“It’s not necessary to smash the furniture, my boy!” she said, going to nestle in the arms of the confused philosopher. Addressing her lover, she added: “And that’s why you got rid of me, Zéphi? Am I, then, incapable of giving salutary advice?”
She darted an anxious glance around the room, suspicious of the perfume vent, the artificial rock, the utilities panel and an enigmatic little container yawning in a corner.
“Let’s hope that Caresco isn’t in communication with us at this moment, and doesn’t have his ear to the microphone! Let’s hope that the graphophones aren’t working! I pity the two of you! Something similar happened one day before my very eyes. A young man freshly disembarked, like you, my little Marcel, gave Dr. Hymen a beating when he was trying to remove, painlessly, a growth that was dishonoring his occiput. Oh, he didn’t last long! The next day he was dissected, displayed in a jar. Caresco had tried to make him into his human monad, as he calls it. He was a prince related to the Russian imperial family—a very handsome fellow, believe me—who had had bad luck gambling and decided to solicit the favor of repopulating our realm. He’d warmed Philoxénie’s couch as soon as he arrived...”
While speaking she had got dressed, and Choumaque had done likewise. Then, sitting on the philosopher’s knee, becoming more serious in the face of the gravity of events, she went on: “Listen, both of you…come closer, so I can speak quietly...very quietly!”
Marcel leaned toward the couple. She brought their heads together is a single attentive bundle. An airplane was audible outside, whose flight projected a shadow ion the mosaic tiles as it passed by.
“What I say to you, my little Marcel…blood of ovaries!...just as long as Caresco doesn’t overhear me!...come closer...” She hesitated momentarily, rejected with a gesture an idea that had occurred to her, and then said: “I have two means of getting you out of this, but for the moment, because of the surveillance exercised over you, one is impracticable. It’s therefore necessary to flee.”
“Flee!” whispered Marcel. “But how do you expect us to flee? Everything is guarded. Within a radius of two kilometers from the coast, our slightest actions and gestures would be denounced. My ship could carry us away, to be sure, and I know enough about navigation to steer her on my own, if necessary…but the very water on which I’d be sailing would betray my heading, and a few meters further on we’d be destroyed by the omnial net...”
“You’re talking too loudly, my boy! How passionate men are! Let me speak. Know this, then. Zadochbach the Inexhaustible is leaving this evening for Paris aboard the airplane that brought you here, under the control of Captain Tronc-de-Jatte. Persuade Miss Mary to go with you, then, and at eleven o’clock exactly, be at the entrance to the tube next to the landing-stage. No one will be there at that time. I’ll take charge of the rest.”
“But what about Zadochbach? And the captain?”
“One’s stupefied by his calculations and the pleasures of Venus. As for the other, I’ll make sure to distract his attention during the time it will take for the young folk to go across the deck and get into the hold. I’m on very good terms with him.”
“But I thought it was impossible for that man to be on good terms with a woman?” Choumaque objected again.
“Oh, don’t worry Zéphi, you don’t have to be jealous—it’s completely platonic.” So saying, she teased the philosopher intimately, in order to prove to him that it was not the same for them. He pushed her away, reminding her about her professional duties.
Marcel immediately made himself scarce, after having given Choumaque a poignant farewell hug. He ran toward the park in search of Miss Mary. He had to see her before the evening, but nothing was more problematic; entire days often passed without them running into one another. For some time, Carabella seemed to have been keeping a closer watch on the virgin and avoiding any meeting with him. Was she acting of her own accord, or following some superior order? Both explanations were plausible.
Thinking about that, Marcel realized all the peril of his audacious action. At the same time, though, he found pretexts for hesitating to carry it out. Why had Madame Môme omitted to facilitate their meeting? Why had she not informed Miss Mary herself? He thought about going back to the High Priestess and asking her to alert the young woman. But where should he look for her? How could he get into the Temple of Sterility? And even supposing that he reached Choumaque’s mistress, would she consent to neglect her functions?
He raised all these objections in order not to be in too much haste to make a decision. And time passed; hours went by without him overcoming his uncertainty. His surge of revolt had lost all impetus. He took pleasure, as usual, in the delights of enchanting location extended before him: the sunlit verdure, the gracious booming of the flowers, the murmur of streams licking the rocks, the libertine images that all those things described, and the huge mountainous couple in the distance.
He told himself that by running away, he would lose the sight of those delightful panoramas forever. Similarly, would he not have to renounce the admirable and hygienic orange costume that was so becoming to his build, which facilitated the circulation of air, in order to return to the grotesque and narrow fashions of the other world, the tight trousers and pleated frock-coat?
It was, however, necessary that they leave. If they did not take advantage of the opportunity that Madame Môme was offering them, a month might pass before it was renewed—and a lot could happen in a month! He imagined the surgeon’s action profaning the object of his adoration; he saw himself overtaxed by the demands of fecund months. He stimulated his despair, but with more reason than real sentiment, because, deep down, the work of creation seemed to him less frightening than his mind was striving to make him envisage it.
Fortunately, an event made up his mind for him. The sudden appeal of a siren, coming from an airplane, made him lift his head. At the same time, these words came down: “Sanitary visit! Everyone to the Heart!”
