Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  And you laid the lily on the cool bed of leaves in your lonely dwelling in the Big Beech at Pierrefeu!...Blessed be Patti Palang Kaing, who watches over stout hearts from his throne in the Forest of Bandong and who rewards brave forest battles; blessed be Patti Palang Kaing, inasmuch as he has blessed your dwelling, O Balaoo!...

  That is the story of this last episode: bloody, tragic, heroic and beautiful as the fights of antiquity.

  Madeleine, with her poor, faint voice and her pale breath, the breath of an expiring lily, was not able to tell all these glorious feats of war to the weeping Coriolis. But the few words which she whispered in his ear, together with what he had seen — the corpses and his humble Balaoo’s wounds — all this made him sob for joy, made his heart leap with pride; for Madeleine was saved and Balaoo had acted like one of the Race in the days of the blameless knights.

  Balaoo was still turning away his head in the door way of his forest dwelling, lest he should show his eyes full of tears.

  Madeleine, sighing, said:

  “We must beg his pardon, very earnestly. We were wrong not to treat him as one of the Race. He said to me, ‘I wanted to see you once more, Madeleine, before you went away with a husband of your Race. What did you think and of what were you afraid? One with fingers to his shoe-hands will always be a true friend to the daughter of men; and, if you knew the law of the forest, laid down by Patti Palang Kaing at the beginning of the world, you would know that the daughter of men can walk without fear in the forest; but it is not forbidden to touch the tracks of her footsteps with one’s lips, nor to lick her hand!’ That was what Balaoo said, was it not, my Balaoo? He told me all that, beside my bed of leaves, waiting for you to come: he even told it me in immortal verse, for Balaoo is a great poet, are you not, Balaoo?”

  Balaoo, at the door, nodded his head in assent, but kept it still turned away, for his pain was more than he could bear and threatened to burst like an untimely storm...And he held himself in, lest he should seem ridiculous, and tried to swallow his sobs and keep his thunder to himself...

  Poor Balaoo, who knew that Coriolis had come to take Madeleine away!...Poor Balaoo, who had himself summoned his master, by order of his little mistress, and who had himself gone, after himself writing the letter — for Madeleine was then too ill — and posted it at night in the box of Mme. Godefroy the postmistress and been very nearly recognized by that confounded old mole of a gossip of a Mother Toussaint, who had not yet forgiven him for his theft of the Empress’ dress!.......

  A few days passed; and it was over. Madeleine was gone. She had gone to join her husband and Balaoo would never see her again. His master would come back, but not she, because of the man’s law that told her to follow her husband. She had but just gone; and, after a leave taking that made all who lived in the Cerdogne country believe that a great storm was raging in the woods and on the mountain, he remained there, at the door of his forest dwelling in the Big Beech at Pierrefeu, remained there motionless, with his arms and legs hanging and his head on his chest, motionless as a pithecanthrope of wood.

  And he stayed like that while the tinkling carriage bells tinkled against his heart, now dry and hollow as a drum; for he had nothing left in his heart now, nothing: she had taken it all. At least, it produced that effect upon him, a sense of emptiness; it was as though he had an empty box there, which naught would ever replace: naught but memory, O Balaoo!...

  And you shall see, Balaoo, that memory does fill the heart, ay, even to bursting-point!...

  There was not a sound now under the greenwood. Balaoo went indoors and lay at full length on the bed of leaves that had kept the shape of her body...and, incredible to state, Balaoo still had tears to shed.

  Then, when the last were spent, he lay for two days and two nights on the bed of leaves, lying without movement, like a pithecanthrope of wood. Old forest friends climbed up to him, peeped through the crack in the door; and he did not move a limb. Old As, who now had a broken leg, looked in and saw and went off without a word, shrugging his shoulders. Balaoo knew none of them now.

  At the end of the second day, when Coriolis returned, he found Balaoa sitting at his door, with one shoulder in the sun and a consumptive look in his face.

