To Anatole France
I.
I am a native of Gelderland. Our patrimony was reduced to a few acres of heath-land and stagnant water. Pines that made a metallic sound as they quivered were growing on its borders. The farmhouse only had a few habitable rooms, and was falling apart, stone by stone, in isolation. We were an old family of herdsmen, once numerous but now reduced to my parents, my sister and myself.
My destiny, bleak at the outset, has become the finest imaginable; I have met someone who understands me; he will learn that which only I knew before—but I have been suffering for a long time. I was in despair, prey to doubt and loneliness, which ended up eroding everything of which I was once certain.
I came into the world with a unique constitution. From the very beginning, I was an object of astonishment. Not that I seemed deformed; I am told that I was more graceful in body and face than is usual in the newly born—but I had the most extraordinary skin color: a kind of pale violet, very pale but quite distinct. By lamplight, especially that of oil-lamps, that tint paled further, becoming a peculiar off-white, like that of a lily submerged in water. That was, at least, how I appeared to other people—for I saw myself differently, as I saw everything in the world differently. To that first peculiarity others were added, which were revealed in due course.
Although born apparently healthy, my development was difficult. I was thin and cried incessantly; at the age of eight months, I had not yet been seen to smile. My parents despaired of my ever growing up. The doctor in Zwartendam declared that I was suffering from a congenital weakness; he saw no other remedy but rigorous hygiene. I continued nonetheless to grow weaker; I was expected to perish at any moment. My father, I believe had resigned himself to it, somewhat dented in his self-respect—his Dutch pride in order and regularity—by his infant’s bizarre appearance. My mother, by contrast, loved me all the more for my strangeness, having ended up finding the color of my skin pleasant.
That was how things stood when a very simple occurrence came to my rescue; as everything concerning me was abnormal, though, the event was a cause of scandal and apprehension.
When one of the servants left, she was replaced by a vigorous Friesian girl, very hard-working and honest but inclined to drink. I was confided to the newcomer. Seeing that I was so weak, she took it into her head to give me, secretly, a little beer and water mixed with schiedam—a sovereign remedy, in her opinion, against all ills.
The curious thing is that I was not long delayed in recovering my strength, and showed thereafter an extraordinary predilection for alcohol. The young woman rejoiced secretly, not without taking some pleasure in puzzling my parents and the doctor. Under interrogation, however, she ended up revealing the secret. My father was extremely angry; the doctor railed against superstition and ignorance. Strict orders were given to the servants and I was removed from the Friesian woman’s care.
I began to grow thinner and weaker again, until, heedless of everything but her affection, my mother put me back on a diet of beer and schiedam. I immediately recovered my vigor and vivacity. The experiment was conclusive; alcohol was revealed to be indispensable to my health. My father felt humiliated; the doctor got himself out it by prescribing tonic wines. Since then, my health has been excellent, although no one hesitated to predict a future of drunkenness and debauchery.
Shortly after this incident, a further anomaly was observed by those around me. My eyes, which had seemed normal to begin with, became strangely opaque, acquiring a horny texture like the wing-cases of certain beetles. The doctor predicted that I would lose my sight, but confessed nevertheless that the ailment seemed absolutely bizarre, and that he had never had an opportunity to study one like it. Soon, the pupil was so confused with the iris that it was impossible to distinguish between them. It was noticed, in addition, that I could look directly at the Sun without any discomfort. In truth, I was not blind at all, and it had to be admitted eventually that I could see perfectly well.
I reached the age of three. According to our neighbors, I was then a little monster. The violet color of my skin had hardly changed; my eyes were completely opaque. I spoke badly, with incredible rapidity. I was clever with my hands and well-adapted for all actions that demanded more agility than strength. No one denied that I would have been graceful and good-looking if I my skin color had been natural and my pupils transparent. I showed intelligence, but with gaps that those around me could not fathom, inasmuch as, save for my mother and the Friesian woman, no one liked me very much. To strangers, I was an object of curiosity, and to my father a constant thorn in his side.
At any rate, if my father had conserved any hope of seeing me revert to normality, time certainly disabused him. I became increasingly strange, in my tastes, my habits and my abilities. At six, I nourished myself almost entirely on alcohol, only rarely eating a few mouthfuls of fruit and vegetables. I grew with prodigious rapidity, but I was incredibly thin and light. I mean “light” in terms of specific gravity, which is the opposite of thinness; thus, I could swim without the slightest difficulty, floating like a plank of poplar-wood. My head was no more inclined to sink than the rest of my body.
I was as nimble as I was light. I could run as fast as a roe deer, easily jumping ditches and obstacles that no other man would even have tried to jump. I could reach the top of a beech-tree in the blink of an eye, or—which was even more surprising—leap on to the roof of our farmhouse. On the other hand, the slightest burden was too much for me.
All these things, in sum, were merely phenomena indicative of a special nature, which, in themselves, would only have served to single me out and make me unwelcome; no one would have classified me as other than human. I was undoubtedly a monster, but certainly not to the extent of people born with horns or animal ears, the head of a calf or a horse, fins, devoid of eyes or with a supplementary eye, four arms, four legs or devoid of arms or legs. My skin, despite its unusual tint, was not so very different from sun-tanned skin; my eyes were not repulsive in spite of their opacity. My extreme agility was a talent. My need for alcohol could pass for a mere vice, a hereditary addiction—the country folk, in any case, like our Friesian housemaid, only saw it as a confirmation of their ideas regarding the “power” of schiedam, a slightly exaggerated demonstration of the excellence of their tastes. As for the rapidity and volubility of my speech, which was impossible to follow, that seemed little different from faults of pronunciation—stammering, lisping and stuttering—common to many young children. I did not, therefore, have any marked characteristics of monstrosity, even though the ensemble was extraordinary. The most curious aspect of my nature was invisible to those around me: no one was aware that my vision was strangely different from normal vision.
