Nora, The Ape-Woman

by Félicien Champsaur

  “Of which you oughtn’t to deprive yourself. You’re beautiful, mad and desirable, O brown flesh.”

  Nora shook her head. However, she allowed the American with the exquisite face—who was proud of her legs, of which her short skirts allowed the sight of her full and shapely knees—to draw her, like a little girl who has been hurt, over her thighs, muscled by sport.

  III. Little Borneo

  The place chosen by Doctors Voronoff and Goldry was an area east of Beaulieu, along the long high rocky cliff that borders the Great Blue, sometimes along the seashore and sometimes a kilometers distant from it. In one of those gulfs of the Riviera the American had established his refuge. The cliff, between one and two hundred meters high, forms an uninterrupted line all the way to Eze, which town and the ruins of its ancient château are its terminus. In the distance, and even higher, a second barrier rises against the east wind known as the Mistral: the Tête de Chien and La Turbie. It is a true cagna,11 as they say in the region. In that already wooded retreat, Abraham Goldry had found a few hectares; nothing could have been more suitable for his plan.

  It is well-known that, after the war, an immense quantity of materiel remained available—for example, immense metallic hangars that had served as shelters for dirigibles. It was, therefore, merely a question of reassembly; Goldry had been spoiled for choice. Only the end walls required more work, and with the necessary manual labor, the American had succeeded in erecting his simian refuge within a year.

  The works had been concluded four years ago, and the stud-farm—there is no other term to describe it—was in full production. Under metallic hangars twenty-five meters high, large trees and thick bushes, lianas, palm-trees and bamboos made a veritable tropic forest; the glazed roofs above the cages, also protected by grilles, allowed the air to be renewed and the heat to be maintained.

  The cages were vast and well-lit, furnished with a comfort appropriate to their inhabitants. Because of the simian spirit of imitation, one central cage, visible from all the others, served as a school; servants clad in ape-skins combed themselves, brushed themselves and made the necessary ablutions there. Thus, in less than six months the residents were neat and rid of all vermin. A healthy and abundant nourishment, ropes, balloons and gymnastic apparatus maintained activity and merriment. So, the result was marvelous, and as soon as the second year—it requires six or seven years to grow to adulthood—the refuge was augmented by baby orangutans.

  It was decided between the four doctors that the orangutans would be reserved for the mysterious important experiments, and that only chimpanzees and gibbons would be used for the grafting operations.

  Dr. Fortin had notified Goldry of his arrival with Georges Clemenceau, the man who had been, for some time “the Savior of the Fatherland,” so the American, highly distinguished, clean shaven, with that air of youthfulness that men of his nation conserve until advanced age, was waiting for them at the railway station. They climbed into the limousine, and in a matter of minutes, they were transported to the “paradise of apes.” After the good lunch demanded by etiquette, Fortin, Clemenceau and Goldry—Marc Vanel, busy in the laboratory, had asked to be excused—went out of the residential block by the back door and immediately found themselves in the forest.

  “To every lord all honor,” said Goldry. “First I’ll show you my pupils, my orangutans.”

  A narrow path, perfectly maintained, plunged into the undergrowth, zigzagging somewhat, as if in order to be better hidden. Exotic trees—banyans, giant flamboyant magnolias, palms and bamboos—were combined with local ones: mimosas, climbing roses and arbutus. One advantage over virgin forest: no masses of detritus, dead wood or marshy areas encumbered the floor; on the contrary, fresh streams ran in all directions, vivifying grass of luxuriant thickness.

  “But it’s a veritable Eden!” exclaimed Clemenceau. “What a retreat for parliamentarians!”

  “They’d rob our inmates,” said Fortin. “That breed of ape is rather inconvenient and useless.”

  “I’ve been one,” sighed the ex-President. “What a waste of time! That’s what I think, in the twilight of life.”

  “There’s our first cage,” said Goldry. “Follow me.”

