many. It’s a means for Caresco to purge his island of them. It’s a way for them—a much appreciated way—to disappear, while meriting a rapid progression along the scale of metempsychosis...”

  “Do you believe all that?”

  “Of course!”

  They looked at one another, as individuals from different worlds, brains that were no longer vibrating at the same rhythm. Thirty years of mental poisoning had, therefore, reduced the friend whom Choumaque had once thought intelligent to stupidity. The phi
losopher was devastated by the thought that in his turn, he might perhaps allow himself to be infiltrated by the virus, and that his philosophy might be destroyed—but the interest of the spectacle gripped him again.

  Caresco and his assistant had finished their operation. After having coated the human fragment, they were now leaning over the deformed matter, and were listening with anxious expectation for the sounds of the thorax; they were keeping watch, by means of little recording devices placed on the neck, for the manifestations of life in the remains of their subject.

  Suddenly, they straightened up, their arms in the air, and a formidable cry escaped them:

  “He’s alive! He’s alive!”

  And then, while Caresco, having mastered himself, contemplated his masterpiece coldly, without a muscle in his face quivering, Hymen gave signs of the most inordinate joy. Perhaps for the first time, he was seen to take off his hat and throw it in the air. Then he accomplished a few fantastic somersaults, after which he threw himself at the Superman’s feet, licking the hem of his smock in frantic adoration.

  “Glory to you, Superman! Glory to you, God!”

  With a gesture of disgust the Superman ordered him to go away.

  Left alone, the surgeon was absorbed in thought momentarily. His eyes made a tour of the room. Their manifest tranquility proved that he did not know that he was being observed from behind the seemingly-opaque partition wall. His unconsciousness, or strange preoccupations, had caused him to forget that he had entrusted Marius with the duty of working nearby. He could not, in any case, imagine that the painter might have put sufficient pressure on the secret button that made the curtain imprisoned in the wall move aside, permitting the mysteries of his ferocious work to be discovered.

  He got up and went to open a cupboard. An infinity of marvelous costumes was assembled within it. He chose one: a black velvet robe damascened with precious stones, so powerfully bright that the lighting was increased by a thousand new nuclei. He took off his blood-stained smock and washed his soiled hands and arms; he removed the red streak from his forehead. Then, after putting on make-up, he restored the gleam to his weary eyes with a vivifying lotion.

  At that moment he was radiant with a new, strange, imperial beauty, completed by the posing on his head of a sumptuous golden crown. Thus adorned he closed the cupboard again and went to press a button controlling a trap-door. A woman lying on a divan emerged from the floor. She was admirably nude, also made up, but by the preparations of nature alone. Her brown skin was bright with all the nuances of a great flavorsome flower. Her firm breasts, with pink areolas, were caressed by the loose tresses of her ardent hair. The light, touching her teeth, made her smile flash like diamonds. No trace on her delicate abdomen revealed surgical profanation. She was a virgin.

  Caresco knelt down beside her. He took her hand, breathed in its odor, choked by an anguished desire, He stammered words of admiration to which she listened with her eyelids closed and her hips writhing with lust. He implored her, but his gaze dominant her entirely. Vanquished, she extended the feverish pulp of her lips toward him. Then, triumphant, he took her in his arms and transported her to the operating table.

  “What’s going to happen now?” demanded Choumaque, alarmed by the spectacle.

  “Good God, wait! You’ll see! Not what you think.”

  The Superman handed the virgin the extremity of a mobile wire, which she applied to her own forehead. Immediately, her eyes fluttered; a few convulsions ran through her; her smile attested to the perfect bliss of her being. Palpitating with amour, she was asleep.

  Then, veritably, the soul appeared in the Superman’s face. His gaze, reanimated by the eye-lotion, was supplemented by an expression of mortal passion. His mouth quivered, palpitating in the stutters of his vice. With a profound plunge of his hand he kneaded the abdomen that sleep had delivered to him, and his touch caused sparks to crackle.

  Then, disdaining his carescoclast, he seized a scalpel placed within reach on a movable table, and penetrated the lily-white skin with a superb sweep. Viscera sprang forth; blood spurted, which he caught in passage. His fingers, after having rummaged in soft red resistances, seized a harder mass,19 which he brought violently to the level of the frightful gap. He twisted it in his athletic claw; he tore it out; and when, the monstrous prey of his delirium, he had brought it to his lips, a great spasm ran through him.

  “I no longer feel steady on my legs—support me!” Choumaque breathed, clutching his friend’s arm, drops of cold sweat flooding his temples.

  “What! He has a sensitive heart, poor fellow! Not used to it, probably...” said the painter, lying the philosopher—who had fainted—down on the ground.

  Immediately, he closed the curtain; then, taking a little syringe from his pocket, he injected a drop of cordial into the arm of the over-sensitive spectator.