Although I saw some things less well than other people, I could see a great many that no one else saw. That difference manifested itself most obviously in colors. Everything that other people called red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo appeared to me as varying shades of darkness, while I perceived violet, and a series of colors beyond that—colors that were nothing but darkness to normal people. I eventually realized that I am able to distinguish 15 colors as dissimilar as, for instance, yellow and green—with infinite gradations, of course.
Furthermore, transparency does not manifest to my eyes in ordinary conditions. I can only see poorly through a window or through water; glass, for me, is brightly colored; water noticeably so, even when very shallow. Many crystals said to be clear are more or less opaque; by contrast, a large number of substances called opaque do not inhibit my vision. In general, I can see through far more substances than you can, and translucency—modified transparency—is so often present that I can say that, for my eyes, it is the general rule of nature, while complete opacity is the exception. Thus, I can discern objects through wood, foliage, the petals of flowers, magnetized iron, coal and so on. At a variable thickness, however, these substances—such as a stout tree-trunk, water a meter deep, a large lump of coal or quartz—become obstacles.
Gold, platinum and mercury are black and opaque; ice is quite dark. Air and water vapor are transparent, but colored, as are certain kinds of steel and very pure clay. Clouds do not prevent me from seeing the Sun or the stars, although I can clearly distinguish those same clouds suspended in the atmosphere.
This difference between my vision and that of other people, as I have said, went largely unnoticed by those around me; they simply thought that I was color-blind—which is too common an infirmity to attract much attention. It was inconsequential for the meager activities of my everyday life, for I saw the shapes of objects in the same fashion—and perhaps more subtly—as the majority of people. The designation of an object by its color, when it was necessary to distinguish it from another object of the same shape, only caused me difficulty if they were unfamiliar. If someone called the color of one waistcoat blue, and that of another red, it scarcely mattered what color the waistcoats seemed to me to be; blue and red became purely mnemonic terms.
Given that, you might think that there was some sort of correspondence between my colors and those of others, and that it amounted to the same thing as my being able to see their colors, but as I have already said, red, green, yellow, blue, and so on, when pure—as the colors of the prism are—I perceived as shades of darkness; they were not colors to me. In nature, where no color is simple, it is not the same; one substance called green, for example, is for me a certain composite color,35 while another substance called green—which is an identical shade so far as you are concerned—is by no means the same color to me. You can see, therefore, that my scale of colors has no correspondence with yours; when I consent to call both brass and gold “yellow,” it is rather as if you were consenting to call a cornflower “red” as well as a poppy.
II.
If the difference between my vision and normal vision stopped there, it would be extraordinary enough, to be sure. That is very little, however, compared to what I still have to tell you. The different coloration, transparency and opacity of the world; the ability to see through clouds, to see the stars on the most overcast nights, to see through a wooden partition-wall what is happening in the next room or outside a house—what is all that compared with the perception of a living world, a world of animate creatures moving alongside and around human beings, without humans being aware of it, without them being alerted by any kind of immediate contact?
What is all that, compared with the revelation that there exists on this Earth a fauna other than our fauna, and a fauna with no resemblance to ours in its form, its organization, its mores, or its manner of growth, birth and death? A fauna that lives alongside and in the midst of ours, influencing and influenced by the elements that surround us, nourished by those elements, without our suspecting its presence. A fauna which—as I have proved—is as ignorant of us as we are of it, as insensible to our movements as we are insensible to its movements. A living world, as varied as ours, as powerful as ours—perhaps more so—in its effects on the planet’s surface! A kingdom, in sum, extended over land and sea and in the atmosphere, modifying that land, sea and atmosphere in fashions very different from ours but with a very formidable energy—and, by virtue of that, indirectly influencing us, and our destinies!
This, however, is what I—alone among men and animals—have seen; this is what I have studied, ardently, for five years, after having spent my childhood and adolescence merely observing it.
III.
Observing it! For as long as I can remember, I have been instinctively subject to the seduction of that creation, foreign to our own. At first, I confused it with other living things. Perceiving that no one was troubled by its presence—that everyone, on the contrary, seemed indifferent to it—I scarcely felt any need to point out its peculiarities. At the age of six, I was perfectly conscious of its distinction from the plants in the field, the animals in the farmyard and the stables, but I still confused it slightly with inert phenomena like fire and light, running water and clouds. That was because these creatures were intangible; when they touched me, I did not experience any effect of their contact. Besides, their forms, although very various, had the singularity of being so thin in one of their three dimensions that they were comparable to moving drawings, surfaces and geometric lines. They passed through all organic matter; on the other hand, they sometimes seemed to be halted or hampered by invisible obstacles…but I shall describe them later. For the present, I only want to call attention to them, to affirm their variety in shape and size, their near-absence of thickness and their impalpability, in combination with the autonomy of their movements.
By the time I was eight years old, I was perfectly able to distinguish them from atmospheric phenomena as well as the animals of our kingdom. In the excitement that this discovery gave me, I tried to communicate it, but I was never able to succeed. Apart from the fact that my speech was almost completely incomprehensible, as I have said, the extraordinary nature of my vision rendered it suspect. No one took the trouble to interpret my words and gestures, nor was anyone ready to admit that I could see through wooden partitions, even though I gave proof of it many times over. Between me and other people there was an almost-insurmountable barrier.
I became discouraged and took to daydreaming; I became a sort of young recluse; I provoked unease in the company of children of my own age, and was aware of it. I was not exactly a ready-made victim, for my agility put me out of range of infantile malice and gave me a means of avenging myself easily. At the slightest threat, I was far away, mocking any pursuit. No matter how many of them there were, mischief-makers never succeeded in surrounding me, much less in taking hold of me. There was no point in even trying to catch me by trickery. Although too weak to carry any load, my agility was irresistible, freeing me immediately. I could return unexpectedly, and crush my adversary—adversaries, even—with rapid and well-aimed blows. I was, therefore, left in peace. I was taken for both an innocent and something of a magician—but a magician of an unintimidating sort, who could be treated with scorn. By degrees I cultivated an outdoor life, wild and meditative, but not devoid of gentleness. The only humanizing influence I had was my mother’s affection, although, being busy all day long, she found little time for caresses.
