Nora, The Ape-Woman

by Félicien Champsaur

  “All I can say is: see Voronoff!”

  “You’re intolerable, Jacquot. One would think, to listen to you, that I’m completely finished.”

  “Hmm! With a great deal of experience…of the Virmile genre...”

  “Wicked boy! I shan’t tell you anything else...”

  “And you’ll let me divine even more. Nevertheless, I agree with you, that kid Nora is truly charming—and if she wanted, it wouldn’t cost her anything...”

  “A fine example you’re setting me there, Monsieur Moralist. I resent that!”

  Jacquot laughed, and said: “Yes my child, listen to my advice, and don’t do what your papa does...”

  “Jacquot, you’re going to end up annoying me. Really, you too often forget who you’re talking to.”

  “No, Master, I don’t forget, but you know that there’s no genius for the person who lives closely with the man.”

  “That’s true; it’s necessary only to judge a man by his work. The work can be sublime, whereas the man is nothing but a dirty pig.”

  “He will forgive you a great deal, because…you know how it goes, Master.”23

  “And I have no desire to retire to the desert. So, you’re saying that in Paris, this little Nora talked to you about me?”

  “Who doesn’t talk about you? Anyway she had a motive; she was planning to come to Eze to see Voronoff’s apes...”

  “Wretch! And she’s at Voronoff’s at present. What time is it, Jacquot?”

  “Not yet ten o’clock.”

  “Good! We have time to telephone Eze to say that I desire to see Romeo again, and that we’re leaving straight away. Inform the chauffeur.”

  “Who’s this Romeo?” asked the secretary, intrigued.

  “A magnificent chimpanzee that Voronoff will sacrifice for me, if…you understand?”

  “Oh la la!” cried the secretary. “May all the gods of Olympus come to our aid! My venerable master is going mad!”

  Ernest Paris stamped his foot angrily. “But it’s you, poor idiot, who doesn’t understand life. What use are all the vanities in the world to me, if I can’t f...”—he made use of an unreproducible expression. “Oh, youth, youth! If you only knew!”

  “That’s all right!” Jacquot muttered. “The man will prevent me from growing old.” In a louder voice, he said: “Is there any point, Master, in me going with you? I don’t want to poach on your preserves.”

  “Hark at the fellow! What—the lovely Nora doubtless doesn’t displease you?”

  “Don’t be annoyed with me. You know full well that my means don’t allow me to pay for a luxury whore.”

  “At your age, my friend, one doesn’t need to pay; sometimes, it’s the other way around. Come on then—one never knows with women, and I’m not jealous!”

  “What about that fatigue, then? Disappeared?”

  “Alas, my friend, it’s only to rinse my eyes. Then too, I can chat with Doctors Fortin and Voronoff. With those two fellows, there’s always something interesting to learn.”

  IX. Apes Face to Face

  In the Paradise of Apes, the four doctors—for Voronoff had been at the refuge for a week—were very excited. Nora had telephoned the day before, asking to visit the famous establishment with her friend Cécile Borel.

  At Nora’s name, Dr. Goldry had jumped with delight; he was going to see his adopted daughter again. The other three were equally curious to examine the results of their work at close range.

  “At the same time,” Marc Vanel had said, “it’s an opportunity to produce Narcisse before two pretty women. People often talk about “atavism”—we’ll see whether our daughter will have another reminiscence of her former existence on finding one of the brothers of her race. I’ll get my airplane ready and fly to Paris. Until tomorrow.”

  At that moment the telephone rang, and Goldry picked up the receiver.

  “But of course, Monsieur,” he said into the apparatus. “It’s a great honor for us. Understood, Our homages, my dear Master.”

  As he hung up, he said to his friends: “It’s going to be a day of sensational visits, then. That was Ernest Paris, asking to visit the establishment. Very flattering for us.”

  “Pooh! He’s a bore,” said Voronoff. “Ernest Paris is burning to be rejuvenated, but can’t make up his mind, even though I’ve reserved Romeo for him. He’s a high-status client, and I intend to get some good publicity out of him, in spite of the utmost discretion.”

