Aslan Norval

by B. TRAVEN

  “Gone crazy, you mean? Not at all. The guinea pig will serve me to find out what my husband might do when he hears that another man—well, what happened at the hotel and with my consent. However, finding that out has little or nothing to do with me personally. Your job as my guinea pig, which you completed excellently, was a different one. I admit that I’m extremely satisfied with my vivisection. It was a much greater success than I expected.”

  “And as your guinea pig, I was the subject of your vivisection?”

  “Yes, you were. I wanted and needed a certain answer to a question that has occupied me for a long time. I could only obtain this answer in empirical fashion and from personal experience. You see, Mr. Beckford, I am very happily married to my husband. The truth is that I could never cheat on my husband.”

  “And last night? And this afternoon?”

  “Of course you don’t think so. That’s absolutely understandable. However, the truth is that I did not cheat on my husband.”

  “And why are you telling me that?”

  “You wanted me to explain the experiment, right? You wanted to know how and why the vivisection happened, right?”

  “Of course—since you did the vivisection on me.”

  “Let me get to the point. You have to know that my husband married me when I was twenty-four years old. And I entered the marriage as a virgin. And by the way, you might not believe it, but in this country more girls marry as virgins than you might think.”

  “I don’t agree at all, ma’am. I have not met a single virgin,” answered Beckford, taking a big gulp of his extra-big double whiskey as if he wanted to wash away the unpleasant memories.

  “I guess it depends on the circles in which you move, Mr. Beckford. And just to tell you something else, which you will find just as unbelievable: my husband gave me four weeks before consummating the marriage. Unbelievable to you, right? However, when we figured out how to be with each other, I learned to my great surprise that age should not be judged according to years listed in a birth certificate. My experiment was nothing but curiosity. I wanted to know what kind of difference exists in this kind of matter between a mature man, of average, or I might say, boyish nature and strength, and a muscular, powerful young athlete like you are, Mr. Beckford—although you really are getting rather soft. I undertook two trials of the vivisection on purpose. The first one was last night, when you were drunk and shy at the same time, because it was the first time. And the second trial was this afternoon, when you hadn’t had anything to drink and did not need to be shy anymore, especially since I made it so terribly easy for you, and practically offered myself to you.”

  “Well, and so what happened?”

  “Do you want to find out the results of the vivisection?”

  “I’m dying to find out.”

  “Mr. Beckford, the results are devastating for you. You cannot compete with my husband in the least, Mr. Beckford. I could not have paid for this kind of experience that you kindly helped me gain, with money or anything else. Thanks to you, I have learned about my husband’s value in every possible way. I hope that you understand now that I did not cheat on my husband. Instead, I affirmed my faithfulness as stronger and more lasting than ever before. Thank you very much, Mr. Beckford, for your kind participation in this vivisection, which was so terribly important for me.”

  “I am the one who must thank you, ma’am.”

  “As you wish. It doesn’t offend me. Look over there,” Aslan pointed to a building in the middle of the street. “There is a subway station. The subway will take you to your hotel much faster than I could in evening traffic.”

  Beckford went to the bar, paid, and told the waiter to pick up the glasses. Then he sauntered to the subway station. As soon as he arrived in Lower Manhattan, he went to the closest bar to pick up a girl or fish for a lonely woman whose husband did not understand her. He was hoping to regain some of his manly pride, which had been gravely injured.

  18.

  Although Beckford had prepared her, Aslan was quite surprised about the piles of newspapers, clippings, telegrams, and letters that had accumulated in the APTC offices during her absence. As Amy explained, most of the telegrams and letters were ones that congratulated Aslan on her enterprising spirit, which had allowed her to defend her ideas and plans so superbly in front of the senators. A significant part of the correspondence consisted of questions regarding where and at what price you could buy APTC shares. There were telegrams with the same questions from Canada, South America, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Amy gave Aslan an overview of what the newspapers had reported in the last few days.

  “The newspapers only mentioned the hearing in front of the committee in the first few days. These days, you don’t read anything about the hearing. Instead you hear about what senators, members of congress, and politicians in general have to say about your project. It appears that the powerful newspapers are on your side, ma’am.”

  “And why shouldn’t they be?” answered Aslan. “It’s a billion-dollar business that the canal or the railway will provide for the large and heavy industries, who are the ones funding the newspapers. The powers that be in industry can smell the fact that large army deliveries won’t exist anymore if Russia and our country can come to an agreement, which could happen overnight as things have been developing recently. Our project will give large industry more work for longer and with greater security than the army could ever do. The army devours and devours resources, but it is completely unproductive. Our railway project on the other hand, is very productive and promises profits that will not be any smaller than those of the unproductive war industry at the end of the day.”

  “I never considered such results and possibilities,” Amy said, surprised.

  It was indeed exactly as Beckford had described it to Aslan when they had sat on the hotel terrace. A complete reversal in public opinion and general interest of the population had occurred. People were tired of the eternal fearmongering and turned their thoughts and expectations toward something positive, finally to channel their incredible creativity and irrepressible energy into new areas of activity. One such new area of activity was the execution of this gigantic plan, a plan so huge that humans had never dared imagine anything like it before.

