Homo-Deus

by Félicien Champsaur

  The plaything par excellence, however, was the baby Antoine. Ulette had declared herself his little mother; she called him “my son” ostentatiously; but as the living doll could not go everywhere with his little mother, Ulette had changed the sex of her articulated doll, and called it Antony; it was lugged around to every corner of the grounds and submitted, without complaint, to all the caprices of its three tyrants.

  Furthermore a guest had come: Fabio Canti, the painter of Venice, Egypt, Palestine and Syria, whose warm and vibrant canvases had earned him the nickname “the Painter of the Sun.” Like Ziem,69 who had a villa in Nice, he was a regular visitor to the Côte d’Azur. He had come from Saint-Raphaël to see Madame Aubert, and the proprietor of the Bellarosa, Madame Desambez, had declared herself happy and proud to offer hospitality to the great master for as long as he wished.

  Fabio, who had been famous and fashionable for a long time, led the simultaneously hard and joyful life of a true artist among the charlatans and art dealers. Of tall stature, and a handsome man, he had always had, as compensation for the struggle, not merely the easy conquest of the pretty girls frequenting the studios, but a number of bourgeois women and socialites subjugated by the spirited artist’s manners and smile. Fabio was neither a gambler nor a drinker; his one vice was women. Not a sentimental lover, but lascivious, he saw nothing in amour but pleasure and did not seek any other attractions than those it gives wise men who do not torment their minds in order to find a thousand irritations and sufferings. However, as the years had accumulated, he sometimes wearied of liaisons that were as rapidly loosened as knotted, and, while repeating to himself that prudent happiness existed there, the pollen-gatherer could not help comparing, on certain evenings, his adventurous life with that of his parents in Venice, who had formed a happy and mutually adoring couple.

  At present, the impetuosity of early youth had given way to sometimes-hesitant and whimsical virility, and the obsession of conjugal love had imposed itself on his mind; he felt lonely. What is the point of fortune and glory, if it is uniquely for oneself? The young widow, the perfect model of the indoor woman, Madame Aubert, was like a crystallization of his familiar dreams. But without giving too much concern to trying his luck, he was taking the cure at the Bellarosa of a tranquil and restful existence, and his eroticism, on leave, was dormant.

  He knew every detail of Antoine Aubert’s frightful accident. The Commissaire charged with the investigation, Albert Raynaud, was a friend of his. They had once hung out together in the brasseries of the Latin Quarter, when the Commissaire was something of a poet, a singer and occasional contributor to periodicals, and they had remained friends.

  The Commissaire was not entirely convinced about the accident of the Quai de Javel, and had said so to Fabio. But the policeman, who had imagination, sometimes told the painter stories about his métier that he brought to fantastic conclusions, with which he also amused himself. Raynaud, of course, would have thought that Fabio Canti could not spend a fortnight or three weeks at the Bellarosa, that nest of widowed pullets without playing the cock. Well, no, he was a cock on vacation, whose eroticism was resting.

  They were on the terrace in front of the villa that overlooked the magnificent gardens, with a splendid view over the coast and the sea, a scene such as one sees elsewhere all along that magical shore. The sky was so pure, the atmosphere so clear, that the gaze embraced, with a delightful clarity, the ultimate slopes of Cap Estérel descending into the sea, forming, with their green fire-trees and red rocks, a rutilant and tormented mass, and in the distance, the town of Cannes, voluptuously extended in the depths of the enchanting gulf. The terrace, paved with large slabs of alternating white and pink marble, was shaded by vigorous wisterias, which, supported by a pergola, painted vermilion, covered it completely with their violet clusters, and the pergola was encrusted with small mirrors that gave the beams the appearance of being perforated, amid the profuse cascade of flowers.

  While the three women were admiring the landscape, without being fatigued by the quotidian spectacle, Fabio Canti, with the heart of a child in an old bachelor’s body, contemplated the two little girls and young Robert. The children were running around, twittering like birds, in the pathways that descended in zigzags toward the beach.

