The whole thing was ascending rapidly. Suddenly, just before the surface, a great air bubble escaped from the top of the wall to which the golden thread was attached. Its passage must have released a delicate catch in some interior machinery, from which several movements resulted: as the knot sharply tightened around the sleeper’s neck, the bird, carried forward by its beating wings, fell into the clutches of the athlete, whose hands drew together to seize it. The bird’s flight was the effect rather than the cause of a push of the thread, which tightened on its own account and slightly lengthened its supporting section.
When the air bubble had been expelled the descent began, while the athlete’s hands drew apart and the knot, as it slackened, brought the bird back to its original position. Once settled on the bottom of the container the object remained stationary for a while — then made a fresh ascent which ended, at the same height, in a repetition of the movements we had observed already, together with a forceful expulsion of air.
“Pilate feels the burning of the terrible brand whose fiery lines are printed on his forehead,” said Canterel, pointing to another Cartesian diver which was vertically approaching the surface.
Pilate was standing with his hands raised to a face contorted with pain and his eyes half-closed in an expression of anguish and terror. At the climax of the ascent an air bubble escaped from some occipital opening, while on the figure’s forehead a dazzling, luminous sign appeared, undoubtedly due to an electric light situated in its head. It was a drawing of Christ in agony, composed entirely of fiery lines. Canterel pointed out that the Virgin on one side and Mary Magdalene on the other were kneeling at the foot of the Holy Cross, and that the hems of their two robes each traced an incandescent silhouette on one of Pilate’s eyelids.
As the trinket slowly descended the sign went out, ready to light up again at the pinnacle of its next ascent.
Pointing his forefinger at another figurine, Canterel made the following brief announcement:
“Gilbert waves over the ruins of Baalbek the famous uneven sistrum of the great poet Missir.”
Gilbert, with an expression of delirious joy graven on his face, was standing on a heap of stones that apparently belonged to some very ancient ruins. His right hand was proudly raised holding a sistrum with five rods, while his mouth was open as though declaiming some strophe of verse.
This time, at the zenith of its upward course, a medium-sized air bubble departing from the right shoulder caused a movement of the raised arm, which waved the sistrum gaily as though to make it vibrate.
“With the aid of a knife concealed in his bed, the dwarf Pizzighini craftily makes a series of cuts on his body so that the annual sweat of blood, watched for by three observers, should seem more abundant.”
This commentary of Canterel’s referred to a group which, at that moment, lay motionless at the bottom of the enormous tank. An extremely conspicuous stunted creature was reclining, with the covers pulled up to his chin, in a kind of cradle adapted to his childish stature. His eyes, animated by an expression of cunning, were fixed on three attentive guardians watching for some phenomenon to be produced upon his person. Soon the whole group, moving gently upward, left for the high altitudes, and the top corner of the pillow gave brutal exeat, at the proper moment, to a powerful balloon of air. This had a startling consequence, on releasing the catch. A very slight sweat of blood beaded on the freak’s horrible countenance, while the sheets, by contrast, were stained with immense red blotches, apparently the result of some frightful hemorrhage. The vermilion, whether deep or faint in hue, in each case had its origin in a light powder that suddenly issued from a mass of microscopic holes. As the four individuals returned to the depths from which they had started, the rosy dust dissolved completely, leaving the water free from any trace of dye.
“Atlas delivers a furious kick at the celestial sphere, of which he has temporarily unburdened his shoulders, and strikes the constellation of Capricorn.”
Another Cartesian diver in full upward flight underwent our scrutiny, itemized by these words of Canterel’s. Bending his knee so as to display the sole of his right foot just about to kick, Atlas, seen from the rear, was in the act of turning his head to dart a furious glance at a scintillating globe that had fallen behind him. The latter consisted entirely of a multitude of little stars, each made of a diamond, connected by an invisible network of rigid silver wires which held them in their proper cosmographical configuration. Arriving in the upper regions, where several cubic centimeters of air emerged all at once from the top of his head, Atlas, aiming his heel sharply at Capricorn, corrected the one slight uranographical error by shifting the stars. On the way down the percussive limb resumed its original position and the fault reappeared.
Turning his attention to a trio that was closely following Atlas as he fell, Canterel continued succinctly:
“Voltaire doubts his atheistic doctrines for an instant, when he sees a young girl rapt in prayer.”
His hand clenched on the arm of a walking companion, Voltaire, seen in profile, was gazing in anguish at an adolescent girl who knelt a few paces from him, praying fervently with her face lifted to Heaven. After a period of repose on the solid support encountered at the end of its descent, the lightweight toy gently took flight. Right at the top, its strange assumption was checked by the Latin word Dubito, which emerged from Voltaire’s lips composed of a number of air bubbles arranged to form six perfectly calligraphic letters.
“At five months old, Richard Wagner, asleep in his mother’s arms, prompts a charlatan to make a characteristic prediction,” declared the professor, turning to the last of the submarine works of art.
