News from the Moon, page 21
One of these resurrections crowned his career as an anatomist. Finding himself in Japan, and learning of the imminent decollation of a rebel soldier, he contrived to subject the mortal remains, following the work of the executioner, to his favorite manipulations. As usual, he waited until the severed head had lost its sensibility, little by little; when the eyelids were closed, the eyes dull and the nostrils immobile, he used a pump to force fresh red blood, free of any clots, into the arteries of the brain. Then, all the invited dignitaries saw the head, formerly inanimate, gradually come back to life, reopen its eyelids and flare its nostrils. The bloodless complexion was reinvigorated, the eyes shone.
As the injection continued, the mouth grimaced, the teeth grated, the eyeballs rolled grievously, teardrops formed. Then, someone having called the murderer by his name, the pupils moved slowly to the side from which the call had come, and the frightfully weak voice of the condemned man asked: “What do you want?”
At that moment, a panic took hold of the breathless and petrified audience. Everyone ran for the door. Even the experimenter’s assistant abandoned his side. They knocked over the apparatus, the pump, the receptacles and the head itself–which rolled on the floor, bouncing and howling, trying to nip the legs of the fleeing dignitaries, hampered by their formal attire.
After this scene, three months passed without the doctor pursuing his explorations further.
He took them up again and extended them, armoring his nervous system to proof himself against any surprise, but they no longer succeeded in satisfying him. The phenomenon of resurrection only lasted as long as the continual introduction of blood by means of an artificial and mechanical process.
He tried to recall to life individuals killed by disease and encountered obstacles even more considerable. Often, the new fluid conducted into the cadaver was insufficient to galvanize it. The doctor attributed this failure to the exhaustion or contamination of the organs. It was important that the flowing flesh, the regenerative juice, could reach the channels and reservoirs that required it. The problem came back to the renewal of the essential parts of the body. But which? To replace them all would be wildly fanciful.
Van Kipekap did not hesitate for long. Impulsion being given to the blood as it left the heart, it was this organ that attracted the attention of the doctor. Another consideration, even more serious, dictated his choice. Like Aristotle and Ficinus, he placed the soul in the heart–in contrast to Plato and Descartes, who lodged it in the brain. In his eyes, the heart represented not only the origin and motor of circulation, but the key principle and very source of life. By the substitution of a healthy heart for an exhausted one, he would rejuvenate old men, cure the sick, and realize the fabulous Fountain of Youth that he and his predecessors had expected to obtain by mere blood transfusion.
With this belief, he returned to his experiments in vivisection, in order that his hands might cultivate an indispensable skill and quickness. The extraction of the heart involved an initial large incision made in the breast near to the sixth true rib, then a first section to separate the superior and inferior vena cava from the right auricle, a second stroke of the scalpel to detach the heart from the pulmonary artery, a third to disconnect the pulmonary veins and the left auricle, and, finally, a last flick of the wrist to sever the aorta.
When one bears in mind that it was necessary to carry out this extraction in two individuals–to place the healthy heart in place of the contaminated organ, to reattach by means of ligatures the stumps of the veins and arteries to the corresponding junctures in the breast of the individual to be caulked, and to sew up the percardium and the flesh of the thorax–one will understand the innumerable slicings that Van Kipekap carried out on all the beasts in creation, secretly and in seclusion, before experimenting on his own kind.
In the end, he considered his “training” sufficient, and had only to await an opportunity to confront the final test. It came along.
At the hospital in N***, on the Scheldt,77 where Doctor Van Kipekap had his clinic, he observed one day two neighboring beds occupied by an old invalid and a young injury-victim. Both were dying, with the difference that the former was succumbing to sickness and senility while the other, built to last for a long time, was perishing accidentally.
The innovator had his demonstration.