  “What a demon that Robert is!” cried Madame Ossola suddenly. “Robert!” she shouted. “Robert! Don’t go off the path! He’s going to pillage all the arbors, the monster.”

  “Let him go, my dear Madame. The damage isn’t irreparable, and it amuses him. The cleared, well-sanded paths are only for grown-ups.”

  The conversation resumed. Fabio never ran out of anecdotes about a host of famous people, with finely-pointed punchlines, and that reminded Madames Desambez, Aubert and Ossola of Paris—where, however, they no longer had any desire to be. Then Fabio talked about the ambitious young who were appointing the leaders of their schools—Cubists, Dadaists, Conists—although they did not know how to draw or paint. They were, he said, like the artful individuals who make a living from music without knowing how to play any instrument, by making themselves into orchestra conductors.

  “The newcomers reproach me,” he said, “for copying nature slavishly. No, but at least I respect it and admire it, while adding my sensibility to it.”

  “You translate it magisterially,” declared Madame Desambez, the white-haired grandmother, “and I love your admiration for Life. The young ones criticize you, you say, for imitating Nature, but your canvases render it even more living and harmonious.”

  “Your works, my dear master,” said Madame Aubert, “are those of an Epicurean.”

  “You’ve understood me, my dear Madame. I only want to see in Life what it has of the beautiful, the picturesque and the agreeable. I’m alive, and I strive to be joyfully alive. It’s very difficult in the present era.”

  “Alas,” sighed the three widows, in unison.

  “It seems, Mesdames,” he went on, “that the war has changed the human heart, and the determined optimism that I follow is beginning to turn into pessimism. Never, in my opinion, have mores been so bitter and so brutal. Today’s mentality requires immediate enjoyment. To tomorrow, one pays no heed, because one knows nothing about it: a race toward the abyss. Let’s enjoy the morning dew without delay; one cannot know what the evening will bring. No confidence in the capital one possesses, which the old have saved up like imbiciles, in banknotes whose value is diminishing incessantly as prices rise. Handiwork devoid of taste, education, and even craftsmanship, earns thirty or forty francs a day. Bring back the equilibrium of exchange.

  “How can these people be made to understand that it’s high pay that makes the cost of living dear, and that a reduction of salaries would have economic repercussions? Our leaders, in order to conserve their electoral clientele, have enriched the agriculturalist; the worker isn’t enriched, since he had to pay more dearly. That leads to an antagonism that will become increasingly accentuated. Hence, the enriched agriculturalist wants to come to town, where he’ll find pleasure and comfort; in his turn he encounters the high cost of living and ends up lacking. It’s doubtless the social seesaw; one goes up, another goes down.

  “The adventurers of all lands ride the roller coaster of everyday life, and the intellectuals are led astray by businessmen and women, by those who make millions shifting the wind and making dust. Here on the Riviera, one sees the rich of the day and their parasites, contaminating our beautiful Provence, holding their Bourse of schemes and ambushes here, around the great gambling dens of Nice, Cannes and Monte Carlo. What remains for a philosopher or an artist to do? To struggle as best he can and laugh, laugh at everything in order not to cry, to forget that fifteen million men died in the mud so that they could live and amuse themselves.”

  “So, Master,” said Madame Desambez, “in spite of your insouciant air, you’re suffering.”

  “No, since you can see me laughing at those puppets, the profiteers squandering the benefits of the victory and ensuring t
hat the victors are now, by virtue of America and English egotism, worse off than the vanquished.”

  “For that,” Madame Desambez put in, “my two sons died, the elder in a muddy crater at Verdun where he was agonizing for two days, without his comrades being able to help him.”