In it, a woman holding a sleeping baby with her left arm, was pointing the forefinger of her free hand at an old man with the appearance of a mountebank. Across a small table, on which stood an escritoire with an open inkwell, he was offering her a flat-bottomed cup which contained an even layer of gray powder resembling ordinary iron filings. This time, near the surface of the water, the defection of an undivided mass of air disgorged by the inkwell on the writing desk made the woman’s wrist oscillate so that her forefinger struck three sharp blows on the rim of the cup. The iron filings were thereupon creased with furrows, which every blow made more distinct, until finally in odd, but fairly legible letters, they formed the words: “will be pilfered” — so admirably appropriate to the future author of Parsifal. As the group returned to greater depths, we saw the iron filings become smooth; for they were, in fact, imitation filings and quite solid, which produced the desired effect by an optical illusion depending on a series of winding cracks that were opened up in three stages by a mechanical device.
The seven delicate nautical objects journeyed up and down quite independently of one another and were at very different heights at any given moment.
When the revue of Cartesian divers was over, Canterel made us draw back a little and pointed to the top of the receptacle. Its inward, horizontal sides, designed to make the whole thing exactly resemble an outsize precious stone, framed a circular opening in the center. A bottle of white wine, bearing the word “Sauternes” on its label, stood nearby, alongside a large jar in which seven sea horses were swimming to and fro. The exact middle of a long thread, passing through the most protuberant part of each hippocampus’s breast, had its two loose ends gathered into a tiny metal sheath. Each of the seven frail setons thus formed was colored differently to evoke one of the hues of the rainbow.
Beside the jar lay a dipping net.
The professor had just taken from his pocket, and carefully opened, a comfit box containing a number of large, bright red pills. Selecting one of these, he advanced a few paces and threw it most adroitly into the great diamond’s opening. Positioned once more beside the facets, we saw the lightweight scarlet nutmeg drop into the water, then slowly sink — to be suddenly swallowed, on the way down, by the animal with the naked, pink skin, which Canterel to
ld us really was a cat, named Khóng-dk-lèn, that had been entirely plucked. Due to its special oxygenation, the aqua-micans — for so the professor termed the glittering water before our eyes — had various unusual properties, notably that of enabling purely terrestrial creatures to breathe quite freely in its depths. This is why the woman with the musical hair — none other, we learnt from Canterel’s lips, than the dancer Faustine — was able to suffer prolonged immersion with impunity, as also could the cat.
With a gesture, the professor then directed our eyes to the right, indicating the human face made up entirely of muscles, nerves and cerebral tissue — this, he told us, was all that remained of Danton’s head, which, as a consequence of remote events had become his property. The sheaths deposited by the aqua-micans and clothing the full length of the fibers, gave the whole a powerful electric charge; moreover, the melodious vibrations which were, that very instant, providing an accompaniment to Canterel’s words were caused by the similar sheathing visible in Faustine’s hair.
The professor, making a sign to Khóng-dk-lèn, fell silent. The cat let itself sink to the bottom and stuck its face firmly, up to its ears, into the metal horn, the point of which was pressing against the wall of the container. Equipped with this glittering accessory, through which it could see out in every direction by means of holes, the cat swam toward Danton’s head.
Canterel told us that the red pellet, swallowed just now before our eyes, had, by means of its special chemical composition, temporarily changed the cat’s entire body into an extremely powerful electric battery, whose force, concentrated in the horn, was all set to be released whenever its tip should make the slightest contact with a conductor. Through skillful training, Khóng-dk-lèn knew how to touch Danton’s brain gently with the tapering point of his strange mask; thereupon, the muscles and nerves, already electrified by their aqueous lining, underwent a powerful discharge, causing them to behave as though under the influence of old routines.
Reaching its goal, the cat placed the tip of the metal cone lightly against the encephalon displayed before it and suddenly the fibers performed an impressive gymnastic. It seemed as though life once more inhabited this recently immobile remnant of face. Certain muscles appeared to make the absent eyes turn in all directions, while others periodically went into action as if to raise, lower, screw up or relax the area of the eyebrows and forehead, but those of the lips in particular moved with wild agility, undoubtedly due to the amazing gift of oratory that Danton once possessed. Khóng-dk-lèn, seen in profile, was treading water to keep himself constantly alongside the head, without blocking our view of it in any way; sometimes he involuntarily broke the horn’s contact with the dura mater, only to reestablish it almost immediately. During such intervals the facial agitations ceased, only to recommence once the current was flowing again. So gentle and cautious was the animal in touching it, that in its moments of freedom the head scarcely swayed at all at the end of its wire, which was provided with a plain rubber suction cup at its very top, attached to the enormous gem’s transparent ceiling.
Earlier, in the course of similar experiments, Canterel had accustomed his eyes to interpret the movements of the buccal muscles, and now as the words appeared, passing over the remains of the great orator’s lips, he revealed them to us. They were disjointed fragments of speech, full of vibrant patriotism. Stirring periods, once publicly uttered, surged pell-mell from the pigeonholes of memory to be reproduced automatically on the lower part of the ruined mask. The intense twitching of the other facial muscles, likewise originating in the manifold recollections sent up from the depths of the past by certain climactic hours full of parliamentary activity, showed how expressive Danton’s hideous snout must have been on the platform.
