Caresco, Superman

by André Couvreur

  “I’ve got her!” Caresco howled, brutally tearing the confused bodies apart.

  He seized his prey in his arms and carried her effortlessly to a seat near the tiller. He was careful to direct the airplane toward one of the crests of the Mount of Venus, who snow-spangled summit was on the edge of the horizon, bathed in light. The surprising logic that edged his dementia, and had enabled him to accomplish the capture with so much precision, did not abandon him when he wanted to ascertain the young woman’s condition—when, with an expert hand slid beneath her veils, he had diagnosed that she was such as he desired.

  “Virgin!” he cried, triumphantly.

  Immediately, he applied the two poles of his psychometer to the sleeping woman’s forehead, and leaned over the needle on the dial.

  “Glory to me, philosopher—it marks a hundred! Look! Observe the triumph of my science over nature! It’s definitive—absolute! I am God!”

  “Is it not rather due to nature—the good, sane and generous nature that has pushed these two young people to love one another—that you’ve arrived at your objective?” Choumaque suggested, timidly.

  The Superman was no longer listening. All his nerves vibrant with an immeasurable pride, forgetting his companions, he fell back into his delirium, and let incoherent words spill out: invocations to his queen, his power and his empire, and threats against the Other. Beneath the fabric, his hands palpated the young woman, whose delicate head, leaning on his shoulder, swayed at the slightest movement.

  Frightened, Choumaque felt Marcel’s face. He found that it was still warm; he made out the slow rhythm of respiration, the pulsation of the heart. He rejoiced, for the moment.

  But where were they going? This abduction was the most extraordinary thing he had yet witnessed. There was no more doubt now about the intentions of the Superman, whose actions were coherently concurrent with the accomplishment of an insane action. Caresco must be taking all three of them to the cavern from which no one ever returned.

  In truth, Choumaque genuinely did not care much about continuing to live. He estimated that he had compensated his dolors with enough joys, and that the term of his equilibrium, although premature, could arrive: he expected it. But them—the dear children! Had they not still days to travel, united in love? And certainly, if they ever managed to quit this neutralizing island, they would have to shed tears, they would have to pay dearly for their partial happiness; but was that not preferable to this nonexistence? And who could tell what there was after the death toward which Caresco appeared to be conducting them?

  While philosophizing, in the splendid serenity of that aerial journey, while savoring bitterly the contrast between the magical sky and the menacing madman, he studied Caresco’s actions, listened to his incoherent voice. He was waiting for the moment when the surgeon, perhaps discouraged by the young woman’s immobility, would weary of talking to her about love and release her from his arms. Then he would hurl himself upon him, grab hold of him and bundle him overboard; he would launch him into the void, in order to annihilate his monstrous genius, hostile to suffering and, in consequence, hostile to happiness.

  But the Superman did not abandon his prey. He hugged her, warming her up against his torso, with infantile babble. And when the mass of the mountain appeared, when the craft, skimming over the asperities of the rocks, glided under terrifying projections that overhung bottomless gulfs, he scarcely turned away from his adoration to give the direction control the few flicks of his thumb that narrowly avoided catastrophe.

  Finally, the airplane’s velocity relented; the wings were folded away into their elytra. They had arrived.

  “Come with us, philosopher!” said the Superman, lifting Miss Mary in his arms with the facility he would have had in carrying the lightest of burdens.

  That order left Choumaque perplexed. There was certainly no lack of temptation to follow the madman. As well as obeying a duty of protection toward the young woman, he would discover the secrets of the mysterious location about which it was said that the Superman never let anyone leave. Nor, moreover, had he abandoned the plan to liberate the people from their monstrous despot, and the opportunity might yet present itself. But to abandon Marcel, his pupil, his friend, to leave him alone at that moment, when the effects of the somniferous gas had not yet dissipated—how could he?

  Finally, he made the decision. Having made sure that the balloon’s moorings were solid and that the young man’s breathing was regular, he set off in Caresco’s footsteps, along a steep narrow path carved into the rock, to the entrance of a cavern, enigmatically open, like the mouth a bandit’s den.

