Caresco, Superman

by André Couvreur

  The foreigner’s body was still lying on the shiny table, but life had fled therefrom with a lightning rapidity, accomplishing in ten seconds the regression of ten months of withering.

  First, it was the face that blanched; its adorable contours melted into a waxy thinness, the cheekbones appeared, the arcs of the jaw became more pronounces. Then the body followed that incredible decrepitude. The jutting of the clavicles described two dark holes; the torso shriveled, with the ribs traced in black. The breasts hung down, reduced to two limp pockets. The hips hollowed out into notches; the legs were no more than bones sheathed in tanned skin. At the same time, the coloration of the face was further modified, passing from yellow to livid. Soon, the eyes, revulsed in an abysmal agony, were not brightening anything but a skeleton.

  Caresco roared! Death, then, was stronger than he was! Death was not obedient to his omnipotence, as life had obeyed him! And that marvelous flesh, which his sadism coveted, was evaporating thus, without him being able to enjoy it!

  He gazed at the abdomen. It was no longer anything but a cavity held by a rigid and dull membrane. In a moment, decomposition would commence its work in its turn, putrefying that source of divine sensuality, introducing its abominable swarmings there, where temptation radiated. But he had to hurry, then! Let him hasten to extract what intoxication that he could still obtain!

  With a cry of lust, he raised his scalpel furiously and brought it down on the lascivious region. His instrument, encountering the cold table, twisted. The metal uttered a plaint. Blood ran.

  The sight of the blood astonished Caresco as if it were something impossible. Instinctively, he compressed the vessel that was yielding it, and convinced himself scientifically of the benignity of his wound.

  And that bleeding was salutary. Freed from his hallucination, he breathed deeply. A weight had been removed with the red liquid. On raising his eyes, he saw that things had resumed their familiar aspect. In the display-cases, the cadavers, the anatomical specimens, were dangling hideously; Fabienne was still smiling; and Druant’s mouth, frightfully open, was crowned with sticky red hair.

  On the table, though, was the bent scalpel, and on his wrist, the trickle of blood.

  What had he seen, then? What had he heard? Where had those images, and those voices, come from?

  Panting, he raised his arms in the air. “I’m going mad! I’m going mad!”

  He took a few steps toward the bed, and sank down on it, sobbing.

  “I’m no longer the Superman!” his voice howled, immensely reverberated by the unruly echoes of the lair. “I’m a man…a madman!”

  With the promptitude of transformation that was characteristic of his extraordinary brain, however, he immediately pulled himself together. Standing up, he shook himself. His neck retreated into his shoulders as he prepared to pounce. He thought hard. Figures, calculations and hieroglyphs seethed intensely in his skull. An enthusiasm illuminated him.

  “The formula! O splendor of my genius! I’ve found the formula!”

  A great enlightenment had suddenly revealed a new world. The formula for an aphrodisiac fluid, for which he had been searching for years, blazed forth on the blackboard of his dolor. Quickly! He had to realize it! He had to throw it as fodder to his scientists! All the crucibles in his empire had to be prepared, to recommence combining his omnium! And in a fortnight, the virgin, definitely defeated, a slave to lust, tormented by passion, would become his queen!

  “Nature, O Nature! Three times you have held me at bay! Well, I defy you more than ever!”

  CHAPTER XIX

  Choumaque hastened toward the Palace of the Heart, where Caresco had commanded a meeting. Assuming that the Superman did not like to wait, he ran, observing with joy now easily his articulations moved, how effortlessly his respiration supported the effort demanded of it. With one arm folded against the thorax, in conformity with the prescriptions of the gymnastics monitor, the other hitching up his belt to satisfy his inveterate mania, he was about to reach the great red façade when the muffled sound of wheels, which seemed to have attached themselves to his footsteps a few moments ago, caused him to look round.

  If the object following him had not been placed on a pedestal he would never have recognized the mechanical man. The face of the half-man did not resemble the one he remembered at all. In fact, nothing could be distinguished now but a kind of aluminum cage vaguely adopting a human shape.

