The World of the Variants

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  When she woke up yet again, the early morning Sun had dried her clothes and warmed her flesh again. She was hungry, but she did not know what to do to procure the humblest nourishment, either from the river or the immense forest, which fed millions of creatures.

  One can live for several days without eating, however—she had even heard mention of a man who had fasted for 40 days. She dared not set off on the raft again, sure of having risked her life 100 times the day before, but she followed the course of the torrential river, in the hope that it might be the one on whose bank van den Bosch had camped.

  She walked all day without finding any nourishment, dragged herself along the following day too, and part of a third. Despair never ceased to increase within her soul. Then weakness obscured her thoughts, and when she fell down in the middle of the third day she stayed there for a long time, half asleep and half unconscious.

  When she came too, dusk was approaching. Almost indifferently, she saw two men leaning over her. The first was Matzal, the half-breed trail-beater, who had come to warn of the approach of the bandits and the proximity of the Boar Men. The other was one of the giant’s servants.

  Both of them had been sent to search for Suzanne. They considered her with a mixture of amazement, joy and dread. “You’re safe, jufvrouw,” said Matzal.

  There was a gentleness in that swarthy face and those hawk’s eyes. The other had a face as inexpressive as a buffalo’s.

  It was joy that invaded Suzanne, but a muted joy, ponderous and fearful. “We’ll be pursued!” she stammered.

  “By the Boar Men, jufvrouw?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “They haven’t killed you!” Matzal murmured, shaking his head. “They kill everyone—men and women! No captive has ever returned. We have horses…they can’t catch us. Are you hungry, jufvrouw?”

  She was not as hungry as she had been before falling unconscious, but when she had swallowed a few mouthfuls she was overwhelmed by voracity.

  “You must eat moderately and slowly to start with,” said the half-breed, who had only given her a thin slice of bread.

  She obeyed. Matzal’s companion went to fetch two horses, hidden in a thicket—thin beasts, but solid. The larger had to carry the young woman, who was a poor horsewoman, and the half-breed.

  She learned that the giant, Lodewyk and Hendrik had searched for her in vain, and then Matzal had set out alone, with a companion of his own sort, into the depths of the jungle, where others would have gone astray.

  All joy had disappeared; Suzanne was anguished by an obscure shame. It seemed that the whole world would divine her odious adventure, and the exaltation to which her flesh had submitted appeared to her to be an unforgivable action whose guilt she would bear forever. That idea floated within a chaotic and dolorous consciousness, an instinctive world into which rational thought only projected indecisive gleams, immediately extinguished.

  A day went by, then another. The first night, they stopped in an abandoned cabin. The following night, Suzanne slept next to a fire lit by her companions. She had recovered her strength and felt safe; strangers to horsemanship, the Boar Men must be a long way behind, if they were in pursuit.

  The sadness persisted, like the winter mists over the polders. She felt unworthy to return to the community of white men, fearing the sight of the person who represented, for her, the most profound human tenderness, on whom were concentrated all the persistent living entities that were her memories.

  Sometimes, trying to define her state of mind, she thought: What have I done? Why should I be guilty…and of what?

  A flux of blood rose to her neck and cheeks; she had ended up discovering where her responsibility lay: it was when, in spite of herself, in spite of the horror and in spite of the disgust, she experienced a return of the mysterious exaltation.

  More days went by. On the fifth morning, Matzal said: “We’ll get there before midday.”

  There was the immense desire to see Lodewyk again, and the shame of appearing before him…

  The proximity of plantations was perceptible by the odor alone: an aromatic odor of dense perfumes, which preceded the sight of the plants. Then, her heart overwhelmed by hostile emotions, Suzanne saw a dwelling through the trees, flowers and bushes that was as spacious as a château.

  It was not Lodewyk who appeared but the debonair giant. He took the adolescent girl to his vast bosom and hugged her with a timid tenderness. “I searched for you in vain, niece. Only Matzal could remain invisible in the forest, among the rocks and marshes.” He dared not say that he had thought her dead, and asked in an almost fearful tone: “They haven’t done you any harm?”

  She lowered her head, feebly, stammering: “No…no…”

  He was more skillful reading the tortuous minds of Malays than the minds of young women. “Lodewyk and Hendrik are searching for you too, my child, but they should return today…”

  She was not astonished to see that he had not divined anything, so far beyond human affairs did her adventure seem, solely connected with the monstrous being with whom she had accomplished it—and she was slightly less fearful of Lodewyk’s return.

  Then there was the waiting: the strange projection of a creature into the future, which renders the present unbearable and attempts to erase it…

  She was exhausted by impatience when van den Bosch told her: “They’re coming!”

  Then there was the great tremulousness of returns—and when Lodewyk appeared, she belonged entirely to the present of sobbing, joy and tenderness. That soul-storm covered her confusion when, to the same question that the planter had posed, she replied: “No…they didn’t mistreat me.”

  Pell-mell, she recounted that which she was able to tell—the devoured prisoners, her patience, her attempts to escape, the raft, the encounter with Matzal—and because neither Lodewyk nor Hendrik went beyond words, she hoped that the abominable secret would never be revealed.