  As soon as all three of them were inside, the Superman was transformed. He suddenly seemed to shed his cloak of madness. His gait was no longer jerky. His hands did not hesitate when he turned to commutator of the omnial light in order to illuminate the lair. One might have thought that he was preparing to carry out the most routine act of his daily occupation.

  He went to place the young woman on the central metallic bed and brought within arm’s reach a wheeled table covered with surgical instruments. He began to make the preparations for the operation, taking off his victim’s clothes, placing wads of cloth around the radiantly pure abdomen, bursting with fecund splendor. His eyes adored the divine head with parted lips and tangled golden hair, coldly. Then he absorbed himself calmly in readjusting the mechanism of a long curved needle fixed in the supportive notch of his carescoclast. His movements had resumed their mathematical certainty.

  Choumaque thought he was no longer living on earth. The horrible aspect of the cavern, the shadowy corners full of display-cases; the enigmatic fragments of bodies gleaming or floating in their liquid; the empty gazes of cadavers, their grimaces, the frightful holes, the contortions that some of them exposed to the proximity of jars; the precise, methodical gestures of the sacrificer; and that beautiful body lying on the metal of the table where a thousand gleams blazed, like metallic eyes: all of that bewildered him even more than it frightened him. He wondered whether the Superman’s dementia had not flowed into his own brain, infecting it.

  But what bothered him most of all was a piquant odor of sulfur floating in the heaviness of the air, to the point of provoking an irritation in his eyes, and he was no less surprised to hear dull and distant explosions rumbling beneath his feet, like the muffled repercussion of the central boiling. He was suffocating. He had to pull himself together to remind himself that he had to prevent an abominable profanation.

  Putting down his instrument, Caresco said: “Well, philosopher, what do you think of my installation? Have you ever seen anything like it? Are they not charming, the patients on whom I’ve operated, whom you can see there? Understand that I enjoy their company. Appreciate with what grateful eyes, what smiles, they salute my presence! In a little while, they’ll acclaim my wedding! For I’m going to marry before them, philosopher, and I intend them to be my witnesses. Just think—I owe them that! Philosopher, you’re going to witness the greatest event of all the centuries: the marriage of Caresco-Superman, or Caresco-God! Ha ha ha!”

  He prolonged his laughter terribly. Then, striking the rumbling ground with his foot, he continued: “And you see how nature intends to come to the party! Can you hear that cracking? One might think them gigantic salvos. It’s for me that the volcano is exalting! But perhaps you don’t know that I’m getting married on a volcano, philosopher! Do you doubt it? Come and see...”

  He advanced toward Choumaque without the latter, paralyzed by fear, thinking of resisting. He took him by the arm and led him graciously toward the table where the young woman was asleep. Then he pointed at the vault.

  “Take note, I beg you, of that enormous chimney. It loses itself in the mountain by way of a furrow that I alone have followed. Thirty years ago, it was still giving issue to fumes, ash and fire! Yes, philosopher, here, where we stand, their fire passed through! And it’s here that I’m going to espouse her, the virgin of Virgins, on an altar that is a volcano! Isn
’t it sublime, to marry in a crater? And yet, if I wished, how easy it would be for me to render its violence to it! Yes, my genius has foreseen everything. I could, if I wished, reanimate the fumes, the ash and the fire almost instantaneously, a colossal upheaval! It would be sufficient for me…come and see, philosopher, what it would be sufficient for me to do...”

  He pushed Choumaque toward one of the walls. He pointed with his finger at the red plate sealed into the rock, alongside which there was a kind of iron collar, moving on a hinge, just large enough to be able to encircle a human neck, when its catch was closed.

  “It would be sufficient for me to press that button, the size of a pea, to unleash the volcano! In ten minutes, my omnial force, activated, would provoke ten consecutive explosions of dynamite, and create a conduit giving passage to the fumes, the ash and the fire! In ten minutes, this corner of my empire would explode, and all my people asleep in the Palace of Sensualities would burn. Do you see that, philosopher. What power! What a cataclysm—which my rival, the God of other worlds, could never equal! Me, I can…me, I can, by doing this...”

