Doctor Lerne

by Maurice Renard

  And the moment came to leave Fonval forever. I wandered through the house devoid of furniture and the grounds devoid of foliage. It seemed that autumn had stripped them both naked simultaneously. The old perfumes were still floating in the abandoned rooms, charged with melancholy memories. Oh, what charm the musty and the locked-up sometimes have! The tenacious silhouettes of unhooked pictures and mirrors, sideboards and wardrobes, were still visible on the walls: patches in the faded wallpaper that remained quite new, shadows of magnificent things left by them to the familiar wall, vivid stains destined to pale themselves over time, along with the memory of their absence. Now empty, some rooms seemed to have shrunk, and others seemed more capacious, without any obvious reason. I revisited the entire dwelling, from top to bottom; by courtesy a skylight and the glimmer of an air-vent I explored the attic and the cellar—and I did not weary of wandering through the décor of my youth, like a living being haunting a phantom place.

  Oh, my youth! I felt that it was the sole inhabitant of Fonval. In spite of their importance, the recent dramas paled by comparison, Donovan’s room and Emma’s no more than mine or my aunt’s. Had I been right to put Fonval up for auction? That doubt accompanied me as I bid my farewells to the grounds. The meadow became a lawn again, and the Minotaur’s summer-house only reminded me of Briareus. I made the grand tour, following the cliff. The clouds were so low that one might have thought them a ceiling of grey cotton wool perched on the circular crest.

  In that wintry interior light, the statues, derived of their green togas, displayed their time- and rain-ravaged concrete; their noses flat or their chins cracked, some among them were crumbling. One, with a Bacchic gesture, extended a mutilated arm whose hand, supporting a bowl, was only connected to the elbow by its armature, an iron bone dreadful to look at. They would continue their poses in solitude. A hint of wilderness, of which only vague indications were perceptible, was already beginning to show. A hawk was sharpening its beak on the summer-house weather-vane. A marten crossed the pasture with tranquil bounds.

  Unable to resolve to leave, I re-opened the château; then I went back into the grounds. I heard my footsteps rattle on the floor-tiles of the corridors and rustle in the leaves on the pathways. The silence increased by degrees; as I broke it, I experienced certain difficulty. It sensed that was going to reign as master and, as I paused in the middle of the state, it tested its omnipotence.

  I remained there for a long time, dreamily: the human center of the enormous circle and of a round-dance of thoughts. In answer to my summons, the faces of yesteryear and yesterday, fantastic and real, fictional and actual individuals, came in a cyclone and whirled around me in a frenzied crowd, making the basin into a Maëlstrom of memory in which the entire Past rotated.

  But it was necessary to go away, and leave Fonval to the ivy and the spiders.

  Emma, dressed for the journey, was impatiently standing guard in front of the coach-house. I opened the door. The automobile was parked at an angle at the back of the building. I had not seen it since the accident, and could not even remember having put it away. Moved by a belated sense of obligation, one of the assistants had doubtless put it in as best he could.

  In spite of my negligence, the engine started willingly at the first electric contact. Then I brought the car out as far as the semicircular esplanade, and closed the symbolically sobbing gate on so many memories, putting an end to the terrifying history of Klotz, thank God, but also to the years of my youth.

  I imagined that the act of keeping Fonval might have the power to prolong them. “We’ll stop in Grey, at the lawyer’s,” I said to Emma. “I’m no longer going to sell. I’ll only rent it out.”

  We set off. I took the straight road. The rocky walls became lower. Emma prattled.

  The automobile purred lightly to begin with. Even so, I wasn’t long delayed in regretting having given it so little care. There was a sudden jolt, followed by several others, and its progress was soon no more than a sequence of abrupt spurts, as soon slowed down as projected.

  I’ve already mentioned that the car was the very model of automation, its pedals and handles reduced to a minimum. Such a machine has one inconvenience; it needs to be perfectly in order before setting off, for, once en route, one has no more influence on it than that required to accelerate or moderate its regimen, and cannot fortify it by dosage or running repairs.