I shall try to describe, briefly, a few scenes from my tenth year in order to make the preceding explanations more concrete.
It is morning. Broad daylight illuminates the kitchen—a pale yellow glow for my parents and the servants, very various for me. Breakfast is being served, bread and tea—but I don’t drink tea. I’ve been given a glass of schiedam and a boiled egg. My mother is taking care of me, affectionately; my father is asking me questions. I try to answer him, slowing down my speech; he only understands the occasional syllable, and shrugs his shoulders.
“He’ll never be able to talk!”
My mother looks at me compassionately, convinced that I am a little simple-minded. The domestics and farmhands are no longer even curious about the little violet monster; the Friesian woman returned to her homeland some time ago. As for my sister, who is two years old, she is playing beside me, and I have a profound affection for her.
When breakfast is over, my father goes off to the fields with the farmhands, and my mother makes a start on her daily chores. I follow her into the farmyard. The animals come to her. I watch them with interest; I like them. The other Kingdom is, however, moving all around us, and captivates me more; it is a mysterious domain known to me alone.
A few forms are extended over the brown earth; they move, they stop, they vibrate at ground level. There are several sorts, different in shape, in their movement, and especially in the arrangement, design and color of the linear features they display. These features constitute, in fact, the major part of their being; even as a child, I can take account of them very well. While the bulk of their form is dull and dark, the lines are almost always sparkling. They form exceedingly complicated networks, emanating from centers, radiating outwards until they become blurred and fade away. Their hues are innumerable, their cures infinite; those shades vary even in a single line—as, to a lesser extent, does their form.
As a whole, each creature is made up of a somewhat irregular but quite distinct border, by centers of radiation, and by multicolored lines that intersect profusely. When it moves, the lines quiver and oscillate, and the centers contract and dilate, while the outline scarcely varies.
All this I can already see quite well, although I am incapable of defining it; an adorable charm possesses me as I contemplate the Moedigen.36 One of them, a colossus ten meters long and almost as broad, passes slowly through the farmyard and disappears. That one, with a few stripes as broad as cables and centers as large as an eagle’s wing, interests me greatly, and almost frightens me. I consider following it momentarily, but others attract my attention. They are very various in size; some do not exceed the length of our smallest insects, while I have seen others more than 30 meters long. They advance over the surface of the ground, as if solidly attached to it. When a material object—a wall or a house—presents itself, they move over it by molding themselves to its surface, always without any significant modification of their shape—but when the obstacle is living matter, or matter that was once alive, they pass directly through it. Thus, I have seen them a thousand times over emerging from a tree, or beneath the feet of an animal or a man. They can also pass through water, but prefer to remain on its surface.
These terrestrial Moedigen are not the only intangible beings. There is an aerial population of a marvelous splendor, subtlety and variety, incomparably spectacular, compared with which the most beautiful birds are dull, slow and ponderous. Here too, there is an outline and linear features, but the background is not dark; it is strangely luminous, sparkling like sunlight, and the lines stand out as vibrant veins, the centers throbbing violently. The Vuren,37 as I call them, are more irregular in form than the terrestrial Moedigen, and generally navigate with the aid of rhythmic dispositions, increases and decreases of which, in my ignorance, I cannot keep track, and which confuse my imagination.
Meanwhile, I am making my way through a recently-mown meadow; a conflict between one Moedig and another attracts my attention. These conflicts are frequent; they interest me passionately. Sometimes, there is a battle between equals; more often, a strong individual attacks a weak one—the weaker one is not necessarily the smaller. In the present instance, the weaker, after a brief defense, is put to flight, hotly pursued by the aggressor. In spite of the speed at which they are traveling, I follow them and contrive not to lose sight of them before the moment when the fight is resumed. They hurl themselves at one another, solid to one another—hard, even rigid. As they collide, their lines glow, heading toward the point of impact, their centers fade and shrink.
At first, the struggle is fairly equal, the weaker one deploying the more intense energy, even succeeding in forcing a truce from its enemy. It takes advantage of that to flee again, but is rapidly overtaken, forcefully attacked and finally gripped—which is to say, maintained in an indentation in the other’s outline. That is exactly what it was trying to avoid, in responding to the stronger one’s thrusts with less forceful but more rapid thrusts of its own. Now, I can see all its lines shivering and its centers throbbing desperately. Gradually, the lines fade and thin out, the centers blurring. After a few minutes, it is set free; it draws away slowly, dull and debilitated. Its antagonist, by contrast, is gleaming more brightly; its lines are more colourful, its centers clearer and more active.
The battle has impressed me profoundly; I think about it, comparing it to the contests I have seen between our animals and their smaller kin; I am vaguely aware that the Moedigen, on the whole, do not kill one another—or very rarely—and that victors are content to absorb strength at the expense of the vanquished.
The morning wears on; it is nearly 8 a.m.; the school at Zwartendam is about to open. I run back to the farm to get my books—and here I am among my peers, none of whom is aware of the profound mysteries that are happening around them, and none of whom has the vaguest idea of the living creatures through which all human beings pass, and which pass through human beings, without any indication of that mutual penetration.
I am a very poor student. My handwriting is no more than a hasty scrawl, formless and illegible; my speech remains incomprehensible; my distraction is manifest. The master continually shouts: “Karel Ondereet, have you finished watching the airborne flies yet?”
Alas, my dear master, it’s true that I watch the airborne flies, but how much more interested I am in the mysterious Vuren passing through the room! And what strange sentiments obsess my childish soul in observing everyone’s blindness—especially yours, earnest shepherd of minds!
V.
The most painful phase of my life was between the ages of 12 and 18. Initially, my parents tried to send me to secondary school; I found nothing there but misery and frustration.
At the cost of exhausting labor, I succeeded in expressing the most commonplace things in a vaguely comprehensible fashion. Slowing my speech down considerably, I enunciated the syllables awkwardly and with the intonation of the deaf. As soon as anything complicated came up, though, my speech resumed its fatal speed, and no one could any longer follow what I was saying, so I could not make my progress manifest orally.
