Nora, The Ape-Woman

by Félicien Champsaur

  “So you’re writing the life of a human Jesus, who didn’t exist anymore gloriously than his contemporaries, except that he died crucified.”

  “No, that’s not entirely exact. I’m writing the history of a mythology based on the possible existence of a man that the Apostles created to form the basis of the new church. There was among the prophets who were abroad in Judea at the time—who were numerous—one who really was crucified as an agitator, in a political context, evidently, for the Romans were very tolerant in religious matters. That man was not called Jesus, or Christ, since those names have a significance other than a proper name. Jesus was a myth, but a real individual served as a basis for him. By substituting an annunciator, invented for the needs of the cause, for the crucified individual—evidently an adversary of the government, a kind of Ravachol42 of the era—Mark, Luke and Matthew were as malign as the simple folk they were...

  “By the way, Narcisse, since we need a name to substitute for that of Jesus—which signifies something like ‘Savior’—what if we were to take the letters of the name of that anarchist, Ravachol, to make that of the revolutionary Jew. Cholavar, or Colvarah, that doesn’t sound out of place as a Jewish name, does it?43 Then again, the fellow couldn’t have been of any great importance, since no one mentions him, Romans any more than Jews, although there were already famous soilers of papyrus at the time.”

  “Why preoccupy yourself with these details? In sum, Master, what you want to do is to write the fictionalized life of a Judean prophet, leaving him among the ranks of human beings—to which he belonged, in any case, even if his father was God. Although a legend, consecrated by twenty centuries of success, has made a minor agitator unknown in his own time except in the petty land of Judea, into an exceptional being, God himself, glorified in thousands of churches and cathedrals, all you have to do, in sum, is to return him to his original plane, and simply show a poor dreamer and speaker of twenty centuries ago to whom women of ill repute lent their assistance.”

  “Here, Narcisse, make a note on a piece of paper of all the names that we can indicate as founders or detractors of that legend. Firstly, all seniority and honor to Saint Paul, who utilized the three evangelists and was the true founder of Christianity; secondly, the Apostles Mark, Luke and Matthew, who only preached the Gospel, each in his own manner, with serious variations, well after the death of Jesus, and seventy years before there as a definitive version...

  “Also remark that the historians of the reign of Tiberius make no mention of him, and that Pontius Pilate ignores him.44 Pliny mentions him, in the year 111 or 112, but after the Christian versions, hence without any historical value. Tacitus says very little about him, and the text is probably apocryphal. The Jewish authors, Philo of Alexandria, Justin of Tiberias and Josephus don’t breathe a word about Jesus. As an involuntary hero of the independence, they ought to have mentioned him, but in fact, they said nothing.”

  “The consequence of all that, Master, brings us back to a non-violent Israelite revolutionary whom the Apostles deified.”

  “Yes, by imposing upon him the life of the Hindu Krishna, the son of Mahia or Mahria. There’s a comparison to be made there, for there’s a singular similarity in the two names that form the divinity of Christianity: Christ and Krishna, Jesus and Hésus—the war-god of the Gauls. Within that mythological gibberish, we need to make our symbolic speaker move, and strip him of that divine vestment, which stifles him like a veritable shirt of Nessus. What a task to disentangle the truth from that thicket of errors! What consoles me and encourages me is that our modern history is scarcely any clearer; today’s Truth is tomorrow’s Lie.”

  “That’s why, my dear Master, the history of humankind, with regard to physical evolution, is more interesting than the political history of peoples.”

  “You’re preaching for your saints, my dear orangutan, and damn it, you’re right—there, at least, we don’t have to struggle against interests and passions. Damn! There’s a fortunate diversion, which brings me closer to people who interest me far more than this book, Le Vrai Jésus. Have you seen Voronoff lately?”

  “Yes, I saw him yesterday, and he’s hoping to see you before his departure.”

  “What! He’s leaving? When?”

  “In ten days or so. A congress in Geneva.”

  “Damn! I need to make up my mind, though. That swine Lemay has influenced me strangely. Let’s see, my friend—frankly, what would you advise me to do?”