  The prospect of a having to stop made me frown.

  Meanwhile, the car continued its jerky progress, and I couldn’t help laughing. That manner of advancement reminded me, comically, of the excursions I had taken on foot in company with Klotz-Lerne, and the capricious slowness of my false uncle, always stopping and starting again. Hoping that it was a temporary indisposition of the engine, perhaps due to an excess of oil, I allowed the automobile to go on. I tried to make out, from the noise of the engine, which of its functions was defective and was causing the periodic inequalities in transmission, which became increasingly marked with each deceleration. Some of them were, in fact, so accentuated that we almost came to a momentary halt. My ridiculous comparison became more emphatic, and that amused me. Just like that rascally professor, I thought. That’s funny!

  “What’s the matter?” asked my beloved. “You don’t look very happy.”

  “Me? Get away!”

  Strangely enough, that question had an impact on me. I would have thought that my face was quite calm, but on the contrary! What reason did I have for not being calm? I was annoyed, that’s all. I was simply wondering which of the organs of this “great body”—as the professor called it—was suffering, and unable to figure it out, on the point of stopping, I…I was annoyed—yes, that was all there was to it! I listened in vain, with an experienced ear, to the bangs, clicks and stifled knocks; but no characteristic sound revealed a malady of the headlights, the valves or the crank-shafts.

  “I’ll bet it’s the clutch that’s slipping!” I cried. “And yet the engine’s quite regular…”

  “Look, Nicolas!” Emma said then. “Should that thing there be moving?”

  “Ah! That’s what I said! You see!”

  She had pointed to the clutch pedal, which was moving of its own accord, while the machine’s somersaults corresponded to its displacements. That was definitely the problem!

  While my gaze was fixed on the pedal, it remained fully depressed, then it extended again, abruptly. The pedal had sprung back.

  A certain unease was tormenting me. To be sure, there is nothing as annoying as a car that won’t go, but even so, I couldn’t remember ever having been so strangely affected by a breakdown….

  All of sudden, the horn began to sound by itself…

  I felt an irresistible need to say something, no matter what; my dumbness redoubled my apprehension.

  “It’s a general breakdown,” I declared, forcing myself to speak in a detached tone. “We won’t get there before nightfall, my poor Emma.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to repair it right away?”

  “No, I prefer to continue. When one stops, one never knows when one will be able to get back on the road again. There’ll still be time…perhaps it will warm up again…”

  But the horn drowned out my voice with a loud clamor—and my fingers suddenly clenched on the steering wheel, for that clamor, having diminished in volume, became an extended continuous note, which became rhythmic as it sang, and took on inflections…and I sensed a tune emerging from that cadence…a march. Perhaps, after all, it was me who was imaging it…but the tune became clearer and, after a few hesitations, like those of a singer testing his voice, the automobile intoned it resolutely in its copper throat.

  It went rum ti tum, ti tum.

  To the accompaniment of the German song, a host of suspicions stirred within my anxiety. I had an intuition of a fantastic and mysterious monstrosity—again! Terror gripped me. I tried to cut off the gas, but the switch resisted; to declutch, but the pedal resisted; to brake, but the lever resisted. A superior force r
endered the unmovable. Losing my head, I let go of the steering wheel and tugged at the diabolical brake with both hands, with the same result—except that the horn made a gargling sound and fell silent, after having utter a sort of snigger.

  My beloved roared with laughter, and said: “There’s a trumpeting clown in there!”

  Personally, I had no desire to laugh. The train of my thoughts ran on vertiginously, but my reason refused to sanction my deductions.

  Was not that metallic automobile, in which wood, rubber and copper had been proscribed, not a single component of which was made of previously-living matter, an organized body that had never been alive? Was not that automatic mechanism a body endowed with reflexes but completely devoid of intelligence? Was it not, in conclusion, according to the theory in the notebook, the sole possible receptacle for a soul in its totality? That receptacle which the professor, without thinking about it, had declared non-existent?