On the other hand, my handwriting was atrocious; my letters sprawled over one another and, in my impatience, I omitted syllables and whole words; it was monstrous gibberish. In any case, to me, writing was a torture perhaps even more intolerable than speech, of an asphyxiating ponderousness and slowness. If, sometimes, by dint of effort and much sweat, I succeeded in starting an assignment, I soon ran out of strength and patience and felt faint. Then I preferred my masters’ remonstrations and my father’s fury, punishments and privations to the horrid labor.
I was, therefore, almost totally deprived of means of expression; already an object of ridicule because of my thinness and bizarre complexion, and my strange eyes, I was also taken for some kind of idiot. It was necessary to take me out of school, and become resigned to making me a farm-laborer.
On the day when my father decided to renounce all hope, he said to me, with an unaccustomed gentleness: “You can see, my poor boy, that I’ve done my duty—everything I can! Never reproach me for your fate!”
I was profoundly moved; I wept profusely; I had never felt my isolation in the midst of humankind so bitterly. I dared to embrace my father tenderly, and murmured: “It’s not true that I’m an imbecile, though!”
In fact, I felt superior to those who had been my fellow pupils. For some time, my intelligence had been developing remarkably. I read, I understood, I deduced, and I had immense subjects of meditation—far more than other human beings—in the universe that was visible to me alone.
My father could not make out what I said, but he was softened by my embrace. “Poor boy!” he said.
I looked at him. I was in frightful distress, knowing only too well that the gulf between us would never be bridged. My mother, thanks to the intuition of love, saw at that time that I was not inferior to other boys of my own age; she looked at me tenderly, and said naïve and sweet things to me from the bottom of her heart, but I was condemned nonetheless to cease my studies.
Because of my weak muscular strength, I was put in charge of the sheep and cattle. I acquitted myself marvelously; I had no need of a dog to look after the flock and the dairy herd, and no colt or stallion was as agile as me.
From 14 to 17, therefore, I lived the solitary life of a herdsman. It suited me better than any other. Free to observe and contemplate, and also to do a certain amount of reading, my brain never ceased to develop. I compared the elements of the double creation I had before my eyes incessantly, extracting therefrom ideas as to the constitution of the universe, vaguely sketching hypotheses and theories. Although it is true that my thoughts were not perfectly ordered at that time, not forming any lucid system—for they were adolescent thoughts, uncoordinated, impatient and enthusiastic—they were nevertheless original and fecund. That their value depended exclusively on my unique constitution I shall certainly not deny, but they did not derive all their force therefrom. Without the slightest vanity, I think I may say that they surpassed considerably, in subtlety as in logic, those of ordinary young people.
They alone brought a certain consolation to my sad life as a semi-pariah, devoid of companions or any real communication with those around me, even my adorable mother.
At 17, life became quite unbearable to me. I was weary of dreaming, weary of vegetating on a mental desert island. I fell into idleness and ennui. I sat motionless for long hours, disinterested in the entire world, inattentive to everything that was happening in my family. What good did it do me to know about things more marvelous than other men knew, since that knowledge was bound to die with me? What was the mystery of living organisms to me, or even the duality of the two vital systems that passed through one another without knowing it? These things might have intoxicated me, filling me with enthusiasm and excitement, if I had some way of communicating them or sharing them—but what could I do? Vain and sterile, absurd and miserable, they contributed instead to my perpetual psychic quarantine.
Several times, I thought of writing down some of my observations, to make a permanent record anyway, even at the cost of continual effort—but since I had left school I had abandoned the pen permanently, and I was already so poor a scrivener that I barely knew how to trace, with difficulty, the 26 letters of the alphabet. If I had still had any hope, perhaps I would have persisted—but who would take my wretched efforts seriously? Where was the reader who would not think me mad? Where was the sage who would not treat me with disdain or irony? What was the point, then, in devoting myself to that vain task, that irritating torture, not so very different from that of an ordinary man obliged to engrave his thoughts on marble tablets with a coarse chisel and a titanic hammer? My writing would have to be a kind of shorthand, so far as I was concerned—and a shorthand even more rapid than usual!
I did not have the courage to write, therefore—and yet, I longed fervently for something to happen, some strange and fortunate eventuality. It seemed to me that there must exist, in some corner of the world, impartial, lucid, inquiring minds capable of studying me, of understanding me, or of extracting my great secret from me and communicating it to others—but where were these men? What hope did I have of ever meeting them?
And I fell back into a vast melancholy, into the desire for immobility and annihilation. For an entire autumn, I despaired of the Universe. I languished in a vegetative state, from which I only emerged to utter long groans, followed by painful protests.
I became even thinner, to the point of becoming fantastic. The people of the village called me, ironically, Den Heyligen Gheest—the Holy Ghost. My silhouette was as tremulous as those of young poplars, as slight as a shadow—and I attained, along with that, the stature of a giant.
Slowly, I formulated a plan. Since my life was sacrificed, since none of my days was joyful and everything was darkness and bitterness to me, why stagnate in inaction? Even if no mind did exist that could respond to mine, was it not, at least, worth the effort of making sure? Was it not, at least, worth leaving my bleak homeland to go in search of scientists and philosophers in the big cities? Was I not an object of curiosity in myself? Even before calling attention to my extra-human knowledge, could I not excite a desire to study my person? Were not the physical attributes of my being worthy of analysis in themselves: my sight, and the extreme agility of my movements, and the peculiarity of my nutrition.
The more I thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed to hope, and the firmer my resolve became. When the day arrived that it became unbreakable, I confided in my parents. Neither of them understood it very well, but they both ended up yielding to my repeated insistence; I obtained permission to go to Amsterdam, free to return if things did not work out for me.
I left the next morning.
VI.