  Under the florid scatter of the wisteria, whose mauve clusters the delightful March sun was peppering, Fabio Canti continued: “That war has killed the sentiment of personal dignity and human solidarity. The biped with the visage that gazes at the sky—os sublime coelemque tueri—as the Latin poet put it,70 no longer has religious beliefs to put the brake on his passions and govern his appetites. Conscience? One is always at peace with it. The uncultivated and the brutal are unaware of it, in any case, and the intelligent, the arrivistes of every rank and every stripe have arguments to appease it. One lives on the margin of all morality, one tramples underfoot all the ancient commandments of the duty to respect oneself and others. No one believes that there’s a social debt to pay, and every one of us is like the Gryllos whom Circe transformed into a pig, and was not ashamed of being a hog.71 The crafty and the well-brought-up merely conduct themselves so as to save face.

  “But then, zut! That’s life, and life is struggle. Everything in nature devours one another, exists at the expense of others, and yet, life is beautiful. It’s a matter of understanding it and not looking for midday at eight o’clock in the evening, when it’s dark. I have my art to defend me, and you, Mesdames, have those darlings.”

  With a gesture, he indicated the insouciant trio, Ulette, Robert and Simone, who were coming back up the slope, shouting and laughing wholeheartedly.

  The grandmother said: “They know nothing, and only experience the intoxication of living. They’re children.”

  XVII. The Pont du Tournant

  In a corner of the Bellarosa’s gardens there was a shaped arbor of hornbeams, forming a kiosk of verdure, and three conspirators, Ulette, Simone and Robert. Ulette was the ringleader.

  “You know that the Painter left by car after lunch, with our Mamans and with his outdoor easel and his box of colors, to work by the Pont du Tournant. We’ve been left behind because it’s very steep out there and they’re afraid of our imprudence.”

  “As if we didn’t know how to climb!” said Robert.

  “It’s not very far way,” said Ulette, “from what I heard, and from the Pont du Tournant one can see the most beautiful part of the stream. What if we were to give them a surprise?”

  “They’ll scold us because they left us behind.”

  “It’s agreed, then,” said Ulette. “We’ll go to Tournant?”

  “It’s agreed,” said Robert. “I’m a man. You can go out with me.”

  “And we’ll take baby Tony.”

  “Oh, no. It’s too cumbersome for your kid.”

  “I’ll ask Madeleine to lend me Antoine’s pram.”

  “All right,” said Robert. “I’ll walk. I have no desire to carry your doll every time you don’t want to.”

  “You’re always afraid of getting tired. You must have been born on a Sunday.”

  “If you’re going to me, I won’t bother with the stroll.”

  “Don’t get annoyed; it was a joke. We’ll get kitted out, then? We’ll need our big straw hats.”

  “I’ll bring my carbine,” said Robert. “What if we run into brigands? And we’ll go via the Porte d’Estérel. That’s much shorter.

  As it was not the first time that Ulette had asked the good Madeleine for Antoine’s pram for her big doll, the latter raised no objection, and merely ordered: “Bring it back by three o’clock; you know that’s the time when your little brother has his walk.”

  “I’m going to take baby Tony for a walk,” said the artful little girl. “He needs a stroll, too.”

  To get to the Pont du Tournant, it was necessary to follow a path between the wood and the wall of the Bellarosa as far as the road, then go along it for a good half an hour and turn left on to a side road that went up through the forest of pines and firs as far as the gully at the bottom of which the torrent ran, and which as spanned by a bridge.

  At first the three little travelers marched gaily, Ulette making Robert push the pram. After a quarter of an hour on the dusty road, however, their legs began to get tired.

  “It’s very hot,” said Robert. “You call this a pleasure trip?”

  “Get away, you wet blanket! Since we’ve started, it’s necessary to go on to the end. Look at that man coming up the hill. He’s walking at a good pace, that one.”

  “He’s not local. I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Load your rifle then. Perhaps he’s a brigand.”

  “I’d have done well to leave it behind. It’s gets heavy, after a while, especially while pushing your pram.”

  The man arrived alongside them.

  “Am I a long way from the Villa Bellarosa?”

  “We’re the grandchildren of Madame Desambrez, the owner of the villa,” said Robert, sticking out his chest, “and this is the daughter of Madame Aubert, and her baby in the pram.”

  The individual started. “Then this baby…?”

