“Oh, let’s talk about your report!” I shout, furiously. “I know about it, your report, my friend Kapalouia read it to me and explained it. Come on, no nonsense—let’s resume our excursion, as was agreed.”
I grasp of the tiller in order to take it from Pingo. He holds on to it solidly with his left hand and delivers a punch with the right that sends me sprawling against the side of the boat. He has the strength of a horse combined with the fist of a very muscular man, that animal of a striped zebra.
“Don’t touch,” he says to me, “or I thump you.”
My plan is spoiled. I’m perplexed. What can I do? Alone against three burly fellows—for my old centaur scientists, after all, aren’t as old as all that; they’re solid individuals, and Pingo alone is worth as much as four boxers, four poor little men, for he has fists and also possesses four legs and four enormous iron-shod hooves. He might charge, and I can see that in a quarter of a minute he’d make mincemeat of four boxing champions! Let’s not get annoyed, let’s temporize, let’s try to be clever, and shrewd. More cunning, always cunning!
XII. From calamity to calamity.
Bibouf and Galibou reveal themselves.
How the quadrumane Zephyrin disembarked
in the centaur capital incognito
My plan is going badly. We have been following the northern coast of the island for a long time; it’s four o’clock in the afternoon and we’ve reached the mouth of the great river that comes from the capital.
I’m no longer saying anything. Let’s face up to fortune bravely. It’s only a postponement, and I’ll succeed in abducting my three centaurs another time, perhaps when we return from our excursion.
“Do you see that port at the mouth of the river?” Bibouf says to me. “We’re heading straight for it, but we’re not stopping, we’re going directly to Zibor, three or four hours upriver...”
“What will our friend Kapalouia think when he doesn’t see us return?”
“He can think what he likes. In any case, he’ll receive a letter in which I inform him that we’ve borrowed you in the interests of science. I explain to him that you’re a great curiosity of natural history and that he’s acting badly in keeping you, so to speak, under wraps in his home, uniquely for his own personal satisfaction, without taking account of the rights of science.”
“And what if I don’t want to go with you?”
“Yes, yes, you want to! You’re going to see the country, its advantageous for your education. And I assure you that everywhere we go, you’ll be received with consideration by scientists as well as simple curiosity-seekers. We’ve prepared the way; you’re expected, my little friend. You interest everyone; be proud—you’re going to have your picture in the newspapers!”
Damn, I thought, what a setback! Such a well-planned escape! These fellow have caused me to lose all the fruit of all my pains. When will I find another opportunity? I’ll wait, so be it, I’ll wait! Let’s be cunning. I need my revenge!
After a pause of a few minutes in the port, we set forth on the river, three or four hundred meters wide at its mouth, which descended through a beautiful wooded valley, in which every turning showed us pretty groups of habitations on the slopes of the hills and in tranquil inlets sheltered under the verdure of great trees.
We traversed fine cultivated fields, gilded all the way to the horizon by the undulations of rope crops; I’m not very well up on agriculture, but I’m sure that there were cereals there as we have here, species not very distant from ours.
Pingo had lowered the sail as soon as we entered the river. He had thrown a rope to the bank and two vigorous centaurs were hauling our boat, trotting side by side along a towpath From time to time we passed other boats laden with wood or bales, being hauled downriver in the same fashion.
There are no factory chimneys on the route. The centaurs have no large industry; they only have the good old eternal crafts, the simple and healthy family industries. Agriculture, above all, is in honor, the excellent soil furnishes the necessary products without avarice. Everywhere along the river, as in Kapalouia’s homeland, there are only agrarian regions, idyllic landscapes animated by a few silhouettes of centaurs galloping through the fields, or families of laborers at work, scattered through the meadows. I’ve told you that life was simple and mild, and the mores patriarchal...
I admired it, but while cursing internally, darting furious glances at my two crooks and that brute Pingo.
At about eight o’clock in the evening, as night was falling, Bibouf showed me in the distance an agglomeration of houses gilded by the setting sun. We were passing gardens and beautiful villas, reflected in the river, which announced to us the proximity of a large city. It was Zibor, the capital.
“We’re arriving, my little friend,” Bibouf told me. “Zibor is a great city, with sixty thousand inhabitants. We want to spare you, and us too, the annoyances of public curiosity as we disembark. You can imagine that idlers would flock to see you, little singular and original creature. What a crowd! No, no premature exhibition; we intend to reserve the first fruits for the Academies...”
“What?” I said, pricking up my ears.
“Yes, we’ll disembark incognito. Pingo, go fetch the crate.