The distance from Zwartendam to Amsterdam is about 100 kilometers. I covered that distance easily in two hours, without any other incident than the extreme surprise of passers-by on seeing me run at such a speed, and a few crowds gathering on the edges of little villages and larger towns that I shorted. To ascertain my route I spoke to solitary old men on two or three occasions; my sense of direction, which is excellent, did the rest.
It was about 9 a.m. when I reached Amsterdam. I went into the city resolutely, going along the beautiful canals where merchant fleets are quietly maintained. I did not attract as much attention as I had feared. I walked quickly, in the midst of busy people, enduring the occasional gibes of a few street-urchins. I decided, however, not to pause. I had gone back and forth through the city in every direction before I finally resolved to go into an inn on one of the quays of the Heerengracht.
It was a pleasant spot; the magnificent canal extended, full of life, between shady rows of trees, and among the Moedigen that I saw circulating along its banks, I thought I perceived a new species. After some indecision, I crossed the threshold of the inn and, addressing the proprietor as slowly as I could, I asked him if he would be so kind as to direct me to a hospital.
The landlord looked at me with amazement, suspicion and curiosity, took his stout pipe out of his mouth and put it back again several times, and eventually said: “You’re from the colonies, no doubt?”
As there was no point in contradicting him, I replied: “Indeed!”
He seemed delighted with his perspicacity, and asked me another question. “Perhaps you come from that part of Borneo that no one has ever been able to get into?”
“Exactly.”
I had spoken too rapidly; is eyes widened.
“Ex-act-ly!” I repeated, more slowly.
“You’re having difficulty speaking Dutch, aren’t you? So it’s a hospital you want? Presumably, you’re ill?”
“Yes.”
Customers were drawing nearer. The rumor was already going round that I was a cannibal from Borneo; even so, they looked at me with far more curiosity than antipathy. People were coming in from the street. I became nervous and anxious. Nevertheless, I put on a brave face, coughed, and added: “I’m very ill.”
“It’s the same with monkeys from that region,” said a fat man, benevolently. “The Netherlands kill them!”
“What funny skin!” said another.
“And how does he see?” asked a third, pointing to my eyes.
The circle drew closer, enveloping me with 100 curious stares—and newcomers were still coming into the room.
“How tall he is!”
It was true that I was a head taller than the tallest of them.
“And thin!”
“Cannibalism doesn’t seem to be very nutritious!”
Not all the voices were malevolent. A few sympathetic individuals defended me: “Don’t crowd him like that—he’s ill!”
“Come on, friend, be brave!” said the fat man, observing my nervousness. “I’ll take you to a hospital myself!”
He took me by the arm; taking it upon himself to clear a way through the crowd, shouting: “Make way for an invalid!”
Dutch crowds are not very aggressive; they let us pass, but went with us. We went along the canal, followed by a compact multitude, and people called out: “It’s a cannibal from Borneo!”
Finally, we reached a hospital. It was visiting time. I was taken to an intern, a young man with blue-tinted spectacles, who greeted me sulkily.
“He’s a savage from the colonies,” my companion told him.
“What do you mean, a savage?” the intern exclaimed. He took off his spectacles to look at me. Surprise immobilized him momentarily. “Can you see?” he asked me, abruptly.
“I can see quite well.”
I had spoken too rapidly. “It’s his accent!” said the fat man, proudly. “Again, friend!”
I repeated the words, and made myself understood.
“Those aren’t human eyes,” the student murmured. “And that skin-color! Is that the color of your race?”
Making a terrible effort to speak slowly, I said: “I’ve come to be examined by a scientist.”
“So you aren’t ill?”
“No.”
“And you’re from Borneo?”
“No.”
“Where are you from, then?”
“Zwartendam, near Duisburg.”
“Then why does your companion claim that you’re from Borneo?”
“I didn’t want to contradict him.”
“And you want to see a scientist?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To be studied.”
“To earn money?”
“No, for nothing.”
“You’re not a pauper? A beggar?”
“No!”
“What makes you want to be studied?”
“My constitution…” But I had spoken too rapidly again, in spite of my efforts. I had to repeat myself.
“Are you sure that you can see me?” he asked again, staring at me. “Your eyes are like horn…”
“I can see quite well…” And, going from right to left, I rapidly picked objects up, put them down again, and threw them up in the air in order to catch them.
“That’s extraordinary!” said the young man. His softened voice, almost friendly, gave me hope. “Listen,” he said, eventually, “I’m sure that Dr. Van den Heuvel will be interested in your case. I’ll go and inform him. You can wait in the next room. And by the way…I’ve forgotten…you’re not actually ill?”
“Not at all.”
“Good. Wait in here…the doctor won’t be long.”
I found myself sitting among monsters preserved in alcohol: fetuses, children in bestial form, colossal batrachians, and vaguely anthropomorphic saurians.
It’s an apt waiting-room, I thought. Am I not a candidate for one of these alcoholic sepulchers?
VII.
When Dr. Van den Heuvel appeared, I was overcome by emotion; I felt the thrill of the Promised Land: the joy of reaching it, the fear of being banished therefrom. The doctor, who had a vast bald forehead, a powerful analytical gaze and a soft but obstinate mouth, examined me silently—and, as with everyone else, my excessive thinness, my lofty stature, my ringed eyes and my violet complexion caused him considerable astonishment.
“You say that you want to be studied?” he asked, eventually.
“Yes!” I replied, forcefully—almost violently.
He smiled approvingly, and asked me the usual question: “Can you see well enough with those eyes?”
“Very well. I can even see through wood and clouds…” I had spoken too rapidly though. He looked at me anxiously. I started again, sweating heavily: “I can even see through wood and clouds…”
“Really! That would be extraordinary. Well, what can you see through that door there?” He pointed to a closed door.
“A big glazed bookcase…a carved table…”
“Really!” he repeated, in amazement.
My chest swelled; a profound contentment descended upon my inner being.
The scientist remained silent for a few seconds, then said: “You speak very awkwardly.”
“I speak too rapidly otherwise. I can’t speak slowly.”
“Well, say something in your natural voice.”
