Nora, The Ape-Woman

by Félicien Champsaur

  Homo-Deus, more than anyone else, was able to analyze his own impressions, but however great the strength of his domination over others might be, he had not been able to vanquish a need within him that, for his physical organization, had the same force as thirst and hunger. That need, that passion, was woman, and, in reality, he had never tried to resist its influence. If fable is not entirely a lie, Marc Vanel would have been, in fabulous times, a veritable satyr.

  As he had told Narcisse, he had experienced in his early youth an amour of the imagination, an amour inspired by reading exalted by the first awakening of the senses, Having passed that crisis, he no longer had any other needs than sensual amour—the best understood, in any case, in the Orient, where he had spent ten years of his life. Having returned to Europe, he had had no difficulty, being handsome and well-built, in finding female partners; he had used them abundantly—but, once his senses were satisfied, he regretted the time wasted in flirtation that could have been better employed in his scientific work.

  When he discovered invisibility, Marc Vanel became veritably worthy of the name of Homo-Deus. Like the master of Olympus, he had only to set his designs upon the beauty that attracted his attention in order to satisfy his desire, without wasting precious time in grimaces that were henceforth unnecessary.

  He had gone to Nora’s house without having made a preconceived decision to posses the she-ape, to whose metamorphosis into a woman he had contributed, but he had been curious to know how far Ernest Paris had got with the dancer. He knew from Narcisse that the writer had inscribed a book to Nora, which the secretary was to take to her. Thus far, the orangutan had only gone out in Marc Vanel’s car, in order to avoid the curiosity of idlers. His entry into Ernest Paris’ home was recent; few people were aware of it, and hardly anyone knew that Jacquot Blakson had been replaced.

  Marc Vanel, invisible, went to find Narcisse as soon as the Academician had left the house in the Avenue Foch, and had reached the Rue Spontini ahead of him. By that means, he had witnessed the amorous old man’s visit, and had become increasingly convinced that Ernest Paris was ripe for the sexual graft. He contemplated making his exit behind the Academician, but, as chance would have it, Nora and the chambermaid blocked the door, in such a way that he would have been forced to jostle them in order to get out, and he had gone back into the drawing room with Nora, who, believing herself to be alone, had started dancing for herself, completely naked. It did not require as much as that to awaken the sensuality of the invisible satyr, and, without premeditation on his part, he had surrendered to his dominant passion.

  No one is unaware that the human brain is merely a reservoir of energy, in which each faculty is localized in a particular place; but the individual self is not localized, it is the ensemble of all those different faculties. The mystery is still ill-defined, since the suppression or amnesia of some parts of the brain leads to the death of certain faculties. The self seems to be a subtle fluid animating the whole, and yet, a part can be suppressed with a certain area of the brain. In the course of Marc Vanel’s studies with Jean Fortin, the two scientists had tried many times to elucidate the bizarre circumstance, but had never been able to resolve it. And Marc, in his mental duality, felt that a part of his self escaped him, and subjugated his entire self to lustful acts that Homo-Deus, in the state of mental repose considered unworthy of him.

  “What do you expect?” Jean Fortin said to him. “Fornication is, for you, an imperious need. It’s necessary to support that vice as the outlet of your intelligence, the waste-disposal of your brain. Its excrement is sperm; let it out and don’t worry about the rest. The subtle sadnesses aren’t yours but those of my daughter Jeanne, who has passed her soul into you, and has always been scornful of the gestures of the loins. I find it very interesting, that struggle between your two temperaments, but thus far, I’ve merely observed it. It’s you, my son, the male, who holds sway.”

  “You must be right; our intellectual fusion is tending more and more to complete the sensual fusion. Our mingled sexes caused a perturbation at first to which Jeanne’s senses have finally awakened, thus doubling the voluptuous sensation, but as you say, the struggle continues—which is to say that Jeanne is still struggling.”

  “It’s difficult, isn’t it, to explain and analyze your miserable sensations? Jeanne, my daughter, that duality of thought…in you, Homo-Deus, the man too often commands the god.”

