Lucius, who was very bald, was sitting in profile, his left side turned in our direction, at the end of a marble table upon which stood a kind of hearth oriented toward us, comprising two firedogs without projections screwed parallel, with nothing overlapping, on the edges of a square sheet of iron furnished with glowing coals.
Throwing a piece of gray rep a meter long and half a meter wide over the firedogs to form a bridge, the madman, careful to avoid any burning contact, slid its two ends together under the metal sheet until the upper surface was tightly stretched, bordered in front and behind from where we were by a narrow margin descending at a slight incline.
Twelve figures several centimeters high, made of rubber skin marvelously painted and modeled, suggesting a band of sinister prowlers on the corner of the table, were placed by Lucius on the rep, whose square surface allowed the warm air to pass through an infinite number of tiny holes packed closely together. Easily borne aloft, they stayed upright in mid-air due to weights set inside their feet, and soon they were circulating according to the whim of the madman whose fingers wandered over the sieve-like material. Deprived for an instant of all vertical air currents except those which lightly brushed its back or abdomen and moved it at that moment out of its axis, one figure would plunge forward or backward; then, when all intervention had ceased beneath it, would rebound to its former level, deriving a lively jig step from the repetition of this maneuver. Another would pivot according to the action of certain air currents brushing tangentially, after the suppression of all contrary draughts, against some jutting part such as a hand or neck.
Once arranged facing each other in two parallel lines of six, of which the nearest had their backs to us, the aerial dolls danced in classic manner the sprightly jig well known under the name of “Sir Roger de Coverly.” Lucius set all this in motion by himself, moving his fingers over the rep like a delicate keyboard which he operated with great virtuosity, the fruit of patient study.
Starting from the two ends of the same diagonal, the two dancers would hop toward each other, then, before touching, would regain their places by a backward movement, immediately imitated by the occupants of the other two end positions. This alternating maneuver, recommenced several times, was varied by the execution of a few twirls about each other as they converged on the center two by two. Lucius slipped his hands over the rep with one wrist sharply curved to avoid interrupting the air currents which supported the inactive dolls.
Then the madman gradually brought the two furthest vis-à-vis toward him and made them turn alternately together in the middle line of the quadrille, then each one with a dancer of the opposite file, not forgetting to make them move one place up toward him each time. After this, everything started again as before.
So the dance continued. Since the second figure always followed the first, a constant rotation conferred the privilege of the corner positions on each of the twelve associates in turn.
Thanks to his unerring skill, which never fumbled, Lucius gave an intense life to the jig without a dance floor, whose calm pace gradually became rapid, then impetuous.
Suddenly the evolutions ceased. Removing his hands from the rep, above which the dancers floated aimlessly, Lucius, haggard, his eyes filled with terror, had turned unseeingly to face us; he was about to undergo, Canterel told us, a strange, hair-raising crisis of hallucinatory reflexes due to the terrifying and evocative spectacle which he had just created, unwillingly obeying his cruel obsession.
Beneath the sway of fear, six hairs stood on end at the edges of each of the tufted regions bordering the madman’s bald pate to right and left — then all by themselves jumped from one pore into another. Uprooted by some profound slackening of the tissues, each hair, which the expelling pore seemed to throw into the air by compressing its upper lips, described a miniature trajectory while retaining its vertical position, and fell into a neighboring pore, which opened to receive it and immediately forced it toward a new gaping refuge, ready to reject it in its turn.
Soon, by dint of a series of bounds, the twelve hairs were ranged facing each other on the shining summit of the cranium, in two equal files parallel to the axis of an imaginary parting and, faithful to their mode of locomotion, spontaneously danced a jig identical to that of the figurines made of rubber skin. The same alternation observed by the four occupants of the end-positions in the multiple half-traverses from corner to corner, simple to begin with, then accompanied by different twirls at the center; the same concerted figure during which two vis-à-vis passed by undulating stages from one end of the quadrille to the other.
Contorted with pain, and like certain nervous people exasperated by an uncontrollable tic, Lucius, as though to halt the odious scene, brought his hands up toward his skull, which a kind of terror prevented him from touching. And, despite him, the jig went hopping on its way to its heart’s content, continuous, implacable, the twelve hairs gaining in turn the four key positions. Canterel pointed out to us in a whisper the immense anatomical interest presented by this reflex effect of an obsession produced by mental shock.
Wretchedly aware of the accursed dance which, ever precise and impeccable, was accelerating vigorously just like that of the lightweight dolls, Lucius was seized by a convulsive trembling, and gave vent to groans of anguish.
After a moment of acute paroxysm the crisis seemed finally to diminish and, while the madman was growing quieter, the hairs regained their original resting places on either side, at the edge of the tufted patches, and subsided into their normal positions. Then Lucius broke into protracted sobs, with his face buried in his hands, loosing a flood of tears brought on by the release of his nervous tension.
Soon, with a radiant smile, he rose and moved a few paces to the left, where he sat down facing the side wall, at a wide table. Upon it were several unstoppered crystal flasks each containing a brush dipped in a colorless liquid and, next to them, numerous pieces of linen cut out beforehand, which were clearly, by their dimensions, designed to make up the various articles of a layette.
