“They know,” Franz murmured, in a low voice.
Master Wolfram heard him. “They know! That’s true—but they suffer in their pride if they are ordinary men, and in their love for humanity if God has put into their hearts that sacred love, for the first thing that science teaches them is the weakness of our perceptions. A scientist wishes to seek outside himself the miracles that are only in the man himself. Poor fool! He does not want to believe the falsifications that nature provides at every instant of the laws that he thinks he has discovered. What do we know about color? We are witness to facts and search in vain for causes. I can prove that by a thousand examples.
“Science offers no means of explaining the action of the moon on terrestrial objects by effects independent of its attraction and its light. In slow maladies, the cessation of life often coincides with the greatest possible distance of the Sun; it’s almost always night, when that star is at our antipodes, that consumptives die. Why? To what causes can the changes of weather brought by the passage of the moon from one phase to another be attributed? Do you know why opium puts one to sleep? No more than Molière’s physicians. What do you say about comets? And light—does it originate from particles belonging to the luminous body, which that body emits incessantly in all directions, as odorant bodies release the corpuscles that escape therefrom? Or is the fluid a subtle kind of matter that fills space, to which the luminous body imparts an agitation that is transmitted sequentially, as the vibrations of sonorous bodies are propagated through the medium of the air? Which of the two hypotheses, of Newton and Descartes, ought we to choose? Are we going toward the heavens or have we descended therefrom?
“We want to explain everything, even creation, and the person whom faith instructs to believe that God created light on the second day and the Sun on the fourth. Remove the Sun, however, and you’re in darkness! To seek to know everything, to explain everything, leads to the absurd. The Hindus represent Brahma in the form of a serpent, supporting the world on his head. He is supported himself on a tortoise, but on what does the tortoise rest in its turn? They refrain from saying. All systems lead there, by dear child. The greatest geniuses have left their reason or their faith in these unfathomable precipices of mystery that surround us.
“Newton discovered the only one of the great laws of nature that it has been given to man to penetrate, and he ended up writing a ridiculous and futile commentary on The Twelve Horns of the Animal of the Prophet Daniel.27 Descartes provided the explanation of the true law of reflection, and proceeded from error to error with his vortices. He, the great genius, supposed an absurdity: the identity of matter and space. Pascal, to escape doubt, threw himself into narrow religion and died at 39. Swedenborg began his life with useful discoveries and terminated it sadly in outré mysticism.
“We’re surrounded by even more material and palpable proofs of the poverty of our nature. Physicians have gone mad for having made mental alienation their constant study. Others have communicated to their children the respiratory maladies to which they devoted their exclusive attention, in the prideful hope of extracting Death’s secret: an effect quite incomprehensible, if a strange hazard had not directed it. Bright, the English physician who devoted himself furiously to the study of diseases of the kidneys died of the cruelest of those diseases.28 That’s science, my child! Come on, come on! You’re young and rich; thank God for those two benefits, enjoy life and love, instead of dying by virtue of anticipation before your hour has come.
“These lines that I’ve translated for you are rather bizarre, I admit, but at the end of the day, that’s no reason to get so involved that you forget to eat or sleep. The fashion in which they came into your hands only seems supernatural by virtue of your imagination, overexcited by that ancient world of dreams into which you have drawn yourself, and the calm and rest to which you have condemned yourself—calm and rest dangerous at any age, but especially at yours, when he possesses a superabundance of strength and youth, which ought to be expended if one wants the equilibrium between those two enemy brothers, the physical and the mental, to be maintained.”
“Perhaps I’ll follow your advice, Master,” said Franz, shaking his head, “but first give me the explanation I’m asking you for.”
“Is it curiosity alone that drives you to ask?”
“Yes,” the young man forced himself to reply, calmly. “You can certainly assume that I’m wise enough not to believe in evocations and the gods of Norse mythology.”
“Oh, my child, on the contrary—I’d rather you were mad, but mad as one is at 20 years of age. All right! I’ll satisfy you. Let’s re-read the translation I sent you together.”
Leaning toward Master Wolfram, to whom he had handed the letter, Baron von Heberghem prepared to listen to what the old man was about to say, without missing a syllable.
“Freyr, Thor, Odin,” the scientist began. “Those three letters are, as I thought, an invocation placed at the head of our singular manuscript by the person who wrote it, to summon the protection of the three great Scandinavian deities. The custom of first putting oneself under the guard of a protective God before writing exists among many Asiatic peoples, and you know that the Scandinavians and the peoples of Asia emerged from the same cradle. The resemblance between Phoenician characters and runic characters is one of numerous proofs of that common origin. A Muslim never writes a letter without preceding it with an invocation of the prophet; a Hindu addresses himself to Vishnu, the protective god, his Juvans Pater, and willingly puts, at the head of the pages on which he is to write, the word Aouan, which is the one with which the Vedas commence.