  Suspended from an enormous cedar, an iron ladder permitted climbing up to the thicker branches, extending horizontally seven or eight meters above the ground. There was a little platform there, and immediately facing, a footbridge leading to a gallery that went around three sides of the cage. The latter was ten meters square, giving a surface area of a hundred square meters. Six meters high, its summit reached the roof of the metallic enclosure. Climbing plants wound around the bars, hiding them almost entirely.

  Doctor Goldry set out along the footbridge.

  “You can follow me,” he said. “My boarders are used to visitors.”

  The cage contained an orangutan couple, a two-year old male and a baby whose mother was still breast-feeding it. When the newcomers appeared, the two adults advanced and shook Dr. Goldry’s hand.

  The young orangutan was capering around the ropes that gave the illusions of lianas, being woven of green-dyed hemp; he stopped his game in order to leap on to Jean Fortin’s shoulders; then, removing the worn beret that the doctor was wearing, he put it on his own head. That action appeared to irritate the father; he snatched the beret away from him and returned it to Dr. Fortin, who had approached the mother and was examining the infant.

  As for the father orangutan, he appeared to strike up a conversation with Goldry, in which gestures played a greater role than words. Clemenceau was able to assure himself, however, that the articulated vowels were combined in some forty different words.

  As soon as he went in, the statesman had experienced the malaise that all humans feel in the presence of those primates; they seem to be a kind of caricature of what we are. But that impression was rapidly overcome, and he took a keen interest in what he saw.

  He drew closer to Dr. Fortin. “Well?” he said. “Are the mother and child doing well?”

  “The infant is better,” the scientist replied. “Teething’s beginning—that’s a critical moment for anthropoids. Look—the mother understands that I’m interested in her child.”

  Delicately picking up the little ape, Dr. Fortin sat him on his arm and stroked his head gently. The little one then emitted a kind of continuous purr. The mother took the doctor’s hand and licked it.

  “When I talk about them, I daren’t say ‘those animals.’ See how easily these individuals have become accustomed to us, and what affection they seem to feel for their jailers. I believe that after two generations, we’ll be able to give them the freedom of the refuge, and they’ll return to their cages freely, which have become their homes. We have twenty more like this one, fourteen of which are inhabited. Soon, Dr. Marc Vanel will introduce you to a few subjects in psychological progression.”

  “Damn!” said Clemenceau. “You don’t have the intention of making humans of them?”

  Fortin smiled strangely, and winked at Goldry. “Do you remember, Georges, what you saw three days ago at the Folies Bergères?”

  “Yes…but you’re making fun of me.”

  “That’s what you’re going to see…Goldry!”

  “What?” said the latter. “What is it?”

  “I’ve found Nora. Monsieur Clemenceau can confirm it.”

  “Where? Are you sure?” Goldry stammered, hastening toward Fortin.

  “Absolutely certain,” he replied. “She’s a woman now, but she hasn’t changed so much that I, her creator, couldn’t recognize her. Your daughter in now a star of the Parisian theater, and she’s in the process of making her fortune—and that of her manager.”

  “What are we going to do, then?”

  “Let her live her life, of course! What right do you think we have to intervene? She’s a minor, but so what? It would be quite an affair to reconstitute her past in order to establish your rights. It would take less time to reconstitute another woman with a select
ed little ape.”

  “Oh!” Clemenceau put in. “Don’t you think that humanity is bestial enough already?”

  “Our dream,” said Fortin, “is to regenerate the human species by renewing its vigor from the source.”

  The ex-President of the Council shrugged his shoulders. “Amuse yourselves, Messieurs les Scientists—but what’s the point?”

  The aged Dr. Fortin placed his hand on Clemenceau’s shoulder. “You’re a man of great intelligence, Georges. You’re a physician, a man of letters, a politician—what do I know? But have you never revolted against the impotence of our comprehension before certain enigmas? Humans have penetrated everything—or, rather, made use of some of the creative or constitutive forces of our world. Today, we’re beginning to perceive that life isn’t concentrated on our globe, but that it extends throughout the universe, and that the universe is nothing but an ensemble of actions that are intimately connected with one another. For a long time, Terrans have believed that they were only linked to their own solar system, but now, with the revelation of cosmic waves, we have the proof that the universe has a binding force, that nothing is isolated in the ether that we call ‘space.’