  At the instant of his apparent death, Klotz-Lerne had doubtless been carrying out an experiment on the car reminiscent of that on the poplar; but, having been distracted for several weeks, perhaps he had made a fatal mistake, not anticipating that his soul would slide into the empty vessel in its entirety and that, once the pedicle was broken, his human form would be no more than a cadaver, which the laws of his discovery would prevent him from re-entering.

  Or perhaps, weary of pursuing his ungraspable fortune, Klotz-Lerne had acted deliberately, and committed a sort of suicide by exchanging my uncle’s substance for that of a machine.

  But why should he not have quite simply wanted to become the new beast predicted in his eccentric lecture: the animal of the future, the lord of creation, which organ-replacement would render immortal and infinitely perfectible, according to his lunatic prophecy?

  Once again, however accurate this interior discussion was, I did not want to accept its conclusions. A resemblance of gait between the automobile and the professor, a probable auditory illusion, and the possible sticking of a lever could not be sufficient to prove that enormity. My anguish required a more decisive proof.

  It got one without delay.

  We were coming to the edge of the forest—that boundary to which the defunct maniac had unremittingly limited his works. I understood that the matter was about to be settled and, on the off chance, I warned Emma.

  “Hold on tight,” I said. “Lean back!”

  In spite of our precautions, the automobile’s abrupt halt plunged us forward.

  “What’s the matter?” said Emma.

  “Nothing. Stay calm…”

  To be frank, I was undecided. What should I do? To get out might be perilous. On the back of the Klotz-automobile we were, at least, out of its reach, and I did not want to be charged by it. I tried to move it forward. As before, none of the controls would obey my orders. I struggled with every one of them, but the rebellion would not make any concession…

  We were in that awkward situation when, unexpectedly, I feel the steering wheel turn in my hands; the levers and pedals were activated, and the automobile, having moved off, made a U-turn and began to take us back in the direction of Fonval. I was lucky enough to be able to turn it round again, by surprise, but as soon as it was pointed in the right direction, it became utterly determined not to go any further, by so much a single rotation of its wheels.

  Emma finally realized that something unusual was happening, and urged me to get out, in order to fix the “breakdown”.

  A few seconds before, however, my fear had been transformed into rage.

  The horn cackled.

  “He who laughs last laughs longest!” I muttered.

  “What’s the matter, then? What’s the matter?” my companion repeated.

  Paying her no need, I took a steel rod from the luggage-rack which served me as a defensive weapon and, to Emma’s profound amazement, I struck the mulish car with it.

  Then the scene became epic! Under the formidable volley of blows, the heavy vehicle behaved like a recalcitrant horse, rearing up, jerking sideways and bucking, it did everything it could to saddle us.

  “Hang on!” I cried to my beloved. And I struck harder.

  The engine groaned, the horn howled in pain or roared with wrath. The sharp blows rained down on the sheet-metal of the hood, and the racket made the woods echo with a fabulous din.

  Suddenly, uttering the trumpeting sound that elephants make, the metallic mastodon bounded forward, made two or three attempts to catapult us out, and then dashed forward with lightning speed—bolting!

  I was no longer master of the situation. The madness of a runaway monster was dictating our fortune. We were almost flying; the eighty-horse-power machine fled with the rapidity of a fall; the rushing air was no longer breathable. Sometimes, the siren screamed stridently.

  We went through Grey like a lightning-flash. Chickens and dogs beneath the wheels; blood on my goggles. We were going so fast that Maître Pallud’s coats-of-arms gave me the impression of a gold streak. At the exit from the village, the highway made a hedge for us with its plane-trees; then the long hill opposed its slope to our celerity. There, giving signs of a fatigue that I noticed in it for the first time, the decelerating automobile allowed itself to be steered.