Pingo went down below decks and reappeared, pulling a large crate with his muscular arms, which I recognized immediately. It was the one inside which I had heaped up all my provisions for the great voyage.
Pingo seemed surprised as he deposited it on the deck. Bibouf immediately removed the lid.
“What all this?”
Pingo scattered my fifteen hams, my pancakes and bananas—all the provisions I had accumulated—on the deck. Bibouf and Galibou looked at them, astonished.
“When Pingo brought the crate on board yesterday evening, it was empty,” said Galibou. “What does this signify?”
I thought it prudent to appear as surprised as them, and I tasted a banana, with an innocent expression. Bibouf and Galibou shook their heads. Evidently, they suspected something. Fatality!
“My little friend,” said Galibou, in a dry tone, “We’re going to send all this back to Kapalouia. Let’s not mention it again! Except that this demonstrates that we need to be prudent and vigilant. Now, let’s think about preserving your incognito…into the crate!”
“What?” I said, recoiling.
“Get into it, cunning little animal! We’re going to a hostelry where our arrival has been announced. Get in—it’s in order that no one will see you on the way.”
I stood before my two enemies and I looked them under the chin with a defiant expression.
“Monsieur Galibou, Monsieur Bibouf,” I cried, “You’re beginning to annoy me. I won’t get into that crate; my dignity opposes it.”
I didn’t think about Pingo. His fist fell upon me from behind; he seized me by the collar and by the belt, and before I could say oof, I was in the crate. The lid closed on me, and on my dignity, forced to make its decision.
The rogues! They had me, I was completely in their power. What were they going to do with me?
I heard Pingo fasten the lid with a strong catch that I had noticed. I shivered. I would choke, rapidly asphyxiated, in that narrow crate, which reeked horribly of ham. I started hammering the sides with mighty kicks, but they were very solid, alas.
On one of its sides, however, Pingo slid a few grooved panels. Everything had been foreseen; the crate was fitted out in such a fashion that air and light could enter. I was no longer running the risk of choking, and I found myself in a sort of cage.
“Don’t worry, my little friend,” Galibou said to me. “You’re wrong to be annoyed, we intend to treat you gently. We’ve arrived, we’re going to disembark. Be good, or we’ll be obliged to close the crate again.
What was the point of struggling? My impotence in their hands was complete. I exhorted myself to be patient. Let’s see what happens; a means of escaping my kidnappers will end up presenting itself.
We disembarked. The boat was
moored to a shadowed quay, in the midst of other boats of various sizes. The river was no longer more than a hundred meters wide. Alongside us I had time to see a ferry, very broad and very long, maneuvered by two centaurs naked to the waist. Further away, a humpbacked bridge with five arches, very high in the middle arch, as in the Oriental lands, straddled the river. Bibouf told me that it connected the two finest quarters of the city.
A cart advanced pulled by a centaur porter. Pingo and the ported lifted up my cage carefully and loaded me on to the cart with Bibouf’s and Galibou’s luggage, and we departed at a gentle trot.
XIII. Captain Zephyrin, a natural curiosity of the first order, has the honors of a very flattering poster
A new existence was commencing for me, alas. Until then, everything had been too pleasant. I was free, happy ad pampered in Kapalouia’s house; that excellent creature showed himself full of concern and heaped me with marks of amity. His charming children liked me too; they could not get enough of their biped friend; in sum, I was almost a member of the family.
Whereas now, O calamity, in the power of Bibouf, Galibou and Pingo, I was no longer anything but a curious animal, often locked in a cage, always closely watched, dragged from town to town…and exhibited, to complete the humiliation, exhibited for money!
Where are you, Kapalouia, my friend? All this, alas, is doubtless the punishment for my black ingratitude toward you; I wanted to flee from you, and I’ve fallen into the hands of Bibouf and Galibou, the very individuals that I wanted to take to Bordeaux in order to introduce them to the scientific world!
But I’ll resume the story of my misfortunes.
In the house to which the cart transported me Pingo had my crate transported to a large room where there was a bed for him. W supped together in that room, me sitting in the Turkish fashion in my crate, the others facing me on a high table.
I have to admit that I was treated well. Bibouf and Galibou even affected to be gracious in order to soothe me. They announced to me that I was going to lead a charming life, to be introduced into high centauran society, introduced to scientists, to the luminaries of Literature and the Arts, all interested already by what had been said about me in the newspapers and impatient to study me. They said that the king would doubtless come to see me and that I would have the honor of being taken to the palace before the royal family.
