“Can you still see her, so fresh in her white smock marked with a red cross, leaning over the edge of your bed, discussing enthusiastically the latest book by the ancient and solemn Comtesse who still found virginal accents in her old meninges? You were scarcely listening, so captivated were your thoughts by that animated pastel...
“All in all, a delightful idyll, perfumed with carbolic acid, which captivated you more and more every day, making you regret that your wound was not more serious, and consequently in more enduring need of the assistance of the little bottles. But didn’t you obtain permission from the chief physician to replace the normal convalescence leave with a longer sojourn in the hospital? And that while your family was waiting for you anxiously?”
I bowed my head. “You know, St. Peter, when love possesses you...”
“Yes, I know…I know…you did, moreover, make amends for your ingratitude toward your parents later, when Mademoiselle Floriane Pastel became Madame Jacque Perdunier, by confiding her to them for a longer period during a journey of reportage with which you were charged by the great daily newspaper for which you worked. She was mortally bored throughout the time that she spent with them, in the country, in that gloomy property in the Nord...
“In penetrating the depths of your determination, however, was it really familial sentiment that guided you? Were you not rather obedient to the fear of leaving Floriane alone in Paris, delivered to all the temptations and all the tributes that a pretty woman receives?”
“Perhaps...”
“Certainly!”
“Love is not devoid of a little jealousy, St. Peter.”
“Jealousy—that’s the word I was waiting for! You are in every respect one of the best-favored of men. Nobility of character, generosity, altruism, devotion—as many characteristics that animate you. You even immolated yourself on the altar of the fatherland. That’s perfect! But those exceptional gifts—which, if I go back to the curriculum of your form, have been manifest throughout your life in seemly actions, and score you a lot of points in favor of virtue—you have always counterbalanced by a failing that passes among humans as a mere flaw, but which I place, personally, on the level of the worst vices: jealousy...
“Jealousy: a base sentiment, an animator of crime; an inept sentiment, moreover, unworthy of your intelligence, which was, in sum, the origin of the act of despair that had brought you before me.”
“I had my reasons, St. Peter.”
“None! Everything you thought regarding the relationship between your wife and your friend Georges Ferval was pure unhealthy imagination.”
“I have difficulty believing you...”
“You’re in the holy place of Truth here! Know that I have never told a lie in my eternity! What reason would I have? Do you think that I wield the stick to that extent?”
His indignant attitude corroborated his words. Nevertheless, I exploded.
“I don’t believe in pure friendship between man and woman! By all his actions, Georges manifested to me that the attraction he experienced toward Floriane surpassed friendship. Would he have come so often to Paris from Toulon, where he was assigned? Would he have arrived to plant himself constantly upon us, sprightly and spick and span in his naval officer’s uniform, bearing his gifts, his futilities…extending to a ring, the last time?”
“Pardon me, but it was an old ring of no value, of the kind with which junk shops teem.”
“It doesn’t matter—he dared to give it to her. And Floriane immediately put it on!”
“Simple politeness.”
“No! Jewelry that seals! Everyone knows what the gift and the delighted acceptance of a ring signifies! Anyway, all their behavior was significant. They looked at one another at length, smiled at one another, joked at my expense with a common accord. And yesterday, last night, at the Élysée ball, did she not refuse the majority of cavaliers to reserve her dances for him?”
“Of course! Everyone knows the cavaliers of the Republic! What a breed! And as you don’t dance yourself, well, it was necessary...”
“And when the ball finished, at four o’clock in the morning, and we were getting into the carriage, if you’d seen the way she said goodbye to him, holding on to his hand for so long...and she...”
“A petty familiarity quite comprehensible when one has visited the buffet several times.”
“One only drinks piquette at the Élysée buffet! No, no, champagne can’t excuse them. Anyway, they only had orangeade, except once, one glass!”
“You were watching them, then?”
“Indeed!”
“Jealousy…jealousy that deforms everything that is normal!” Suddenly bursting into laughter, St. Peter said: “None of that proves that you’ve been cuckolded, does it?” Immediately becoming grave again, however, he added: “Nevertheless, your suicide, explicable as it is by your nervous state, is a sin that merits punishment.”
“Hell?” I shivered.
“Oh no…that would be excessive. On earth, you know, people have a false idea of our severity. What? We’ve been sanctified by our virtues, and we don’t obey the first among them, which is charity? Don’t believe everything that’s said about where the seven capital sins lead. I know that terror that has been used to maintain morality, that it’s a brake on evil instincts, and from that point of view, the eternal furnace is a salutary legend—but think about it: who hasn’t committed a capital sin in the course of a life? Paradise would be a desert, damn it!”
Immediately, he bit his lip. “Did I say damn it? Forgive me, it was a slip of the tongue. I commit a few of them, being too intoxicated by your eccentric language…a language that, by the way, has so much phraseological clarity, power and harmony that I’ve made it my diplomatic language. I simply wanted to emphasize my protestation with an energetic interjection…and a blasphemy passed my lips! Forget it, and only remember our indulgence. Look, I’ll give you an example, by telling you a story that presents a certain analogy with yours.”
