The Crazy Corner, page 12
I asked him that, almost furiously. He replied, almost coldly: “I repeat to you that it exists, out there. The yogi is making you see it at a distance. But it exists. He releases it at will, in order that I can copy it. Do you understand, now? Do you understand? This yogi is known as the plague-man.”
Here, in my memories, so coherent up to that point, there is a gap. Surely, under the influence of the liquor or the hypnosis, I lost consciousness for a while. Not for very long, though, for I found myself getting out of a cab at Hawks’ door, and saying to him, angrily: “Definitely, my friend, you’re a great artist, but also a poor friend. Your habitual mystifications were, strictly speaking, excusable. This isn’t, any longer. You’re making a fool of me now—it’s too much. Goodbye!”
He tried to reply. He wanted to take my hands, to take me into his house. I refused. If he had admitted that he had wanted to take the hoax to its conclusion, I would still have forgiven him, but he was obstinate in his denials; he continued to play me for a fool. That really is intolerable, isn’t it? It made me indignant.
Six weeks later I received an issue of the Indian News, in a band on which the address had been written by Hawks, in which an article had been ringed in red pencil.
The article related that plague had suddenly broken out in the village of Pendjah-Sloe, in the wake of a tornado, which had emerged unexpectedly, without any meteorological preliminary, in the midst of a serene sky. It had been possible to circumscribe the epidemic and prevent its spread. It seemed to have been caused, inexplicably, by the tornado, itself inexplicable. The reporter ventured curious theories on that subject, regarding the mysterious correlation of certain epidemics with atmospheric cataclysms. He offered statistics in support, including the exact date and time at which the tornado had surged forth and the first manifestation of the scourge had appeared.
That date was 12 December 1894. The local time corresponded with a London time of four-twenty in the afternoon.
So what? Had the yogi simply been seeing at a distance, having made me share hi vision in what occultists call the astral mirror? Or was he even more than that? Was he the formidable mahatma of evil that Hawks called the Plague-Man?
I have never dared to reach a conclusion, and you ought to understand now why, when I reflect on that strange adventure, that however convinced I am of having lived it in reality, I have all the difficulty in the world persuading myself that it was not a dream.
The New Explosive44
Being almost incompetent in the particular matter in question, having been the only witness to the frightful experiment—in conditions, moreover, that I could not help but find strange and troubling—I am force to confess, honestly, that my testimony offers none of the guarantees necessary to scientific testimony.
I will say even more: this testimony, my own testimony, the testimony of my own eyes and ears, I am the first, when I think about it, to call into doubt.
And yet, I saw and I heard; I am sure, in any case, of having really seen and heard, and not in the course of a dream.
Of the fact that I wasn’t dreaming, at least, palpable proof remains: the letter from my friend Harry Sloughby confirming the existence of the experimenter and my presence at the frightful experiment. While I am writing I have that letter in front of me, and I am rereading it in order convince myself that I wasn’t dreaming.
This is what it says:
No, my dear chap, you won’t see the thing again, at least not alone, for our man has left to prepare his great coup. He claims to be all set now to attempt it. In what location? That I don’t know—but what does it matter? If he succeeds, as he hopes, we’ll know soon enough when we go to the Devil. My only regret then will be not being able to laugh with you at the big joke.
Very cordially yours,
H. S.
Evidently, according to that letter, I witnessed the experiment. But was the experiment really as frightful as I recall? The joyful tone of my friend Harry Sloughby leaves me uncertain about that. How, if he believes in the consequences of the experiment that I narrated to him, can he treat it as a big joke? But isn’t it, in the final analysis, me who made it into a big joke for him?
The last time we had met in London, six weeks earlier, we had had a long metaphysical and cosmogonic discussion in which, going from one thing to another, I had ended up saying to him: “The eternal evolution of matter45 seems to us, for the moment, to be in a period of concentration—but the previous period, and, in consequence, the next, of diffusion, remains in potential. It would be sufficient for a shock to reawaken that dormant potential for the period of diffusion to recommence, and then...”
Abruptly, Harry Sloughby had interrupted me with these words, which I took to be a joke: “I know someone who’s trying to produce that shock.”
When I reproached him for a joke of such a vulgar kind in a conversation as elevated as ours, he added: “I’m not joking. I repeat that I know a man whose cosmogonic ideas are in precise accordance with yours, and who wants to apply them—that’s all.”
“But he’s a lunatic,” I replied.
“He is, indeed, reputed to be mad,” my friend retorted. “He’s even been locked up and treated as such. Thanks to my intervention, he’s been released again. Since then, he’s inherited a considerable fortune. He’s taken advantage of it to try to apply his ideas. He’s occupied in establishing a science that he called chemical cosmogony. Would you like me to put you in communication with him? If you like, he’ll doubtless show you some curious things. He’s never shown anything to me—he thinks that I’m a practical joker.”
Presumably, I had what was necessary to please the man in question. Probably, it was the sincere and ardent enthusiasm for metaphysics that carried me away during our first conversation, with a kind of intoxication suddenly poured into me by the otherworldliness of his gaze.