  “Eh! But it’s the captain!” he risked.

  “Himself, Monsieur Choumaque. I see with pleasure that you’ve recognized me, even though a slight transformation has been carried out in my physiognomy by the Superman.”

  “To tell the truth, it does seem to me...”

  “It ought not to seem to you. It’s a certain thing. The divine Caresco has taken pity on me and has favored me with a marvelous operation. This cage that you see placed on my head replaces the various items of apparatus that were still juxtaposed there a fortnight ago. It is an integral part of my being; it multiplies my sight and hearing tenfold; it replaces both jaws, my tongue and my larynx. As for the sense of smell, let’s not talk about it—it’s superfluous. Have you noticed how powerful my voice is?”

  “I confess that you’re thundering, Reply to me sincerely, though, Captain: you must be horribly uncomfortable in there?”

  “I’ve never been so much at ease.”

  “With the result that you still consider yourself the happiest man…forgive me, did I say man?...I mean the happiest individual in the realm?”

  “I should think so! That’s the twenty-fourth time he’s opened me up.”

  “It seems to me,” observed Choumaque, “that if your anatomy resembles a strong-box, your mind, on the contrary, is the very opposite of a financier’s. The more that is stolen from you, the more satisfied you are.”

  “It’s so good to allow someone one adores to take!” avowed the dwarf, introducing inside his mask the back-scratcher that he was holding in his only hand, in order to calm the itching of a scar.

  On these reflections, they arrived at a large circular space occupied at the center by a vast recently-built chimney, the foundations of which penetrated to a depth of three hundred meters, which rose to some sixty feet above the ground, following the trajectory of a semicircular curve. From the open summit of that masonry, a metal tube with a radius of ten meters emerged, ablaze with the caress of the sun.

  Before Choumaque had time to ask what this new invention was, the clamors uttered by the scientists assembled in the place welcomed the arrival of the Superman. The latter passed through the middle of two violet rows of prostrated bodies, his eyes proud, his expression smiling and his gestures astonishingly animated, with an attitude of exceptional satisfaction. As soon as he perceived Choumaque he beckoned to him to approach. Interrupting the pirouettes with which the philosopher was honoring him, he drew him closer to him and kissed him on the cheeks.

  “I’m delighted that you’ve come, philosopher. During the month you’ve been in Eucrasia, I’ve scarcely seen you. However, you interest me, like every new puppet of the old world that I attach to my keyboard. Tell me, are you glad to be here?”

  “I can let myself live here.”

  “That’s the ticket. And your companion, the mariner?”

  “Oh! Him...”

  “And the foreigner, Miss Mary?”

  “I dare not be as affirmative in that respect.”

  The Superman had taken Choumaque’s arm, and, while chatting, drew him toward the entrance to the block of masonry. The philosopher, astonished by that graciousness, listened to the approving and slightly jealous murmurs with which the bearded violet-clad population was following them.

  “I believe, in fact,” the potentate continued, “that the young Redlander is less seduced than the two of you. My psychometer, placed on her temples yesterday by Carabella, revealed that after reaching seventy-six, she has now declined to fifty. Fifty is the figure that ordinary happiness gives—normal love, the love
she experiences for the Sower, But wait a little, philosopher! Wait…I’ll let her rest for the moment, while a little trick of my own is being prepared for her. Then you’ll see! Just be patient...”

  He concluded his confidences with a trenchant gesture that expressed the fate reserved for the foreigner. Choumaque shivered. The bloody doll came back to his mind’s eye. The words he had just heard revealed the Superman’s previous attempts, at least one of which had unfolded and gone awry before his eyes. They also confirmed his latent madness. Thus, the situation became clearer, and Caresco’s projects were revealed in all their fantastic horror.