He collected himself momentarily, stroking his beard.
“Yes, only the day before yesterday, an individual was brought to me who had gone bang! bang! in the head, but after first having killed his wife. Ordinarily, such cases, being rather banal, aren’t submitted to me. Our services know, in accordance with the standard ready-reckoner, what course to take. It’s ruled like paper for musical notation and they proceed on its authority. But this time they were dealing with a worthy laborer, a ditch-digger by trade, whose case lent itself to hesitation. He had had the bad luck, that honest citizen, to marry an inveterate drunkard, abominable to his children, whom she beat. That evening, returning home drunk, as usual, she plunged a red hot iron into the arm of her new-born, who was crying with hunger. On seeing that, the ditch-digger leapt at her throat and squeezed it until she lost the taste for rotgut. Well, I chatted to that criminal for a long time, as with you. I understood his perpetual ordeal in being so badly matched. I consulted his form, which was extraordinary in its honesty, rectitude and civic courage, for a rustic...”
“And what did you do, St. Peter?”
“With the woman? I didn’t have to occupy myself with her, of course—the grill, automatically.”
“But the ditch-digger?”
“Over the ditch-digger, I hesitated somewhat…but he was such a good citizen that I sent him the other way.”
“Which is to say?”
“To HIM.”
“HIM?”
“In capital letters, my friend.”
“Pardon me, St. Peter...”
I ought not to have forgotten the notion of the Sovereignty of that supreme refuge, but I was entirely focused on the attitude of the saint. He accompanied the confession of his forbearance with a gesture of the right arm. Limply raised, letting the hand hang down, significant of a momentary renunciation of his mission as an administrator of justice. His aureole appeared to me to be even more luminous. He radiated generosity.
I was inspired by that to dare to raise an obj
ection. “I can only applaud your decision, but the woman? The drunken woman—was she really responsible? Did she merit such a cruel fate?”
“She only had to refrain from drinking.”
“Drinking…I’m not speaking for myself, who only drink water...”
“That’s an error, my son!” said the Saint. “Wine is an intestinal antiseptic. Wine is a salutary beverage, and you have admirable vintages in France. I remember, in the course of an inspection I carried out on earth, when I was obliged to submit to all the corporeal exigencies of humans, having drunk a certain little claret from Touraine, which was to kneel before! Whereas alcohol is a disastrous poison!”
“That’s understood—but would that woman have drunk the ethyl if the State hadn’t favored its sale? And are you not, fundamentally, responsible for that calamity in allowing the State to do it?”
“There, we’re of the same opinion,” the Saint put in, “But what can we do? Alcohol has other objectives than poisoning the race. And then, we have to leave humans a certain initiative. They abuse it, as with all the liberties we grant them. They elect the purveyors of bistros that parliamentarians are. So, believe that I don’t spare them, those henchmen of the zinc, when they fall under my paw. I’ve even given orders for their coefficient to be recalibrated. A politician automatically loses a quarter of his virtue points. Perhaps that would make them hesitate to solicit votes, if they knew it?”
We were in such accord on that point that I summoned up the courage to make a personal request. “Dare I beg you, O Mater of my destiny, to have the same indulgence for me as for that poor ditch-digger?”
“Send you to Paradise? You can’t think so! Your case isn’t the same thing at all. You haven’t passed through the same ordeals as that worthy man! All your sufferings were the creation of your own imagination.”
“Floriane is guilty!”
“I tell you that she isn’t!” He reinforced his negation by clicking his thumbnail on his teeth. “Floriane hasn’t done that, or anything else, that legitimates your suicide! I don’t know what will become of her later…with women, it’s necessary to expect anything…but for the present...”
“I have the regret, St. Peter, of wondering why you persist in exculpating her thus, when in the depths of my reason...”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, I don’t, St. Peter.”
“That’s good. I’ll take advantage of your incredulity to attempt an experiment that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and which will convince you subsequently... So, I’ll postpone my decision in your regard.” As he observed my emotion, he added: “Don’t worry. I’m going to employ you in the fashion of a psychic guinea-pig; but as you’re an elite subject, I think you won’t have cause to regret it.”
He pressed the call button of the telephone. Someone responded instantly at the other end of the line. Perhaps, once again, it was only a simulacrum and the communication was quite simply established by an exchange of thought. At any rate, as soon as he had pronounced the words: “Come, my children,” the two angels that had abstracted me from my planet reappeared in the room. They took hold of me by the armpits, as if to depart.
“You’ll come back to see me from time to time and we’ll chat,” St. Peter said to me by way of farewell.
Lifted off the ground, I went along the enfilade of administrative services again. Many of the celestial bureaucrats had stopped work to watch us pass by. They were still smiling, but it seemed to me that there was a hint of irony on their lips.
Then, once again, there were the great wing-beats of my transporters, first through the clouds and then infinite space: space strewn with a shiny dust, the homage of the stars.