  “Well, that which we can’t comprehend, because our brains are not yet sufficiently developed, a superhuman might be able to decipher, tearing away the veil that masks the great mystery: the why of what is. What’s the point of showering ourselves with marvels, if we don’t know the reason for being? Every one of the creatures that populate the earth is a composite of other creatures. Nature—or, if you prefer, the creative force, the spirit, the soul of our globe—has had its infancy, its adolescence, its maturity. In what phase is it presently? We can’t tell. In any case, it seemed to have proceeded from the horrible, the infamous and the monstrous to increasingly harmonious forms. Human beings, which we have the vanity of considering as the most perfect of those works, have taken thousands of years, perhaps hundreds of thousands, to become what they are today. Will they need as many more for their intelligence to comprehend the work in its totality?

  “That can’t satisfy contemporary humans. Their duty is to hasten, to accelerate the work of nature, and, if necessary, to bring it forward. And that’s what my collaborators and I are trying to do; and, not being able to work with human beings—we’d be prevented from doing so—we’re working on apes. The results we’ve obtained encourage us to persevere. You’ve seen Nora, the ape changed into a woman; we’re going to continue, this time with a male, and who can tell what we’ll obtain?”

  “You’re frightening, my dear Fortin! Two centuries ago, you’d have been burned as a sorcerer.”

  Goldry had drawn closer again. “How do you find our boarders, Monsieur le Président?”

  “They’re well on the way to reproduction.”

  “You’ve only seen my children, the orangutans of Borneo. Now I’ll show you our breeding-stock destined for Voronoff’s grafts: a few chimpanzees and fifty gibbons, experimentation having shown us that the results of virilization are the same by means of the latter.”

  The three men, Clemenceau, Goldry and Jean Fortin, came down, after having taken their leave of the orangutans, who escorted them very politely to the door.

  Having gone back into the forest, they continued along the little path all the way to the extremity of the domain. That was where the dwelling of the quadrumanes was located: a residential block in brick, with a vast cage behind it, eight hundred square meters planted with trees and bushes. A clear stream leapt from rock to rock over a bed of sand and pebbles. Covered food-troughs were set here and there. Thus installed between the building and the cliff, forming a cul-de-sac, the apes lived in a constant temperature between thirty and thirty-five degrees; in case it dropped too far, the building could be heated.

  As among the orangutans, the visitors were able to penetrate without danger, but here the apes seemed more suspicious and only allowed themselves to be approached fearfully. There, as everywhere else in the establishment, the greatest cleanliness reigned. Clemenceau remarked to Goldry, however, that some of the inhabitants seemed somewhat melancholy, and kept themselves apart from their joyful companions.

  “They’re our invalids,” the American replied, “those who give humans their gift of energy. We prepare them in another lodging, because we’ve noticed that their presence makes the others suspicious. Voronoff doesn’t want to kill them, for he hopes to be able to restore their virility, or to utilize them for other experiments...

  “Look—there’s a couple of chimpanzees who are particularly affectionate; they never quit one another and their arms are always linked. Several times already, the male, who is magnificent, has been chosen by clients, but Dr. Vanel has opposed it, so much does the attachment of those two individuals surpass the norm of simian sensibility. We call them Romeo and Juliet.”

  Abraham Goldry summoned the two quadrumanes, who immediately came closer, and gamboled around the doctor; he stroked them and gave them a few dry cakes.

  “Humans are singular animals,” said Fortin. “Look at Goldry, who has no wife or child; he’s created a family and he loves his apes as if they really were his children. It’s true that, if what he says is reliable, one of those orangutans, Narcisse, is the son of his great friend Ouha, the king of the apes, just as Nora is the daughter of a she-ape and Goldry.”