  Once Miss Mary was reduced to the common mentality by the dissolving action of secret methods, vibrating at the same pitch of morality as all the other creatures on the island, the Superman would possess her, in the only fashion that permitted him to experience the joys of amour. He would sacrifice her with all the more intoxication because he would imagine that he was bringing a supreme tribute to his humanitarian dream, to his insensate conception of creating happiness by means of science trampling nature.

  And that perspective, independently of the threat it posed to the young people, revolted Choumaque’s doctrine.

  It was under the empire of that emotion that he allowed himself to be led to the elevator set behind a heap of stones that no one had had time to clear away. It was dark, and damp air currents, coming from the recent construction, proved that the services, too pressed for time, had not yet regulated the lighting and the temperature. The neophyte became anxious.

  “May I know where you’re taking me, Superman?”

  “I’m taking you on a rather interesting little voyage, and I beg to observe he honor that I’m doing you. You’re going with me to visit the region of the Ankle, where my slaves live.”

  “The cheville ouvrière, then,” said Choumaque, whose wit had not lost its rights.22

  His quip flowed past the Superman’s inattention; the latter continued: “Your philosophy will have reason for disquiet. You’ll see how happy I’ve made individuals whose destiny elsewhere is to suffer.”

  “Are you sure that we’re going the right way? I can no longer see clearly. I’m stumbling over stones. Don’t you have a match?”

  “A match, in the land of light!”

  “In truth, I think that would be appropriate to the occasion.”

  “A match, when I’m going to take you on a journey at a hundred kilometers a second!”

  “How many did you say?”

  “I said a hundred, and I’m not joking. This morning, we’re inaugurating my new means of transport. You’re going to sit down comfortably in a cannonball, which my omnial force will propel at a hitherto-unknown velocity...”

  “And it’s an inauguration! Oh my God!”

  “Don’t invoke the Other!” the Superman objected, in the darkness. “The Other has never invented such a velocity. His bolides are tortoises compared with my bullet-cabin! God, that’s me!”

  As a chill invaded his forehead, Choumaque thought that he was sweating in fear. He had heard mention of the failure of a similar experiment attempted previously, and he would not have given ten centimes for the life of the creator of the doctrine of equilibria. His companion had introduced him into the elevator, which was engulfed in absolute obscurity. At the bottom of the abyss, a glimmer of light appeared, guiding them to a luxurious cage placed in the interior orifice of a large metal tube—the cannon.

  Before going into it, the philosopher, veritably panicking, protested: “Do you really need me, Superman? Couldn’t you make the voyage alone?”

  “You’re scared?”

  “Scared? No, it’s not so much that I’m scared, because courage is an entirely relative thing. To have courage is to dare to confront certain danger. The Greeks at Marathon, Henri IV under his white flag, Napoléon before the bridge at Arcole, had courage. Me, I have no need of it. Since I’m traveling in your company, no danger can exist. Of that I’m quite convinced. I add that for the sage, true courage consists, not in considering contrary events with an eye that doesn’t blink, but in steeping one’s soul constantly in the commerce of virtue...”

  “Enough talk—let’s go!” said the Superman, grabbing him by the neck and throwing him, chilled by fear, on to the soft cushions of the bullet-cabin.

  What was happening was becoming so extraordinary and was accomplished with such rapidity that Choumaque scarcely had time to perceive it. A partition came down, blocking the cage. Calmly, Caresco pressed a button. A mighty explosion, like the shattering of a world, tore their eardrums. Then there was a flash, in which all the intensity of the firmament was concentrated. Finally, a scarcely-perceptible shock, felt in a new obscurity, indicated that the machine was at its destination.

  “Well, what do you say to that, philosopher?” the potentate exulted, slapping Choumaque repeatedly, in order to bring him out of a faint.

  “For the moment,” stammered the philosopher, “I can no longer find anything to say.”

  After such a shock, the rest of the excursion could no longer present any real interest. Nevertheless, Caresco, without paying any heed to the neophyte’s amazement, obligingly showed him the region of slaves.