Chapter III
The miserable world from which I had been removed a short while before soon reappeared, in a vision of I don’t know how many trillions an hour, initially confused by distance, but which then became more precise. I suspected it by virtue of the fact that we were plunging through rarefied air, which I was not breathing, but which I was certain was the air of the stratosphere.
Then we traversed the clouds emitted by the terrestrial crust, eventually to fly over the sea, the countryside sown with foliage, towns and villages, and finally Paris, which I identified by means of Monsieur Eiffel’s ladder.
Finally, here comes my street, my building, through the walls of which we pass. Here comes the landing of my third floor, on to which the only door of my apartment opens.
At that terminal point, where the angels deposited me and immediately vanished. I had the entirely physical impression that I had instantaneously rematerialized, but in an extraordinarily reduced volume.
Only too true!
There is a large full-length mirror on that landing, an admirable attention of my landlord, which permits us—Floriane and me—to stop before it when we leave for the theater or a soirée to check the correction of our costumes. It’s necessary that no awkward crease or stray lock of hair spoil the impression of elegance that we’re about to produce. Floriane adds a little powder to her face there; I adjust the rectitude of my cravat.
Well, there, in that mirror, what is it that I see?
I see a dog.
A little dog of the breed known as English terriers, black with short hair, with fiery patches above the gilded eyes, an elongated body with slender legs and a sleek paunch, sufficiently plump without being fat. A handsome little dog, in truth.
And I had the conviction, at the same time, that the dog was me, that it was inhabited by my intelligence, by my soul, the possessor of my past, disposed for my future, endowed with my instincts—destined, in fact, to continue Jacques Perdunier in the substance of an animal that was not yet baptized.
Oh, son of a bitch! One can make fun of a penitent, but not this extent! Me, a celebrated writer, designated for the green coat, decked out thus! Buried in the skin of a beast! Saint Peter had played a damnable trick on me, even if he hadn’t sent me to damnation.
And I looked at myself in the mirror, expressing my amazement with a hateful crispation of my chops, exposing the glare of my teeth, ready to bite.
However, as I contemplated myself, reflection diminished my rage. With what aim had my judge decided to have recourse in my case to a metempsychosis forbidden in his realm? Did not divine law and holy morality formally proscribe the transportation of a spiritual entity into a new incarnation? I believed so, at least. Doubtless, I must be the first person to which that incredible adventure had happened. Yes, the first, since St. Peter had let it slip in my presence that he was going to attempt an experiment he had been thinking about for a long time, that he was going to make me his “psychic guinea-pig.”
So, as I reflected with all the faculties of my intelligence grafted on to another carcass, my anger dissipated and my jowls relaxed. Soon, a joyful agitation of my tail was concordant with the complete evolution of my humor.
Let’s see, I said to myself, I could be up there, purging in I don’t know what manner my self-murder, but St. Peter has decided that I ought to be sent back to Floriane’s proximity. I’m therefore going to live again in her atmosphere, be nourished by her—instead of nourishing her—and perhaps receive abundantly the caresses that she measured out under the conjugal regime. And I’m complaining? Doubtless I’ll torture myself again with what I’m going to discover regarding hr relationship with that traitor Georges Ferval, but will my jealousy conserve, under my metamorphosis, the acuity of a masculine rivalry?
Come on, let’s recover a little common sense.
Calm down, calm down. And let’s see, first, how I can set foot inside my home again. Floriane is away for the day. She’ll come back from her parents’ place after dinner, at the time I indicated to her as being before that of my return from our friends—which is to say, bedtime. Now, I killed myself well after the departure of the servants, at about four o’clock. My celestial journey was instantaneous. My appearance before St. Peter lasted…let’s say thirty or forty minut
es. The angels brought me back as quickly as they took me away. All things considered, therefore, it ought to be about five o’clock. The orientation of the sun through the window of the stairwell confirms that. It thus remains for me to wait for a good five hours outside my door. Let’s try to make the most of it.
I spent a long moment then studying myself in the mirror. Only then did I perceive that I had not changed sex. Is it credible that that had not been my first curiosity? It was, however, an important matter. That went without saying. I was a male, since it is necessary for me to use that gross term. The observation was a comfort to me. The inconveniences of the female condition are well known—the frenzy that unleashes them at the times when procreation demands it.
I was a male and, let it be said without vanity, a male who appeared to me to be as seductive as possible. Details of my new being, which amazement had prevented me noticing when I first made my acquaintance, persuaded me that I had, in esthetic terms, everything I might desire. I could not help admiring my anatomy, which exemplified my breed in all its purity, with the two gold patches above the eyes, the slenderness of the muzzle, the sleekness of the neck, the aristocracy of the feet, the luster of the hair and, above all, the eloquence of the ears, partly suppressed and tapering to a point, which pricked up at the slightest external sound and the slightest internal emotion—for it is well-known that dogs speak with their ears and their tail, and mine, cut short, in accordance with a fashion that, in this instance, did not make it ridiculous, expressed by a rapid vibration my contentment in being home again.
The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 3) Page 24