  I had to thrash it frequently to get it to take us as far as Nanthel, which we eventually reached without any hitch. As we passed over a curb, however, the copper mouth uttered an exclamation of pain, and I saw that the jolt had just broken one of the springs in the right front wheel. When we reached the courtyard of the hotel, I tried to fit a new spring to the rim, but did not succeed in doing so; my attempts drew such moans from the horn that I had to abandon the repair. It wasn’t urgent, anyway; I had decided to complete the journey by rail and send the recalcitrant machine back on a goods train. The future would decide its fate. For the moment, I confided it to a garage, among the double phaetons, saloons and limousines, and withdrew in haste, knowing that the round eyes of its headlights were glowing behind me with a hostile gaze.

  While I reflected on the details of this incredible phenomenon as I drew away, a passage from a scientific article I had once read, and which had made an impact on me, came to mind. I was not a little surprised to find in the words some sort of vague explanation of the prodigy and the promise of further miracles just as disconcerting: “It is possible to imagine that there is an intermediate state between those of living beings and inert matter, just as there are entities intermediate between animals and vegetables.”

  From the outside, the hotel gave every sign of luxurious comfort. An elevator bore me up and I was taken to my room. My partner had preceded me. Having been cloistered for such a long time, she was gazing at the street, the swarming people and the shops lit up in all their splendor with a sort of avidity. She could not tear herself away from the spectacle of life, and, while changing her clothes, returned incessantly to the window, parting the drawn curtains in order to look out again. I thought she seemed less affable with respect to me, and that the world interested her more than I did. My strange conduct in the automobile must have surprised her, and, as I had decided not to offer her any explanation of it, I suspected that she regarded me as a lunatic, not yet cured of his insanity.

  At dinner, at a little private table lit by candelabras whose soft light was that of a boudoir, Emma, surrounded by men in suits and women in low-cut dresses, exhibited a misplaced exuberance. She ogled the former and looked the latter up and down, sometimes admiringly and sometimes contemptuously, expressing loud approval or laughing ostentatiously, a source of amusement and astonishment, ridiculous and delightful. She wanted to chatter away to the entire audience.

  I took her away as soon as I could—but her desire to return to worldly life was so ardent that it was necessary for us to go immediately to some public place. Of the theater and the casino, only the latter was open; that evening, it was playing host to the finals of a wrestling championship organized in imitation of those in Paris.

  The little hall was
crammed with shop-assistants, students and hooligans. A cloud floated within it, a mixture of proletarian and petty bourgeois tobacco-smoke.

  Emma displayed herself proudly in her box. A crapulous popular song, played by a shameless orchestra, made her ecstatic, and as her ecstasy was scarcely discreet, three hundred pairs of eyes turned to face her, attracted by the windmill movements of a fan and the feathers of a hat that were beating time just as boldly. Emma smiled, and subjected the three hundred pairs of eyes to a military inspection.

  The fights—and especially the fighters—filled her with enthusiasm. Those bestial humans, whose heads—all massive jaws and tiny brows—seemed destined for the guillotine-basket, excited the most unseemly frenzy in my beloved.

  A hairy tattooed colossus won the contest. He came forward to make his bow, awkwardly bobbling a myrmidon’s head with porcine eyes atop a titanic body in order to do so. He was a local man, and his fellow citizens gave him a standing ovation. The title of “Bastion of Nanthel and Champion of the Ardennes” was bestowed upon him. Emma, standing up, applauded him and cried “Bravo!” so loudly, and with such insistence, that she provoked scandalous laughter in the crowd. The champion blew her a kiss. I felt my face blaze with shame.

  We returned to the hotel and exchanged bitter words, precursors of a chaste night—chaste, but restless. Our apartment happened to be above the arched entrance and edit, through which automobiles were passing all through night…which caused me to dream of misfortunes and absurdities.

  Awakening brought me real ones. I was alone in the bed.

  Bewildered, I tried to interpret my beloved’s absence in terms of the most excusable domestic activities, but her place was cold and that disconcerted me. I rang for the bellboy. He arrived, and gave me this letter, which I have kept, and whose lined paper, spattered with smears and ink-blots, I now pin to my blank sheet: