The New Moon, page 12
“Your father is a monster.”
“Almost all poor people would do the same in Stivalo, because a clear voice is a resource without indigence.”
“Cannot women be made to sing, if people like clear voices?”
“Oh, Sire, women do something else.”
“In my country they do both,” said Poequilon, “and it is considered satisfactory. But let’s leave it there; it’s an evil that it’s necessary to bemoan. What are you going to do in Antopholia?”
“I’m going there to join my wife.”
“Your wife! That’s nice—and your children too, no doubt?”
“Oh, no, Sire,” said the young man, smiling bitterly.
“But explain this enigma to me” said Poequilon. “You have been immolated to music since childhood, but you’re married? What do you do with a wife? Can your voice, which takes the place of everything, take the place of something?”
“Sire,” said the musician, “beauty extends its empire over us, and we are in despair at not being able to obey its laws, but illusion consoles us and the caresses of a beautiful woman, even in redoubling our woes, lighten them…it’s a mystery that can only be understood in our situation.”
“I understand perfectly,” said Poequilon, “the pleasures that you can savor in your condition.”
At these words the musician, thinking he had encountered a peer, said to him: “Have you also lost the precious spring of life, Sire? Your last words seem to authorize me to take that opinion of you; however your opulence does not permit me to be convinced of it, unless you are the Doctor of some illustrious Metrotonic Academy.”
Poequilon was embarrassed to respond to that naivety. “I cannot criticize your question,” he said to the young man, “mine having been equally indiscreet, but there are things so extraordinary in my story that you would not be able to believe it if I told it to you. Let’s get back, I beg you, to what concerns you.”
Rich people are imposing, and the young Stivalian was reduced to replying.
“So, you’re married,” Poequilon continued, “but such an engagement in a profanation, which robs society of the productive voluptuousness of your spouse, and these sterile liaisons cannot have the approval of the law.”
“Pardon me,” said the musician; “the Paterodiple permits us to marry in order to soften our bitterness and prevent us from becoming women.”
“What do you mean, becoming women?” said Poequilon. “What obscurity…?”
“Sire,” the young man replied, “when you get to Antopholia, you will not take long to discover the thread of that labyrinth.”
IX. Mysteries of Antopholia; Poequilon escapes
miraculously a misfortune that does not threaten him
in the face.
While conversing thus they arrived in Antopholia. Poequilon rewarded the young musician generously. He met his wife, who seemed to him to be charming, and asked her how she had been able….
The beautiful Piastrella interrupted him, to tell him that women engaged in a legally duty-free marriage were dispensed from conjugal fidelity, but that it was a tacit law that it was hidden from the infirm husbands, for the tranquility their minds.
Poequilon understood that marvelously, and made arrangements with Piastrella in order that young Becco, her husband, should remain in ignorance of the tacit law.
As he did not know anyone in Antopholia, he retained the young Becco with him, to company him everywhere. The City seemed so agreeable that he resolved to stay there for some time; he saw the squares, the palaces, the temples, the statues, the libraries and the tombs, and filled his notebooks with numismatic devices and epitaphs.
Meanwhile, he circulated in society, and noticed that his looks had never been so praised as in that city. The men, in particular, exclaimed over his beautiful eyes, hair, etc., and he observed that Becco, who passed for his groom, also had a considerable share in the praises of the Anapholians.
“Becco is very likeable,” one of them said to Poequilon, “and I congratulate you.”
Another, by contrast, said to him: “I would like you better than Becco.”
He did not know what all that meant, and dared not ask the impetuous Antopholians to explain.
He found himself alone one day with the beautiful Cappellugola. She was a woman whose figure and beauty were comparable to the famous Venus of Antopholia. He declared to her in a few words the passion that she inspired in him.
The beauty with a majestic face said to him: “Go find your Becco.”
Poequilon took that opportunity to clarify the mystery, and said to her: “I swear to you, beautiful Cappellugola, that Becco is only my groom, and I don’t believe that I can do anything else with him, except make him sing sometimes, because he has a beautiful voice.”