  Goldry’s face had become crimson. “You know, Dr. Fortin, that that joke...”

  “There’s no shame in it, my friend. Personally, if I were certain of the result, I’d inseminate a crocodile or a rattlesnake. The truth is that our friend, during his sojourn in Borneo, was forced to yield to the lubricity of a female orangutan, and while he was collecting the orphans of Ouha’s kingdom, he believed that he recognized his former mistress among the mothers whose offspring he removed. Not banal, eh, that story!”

  “And the young Goldry?” asked Clemenceau, to tease the American.

  “Narcisse, do you mean? You’ll see him shortly.”

  “If I can ever lock you in with a she-ape, Fortin…!” snorted Dr. Goldry.

  “There’s no need to lock me in—I’ll go of my own accord.”

  They visited the cage in detail, and the ex-Premier admired its features.

  “It is, decidedly, all that a quadrumane could desire.”

  “Now we only have the study rooms to visit,” said Dr. Fortin. “Here ends the Paradise of the Apes.”

  IV. Notes on Four Scientists

  1. Abraham Goldry

  In 1913, Dr. Abraham Goldry, an American subject and distinguished anthropologist left Philadelphia, where he was an honorary professor—Goldry did not actually teach; after having moved up through the university ranks, being rich, he had devoted himself entirely to research—in response to an invitation from a friend who had taken up residence in Borneo in Oceania with his daughter Mabel, Abraham’s goddaughter. In order to convince her godfather to make the journey, Mabel had written to tell him that, thanks to the presence in Borneo of a young black woman named Dilou, they had captured an adult orangutan of remarkable intelligence. Dilou, the daughter of a coastal planter, had been abducted by the great apes and had lived with them for several years, and it was in order to get her back that the orangutan had allowed himself to be captured.

  What luck for the anthropologist! He departed immediately for Borneo. The great ape charmed him, and he soon became his intimate friend; then, one day, Ouha-that was the orangutan’s name—had escaped, abducting the woman again. They had pursued him; then, a Homeric struggle had commenced between the humans and the apes commanded by Ouha, which concluded with the defeat of the white men and the abduction of Mabel.

  They could not leave the young woman in the hands of the ape. A great expedition was organized, which had no better result; many men were killed and Goldry was taken prisoner. Ouha, recognizing his old friend, had spared him and imprisoned him in a cave. There, the doctor had dressed in the skin of an orangutan killed in the battle and had become a kind of adviser
to the simian monarch, to whom he rendered great services in wars with other tribes of apes—martial successes that had given Ouha the ambition of expelling all the humans from the island.

  In the meantime, Mabel’s father, Harry Smith, aided by a few friends, had resolved to make another attempt to rescue his daughter, and, force having failed, to employ cunning. This time, in fact, they succeeded, and brought Mabel and Goldry back to Riddle Temple. In the course of their captivity, the two prisoners had been obliged to submit to the consequences of their fatal situation; Mabel had become one of Ouha’s wives, and had formed a sentimental attachment to him, and Abraham had been obliged to accept the caresses of a young she-ape, the widow of the orangutan Kri-Kri, whose skin he had been forced to put on.

  Furious, Ouha had organized an army of three hundred orangutans and had marched on Riddle Temple in order to recover his wives, Mabel foremost, and a young Malay named Rava. The king of the apes had not anticipated the rainy season, though, and almost all of his army had perished miserably during the journey. When he finally reached Riddle Temple he only had thirty soldiers left; even so, he had engaged in battle, and had found death there, but taking Mabel and her father with him.12

  Goldry thus remained the proprietor of Riddle Temple. Should he return to America and attempt by all possible means to pursue his studies on the simian origins of humankind? The defeat and death of almost all the adult males of the orangutan tribe left the city of the apes defenseless. It was, therefore, the ideal moment to attempt a new expedition, with every change of success. Goldry organized a troop and, at the head of a hundred well-armed men, he had traversed the virgin forests yet again and invaded the orangutans’ territory.