IV. Hot and Cold

 

 

Sleep nourishes. My slumber lasted until the following morning. I had never slept so badly, though. The trepidations of the automobile journey had haunted my hips, and I felt the repercussions of revenant jolts and the twists of spectral bends for a long time. Then I was visited by dreams in which a prodigious world came to life: Broceliande, the Shakespearean forest, was on the march; amid the host of its branches, mostly walking arm-in-arm in pairs, a birch tree that had the appearance of a lance made a speech to me in German—which I could scarcely hear, because many of the flowers were singing, many of the plants were yapping insistently, and, from time to time, the tall trees howled.

On awakening, I remembered this wild hunt with phonographic exactitude, to the point of being alarmed, and scolded myself for not having made a more thorough examination of the greenhouse; a calmer and less hasty study of its contents would doubtless have been more edifying. I passed a severe judgment on my haste and irritation of the day before. But why not try to make up for it? Perhaps it wasn’t too late.

With my hands behind my back, a cigarette between my lips and seemingly going in no particular direction—as an idle stroller, in sum—I wandered past the greenhouse. It was locked. I had, therefore, spoiled the only opportunity to instruct myself in that regard—yes, I sensed it, the only one. Fool! Fool!

In order not to arouse suspicion, I went through the prohibited region without even pausing, and the pathway now took me toward the grey buildings. A new path beaten through the grass that covered the old one testified to frequent usage.

After a few strides, I saw my uncle appear in front of me; he had undoubtedly been on the lookout for my emergence. He was very cheerful. When he smiled, his dull face bore more resemblance his youthful face of long ago. That affable expression restored my serenity; my escapade had passed unnoticed.

“Well, nephew?” he said, almost amicably. You agree with me, I’ll wager. The place isn’t recreational. You’ll soon have had your fill of your nostalgic strolls through the depths of this old dump!”

“Oh, uncle, I’ve always loved Fonval, not for its scenery but as an old friend—an ancestor, if you like. It’s family. I’ve often played on its laws and among its branches, you know; it’s a grandfather that has dandled me on its knees, rather like—if you’ll forgive the cajolery—rather like you, uncle…”

“Yes, yes,” murmured Lerne, evasively. “All the same, you’ll soon have had enough of it.”

“You’re mistaken. Fonval’s grounds, you see, are my Earthly Paradise.”

“You said it! It’s certainly that,” he confirmed, laughing. “The forbidden tree grows within its bounds. At any moment, you might run into the Tree of Life and the Tree of Science, which you mustn’t touch…it’s dangerous. If I were you, I’d go out from time to time in your mechanical carriage. Oh, if only Adam had owned a mechanical carriage!”

“But there’s the labyrinth, uncle.”

“I’ll go with you, then, and guide you!” the professor cried, merrily. “Besides, I’m curious to see one of these…er…machines in action….”

“It’s called an automobile, uncle.”

“Yes: one of these automobiles.” His Teutonic accent gave the word, already somewhat lacking in velocity, the amplitude, gravity and immobility of a cathedral.

We were walking side by side toward the coach-house. My uncle, mustering his courage in the face of ill fortune, had obviously reconciled himself to my intrusion. Nevertheless, his persistent good humor only served to irritate me. My planned indiscretions seemed less legitimate. Perhaps I might even have abandoned them there and then, if desire for Emma had not encouraged my hostility to her despotic jailer. Then again, was he sincere? Was it not merely to incite me to keep my sworn oath that he said to me, as we arrived at the improvised garage: “Nicolas, I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I really do think that you might be very useful to us in future. I’d like to get to know you better. Since you’ll be staying here for a few days, we’ll talk a good deal. I don’t do much work in the mornings, so we’ll spend them going abroad, whether on foot or in your carriage, and chatting. But you haven’t forgotten your promises?”