He took a white rod about ten centimeters long from his pocket and fixed it upright in a tiny hole in the table. It was as thin as a piece of thread and seemed as rigid as steel. With one of the brushes he moistened its upper end, then, without pausing, held the touching edges of two pieces of linen vertical, pressed against each other just above it — with one hand at the top and the other at the bottom.
Suddenly, like a thin Pharaoh’s serpent, the hard thread lengthened of its own accord in rapid and close-knit undulations, continually piercing the two thicknesses of linen from each side in turn. From bottom to top it sewed a fine and perfect seam in a wonderful running stitch, which was completed over the whole available length in less than a second. This phenomenon over, Lucius broke the thread, the imprisoned part of which spontaneously formed small knobs, like stop knots, at each of the two ends, level with the cloth, and at once became completely flexible.
Canterel showed us the white rod, lacking only the tiny moistened part which a flameless combustion, resulting from certain chemical properties of the colorless liquid, had transformed into thread.
After moistening the new tip of the rod with a brush from another phial, Lucius folded back the edge of a piece of the work in progress and held it upright in the required position. A speedy white thread, rising in a tight spiral, sewed a hemstitch by piercing alternate single and double thicknesses of linen twice at each turn. When the thread was broken, two knob-like barriers appeared and the seam became pliable.
The professor drew our attention to the joyful eagerness with which the madman hastily worked at his daughter’s layette, for at times, due to a derangement of his throbbing reason, he believed she was about to be born. All the colorless liquids were different and each gave rise to its own thread, generating a special stitch labeled on the flask.
The next thread, produced by the intervention of a third brush, was as quick as lightning d
espite its relative complexity; it sewed a backstitch by returning continually to pierce the double thickness of cloth held in its path just below the last hole — then instantly mounting higher than before. Through the effect of a hitherto unused liquid, the fourth thread, which was very similar, managed a piqué stitch in the linen presented to it, by passing a second time through the first hole it encountered in each of its descents, which were invariably followed by an ascent of twice the distance. A fifth thread, due to another flask, gave a whipstitch by enclosing sideways in its rather wide coils, without leaving any space, the exterior line marked by two linen borders placed accurately together. The formation of the two stopping knobs and the phenomenon of softening never failed to occur.
With an unerring eye Lucius wetted only a tiny fraction — subtly different each time — of the rod’s tip, faultlessly taking as his basis the directness or otherwise of the line of perforation devolving upon any particular thread, according to a calculation of proportions.
The thread produced by the sixth phial performed a herringbone stitch in the linen, which, by its stupendous zigzags, recalled those insane pyrotechnic lucubrations whose chaotic, amply oscillating ascents performed in the air, amid explosions, are so baffling. Moreover, all the threads bore a resemblance, though on an extremely reduced scale, to complicated set pieces of the kind that produce multiple curves, spirals or broken lines.
The lightning speed of each seam demonstrated the overwhelming excellence of this method, which would have enabled a seamstress to do a hundred times the daily amount of work achieved with the best sewing machine.
After carrying on with his work for a while, resorting to the same six flasks, Lucius stopped in a fit of lassitude before the white rod, which had now become very much shorter. Happening to turn round, he seemed to notice us for the first time and approached, speaking this single word through the grille:
“Sing.”
At once the professor begged the singer Malvina, who was in our group, to execute a lyric phrase from an opera in order to satisfy the madman’s caprice. Malvina had played the role of one of the confidantes in a recent biblical opera called “Abimelech,” and she began, almost at the top of the high register: “O Rebecca . . .”
Lucius briskly interrupted her and made her endlessly repeat the same fragment, paying particular attention to the very pure vibrations of the last note.
Then he went and sat down to the right, facing us, at a pedestal table which supported the following diverse objects:
1. A lamp, not lit at the time.
2. A thin engraving point with an amazingly fine gold needle.
3. A small ruler several centimeters long made of bacon, displaying on one of its sides six principal divisions, marked by thick, numbered strokes, each comprising twelve subdivisions which were indicated by finer and shorter lines. The vivid red of the lines and figures stood out sharply against the whitish gray of the fat. This delicately made instrument was a miniature reproduction of the old fathom, divided into six feet and seventy-two inches.
4. A thin, square green tablet made from some kind of hardened wax.
5. A very simple acoustic apparatus consisting of a short gold needle fitted to a round membrane provided with a horn.
6. A small rectangular sheet of white card with a central opening, whose imperceptibly split edges neatly framed a flat, faceted garnet, which was cut in the form of a lozenge, giving the whole thing the appearance of an ace of diamonds.
Lucius laid the little fathom on the center of the green tablet, placed flat in front of him, taking it by both ends between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand — and compressing the divisions and subdivisions directly before his eyes, lengthways, in such a way as to wrinkle them and make them shorter.
After choosing various points along a single line very carefully, by examining the red strokes, he held the engraving point vertically in his right hand and made seven superficial marks with it in the wax, pressing the needle against the bacon.
Having established these guides, Lucius slightly relaxed the grip of his two fingers, letting the elastic fathom lengthen of its own accord to give his measurements a little more amplitude. Then he interposed some new marks on the green surface among the first, following exactly the same procedure.
For a long time the madman still pursued his task, squeezing the often very stunted fathom a different amount each time and consulting its red subdivisions in order to attack the wax with his point in the virgin parts of the same rectilinear zone, with subtle variations in his ways of touching it.
Finally the green tablet showed a short, thin, straight line composed of short pricks, resembling those on phonograph cylinders when a voice has been recorded on them.
In response to a desire evinced by Lucius, who promptly put away the fathom and the point, the attendant lit a match and approached the lamp.
As the flame gained on the wick, Canterel slipped his arm between two bars, took a sheath of faded silk from against the left-hand wall and pulled it toward him. Long and flat, it bore on one side the Latin word “Mens” in old embroidery, surrounded by religious emblems and flowers. From it he withdrew a very ancient plank and showed us the complete text of the Mass finely engraved in Coptic letters, covering both sides of the wood. Soon this plank, replaced in its sheath and returned through the grille, was leaning once more against the wall.
By simply releasing a catch, the attendant set some kind of mechanism in motion inside the lit lamp, which thereupon began to throw out vivid momentary flashes, regularly separated by three seconds of near extinction.
Holding the green tablet in his left hand, right away from him, and the ace of diamonds between the fingers of the other, Lucius lifted his arms and turned slightly toward the right, with his back to the lamp. Seen in profile by us, he raised the objects one behind the other, parallel, with the ace forming a screen between the tablet and the flame.
At the first flash in the fading daylight, the garnet threw some microscopic and widely separated points of red light toward the back of the room; due to the facets, these were highlighted by the surrounding shadow of the card and displayed appreciable variations in brightness because of the greater or lesser purity of different parts of the jewel.
Moving the strange card, Lucius quickly selected one of these points and aimed it at the topmost mark on the tablet, where he held it during the next three flashes.
Between the flashes the points vanished without trace.
In this way Lucius illuminated all the marks made by the engraving point in turn, choosing for each one a special spot of light, of greater or less intensity, and varying the number of flashes used from one to fifteen. Sometimes two or more points were employed on the same mark in succession.
Canterel provided a commentary on the madman’s task.
Each burning point was entrusted with a scrupulously exact piece of modeling, favored by the correct mixture of red and green; its slight warmth imperceptibly softened the wax of the mark aimed at, thus bringing the first work to completion by perfecting the future quality of the embryonic sounds.
After returning toward us to put away his ace, then laying the green tablet flat on the pedestal table, Lucius grasped the acoustic apparatus and gently ran its almost vertical gold needle along the line formed by the marks. As the point moved over this rough path, it transmitted many vibrations to the membrane, and a woman’s voice, resembling Malvina’s, emerged from the horn and distinctly sang, on the correct notes: “O Rebecca . . .”
It appeared that the madman artificially created all sorts of human voices by the process submitted to our eyes. In an effort to recover the voice of his daughter in her first attempts to talk, he multiplied the trials, hoping to discover by chance some timbre which might guide him toward success by approaching his ideal. This is why he uttered the word “sing” and had hastened to reproduce the model furnished by Ma
lvina.
Piloting the golden needle along the line once more, Lucius made the phrase “O Rebecca . . .” sound several times, and was plunged by its final note into a painful state of excitement. Confining himself to the end of the track, he played the second half the final sound over and over again; then, profoundly moved, made a sign for us to leave him.
Canterel led us out of Lucius’s sight, since he clearly wished to pursue his obsessive research closely in solitude, using the vibrations which he had been playing over the moment before as a new starting point.
As the professor wished to stay within range of the attendant’s voice in case of an emergency — rendered likely by the madman’s present condition of excitement — he strolled with us behind the barred chamber, where he related some distressing events.
∗ ∗ ∗
One day a young visitor named Florine Egroizard had tearfully recited a pathetic tale, imploring Canterel to use his celebrated science to save her husband, who had become insane as the result of a sudden calamity, and for two years had been despaired of by the greatest specialists.
The sick man, Lucius Egroizard, had been an enthusiastic member of an Italian society exclusively devoted to the cult of Leonardo da Vinci, and had formerly occupied himself simultaneously with art and science in order to follow, however humbly, the unique example in history provided by his idol.
Florine and Lucius were a devoted couple whose happiness was complete when, after waiting ten long years, their daughter Gillette was born, fulfilling their most ardent wishes. Neglecting his work, the father would spend hours watching the happy smiles and the first babblings of the child he had so long desired.
A year later, Lucius brought Florine and Gillette to London, whither he was called by an attractive commission for portraits and busts. He used to go twice a week to a splendid residence in the county of Kent, to paint the young mistress of a manor, Lady Rashleigh. One day, at a wish that the latter had graciously expressed, he had Florine accompany him carrying Gillette, whom she was breast-feeding herself.
Locus Solus Page 20