  Suzanne lived a new life, which would have been charming. A sweetness fell from the high summits on to the van den Bosch lands; the evenings and mornings were warm, with sudden fresh breezes that caressed the flesh like promises of happiness.

  Suzanne would have loved those strange constellations which, rotating gracefully around the Southern Cross, were suggestive of the austral legend, the forever-veiled history of a world whose annals were as lost in time as the ancient skeletons in the avid Earth.

  She vaguely sensed the strength of vegetation and its vehemence; in a halo of aromas, she understood the poverty of the cultivated ground on which her race lived, and lapsed into a vast dream that would have been beautiful if it had not been so sad—but a terrible melancholy penetrated all the way to the marrow of her bones.

  She felt like a foreigner among her own people, burdened by a shameful secret that others could not even imagine. Something awoke in the immense sunsets that made her, in her own eyes, a fantastic monster. She anticipated the arrival, in the cruel forest, of the man with the vile head, a frightful desire passing through her innocent and voluptuous body. Desperate and on fire, she refused and desired; a jet of flame penetrated her, of which she was so ashamed that she burst into tears. Thus, the horrible mystery lived on within her, mingled with the beating of her heart and the most intimate retreats of her thought.

  She tried to take refuge in the nearness of others, especially of Lodewyk, the focal point of beautiful memories, but she felt indescribably estranged, exiled from the white race, and even from Malays or yellow men.

  A double nostalgia caused her anguish by day and tortured her by night. With terrible sighs, she appealed to her homeland, its innocence and purity, its slow dreams, its calm canals and hours of song. Frissons dazzled the mornings, the birth of each recommencing day: legends of ancient Batavia drawn from the depths of centuries, boundless promises, evening stars that project youth into the skies…

  Then, with tremors in her heart and her limbs, came the frightful nostalgia of the forest, the inconceivable mixture of horro
r and pleasure…the cruel night, the odor of amorous flowers, speaking the demonic language that got witches burned.

  She got up, and she prayed, lifting her supplicant hands toward unknown stars.

  One night, when she suffered thus, the dogs barked—only for a few minutes—and Suzanne, standing at the window, saw a shadow loom up among the coffee-bushes, in the silvery moonlight. She knew already. A mortal terror weighed upon her shoulders, and when she tried to cry out, she had no voice.

  The monster surged forth into the light; in a few strides, he reached the building. Then Suzanne saw him grip the window-sill. She was made of stone, palpitating stone, a block of paralyzed flesh. He had only to grab her, to drag her into space…

  Two dogs arrived, growling, which fell silent when the Boar Man had passed his hand over their skulls, as if they had recognized a fabulous master.

  Suzanne did not move, gripped by a fatality comparable to the fatality of birth and death. The gardens and plantations succeeded one another without her having opened her eyes; she inhaled the brutal effluvia of the wild beast, the effluvia of a tiger or a panther, which became more odious as she emerged from her stupor.

  The forest was there, the implacable land of trees and beasts, where human law ended, where everything was born and disappeared in accordance with encounters of strength, cunning and hazard.

  Suddenly, she was deposited on the ground; she sensed, despairingly, what was about to happen…

  The brute resumed his march through the forest, dragging his captive behind him—but this time, the journey was quite short.

  Around a large red fire, beside a pool, a dozen Boar Men were asleep or on watch. As on the evening of the first abduction, the chief arranged foliage for Suzanne and left her an animal-skin…and for a long time Suzanne remained plunged in a mortal scorn for her own person that overwhelmed all peril and all disgust. She became irreparably estranged from her own humanity, a stranger to the frightful humanity that had seized her again, and stranger still to herself, her childhood, her youth, to all of her memories, and even to Lodewyk: every tremor of the forest, every palpitation of her heart condemned her; life became so impossible that Suzanne felt buried in the darkness, as a cadaver is buried in the Earth.

  She got to her feet. She looked at the fire and the wild men. They all seemed to be asleep, and perhaps they really were asleep, but their subtle senses remained alert to the surroundings. The slightest unusual noise would have woken them.

  The pool was close by, so close that Suzanne slid to its edge and contemplated the dormant water, where the cold life of fish, reptiles and batrachians was swarming frightfully.

  Heads had been raised; eyes had followed the young woman’s movements, but on seeing her immobile, the men went back to sleep, unable to imagine that a creature might escape into oblivion.

  For one moment more, Suzanne allowed the shadows of the vanished world to pass by. Regrets were floating in the black sky; Lodewyk drifted past in a deadly fog. And, leaning forward, she disappeared among the algae, so gently and so softly that no ear perceived the annunciatory splash of her death.

  IN THE WORLD OF THE VARIANTS

  From the moment of his birth, Abel seemed to belong to a different race from his brothers; subsequently, a strange atmosphere seemed to isolate him from children and adults alike. No one ever discovered the reason for that anomaly. It was unrelated to his physical make-up—or, at least, did not seem to be. He had the fair hair and white face of men who set off from the North in their deckless boats to conquer lands, steal riches and rape women. In his province, the descendants of such men abounded.