“The three lines that follow—you who have the intelligence and the courage, and who seek wisdom, go very far into the North—have no need of explanation. First, the author wants someone to go to a country that he describes precisely enough for it not to be hard to find. The rivers Driva and Logen are two of the innumerable watercourses that emerge from the Skanderna mountains in Norway. Then it becomes less clear. On the night of the summer solstice, it says, when Hodur and Nott are the masters of the sky at the same time as Vali—which is today, Hodur and Nott being the divinities of the night and Vali that of the day, when it is day and night at the same time—a common phenomenon in the polar regions when, for several days, the Sun never quits the horizon. The peak of the Nunsfjeld is not close enough to the pole for the phenomenon to last for a long time, and it’s for that reason that our magician designates as the night that must be chosen for the invocation that of the summer solstice—the epoch which, as you know, gives us the longest day of the year in our hemisphere.
“I continue. With a runic staff inscribed with the sacred formula in hand. This staff, on which the runic characters must be carved—probably the three words, or rather the three letters, placed at the head of this singular script—will play the role here that the staff always plays in magical ceremonies, from Aaron’s rod to fairies’ wands. You will stand it up, inclining it toward the pale star as it rises, in the lowest of the mysterious signs engraved in the granite. Which is to say that, after having placed the staff upright, with its foot in the lowest of the notches of runes carved on one of the slopes of the summit of the Nunsfjeld, the operator must point its other extremity at the Moon, as soon as it appears on the horizon.
“The Sun, which will still be illuminating the peaks of those desolate heights, will then project the shadow of the staff over the rocks, and it’s where that shadow stops that one ought, while invoking Vidar—which is to say, employing considerable force, Vidar being the Hercules of Scandinavian mythology—doubtless to displace the rock, to find the spirit of Mimer. Do not let yourself be seduced by the silver harps of Hogspolar, brave the Niks and the Valkyries evidently means nothing other than: don’t stop in towns, whatever pleasures you find there, and overcome all obstacles courageously.”
The old man concluded: “That, dear child, is all that I can add to my translation.”
“But what is the spirit of Mimer?�
�� asked Franz, who had not taken his eyes of Master Wolfram throughout the time he was speaking.
“Oh, that’s true—I forgot to give you that detail. Mimer, my son, has never been a man or a spirit. It was, according to Scandinavian legend, an embalmed head which possessed all knowledge, and which Odin, the first king of the fabulous times of the Aesir, consulted at awkward moments. One simple question addressed to the head, and its reply settled any matter. Does the author of these runes want to make it understood that the head of Mimer the sage is out there under the rocks of the peak of the Nunsfjeld, that it has conserved its singular power of knowing everything, and also that of speaking and giving advice? I don’t know—it’s quite possible. In any case, though, as I don’t suppose that you have any more intention than I have of going to verify the fact, it would be silly of us to waste any more time on the story.”
“You’re right, Master, and I thank you,” Franz replied, getting to his feet and shaking Wolfram’s hand respectfully. “I’m very small by comparison with your science.”
“Come on, come on, you silly boy! Put Erasmus and your cabalistic runes away in a corner of your library, and love Marguerite. Love—that’s the science of youth. And sleep soundly, without seeking to know. Remember my advice, and when you have need of your old friend again, come back. You’ll always be welcome.”
Shortly after leaving the antiquarian scientist, Baron von Heberghem went into his house, much calmer, as if his decision was made. From that day on, he no longer set foot outside, shut up more than ever in his library, and broke off completely the exceedingly rare relationships that he had maintained in Frankfurt. Schmidt employed every possible means to find out what his young master was doing while he was alone for such long periods; he did not succeed. The Margrave von Hersfeld came knocking at his door, in vain. The sweet memory of Marguerite, a gracious phantom of the past, came knocking at his heart, in vain. Nothing could extract him from his studies and dreams.
More than five on this passed in that way.
“What’s the date, Schmidt?” he asked his servant one day, as he sat down at table.
“The third of June, sir.”
“The third of June?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Already. I’ll have time, though. Schmidt, get everything ready today that we’ll need for a journey of several weeks. We’re leaving for Stettin tomorrow morning.”
“Where are we going, sir?” Schmidt asked, in terror.
“Norway, my brave Schmidt—Norway, the land of long winters and nights during which you can see the Sun.”
The old servant went out and raised his arms to the heavens.
Franz set about reading Wolfram’s translation of the runes attentively—a translation that he had never set aside—and transcribing for the thousandth time, for fear of forgetting them, all the explanations he had obtained from his old friend. Then he ran to shut himself up in his library, in order to dream once again of the power that he was about to possess, of the supreme science that he believed he had been summoned to snatch from oblivion.
He had been there, alone in the midst of his dreams, for several hours, and night had fallen, when Schmidt came in to hand him a letter. He opened it.
Franz, Marguerite wrote, I hear that you’re going to leave. Where are you going? To run after some chimera from which you hope to obtain happiness! I’m acting in violation of all social laws in writing to you—to you, who have forgotten for such a long time our joys and childish oaths—but I have a presentiment of misfortune, and if I cannot be your wife, I want to replace your mother. Stay, Franz—stay among us, I implore you! I have divined the torments and doubts of your soul. Stay! I pray constantly that you might remember, perhaps that you might love. It’s not for my happiness that I beg you on my knees—who am I?—but for yours…for you, who are everything to me.