  XIII. The Conquest of Life

  Ernest Paris rarely went out alone, but since he had taken Narcisse on as his secretary, he could not show himself arm in arm with an ape without giving rise to equivocal comment. The Master therefore went out to stroll alone or in the company of a friend. That day, the weather was mild and dry, and, in spite of the injunctions of Pédauque,34 the Academician had gone out alone with the intention of taking a turn around the Bois de Boulogne. With a newspaper in his hands, he was walking slowly, reading bits here and there and commenting aloud on the articles. Among the papers he had bought was L’Humanité, a daily to which he occasionally submitted reports of public meetings.35

  The article that he was reading concerned a strike in the metallurgical industry, which was seeking support from all the trades unions in order to bring about a general strike.

  Again! Ernest Paris thought. The workers must be mad to allow themselves to be led by these pamphleteers. A strike! Don’t these imbeciles see that a strike always coincides with a lack or orders or an overabundance of stock? Truly, I was wrong to associate myself with those people. To anticipate the future—what a joke! All this is the fault of the Dreyfus Affair. I thought then that there was a popular consciousness. But it’s beginning again and it’s always the same: they demolish, they rebuild, and it’s still the same. Men can’t liberate themselves from their passions; nothing will change. We play with our passions, but the greatest events don’t change anything at all.

  A general strike to do what? To jabber, to idle, to get drunk, and then to shoulder the yoke of misery again. After all, perhaps it’s not so stupid. During those few days, the workers will live like the directors; they’ll even imagine that they amount to something. Idiots! Puppets, whose strings are being pulled by a few disaffected bourgeois! And they believe that I too am one of theirs, because, disgusted with the conservative regime, I fell back one day on anarchism. An anarchist, a smasher of everything, so be it—but a socialist, a mumbler and tower of the line? No, my lads!

  Why am I mixed up in all that? And no means of getting out! The brothers have me and brandish me; I’m one of their flags—red, naturally. And they don’t sense that I’m a bourgeois, a dirty bourgeois, like Jaurès, like Karl Marx, whom they’ve never read, any more that they’ve read me. What, then? The people make gods with legends, phantoms of men that they take for realities. In sum, theoretically, underneath these strikes, there’s nothing but the instinct of the capitalist presented deceptively to the mass of the credulous.

  Bah! Let’s resign ourselves to it; we don’t know, we don’t understand, we’re no different from the men of all ages. But practically, what remains to us is the game of appearances, the graceful movement of the body, and the illusions of thought. That’s enough for me…but for them, poor devils? Egotism! Divine egotism! It’s You who direct and lead everything, and that ideal suffices to fill our existence... Apart from that, I don’t believe there’s anything at all!

  “But it’s the dear Master!” cried a joyful voice. “How glad I am to run into you!”

  Ernest Paris opened his arms and pressed the man who had interrupted his reverie to his heart.

  “What a pleasure, my dear friend! Such a long time! Let’s see, since…since…?”

  “Since the Dufusne sale, which you bid against me for the Elegies de Jean Second.36 Do you remember? It was the Tissot edition with the subtitle: suivies de quelques baisers inédits par P.-F. Tissot. Ha ha! I even had the advantage of stealing that curious volume from you.”

  “It was the subtitle that made me let it go.
One would have to be from his village to imagine that there was anything unpublished in that material. The unpublished kisses of Monsieur Tissot! Where could he find unpublished kisses? In the first days of creation? Adam and Eve, after a few weeks, certainly knew as much as Second and Tissot. Those patented kisses have mouths full of Greek and Latin, and he must have slobbered them all over the cheeks of his darling when they passed from theory to practice. In brief, that theft wouldn’t tarnish our old friendship, my dear Jacques.”

  “Ha ha! I’ve stolen many other things since, my dear Master!”

  “La la! Not so much of the ‘dear Master,’ Lemay—it ages me too much. The wind of the century must have stolen from your memory the passage from the gospel: ‘Do not allow yourselves to be called Rabbi, for one alone is your master, and you are all Brothers.’37 I too, in my youth, called people ‘dear Master,’ but that word signifies, etymologically, Magister—which is to say ‘you are three times greater than me three times greater than anyone...’ It translates intimately as: ‘Poor old pedant, you drivel and drool and wobble your head—don’t linger in this world; you’ve lasted long enough; it’s time to make way for the young.’ Yes, my friend, that’s what those who butter up their old idols at arm’s length think. Where has the time gone when I gave them the ‘dear master’? I was an adolescent then. Don’t age me, Lemay, my friend!”