I then recounted the tale of my entry into Amsterdam. He listened to me with extreme attention, and an intelligent and observant manner that I had never encountered among my peers. He did not understand any of what I said, but he demonstrated the sagacity of his analytical capability:
“If I’m not mistaken, you’re pronouncing 15 to 20 syllables a second—which is to say, three or four times as many as the human ear can perceive. Your voice, moreover, is much sharper than any human voice I’ve ever heard. Your gestures, excessive in their rapidity, correspond perfectly with that speech. Your entire constitution is probably more rapid than ours.”
“I can run faster than a greyhound,” I said. “I write…”
“Ah!” he interjected. “Let’s see your handwriting…”
I scribbled a few words on a writing-pad that he gave me, the first ones fairly readable, the others increasingly scrambled and abbreviated.
“Perfect!” he said, a certain pleasure mingled with his astonishment. “I believe that I shall be very glad to have met you. It would certainly be very interesting to study you…”
“That’s my keenest—my only—desire.”
“And mine, of course. Science…” He seemed preoccupied, thoughtful. Eventually, he said: “If we could only find an easy means of communication…”
He started pacing back and forth, frowning. Suddenly, he stopped. “How stupid I am! You’ll learn stenography, of course! Eh?” A cheerful expression appeared on his face: “And I’m forgetting the phonograph…the perfect confidant. It’ll be sufficient to slow down the playback more than the recording. It’s settled: you’ll stay with me during your sojourn in Amsterdam!”
The joy of a vocation satisfied, the delight of not spending vain and sterile days! In the presence of the intelligent personality of the doctor, in that scientific environment, I felt a delightful sense of well-being; the melancholy of my spiritual solitude, the regret for my wasted abilities, the long misery of the pariah status that had weighed upon me for so many years, all vanished, evaporating in the sentiment of a new life, a real life, a destiny of salvation!
VIII.
The doctor made all the necessary arrangements the following day. He wrote to my parents; he provided me with a stenography instructor and obtained phonographs. As he was very wealthy and entirely devoted to science, there was no experiment he did not propose to undertake; my vision, my hearing, my musculature and the color of my skin were subjected to scrupulous investigation, which made him increasingly enthusiastic,
“This is prodigious!” he exclaimed.
“I understood perfectly, after the first few days, how important it was that things be done methodically, proceeding from the simple to the complex, from slight abnormalities to marvelous ones—so I had recourse to a little artifice, which I did not try to hide from the doctor, which was only to reveal my abilities to him gradually.
The rapidity of my perceptions and my movements claimed his attention first. He was able to convince himself that the subtlety of my hearing corresponded to the rapidity of my speech. Graduated experiments with the most fugitive sounds, which I imitated with ease, and the speech of ten or 15 individuals talking at once, which I could distinguish perfectly, demonstrated the matter beyond all question. The velocity of my vision was no less proven, and comparative trials of my ability to resolve the gallop of a horse and the flight of an insect, against those of instantaneous photographic apparatus, were entirely to the advantage of my eyes. As for perceptions of ordinary things, the simultaneous movements of a group of people, children at play, the movement of machinery, stones thrown into the air or little balls tossed into an alley in order to be counted in flight—they stupefied the doctor’s family and friends.
My runs through the large garden, my 20-meter jumps, the instantaneity of my seizing objects and putting them back again, were even more admired, not by the doctor but by his entourage; and it was a continual pleasure for my host’s wife and children, during a walk in the country, to see me outrun a galloping horseman or follow the flight of a swallow. There is in fact, no thoroughbred to which I could not give a start of two-thirds of the distance to be covered, whatever it might be, nor any bird that I cannot easily overtake.
The doctor, increasingly satisfied with the results of his experiments, defined me thus: “A human being endowed, in all his movements, with a speed incomparably superior, not merely to other human beings, but also to that of all known animals. That speed, found in the slightest elements of his organic make-up as well as the whole, has created an individual so distinct from the remainder of creation that he merits a special category in the hierarchy of animals all to himself. As for the curious constitution of his eyes, and the violet hue of his skin, it is necessary to consider them as mere indications of that special status.”
Tests having been carried out on my muscular system, he found nothing remarkable therein, except for an excessive thinness. No more were my ears furnished with any unique attributes; nor, save for its color, was my epidermis. As for my hair, which was dark—a violet-tinted black—it was as fine as spider-silk, and the doctor examined it minutely.
“I’d have to be able to dissect you!” he said several times, laughing.
The time passed pleasantly in this fashion. I had learned stenography very quickly, thanks to the ardor of my desire and the natural aptitude I showed for that manner of transcription—into which I introduced, moreover, a few new abbreviations. I began to take notes, which my stenographer translated. Furthermore, we had phonographs manufactured according to a special design made by the doctor, which were perfectly adapted to reproduce my speech, considerably slowed down.
My host’s confidence eventually became perfect. In the first weeks, he had been unable to help being suspicious—which was entirely natural—that the uniqueness of my abilities might have given rise to some madness, some cerebral derangement. Once that fear was set aside, our relationship became entirely cordial—and, I think, as captivating for each of us as for the other. We carried out analytical tests of my perception through a large number of substances reckoned opaque, and of the dark coloration that water, glass and quartz acquired for me at a certain thickness. You will remember that I can see quite well through wood, the foliage of trees, clouds and many other substances, that I had difficulty distinguishing the bottom of a body of water half a meter deep, and that a window, although transparent, is less so for me than for ordinary people, and rather dark in color. A thick piece of glass appears almost black to me. The doctor convinced himself of all these singularities at his leisure, being particularly struck by my ability to make out the stars on cloudy nights.