  The men there were former gitons who had aged internally, the women courtesans unusable as objects of lust. They lived in the atony particular to those deprived of reproductive qualities, very hygienically, in the midst of sumptuous palaces, their desires almost extinct, no longer even having the strength to make love to one another. Draped in yellow costumes embroidered with the symbolic cross, their flesh incomplete, under an appearance that make-up and tonic fluids rendered young, they dragged themselves around languidly all day long. They played knucklebones and feminine games, only disturbing themselves from time to time in response to a request for service, to which they devoted themselves indolently.

  Caresco took the trouble to get them to talk, interrogating them about their sentiments, making them confess their hope in metempsychosis, extracting from them the confession of a happiness that Choumaque knew perfectly well to be non-existent, since it was the expression of a passionate neutrality—but the philosopher no longer had the energy to protest.

  And already they were leaving, in order to return by means of the pneumatic tube.

  They were following a little path framed by verdure when an unexpected encounter immobilized them. Collapsed on the edge of the path was the body of a slave, seemingly asleep. His arm, folded over his head, did not prevent them from perceiving a frightfully livid face, from which a greenish fluid was escaping.

  At that spectacle, Caresco’s physiognomy was struck by an indescribable stupefaction. “What? What’s this? Can it be...it’s impossible!”

  He bent over the slave, and moved the arm relaxed by recent death—and the more he filled himself with the vision of that tumefied and pustulent face, the harder his alarmed faculties tried to resist the reality of a diagnosis.

  “But it’s…the plague! It’s the plague!”

  Horrified, Choumaque had taken a step back in order to escape. Seized by the shoulder, he was obliged to remain and witness the manifestations of the surprise and the fury that were throwing the mind of the potentate into confusion.

  “The plague! It’s unprecedented! Can you imagine that, philosopher? The plague, in my realm! Microbes in my giant State! The evils of nature in my supernatural country! It’s stupid! It’s not true! The plague! The plague!”

  He drew him away, howling that formidably frightening word. His howls increased when, further on, they encountered the body of a second slave, and then a third, then ten, then twenty, and then a hundred, lined up among the path. The Superman’s delirium increased with each discovery.

  “The plague! The plague! Oh, Choumaque, can you believe it? Will nature be stronger than me? Will I be vanquished? Are you not God, then, Caresco? The Other is demolishing you, is breaking you, Caresco!”

  His eyes haggard, he was fleeing now, muttering insults. Howeve
r, his excitement suddenly died away when he had taken his place in the tube. After having completed the journey in an intense meditation, he took Choumaque to the Palace of Hygiene, and, having made him take off his garments while he undressed himself, he put him to sleep in order to pass him through a steam-bath and inoculate him with all sorts of serums. He submitted himself to the same treatments.

  On the evening of that memorable day, however, the people, summoned to a hilltop, were able to witness an admirable spectacle. A colossal flame burst forth in the region of the Ankle, which had be isolated for several hours by a sanitary cordon. With choirs, music, and acts of grace, a universal intoxication celebrated the bounty of the Superman, who had thus enabled two thousand of his subjects to progress at a stroke toward the superior state of metempsychosis.

  Those slaves who had not had the good fortune to be at the nucleus of the outbreak, and who had not been able to return there, lamented not being burned with their brothers and sisters in servitude. Their grief was the only shadow that tarnished the joy of the unexpected fête.

  CHAPTER XX

  Choumaque spent all night battling insomnia. He had thought about going to apply his temples to the source of soporific fluid with which the utilities panel was equipped, but that artificial means of appeasing the inclemency of the natural was only half-pleasing; he preferred to get up, to drape himself in a handy peplum and go out on to the terrace outside his room, to await the dawn patiently.

  The pure air did him good. The breeze, cooling his brow, dissipated the anxieties that had been agitating him dully all night. He leaned his elbows on the perforated balcony and watched the triumphal blossoming of the pre-dawn light. Beneath him, in the shadow, chaos still subsisted; nothing emerged therefrom—neither the distant Palace of the Face, nor the great specters of the crowns of the trees, nor the amorous block of interlaced rocks.