Having solemnly summoned the most illustrious doctors, his interns and the great men of Flanders, he chloroformed the two patients, carried out point for point the little program so often repeated on innocent stray dogs and congenial rabbits, effectively attaining the substitution of the healthy and intact heart of the man in his prime for the worn-out and degenerate organ of the septuagenarian. The wounded man died, while the invalid awoke following a recuperative slumber, completely transfigured, as vigorous and hearty as a 14-year-old.
Among Van Kipekap’s colleagues, some hailed it as an unqualified miracle, others as a fraud or a conspiracy. All of them challenged him to repeat the marvelous experiment. Van Kipekap asked for no more, and succeeded a second time. He operated repeatedly with the same facility. Then the envious bowed down.
Meanwhile, the news of the prodigy spread, dazzling and resounding, to all four corners of the world. Humankind in its entirety glorified this Fleming, who had equipped it with near-immortality.
In truth, the finding only benefited those people rich enough to afford to regain their youth. Such as they would be able to change their hearts as they changed their clothes and their mistresses. With the introduction of a new heart into the economy, the other machinery of the human clock was repaired.
It became very difficult to obtain exchangeable organs, because a well-constituted rogue that fate had delivered to a tragic death–and who, having been declared lost, consented to be separated from his irreproachable heart for the benefit of a millionaire mortgaged by old age and excess–did not turn up every day, at the appropriate moment. In normal times, one could only shop around for that desirable article in certain heroic categories: masons fallen from scaffolding, miners surprised by an explosion of fire-damp, railway-passengers crushed by an impact with the buffers, victims of cut-throats, and the same cut-throats in the hour of their expiation.
The heart became the luxury item par excellence, the monopoly of Croesus. Prices soared in proportion to the youth and vigor of the subject. Speculation became involved; the human heart was quoted on the Bourse like any other commodity. Despite the extraordinary prices commanded by that engine, supply invariably fell short of demand. Only war caused a lowering.
The only opportunities for repair extended to the middle classes arose by bombardment. Then, one might witness the most extraordinary of spectacles. Valetudinarians and incurables would drag themselves along in the wake of armies, in breathless anticipation of the following day’s butchery, their longevity awaiting the violent suppression of thousands of the able-bodied and spirited. On bloody chessboards where black men were throttled by white, these gentlemen’s surgeons and lawyers, lugged around on litters, leaned out over mortally wounded young recruits and conscripts, extending their instruments and pens. From those blond youths who were already dying, the vampires asked nothing more than to sign on the dotted line before witnesses. The surgeon took the place of the minister and the man of law to perforate and butcher each expiring soldier with all expedition. They went in this manner from one body to another, providing a prelude to the mutilations of the rooks and vultures.
Inevitably, abuses occurred and justice armed itself with new laws. In times of peace, many a conscienceless industrialist did not shrink from procuring by crime that which politics was tardy in delivering to him. Assassins supplanted conquerors. The courts investigated abominable affairs of the abduction and murder of children.
Thus, the discovery of Doctor Van Kipekap only profited the tiniest minority of humankind, while worsening the lot of the majority of men in exposing their robustness and their very blood to the ferocious covetousness of the powerful. Serfdom was kept alive under guises as various as ever: prison-seed, hospital-haunts, gallows-birds, cannon-fodder, pleasure-fodder and scalpel-fodder.
II.
At that time, one of the compatriots of Doctor Van Kipekap of N*** on the Scheldt was a poor devil of a paver named Tony Wandel. He was a simple Christian soul in a body worthy of the Homeric era. Married to a blonde pauper, who was his equal in resignation and as beautiful as the legendary burgesses of Anvers and Bruges, the father of three little ones as chubby as Rubens cherubs, he toiled steadfastly six days a week, his piledriver or mallet falling rhythmically and incessantly on the flagstones. He was never idle, except when he had to be; he would have considered it stealing from the four innocent creatures who comprised his paradise on Earth had he wasted a quarter of an hour of the working day or a sou of his wages in the pursuit of drunkenness.
Tony Wandel experienced neither envy nor rancor in comparing his lot with that of the aristocrats of N***. He endured the weather as God sent it to him, considering himself unrivalled in that he was able to feed, house and clothe his own.