  Coriolis had told his daughter that he was going to retire for good to Saint-Martin-des-Bois; but he lied in his thought: it was to the Big Beech at Pierrefeu that he meant to withdraw, far from a society that could but curse him, alone with his divine masterpiece, with the man from Java whom his genius had brought into the world. At any rate, he must see what he could do. There were unpleasant rumours in the department, stories about a pithecanthrope. Coriolis considered that he was best-off in the forest guarded by the memory of the Three Brothers and of the battle in which so many brave officers and soldiers were slain...It was a very nearly safe and inviolable retreat, very nearly...

  Coriolis’ first thought was how to overcome Balaoo’s sadness. He was right, for the poor fellow was extremely ill and, if he went on moping like that, without mov ing, at the top of his tree, would surely fall into a decline.

  Coriolis took him for walks in the forest. To divert his pupil’s thoughts, he told him of the pranks of a certain Gabriel, whom many people for a moment believed to be Balaoo. In fact, Coriolis himself was taken in by a trick which Gabriel had of wearing his jacket open and suddenly thrusting his fingers into the pockets or arm-holes of his waistcoat; and, lastly, because of an eye-glass.

  “I knew Gabriel well,” replied Balaoo, making an effort to follow his master’s train of thought. “He used to copy everything I had: my clothes and even my way of wearing them. I once made him a present of a pair of spectacles; and I see he managed to make an eyeglass out of them, because I wore one. Those monkeys are never happy unless they are mimicking people!”

  They walked for a time without speaking; and then Balaoo resumed:

  “While all these horrors were being put down to me, I was on my way to Pierrefeu, in despair. I merely wanted to see Madeleine once more. I saw her through the window of the railway-carriage; but the other tried to kill me; and I am very sorry that he did not succeed.”

  Coriolis fondly pressed Balaoo’s arm. Balaoo humbly returned the pressure and lowered his head, as he concluded:

  “Yes, my only wish now is to die...to die in this forest which has known her, which has heard her soft voice calling, ‘Balaoo!...Balaoo!...Balaoo!...’ My only joy henceforth will be to see the trees at the foot of which we used to sit when she wished to teach me some fresh story...Here I shall find her image everywhere...Patti Palang Kaing is kind...He will let me die here...”

  Coriolis tried in vain to silence him. Balaoo thought of nothing but Madeleine and took a mournful pleasure in confiding his thoughts to all the branches on the road. He was visibly pining away. He emerged from his dreams only to speak of Paul and Virginia, which his master had read to him. The story attracted him above all others because he found in it a likeness to his own misfortunes. And, like Paul after Virginia’s departure, he visited all the spots where he had been with the companion of his childhood; all the places that reminded him of their alarms, their games, their picnics and the loving-kindness of his dear little sister; a young birch which she had planted; the mossy carpets over which she loved to race; the open spaces in the forest where she used to sing and where their two voices had mingled their two names: Balaoo!...Madeleine!

  In five days! time, he took to his bed; and Coriolis began to fear that he would never leave it again. One morning, Balaoo woke from his coma and saw Zoé and Gertrude standing by his side. He betrayed neither anger nor the least ill-humour. Nay more, he let Gertrude kiss him tenderly and begged Zoé’s pardon for all the pain which he had caused her since he first knew her. His voice was gentle and soft; he allowed himself to be nursed and petted. He was as weak as a child at the point of death. Coriolis, kneeling behind him and supporting him, though he was no stronger himself, ventured to use the “word-remedy” which little Zoé, with her fond he
art and quick intelligence, had suggested of her own initiative. He leant over and whispered two syllables in Balaoo’s ear:

  “Bandong!”

  At once, Balaoo’s eyes kindled, his frame stiffened, his chest breathed more firmly and he repeated:

  “Bandong!”

  Then Zoé asked:

  “Would you like to go back to the Forest of Bandong, Balaoo?”

  “Oh,” said Balaoo, with a terrible sigh, “oh, how I should love to see it once again before I die!”

  “Well, we will take you there, Balaoo!...We will all go together!...”