  The effect was instantaneous. Choumaque recovered consciousness.

  “Let’s get out of here! Quickly!”

  “Not a word about this to anyone,” advised the painter, when they were outside. You wouldn’t survive, nor me either, if anyone knew that we’d seen the Superman amorous. And I’m fond of my skin, for Metempsychosis...”

  CHAPTER XIV

  After leaving Marius, Choumaque was hurrying his paces when he suddenly heard a strange voice calling to him.

  “Hey! Where have you come from?”

  The philosopher turned round, and was not overly surprised not to perceive any interlocutor, for the island was sufficiently tricked out for a phonograph to be hidden by a fold in the terrain, and for someone to adopt that surly tone in order to give him a scare. He was, therefore, about to continue on his way without replying, in order not to compromise himself, when a rustle of wings, followed by the appearance of the flyer from a clump of trees, suddenly immobilized him.

  He was in the presence of a goose, and she repeated the question: “Where have you come from? What are you doing here?”

  At first, Choumaque could only gaze at this new phenomenon dazedly. He had been greeted several times, with a few affectionate terms, by talking animals, but none had ever pronounced such a purposive sentence. Thinking, nevertheless, that the Superman’s genius could not extend so far as to render a palmiped as notoriously stupid as a goose intelligent and loquacious, he smiled, and replied: “What are you doing here?”

  “I guard the Brain, as my ancestors guarded the Capitol.”

  This time, Choumaque almost fell over.

  The Jabotière,20 perceiving his surprise, went on: “You must be as stupid as a human, Monsieur Choumaque, to be astonished to hear me conversing. Don’t conclude from the fact that the animals in the other world express themselves in an incomprehensible fashion that they’re mute and stupid. It sufficed for the Superman to remove a little morsel of cerebral substance from the encephalum of a human and transplant it into my cranium for me to become more manifestly talkative than a windbag of your sort, and one commits a gross error when one measures intelligence by the abundance of words. Ask me questions about morality, and you’ll see how I reply to them.”

  This overturns all my ideas about the mental supremacy of humans, Choumaque thought, still trembling with stupefaction, and I’ve never regretted as much the good moments that I owe to abatis aux navets.21 To think that I was eating philosophy!

  He approached the bird and stroked her, caressing her remarkably shiny feathers. Then, wanting to plumb the secrets of that unknown soul, he asked: “Just one question, little goose: are you happy?”

  “I was. I’m less so since the Master’s operation separated me from nature and brought me closer to humans. I now have concerns of diction and conduct that embarrass me. I no longer dare delouse myself in public, as I did before. I must, alas, befit my function and my status...”

  Choumaque almost burst out laughing, but he contained himself, thinking that, in fact, the animal was to be pitied. Besides, an idea occurred to him that compounded his anxiety. Did not the goose’s reply confir
m Caresco’s sentiment, in claiming to obtain the happiness of his subjects by making them stupid? Was the potentate not right, then? The greatest bliss of the soul consisted, therefore, in being retrenched in the cerebral activity of the brute, in getting rid of the intelligent exchanges and amiable controversies of metaphysics and simple enjoying material pleasures!

  That thought upset him, and he attempted to draw away from the bird that had suggested it—but the goose, in a confidential mood, did not want to stop. She continued talking, and followed him, waddling on her webbed feet. He was obliged to lengthen his stride to flee the unbelievable conversation.

  He thus avoided the danger of the question that had been put to him at the beginning and giving an explanation of his presence in Caresco’s palace. But while running, he reflected that the Jabotière had, indeed, become very human, because, for the sake of the pleasure of chatting, she had forgotten to guard the Capitol.

  CHAPTER XV

  A large oblong room with coldly garish walls, painted in violet, heightened by a gold frame, and divided into two parts, one ascending in steps with tables and reading-desks, the other flattening out into a stage equipped with a vast blackboard covered with lines and symbols in white chalk, enclosed at that moment all the genius in the realm. It was the Academy of Eucrasia.

  On the steps, two hundred violet-clad scientists were bent over books, papers and writing materials, and the artificially young heads had old gazes. On the stage was a porphyry throne where Caresco, seemingly tired and weary, was listening to a mathematician illustrating his speech with the calculations and lines traced on the shiny blackboard.

  The man, a former professor from the British Museum in London, was explaining how a new mechanism of transportation due to his research would produce, thanks to an explosion of omnial gas, a force sufficiently considerable to launch a cabin-shell containing ten people from a monstrous cannon at a velocity of a hundred kilometers a second. The projectile in question would follow a trajectory so scrupulously calculated that it would infallibly, and precisely, fall into a receptive cage equipped with such powerful springs that the slightest shock to the passengers would be avoided.