The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 2)

by André Couvreur

  Around us, the party was becoming hectic; people were throwing confetti and streamers; and that folly, the lights, the variegated colors and the hectic orchestra making my heart spin as much as the suggestive liquor. I was invaded by well-being; I now gazed without displeasure at the young man with the gilded eyes, the rosy cheeks and the musculature of a young god.

  Why, I wondered, should I not vibrate with him the same rhapsodies as with Marcel? He’s a poet, and doesn’t love grow better in a poet’s flower-bed than a scientist’s crucible? Provided that the poet plays his lute in the shade of a solid cash-box, upon which his Egeria has only to draw to satisfy all her whims...

  I’m ashamed to describe my weakness, when a few moments earlier I had felt so strong in my pride, but let no one forget, in my defense, that it was difficult for me to resist the champagne, the ambience and, to top it off, an inexplicably persuasive action coming from Monsieur Danator. Thus, invisibly and silently, certain powers of nature take possession of you.

  He had incontestably exercised some influence upon me, for he transmitted, without saying a word and without his gaze, his desire that I should dance with his son again. I was on my feet before the latter had even asked me.

  “Go, my children,” he said, coupling us together. “Life favors you; take advantage of it. Dance, in a spiral orbit, obedient to the ineluctable laws of nature. Later…if my ideas about osmosis are correct…later, we’ll see.”

  Joke or prophecy, I didn’t care; I welcomed Adam’s arm. This time, the orchestra launched into a foxtrot, but Adam forced me to waltz. You can imagine the ravages we produced, the shoves we imparted and received among the dancers who were following a different set of steps.

  “Stop! Stop!” I cried. “Can’t you tell that this isn’t a waltz?” But my protest went over his lowered head, failing to disenchant his ineradicable smile.

  I renounce any attempt to describe the amazement of the couples with which we collided, the indignation of a party of customers whose table we sent flying in passing, and the piercing mockery of my rival, Mademoiselle de Laricarière, on the arm of her frisky quinquagenarian. Fortunately, a void formed around us, and as the hour was epileptic and we were in tune with it, the crowd finished up cheering us frantically. I went back to my seat with my hair undone and my tulle dress in bits, a whole section of the skirt having been ripped off in the confusion.

  “Well, I can’t compliment you for your enthusiasm! Look what you’ve done to me, Monsieur Adam! I’m practically undressed.

  “Do you think Eve wasn’t, when Father Adam waltzed with her in Paradise?” Monsieur Danator joked.

  That excursion had dissipated my favorable dispositions. I huddled up in my ridicule. I demanded my cloak in order to hide my rags; Monsieur Danator hastened to fetch it himself. In his absence, Marcel asked his son several questions, to which the latter made no reply.

  I attributed Adam’s silence to the fact that he couldn’t hear, because of the din that was being produced around us; doubtless, too, he was unused to such distractions, for he gazed with bewilderment at the party animals throwing celluloid projectiles; he was listening as if in a dream to the racket of the orchestra, the interpellations, the songs and the screams mingled with the stridency of the toy instruments—trumpets, whistles and little bells—that had been distributed in order to add to the infernal cacophony.

  Soon, Monsieur Danator came back, holding my cape and struggling to free himself from a network of streamers that had been thrown at him on the way. Furiously, he brushed off his pursuers with his beret, removed from his scalp for the first time, which permitted me to see its astonishing devastation.

  He covered me up with nurse-like precaution. Then he drew me into the quietest corner of the establishment and made a loudspeaker with his hands in order to transmit his confidence to me.

  “Don’t hold it against my specimen. He only knows how to dance the waltz. I’ll buy you another dress, prettier than that one, and you’ll come out of the misadventure, in the end, with a profit. But if he’s only a one-note dancer, know that Adam has many qualities and charms that make him an elite child. He’s delightful, the boy, as you’ve been able to convince yourself. So, I’ll take advantage of it to remind you, one last time, my child, of the proposition that I made to you. I say ‘one last time’ because, for you as well as for us, the uncertainty can’t go on any longer. We’re becoming the laughing-stock of the resort...