  “Am I not the best of responses myself?”

  “That’s true…but…let’s go! The die is cast; I shall cross the Rubicon. Telephone Voronoff, please.”

  Narcisse went to the apparatus and asked for the requested connection.

  “Do you know, Narcisse, how long it takes to recover fully from this kind of operation?”

  “It depends, Master; there are some who leave the Institute the same day, but it’s more prudent to stay there for a week.”

  “And how long does it take for the effect of the renovation to become manifest?”

  “That also depends on temperament. Two or three months.”

  “How long that interval will seem to me! By the way, Narcisse, did you know that I’m a candidate for the Nobel Prize?”

  The orangutan made an interrogative gesture.

  “Nobel was a Swedish chemist, born in Stockholm, the inventor of dynamite. In 1896, to his credit, he founded the Nobel prizes, to the profit of literary, scientific and philanthropic endeavors throughout the world. Was the suggestion of that candidacy an assurance of success? Oh well, I’ll profit from my convalescence to undertake a trip to Sweden.”

  “And what shall I do in the meantime?”

  “You’ll replace me here. From the day of my departure, you’ll be my other self—try, however, not to make the same grimaces. As for occupation, there’ll be no lack of work: all of Jesus to disentangle. Then, you can commence a kind of sketch of him; when I return, we can establish the definitive text.”

  “I’m grateful to you for that confidence, Master.”

  “No false modesty, my boy. I assure you that you’re entirely worthy to replace me…especially at the Académie.”

  “You aren’t flattering your colleagues, the Immortals. As it happens, the regulations haven’t anticipated the candidature of an ape.”

  “Too bad! The sessions would be no less grimacing, but more interesting. Do you believe, then, that Voronoff has made you a very valuable gift in giving you speech and intelligence?”

  “I can foresee one of your paradoxes. Go on, Master, it’s always profitable to listen to you.”

  “How human you are already! You capture me by vanity. So be it; it’s the weakness of humankind, and I’m not exempt from it. I’ll tell you, then, that intelligence is, in sum, a paltry gift that the demiurge has made to human beings. Intelligence, take note, doesn’t only serve to make us suffer; it has limits that it cannot surpass; it is only able to awaken our curiosity, our desire to know, and leaves us in an indecision of which ignorance is unaware. As it isn’t spread universally, it only excites envy and scorn.

  “The dream, the good dream, is not only to be ignorant but to be stupid, which doesn’t exclude the means of success—one can be stupid, but very clever in organizing one’s life. For example, our legislators, our judges, our physicians, our advocates and many other people are certainly not idiots—they’ve received an adequate education—but all the same, it’s sufficient to chat with them for an hour, as Lefèvre says, to comprehend that they’re perfect imbeciles. One can be very stupid, and enjoy the consideration of one’s peers.

  “Undoubtedly, you prefer to be intelligent—in which case, you’re mad! Think about it: we aggravate our chagrins and our dolors by meditating and reflecting on them; we then suffer twice, from the dolor in its reality and the image that our intelligence gives us of it. I’ve spent a large part of my life doubling my ennuis, but since a certain experience has come to me with age, I now content myself with suffering o
nce. After that, I don’t care!”

  “And do you think, my dear Master, that you would have been happier if you hadn’t used your intelligence for the work, for the worldwide expansion of your genius?”

  “I don’t know—but I know that there are publishers who would have lost by it!”

  Art any rate, the day after that conversation, Ernest Paris went to see Dr. Serge Voronoff, in order to reconquer his youth.

  XVI. The Nobel Prize

  This time, Ernest Paris was firmly decided. In his imagination, he already saw himself competing with his friend Jacques Lemay; his mind fully preoccupied with the enigmatic Nora, he was only envisaging the green fruits for what they would become.