  “He’d be furious about that—and I’m convinced that that’s the only motive that’s holding him back,” Dr. Fortin replied.

  Two days later,24 at about nine o’clock in the morning, the throb of an aircraft engine was heard in the avenue leading to the refuge, and a few minutes later, the apparatus came to a halt at the door. Three women got down: Cécile Borel, Nora and Maud.

  “You see, Doctor,” said Nora, “that I haven’t forgotten your kind invitation, and that I’m abusing it to bring curiosity-seekers.”

  “I’m grateful to you for it. A little publicity never hurts, and there’s none better than that provided by three pretty women.”

  “This is my friend Nora, who can compete in agility with your boarders. You must have heard mention of her; for four months she’s been the biggest attraction in Paris.”

  “Won’t you come some day to dance in Nice, Cannes or Monte Carlo?”

  “Of course, when the Folies Bergère will allow me to do so.”

  “Would you like to commence the visit right away or rest for a moment? Dr. Voronoff is with us at present; he’ll be pleased to accompany you. You’ll see this paradise, my beauties; it’s enough to make one want to be an ape.”

  Guided by Dr. Voronoff, they were about to head for the reception room when an auto stopped in front of the house.

  “An expected visit, Mesdames: the illustrious Ernest Paris.”

  “What! We’re going to have the good fortune to meet that dear Master!” exclaimed Cécile Borel—and, hastily reversing direction, she drew her companions along with her.

  “Ah! Dear illustrissimo Master!”—the superlative communicated an impression of the proximity of Italy—“how delighted I am to encounter you here!”

  “The pleasure is all mine, my dear friend. Always fresh and lovely—you doubtless posses the secret of the elixir of youth!”

  “Alas, no!” simpered the Célimène.25 “Do you know, Master, that I’ve discovered a white hair!”

  “Impossible! But don’t let that warning frighten you—you still look twenty. But tell me… Mademoiselle?”

  “Oh, you recognize her? That’s flattering for you, Nora. But yes, my dear Master, it’s our star of the music hall. Having left yesterday evening in Marc Vanel’s superplane, she’ll have to return this evening in time to dance at the Folies Bergère. Permit me, Master, to introduce you to Maud Macfield, the most vagabond of Americans.”

  “My compliments, Miss. What a pity I’m not of an age for vagabondage; I’d gladly do it in your company.”

  “I’m not a pedestrian vagabond, Master—my Ford and my yacht are at your disposal.”

  “Ha ha! I won’t say no,” said Ernest Paris flirtatiously.

  Serge Voronoff, Jean Fortin and Marc Vanel appeared on the perron. “You’ve done well to come today,” said Dr. Fortin, after the customary salutations, “for our friend Serge is returning to Paris during the week.”

  “But I wouldn’t have left before your visit, Master, since you had promised me.”

  “And you can see that I keep my word. What’s more, see how lucky I am: I’m encountering three goddesses in your house!”

  “Let’s go in,” said Voronoff. “We’ll chat for a moment, and then I’ll introduce you to someone.”

  When the visitors came into the drawing-room, Narcisse, the orangutan, in an impeccable gentleman’s visiting suit, was sitting in an armchair reading a scientific journal. He stood up briskly and bowed.

  Marc Vanel introduced him. “Monsieur Narcisse Goldry; Madame
Cécile Borel of the Comédie-Française, Mesdemoiselles Nora and Maud Macfield.”

  At the name of Goldry, Nora, who had taken a step backwards, like the other three visitors, at the sight of the orangutan, shivered and looked at Narcisse with a terrified expression.

  “That’s good, that one!” exclaimed Ernest Paris. “You give a civil estate to your boarders! My compliments, Messieurs! This one’s better dressed than the famous Consul.”26

  “You really think so, Master? In that case, I’m delighted to have that advantage over my compatriot.”

  A thunderbolt falling in their midst could not have been any more petrifying than those simple words falling from the mouth of the great ape. He continued: “What a happy day for me, to make the acquaintance of three of the prettiest women in Paris and the most distinguished of our literary glories.”

  “The farce is delightful, but let’s not prolong it any further,” the novelist relied. “Take off your mask.”

