Homo-Deus

by Félicien Champsaur

  The group had split up. Only two men were blocking the road, signaling them to stop.

  “Too bad for them!” growled Aubert. “It’s necessary to get through, no matter what the cost.” And, putting it into fourth gear, he launched the automobile at the gendarmes.

  Understanding that the vehicle was going to run them down, the two gendarmes leapt aside just in time not to be hit.

  “Fire!” shouted the brigadier.

  Four carbines fired. Two bullets were embedded in the bodywork, a third shattered the windshield. A second salvo was followed by a third, but the fugitives were out of range and not wounded, save for a few shards of glass that had flown into their faces, inflicting slight cuts.

  “We’re fried now,” said Etienne. “The telegraph has circulated our description.”

  “Give up on Théoule. Head for the frontier, and we’ll find a means of crossing over on foot, over the mountain paths.”

  “What’s the point? No matter where, we’ll be pinched. Might as well stick to my original idea. If I can reach Théoule through the woods of Cap Estérel and the Auberge des Adrets, I don’t care about the rest.”

  “You don’t care about anything. What about me?”

  “You can look after yourself, bastard!”

  Keysar did not reply. He thought about having himself dropped off on the road. But where would be go? To get caught, in short order. The thought obsessing his brain became more precise. If he could get rid of Etienne, take possession of the four hundred thousand-franc bills that were stuffed in his pockets, and reach some hamlet lost in the foothills of the maritime Alps, going to earth if necessary, like a wild beast, in the forest, to await a favorable opportunity…within a month, his beard would have grown back, and he’d succeed, thereafter, in getting himself out of trouble. But Etienne was stronger than he was, and had a Browning in his pocket, as well as the blue bills.

  Meanwhile, the auto, still traveling at top speed, was burning up the road. On a bend, Etienne perceived that the vehicle was leaning to the right. They were out of danger for the moment and dusk was falling. He braked and leapt out to inspect the tires. A bullet had scratched one of the rear tires and the frantic race had enlarged the rip. The wheel needed to be changed. It was time lost, but there was no means of avoiding it. He took off his overcoat and jacket, and set to work.

  Thomas Keysar felt cold sweat running down his back. Etienne’s jacket, thrown on the seat, contained the wallet and the Browning. What a temptation!

  Aubert, absorbed in his task, had removed the damaged wheel and put on the spare one. A bullet brushed through his hair and another tore his ear. Thomas, leaning over the side of the vehicle, was taking aim again.

  Instinctively. Etienne parried with the heavy wrench that he was holding in his hand, striking hard, twice, at the murderer’s hand and wrist.

  Thomas dropped the Browning. Aubert picked it up.

  Dazed, the two accomplices stared at one another with horrified eyes. Thomas threw himself backwards; then, leaping out of the vehicle on the far side, he threw himself into the undergrowth bordering the road and disappeared, while Etienne staunched the blood that was blinding him.

  In sum, the wounds were not serious, but blood was running in abundance from the ear that was half torn away.

  Still holding the Browning, he climbed up on to the footstep in order to get the handkerchief from his jacket. It was no longer beside the steering wheel where he had put it. Suspiciously, he climbed into the vehicle. His jacket was lying on the floor in front of Thomas’s seat, and the banknotes had disappeared. He collapsed onto his seat.

  Everything was turning against him. If he let him go, he was doomed.

  Taking his handkerchief, he made a bandage of it, and knotted it around his head in order to support his ear. In the meantime, darkness had fallen over the deserted countryside. He sensed that the wretch could not be far away, cowering in a bush. There were not enough concerns, then, not enough alarms?

  In the end, he found a stout branch of dead wood, set it across the road, and then, climbing back into the car, activated the engine. He pulled away at moderate speed, without switching on the headlights, and the sound of the automobile was soon lost in the distance.

  Only then did Thomas Keysar emerge from hiding. It was now a matter of finding a place of safety for himself and the money. Had it been daylight he would have tried to make off through the woods, but by night he risked getting turned around.

  He decided to go back the way they had come, primarily because in front of him, there was Etienne, who might have been stopped again by some new accident. He therefore started walking, limping, because he had twisted his foot in the leap he had made to escape Etienne’s vengeance. Furthermore, the blows of the wrench he had received on the back of the hand and the wrist made it exceedingly painful for him to use his right hand.

  He walked for about an hour and then, unable to do any more, he lay down in the grass of the ditch and went to sleep.

  XV. The Anthill

  He was woken up by a shock as disagreeable as it was dolorous. Opening his eyes, he uttered a cry of terror. Etienne Aubert, bloodied by laughing sarcastically, taking advantage of his slumber, had trapped his feet in the noose of a long slender cord, and was dragging him into the undergrowth. He uttered a scream that was half of agony and half of terror, and lost consciousness.

  Etienne, after having traveled some distance in the car, had stopped; then he had gone back along the road on foot until he reached the branch that he had placed laterally as a reference point. He was sure then of having reached the spot where he had nearly been wounded. Was Thomas still hiding in the wood, or had he set out on foot?

  With the aid of a pocket torch he explored the terrain. There was a narrow ditch on either side of the road. It was not difficult to find the place where Thomas had plunged into the bushes; he also found, very rapidly, the place where he had emerged again, for he had grabbed hold of clumps of grass with his uninjured hand, some of which had given way under the effort.

  Thomas must have retraced their route; otherwise, he would have run into him. It was a difficult search under the moonless sky,73 but the bright darkness of a southern spring was sufficient for him to distinguish something on the white road from some ways away. After an hour, Etienne perceived the tottering silhouette of Thomas Keysar, and followed him prudently at a distance, walking by the side of the road. Eventually, he had come upon him snoring, exhausted by fatigue and emotion, and had bound the joker’s feet.

  Like a good automobilist, he had had a long piece of string in his pocket, known as a “whip,” for making minimal repairs. He was about to make use of it to strangle the bad advisor and traitor, having taken back all the small bundles of banknotes, when he spotted, some distance away, a mound about a meter in height, which he recognized at a glance as an anthill. Then, rapidly, he wound the cord around the legs and arms of the adventurer of letters, wrapping him up like a gigantic sausage. Having done that, in order to reanimate the unconscious man, Etienne Aubert pulled up a few clumps of grass wet with dew, and rubbed the face of the former critic and charlatan thought-reader vigorously.

  Under that energetic friction, Thomas Keysar came round.

  “Mercy!” he moaned. “Forgive me! Forgive me!”

  “No, my lad. Look what you’ve done to me, bandit!”

  Etienne Aubert projected the light of the torch at his own face.

  At the sight of the blood-stained face and the ear that was poorly attached by a handkerchief that was almost entirely red, he understood, by the coldly determined expression, that he was doomed.

  “However,” said Etienne, “I won’t kill you. I had my own father killed, but personally, I don’t kill. I shall simply leave you here in this wood. The morning’s already paling the firmament, and you’re only a hundred paces from the road. Your eyes are already shining with hope, eh, imbecile?”

  He left Keysar in order to head toward the anthill, and, breaking off
a green branch, he used it as a lever to open up a broad gash in the hillock. The ants, woken up, rushed out in all directions to investigate the cause of the disaster. Then he went back to pick up his victim and throw him onto the section he had opened up, and retreated a few steps, in order to avoid being attacked himself.

  The sky became brighter, and the large trees emerged from the shadows first. Then, the light penetrating through the braches descended, still vaguely, to the ground, where Thomas was moaning.

  He understood now, the horrible objective of his former friend, by the characteristic odor and the furious swarming of thousands of ants. He twisted in his bonds and rolled over in order to get away from the danger, but he felt the hordes of insects running over his entire body. The enemy was reconnoitering the prey before devouring it.

  Etienne sniggered, seemingly greatly amused, and sniggered and sniggered...

  Eventually, as Thomas, bound as he was, was moving too far, Etienne took out his knife. He started cutting branches from the bushes.

  He carved points on ten of them, then, returning to his victim, who had ended up rolling some distance from the anthill, he shoved him back with kicks and thrusts of the sharp branches, digging into his ribs. Employing all his strength, he drove pickets into either side of the wretch, thus imprisoning him, in order to prolong the torture of being slowly devoured by the ants, enraged by the disturbance of their home.

  Thomas Keysar, the so-called Caesar of the Chamber Pot, understood that the only help he might obtain was in the locality, and he started howling: “Help! Murder! Help me! Help me! Murder! Help!”

  That animal’s capable of attracting people, if there are any nearby. Necessary to shut him up.

  He rolled up his sleeve, and picked up a handful of earth, grass and insects, which he stuffed into the mouth of his victim. The patient was suffocating; in order not to choke he had to spit out, or even to swallow, the repulsive mixture—but a second handful followed the first. Then, as he was still rejecting it, and as the ants were climbing the arms and legs of the torturer, Etienne Aubert cut out the wretch’s tongue with his knife.

  The ants, rendered audacious by the vain efforts of the victim, tied up like a sausage between the stakes, eventually penetrated into his mouth, his nose, his eyes and his ears.

  Then Etienne, certain that it was impossible for the agonized man to escape death, and in order to escape the ants that were beginning to invade him, beat a retreat.

  Having already recovered his wallet, he then thought about his car, and went back along the roadside.

  At the moment when he was about to climb the embankment, however, he heard the roar of an automobile traveling at top speed and threw himself behind a bush—but he had had time to glimpse blue horizon uniforms, kepis with white braid and the barrels of rifles.

  More gendarmes! It’s a pursuit, then. They’re tracking the wild beast. My car will be captured. I only have my legs to save me now. Better to finish with it...

  He took his revolver out of his pocket and raised it to his head—but his arm fell back.

  I can’t…I could never...

  He stayed there for a moment, stupidly, and the instinct of self-preservation got the upper hand. The roads were becoming untenable. Without following any path, he climbed into the brush of the mountain.

  XVI. The Refuge of the Lost Pines

  He walked through the forest all day—for it was no longer a small wood but a great forest, stirred by the breeze, emerald-tinted by the spring, mostly of oaks, pines and firs, with branches traversed by light in the enchantment of renewal and the sun. Where was he? In the Estérel? He did not know. By dusk, hunger was tormenting him. He found fallen chestnuts in a grove of Spanish chestnut trees, left over from the previous season, with which to give his stomach some satisfaction, and he had four hundred thousand francs on him. He could do no more. He lay down on the moss at the foot of a tree and went to sleep—a heavy slumber that as troubled nevertheless by nightmares.

  Toward morning, in a frightful dream, he saw the anthill again. There was no longer anything upon it but a skeleton whose skull and hands were shining with a phosphorescent glow. He, Etienne, was sitting on the trunk of an oak, facing the cadaver, and it was absolutely impossible for him to move. He could feel his heart and his temples beating impetuously, but it was as if his limbs were petrified.

  Suddenly, the skeleton agitated, with slow efforts; it slithered, disengaging itself from its clothing and its cords. Finally free, it sat down in front of Etienne and started to laugh. The mute laughter that emerged convulsively from the empty breast of the skeleton had something frightful about it. Etienne felt sweat running over his face; he made superhuman efforts to flee, but without being able to lift a finger.

  That went on for a long time, an eternity for the sleeper. Finally, the skeleton stood up, came to crouch down behind Aubert and placed its hands on his shoulders: fleshless hands, each phalanx of which was glowing in the darkness, for it was dark now, and only the skeleton was visible in the gloom. Its hands seemed to be made of lead. He could not support their weight, and could not escape them.

  Then there was a long whisper in his torn and bloody ear.

  “I’m sniggering in my turn. One doesn’t kill a man entirely. I, too, could deliver you as fodder to the ants, but I’d rather feel you gasping under my hands. I’m going to strangle you with these pretty ivory hands, and I’ll feel them digging into your flesh very slowly, and the warmth of your blood passing into me, and we’ll live the beautiful life of the dead eternally, the two of us bound together in death as in crime.”

