The Ark

by André Arnyvelde

  “It is to that seduction, that attraction, that mystery that I go spontaneously, immediately and instinctively. As for the instinct that leads me directly, however poor or malign the appearances might be, to that which is the flavor, source of emotion or cargo of knowledge in any object, state or person, that instinct is properly that of Joy. It launches toward its aliment—flavor, emotion and knowledge being good nutriments of Joy—as air and light throw themselves into the slightest interstices of substances, no matter how hard and dense they might be.

  “Thus, and by virtue of that instinct, I am protected from experiencing, before anything whatever, what you call disdain, disgust or indifference; and it therefore follows that everything that there is in the world will be immediately interesting, curious and attractive to me, and thus to some extent nutritious.

  “In consequence, if we return to the example of Jesus, taking it for certain that everything that is in the world bears some source of joy, it is necessary for me to say, first of all, that, even at the price of paradisal bliss, I could not easily be turned away from such a world, and, secondly, that the question of option would not arise if I were to hold it as no less certain that the divine, the celestial and the spiritual that were shown to me on the far side of the clouds and outside my planet had no other true residence than in my sentiment and in my sense of things, with the consequence that, without having to renounce anything of this world, it is sufficient for me to savor the divine in all things, whatever they might be, with the fervor, bliss and delight particular to the celestial elect.

  “And that is the first comparison that we can establish with that which was previous. If the pleasures of the world are for me exactly as numerous and diverse as the objects, things, beings, elements and states composing the world, the glorious felicity of the God of the Christians appears very mediocre compared to mine. Firstly, since it is only made of half of the possession of that world, a half acquired by losing the countless advantages and perfections of the other half; and secondly because that God only has enjoyment in and by the spiritual side of things—to the extent that they have one—and in souls, and particularly the souls of celibate monks and nuns, old bigots, people in great fear or anxiety of dying, and all other wretches. Whereas, by virtue of the instinct of Joy that is nourished by the goodness and beauties, material as well as spiritual—and causing the former and the later to interpenetrate at will—I have the unlimited possession of the knowable world and the enjoyment of the best of all things concrete, comestible, caressable, odorous, and at the same time, the best of souls. With regard to that last enjoyment, understand that I can take without any prohibitive canons fixed in advance, with no restrictions or preliminary conditions, sniffing in every soul its specific perfume, whether it be similar to that of honey in the shepherd, that of the ocean or the forest in the artist, and thus, without reserve, of all things and without end...

  “However, one point preoccupies you. We have prejudicially admitted that I have the prerogative of an unlimited possession, of everything beautiful, flavorsome and joyous, and that by the privilege of my nature. How dearly you would like to know where such a privilege comes from! It seems that I owe it partly to the particular constitution of my being—and that I shall explain when the moment comes—and partly to my instinct of Joy, which, in the final analysis, might well be the essential spring of that privilege.

  “Thus, without being enlightened as to the genesis of the instinct, you can at least presume the mechanism of the privilege. The ever vaster possession of the world and the instinct of Joy are expressly interdependent. They nourish themselves in one another inexhaustibly. Is it the stammering sentiment of permissible possession that, in the beginning, gave birth to the first impulse of the instinct of Joy? Is it the latter that awoke the sentiment of that permissible possession? At any rate, whichever one was the initiator of the other, it is very easily conceivable that the nascent instinct, at the same time as it gave the nascent sentiment of possession its physical life—in a sense, its warmth, its basis of strength—gave it the ardor to know, to measure the extent of its power and its domain.

  “The sentiment of possession immediately advancing into its literally infinite domain, in discovering extent and number, simultaneously assured and fortified the instinct of Joy. And thus, thereafter and forever, instinct fructifying and being fortified as the extent and number of possession was more fully discovered, the latter, under the ever more excited surges of instinct, progressed and advanced, extending proportionally and always multiplying its domain. Thus, by inexhaustible reciprocity, the instinct of Joy is endlessly enriched, which endlessly enriches the world...”

  He fell silent then and extended his arm toward the mists that were covering the Rhune at our feet.

  31

  …Whereupon the mists opened, and unveiled a grim décor of black, gigantic rocks, looming up in a desert expanse.

  “For a god,” said the arcandre, “Hercules showed himself to be singularly stupid in cutting off the heads of the hydra. He had something much more genuinely Herculean, or simply cleverer, to accomplish with regard to the Lernean monster. I want to show you a very recreative spectacle, in which you will see featured nothing less than the hydra itself.

  Having said that, he suddenly disappeared from my vicinity. A moment went by, and I perceived him digging in the ash-colored sand of a desolate location. He was naked. His flesh was gleaming with a gilded light similar to that with which Renaissance painters colored the bodies of angels. Svelte and robust, he walked toward the rocks. From afar, he raised his hands toward me, and showed me that they were empty. Then he went past the rocks. At that moment, a frightful roar, compounded from the sound of a hundred different but equally ferocious and furious cries, shook the air, and above the highest and most distant of the rocks, the heads of the hydra appeared, aspiring the winds and writhing toward the sky. Soon, the monster emerged between two other advanced rocks.