  “But it’s not a mask, it’s a face,” Marc Vanel interjected. “Beauty is relative, according to the region in which it’s found. An Eskimo or a Hottentot would certainly think themselves more beautiful than we would.”

  “And does Monsieur enjoy the same privilege, and consider himself a type of beauty?” asked Cécile Borel.

  “Yes, of course, Madame,” Narcisse replied. “True beauty isn’t necessarily a form agreeable to the eye; it also consists in intellectual beauty, and from that point of view, I don’t consider myself inferior to anyone.”

  “This is a house of miracles, then!” exclaimed Ernest Paris. “Well, Jacquot, who are threatening to leave me—here’s your replacement, readymade.”

  “I would be sorry to replace you, Monsieur Jacquot. However, if I were in your position, I would consider it a veritable honor to be living with the foremost of our men of letters.”

  “I sincerely advise you not to envy my secretary, for I’m a very disagreeable individual.”

  “Master!” said Jacquot. “I can’t let you say that.”

  “I have my excuse: the platitude of the crowd that makes a kind of demigod of an artist of letters, as if a few rungs more on the gradation of intelligences merited the abasement of the mass. Don’t take this as a paradox, but I believe that there wouldn’t be any intellectual superiorities if there were fewer personal vanities. I recall two engravings that had a certain success in my youth: Molière and his maidservant, and Boileau and his gardener. Can you believe that if Molière and Boileau hadn’t judged those two individuals of inferior class capable of understanding and appreciating them, they would have taken the trouble to read their works to them? Those great minds recognized in those humble ones an intelligence that was not inferior but merely different from theirs. We writers only have one veritable talent: that of mirroring, of reflecting what we see, storing the work of our predecessors, and drawing therefrom by combining it with our own observations—or what we take to be such, for, as soon as one puts black on white, who will dare affirm that what he thinks original is not simply the reflection of another thought?”

  “That might be, Master, but there’s the style. Those whose at consists of lining words up one after another inevitably encounter the reef of which you speak, but they present the thought in a clearer, more familiar fashion and more harmonious fashion; that is the art in which you excel, and which constitutes the mark of your genius.”

  “If there were not ladies here, before whom I have the conceit of dissimulating my age, I would ask you, Monsieur Narcisse, what yours is, for you have a maturity of thought that seems to equal mine.”

  Narcisse looked at Marc Vanel in an interrogative fashion that signified: Ought I to reply truthfully?

  It was Vanel who replied for him: “Narcisse is thirteen years old.”

  There was a murmur of general amazement. Then Ernest Paris addressed Marc Vanel.

  “My dear friend, you and your collaborators have become used to being considered as sorcerers—no, the word isn’t improper, since everyone knows that you’re uniquely scientists, since science has no secrets from you. At this moment, I have before my eyes an individual who has the appearance of an ape, and who seems to me to possess knowledge that not many people have, If it’s an indiscretion on my part, don’t answer, but if you can do so, I’d be infinitely grateful to you for satisfying our curiosity—for I assume these ladies are as intrigued as I am.”

  “Oh, Monsieur Vanel,” exclaimed Cécile Borel, “tell us the truth—it’s so exciting.”

  “And you, Mesdemoiselles, what do you think of it?” asked Dr. Goldry, looking at Nora in particular.

  The dancer did not reply, but Maud said: “I think that no one had ever seen anything like it.”

  “Well, it’s Narcisse himself who will reply to us, for he’s not only our creature—he’s become our collaborator. Speak, my son.”

  Amiably, Narcisse turned toward the ladies and, in spite of the strangeness of the scene and the monstrous face of the orator, none of them dared smile, even though everything about the orangutan’s pose made an extravagant contrast with the physiognomy of his auditors: the elegantly-tailored garments, bringing out his formidable stature; his powerful limbs, the hands double the size of human hands, and the enormous feet, buried in patent leather shoes that could have served as violin-cases; above all that, the frightful mask with the flamboyant eyes, the fleshy lips, revealing teeth that could crush iron; and, crowning that apocalyptic head magnificently, a vast forehead shaded by splendid black hair, supple and undulating, like the mane of a lion.