  Hallucinated by the idea of an orgiastic crime, he extended his hand, and Choumaque had to hold him back.

  “Oh, indeed, I’ve thought about it long and hard! Of ending it thus, on the day when I’m tired of it all: of sterilizing my realm in the blink of an eye, of making it new again, virginal, like Miss Mary! Virginal, as it was when I took possession of it! I’ve deflowered everything...can I not, once, restore everything to virginity? And that moment will come! And when I’ve decided it, I’ll imprison myself in this collar that I’ve sealed into the wall, in order that nothing can make me go back on my resolution. Then, I’ll only have to reach out my arm, press that button, and give myself voluptuously to the entrails of the earth, to the purifying fire of life! O life! O nature! How I dominate you! And you, the Other, God of the old worlds, can you do as much? What a dwarf you are alongside the giant! Gigas is me! Satan is me! I am. I am the Force benevolent to the point of destruction. I am God! Look, philosopher: God is about to espouse the dove!”

  He undressed. His garments, lacerated by his eager hands, fell to the floor. He revealed the violent musculature of his torso, its youth conserved, of his hairy legs, his erect penis. His bulging eyes with the strange unequal pupils shone. Foam appeared on his lips.

  Returning to the operating table, he made his dilated flesh shiver on contact with the cold metal, the touch of the splendid body.

  In the meantime, Choumaque, behind him, moved on tiptoe in order to get nearer to the table, to grab a knife and plunge it between his shoulders. Yes, kill him, kill him…!

  Alas, the madman seemed to have divined his thought; he turned his head just as the philosopher’s hand descended upon the hilt of the instrument—and he was the one who took possession of it, and raised it voluptuously into the air.

  But just as he was about to plunge it down, Miss Mary woke up, and raised herself up on one arm.

  “Run, my child!” Choumaque shouted, with an anguished gesture. “Quickly, this way!”

  Then, there was a palpitating chase. The young woman, terrified by the horrible threat that greeted her awakening, had thrown herself off the table, and her divine form scrambled desperately away from the brandished knife. She circled the cavern, which her screams filled with terror. Her gaze sought in vain for a gulf into which she could throw herself and disappear. Caresco followed her, roaring, with blood on his lips and in his eyes.

  Twice she slipped through his fingers like an eel. Finally, he grabbed her by the hair at the moment when she grabbed hold of the rock, and tore her away from it with the violence of a predatory carnivore. Their two nude bodies came together, interlaced, and became confused. But when, having lifted her up, he tried to bring her back to the table, suddenly, a steel grip strangled him and stuck him to the wall, paralyzing him.

  Taking advantage of the moment when the struggle had been prolonged in the vicinity of the collar, Choumaque had abruptly shoved the madman into the trap. The click of the catch acclaimed the capture. When Caresco’s raised blade came down, Miss Mary was free, and it was the philosopher who felt the cold blade plunge into his arm.

  “There,” said Choumaque, aloud, sustaining the young woman, who had fainted, “is the most evident, albeit extraordinary, compensation that could ever be given to the creator of the doctrine of equilibria to observe. The joy that I feel at this moment only equals the thousand tortures that my soul suffered during the previous ten minutes. If you weren’t screaming so loudly, Superman, I would prove to you, by one equals one, that my philosophy is superior to yours, and that it wasn’t worth the trouble of accumulating so many dreams of grandeur to end up in an iron collar. But you’re wailing too much. Then again, I have better things to do than occupy myself with your education. I have to transport this virgin, as decently as possible, to the arms of her lover. How he cries! How he kicks! Have you finished, loudmouth? By Leibniz, it’s insupportable! You don’t want to shut up, eh? Hang on! I’ll make a tampon and stick it in your gob! For the sight of blood upsets me...especially when it’s mine!”

  He looked at his arm. He could not feel the wound, but he could see the blood running down his sleeve, coming to stain his numb hand crimson.