The monstrous voice repeated the order several times, designed to be audible even through the also of dwellings, to extract sleepers from their slumber and the amorous from their transports; then it drew away.
Marcel knew that no one escaped that inquisition of a particular order, extended by Caresco over all his subjects. He concluded that he was certain to encounter Miss Mary soon. But would he be able to speak to her in secret? Not daring to hope for that, he resolved to alert her by means of a note, which he wrote with his blood on a piece of white cloth, for he had neither ink nor paper. He clutched the message in his hand, ready to seize the first opportunity to pass it surreptitiously.
His precaution did not seem to have been needless. When the foreigner appeared, she was accompanied by Carabella, who surrounded her with ardent attention. Delightfully draped in radiant silk, as usual, she took pleasure in making the fabric rustle as she walked. Her hands were overladen with jewels since she had started accepting those the courtesan offered her.
As soon as she saw Marcel, she signified to him with her gaze all the annoyance she felt at not being able to meet him on her own. She held out her hand him, and was very surprised to find the piece of cloth in the young man’s hand. She concealed her astonishment, however, understanding that she had to hide whatever it was that he was giving her in secret. All three of them took the pneumatic tube to the Palace of the Heart.
The immense symbolic façade, in red stucco that seemed to be bleeding, with orifices similar to sectioned and gaping vessels, loomed up before a bare plain paved with mosaics, where a considerable crowd had already gathered. One might have thought it the rendezvous for another fête, so cheerful was the animation, and so many songs were emerging excitedly from so many mouths. Rhythmic dances, quadrilles of pretty young women, the gitons’ feats of skill and strength, the sound of flutes, harps, sistrums, the sparkling of colors, jewels and metals, the placid comings and goings of spouses, animated children’s games, perfumes—a chaos, a tumult of varied sensations—greeted them. They passed thro
ugh. Mischievous children threw flowers at them. Courtesans, surprised kissing one another on the mouth, offered to do the same for them.
Carabella had to guide them through the dense crowd to reach a kind of wicket-gate at the entrance to a vessel. There they were recognized and their presence recorded in the columns of a huge book. They went through a circular arch into a gray infrastructure similar to the interior walls of an artery. As they were a trifle cramped for room and the temperature was somewhat elevated, a sterile spouse in a long purple toga demanded fresh air, and his plea was rapidly granted.
Immediately, Carabella shouted to him: “Gilded-Gaze! I haven’t seen you for a long time. Don’t you and Veloutine love me anymore?”
“Veloutine’s at the Fecundity at present,” the spouse replied, causing the gold of his eyes to shine toward the courtesan.
“What are you doing here, then?”
“I’ve come for the visit, and to be sterilized.”
“With courtesans, Gilded-Gaze, the latter measure isn’t necessary, as you know...”
“Thank you for the offer, Carabella, but at the moment, I’m very smitten by a fecund mother...”
“Whenever you wish, charming spouse,” said Carabella, complaisantly.
They continued chatting. Gilded-Gaze told her about the happiness of his household and the three boys who filed his dwelling with laughter. One of them, however, had been designated for castration. The other two would be scientists, after having been reproducers. Then, his turn having arrived, he hastened to go and offer himself to the serum that rendered him refractory.
Carabella, becoming serious again, explained to her companions that that was how Caresco preserved the purity of the race.
After five minutes of kicking their heels, Marcel and Miss Mary were pushed into a little oblong room resembling a laboratory, where people were getting undressed while others were putting their clothes back on. Slaves were indifferently assisting all those temptations of beauty. Their torsos, tight in the yellow sheath of their doublets, marked with the characteristic cross, were leaning emotionlessly toward adorable nudities, aiding the gestures that unveiled or covered up the splendid flesh.
In one corner, Dr. Hymen, wedged into his long frock-coat with the green short-front, with his gold trinkets dangling over his abdomen and his shock of black hair fusing with the tufted fur of his top hat, was bending over the bodies, palpating, ausculating, tapping, measuring, making his scrutinizing instruments clink and their mechanisms click. He too, busy as he was, did not allow himself to be troubled by any special sensibility. When he concluded an examination, he bustled the person who had been its object, propelling them to another corner of the room, where attentive aides listened to the only words he pronounced—“One milligram!” or “Two milligrams!”—before applying the treatment. And the docile people obeyed, going to offer their arms to the injection of the serum preventing all maladies, distributed by a hollow needle fitted to a tube equipped with a little automatic counter.
All ambient life was then extinguished in the religious solemnity of that vaccinatory practice; and the beautiful human harmonies, the blonde flesh of fecund mothers, the warmer complexions of courtesans, the nacreous grace of virgins, the powerful anatomy of sowers, the sleekness of gitons and adolescents, all communed with health, without any lubricity. Then, immediately after the inoculation, the noise began again, the movement, the animation, the collisions and the kisses resuming under the influence of the recovered vital force.
“Undress!” a slave instructed the two hesitant young people.