  Nora did more than excite his desires; she impressed him with something unexpected that he could not explain, but to which he submitted. He sensed that she was, at the same time, something more and less than a woman, something akin to a personification of sex, in the lustful sense of the word, a marvelous instrument of pleasure. That imagination came to him from the facility with which the young woman played with all her organs, making herself into an astonishing plaything of love. Only one thing disturbed that comprehension slightly: the blue dancer’s intelligence. He would have preferred her to be very stupid, like a hortensia,45 judging that intelligence was somehow anachronistic with her nature.

  Moreover, the petty liberties that he had permitted himself with the young woman, while putting intimacy into their relationship, were a trifle vexing for him; he was well aware that Nora expected a more precise manifestation, and that the role of flirtatious suitor could not last indefinitely. The fashionable woman might become smitten with a young and vigorous man—her official protector, Jules Ducon, did not count in Paris’s mind—and then, he would no longer play any role with regard to her but that of an old minor character, retained for his prestige, but nevertheless somewhat ridiculous.

  Ernest Paris did not want—and with good reason—to look stupid.

  The day was not too far advanced, and Ernest Paris resolved, before going to see the illustrious surgeon, to render one last visit to Nora, leaving Narcisse plunged in piles of paper.

  Already buoyed up by hope, he went to the Rue Spontini. However, when he went into the drawing room to whose ornamentation he had contributed so many works of art, a disappointment awaited him; Nora was not alone. Her friends, Cécile Borel and Maud, were sitting beside her on the divan.

  Given what I’m going to do, he thought, perhaps that’s better, in order to leave her a good impression of myself. The essential thing is to explain my long absence in her eyes. Even so, he contrived a slight movement of chagrin—just enough to make the young blue star understand that he would have preferred to find her alone.

  “My dear Master!” exclaimed Cécile Borel, hurrying to meet him. “How glad I am to run into you!”

  “Less than me, beauty among beauties, certainly less than me.”

  Hand-kisses, reciprocal congratulations—and, as usual, Ernest Paris found himself the center and unique attraction of the place.

  “I didn’t hope to find myself in such brilliant company,” the Master said, negligently. “I’ve come to take my leave of my incomparable young friend, being on the eve of a rather long voyage.”

  “I can guess,” said Cécile Borel. “You’re going to Sweden to collect the Nobel Prize, which had just been awarded to you.”

  “You’re better informed than I am, for I don’t yet know...”

  “We dramatic artistes know everything before everyone else. It’s therefore a joy for me to be able to give you good news.”

  “I thank you. I consider the good fortune of the Nobel Prize, awarded to France, less as an unexpected satisfaction for my vanity as a man of letters, or as a source of personal gain, than as a consecration of the superiority of French literature. Nevertheless, I see employment in it, for some time to come.” The victor addressed a rapid wink to Nora.

  “Money is still money,” Maud put in. “It’s necessary not to consider it with disdain.”

  “No one appreciated money for its true value as much as I do, Miss Macfield. Money dominates and crushes everything, as you know better than I do. It’s Capital that rules the world, laughing at the bloodshed, the human lives sacrificed! Money, alone, is the universally-worshipped god, the uncontested master of the world. It’s what makes wars and profits from them, which makes peace and extracts even more from it than from war. Long live money!

  “Thanks to money, anger and disgust reawaken the stomach overcharged with humanity, and make it vomit forth all the filth that it has been made to absorb for centuries. They smile, the Messieurs of Finance, because they say to themselves that everything will last as long as them, and that they are the kings of the world. Wrong, Messieurs! Your money, which you consider as a force, you are in the process of destroying yourselves, by replacing it with paper. As long as the old world lived by the exchange of metallic value, it was maintained, come what may. On the day when the Bank valorized it all with paper, the decadence of public life commenced.

  “How long will your reign last, Messieurs of Finance? I cannot say, but I believe its end to be imminent. Let humanity understand that, and money will no longer have any but its exchange value between direct consumers.”

  “Humanity will be what we make of it,” said the American woman, harshly.

  “You’re mistaken. Humanity is not made; you will submit to it, and it will drive you to suicide.”

  “The theory of a litterateur. Money has always been the supreme Master, and it always will be.”