On Sundays in summer and other holy days, after vespers, the humble family walked lovingly along the river bank. They inhaled the briny breeze, the fragrance of new-mown hay beneath the dikes, the invigorating perfume of tar. Their eyes would follow the flight of white sails over the greenish carpet of the waves or the corkscrewing smoke of a ferry-boat. Less contemplative, the children would rush up and down the slopes gathering armfuls of selected flowers, while wallowing farm animals and shy horses greeted them with a neigh or a whinny.
As evening approached, after the beneficial walk, they would snuggle together under the vaulted ceiling of an inn at the town gate, pounded by the vibrations of the organ and the dance, and share a waterzoei–the Flemish bouillabaisse–and slices of bread with white cheese spiced with garlic, all accompanied by a delectable uitzet, the beer of beers. They would go home as night fell, contentedly taciturn, the parents carrying their two youngest in their arms.
Thus they labored all their life, while the grey and monotonous weeks went by like a rain-filled sky that Sundays crossed with rainbows. But this humble outcast’s felicity suffered an eclipse. One day, the housewife waited much longer than usual for the paver to return for his supper. Anxiously, she ran to his workplace. There she learned from her husband’s gang-mates that he had been knocked down while lending a hand–helpful as ever–to decouple a carriage, when the horse, whipped by the impatient driver, took the bit in its teeth and succeeded in starting up the heavy vehicle, one of whose wheels had passed over the paver’s legs. She would find the wounded man in the hospital, but–his companions added, shaking their heads–perhaps with two limbs fewer.
Having heard this sad anthem, Nellie hastened to fly off in search of her man. They had exaggerated. The amputation of the paver’s limbs would not be necessary, but the poor devil would be crippled for life and would be unable to walk without crutches.
He recovered, but what good was that? No more working for six days, no more walking on the seventh. Little by little they ate through their savings, selling the most elegant of their clothes. Soon, they were heavily in debt, the baker’s tally-stick covered in countless notches. Then privation attacked the rosy cheeks of the wife and children.
After that, there was no other recourse left to the paralytic than begging. Every day, leaving the sick woman to look after the little ones, the cripple undertook his painful and humiliating pilgrimage. Tony Wandel, whose muscular arms would still have been able to lift a pick or a mallet with ease, was reduced to extending his hand, at the risk of being taken for an impostor, confused with vagrants and paupers.
Once, when he was backed up against the door of a church, wringing his heart and thinking of his poor angels, telling himself that for love of them he would open his veins and nourish them with his blood, Tony was accosted by a little man in the prime of life. The man had a fresh complexion, thin lips, eyes of different colors, a face framed by salt-and-pepper mutton-chop whiskers, a sly manner and a paunch; he was dressed in black, ornamented and wearing spectacles. In a jerky and metallic voice, this personage subjected the young invalid to a kind of interrogation.
The trusting Tony willingly told the stranger his troubles; although the lad was rather prolix in narrating his adventures, and a chronic lisp stretched the lamentable tale even further, the unknown lent a complacent ear to the hymn of complaint–and, by an approving nod of the head, encouraged the paver to continue.
This mysterious interlocutor was none other than the illustrious Doctor Van Kipekap. While listening to the young chap, the surgeon was staring intently at his new acquaintance. His inquisitive eyes seemed to want to penetrate the outer tegument to analyze the blood and the humors. When the beggar fell silent, the doctor continued his questions.
“And, except for this little misfortune... I beg your pardon, this catastrophe... which has deprived you of the use of your legs, tell me, my dear friend–permit me this familiarity, for your appearance is infinitely agreeable to me–have you ever had any serious illness?”
“I never took to my bed except to make love or to sleep, before this calamity taught me its other functions...” After a pause, the good-hearted fellow added: “At present, I’m in remarkably good health for a useless creature. My stomach aches with an imperious clamor for a nourishment that my arms can no longer earn...”