“What!” said Cappellugola. “Becco isn’t….”
“I can assure you,” Poequilon said, “that I don’t understand what you’re saying, and I beg you to instruct me regarding the mores of Antopholia and to regard me as the admirer of your unique attractions.”
Reassured, Cappellugola kissed Poequilon tenderly, and told him, without outraging Nature, how the Antopholians insulted beauty.32
When he left that beauty’s arms, he met Cappellugola’s husband on the stairway, who said to him: “Don’t be alarmed to encounter me, young foreigner; I know about the sweet moments you’ve just spent with Cappellugola, but the Antopholians are of good composition. I could stab you twenty times in the heart, as is sometimes practiced among us when we have nothing better to do, but there are reasons for not always being so malevolent. Your physiognomy touches me, and I want to penetrate you with my good intentions; come with me.”
Poequilon, judging this discourse insidious, put up some resistance; soon, twenty servants took hold of him, and after having dragged him into a closet they delivered him in the most submissive state to the jealous Antopholian, who was about to avenge himself in his own manner when Selenos permitted the floor to collapse. Poequilon found himself free and unharmed in the vestibule, from which he ran home.
“That’s it,” he said. “I’m leaving this infamous nation, which lightning ought to set ablaze one day, this impure cloaca where one sees eagles crawl and rivers flow without sources, and where, in sum, all Nature is overturned.
XII. A Periphanian adventure taken to its conclusion.
Recognition that does not flatter everyone.
After that imprecation and a brief rest, Poequilon escaped the Antopholians, sometimes looking behind him, because he feared the pursuit of those furious people. He arrived by night in Periphanes, a large city that was the capital of Periphania.
I say “by night,” but that is a manner of speaking, because the day star never ceases to illuminate that great nation; it finds it difficult to turn its gaze elsewhere, because everything there is so remarkable. There are the serenades that lovers sing under the windows of their mistresses, and combats between bulls and Periphanians, in which there is a great deal of applause when the bull is victorious. The rest of the time is spent killing little insects in the sunlight and massacring enemies in the crowd with the aid of the mantle with which the Periphanians cover their faces. No one pays any attention to these murders; it is only Tauricide that merits the attention of the law.
That species of man comes into the world with the Aphrodise; they are very sober, extenuated by amour, puffed up with pride and flaccid with idleness. The women are beautiful and very voluptuous; they lose their heads at the sight of a Verticephalian; they walk in the shade, their faces covered by a veil, and are imprisoned for the rest of the day behind grilles and bolts, confided to the guard of an old woman known as a Dracona.33
All that means, I think, that the Periphanians are very jealous, but so many precautions do not prevent the temperament of the Periphaniennes from harvesting an amiable foreigner from time to time.
Poequilon studied the customs of the Periphanians for some time and went for regular walks at the same time as the women. One day, he noticed the figure and gait of a Periphanienne, and thought he recognized Olympia. In that opinion, he followed her cautiously and discovered her dwelling. He learned that her name was Motacilla, and that she was married to Señor Alto Fronto Balordo Occisero de los Occiseros.34 He retired very pensively at that news, and was going into his house when an old dracona handed him a letter, saying to him: “Handsome horseman”35—that is the usual epithet that given to men in that country—“don’t neglect such precious advantages.”
Poequilon had nothing more pressing to do than shut himself away to read the letter, which he rightly judged to be gallant. He saw these words, in the Verticephaliam language:
Handsome horseman.
If you have courage and if you love beauty, at the same hour tomorrow you will allow yourself to be guided by the dracona who has handed you this letter, and you will receive the caresses of the most amorous of Periphaniennes.
Motacilla
On reading this, Poequilon was confirmed in the belief that Motacilla was none other than Olympia, who had recognized him, but, living under the tyranny of Balordo Occifero, she could not employ any other means of seeing him than the customary stratagems of the women of the nation. That she had not declared herself in the letter was doubtless to procure him an agreeable surprise. On the other hand, a certain impulse of jealousy troubled him. He thought that Olympia might not have recognized him, but had become amorous at the sight of him, and he judged that he ought not to miss the rendezvous, whether it was to encounter an unhappy and faithful wife or to convince him of her perfidy.