  Balaoo put his great, quivering fists to his lips, as was his habit when he wished to restrain the too-noisy expressipn of his joy or grief:

  “Let us go!” he said. “Oh, let us go!...Far from men’s houses!...Take me back to my Forest of Bandong!...”

  There was no reason nor room for hesitation. It meant salvation not only for Balaoo, but for all of them, especially Coriolus; for Zoé had returned from Clermont with the most grievous news. M. Mathieu Delafosse now knew for certain that the smart officers and brave men killed in the attack on the forest had fallen under the blows of Coriolus’ pithecanthrope. The official enquiry had ended by clearing up that gruesome business; and the police were once more hunting for the master and his terrible disciple.

  There was only just time to fly.

  They crossed the frontier and took ship for the East.

  They fled to the Forest of Bandong.

  Epilogue

  BALAOO WAS SAVED on the day when he set eyes once more on the place where he had seen his mother for the last time. It was three days’ march from Batavia, a few hundred yards from the mangroves which, for a thousand years and more, had been digging their roots to the very heart of the earth. He recognized the disposition of the glade and the thick leafy vaults that cast the same shadow and the same light; for it takes hundreds of centuries to alter those landscapes created by the last upheavals of the world and the first vigour of the universal sap.

  “This is it,” he said, stopping his companions. “This is my Forest of Bandong. These are the woods of my childhood. Here I played with my mother and my little brother and sister. I was strong and lusty even then, though still a baby, scarcely three or four years old. My little brother and sister were only just beginning to walk, while I gambolled and frisked about and called and beckoned to my little brother and sister and invited them to come and share my sports...The little fellow tried a skip or two, to follow me, but they were vain efforts. I can still see him tottering on his little legs that were hardly strong enough to bear his weight. He fell; and my little sister fell also; and our mother picked them up tenderly and encouraged them with word and gesture...What followed I shall remember to my dying day. My mother, seeing the little ones so clumsy and so tired, took them in her arms and began to sing them to sleep, rocking them and crooning a sweet lullaby of the swamps. O Patti Palang Kaing! Then they of the Race arrived. And they threw a net over me, in which I struggled while my mother fled to save my little brother and sister, flinging me a cry of farewell, the cry of a pithecanthrope mother, which is like nothing else in the world: it rings in my ears even now...It was lucky for them of the Race that my father was engaged elsewhere in the forest that day...Yes, this is it. This is my Forest of Bandong. O Patti Palang Raing, shall I ever see them again: my father, who thundered so loud; and my mother, who watched over our games; and my little brother and sister, who rolled and tumbled in the grass, like awkward little kittens!”

  Balaoo did not find his relations. And he came to the conclusion that he had long since been forgotten by his friends. The village in the swamps had disappeared. But Balaoo rebuilt the huts on the triangles formed by the three roots of the giant mangroves. And all the four of them — Gertrude, Coriolis, Zoé and he — lived at that spot in peace and quietness.

  Gertrude had grown very old and no longer budged from her seat, busied eternally in knitting socks which Balaoo never wore, for he now went about on his unshod finger-toes. Zoé had become the active and more and more untamed servant of her two masters. She never addressed Balaoo except in the third person of the monkey language. She had forgotten her Paris fashions and dressed in leaves. And she was glad to learn no more geography. Coriolis had lost the habit of talking man language and confined the expression of his thoughts to a few anthropoid monosyllables. He took a keen delight in returning to what he considered the starting point, the source of human life, the monkey race. The unhappy man no longer had the cerebral force to conceive that this set-back was perhaps sent to him as a punishment from Heaven for daring to amuse himself with the sport forbidden by nature, the sport of mixing the species!

  Balaoo, who went to Batavia every six months to fetch a letter from Madeleine at the poste restante and who was constantly reading Paul and Virginia, Balaoo alone retained nearly all his acquired civilization. In this he was greatly aided by the memory of Madeleine. He lived with the thought of his young mistress ever before his mind.