  “Then why has the Nobel Prize been given to the litterateur whose theories you scorn? There is a force above money, a force to which humans cling as the sole reason for their existence: it is confidence in themselves, in an ideal of beauty, justice and love.”

  Maud Macfield shrugged her shoulders. “Beauty! Justice! Love! All that can be bought with money—even paper money.”

  “Oh, my dear, you can speak ill of everything, except amour,” simpered the Célimène.

  “Amour, my dear Master,” said Maud, “is a subject more exciting for you and for us than all your nonsensical theories about money, and you ought to have interesting things to say to us about it, being so expert in that chapter!”

  “How wrong you are! Everything has been said about that subject, and I don’t feel that I have the courage of a Michelet, to try to write a book about it.46 All that one can say, without the risk of being mistaken, is that each individual has his own way of comprehending love, and that the best is the one that one feels oneself—and above all, it’s the manner in which one submits to the influence of beauty, or of sex.

  “Obviously, beauty is only one of the innumerable traps of which nature makes use to constrain us to her obscure will. It constitutes the supreme artifice of the marvelous and essential mirage that is amour. But truly, we ought not to be suspicious of it, for then, to what would we entrust ourselves? On the contrary, it’s necessary to abandon ourselves to amour, to beauty, to find a religion therein, a recipe for happiness. There is salvation, for there, also, is forgetfulness! Certainly, it’s not easy to emerge from oneself, but if one ever hopes to succeed in that, it’s only with the aid of the beautiful.

  “And it’s you, Mesdames, who conceal the formula. In contemplating you, we escape from life, from its ennuis, its struggles, and its servitudes. It seems that we are savoring a magical beverage, as if we are transporting ourselves to another element, where all sadness and dolor are forgotten. Supreme opium! Source of arts, letters and everything of which humanity can be proud, beauty is the ransom of the universe. The demiurge who created the illusion of the world and imprisoned us within it was—for I believe it to be dead—a malevolent demiurge, to judge by its work, but it has ceded us beauty as a privilege Thus, it has permitted man to dream, to love, to glimpse an ideal of sorts—and for that, if only for that, much can be forgiven it...”

  A new visitor had come in, but, in order n
ot to interrupt the Academician’s speech, the chambermaid had not introduced him. After a mute salutation, he approached the group formed by the three pretty women.

  “Perfect!” said Dr. Jean Fortin. “I’ve arrived just in time to applaud you, Ernest Paris, for I strongly approve of your theory of amour via the fascination of beauty.” He turned to Nora and continued: “You see, Mademoiselle, that I’m abusing your permission, and that I’m glad to be able, like your friends, to bring you the testimony of my profound admiration.”

  “What, my dear friend,” said the sempiternal speech-maker, “is it possible that your labor of genius leaves you the leisure to think about beauty?”

  “Why not? The work is, in itself, a manifestation of beauty; and do you not know, Mesdames, that everything men do on earth has no other objective than the adoration of your sex?”

  “In the strict sense of the word?” asked the American.

  “Yes, my dear Mademoiselle. We can surround the idol with all kinds of tinsel, but the true goal, the true alliance, is sex. Three quarters of human copulations are practiced in the dark; what, then, is the role of beauty? Certainly, celestial mechanics are well regulated, but amour is also an ingenious mechanism.”

  “You’ve done well, Doctor,” exclaimed the Célimène, “but you haven’t proved that amour, in its ideality, in its sentiment, is possible. It has been made into a god; it’s necessary to consider it as such, and worship it.”

  “Are you forgetting, then,” Ernest Paris put in, “that our great scientist is the bitter adversary of all gods?”

  “That depends; I’m only the enemy of religions that I consider as a hindrance to intellectual progress. Think of the time that people have wasted in the dissection of theologies and their schisms! But as for amour, I bow down before it respectfully, for it’s the great animator of the human species and the immense whole of animality.”

  “Yes, my friend, but isn’t what these ladies are demanding of your science the proof of the ideality of amour—or, if you prefer, its spiritual relationship with the curt brutality of the act?”