“Come on, is it agreed. Am I deputy director?”
“You are.”
“Good. A few little ideas occurred to me the other day, which I shall submit to the first board meeting. And I’ll go back to Paris immediately to take up my position...”
“That settles everything,” said Charles. “Since the deputy director of the company will be in his office in Paris tomorrow, the director can extend his vacation by a few days, for I too have an idea for the return... I’ve exposed it to Mother and Marcelle, who will be kind enough to take charge of bringing the children back to the house. You don’t see any inconvenience in that little plan, Father?”
“None. Anyway, you need a breather after your voyages to Java and other places with excessive climates.”
“And then too, Suzanne has been a little tormented lately.”
“Mistakenly!” said Monsieur Montgrabel. “Poor little Suzanne, so lovely and sweet.”
“Mistakenly, for sure,” Charles went on, “but it’s over now. So, in order to put it behind us completely, instead of coming back by tube with you like people in a hurry, Suzanne and I will take the schoolboy route. We’ll escape, flee, all alone” In order to come back we’re going to go donkeying...”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a new sport. Our generation is very sporty, you know. There are people wary of various overly practical and overly organized forms of tourism, overly familiar ports, autos, airplanes, aerial, submarine or mixed dirigibles; it’s seekers of the unknown, avid for new impressions, who have invented donkeying. They’ve rediscovered the donkey, the worthy little donkey, the humble ass, a forgotten animal, almost lost. Oh, there’s something to be done with the donkey! It’s quite simple, you’ll understand: one puts a saddle on it, with a bridle and stirrups, as people once did with horses. One climbs on to it, quite at ease, and one sets off, straight ahead, not on the cluttered, unapproachable, redoubtable roads, much too well-known, but tranquil little paths, gently and peacefully, over hills and vales, through fields and meadows, over grass or through brushwood, where the mount chews thistles in passing, along rivers with flowery banks, under poplars or in the coolness of shady woods. What do you think of our plan? It will be delightful along the banks of the Dordogne.”
“Delightful. But where will you find the donkeys?
“I’ve had difficulty, but I’ve found three.”
“Why three?”
“Two for us and one for the luggage. We’ll go with you to the tube station in a little while, then Firmin will leave the auto-flyer in the garage and take the third donkey. I think he’s perfectly capable of piloting a donkey, even a recalcitrant one, such as one sometimes encounters, according to ancestral memories...”
“Go on, then, go donkeying, my children. Now let’s have lunch, and afterwards, the tube to Paris. It’s astonishing how alert and well I feel now, with an appetite for work!”
“Yes,” said Madame Montgrabel, still anxious. “But I’m handing in my resignation...”
“That’s understood. You’ll only keep the departments of social relations. Look—another advantage of the new plan. Charles, as managing director, is constrained to leave major study voyages to others. He stays in Paris, no longer budging from his directorial office. Suzanne, delighted, isn’t bored any more. Everything has worked out for the best!
A smile illuminated Suzanne’s face, serene again, and she kissed her father-in-law as a sign of reconciliation and gratitude.
“I think so!” said Monsieur Montgrabel, cheerfully. “It seems to me that I read yesterday on a poster, that according to the calculations of Statist statisticians, the State the great administrator, could, by means of a contribution of one franc ninety-eight per person per day, ensure all services, including those of nourishment and administration. We’ll propose that figure to the hotelier of the Lion d’Argent!”
“And then to Paris,” said Charles, “you by tube, us by the schoolboy route.”
CENTAUR ISLAND
I. Captain Zephyrin’s Shipwreck and
Truly Extraordinary Encounter on an Unknown Shore
Long-haul captain Zephyrin Canigousse, of the port of Bordeaux, is not one of those mariners who allow themselves to be carried away by their imagination in recounting their travels and willingly embroider the truth. There was certainly never a man more worthy of faith. That love of decoration is good for the men of Marseille, but the captain is a native of Gascony, so one can believe him when he deigns to narrate some episode of his distant peregrinations.