  “Ha ha! I’m one of the young ones, myself...and so...”

  “No! If I’m not mistaken, you’re a year older than me…you’ve seen more than eighty springs.”

  “Yes, if you trust chronologies—but look at me!”

  And Lemay stood up straight, fine and sprightly, before his friend Ernest Paris.

  Jacques Lemay, the son of Pierre Lemay, the founder of the Bars Lemay, a chain of coffee-houses, was not just anyone. The Bars Lemay had more than a hundred branches on Paris: Gourmets go to Lemay’s. Jacques was a very Parisian specimen, a socialite, a great lover of women, and also of the arts and letters. There was not a salon, theater or music hall where Jacques Lemay was not welcome, and where he was not the king by virtue of his bonhomie, his amiable criticism and his large fortune. Physically he was short and plump, with a doll-like face under an impeccably shiny silk hat. The Lemay hat had its celebrity, akin to that of the old Sardou beret. The friendship of Ernest Paris and Jacques Lemay dated from their adolescence; they were always happy to bump into one another. Their “do you remembers?” had the joy of only evoking pleasant memories.

  Lemay had good reason to strike a pose in front of his friend, because, in spite of his gray and slightly thinning hair, he was astonishingly young and lively, shorter than Ernest Paris but well-balanced and looking very well. The writer studied him with an affection mingled with envy.

  “Do you know, Lemay, that you look marvelous! My word—you’re rejuvenated! You’re le May—the jolly month of May!”

  “Ha ha!” said the other, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “You never spoke a truer word.” He passed his arm under the Academician’s, and drew him away. “Do you know, my dear, what I’m doing here?”

  “Here? What I’m doing myself, of course—talking a walk.”

  “Phooey! I live in Passy; I don’t come to stroll in the Avenue Foch, do I? No, my dear, I’ve simply had a stroke of luck. Don’t roll your eyes like that, can’t you see that I still have a little in the locker? And women have always been my little weakness. Ha ha! Yours too, eh? Come on, don’t deny it—your reputation’s made, my friend. But there you go! You daren’t risk it, for fear of a breakdown, whereas I...ha ha! I tell you, my dear, I still have a little put by! A little girl, a jewel! Sixteen—that’s fresh—a little flower, what? Ha ha!”

  “Get away, joker! You’re older than I am.”

  “One year more, but thirty less. Look at me, old man.”

  And, pivoting on his heel, Jacques Lemay sketched a few steps of the Charleston.

  “Eh? There! Eh? There!”

  “You’re going to get us noticed, my lad. At our age...”

  “At my age? But I’m twenty years old, my dear, and at that age, one has fun. My little friend is sixteen, I tell you; she’s a rosebud…phooey! Phooey!”

  And the little man leapt into the air.

  “What’s got into that fellow?” muttered Paris. Aloud, he said: “Are you mad or in your second childhood?”

  “The latter; I’m getting younger every day. If the nurse is pretty, I come back...”

  “Come on, Lemay, this isn’t natural. Sixteen? And you can?”

  “And how!” He started singing: “She’s sixteen! I’m sixteen! The age of amour! It’s the age of amour!”

  “Ta ta ta! You’re intoxicated—are you full of spanish fly?”

  “Better than that old man. Lean over.” He whispered into the other’s ear: “I’ve had a graft!”

  “Ah!” said Paris, open-mouthed. “You…you’ve dared…?”

  “I’ve dared! I confess that I was anxious about the result, because it’s been long enough coming, but now…here!” He indicated a dimension on the Academician’s cane.

  “Damn!” said the latter, dazzled. “And it holds up?”

  “Does it hold up? Come in, come in, Monsieur…as soon as one finishes, one recommences!”

  “I’m salivating,” said Ernest Paris—and it was true. “Good God—how stupid I’ve been!”

  “Just between us, no?” said Jacques Lemay. “It isn’t to be shouted from the rooftops, and you need, my dear Master...”

  “You can be sure of my discretion—all the more so because I’m hesitating…groping…myself.”

  “You’re groping yourself? Limp, is it?”

  “Don’t be silly. I mean that that I’m hesitating over the sacrifice of Romeo, or Philemon...”