I nodded my head. After all, I thought, he really does seem to want to publish the unknown solution he’s pursuing, some day. Why should it not equitable, even if the endeavors needed to attain it are not? It’s doubtless those alone that he intends to keep hidden until they bear fruit; he reckons that the brilliance of the latter will justify the barbarity of the former, and grant him absolution for them. As long as the end does not betray the means, and that those means can remain unknown forever. On the other hand, Lerne really might be afraid of competition. Why not?

I ruminated thus while emptying a can of gasoline that I had been lucky enough to find in the trunk into the tank of my lovely car.

Lerne got in beside me. He pointed me in the direction of a straight road that ran alongside one of the encircling cliffs—an ingeniously-concealed short cut. I was astonished, at first, that my uncle should have shown me this recourse, but, all things considered, was he not showing me the way that I might leave? And wasn’t that, deep down, what he desired with all his heart?

Dear uncle! He must have led a very reclusive or very absorbed existence, for he retained a touching ignorance on the subject of automobiles, of the sort that scientists often have for subjects outside their specialties. My physiologist was not strong in practical mechanics. He had only a nodding acquaintance with the principles of the automobile’s docile, flexible, silent and speedy locomotion, which filled him with enthusiasm.

“Can we stop here, please?” he said, when we reached the edge of the forest. “Explain the machine to me—it’s marvelous. This is where I usually terminate my excursions. I’m an old eccentric! You can go on alone afterwards, if you wish.”

I began my demonstration, and perceived then that the slightly-damaged horn could be repaired in a trice. Two screws and a piece of wire restored its deafening force. On hearing it, Lerne’s face lit up with ingenuous delight. I went on with my lecture, and as I talked my uncle listened with increasing attention.

In truth, the subject was well worthy of interest. During the last three years, although motor cars have scarcely changed in respect of their elementary structure and principal components, their adaptation has progressed in compensation, and their constituent materials have been employed more judiciously. Thus, no wood had been used in the construction of my car, whose racing-seats had been reduced to a minimum. My eighty-horsepower engine was a luxurious and precise little factory, entirely made of cast iron, steel, copper, nickel and aluminum. The great invention of the era had been applied to it—I mean that it did not rest on four pneumatic tires but on admirably elastic spring-mounted wheels. Today, that seems perfectly ordinary; a year ago, my steel rims still provoked a great deal of surprise.21 But the most remarkable thing about the 234-XY, in my considered opinion, was the improvement that the engineers had obtained so gradually that one hardly perceived it on a day-to-day basis: automation.

The first “horseless carriages” had been cluttered with levers, pedals, knobs and steering-wheels necessary to control it, and taps and grease-guns indispensable to the functioning of the engine. Each generation of automobiles had, however, dispensed with more of them. One by one, almost all these manual controls requiring incessant and multiple human intervention had disappeared. In our day, its component parts having become automatic, the mechanism is self-regulating. A driver is no more than a pilot; once in action, his mount maintains its own progress; once awakened, it only goes to sleep again on command.

In brief, as Lerne remarked to me, the modern automobile enjoys all the properties that a spinal cord might confer upon it: it has instincts and reflexes. Spontaneous movements are produced there, alongside the voluntary movements provoked by the intelligence of the driver—the latter becoming, so to speak, the vehicle’s brain. It is from that intelligence that the orders for willful actions depart, to be transmitted by metallic nerves to muscles of steel.

“Besides,” my uncle added, “there’s a striking resemblance between this carriage and the body of a vertebrate.”

At this point, Lerne was getting back to his own subject. I lent an attentive ear. “We already have the nervous and muscular systems,” he continued, “represented by the control rods, the transmission and the working parts. But what is the chassis, Nicolas, if not the skeleton, to which the bolts attach them like tendons? Gasoline blood, the vital element, circulates in copper arteries! The carburetor breathes; it’s a lung. Instead of combining air with blood, it mixes it with gasoline vapor, that’s all! The hood is the thorax within which life beats rhythmically. Synovial fluid plays the same role in our joints as oil in these. Shielded by the resistant skin of the bodywork, here are the tanks, stomachs that grow hungry and are replenished. Here are the eyes, phosphorescent like those of cats, but thus far deprived of sight: the headlights. The horn is a voice. Here is the exhaust-pipe, whose comparison would seem offensive to you, Nicolas. All in all, your vehicle lacks nothing but a brain—for which yours sometimes stands in—in order to become a huge beast, albeit one that is deaf, blind, insensible and sterile, deprived of the senses of taste and smell.”