  “Adam adores you, you know; he wants to make you the happiness of his life; he’ll be very unhappy if you reject him. I could have chosen other parties for him; there has been no lack of opportunities. His fortune, his virtues, his personal grace and beauty make him the cynosure of all the eyes of virgins in ferment and their ascendants desperate to add a male to their wealth.

  “Yes, I only had to lift my finger—but it’s you he wants, and I love him too much not to bow to his desire. I have, on the other hand, pointed out the incalculable benefits that you would get out of it: you don’t find a father-in-law like me lurking underneath a bidet. So make up your mind, my child; I need an answer this evening, and I’ll have one—yes, and I want it to be affirmative.”

  In any other circumstances, that ultimatum, and the terms in which it was expressed, would have deterred me even from responding, but I was still laboring under the emotion of Marcel’s advice, and, on the other hand, as I’ve said, my interlocutor was giving off some kind of mysterious and intense persuasive power that put me at his mercy.

  I therefore replied: “I can’t decide so quickly, Monsieur Danator, as you ought to understand. Your offer flatters me, certainly, and I admit that your son seems to me to be an enviable companion. As for you, I’m thoroughly persuaded that there aren’t many fathers like you”—I put a certain irony into the last remark, which Monsieur Danator understood perfectly, for his face twitched—“but to promise myself to someone for life requires that I get to know them a little better...”

  “Adam has no need to be known, since I’ve made him and I guarantee him!” claimed Monsieur Danator. And he added, incisively: “Look, I’ll give you all night to think about it. Tomorrow morning, Adam and I will come to the beach. He’ll take his bath with those paupers. I detest that promiscuity, on principle, but I want you to be able to see how anatomically perfect he is in his bathing suit, and what an exceptional swimmer he is...yes, it’s quite different from dancing when he’s in his element...

  “This is what I propose: we’ll avoid meeting up in the baths. After his aquatic exercises, if it’s yes, come over to me and say: ‘Bravo for the man of the sea!’ If it’s no, don’t come over, and I’ll redirect my attention to some other creatress.”

  Mademoiselle de Laricarière went past at that moment, and the attention that Monsieur Danator directed at her told me as clearly as could be that she was the “other creatress” he had in mind. I vibrated with jealousy.

  “Is that agreed?” the strange man insisted.

  “It’s agreed.”

  We went back to our table, and I observed that Adam and Marcel had remained mute during our absence, but that the latter was observing the former with prodigious interest. For love of me? I no longer hoped so—but an incident followed that further complicated the pattern of the evening’s events.

  Let’s see whether I can remember the position and attitude that each of us had when, by virtue of a practical joke in the worst possible taste, the electric lights suddenly went out and absolute darkness reigned, unleashing the enthusiasm of the clientele.

  This is how it was: I had Monsieur Danator facing me, Marcel to my left and young Adam to my right, with his legs crossed. Well, at the moment when, after some hesitation, my retina adapted to the obscurity, I distinctly saw, in the darkness, in the place occupied by Adam, five phosphorescent gleams. One of them, the largest, was at the level of his eyes; two others were in the same plane as his hands; two more, which were no more than stripes, were palpitating perpendicularly near the floor.

&nbs
p; That incomprehensible illumination only lasted for a few seconds. I divined a jostling beside me, as if someone had violently shoved someone else out of the way, and the phosphorescent patches, after several oscillations, vanished.

  People around us having lit matches, I was able to recognize then that Monsieur Danator and Adam had exchanged places, and that the father was snatching away a handkerchief that he had thrown over the face of his offspring. Furthermore, the electricity was immediately switched on again, and I welcomed with genuine relief the enormous laughter of Monsieur Danator, manifestly emitted to enable me to share the joy of the farce of the phosphorescence.

  Another joke, I thought, an amusing trick of physics. Monsieur Danator has found a means to make his son glow in the dark. The luminous patches were his face, his hands and the gaps in his perforated socks, uncovering the skin where the stripes were. But how curious these people are, and how they’re aggravating my hesitation, as if on a whim.