  “Is Antoine, Monsieur. The Bellarosa is the beautiful villa that you can see from here.”

  “Damn!” swore Baudard—for it was him. “This is made to measure.”

  From the direction of Théoule, however, a peasant’s cart was slowly approaching. It’ll be here soon. I believe I was about to do something stupid. That’s no good. I’ll follow the kids. Perhaps an opportunity will present itself.

  He thanked the children, allowed them to get a start, and then followed them at a distance.

  Meanwhile, the quartet had arrived at the road leading to the Pont du Tournant. They turned on to it without hesitation, Ulette declaring that it was the right road. The Luron, after having descended sinuously through the maritime foothills of the Alps, ran into a mass of granite there, which left for it such a narrow passage that the water accumulated against the natural barrage, and broke through it to fall down on the other side onto the rocks in foaming cascades. At the top of the path followed by the children, and old bridge overlooked the roaring rush.

  That, however, was not the most marvelous viewpoint, for the one chosen by Fabio Canti was at the bottom of the falls, a hundred meters from the bank. From down there, he could see the ensemble of the cascades, of which he wanted to make a study, in a harmony of silver, gray, green and blue. The three little excursionists, having arrived at the bridge, had a disappointment, for, from where they were standing, they could not see the auto, the painter and the three mothers, and the noise of the falls would have prevented them from being heard if they had wanted to call out.

  “Zut!” said Robert. “They can’t be far away. I’ll climb up in the pines above the Tourmant. From there I’ll be able to see the Painter and our Mamans. Wait for me, girls.”

  “We’ll go with you!” cried Ulette. “We’ll find strawberries in the woods.”

  “And I’m fearfully thirsty,” said Simone.

  “What about the pram?” said Ulette. “And Baby Tony?”

  “Oh, he won’t fly away. Is there any need to burden ourselves with that?”

  “You know very well that he needed a little exercise. You’re not very nice to Baby Tony.”

  “Look—to give you pleasure I’ll kiss the dirty kid.”

  Robert matched action to his words. After him, Simone did the same, then Ulette, at length, instructing Baby Tony, in a loud voice, to be good. Then all three of them ran into the wood, toward the top of the hill, and soon disappeared into the undergrowth.

  Hidden behind a tree trunk, Armand Baudard had missed none of that scene.

  Thunder! I must be blessed! A stroke of luck like that, on arrival! That’s a hundred thousand bullets very rapidly earned. Let’s see...the kids have gone. Just a matter of throwing the little rat into the drink. He started to laugh. Well, that’ll cure his thirst. Then it’ll be an accident for which the kid
s will get the blame. Let’s go—double quick.

  He ran forward, grabbed the pram, having glanced vaguely at its contents, without paying much heed, and threw the whole thing over the parapet of the bridge.

  That’s at least thirty meters to fall. If he escapes from that, he’ll be lucky.

  And the monster immediately fled, at top speed.

  At the bottom of the waterfall, Fabio Canti had finished his sketch, and was rearranging his colors and packing his bag while chatting with the ladies of the Bellarosa.

  “Oh!” said Madame Aubert. “What’s that coming toward us?”

  “One would think,” said the painter, “that it’s the wreckage of a child’s pram.”

  Carried by the torrent, it raced along through the rocks, having broken into pieces. Hanging by its wrappings, a baby deprived of its legs, its head fractured and dangling, was following it lamentably. The members of the group were looking at one another quizzically, wondering what it might be, when Robert, Simone and Ulette appeared, emerging on to the slop between the fir trees, preceded by a landslide of pebbles.

  “What’s this?” cried Madame Dambrez, severely.

  Robert threw his arms around his grandmother’s neck, knowing full well, the little imp, that she would not resist his caresses for long. Ulette and Simone each did likewise with the necks of their mothers.

  “It’s me who brought them,” he said, bravely. “We heard you say where you were going, and I was vexed to be treated as a little girl. And then, Baby Tony wanted to come, too.”

  “Ulette’s doll,” asked the painter anxiously, or her brother Antoine.”