At a shouted command from Canterel the cat drew back from the head, which became suddenly inert, then used its forelegs to free itself from the horn, which soon slid lazily to the bottom.
Telling us to remain where we were, Canterel went round the monstrous diamond, clambered up a slender double ladder of costly nickelled metal, which was standing against the side opposite our own, and ended up overlooking the circular opening.
Using the net, he lifted the sea horses one by one from the jar and plunged them into the aqua-micans, where an unexpected scene took place. On each breast, to right and left, the lips of the two artificial openings parted from time to time under the influence of internal pressure, allowed an air bubble to pass, then closed once more upon the seton. This phenomenon was slow and periodic to begin with, then soon became extremely frequent. The professor assured us that the hippocampi would have been incapable of living inside the great diamond without their double outlet, for through it escaped the excess oxygen which the dazzling tide, well-suited to the breathing of terrestrial creatures, inevitably liberated in aquatic animals.
The left side of each of the seven lophobranches was covered by a smooth layer of wax the same color as themselves.
Canterel uncorked the bottle of Sauternes and began to pour a thin trickle of its contents into the strange tank. Now, once in contact with the aqua-micans, the wine — without showing the slightest tendency to mix — solidified and, suddenly clothed in a magical brilliance borrowed from its environment, sank grandly in yellow lumps like pieces of the sun. Noticing this phenomenon, the sea horses gathered of their own accord in a tight circle conveniently situated to receive these dazzling avalanches in their midst, and kneaded them with the flattened sides of their bodies into a single conglomeration. The professor continued to tip the bottle, constantly dispatching fresh material to the attentive throng who seized it as it fell, letting none escape. At last, judging the quantity to be sufficient, the strict butler briskly recorked the bottle and put it away beside the jar.
The hippocampi now possessed a glittering yellow ball scarcely three centimeters in radius, fashioned by their continual kneading. Skillfully besieging it, they turned it about in all directions on the spot and by careful modeling, likewise performed entirely with their wax-coated sides, they did their utmost to give it a flawless rotundity.
Before long they possessed an absolutely perfect and homogeneous sphere, whose surface and interior were quite unblemished by any trace of joins. Then they abruptly left it with one accord and placed themselves side by side in a single rank, in the correct order which their setons required to form a rainbow.
The sphere behind them, being free, descended. When it drew level with the double ends of all the setons, it attracted the metal of the seven short connecting sheaths like a magnet. The traces tautened horizontally once the team began to move, due to the magnetic globe’s inertia as it was dragged forward by the sudden general impetus.
A cry of surprise was wrested from our lips — for the whole display suggested the chariot of Apollo. Because of its blazing participation in the aqua-micans’s brilliance, the transparent yellow ball was indeed encompassed by blinding rays, which transformed it into a luminary of the day.
Soon the steeds made a circuit of the immobile submerged column, while numerous air bubbles, expelled from their breasts, burst continually on the surface of the water. The tension in the setons allowed only the backs of the metal sheaths to remain touching the solar sphere, whose inert mass described an impeccable curve. As the equipage bowled along to the left it masked successively Danton and Faustine, doubled round the realm of Cartesian divers, then passed in front of us proceeding to the right.
Canterel declared there was to be a race and invited us to select our favorites. He then announced that the hippocampi — handicapped by their positions at varying distances from an imaginary cord — would, for the sake of simplicity, be given their ordinal numbers in Latin by way of names, beginning with the violet seton held by Primus, who had the most advantageous position. With nothing staked except the honor of winning, each of us named his choice aloud.
Just as the moving rank reached the column in perfect alignment, Canterel (wh
o had fixed the length of the race beforehand at three full laps) made an urgent, sweeping gesture with his arm, which the intelligent creatures perfectly understood; gently propelled by their three dorsal and pectoral fins, they vied with one another in their efforts to put on speed.
After an elegant turn, the competitors surged furiously to the left, Tertius setting the pace, closely pursued by Sextus, Primus and Quintus. Although the squad’s initial alignment was upset, the setons, having a certain elasticity, all remained perfectly taut — without pulling the sphere forward, letting it trail behind or giving it the slightest jolt.
Faustine’s hair, still swaying melodiously, provided an orchestral accompaniment to this mythological cavalcade.
The team circumnavigated Pilate, whose forehead had just lit up, then scurried off before our eyes with Quartus in the lead.
Just as the team occulted the impassive Danton, after neatly manoeuvring round the column, Septimus strained forward impetuously to overtake Quartus.
Septimus, greeted with great applause from his backers, then continued to maintain his lead round the little column.
The seven breasts were now generating a mass of gaseous pearls, whose numbers showed how much the excitement of the race accelerated their respiratory exchanges; at the Cartesian divers’ corner some of these bubbles became mixed with another aerial “Dubito” from Voltaire’s lips.
Locus Solus Page 6