“A full set of infirmities!” I remarked, bursting into laughter.

“Hmm!” Lerne retorted. “In other respects the automobile is better equipped than we are. Consider this water, which cools it: what a remedy against fever! And how long an engine might last, if used in moderation! For it is infinitely reparable…it can always be cured. Haven’t you just restored its power of speech? You could replace its eyes just as easily…”

The professor was getting carried away. “It’s a powerful and redoubtable body!” he cried, “but a body that allows itself to be put on, a suit of armor whose wearer finds himself amplified beyond all expectation, multiplying his power and speed! Why, inside this you’re neither more nor less than one of Wells’s Martians in its three-legged cylinder! You’re no more than the brain of an artificial and vertiginous monster!”

“All machines are like that, uncle.”

“No, not as completely. Except for its form—which has no similarity to any animal, of course—the automobile is the most adequate automaton we have ever contrived. It is more aptly made in our image than the best clockwork manikins made by Maelzel or Vaucanson, the most human of androids—for, beneath their anthropomorphic envelopes, the latter conceal a turnspit organism, which can’t compare with the anatomy of a snail, while this…” He stepped back, enveloping my motor car with a tender gaze. “A superb creature!” he exclaimed. “How great is man!”

Yes, I said to myself, there’s far more beauty in the act of creation than in your sinister assemblages of ancient flesh and immemorial wood! But it’s good of you to acknowledge it!

Although it was getting late, I went on to Grey-l’Abbaye to fill up with gas—and, in spite of the fact that he was a creature of habit, Lerne, infatuated with the automobile, went beyond the traditional limit of his walks and insisted on accompanying me.

Then we took the road to Fonval again.

My uncle, prey to neophyte ardor, leaned over the hood in order to take the machine’s pulse, then dissected one of the grease-nipples. In the meantime, he questioned me, and I had to inform him of the smallest details regarding the car, which he assimilated with incredible accuracy.

“I say, Nicolas, sound the horn, would you? Now slow down… stop… set off again… quicker… enough! Brake… reverse now… halt! That’s colossal!”

He was laughing. His darkened face underwent a sort of beautification. On seeing us, anyone might have supposed that we were the best of friends. Perhaps we were, in fact, for the moment—and I glimpsed the possibility that Lerne might one day take me into his confidence, thanks to my two-seater.

He conserved that gaiety all the way back to the château. The recovered proximity of the mysterious workshops did not alter it at all; it only disappeared in the dining-room. There, Lerne suddenly darkened again. Emma had just come in—and the husband of my Aunt Lidivine seemed to vanish with my uncle’s smile, leaving behind a peevish old scientist between his two guests. I understood then how little his future discoveries mattered to him by comparison with that woman, and that he only wanted to acquire wealth and glory in order to keep a better hold on that charming girl.

He certainly lusted after her, as I lusted after her too: in the manner of a hunger, a corruption, a burning desire of the epidermis, a thirst of the skin. He was greedier; I had more appetite—that was the difference between us.

Come on, let’s be frank. Elvire, Beatrice, ideal lovers,22 you are only coveted pastures to begin with. Before you are given rhythm in verse, you are desired in a non-literary way, like—why search for hypocritical metaphors?—like a plate of lentils, or a cup of fresh water. But harmonious phrases were found for you, because you were able to become venerated lovers, and from then one you were cherished with that perfected tenderness that is our involuntary masterpiece, our slow and exquisite retouching of Creation. Certainly, as Lerne put it, man is great! His love is a delightfully gilded lily: the most beautiful graft in our gardens; an essentially artificial work of art, with a cleverly sweetened aroma.