  She was now a solicitor’s wife at Clermont-Ferrand and had two little boys, who played in the house in the Rue de l’Écu with that contemptible General Captain.

  “If ever those two youngsters want anything in this life,” said Balaoo, “they have only to make a sign: I’m there!...Tourôô!...Woop!...Tourôô!”

  I have said that Balaoo retained nearly all his acquired civilization, in his Forest of Bandong. But he did not become proud on that account. And, when the denizens of the forest, the real wild brothers of Bandong, gradually drew closer to the new family in the mangrove village and, on spring evenings, formed a circle around Balaoo and listened to his tales of men, Balaoo would say in their language, after a short prayer to Patti Palang Raing:

  “Animals are animals and gods are gods, but men are nothing at all!...In short,” Balaoo concluded, putting his fingers up his nose, after the insulting fashion of pithecanthropes, “men are gods spoilt in the making!”

  A PLAINTIVE HYMN TO PATTI PALANG KAING, GOD OF ALL THE ANIMALS IN THE FOREST OF BANDONG

  By

  BALAOO

  (Dedicated to Mlle. Madeleine Coriolis Boussac Saint-Aubin.)

  Voopwoooppwoooppwooopp! (*)

  Patti Palang Kaing! Patti Palang Kaing!

  Could not the God of Christian man

  Say that these fingers bound should be,

  The toes on the shoe-hands of me?

  Patti Palang Kaing! Patti Palang Kaing!

  Why change the language of my song

  From my native Forest of Bandong

  And teach me to weep at right and wrong,

  If He could not also bring His mind

  The toes of my shoe-hands to bind?

  I roamed through the garden of man

  Like one of the race in woe.

  Not one of them saw my tears:

  Not she whom I love the best,

  Though she heard how I beat my breast

  In a grief that none can know.

  To the other, who strolled with his nose on high,

  She said, “It is thunder passing by.”

  If only there were bands

  To the toes of my shoe-hands,

  I should say to Patti Palang Kaing:

  “Patti Palang Kaing! Patti Palang Kaing!

  Keep thou, across the seas,

  Thy plantains, mangroves, mango-trees,

  Since thou hast put me bands

  To the toes of my shoe-hands!

  Patti Palang Kaing!

  Balaoo knows no pang!”

  And I should say to Madeleine,

  In the softest voice of men:

  “Madeleine, my fair,

  I fain would kiss thy hair!”

  If only there were bands

  To the toes of my shoe-hands!

  Alas, did not the other say:

  “I would kiss thy hair to-day!”

  Silent I watch and stand,

  Waiting to kiss her hand!

  Patti Palang Kain
g! Patti Palang Kaing!

  Appeal to the God of Christian man

  To restore the language of my song

  From my native Forest of Bandong!

  And give me back my mangrove-trees,

  With my hands that were not as these!

  (*) This exclamation is equivalent to the “Ororororoi!” of the Greek tragic author and means “Alas!” — AUTHOR’S NOTE.

  THE END

  The Bride of the Sun (1912)

  Anonymous translation, 1915

  Original French Title: ‘L’ épouse du soleil’

  CONTENTS

  BOOK I — THE GOLDEN SUN BRACELET

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  BOOK II — THE LIVING PAST

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  BOOK III — THE TRAIL OF THE PONCHOS

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  BOOK IV — THE DICTATOR

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  BOOK V — THE HOUSE OF THE SERPENT

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  BOOK VI — THE TEMPLE OF DEATH

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  EPILOGUE

  BOOK I — THE GOLDEN SUN BRACELET

  I

  AS THE LINER steamed into Callao Roads, and long before it had anchored, it was surrounded by a flotilla of small boats. A moment later, deck, saloons and cabins were invaded by a host of gesticulating and strong-minded boatmen, whose badges attested that they were duly licensed to carry off what passengers and luggage they could. They raged impotently, however, round Francis Montgomery, F.R.S., who sat enthroned on a pile of securely locked boxes in which were stored his cherished manuscripts and books.