  He inspired a sort of disquiet, and the sentiment of very distant things, lost in Space and Time.

  His speech also seemed unusual, even though, until the age of 12, he had not said anything extraordinary. Sometimes, some unspecifiable mystery was sketched out, quickly lost in familiar words. His gestures generated unease; even when he did exactly the same thing as other children, it seemed that he did so in accordance with a different orientation, as if he were carrying out left-handed movements with his right hand.

  At an early age, he astonished some people with his subtle nature; for them, he evoked existences hidden in the islands or the solitudes of the sea, dreams enveloped in mist, depths in which obscure plant life and abyssal beasts were at war.

  He belonged to a mediocre and placid family, untormented by any devastating dream. A few acres of soil surrounded a humble house, into which light penetrated through numerous little windows pierced in the four façades. The orchard yielded the fruits of the region; vegetables abounded in the kitchen-garden; two cows and four goats lived on exceedingly green grass. Because the family had a near-horror of meat, it led an easy life whose joys were not cruel.

  The father, Hugues Faverol, a surveyor, assured the family’s present and consolidated its future; the mother, gentle and incoherent, would have managed the household badly, but a maidservant and an old gardener regulated the affairs of the house, the stable and the land.

  The turbulence and mischievousness of Abel’s brothers was supportable; because he was the eldest and the strongest he had no difficulty defending himself. Although there were obstacles between him and those whom he loved from the outset, he scarcely perceived the singular dissimilarity between his universe and the universe of other men before his 12th year.

  He saw, heard and felt all that they saw, felt and heard, but around and within every appearance an unknown appearance emerged. Thus, he perceived two distinct worlds, although they occupied the same space: two terrestrial worlds that coexisted, with all their creatures.

  Abel eventually realized that he was linked to both worlds. That discovery, which became more precise by the day, he was fearful of revealing, even to his mother, and it was indirectly, by means of questions that alarmed his kinfolk, that he assured himself of his utter originality. Finally sure that the double world existed for him alone, he sensed that the revelation of his reality was pointless, and might be dangerous.

  For several years, however, the world that penetrated every part of the world of human beings remained indistinct. One might have thought that Abel perceived it by means of rudimentary senses, as a sea-urchin might perhaps perceive the ocean and the rock to which it clings. At length, the world diversified. He began to establish there the order that a child establishes among the incessant metamorphoses of his environment, and it did not take long for him to realize that in the other universe, he was younger than he was in the human world.

  No human terminology could express the existences and phenomena that he discerned; apprehended by senses whose development became increasingly rapid, they revealed nothing of that which hearing, sight, touch, taste or smell reveal to us, nothing that we could perceive or imagine.

  The living things were the last to appear to him. It took him several months to assimilate their total appearance; unlike our animals and vegetables they had no fixed structures: a series of forms, incessantly changing, unfolded in a near-constant order, repeating themselves and thus forming cyclic individuals. As Abel subsequently learned, they live much longer than the living beings of our realm. As soon as he had grasped their mode of existence he recognized them, at first in their essence, then in their individuality, as easily as we recognize a song or a symphony.

  Their diversity was as great as, and perhaps greater than, the diversity of our fauna and flora. The inferior species had slow and monotonous cycles. As one ascended through the hierarchy, the variations became more rapid and more complex; in the highest degrees, several cycles unfolded in concert, confused and distinct at the same time.

  Abel perceived all this, with increasing clarity, in the manner of children—which, by virtue of not being embarrassed by method, is swifter and more penetrating. He soon found out that the Variants, as he named them, developed differently from animals or plants. Their extent did not increase; they were no smaller at birth than subsequently, but were vaguer, with incoherent c
ycles; gradually, their movements gained in coherence; they attained their full harmony after evolutions that were more numerous the more highly placed they were within the hierarchy.

  It was on a June evening that Abel realized that he was himself both a human and a Variant—an evening when the clouds prolonged their metamorphosis. Weary of grazing the warm air, the swallows were chasing one another with hectic cries, drunk on a pleasure that filled the young man with compassion and tenderness. They seemed to him as ephemeral as those fragile countries hollowed out in crepuscular vapors—and, seized by an anguish, he had taken the hand of his mother, whom he loved more than any other creature.

  They were alone. They seemed to be seeing the same appearances of the Universe, but, sensing instinctively that he was going further than she into the mystery of things, his mother said, with a touch of fear: “What are you thinking about?”

  That was a moment when the world of the Variants was superimposed more narrowly upon the world of human beings, and Abel had his Revelation.

  Until then, his human life had been so predominant that Variant Life had seemed entirely exterior. That evening he knew that he participated in the two Lives. Bowled over, he ceased to perceive his mother’s presence. Frightened by the sight of a face as motionless as a mineral and staring eyes whose pupils were expanding in the dim light, she squeezed his hand in anguish.

  “Abel...my little one! What’s the matter?”

  He looked at her without seeing her; then, like a man coming out of a trance, he murmured, without thinking about what he was saying: “I was living in the other world.”