  The fingers of ivory and ice knotted themselves around Etienne’s neck. He uttered a frightful scream, and woke up.

  It was not entirely a dream. A snake, attracted by the human warmth, had slid over him and coiled itself around his neck. He leapt to his feet, and hurled the reptile away, which disappeared, hissing. He shook off his fear, and, having slaked his thirst with water from a stream, he washed his hands and face. Then he resumed his journey in the direction of the rising sun.

  He had been walking in that fashion for two hours—for he had a wristwatch—along a rocky crest, when he shuddered. Smoke was rising through the foliage.

  Within infinite precaution, he approached. It was escaping from a sheetmetal pipe emerging from the roof of a miserable hut made of dry stones stuck together with a daub of straw and earth. Around it was a meager enclosure where vegetables were growing. Attached to a long tether, a goat was grazing at its whim on the grass and flowering hawthorn bushes.

  Who could be living there? Armed, Etienne was not taking any great risk in confronting the inhabitants. One hand clutching the Browning in his pocket, he went straight to the door of the hovel and opened it. A woman of about fifty was occupied in frying scraps on a small cast iron stove. She turned round as she heard the noise, more astonished than frightened. She was tall and strong.

  Etienne Aubert’s appearance was not at all reassuring. She took hold of a heavy piece of wood and said, unemotionally: “There’s nothing to take from here, Man. If you come any nearer, I’ll split your head with this.”

  “Have no fear—I don’t mean you any harm.” And he handed the woman a hundred-franc bill. She dropped the piece of wood in order to take it.

  “That’s different, then. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve gone astray in these woods. I’m dying of hunger and fatigue.”

  “You’re lucky. I’ve made grub for two days. We’ll share.”

  The worthy woman put two plates on the table, cutlery and two glasses, put the little stove in the middle and held out a spoon in order that the strange visitor could serve himself. It was a stew of potatoes and lard. The bread was black. To wash it down, a varnished pitcher full of delicious fresh water. To conclude the Spartan meal, there was goat’s cheese spread with odorous herbs and a plate of walnuts.

  His hunger appeased, Etienne interrogated his hostess. She explained how she came to inhabit the
high mountain forest. She was the wife of an itinerant knife-grinder, Jean Chrysostome, who owed his name to the saint of the day on which he had been found by the roadside. Raised at the expense of the Assistance Publique, he had been placed on a model farm when he was old enough; but Jean had no taste for large-scale agriculture, especially on behalf of others; he preferred fishing and poaching. He did his obligatory military service, and later, even though he was forty-five years old, took part in the Great War. Liberated, he had wandered for a while from one coast to the other, and finally, in love with the Estérel and the Côte d’Azur, had undertaken the métier of itinerant knife-grinder. In the course of a tour he had made the conquest of Sauvageonne, who had been by turns a farm girl, a tavern waitress, a cow herder and a maid-of-all-work, and was fond, like him, of solitude.

  The two of them had constructed their shelter on land that belonged to no one—or about which no one cared, at any rate—far from all communications. The two anchorites had gradually enlarged their domain, clearing land around their cabin. Jean Chrysostome set off in the good season with his old wheelbarrow and brought back the little money necessary to the maintenance of the household. At the present he was on tour, and his wife did not expect him back for a fortnight.

  Etienne made his plan.

  “So,” he said, when she had finished her story, “you don’t often see people.”

  “In the three years that we’ve been here, you’re the first human being we’ve seen.”

  “But how do you get food supplies?”

  “I ride our little donkey to Cambescure, a village eight leagues from Puget-Théniers. I find what’s necessary there: bread, salt, oil, vinegar and lard. There’s a spring of pure water a little lower down the slope. Our garden furnishes the rest. With the money you’ve given me, I’ll buy chickens and a small pig if I can find one.”

  “Listen to me, my good woman: meeting me might be lucky for you. For certain reasons, I need to isolate myself from the world. This hut and your way of life please me. If you’d like to take me on as a lodger for two or three months, I’ll give you five hundred francs a month.