“Truly, you experience hunger! Adorable young man! A providential encounter! Will you show me your tongue? I’d like to eat it... Will you permit me to take your pulse?... Excellent. And may I put my ear to your chest? There! Perfect! A heart that might beat for a hundred years without missing a pulsation. Sixty-five beats per minute: the normal figure...” He had counted them on his chronometer.
The innocent Tony submitted to this auscultation with all his original deference. The doctor seemed more and more enthusiastic and expansive. He rubbed his hands together. His face became cheerful. He pronounced words that had no significance for the paver in a voluble manner.
“Marvelous constitution!... Solidly build!... Irreproachable well-being! Twenty-three years, and thus beyond the climacteric age! 78 No bile... Blood-supply generous, neither too thick nor too fluid!... Here’s one who fits the bill! There are none but the world-weary, malnourished and badly housed, who bring together a similar combination of physiological virtues.” Abruptly, he demanded of the cripple: “So, my lad, if I’ve grasped the moral of your fascinating story, we no longer hold hard to that she-devil life, and we’d quit it without regret, on condition that our entry into the realm of moles would benefit our widow and orphans?”
“Alas, Monsieur, that’s exactly what I think. A tragic death is better than a tragic life!”
“Well, comrade, what if I took you at your word and asked you to abandon the remainder of your days in exchange for a fortune guaranteed to those you leave behind?”
“I would accept!” the market-trader replied resolutely. “On condition that you show me a Christian door whereby to make my exit from life. Suicide leads to damnation...”
“But a sacrifice like the one you shall consummate to save your family is no longer called a suicide!” said the artful doctor, recalling his casuistry.
“Do you think so, Monsieur? In such a matter, a person of your importance is better able to discern rightness than we mere sheep. Tell me what must be done; I’m your man.”
“Marvelous! I was right to come your way, and your character does not give the lie to your physiognomy. Shake my hand! Your widow will gain 500,000 florins before the Sun sets or I’ll give away my name.”
“My widow! Five hundred thousand florins!” the beggar repeated, as his heart was squeezed by anguish–although hope soon reinflated it.
“Ah, we manage our affairs briskly, my young friend. The bargain set up, the bargain concluded. It will be necessary to do away with you this very day... But before I summarize the details of the transaction for you, and the manner in which we shall fulfill our mutual obligations, would you like to accompany me to a place more suitable for confabulation? Not least because idlers are spying on us, intrigued to see a ragamuffin like you in conversation with the famous Doctor Van Kipekap. We must keep it to ourselves, you understand...”
Luckily, they found themselves in the proximity of a local tavern. Van Kipekap led his placid captive into a room sheltered from eavesdroppers and both of them sat down at a table before a revivifying collation and a delicious flask of dessert wine, which sat in their glasses like liquefied rubies. Then the doctor began to tell his story.
III.
The great man, loyal to his fatherland and a confirmed burgher of N*** on the Scheldt, also counted his among his fellow citizens his principal client, the extremely rich banker Trekkenpluk, a moribund sexagenarian who wanted to recover his health and a new youth at any price, in order to enjoy the fabulous wealth from which death threatened to separate him. For several years, he had been in search of a willing bumpkin who would sell him a sturdy heart, guaranteed faultless by physicians.
Unfortunately, fate had delayed the moment of its acquisition. The number of suicides was diminishing, and suicides skillfully procured at the banker’s behest had killed themselves too abruptly, shooting themselves in the heart, not wishing their precious viscera to profit their survivors. As soon as the news reached him that a pauper was on the brink, Van Kipekap, always on the lookout, would dispatch his best bloodhounds to the hovel, but they always arrived too late; the hanged man, who was taken down completely cold, had already danced the last bourrée.79 Assassins were too conscientious in finishing off their victims and maliciously put the scaffold’s caterers off the scent. Then, there were the wounded transported to hospital, who presumed to die without forewarning the financier who was animated by the most generous sentiments in respect of them.