Franz drew a piece of paper toward him.
Marguerite, he wrote, in a feverish and hurried hand, I love you as before; I’m leaving, it’s true, but I shall return soon, and as I wish to be, superior to other men. We shall be happy then. Since you love me, don’t try to struggle against destiny.
Proud man! He denied, in those few lines, that of which humans beings should be prouder than anything else—his free will.
Three days later he embarked at Stettin, with his servant, on the steamship that would put him ashore at Christiana after a crossing of 72 hours.
On June, 22 a little more than a fortnight after their departure from Frankfurt, Franz and his servant, accompanied by a guide, were climbing the Nunsfjeld. They had left the poor hamlet that suspended its wooden houses covered with birch-bark from the flank of the mountain at an early hour.
Although it was already 10 p.m., they could see almost as well as in the middle of the day. The Sun had not quit the horizon, along which its course extended. Its oblique whitened rays, drowned in mist, cut out huge shadows on the granite giant. The Nunsfjeld reached up proudly into the sky, dotted in the north by pale and vacillating stars. Its summit, covered in snow for eight months of the year, had now shed its winter shroud and presented nothing to the eyes but bare and brutal asperities.
The guide, a tall blond-haired Norwegian with harsh features—a true descendant of those men of Asia, the Aesir who had come from the east under the leadership of Odin—marched in the lead, his great iron-clad staff in his hand. Franz followed him with a firm step, plunging a calm gaze into the profound crevasses that the revolutions of nature had hollowed in the Nunsfjeld. Totally focused on the project he had undertaken, he marched without seeing the danger, thinking of nothing but the goal he wanted to reach. Schmidt came next, or, rather, trailed behind his master. Half crazed by terror, the old servant of the Heberghems sometimes crouched down on a rocky ledge in order not to give way to vertigo, but quickly resumed his course to rejoin those ahead of him when they had disappeared behind one of the thousand outcrops of the mountain.
They arrived thus at the summit of the mountain at about midnight. The most sublime of spectacles awaited them there. Beneath their feet, the precipices they had just crossed and the bare and brutal frocks, still sunlit, showed themselves in all their stark horror. Lower down, in a half-light full of poetry, immense forests of fir and oak extended, the monotony of which was broken periodically by soelers—little meadows of flowers and grass, seemingly suspended from the flanks of the mountain. Below that they made out the village, almost buried in the semi-darkness of the valley. Around them, somber colossi, loomed the peaks of the Skanderna mountains, with their eternal snows. Above their heads the desolate zones of the grey sky unfurled, with its tints of reddish yellow in the east. There was not the slightest breath of wind; the calm that surrounded them was so profound that they might have been able to hear the distant North Sea continuing its work of destruction in the fjords.
Franz did not pause to contemplate that marvelous landscape. Without wasting a instant resting on the platform that surmounted the mountain-peak—a platform on one of whose rocks Schmidt and the guide had collapsed with fatigue—he started making a tour of the summit of the Nunsfjeld.
After a few minutes of ardent, fitful and feverish research, he found what he was looking for. On a huge flat rock set against the peak, he saw three long gashes, corroded and pitted by time, but still reproducing with sufficient exactitude the three letters set at the head of the mysterious manuscript—letters that he had carved himself upon a birch-wood staff that he held in his hand. Hollowed out almost a foot deep in the granite, each of those symbols was more than a meter tall. Quieting the beating of his heart, Franz then turned his gaze westwards. At the extremity of the incommensurable horizon that it embraced, the light clouds were iridescent on their lowers borders. The Moon was about to rise.29
“Schmidt!” he shouted, in a strident voice.
The old German shivered as this sound suddenly troubled the calm of the solitudes, and immediately rejoined his master.
“It’s time,” said the young man, wh
en his servant was beside him. “You see that gash in the rock?”
“Yes,” Schmidt murmured, in a hushed voice.
“Hold this staff upright, like this, in that horizontal cleft.” He indicated the place described in the manuscript. “When the Moon appears, tilt the staff toward it, without taking the foot out of the hole.”
“My dear master,” said Schmidt, throwing himself on to his knees in front of Franz, “I’ll do everything you ask of me, but is this Christian work that we’re doing here?”
“Silence! Obey me. The pale star is about to emerge from oblivion.”
“God protect me,” said the poor servant, seizing the magic staff with a trembling hand and helping himself with his knees to hoist himself up to the mysterious symbol.”
“Are you there?” Franz asked, after a moment.
“Yes.”
“Pay attention! The Moon’s about to appear.”
The nocturnal disk was sketched on the horizon; a reddish segment extended skywards. The Sun continued in its course, reminiscent of an immense globe of fire. The shadow of the runic staff extended in zigzags over the asperities of the granite.
Soon the Moon showed in its entirety, red and bloody. Smith, feeling chilled by fear, tilted the tip of the runic staff toward it, recommending himself to divine clemency.
Franz reached the place where the shadow terminated in a single bound.
The World Above The World Page 10