  It loomed up, surpassing the vastest masses in height. I saw, standing on its tail, a formidable, frenetic trunk, covered in scales, dividing toward the summit into thick tentacular branches, each one terminated by a head that was howling and spitting fire from the mouth.

  The arcandre continue advancing, and stopped, a gracious dwarf, a few paces away from the immense beast. There, without sketching the slightest gesture of attack or defense, he waited, contemplating the hydra. He smiled. His face expressed a curiosity that as simultaneously jovial and vigilant. The beast lashed the air with tongues of flame and convulsed its giant body, launching a storm of fire toward the visitor through all its mouths, with a multiple hiss...

  As soon as they touched the gilded body, the flames vanished and the sand at the arcandre’s feet was suddenly strewn with petals, as if a current of air had carried the flowers from some nearby garden and scattered them there.

  The hydra redoubled its incendiary spitting. The arcandre fanned the air between himself and the monster with his hand, and now the flames curved back and returned to the body of the hydra, which they began to devour. The beast howled in surprise and pain, and the trunk and the heads, in hideous contortions all sought to escape the ardent bites and to attain the strangest of adversaries.

  Now, as the hydra advanced, in these convulsions, the arcandre struck the ground with his foot. Then the earth opened up, and with a cataclysmic tremor, swallowed more than half the monster. The tentacles, left free, bristled and stretched, and their frightful heads rent the air with howls and flames. The arcandre stamped his foot again, and the earth was shaken, opened up again, vomited forth the monster and projected it bodily into the air, swinging it there. One might have thought it some apocalyptic balloon, struggling and writhing in an infernal tumult of whistles and roars, some of its tentacles reaching out in bewilderment toward the clouds, others folding back like hooks as if they wanted to grasp the void.

  Having followed with an admiring eye the fantastic spectacle that the enormous gesticulations of the hydra cr
eated in mid-air, the arcandre raised and then lowered his arm. The beast abruptly fell, with all its weight and mass. It remained there, lying on the ground, as if flaccid, stunned. The arcandre considered it and did not move.

  Gradually, slowly, with slow undulations like those of waves charged by a tempest, the hydra succeeded in getting up again, and came upright, swollen with hatred and rage, ready for further combat. Suddenly, the arcandre, with one bound, rose up and attained the height on one of its heads—and notwithstanding the roars, the fire and the fangs, he took hold of the underside of that head with both hands and transfixed with his eyes of light the enormous eyes of the monster.

  This is what happened. The tentacle lashed the air violently, knotted itself around the body of the arcandre, forcing him to let go and swinging him in the void. Over the arcandre, held tightly in the curl that the squamous branch formed, the head of the branch leaned, avid with fury and voracity. The mouth opened with thunderous gasp, and the fangs touched the blond flesh—but as I was about to cry out in fear and anguish, the magician freed one of his arms from the colossal grip, raised it toward that head and began to caress it with the hand a little above the mouth that was, in a sense, the neck of the tentacle, as one might do with a pet cat stretching itself and purring among cushions.

  And while doing that, my arcandre laughed in is childlike fashion, and while he flattered horrible head in that way, gradually, the roaring was strangled, the flames shortened, the hideous mask took on a character of stupefaction and pleasure that I cannot describe, so much did the ensemble seem burlesque, frightful and touching—and all the hydra’s heads, flames extinct and whistling breathless, orbits dilated by bewilderment, leaned toward the one that the arcandre had bewitched.

  “Ho ho ho! There!” said the latter. “That’s better than our first duel…and it makes a change for you, beautiful monster, from the moans of horror and the maledictions that were until now the only concerts elevated toward you... Gently! Ho! Gently! And that’s much more pleasant than the points of spears, the trenchant edges of blades, and the boulders with which certain individuals tried as hard as they could to kill you... Why kill you, eh, my hydra? Such a robust monument of flesh, such an ingenious adaptation of force, flexibility and impetuosity, such a generous source of flames! There, there! Is there nothing better to do with all that than annihilate it? Ho ho! As one can, by means of such a powerful apparatus, easily accomplish many rude tasks that the paltry muscles of humans renounce! But you have not, yourself, my poor monster, any other care than devouring... There! Of course! Is that your fault? Living in such a lugubrious décor, ennui must soon enrage you…and having nothing to chew but the roots and arid vegetation of this desert makes human flesh prodigiously tasty. So come on, then, graze these grassy meadows for me instead, dig these grasslands bright with flowers for me....”

  A miracle burst forth. All around the rocks inside which that extraordinary combat was taking place, throughout the expanse, all the way to the horizon, the dull ground was covered with verdure. The desert was populated with trees and flowers. Nacreous springs flowed. Delightful birds fluttered from foliage to foliage. The leaden sky became blue. The hosanna of spring rose up from the earth, sung by every blade of grass, by every pistil, the light winds carrying it all the way to the vaults of the atmosphere, filing space with it.