Alas, it wasn’t that aroma that Lerne and I were breathing, but the curt, simple and primitive corolla in which the perpetuation of the species is allegorized, and whose anticipated fruit is its sole raison d’être. Its imperious odor intoxicated us: a poisonous perfume, weighted with luxury and jealousy; the scent of Nature’s tenebrous designs, in which it not so much the love of a woman that pulses as a hatred for all other men.

Barbe came and went like a jack-in-a-box, serving the meal. We ate silently. I avoided the pleasant spectacle of Emma, convinced that my gaze, if it lighted upon her, would carry an implication of kisses, about which my uncle would not be mistaken.

Now entirely at ease, she feigned indifference. With her chin in her hands and her elbow on the table, her bare arms emerging from short sleeves, she looked out of the window at the meadow, whose occupants were lowing.

I would have liked, at least, to look at the same thing as my beloved. That distant and sentimental communion would, it seemed to me, have appeased my base ambition for more intimate encounters. Unfortunately, the meadow was invisible from where I was sitting, and my eyes wandered idly, always perceiving, in spite of themselves, the whiteness of bare arms and the uplifts of a bosom that was palpitating faster than might have been expected.

Faster than might have been expected.

As I interpreted that agitation in my favor, Lerne, hostile and taciturn, called an end to the session. As I went past the young woman, brushing her, I felt that she was entirely vibrant; her nostrils were quivering—and a great delight transported me. Could I doubt that I had moved her?

We were going past the window when Lerne tapped my shoulder and whispered to me, in the quavering tone in which, I imagine, satyrs laugh: “Ach! There’s Jupiter up to his old tricks!” And he pointed at the bull, standing lecherously amid his harem, in the meadow.

By the time we were in the drawing-room, my uncle had already recovered his surly manner. He told Emma to go up to her room, and, having given me a few books, he advised me in a categorical tone to go and read in the shade of the forest.

I could not do otherwise than obey. Bah! I said to myself. For exhorting me to submission, he’s to be pitied more than anything…

 

What took place that night significantly chilled that pity. The incident troubled me all the more because, far from seeming to contribute to the clarification of the mystery, it seemed inherently incomprehensible.

This is what happened.

I had fallen asleep peacefully, my mind occupied with Emma and the delightful hopes associated with her. Instead of taking me into some indecent and entertaining phantasmagoria, however, sleep brought back the previous night’s absurdities: roaring and baying plants. The intensity of the dream increased incessantly. It became so sharp, the noises so real, that I woke up abruptly.

Sweat inundated my body and my hot sheets. The last vibrations of the echo of a recent cry were fading away on my eardrums. It was not the first time…no…I had heard that cry before, from the labyrinth, in the distance, in the direction of Fonval…hmm…

I raised myself on my hands. A ray of moonlight lit the room. There was nothing to be heard except the rhythmic march of Time within the clock, the oscillation of his scythe. My head fell back on the pillow.

Suddenly, though, with a sudden twitch of my entire body, I buried myself under the bedclothes, with my hands over my ears. The sinister howling was coming from the darkness of the grounds, but it was extraordinary and supernatural. It really was the stuff of nightmares, and the dream was intruding upon reality. I thought of the huge plane-tree growing next to the château…

With a superhuman effort, I got out of bed. It was then that the yapping started…a stifled sort of yapping; very stifled…

Well, what of it? All that could have come from the mouth of a dog, damn it!

From the window overlooking the garden, there was nothing to be seen…nothing but the plane-tree and the other torpid trees, in the moonlight…

The howling began again, however, over to the left—and from the other window, I saw something that seemed to me, momentarily, to explain everything. One thing that was certain was that it was reality that had nourished my dream in an auditory sense, actual sounds having suggested the vision of imaginary screamers in my sleep.