It was only then that I began to tell him that I also perceived colors differently. Experiments established beyond doubt that red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo were as invisible to me as infra-red or ultra-violet to normal eyes. On the other hand, I was able to provide evidence that I perceived violet and, beyond violet, a whole series of shades: a spectrum of colors with at least twice the range of the spectrum that extends from red to violet.38
This astonished the doctor more than anything else. The investigation was long, scrupulous and, moreover, conducted with infinite artistry. It became, in the hands of that skillful experimenter, the source of subtle discoveries in the order of sciences classified by human beings, giving him the key to arcane phenomena of magnetism, chemical affinity and the power of induction, and guiding him toward new notions in physiology. You can easily imagine what an ingenious scientist might be able to deduce from such data as knowing that some metal manifests a series of unknown hues, variable with pressure, temperature and electrical state, and that the most transparent gas has distinct colors even at low density; learning about the infinite richness of the tones of objects that seem more or less black, and that they present a more magnificent spectrum in the ultra-violet than all the known colors; and, finally, knowing how the unknown hues of an electric circuit, the bark of a tree, or the skin of a human being vary from day to day, hour to hour and minute to minute.
At any rate, these studies plunged the doctor into the delight of scientific novelty, compared with which the products of the imagination are as cold as cinders compared with fire. He repeatedly said to me: “It’s obvious! Your extra-luminary perception is, in sum, merely an effect of the speeding-up of your organic constitution.”
We worked patiently for an entire year without my making any mention of the Moedigen; I wanted my host to be absolutely convinced, to give him innumerable proofs of my visual abilities before venturing upon the supreme confidence. Finally, the moment arrived when I thought that I could reveal everything.
IX
It was the morning of a mild Autumn day, overcast with clouds that had been traveling across the vault of the sky for a week without any rain falling. Van den Heuvel and I were strolling in the garden. The doctor was quiet, fully absorbed by speculations of which I was the principal object. Eventually, he began to speak.
“It’s pleasant, mind, to imagine being able to see through these clouds…to penetrate as far as the ether, when we’re… blind as we are…”
“If only the sky were all I could see!” I replied.
“Oh, yes—the entire world is so different…”
“Much more different than I’ve told you!”
“What!” he cried, with avid curiosity. “Have you been hiding something from me?”
“The most important thing of all.”
He planted himself in front of me, stared at me with a veritable anguish, in which a certain mysticism seemed to be mixed.
“Yes, the most important thing of all!”
We had arrived beside the house; I rushed in to ask for a phonograph. The instrument that was brought was state of the art, much improved by my friend, capable of recording a long speech. The servant deposited it on the stone table at which the doctor and his family took coffee on fine summer evenings. The fine apparatus, miraculously accurate, lent itself admirably to conversation. We could talk almost as easily as in a normal conversation.
“Yes, I’ve hidden the most important thing from you, wanting to have your entire confidence first. Even now, after all the discoveries that my constitution has permitted you to make, I fear that you might have difficulty believing me, at least to begin with.”
I paused in order that my words might be repeated by the instrument. I saw the doctor go pale: the pallor of a great scientist confronted with a new aspect of matter. His hands were trembling.
“I’ll believe you!” he said, with a certain solemnity.
“Even if I claim that our creation—I mean our animal and vegetable world—is not the only life on Earth—that there is another, just as vast, as numerous and as complicated…invisible to your eyes?”
He suspected occultism, and could not help saying: “The world of the fourth dimension: souls, phantoms and spirits.”
“No, no—nothing like that. A world of living beings, condemned, as we are, to a brief existence, organic needs, birth, growth and conflict…a world as frail and ephemeral as ours; a world submissive to laws as fixed as ours, if not identical; a world similarly imprisoned by the Earth, similarly vulnerable to contingencies…but also completely different from ours, without any influence upon us, as we have no influence upon it, save for the modifications it makes to our common foundation, the Earth, or the parallel modifications to which we subject that same Earth.”
I don’t know whether Van den Heuvel believed me, but he was certainly in the grip of a keen excitement. “In brief, they’re fluid?” he queried.
“That’s something I can’t say, for their properties are too contradictory to the idea we’ve formed of matter. The Earth is as resistant to them as to us, as are the majority of minerals, although they can penetrate some way into humus. They are also quite impermeable—solid—with respect to one another, but they pass through plants, animals and organic tissues, albeit with a certain difficulty, and we pass through them in the same way. If one of them could see us, we would probably appear fluid in relation to them in its eyes, as they appear fluid in relation to us in mine—but it would probably be no more able to conclude that than I am; it would be struck by parallel contradictions.
“Their form has the strange quality of having very little thickness. Their size is infinitely variable. I’ve known some of them to reach a hundred meters in length, and others as small as our tiniest insects. Some of them derive nutrition at the expense of the Earth and weather phenomena, others at the expense of weather phenomena and the individuals of their kingdom—without, however, that being a cause of murder, as among us, since it is sufficient for the stronger to draw energy, that energy presumably being extractable without exhausting the vital source.”
The doctor asked me, abruptly: “Could you see them when you were a child?”
I guessed that he had formulated the hypothesis that this was, in essence, some disorder that had overtaken my organism fairly recently.
“Since infancy!” I replied, forcefully. “I can provide you with the necessary proofs.”
“Can you see them now?”
“I see them—the garden contains a considerable number of them.”
“Where?”
“On the path, on the lawns, on the walls, in the air…for there are aerial as well as terrestrial ones—and also aquatic ones, although those rarely leave the surface of the water.”
“Are they numerous everywhere?”
“Yes, and scarcely less numerous in towns than in the fields, and in houses than in the streets. Those that prefer enclosed spaces are smaller, though, doubtless because of the difficulty of moving around—although wooden doors are no obstacle to them.”
“What about iron…glass…brick?”
“Impermeable to them.”
“Would you care to describe one of them—preferably a large one?”
“I can see one of them near that tree. Its form is extremely elongated, and rather irregular. It is convex on the right, concave on the left, with bulges and indentations; one might imagine it to be a cross-section of a gigantic, thickset caterpillar—but its structure isn’t characteristic of the kingdom, for structure is extremely variable between species, if one may use that term in this context. Its infinitesimal thickness is, on the other hand, a universally general quality; it can scarcely be more than a tenth of a millimeter, although it is five feet long and 40 centimeters broad at its greatest width.