The moment came and the dracona came to find him with two men laden with a harpsichord case; he allowed himself to be put inside it, and he was carried in that fashion all the way to Motacila’s room. When he was liberated, the beautiful Periphanienne offered herself to his eyes and revealed her charms to him, which are easier to represent than describe. She was in the most voluptuous state of undress, and the most comfortable for a climate in which the heat causes the bitter and subtle fire of an inexhaustible sensuality to flow through the veins, and which plunges into a delicious languor those who carry it in their bosom.
Her wavy hair flowed over her bare shoulders, and over her delicate midriff a light garment of dazzling whiteness outlined her magnificent waist and the curve of two widespread hips, which announced the girdle of Venus. A light abundantly-pleated skirt, in which amours seemed to be hiding, allowed the sight of two slender and elegantly turned legs, the gracious contours of which were revealed by attitudes that seemed involuntary. From that ravishing base, Poequilon returned his gaze to a pale and agitated bosom, which no veil concealed, and the visage of a Goddess, whose alabaster was only differentiated from that cleavage by the nuances of the subjugated modesty that flatters even at the moment of amorous delirium.
Two large dark and languid eyes appeared to take pleasure in Poequilon’s delight, and two beautiful arms wound tenderly around the amorous Verticephalian.
“Handsome Hyppicos,”36 she said, in the Periphanian language, “I can see that you love me; don’t languish any longer; let’s take advantage of the sweet moments that love accords to us.
Burning with amour, Poequilon soon said to himself: I came here expecting to find Olympia; it isn’t her, but ought I to offend the beautiful Motacilla, who prefers me to all the distinguished men in Periphanes? No, there is no man capable of such firmness; I shall make the most adorable of all women happy; our felicity is common. Oh, forgive me, Olympia; I am dying of amour, and Motacilla is tearing me away from you and from myself.
He savored inexpressible pleasures, and in the transports of joy and gratitude he said to the beauty: “Never have the pleasures of amour seemed to me so seductive, so vivid; I thought I might die twenty times over of languor, fury, sentiment, voluptuousness and tenderness. I had only ever experienced such sweetness with Olympia.”
The beautiful Periphanienne, her eyes moist with tears, said to him: “Recognize Olympia, Poequilon, and see that the true pleasures are only in the knots that we have formed.”
Poequilon was nonplussed by these words. He considered the beauty attentively, and as if the scales had fallen from his eyes, he recognized Olympia. He bathed her with his tears and covered her with the most tender kisses—but the memory of Alto Fronto Balordo Occisero de los Occiseros came back to mind.
Olympia smiled, and told him that the Occisero in question was only one of the women of her retinue in disguise, that she had used that stratagem for safety’s sake in all the places where she had traveled in search of him since leaving Eutoquia, where the children she had left there had multiplied considerably.
“I begged Selenos so much to permit me to search for you,” she added, “that he granted me that favor, but on condition that if you were unfaithful to me after having found me again that I would return immediately to the Island of Eutoquia and that you would only see me again on that Fortunate isle—which you will reach one day, it’s true, but only after many difficulties.
Poequilon swore the most constant fidelity to her, and asked her for details of her travels and her sojourn on the happy Island.
Olympia replied that Selenos had forbidden her to satisfy his curiosity in that regard, and that he would be informed when destiny ordained it.
Poequilon contented himself with that response, but he wanted to make sure that Occisero really was a woman; the slave in question was summoned, and Poequilon was soon librated from his anxieties.
He asked his dear wife then how she had subsisted since leaving the island, and learned with abundant joy that Selenos had granted her the projection powder in the four known and arid continents of the Moon.