  Within the span of three weeks, it was not even a question anymore whether the canal or the railway would be built. No, the only question occupying the public was short and sweet: When do we begin building the railway?

  Three weeks were enough for the majority of the most experienced engineers to decide in favor of the railway, as Aslan had broadly outlined it during the hearing in front of the committee. It would cost much less to build the railway than the canal. They would have to buy much less land. The construction of the railway would only take five, and at most, eight years if the cooperation were well organized. How many ships could be transported from one ocean to the other only depended on the number of freight trains.

  Instead of a single sluice that would lift each ship hydraulically onto the freight train, you could build six, ten, or even more sluices side by side if necessary. They would lift the ships onto a sidetrack at first, from where the ships would later move to the main tracks.

  The newspapers discussed the smallest details of the project’s various problems. Engineers who had something new and interesting to write received up to five thousand dollars per article. The readers devoured those articles more eagerly than the common stories about scandals, which were published daily, and where yesterday’s differed from today’s only in the names of the protagonists.

  Editors constantly received letters from readers with new, sometimes very useful proposals. However, they had discussed every technical problem so often and from so many perspectives that it seemed there was nothing new to expect. Suddenly the question appeared: Where is the money coming from for the execution of this project? Who will pay? It had become clear that it was not a matter of hundreds of millions but rat
her about many hundreds of billions of dollars. Courageous reporters found answers and shared them with their readers in their newspapers at the risk of being summoned in front of an investigating committee accused of worshipping anti-American ideas.

  They said take the money from where it does not serve any purpose but to keep all nations of this earth, all people of goodwill in constant fear of hydrogen bombs. It works like this: Keep the Russians and their colonial peoples afraid of the mercenary Americans. Instill in Americans terrible fear of the potentially destructive desires of the Bolsheviks, who have no religion and no culture. Anxiety. Fear. Horror. Threats. Keep people afraid and anxious, and you can take up to ninety-two percent of their income and they will even say thank you. Their fear of imprisonment for tax evasion will help you. Fear is the most pitiless and cruelest enabler of dictators.

  Where is the money coming from? We have so much money that we throw it at countries that do not even want it, they were saying. Not even England said thank you. And why should they? Don’t they like the Bolsheviks more than us in England? However, we lack the courage to admit that.

  Ten minutes after publication of the newspaper that had printed the question “Where is the money coming from?” the author of the article and the editor who had accepted it were unemployed on the streets.

  However, two days later a notice appeared that was worthy of printing: The Bolsheviks, not the Russians, no, the Bolsheviks had managed to create a remote-controlled hydrogen warhead. At a range of eight thousand kilometers, it would miss its target at worst by a mere forty meters. It was capable of a destructive power ten billion times stronger and more destructive than that of the atomic bomb that had exploded over Hiroshima.

  The ink of this news had barely dried in the papers when the American Department of Defense reported that they had successfully remote-controlled an unmanned airplane from an underground cave. If this plane left Cape Canaveral, Florida, at exactly 7:13 in the morning, it would fly around the globe in precisely nineteen minutes and would be capable of dropping its hydrogen bombs over the center of Lake Michigan 12.46 seconds later.

  The American newspapers did not have to wait long for an answer from the Bolsheviks. This time, it was an invisible wall of radar that rotated high in the atmosphere and was remote-controlled from the ground. It was capable not only of catching any rocket fired by the Americans but also of propelling it back at a precisely calculated angle so that it would explode over the center of Times Square in New York. And people wasted their time with these inventions and counterinventions. They were kept prisoners in laboratories, squeezed into uniforms, and decorated with glittering medals. They squandered and idled away their short, valuable, measured time on earth, their life. A life that had been given to them only once until eternity and which they could never repeat to serve more noble purposes.

  Certain circles tried to get the world to understand that it was impossible to live together with the enemies of culture and civilization, and that we should not even try to do so. Newspapers, speeches in Congress, and keynotes constantly kept the possibility of a nuclear-and-hydrogen war alive. Nevertheless, the project of the Inter-American-Atlantic-Pacific-Connection inspired both public and private opinions with increasing enthusiasm daily. Even militarists began sending articles to the newspapers. They supported the project decisively, of course, only from a military perspective.

  In any case, whether certain politicians liked it or not, the project was again the focus of the interest of tens of thousands of people. You could observe the construction of this project. It was something solid, something you could hold on to, something useful, as opposed to indefinite, unknown, feared horrors.

  19.

  Holved, who had returned a week ago from Indonesia, was sitting nonchalantly in Aslan’s boudoir, flipping carelessly through the evening newspaper.

  “You know, Aslan,” he said, without looking up from the paper, “I really don’t feel like spending the evening and the night, maybe until four in the morning, with Elmer Tuckers and his other half. He, Elmer, I mean, is a delightful guy with whom you can have quite some fun when you are alone with him. But she, Minnie, really gets on my nerves. She is so boring that even God would be bored. She only gossips about her neighbors, how often they fight, give each other black eyes, reconcile, and then go to their lawyers a week later to get an irreversible divorce. It could make you go to sleep.”