  “Just like Seneca! Caresco has opened my vein!”23

  He started to laugh noisily. His joy almost covered the howls of the madman, and there was a strange collision of echoes in the cavern. Soon, however, the howls and the laughter died away at the same time. The captive was no longer moving. His eyes, which had become calm again, indicated that he was reflecting.

  “What is he planning now?” said the philosopher, following that transformation anxiously.

  He was right to be alarmed, for the madman’s features suddenly expressed an abominable silent intoxication, while his hand, reaching out to the metal plate next to the collar, pressed the red button.

  Then Choumaque panicked. “The volcano! I’d forgotten about that! The volcano! Everything’s going to explode! Oh, if only I’d killed him!”

  Carrying the body of the young woman, he launched himself toward the exit.

  Dawn was breaking. The freshness of the air, whipping him, increased his strength beyond human limits, and he continued to maintain his precious burden in one arm. He ran down the steep path, nearly losing his footing twenty times over, but he could see no other death, could feel no other threat, than that of the explosion.

  Exhausted, he finally arrived at the nacelle and threw the body of the young woman into the arms of the recently-awakened Marcel. An initial tremor of the earth, subjected to the repercussion of a deep explosion, told him that one minute had already elapsed.

  “To the boat! Quickly, to the boat! Don’t ask questions. We need to be on board in nine minutes, or we’re doomed!”

  Automatically, Marcel obeyed. He seized the tiller, lifted the airplane, and orientated it. A second, louder noise had just exploded. The craft hesitated momentarily, then launched forth at top speed, fleeing through the immensity. A third detonation, and then a fourth, were bellowed by the rocks.

  More coolly, Choumaque murmured: “Hurry, my boy. Use full power! The volcano will open up in six minutes. Our only hope of salvation is to be aboard before then.”

  Marcel quintupled the energy without understanding anything except that there was a terrifying threat. The great wings beat ardently; the entire mechanical carcass vibrated, creaking in unison with their hearts. Three more detonations jolted them. Again, the imperious fear of the philosopher resounded, gasping: “Three minutes, my boy! We only have three minutes left. The mountain is going to blow up, the fire will burn us, the fumes will asphyxiate us. We’re not going fast enough. Hurry, I beg you! Listen! There’s the eighth explosion! We only have two minutes!”

  “I can see the sea!” Marcel shouted, wildly, tearing off his doublet. “I can see the ironclad! Clothes off!”

  One last and intense swerve filled the ninth minut
e. The airplane went down at lightning speed and plunged into the waves sixty meters from the ship. They dived. The water seethed in their ears, gurgled in their throats.

  Marcel grabbed the young woman’s hair. Stunned, he nevertheless conserved the consciousness of what he had to do to save her. He struggled. A desperate effort brought him to the ladder to the deck, on to which he hoisted himself. On turning round, he still had time to grab Choumaque’s foot as he sank.

  Streaming, glorious, dragging two bodies, one by the hair and the other by the heel, he climbed the few steps that led to the deck. Exhausted, he noticed that the sea was still calm, that the carcass of the airplane was sinking slowly, that Miss Mary, woken up by the coldness of the water, had opened her eyes again, and that Choumaque was vomiting. He exulted at those spectacles.

  Then, what they saw and what they heard was terrible. The tenth shock burst forth, mightily. A mountain of fumes, gases and fire sprang from the Mount of Venus, propelling worlds. The land tore; its immense abdomen yawned, in a monstrous and superb quartering. The sea, lifted up by that revolt, swelled up, reaching for the heavens. The ship was carried away by the formidable blister of the element.

  Everything went black. A colossal jet of glaucous water, which they saw agglomerating frightfully in the air for fifteen seconds, finally crashed down on to their shoulders, and flattened them against a mast, to which the instinct of conservation made them cling.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  “My dear children,” said Choumaque, interrupting the clergyman—who, with his hand on the Bible, was about to pronounce the sacramental words of union—and stopping him with a gesture, “my dear Miss Mary, my dear Marcel, before accomplishing the marriage of which this worthy servant of one of the gods of the old world is about to celebrate, permit me to confide some of my hesitations to you.