Now, this is what Zephyrin Canigousse consented to tell us the other day, while picking fruits in the garden of his little house at Hendaye.
Not a single word will be changed in his story, told in a tone so simple, with a sight Gascon accent, mingled with that of the most perfect sincerity. We shall not add a single comma in scrupulously transcribing his words and we can affirm in advance that the worthy captain’s truly amazing revelations will provoke a considerable emotion throughout the world and confound all scholars.
So (the captain began) we had left Melbourne and we were heading toward ****—the place name is irrelevant—when, after several weeks of tranquil navigation in increasingly warm and unfrequented regions, where we did not encounter anyone, even Malay pirates or savage pirogues, the weather suddenly got worse.
The sun continued to grill us, and it was a rotisserie and a boiler, along with the sea, that poured cataracts of hot water over our poor vessel. Suddenly, there was a cyclone, a frightful typhoon. Our ship was carried away like a wisp of straw, precipitated into the hollows of monstrous waves, thrown keel in the air into whirlpools of foam, recaptured, tossed again and turned over again...
Although solidly moored, the men were snatched away one after another, along with the masts and the funnels. I was waiting for the end: a disagreeable moment, damn it! But the tempest was making such an infernal din that I couldn’t hear myself think, even by shouting, and I didn’t have the idea of being scared. I only felt a great annoyance at missing an important rendezvous in Hong Kong.
How long that lasted, I can’t say. At a given moment, lifted up by a wave more monstrous than the rest, I was rolled in its swirls, hurled like a cannonball in the midst of a firework display of white foam and red flashes, and I lost consciousness...
Whether that faint lasted for a week or only a matter of minutes, I can’t say. When I came round, I had some trouble gathering my thoughts. Where was I? What, no longer dancing, no longer leaping, no longer tumbling? What tranquility, what calm after that frightful din!
Oh, my head! Oh my arms! Oh, my legs! I felt molded, demolished, broken all over, but the weather was delightful, the air smelled good, the waves were now like velvet paws caressing tenderly...so where was I?
Lying half in the water and half on pretty fine sand, I was able to raise myself up on my elbow and look round. “Land! An island!” Needless to say, I had been saved by a miracle; I finally perceived something other than water: a vast inlet framed by big rocks, with verdure behind, in the middle of which, tall coconut palms loomed up.
Saved, thank God! I savored the joy of finding myself out of danger, blissfully. My comrades, alas, had not had the same luck, and I couldn’t see any wreckage of our ship, not even the smallest plank. The devouring ocean had not allowed a single fragment to reappear.
Yes, but I suddenly thought about savages. Damn! To escape a shipwreck only to fall into the hands of ferocious Kanaks wouldn’t be pleasant! And I remembered a heap of stories of mariners shipwrecked on scantly inhabited shores, immediately and unceremoniously put on the spit, or fattened up in order to be served up one after another as the main dish of a great feast when the tribes got together and exchanged courtesies. I had to expect annoyances of that sort. Fortunately, I’m thin; I would have had a slight delay...
Those reflections introduced a hint of black into my satisfaction at finding myself out of the grip of the tempest. Crawling over the sand and in the water I
was gazing anxiously at the shore when I suddenly heard cries and appeals uttered by strange voices, which even seemed to me to be savage and ferocious.
I turn around swiftly. It’s a matter of not allowing myself to be devoured. I perceive indigenes running from rock to rock, gesticulating...
And I’m defenseless! They’re hurtling toward me with an incredible rapidity. But they’re on horseback, damn it! I hear the noise of hooves trotting over the shingle and through the first waves…floc, floc...patapan, patapan…floc, floc...
Here they are! I’m caught; they’re hailing me in an unknown language... Let’s at least try to mollify them, so they don’t eat me immediately. I stand up, with a amiable smile. Why, there are only two of them, making enough noise for half a dozen.…
Ah! Oh! Ah! Damn and double damn! I raise my arms in the air in amazement and fall to a sitting position in a pool of water, splashing my savages—ploof!—who jump in their turn, in an amazement similar to mine!
My savages, damn it, my local natives, aren’t Kanaks, and they aren’t negroes, Chinese or Malays… they aren’t humans at all… or rather, they aren’t all human. They’re centaurs! Yes, centaurs of the classic species, those we know from fabulous accounts: mythological centaurs!
No, I’m not seeing things! I can really see them! I plunge my fists into my eyes and I rub hard… No, I’m not dreaming, they really are Centaurs, I tell you: CENTAURS! Creatures half-human and half-horse, as in fable, or what we took for fable. I’ve done my classes, I haven’t forgotten what Greek legends say about the centaurs that lived somewhere in Thessaly and which troubled the wedding of Pirithous, king of the Lapiths...
Well, they’re the same, exactly the same! Oh, my head! I’m ready to shout: “By Jupiter, would you care to go back into mythology right away!”
So, I raise my arms toward the heavens and wave them frantically. They do the same, raising their arms toward the heavens, just as bewildered as me, but as they each have four feet…four horse’s feet and two human arms…they rear up on their hind legs, and manifest an amazement even greater than mine.
They utter exclamations in a sonorous language, which isn’t Greek. I can divine perfectly well from the tone what they mean: What is this extraordinary individual, this monster of an unknown species?
Finally, after having rolled their round eyes for a long time, one of the centaurs bends down, catches me in his net and grabs me by the arms. I cling to him, he sets off, going back up the beach and pulling me into the rocks, on a slope that’s a little too steep for my shipwrecked strength.
The other centaur follows, encouraging me, and pushing me at difficult spots, and we finally arrive outside the reefs on good soft warm sand. There I let myself drop in order to catch my breath and try to recover my spirits, which really isn’t easy.
Soon I hear galloping around me, and I find myself surrounded by a band of centaurs and centauresses arrived from various directions, all uttering exclamations of astonishment and arguing animatedly.
II. In which Captain Zephyrin, collected by natives
with our legs and two arms, progresses
from one surprise to another
It’s too much! The cyclone the hours and hours, perhaps days, spent in my desperate situation, delivered to all the caprices of the monstrous waves, finally running aground on that shore and, to finish it off, the appearance of the centaurs!
I nearly faint again—from fatigue, hunger and emotion, you understand! Doubtless they perceive it; a centauress cuts through the crowd. She’s holding some sort of bottle in her hand. She…how shall I put it?...she kneels down beside me and puts the bottle in my mouth, while supporting my head with her other arm. She encourages me with words pronounced in a soft voice, speech of which I can translate easily enough merely by the intonation: Come on, my friend, drink this for me; it’s good, very good, it will do you good!
In fact, it is good; it’s an excellent cordial, which reanimates me and warms the blood in my veins. It’s more agreeable that being put on the spit, as I expected to be.
My saviors number a dozen centaurs and centauresses, plus a few little centaurs galloping alongside Papa and Mama.
No, they aren’t Oceanian Kanaks, Kanak centaurs, they’re white, with a mat or slightly bronzed complexion. The features are European, with fine brown beards. There are blond ones too, however; among the three centauresses that I came distinguish in the crowd, there’s one blonde—the one who gave me the cordial to drink.
And my centaurs are dressed; they aren’t savages, I tell you. Naturally, they have bizarre costumes, very different from the national costumes with which I’m familiar—and God knows that I’m familiar with some on all five continents! They have simple enough tunics of a sort hanging down almost to their knees—their horse’s knees, that is—attached by woolen belts dyed in bright colors.
The centauresses are wearing very similar tunics, but much more elaborately ornamented, with necklaces of glass beads around their necks. I can see that coquetry exists here too; the centauress who gave me something to drink has dangling metal brooches on her tunic, bracelets on her arms and even—how shall I put it?—on her horse’s legs above the ankle...no, the fetlock.
There are fishers there and manual workers, I sense that by their rude and callused hands; there are also individuals of a more elevated status, doubtless bourgeois centaurs, who were out for a stroll on the beach, and came galloping with the others in order to bring aid to the castaway.