XIII. A Voyage to Pitho
Poequilon wanted to leave Periphania and enjoy the company of his beloved Olympia in a nation where the mores were more to his taste, and he decided on the famous city of Agathokrine, the capital of the Empire of Pitho.
Olympia, who had been traveling for a long time, fruitfully, said to Poequilon: “The mores of Pitho would not have suited you any better than those of Periphania. However, there have been fortunate changes in these estates. The Emperor of Periphania has established laws that ought to change the face of government and assure the tranquility of the people; he has destroyed the monsters that were ravaging the nation, and by virtue of a generous firmness that cannot be to highly praised in this climate, he has put all the Periphanians under his personal protection.
“The Emperor of Pitho merits equally great praise; he has triumphed over the blackest conspiracies and has profited from that glorious success to put limits on the severity of the Fecracy,37 by making himself the High Fecrat of his Empire; but I don’t like lands where changes are so recent; there always remains some germ there fatal to foreigners, and if you take my advice, we won’t remain there for long.”
They eventually arrived in Agathokrine. Poequilon was surprised and edified by the extraordinary piety of the people. “In truth,” he said, “these people inspire me with a singular confidence, and I could easily take them for Angels.”
“Suspend your judgment,” said Olympia. “Appearances are very deceptive under a Fecratic government. In fact, the fear of losing their property and the terror of torture renders some secretive and throws the others into a lethargy far from the piety that Selenos desires.
“These people that you believe to be so Saintly, if they have the slightest suspicion of you, will go to denounce you to the Fecrats, for you to perish cruelly. I cannot blame them, for if one does not do that, another will accomplish that dire function, and the unfortunate Pithonian who has spared you will be enveloped with you in the deadly sentence.”
These warnings frightened Poequilon, who noticed that the Fecrat Edifiants imposed authority upon families. He was afflicted by that, for he had known that breed for a long time.
“If the Fecrats are part of the government,” he said, “should they not remain in their Tribunals to await the complaints of Individuals and judge cases within their competence? Nothing is so indecent as to be both Judge and Emissary.”
It was thus that they reasoned on the mores of Pitho, and they resolved to conduct themselves with so much circumspection that the Fecracy could not get its teeth into them.
XIV. A prompt exit from Pitho, and for good reason.
In spite of Poequilon’s precautions, a Fecratic storm gathered over his head, and he had no suspicion of it. He learned by chance that a woman from Stivalo, with whom he had once been acquainted, was living not far from Agathokrine. He wanted to see her, and having found out where she lived, he saw the shoes of an Edifiant at the door. He did not think that such footwear ought to prevent him from going in, and as an old friend of the mistress, he went into the apartment. He was very astonished to catch the Edifiant in a function opposed to his ministry; however, he made his apologies and left.
On the way back he met a bearded man who usually turned his ingots into coin for him, and told him about that adventure.
“You’re lucky that I’m a Lipodermist, and in consequence incapable of denouncing you,” he said, “but believe me, run away with your wife if you don’t want to be reduced to ashes at the next Good Work of the Fecracy. You’ve committed an irremediable profanation in not going away on seeing the Edifiant’s shoes. The chamber into which you penetrated was a sanctuary. Flee, I tell you; I tremble for you and or me. The crime committed by my father, who was burned after being ruined, was trivial compared with yours.”
“But my wife told me,” said Poequilon, “that since the day when the Emperor made himself High Fecrat, the Fecracy had become less severe.”
“That’s all well and good,” said the Lipodermist, “but as long as the word Fecracy subsists, fear for your skin; there are indeed some Fecracies less dangerous than others; the Fecracy of Stivalo, the Fecracy of Periphania and the Fecracy of Gondola are not as terrible as Pitho’s, and Pitho’s is less terrible than Zinzibri’s, but in that matter it’s the same as diseases; it’s commonly said that there are no good diseases, and the same is true of Fecracies…. Shh! The Pithonians are already watching us. The Fecrat has spoken; I’m sure of it. Save yourselves, quickly. I’m running too, since I’ve been seen with you.”