Fortunately for them, the flood of people, poorly contained by slaves, who were insufficient in number since the majority of them had been burned, threw them into a corner of the room before they could be undressed and subjected to the application of the serum. Carabella, fully occupied with Gilded-Gaze, had lost sight of them, and they found themselves isolated in the swarming and jostling mass of nude bodies that were getting dressed again, their faces so close that their breath was almost confused, and they shivered. But time was pressing, and Marcel had no thought other than to explain the contents of his note verbally.
“Let’s hide, Miss Mary! Let’s avoid the injection, since we’ve been lucky enough to escape the solicitude of the slaves. And listen: a danger threatens you—yes, a danger such as you have never known, you who have made war, breathed in the acridity of gunpowder, heard the whistle of bullets!”
She considered him with her large dark velvet eyes, which the pale brown wave of her hair rendered more energetic. He saw reappear therein, reanimated by the evocation of peril and he fatherland, all the primal virtues of the valorous soil that the two drops of the avoided serum would doubtless have annihilated.
He went on: “I believe you have faith in my word. It is that of a devoted lover. Caresco, I tell you, no longer wants to let you leave his realm. In order to force you to remain, he will employ an abominable practice. It’s necessary to flee, Miss Mary. It’s necessary that this evening...”
Crystalline laughter cascaded beside them. It was Carabella and Philoxénie who, finally discovering them, were making fun of their gravity. Both of them, their cheeks animated by the recent inoculation, were astonished that the vital force was not more apparent in the neophytes’ attitude. They drew closer,
“Read my note; it will inform you,” Marcel just had time to whisper to his companion, as he moved away from Philoxénie’s hand, which was venturing toward his waist.
CHAPTER XXIII
The moon appeared more triumphantly than ever that evening. Miss Mary, having returned to the Caravanserai, stayed in her aerial garden for a long time, contemplating the enormous fluidity descending from the infinite. How good one felt, so close to the sky, and how one entered into communion with the splendor of the firmament! An exaltation as vibrant as the rays of the star dilated her heart.
Was that because she was nearing the moment that was about to liberate her from this country—where she had, however, only found disappointments for her dream of revenge—or because that same country had particular beauties and she wanted to fill her eyes with them, profoundly, one last time, drinking in the spaces where her heart had opened to love? She could not have said—but she felt the magnificence of the night divinely; she was excited by a desire to fly away into that lunar shimmer, to glide, a magical form, though that silvery expanse, to melt into the sovereign tranquility of the firmament.
She knew the Marcel would follow her there. With him, both rendered immaterial, she would swim in the soul of nature, and that psychic embrace would calm the suspense that was lacerating her nerves.
Eleven o’clock, he had written!
The microphone inside her room announced a visitor whose name she could not make out. Palpitating, she got up swiftly in order to run to the visitor, imagining, implausibly, that it must be Marcel—but it was only Carabella. The courtesan was wearing a long evening veil over her tunic, symbolically embroidered, which she put down as she came in.
“You’re not in bed yet, my divine one? I was hoping so much to find you in bed...”
“Why have you come at this hour, Carabella? You know that I don’t need you when I’m asleep.”
“So it’s not to let you sleep.”
“What do you want with me, then?”
Carabella dared not admit that she had been sent by the Master, with the mission to discover whether the foreigner still had the same degree of resistance—fifty on the psychometer—that had led to his cessation for some time of the alchemical methods designed to impregnate her with Passion. She was to strive, by attempting the power of caresses, to ascertain that nature was still predominant in the young woman, and convince the potentate that the long fast in question would result in a more decisive influence for the aphrodisiac fluid whose formula the violet scientists were synthesizing.
“Carabella! You’re looking at me as a drunken man might look at me! Why is that? Are you a masculine soul clad in the body of a woman
? In that case, know that I’m not free. Know that my heart is fixed...”
“On the handsome sower!”
“It doesn’t matter on whom. Leave me alone I want to rest.”
“Virgin! O virgin who has no wish to try Passion!”
She placed her burning lips on the young woman’s shoulder. But she could not have been more untimely, and her offer had never been welcomed with more disdain. To convince herself of that resistance, she parted Miss Mary’s corsage and plunged her hand within, delighting in feeling the firmness of the breasts within. Immediately pushed away, violently, she was astonished to retain between her fingers a scrap of silk which she mistook at first, in the dim light, for a handkerchief or some sort of sachet, and which she did not return, in order to conserve the perfume of her grim adversary, whose voice repeated: “Get out! Go away! I don’t understand your persistence! I don’t want to understand it!”
When Carabella had gone, Miss Mary listened to her footsteps for some time. She heard the atrium that was carrying the courtesan away slide downwards. She did not know exactly what time it was but the decline of the moon had been prescribed as prior to the meeting with Marcel, and the star was already retiring toward the emergence of the great trees populating the park.
She waited a little longer. A little talking bird came in through the open bay and chirped a few words, after which it flew away, seeing that she was paying no attention to it. It was one of the things that always surprised her, that amity of animals for people. She discovered therein the proof of a meek humanity. Now, she was about to return to the lands where humans were still submissive to their destructive instincts, where the animals fled from them—and that observation weakened her determination to go. Where was happiness to be found?
Caresco, Superman Page 28