  “I consider, Mesdames,” Narcisse began, “that your curiosity is very legitimate, since I too felt it when I was able to compare myself with human beings. As Monsieur Vanel said just now, beauty is relative; my first impression was that humans were ugly. I had not yet seen you, Mesdames, for you alone would have modified that judgment. But I only saw men, and I thought them all the uglier because I saw that they were weak, and the sentiment of strength is, among primitives, the true sentiment of beauty.

  “I was three years old when those Messieurs, after having modified the form of my cranium, as you can see, and grafted me two pineal glands and two thyroid glands, set about, once the grafts were making good progress—which took nearly a year—commencing my education. They did not stuff my head, as the vulgar expression has it, but they populated it precisely with a judiciously chosen documentation, which they fixed in successive stages, in an indelible fashion.

  “Have you ever reflected on the singular phenomenon of memory—the faculty of accumulating facts that we can renew and revive at will within our thoughts? Among other members of my species and the majority of animals, memory is more or less short; among many it is unknown. Those individuals accomplish actions that are always the same, because memory is limited in them to the repetition of the same gestures—those which relate to nutrition and reproduction. In humans, memory has become its own reason for being, since it is by courtesy of it that mentality develops.

  “The glory of Monsieur Voronoff will be that of having discovered the enormous role that the glands play in the economy of the human body: a vivifying and reconstituting property, when one can activate its functioning by grafting. That is what has been carried out within me with a maximum of intensity, since the pineal and thyroid glands, the ones that vivify the brain, have been grafted into me in duplicate. If the experiment justifies the attempt, nothing prevents its repetition, on another subject, in triplicate or quadruplicate, and we shall obtain by that method individuals of a mentality triple or quadruple the norm—and, in consequence, superhuman.”

  At that point Narcisse sketched a smile, which resulted in an abominable grimace, and he continued: “I shall put myself back on the operating table and continue to extend myself before you. The quality of my instruction was not to cram me with all the old texts that repeat themselves through the ages, but a selection that gave me, if I might qualify it thus, a cervical library as complete as possible, on the philosophi
cal side as well as the scientific. Presently, I have perhaps attained the intellectual level of my masters. That has been my goal and I shall limit my ambition to it. That, Mesdames, is all that you desired to know about your very enthusiastic admirer.”

  The same agreeable smile-cum-grimace underlined that final compliment.

  Ernest Paris looked successively at the four fantastic doctors; they had satisfied expressions, and the novelist, nonplussed by what he had just heard, only found the same word as Clemenceau: “Marvelous! Truly, it’s marvelous!”

  Narcisse, the knowledgeable ape, continued: “Why be astonished that I talk like a doctor? The ape is the animal that resembles humans most extraordinarily; for the master of the earth, he is something akin to a living store of interchangeable pieces. Because one component does not work in an automobile, one does not put the vehicle on the scrap-heap; one examines it, and, if there is reason, one rectifies it, one exchanges the part that does not work. And your automobile works again, very well. Much the same thing was done to me. The glands, in the simian and human mechanism, are essential; Dr. Voronoff has utilized one category for the grafting of sexual organs and the reconstitution of life, but that is only one point and a limited application of the science. My cerebral humanity is proof of that; I am the simple result, which nature alone took centuries to accomplish, of the magnificent effort realized in a few years by four scientists, and solely by virtue of the antithetical will of these Messieurs, I have retained a primitive and hairy form.”

  Voronoff leaned toward Ernest Paris’ ear. “Well, my dear friend, does Narcisse give you enough confidence?”

  “Confidence? Hmm. You’re damnably dangerous, you lot! You’ve made this fellow a man—what if you had a whim to make me an ape? Shh! We’ll talk about that in private.”

  Turning toward Cécile Borel, Maud and Nora, Ernest Paris said: “Well, Mesdames, shall we begin the visit to the establishment? Would Mademoiselle Nora care to accept my arm? But you seem troubled, my dear child. Is it listening to the transcendental history of the ape that has confused you a little?—as it did me, I confess. One finds oneself in a fantastic atmosphere here, and if it weren’t in bad taste to believe in God and the Devil, one might think that one were in their laboratories.”