The man’s eyes, in fact—surely the eyes of a madman—had immediately given me the impression of those bottomless pits that are sounded, or rather imagined, between certain constellations, in the depths of which it is as if one sees the Absolute itself asleep.
I’m expressing as best I can, but really quite badly, what I experienced in plunging myself into his gaze. What I can also say, to translate my sensation to some extent, is that the gaze in question absorbed all the power of attention of which I was capable at that moment. What face and what body did the man have? How old was he? I didn’t notice, and I have no memory of it.
What I do remember, apart from his gaze, is that we were alone, he and I, in a deserted park, and that he let me talk, entirely given over to the metaphysical drunkenness with which his gaze intoxicated me, and which he poured into me with that gaze, in some way, in increasingly copious draughts, intoxicating in the full sense of the English word.
What I also remember—for I ought to say everything—is that my friend Harry Sloughby, before introducing me to the man and abandoning me alone with him in that deserted park, had weighed me down with a sumptuous meal with bloody meat, strong drink and black cigars, under the pretext of rendering me, against the probable emotions I was about to have, particularly solid and “energetic.”
Nevertheless, I hasten to add, when I went into that deserted park, it seemed to me that I was in full possession of my faculties.
What I don’t remember at all, however, is the length of time during which the man allowed me to talk metaphysics beneath his gaze. All that I know is that I went into the deserted park at about two o’clock in the afternoon, and that I only recovered consciousness in bed at my friend Harry Sloughby’s house, having slept for a long time, the following morning.
But I do retain the memory, clearly envisioned, with full consciousness of not having been dreaming, of the frightful experiment.
I had just explained, in lyrical terms, the anterior or forthcoming state of matter in the period of diffusion, and the possibility of a shock reawakening that period of centrifugism, potential within presently-centripetal matter, when the man, his gaze hypnotizing me, said:
“Perhaps I can produce that shock. I’ve found the necessary explosive. It’s only a matter of fabricating the quantity necessary to blow up our astral system. I have enough of it already to blow up the Earth. I’ve made the calculations. You shall see.”
In front of us, in the center of a clearing, a stone sphere as balanced on a pedestal. It was about two meters in diameter.
The man opened a little box, similar to a snuff-box, which seemed to me to be empty. He appeared to take something out of it. He put that imperceptible thing on the rim of a hole bored in the sphere, blew on it, and said:
“Now my grain of explosive is at the center of the sphere. The sphere stands for the terrestrial globe; the explosive is a dose sufficient to blow it up in a quarter of an hour. You shall see.”
He started to run. Alarmed, I followed him. As we arrived at the château, out of breath, after running for a quarter of an hour, I heard a mighty detonation.
The man looked at me, with his gaze in which the Absolute was dormant, which I “saw” awaken in a flash. I was thunderstuck by it. I must have fainted. I don’t remember any more.
I only came to, as I said, in the house of my friend Harry Sloughby the next morning, with a terrible headache, about which he said to me, smiling in his mocking manner, ever the practical joker: “Metaphysics after too good a dinner, my dear chap, makes your hair hurt.”
I told him about the frightful experiment. He said: “You must have had more to drink at the old man’s place?”
“Nothing,” I replied, “absolutely nothing, except for his gaze.”
“You’re as mad as he is,” he said. “Oh, these poets!”
Vexed, almost angry, I left him after that, six weeks ago. The other day, after a note from him inviting me to go hunting in Scotland, I asked him to arrange for me to visit the man again. You have seen his letter in reply.
And that’s the story of the new explosive. You can conclude from it what you wish. For myself, I confess, if the man sends us all to the Devil very shortly, I shall think, like my friend Harry Sloughby, that it’s a big joke.
NIGHTMARES
Pft! Pft!46
Once upon a time, in a country that I cannot specify—for, in truth, the country is called by all names and the time is all of time—there was a woman, of whom I likewise cannot give you an exact description.
Everyone, in fact, saw her differently, and everyone was right, since they really saw her that way.
It is necessary to tell you, however, that she did not do anything in order to be judged in one fashion or another. She contented herself with being, in reality, what people believed her to be, not knowing herself what she was.
A few wise men insinuated that she was doubtless nothing; and others, wiser still, added that that was precisely the origin of her charm. They compared her to clouds, whose magic depends on the dreamer who contemplates them, and to the symphonies of the sea, in which one hears the music that one sings within oneself.
The said wise men were assuredly not particularly stupid in their comparisons, and yet, like all wise men, they were great fools—for that nothing, which they translated so disdainfully as nothing, was also something. The proof of that is that they could not refrain from paying attention to it, and seeking an explanation for it.
Perhaps much wiser were the self-confessed fools who did not seek that explanation, and simply took the mysterious woman for what she was—or, at least, what they believed her to be, and who thus lived by means of her and within her.
Lived, yes, and also died, alas!—and died after having previously suffered the thousand deaths in detail that are known as disappointed desire, deceived faith, shattered hope, jealous love and betrayed love.