There was a huge but emaciated dog out there, with its back to me. It had placed its forepaws on the closed shutters of my old room and was uttering long wails at intervals, with all its might. The other barking sounds—the stifled ones—were replying to it from inside the house. Was the latter really barking, though? What if my hearing, now suspect, were still deceiving me? One might have thought that it was, in fact, the voice of a man imitating a dog. The harder I listened, the more convincing that conclusion became. Yes, certainly, it was impossible to mistake it—how had I been able to hesitate? It leapt to the ears: some joker, installed in my room, was amusing himself by tormenting the poor dog. Furthermore, he had succeeded; the animal was giving signs of increasing exasperation. It modulated its clamor terribly, giving it a more extraordinary intonation every time, as if in desperation.

In the end, it scratched the shutters furiously, and bit them. I could hear the wood cracking between its jaws.

Suddenly, the beast froze, its hackles raised. A storm of abuse abruptly broke out inside the apartment. I recognized my uncle’s voice, without being able to grasp the meaning of the reprimand.

The admonished joker immediately fell silent. But the dog, unaccountably, whose frenzy ought to have diminished, was now beside itself. Its back bristled like a wild boar’s. Growling, it began to run along the wall of the château, toward the middle door. Just as it got there, Lerne opened the door.

Fortunately for me, I had taken the precaution of not drawing back my curtains. His first glance was at my window.

In a low voice, with suppressed anger, the professor scolded the dog. He did not move forward, though, and I realized that he was afraid. The other drew nearer, still growling, its eyes glinting within its vast head.

Lerne spoke louder: “To your kennel, vile beast!” A few foreign words followed; then he went on in French as the animal kept coming: “Go away! Do you want me to beat you? Do you?”

My uncle seemed to be going crazy. The moonlight exaggerated his pallor.

He’ll be torn apart, I thought. He doesn’t even have a riding-crop.

“Back, Nelly! Back!”

Nelly? This was expelled student’s bitch, then—the Scotsman’s Saint-Bernard.

Indeed, the foreign words that poured forth then informed me, to my utter astonishment, that my uncle also spoke English. His guttural invective resonated in the nocturnal silence.

The dog gathered herself, about to pounce—whereupon Lerne, at the end of his tether, threatened her with a revolver, while using the other hand to indicate the direction in which she was to go. While out shooting, I had had the opportunity to see a dog put to flight by a rifle, the murderous power of which it knew. Facing a pistol, the thing seemed to me less banal. Had Nelly experienced the effect of that weapon before? It was plausible, but I thought it more likely that she had a better understanding of English—MacBell’s language—than my uncle’s revolver. She was gentled as if by the voice of Orpheus, crouched down, and took the path toward the grey buildings, as indicated by Lerne, with her tail between her legs. He ran after the dog, and the darkness swallowed them both.

From the depths of my clock, the imperishable Reaper mowed down a few more minutes. In the distance, doors slammed. Then Lerne came back. There was nothing more.

There were, therefore, two unsuspected individuals at Fonval: Nelly, doubtless abandoned by her master in the course of his precipitate flight, whose lamentable appearance scarcely suggested that she was happy there, and the practical joker. For the latter, logically, could not be either of the two women or any of the three Germans; the nature of the buffoonery betrayed the age of its author: only a child cold amuse himself at the expense of a dog. But no one, so far as I knew, was lodged in that wing…

Ah! Lerne had told me that he was using my room. Who, then, was living in it?

I would find out.

If the hidden presence of Nelly in the grey buildings invested that already-intriguing location with new interest, the closed apartments of the château were becoming a supplementary target. My objectives were finally becoming clearer!

As the prospect of the mystery-hunt excited me, a presentiment warned me that I would be wise to follow it to the death, and break Lerne’s first commandment before violating the second. “Let’s get to the bottom of things first,” said the voice of reason. “They’re complicated. Afterwards, we can make provision for the bagatelle in peace.”

If only I had heeded my own advice! But the voice of reason speaks softly, and who, I ask you, can hear it, when passion starts bawling?