  “We’re going,” said Monsieur Danator. “Come on, Adam, kiss your fiancée’s hand.”

  “Not his fiancée yet...” I protested.

  “Yes, yes! Tomorrow, the matter will be resolved. There are attractions that one can’t overcome. My son is better than an attraction; he’s all the attractions of nature, a synthesis of attractions, if I might put it that way. So, tomorrow, it will be yes, and in three weeks—the time required to publish the banns—you’ll be the beautiful young Madame Danator, the promise of my posterity.”

  On that affirmation, he withdrew, pushing my near future in front of him. I followed them momentarily with my eyes and then lost them behind a curtain of spectators. But I had scarcely turned away when a great hubbub rose up from the direction in which they had gone.

  It was evidently a dispute; people were climbing on to their chairs to get a better view, and I heard a shrill voice rising above the tumult, protesting and shouting threats.

  “What’s going on?” I asked the manager of the establishment, who was coming back from the quarrel, now concluded.

  “It’s his son, Mademoiselle.”

  “His son?”

  “Yes, the Danator boy, the puppy! Pure vandalism, Mademoiselle! Can you imagine that as he passed the buffet, the fool took it into his head to steal a lobster cooked for supper.”

  “Steal?”

  “As I say! He stuffed it under his overcoat and scurried off as if it were nothing. No way, José! I’d seen him, and I was able to catch up with my dish. The very idea! Because they’ve got money they think anything’s permissible. That one would dip his fingers in the sauce, for sure.”

  “But in the end, you were compensated?”

  “Yes—the father threw me a thousand francs and didn’t want the change. I can’t deny that that’s overpayment—but it’s the way of doing things that’s disgusting.”

  I turned to Marcel. “What do you think of that?”

  “Very, very interesting.” And without any further explanation, he said: “Would you like some supper, Made, or would you prefer it if I dropped you off at home?”

  “I’d gladly walk a few steps in your company, Marcel, inasmuch as I need to talk to you.”

  “At your orders, Made.”

  We went out, glad to be finally getting away from those pleasures, which were offending our delicacy, each as much as the other. Immediately, we were gripped by the poetry of the splendid night. In the tranquil atmosphere, the moon, in all her coquetry, was pouring a pale golden fluid over the vellum strewn with a dust of stars. O mysterious space, O slow clarity, how you evoke the near-nothing that we are in the infinity of worlds!

  And yet, I brought the universe back to our two beings drawing away from the Pergola: the millions of lights no longer counted by comparison with the two of us, mere ephemeral vibrations of eternal life!

  “Ah, here’s something that will compensate us for those lunatics!” said Marcel, consoling himself.

  Leaning on the parapet of the sea-front, he steeped himself intensely in the marvelous sight of the bay, somnolent beneath the homage of the heavens. To the left, in the direction of Ciboure, the lights of the Réserve, the Pergola’s rival establishment, were going out, with the result that a great calm reigned there, and I wondered what fate awaited me in that corner of earth sunk in the darkness, if I agreed to enter the Danators’ villa as a bride. Ahead, on the sparkling immensity, the barrier of rocks and cement edified by human hands to oppose the wrath of the waves was clearly perceptible; it assured us of the tranquility of the vast waves, permitting them to come and expire quietly fifty paces away from us. What a formidable and tender harmony, that muting of the waves!

  “Which way?” Marcel asked.

  I pointed toward the cliffs of Sainte-Barbe, our usual stroll. For the first time in the two seasons since a genuine sympathy had developed between us, he took me by the arm. I felt the gentleness of his grip divinely. Nothing other than the exquisite night authorized his familiarity, however; on the contrary, he was risking it at the moment when our destinies, hitherto encouraged to combine by a mutual attraction, were perhaps about to be separated forever...except that I had need of his protection; that I was a poor wreck, floating at the whim of two contrary sentiments, the tutelary flow toward Marcel, and the ebb, swollen by uncertainties, toward the Danators...

  Where would I run aground?