But why that alas? Are not those thousand deaths in detail life itself? With the consequence that the amorous hasten gladly to their suffering, and savor them, as if they had these poetic lines for a motto:
Go on, take my life; it’s yours: I yield it to you.
Write what you please on that great white vellum.
Tear, if you wish, all the pages from the book.
Eat my flesh, drink my spirit, empty my stomach,
But let us live! It is still living
To see one’s blood flow.
Furthermore, it ought to be observed, in the mysterious woman’s defense, that she did not make them suffer in that way out of cruelty. She was no more wicked than anything else. She even had, on many occasions, fits of tenderness, of compassionate shame. She grieved sincerely for those she had rendered unhappy.
Many a time, she warned them, in all honesty, by saying to them: “You know that I don’t love you.”
To which they generally replied: “What does it matter? For myself, I adore you.”
And truly, after that, what right had the men she deceived and tortured to complain?
To others, undoubtedly, she sighed, breathlessly: “I love you!”
Then she deceived them too—but then she had this excuse: “I was deceived myself. I thought I loved him. It isn’t my fault. Oh, how I suffer from my error!”
And she said that so prettily, and with such good faith, that it was necessary, as a disinterested judge, to find in her favor.
Then again, she always ended up turning everything to laughter, even her own suffering, and that of others even more so. The foundation of her philosophy—for that nothing, in spite of the opinion of the wise men, had a philosophy—was that it was necessary not to attach any importance to anything whatsoever.
She did not have a hard heart, and did have a heart, since she occasionally wept—but once her back was turned, she no longer thought about her pain, shrugged her shoulders and “moved on,” making a sound with a dainty movement of her lips: “Pft! Pft!”—so often that a wise man with a malicious tongue ended up nicknaming her “Madame Pft! Pft!”
She was not annoyed by that; on the contrary, she took it as a compliment. The nickname seemed to her to be amusing. After reflecting on it at her leisure—for that nothing reflected—she even judged it a convenient employment. Instead of seeking excuses for her conduct thereafter, instead of giving explanations to those who interrogated her as a sphinx, she simply replied to them: “Pft! Pft!”
Then the wise man with the malicious tongue said to himself, scratching his head and congratulating himself on his inventive genius: “Damn it! Might I, without suspecting it, have made a great discovery? Might I have found the key to the enigma?”
He thought so, and pursued the thought so far that he fell madly in love with the mysterious woman, whose mystery he imagined that he had elucidated.
To tell the truth, as he was a wise man and a scholar—which is to say, one of those proud individuals who are extremely skillful at fooling themselves—he did not want to admit that he was in love, and lulled himself with the idea that he was simply obsessive in his scientific duty.
“No,” he repeated to himself, obligingly, “I haven’t been seduced by that doll. I’m intent on studying her, that’s all.”
Now, neither more nor less than the vulgar, he set out to study her by paying court to her, by desiring her, and being avid for her; and, in sum, under the pretext of putting that soul in the crucible, he occupied himself naively in melting in his turn in the hollow of the bed where so many others had melted. No more and no less than so many others, he melted there, the poor wise man—and he learned nothing at all in melting there, the deplorable scholar.
He did not know himself whether he was loved. She could have told him, honestly, that he was not, as she had so honestly told others; but with him, because of his pretentions to divination and the cunning he affected, she amused herself a little by not being frank. When he questioned her, bewildered by passion, she riposted, smiling, looking away: “Pft! Pft!”
She deceived him—that goes without saying—but into that blow she put malice and cruelty, as one can easily believe. In fact, she provided him, as a fortunate rival, with a pure imbecile.
He would have been cowardly enough, that brave scholar, to have forgiven her, if she had consented to make him that confession. If necessary, he could have explained that depravity of taste scientifically, explained it to the point of excuse and absolution. Was it not a natural effect of contrast, that the woman might prefer a brute to an elite intelligence? He would have proved it magisterially, to give himself pleasure. But she did not even leave him that consolation. When he asked her, weeping, if he ought to believe in that rival, and when he proposed piteously to the guilty party to proclaim her innocent, she performed a pirouette, and murmured: “Pft! Pft!”
He knew then all the rage of jealousy and despair. He came to conceive the most criminal projects in consequence. He did not hide them, and threatened to render her responsible for them.
“Yes,” he cried, “that rival to whom you have sacrificed me, I shall kill him.”
She shook her head, to indicate that she did not believe in that sanguinary design, and then she added: “And anyway, even if you do: Pft! Pft!”
Transformed into a ferocious beast, the scholar showed himself to be more brutal than the beloved brute. He lay in ambush for him one evening, cut his throat, butchered the unfortunate fellow, ripped the heart from his breast and came to throw that horrible trophy, still beating, at the woman’s feet.
This time, to be sure, she was a little frightened—but, a gleam of triumph having ignited in the murderer’s eyes, she did not want to recognize that triumph. She stiffened herself against her terror, contemplated the hideous morsel of red flesh tranquilly, turned it over with the tip of her umbrella, and said, with a gracious moue: “Pft! Pft!”