  “Why did you invite both of them, then?”

  “Since they are both in New York, I can’t just run around with Elmer alone as we usually do. And since I am saddled with both, you have to participate. One couple with another couple. Business. As you know, Elmer is powerful in the administration of his city and his electoral district. Last year, he pushed three construction contracts our way. When he told me on the phone yesterday that he was in New York and would gladly accept an invitation for a cheerful evening, what was I supposed to do? I offered to show him and his rib New York at night. He quietly hinted he might have a new contract for us in his pocket. The way I understand it, they want to build two significantly larger airports and a new, extremely modern overland bus station out there in Idaho.”

  Holved continued to talk without wondering whether Aslan was listening or not. She was sitting dressed in a light housedress in front of the mirror, polishing her nails and lost in thought. Her nails, however, were already in perfect condition.

  Without looking up, and keeping her eyes focused on her fingertips, she said: “You know, Holved, I cannot keep any secrets from you.”

  “There is no reason to keep secrets. Don’t tell me you shot someone during my absence and need me to get you out of that mess now.”

  He was still leafing through his newspaper. He was used to Aslan’s frequent confessions: A collision with another car at a total cost of five hundred dollars, including damages to be paid. Or a confrontation with a police officer; in a hurry, she had hurled about a dozen remarks at the officer, which he had misunderstood since he was in a bad mood, and which had resulted in a citation. Another time, she had had troubles with the cook, who had quit on the fifteenth. Of all things, it had been the cook whom Holved loved particularly because she actually knew how to cook. Usually, Aslan confessed to such incidents, really more to be talking and less because she thought it was her duty to report everything that happened. Holved rarely got excited by her confessions. Since his thoughts were often all over the place when Aslan told him something that was of little interest to him, he hardly listened now when she casually mentioned that she could not keep a secret from him.

  Without looking up from his newspaper he said indifferently: “Well, what is it this time that you cannot keep secret?”

  “Nothing as embarrassing as a fine or a citation,” she said, picking up her comb to fix her hair in front of the mirror. “It’s very simple. I got involved with a man. That’s it, and I think as your wife, I should confess this to you.”

  She said all this so casually that Holved did not understand even half of it. Apparently, her words only slowly took on shape and meaning for him, since he remained unaffected for a few seconds, concentrating on a newspaper article.

  Suddenly, however, he looked up, startled, and dropped the newspaper onto his knees. “What did you just say? Did I hear correctly?”

  “You did hear correctly, Holved. And it didn’t just happen once, it happened twice. Once late at night and the second time was in broad daylight the following day in the afternoon. Of course, I had drawn the drapes.”

  “Well, at least the drapes were drawn. Very careful on your part. Of course you only dreamed all this.”

  He was quietly hoping she would admit that it had been a dream and that she would say with a laugh she only wanted to see what he would do if he learned of something like this. And as if she had indeed guessed his thoughts, she said: “I did it for two reasons. On the one hand, I wanted to find out what you would say or do.”

  “And on the other hand?”

  �
��And on the other hand, I did it out of curiosity, pure, unadulterated curiosity.”

  “Curiosity?”

  “Yes, really and truly out of curiosity. And there was no other reason. I wanted to find out personally what kind of difference there is between a man of your age and a man my age, who is built like a boilermaker and could perform as a wrestler at the circus in the evenings.”

  “So, it was curiosity. That’s all well and good. And what is the name of this man?”

  Aslan was still sitting in front of the mirror and playing with her comb. She looked at Holved from the side. “I didn’t ask him his name.” She was happy with this answer. She avoided lying whenever possible. She was speaking the truth since she had not asked Beckford what his name was, because of course she had known his name for a long time already. It would have been trickier if Holved had asked: Do I know this man? It would have cost her quite some effort to answer that question without lying.

  “His job?” asked Holved, more to distract his thoughts from her adventure caused by curiosity than because he was interested in the gigolo’s profession. His name and career could not change anything about the facts.

  “I did not ask him how, where, and in which way he makes his money.”

  Again, she spoke the truth. She had not needed to ask Beckford how he earned his money, because after all, she knew better than anyone else.

  “So, you didn’t even ask that. Strange.”

  “No reason to do so. Why should I have asked him anything? He would have lied to me anyway.”

  “And where did you amuse yourself in this manner while I slaved away in tropical heat to finish up our contracts?”

  “Good God, don’t get sentimental! I would have attempted to still my thirst for knowledge anyways, whether you were at home or as you said so beautifully and cinematographically, whether you had to bake in the sun in the tropics.”

  Holved had gotten up and was now pacing in the boudoir, which was not exactly easy due to the tightly packed precious furnishings. However, he felt he had to do something. And if a wife gives an unsolicited confession of having talked more or less deeply with another man, there is only one option. Since time immemorial, such a husband has had to pace, whether in an ultramodern boudoir or in front of a stone cave. Usually, a dagger, revolver, or club did not emerge until the husband, whose manhood had been deeply wounded, had decided during his wild pacing which solution would serve his own interests best.