  “What are you telling me? Philemon? A model of conjugal fidelity. Oh, no, no conjugo! The crazy nights of intoxication for us! Plurality! Boom boom boom!”

  “He’s mad, I swear! Damn! I want to be rejuvenated, but what will people say if I rejuvenate myself too much?”

  “What does it matter? Oh, my old friend, I don’t give a damn what anyone says. Those who purse their lips, it’s because they can’t do it anymore. Sixteen! Blonde…a jewel…!”

  “And you’ve arranged to meet this blonde spring in the Avenue?”

  “Yes,” said Lemay, suddenly anxious. “At the Metro station. I’m taking her to the Pavillion Dauphine, or the Pré Catelan.”

  “But we’re at the Porte Dauphine. What if you’ve been stood up, Lemay?”

  “What an idea! No, she loves me, my dear—she told me so.”

  “And what did that cost you?”

  “Thus far, nothing at all. It’s new, since a week ago. A shopgirl at Chez Pateret. Sixteen years old!”

  Yes, I know, since you keep on repeating it. But what if the jewel, the flower, the rosebud, doesn’t come?”

  “I’ll die of it, old man! I told you: I’m twenty. I’m palpitating as at my first rendezvous.” He broke into song again: “I’m Cherubini…Marraine, chère marraine…but no, the Comtesse was thirty…Angèle, my Angèle is only sixteen…a jewel… a fl…ah, there she is!”

  In fact, a very pretty girl had surged forth from the stairway of the Metro. Lemay ran forward and kissed the hand that the lovely girl held out; she blushed—but very slightly, playing to the gallery.

  “Well, Paris, what do you think? A jewel…a rosebud...”

  “Introduce me,” said the Academician, majestically.

  “Oh yes! Mademoiselle, my best friend: Ernest Paris of the Académie Française, the famous author...”

  “Bonjour, Monsieur,” said Angèle. “How are you?”

  “Very well, Mademoiselle, thank you!” Paris replied, vexed by the slight effect that his name had produced on the shopgirl.

  “You’re high up, Monsieur Jacques says—in fact, you’re taller that he is.”38

  Lemay guffawed, delighted with his young friend’s wit. “No, my child, he�
�s an author, a novelist…a man of letters, in sum.”

  “Oh, I understand—you write feuilletons in the newspapers. Do you know where I read them? In the W.C.”

  “She’s amusing, the child, eh? What did I tell you, Paris? Oh, I’m certainly not stupid. So, Angèle, let’s go. Shall we have lunch at the Pavillion Dauphine…no? Armenonville, then? Will you join us, my dear Master…pardon me, my dear friend?”

  “No thank you. I’d hinder you in your effusions.”

  “Oh, I only invited you out of politeness!”

  “Decidedly, Lemay, you’re becoming too young for me. Adieu, children—enjoy yourselves!”

  “If you’re not coming, we’ll have fun by ourselves,” said the shopgirl, taking Jacques arm. “Au revoir, grandfather!”

  Furious, Ernest Paris stood there watching the couple climb into Lemay’s auto.

  “Grandfather! Grandfather! What an insolent hussy! To compare me to a feuilletoniste that she reads in the W.C. Oh, glory, what nonsense!”

  At a slow pace, somewhat downcast, and somewhat weary, having walked for more than an hour, the illustrious Academician headed for home, thoughtfully.

  XIV. The Call of the Forest and Amour

  The old master Ernest Paris was increasingly infatuated with the blue-tinted dancer, and Narcisse had taken Jacques Blakson’s place in the Academician’s house, while the latter was attempting to carve out a place in the literary world by writing for the new periodicals. Ernest Paris had had several reasons for taking on the orangutan: originality, the chic of the unique, as well as a warm recommendation from Georges Clemenceau, and the amusement of having an ape-man as an alter ego. In addition, the orangutan brought an efficacious collaboration to the eccentric book, Le Vrai Jésus, in which, thanks to an adroitly modified compilation and his own imagination, he was setting the prophet on his feet, very much alive. The extraordinary intelligence of Narcisse, and his surprising gift of adaptation to all ideas, supplemented and rejuvenated the qualities of his employer, whom age and habitual idleness sometimes paralyzed. He felt that the presence of the orangutan was for his mind what Voronoff’s graft promised to be for his matter.