  Now, while the arcandre was speaking, the hydra had gradually loosened the knot of its tentacle. The curl broadened, as if languidly. And the arcandre might have fallen if he had not, while his body gradually resumed its freedom, while still talking and caressing the horrible throat, aiding himself with the scales, slowly climbed the living branch, which bewilderment was softening, in such a fashion that, still ascending, he perched upon the top of the head when spring surged forth beyond the rocks, his legs encircling the neck and his hands resting on the monstrous cranium.

  And he continued.

  “O voracious, famished, redoubtable utterly vigorous hydra, you only have to pass these rocks to reach that beautiful vegetation. There, perfumed winds flow, and an exquisite light shines. And beyond the meadows are regions without number, rich in all pastures appropriate to sustain you, much better than your desert, abundant in rivers where you can bathe, full of all sorts of delights superior to human flesh! Out there, what arenas for your strength and what goals for our ardor! Hup! There! The meadows, traversed, what voyages, what adventures! But my arms are too feeble to move on their own the rock that bars our route. It would be child’s play for you to knock over the mass. Hup! Forward, beautiful hydra! Move that big stone out of the way for me, and let us wander in the charming meadow...”

  And like a schoolboy stride a dog, the arcandre slaps and whips with one hand, laughing, and with the other caresses the giant mouth—and the hydra advances, prancing stupidly, extending all its heads together toward the miraculous spring, twisting its trunk as it advances toward the most enormous of the rocks, one thrust shoving you over and the other shoving you away like an ox shaking itself and chasing away a fly, and suddenly, on the threshold of the meadow, curving its trunk in monstrous serpentine movements toward the ground, and inclining its branches...and now the entire hydra, with all its heads, is crawling meekly through the grass, carrying the arcandre on its back.

  32

  A bird, intrigued, came to flutter around the monster. The beautiful bird! The plumage of its body shone with colored reflections of jade, like those that the foliage of forests produce in the light of the full moon. Its head shone with an ardent bronze glitter, like the fires of midday over the amber and of beaches. A tuft of opals danced on its vermilion head. It settled recklessly on one of the hydra’s skulls.

  The beast stopped crawling. Heads rose up from the grass, looking grimly at the radiant intruder, and attempting to seize it. Frightened, the bird flew away. Then it came back, and others followed—and they were all emboldened, playing and fleeing, brushing the hundred monstrous mouths with their multicolored sparkles.

  The hydra, dazzled and exasperated, raised itself up entirely, its heads hissing, its mouths blowing out a mist, the precursor of flames. Now, a gust of wind agitated all the trees at that moment, shaking the flowery branches, and suddenly caused a downpour of white and pink spring blossom to rain down on the hydra.

  The monster, momentarily blinded, fell back along its full length. The birds dispersed. Their songs and the music of their wings sounded in all directions. Whether it was the fraternal softness of the earth, the freshness of the young corollas, the soothing welcome of the grass or the limpid novelty of the dew, it seemed that an intoxication gripped the monster; it stretched, it grunted softly, it rubbed itself contentedly against the velvet of the ground...

  33

  I shall say no more about the enchantment of the hydra, for the book is thickening now, and I am far from having reached its capital point. Perhaps I shall report elsewhere the succession of further miracles produced by the arcandre, the vanquisher of the monster:

  How the latter rose up from the baptismal spring, transfigured and stripped of its scales...

  How it changed its form at the whim of the arcandre, and what astonishing forms it took...

  How the magician produced different décors and, following the beast, accomplished all sorts of extraordinary labors before my eyes. At his signal, the hydra tunneled through mountains from one side to the other, deflected torrents and opened beds for them in sterile terrains that were covered with crops; stretched out toward the blackest clouds of the tempest, bursting and sweeping away the clouds and reopening the way for the sun; elongated itself all the way to the far side of the world, went to snatch the summer therefrom and transport it to regions sickened by winter...

  I shall not say any more about the fantastic works of the hydra. I am in haste to arrive at a particularly solemn moment in my story. Because of that haste, I shall proceed more rapidly in the relation of prodigies, and doubtless even pass over in silence truly unimaginable scenes, or indicate them
only in a few strokes...

  34

  The arcandre had returned to my side, and, having resumed his ordinary appearance, he said:

  “To be sure, one sees, in legend, Marthe charming the Tarasque, and the beast following the saint obediently.17 One also sees the dragon that murdered Saint George allowing itself to be attached and led away by a princess that it had hoped to eat…but in those fables the triumph over the monster is sufficient. The glory of God, thanks to whom the miracle is realized, is completed by the submission of the beast created by Hell. That is what the tales want to establish, and they go no further. There is no question of making the beast of death serve the purposes of the living.

  “Furthermore, fables of that species are rather rare. More generally, the monster is killed. For Hercules, there was no other way to vanquish the hydra than to annihilate it completely. Perseus killed the Gorgon, Theseus the Minotaur, Siegfried Fafner and the Archangel Michael, in trampling Lucifer underfoot, killed, as it were, his terrestrial power and consigned him to the empires of Evil. Now, is so much brutality truly admirable? Killing is the action of a butcher, not a victory of the gods.