  “Let’s take advantage of the night,” I said to my companion, “to explain ourselves frankly. It’s easier to dare to speak from the heart at night. A little while ago, you gave me some advice that, I confess, I wasn’t expecting. In essence, you told me this: ‘Be venal, marry Adam Danator.’ Is that possible, Marcel; and if I decide to do it, ought I to believe that I won’t leave any regret behind?”

  “In whom?”

  “Come on, Marcel! I’ve asked you to be honest. All of your conduct toward me until now led me to believe that you wanted me for a wife; I sensed in myself treasures of abnegation and tenderness that would have rendered me worthy of it. You couldn’t possibly have been unaware of that…and now you’ve suddenly changed your tune and are pushing me toward that strange man…yes, strange, in spite of all the perfections you’re obstinate in recognizing in him. So, I confess that that has taken me by surprise…and that it saddens me...”

  I divined, by the fashion in which his arm started to tremble against me, that he was experiencing an emotion similar to mine. And yet, he declared: “I’ve told you exactly what I think, my dear Made. A woman could never be happy with me, you see. I’m too much a slave of my work to distract myself with anyone whatsoever. Science, work…I can’t accept other yokes. And look—I’m giving you proof of it by renouncing you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing…I’m explaining myself badly. Know, nevertheless, that I retain an affection for you so faithful that I wouldn’t want to lose sight of you during the preliminaries of your marriage and the beginning of your union. Yes, permit me to assist, like a caring big brother, in everything that will interest you for some time to come. That authorization will make it easier for me to do something, in case...”

  Again, he appeared to be afraid of having said too much. But my disappointment and irritation prevented me from commenting on his hesitation. All I could see was the wound in my amour, envenomed by self-regard.

  “That’s all right,” I said, bitterly. “It’s settled now. The situation’s clear; I prefer that. It will permit me honestly to link hands with the young man. As for your offer of involving yourself in my marriage, to play, before the courtesan that I shall be, the role of guardian of the seraglio, permit me to be astonished, and to decline. I’m big enough, thank God, to defend myself, if ever some annoyance crops up…which is improbable.”

  “Presumptuous girl!” he said, but more in pity than by way of criticism. “Well, I’ll occupy myself with your honor in spite of you.”

  “We’ll see about that!” I retorted. And I left him at the foot of the cliff that we had just reached. I thought I
heard a plaint calling me back, but I didn’t look round and went back to my hotel on my own.

  II

  I slept badly, persecuted by an extravagant dream. I shall narrate it for the benefit of those who don’t believe in the warnings of dreams. I found myself with Marcel in the outskirts of a city in Tunisia—I don’t know which one, exactly—in which my father’s career had caused me to spend a few years of my childhood. My companion said such lovely words of love to me, enveloping me with such charm, that we came without realizing it to the limit of the marshy agricultural lands of the city, where the desert extends its blonde undulations, sometimes punctuated by clumps of brushwood, to infinity.

  Suddenly, a troop of Arab horsemen arrived, brandishing weapons and uttering ferocious cries, who surrounded us in order to take possession of me. Then I implored Marcel for protection, but I was amazed to see that, far from defending me, he handed me over to my abductors.

  Then I saw myself traveling, as a captive, with my hands tied, through the streets of the city in which my father represented France, taken to the gate of a palace in which multicolored mosaics glittered in the sunlight, and I was introduced by force into the dwelling. Still under Marcel’s surveillance, servants stripped me of my clothes, bathed me and shoved me, naked, in front of a beardless lord, in whom I recognized Adam Danator.

  I learned then that I was in his seraglio and that Marcel benefited from certain negative conditions that permitted him to guard the honor of the master of the place. My God! What was that young billionaire, mutated into an Oriental prince and possessor of a gynaeceum, going to do to me?

  His intentions could not escape me, for he too began to undress, while hidden musicians intoned, not the ardent hymns of belief, but the wedding march from Lohengrin. I was obliged to play my part, and I was already preparing myself for a sacrifice that, I confess, to my confusion, excited my curiosity even more than it horrified me, when Marcel, like Olympian Jupiter, suddenly provoked an earthquake by stamping his foot on the ground—a seismic shock that made the edifice crumble and reduced the pretender to my charms to dust.