I’m questioned, interrogated, but I don’t understand a word, although I can make a good guess.
How are you feeling now, poor unfortunate creature? Are you better? Come on, come as far as the houses over there...
I’m shown white and pink houses gleaming in the sunlight some distance away at the top of a hill. I nod my head as a sign of consent and I stand up, on legs that are still unsteady.
“Thank you very much, Messieurs et Mesdames,” I say. “You’re very kind. I’m feeling better and I’ll go with you.”
I distribute handshakes all round; they understand that I’m thanking them and look at one another with smiles of satisfaction.
The centaur fishers who found me first take the lead with their nets and baskets, in which strange fish are quivering, unknown in our cold northern waters. An obliging centaur, seeing that I’m still in some discomfort and limping, because of having been rolled over so many pebbles by the demented waves, and so brutally, picks me up and sits me astride s back, holding me firmly by the belt with one hand.
Equitation is not my forte, and I’ve known encountered simple horses elsewhere that have thrown me out of the saddle, sometimes to starboard and sometimes to port when it wasn’t forwards or backwards, but this time I don’t have to torment myself with reins or equilibrium, since my mount is holding me in place himself. All goes well and, transported by joy, I let myself go, crying: “Forward ho! Giddy up!”
Damn, that’s not polite to my benefactors; I seem to be treating them like mere horses. Fortunately, my impoliteness passes unnoticed; they don’t appear to hold it against me, and we go up the slopes at a gentle trot, the entirely troop chatting cheerfully.
What luck—the indigenes are good-natured, worthy people, mild and hospitable. Instead of putting the poor castaway on the spit and eating him with salt, they pick him up, comfort him and look after him. Let’s go with the flow and see what happens.
Damn it! What a surprise, all the same. The country seems to be perfectly cultivated. Here are fields and gardens, well-maintained roads, even a signpost bearing an inscription in bizarre characters.
We travel rapidly, and I wouldn’t have been able to follow my centaurs on foot. As we emerge from a little wood on to a plateau overlooking a vast horizon. I’m able to form an idea of the land to which the cyclone has brought me. The island—is it an island?—is large; as far as the eye can see I perceive a beautiful countryside, immense plains and undulating hills, between which rivers scintillate, snaking throug
h meadows, fields and forests. I distinguish villages, and even larger agglomerations that must be towns.
At the farthest limit of the blue-tinted horizon, a chain of high mountains is outlined, blurred and disappearing into the clouds. Behind me is the sea, the immensity of the ocean, without a dot on the extreme blue line.
But I don’t have time to linger in contemplation of the landscape; there are more people on the road or alongside it. I start on the rump of my horse—which is to say, the benevolent centaur who is carrying me. I can see metal shining, breastplates scintillating. What, soldiers? It’s the cavalry…no, still centaurs, but soldiers, men of war.
To make sure that I’m not dreaming, and to see whether a sudden movement might wake me up, I let go of my centaur’s tunic and let myself fall. I don’t fall—the centaur catches me while trotting. I really am awake.
We arrive alongside the militia. They’re sixty strong, all handsome fellows, young, strong and well-groomed, if I might put it thus. They wear steel helmets with bristling crests and breastplates of large steel plates, with short sleeves of chain-mail, from which muscular arms protrude. They’re in the process of shooting at targets in a broad terrain bordered by the road. The target represents a white centaur with broad brown stripes on the hindquarters, like a zebra. The centaurs arrive at a gallop in groups of four, brandishing bows, and while galloping, release their arrow at the target. They seem to me to be skillful.
Suddenly, at the sight of me, the entire squadron suspends the exercise and they run to cluster around me, with cries and exclamations. A centaur officer, a golden chestnut with a handsome face, advances authoritatively and takes my arm in order to put me on the ground and examine me more easily.
The benevolent centaur serving as my mount explains:
“Be careful, don’t break him! This strange animal is a trifle unwell. We found him on the beach; the sea cast him up... Yes, yes, he came out of the water. See, he’s still all wet...”
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