“What defines it most obviously, and its entire kingdom, are the lines that cut across it in every direction, terminating in networks that thin out where two systems of lines meet. Each system of lines is equipped with a center, a sort of swollen patch slightly elevated above the mass of the body—or sometimes, by contrast, hollowed out. These centers have no fixed shape, sometimes being almost circular or elliptical, sometimes twisted or spiral, sometimes divided by several constructions. They are astonishingly mobile, and their magnitude varies on an hourly basis. Their borders vibrate very rapidly, by virtue of a sort of horizontal undulation. Generally, the lines emerging from them are broad, even though there are also some very thin ones; they diverge, finishing up as infinitely delicate traces that gradually vanish.
“A few lines, however, much paler than the others, are not engendered by centers; they remain isolated within the system and grow without changing color. These lines have the ability to move around within the body and to vary their curvature, while the centers and the lines connected to them remain stable in their respective situations.
“As for the colors of my Moedig, I must renounce any attempt to describe them to you, none of them being in the register perceptible to your eye, and none of them having any name for you. They are extremely bright in the networks, less so in the centers, and very faint in the independent lines—which, in compensation, are highly polished, with an ultra-violet metallic quality, if I might express it thus.
“I have assembled a few observations on the mode of life, nutrition and autonomy of the Moedigen, but I don’t want to show them to you for the moment.”
I fell silent. The doctor had the recorded words repeated twice over by our impeccable intermediary, then remained silent for some time. I had never seen him in such a state; his features were rigid, mineralized; his eyes vitreous, cataleptic; an abundant sweat was running down his temples and moistening his hair. He tried to speak, but could not. He made a tremulous circuit of the garden, and when he came back his expression and mouth expressed a violent, fervent, religious passion. One might have thought him a disciple of a new faith rather than a placid hunter of phenomena.
Finally, he murmured: “You’ve overwhelmed me! Everything you’ve just told me seems perfectly lucid—and have I any right to doubt it, after all the marvels you’ve already shown me?”
“Doubt!” I told him, hotly. “Doubt fervently…your experiments will be all the more fecund for it!”
“Ah! He went on, in a dreamy voice. “It’s prodigy itself—and so magnificently superior to the vain prodigies of Fable! My poor human intelligence is so small by comparison to such knowledge! My enthusiasm is infinite. Something within me, however, doubts…”
“Let us work to dispel your uncertainty. Our efforts will be rewarded a hundredfold!”
X.
We worked. A few weeks sufficed to dispel all the doctor’s doubts. Ingenious experiments, undeniable concordances between each of my affirmations, and two or three fortunate discoveries regarding the influence of the Moedigen on atmospheric phenomena left no room for equivocation. The assistance of Van den Heuvel’s eldest son, a young man with the greatest aptitude for science, further increased the fecundity of our labors and the certainty of our discoveries.
Thanks to the methodical mentality of my companions, and their skill in investigation and classification—faculties that I gradually assimilated—it did not take long for my presently-uncoordinated and confused knowledge of the Moedigen to be transformed. The discoveries multiplied, the rigorous experiments gave firm results, in circumstances that would, at most, have suggested a few seductive diversions in ancient times, or even in the last century.
We have now been conducting our researches for five years; they are far—very far—from reaching completion. An initial account of our findings will not be ready for quite some time. We are, in any case, strictly determined not to do anything in haste; our discoveries are too important in kind not to be revealed in the greatest possible detail, with the most sovereign patience and the most careful precision. We do not have to get in ahead of any other researcher, we have no patent for which to apply, nor any ambition to satisfy. We are at a height at which vanity and pride fade away. How can we reconcile the delightful joys of our work with the wretched lure of human renown? Besides, is not the mere accident of my constitution the sole source of these things? How petty it would be, therefore, to glorify ourselves?
We live passionately, always on the verge of marvelous things, and yet we live in an immutable serenity.
I have had an adventure that has added to the profound interest of my life, and which, during my hours of leisure, completes my infinite joy. You know how ugly I am, and stranger still, liable to frighten young women. I have, however, found a companion who can accept my affection to the point of enjoying it.
She is a poor hysteric, neurotic girl, whom we found one day in a hospice in Amsterdam. She is considered to be wretched in appearance, as pallid as plaster with hollow cheeks and wild eyes. To me, she is pleasant to behold, and her company is charming. My presence, far from astonishing her, like everyone else’s, seemed from the outset to please her and comfort her. I was touched, and wanted to see her again.
It did not take long to perceive that I had a beneficial effect on her health and well-being. On further investigation, it seemed that I influenced her magnetically; my proximity, and especially the imposition of my hands, communicated a veritably curative gaiety, serenity and mental equilibrium to her. In return, I found pleasure in being with her. Her face seemed pretty to me; her pallor and thinness were merely delicacy; her eyes, capable of seeing the glow of magnets, like those of sufferers from hyperesthesia, did not seem to me to have the quality of wildness of which others disapprove.
In a word, I found her attractive, and she returned the sentiment passionately. Soon, I decided to marry her, and easily attained my goal, thanks to the good will of my friends. The marriage has been a happy one. With my wife’s health restored, although she remained extremely sensitive and frail, I tasted the joy of being, in the most important aspect of life, like other men. My destiny has been especially enviable for six months; a child was born to us, and that child reproduces all the characteristics of my constitution. In terms of color, vision, hearing, extreme rapidity of movement and nutrition, he promises to be an exact replica of my physiology.
The doctor is watching him grow with delight; a delightful hope has been born in us: that the study of Moedig life, of the kingdom parallel to ours, which requires so much time and patience, will not come to a stop when I die. My son will doubtless pursue it in his turn. Why should he not find collaborators of genius, capable to take it to further extremes? Why should there not be born, to him also, seers of the invisible world?
May I, too, not expect more children? May I not hope that my dear wife will one day give birth to other offspring of my flesh similar to their father? And as I think about that, my heart quivers, and I am filled with an infinite bliss, feeling myself blessed among men.