They added that, in my petty intellect, I ought to take account of all the pleasure and the immense advantages of that new existence: I would be famous, it was almost glory; I would see the country and meet illustrious centaurs; people of all classes would file before me…and I ought to testify some gratitude to them, Bibouf and Galibou, who had assumed the responsibility, at their own expense, of procuring me that delightful existence, those honors, those pleasures and those mental distractions!
Personally, I’m made in such a way that emotions and worries put me to sleep. I gain from that by more easily recovering strength and courage. I had had more than sufficient emotions that day, so I fell asleep on the cushions that Pingo passed me in my cage before the end of my enemies’ speech.
Serious matters, tomorrow!
The next day, when I woke up, Pingo opened my cage and said to me, speaking pidgin: “You know, little animal, you free, you not attached by cord, provided you not try to run away…anyway, you watched, me not leave you. Look, me like you a lot already. Me going to give you pleasure.”
Why not respond to those advances? Certainly, I wanted Pingo to go to the devil, but why tell him that? Let’s try, on the contrary, to gain his sympathy.
“Me your friend too, Pingo. You good fellow, Pingo. Me like you a lot.”
O hypocrisy! I emphasized that declaration of amity by shaking my jailer’s hand.
“Here,” Pingo goes on. “You can read a little. Look what’s to be posted at the door of the house—it’s for you, my friend, you well content.”
He showed me, leaning against the wall, a large placard bearing a long inscription in characters of various sizes. Slowly, I spell out:
Next week
The quadrumane Zephyrin
after which he will be presented to illustrious scientists
of various ACADEMIES
gathered in special congress in honor
of this presentation
by the learned masters of zoology and paleontology BIBOUF & GALIBOU,
the extraordinary creature, the singular talking and thinking quadrumane
Zephyrin
??? Vestige of unknown world or strange phenomenon, bizarre being
escaped from the strata of the Tertiary epoch, having survived, who knows how,
the revolutions of the globe ???
Will be visible for the Public here for a month
at the price of two silver piecettes per person,
one piecette for children,
gratis for military personnel.
Tell your friends
Director of the exhibition: Pingo
I understood everything now! O rage! Bibouf and Galibou had had the same idea as me and the wretched had got in ahead of me. Fatality! If I had put more haste into my preparations it would have been me who abducted them, it would have been me who was drafting posters of the same sort in Bordeaux or in Paris. But let’s not try to rebel, let’s think instead!
I didn’t get any further in my reflections; breakfast arrived, Bibouf and Galibou came in.
“Well, have you read the poster?” Galibou asked me.
“I’ve read it, “I replied. “I’m most honored… it’s very flattering. It’s too much honor for me...”
“No, no, don’t be modest, you’re a curiosity of the first order. And you’ll impassion the public, you’ll see! You’ll excite discussions and controversies…yes, scientific quarrels…it’s starting already!”
“We’ve opened fire,” said Bibouf, rubbing his hands. “Personally, I proclaim that you’re barely emerged from the lowest animality, that you’re a simple brute with glimmers of reason, while my learned colleague Galibou sustains the contrary thesis…a matter of triggering polemics, in your interest, since it’s in the interest of the enterprise. My eminent colleague Galibou, modifying his opinion since our first communication to the Academies, claims that you’re the representative of a decadent species, isn’t that right, learned Galibou?”
“Certainly,” Galibou agreed.
“…Of a species that’s extinct, that finished because of an excess of intellectuality. Do you understand these things? Look at your muscles by comparison with Pingo’s… you scarcely seem equipped for fighting...”
I bowed by head humbly, determined not to argue with them and to give them the idea that I was absolutely resigned to my fate.
“Let’s have breakfast,” Galibou went on. “We’re expected this morning at the Zoological Institute, and this afternoon at the session of the Academies. Tomorrow, a presentation at the Fine Arts, a session of portraits and measurements. For the afternoon, I’ve solicited an audience at the Palace, it’s necessary to appear before the King and Her Majesty the Queen. What honors! What honors!”
“Yes,” I said, “but what will my friend Kapalouia think of you, on not seeing us come back?”
“Kapalouia? He’s informed,” said Bibouf. “He knows that in taking you away, we were only yielding to your insistence...”
“What, you said that?”
“Certainly, and furthermore, you wrote it to him yourself.”
“Me?”
“Yes. Do you recall that I asked you for an autograph the other day? The autograph was the signature for a letter that I wrote afterwards…in your name, with the necessary spelling mistakes.”
Infernal Bibouf! He had thought of everything! I too had left a letter for Kapalouia on leaving, but it was necessarily conceived in vague terms, by reason of my feeble knowledge of the centauran language. Kapalouia wouldn’t understand, and would think that I had left with Bibouf of my own free will!
XIV. Official presentati
on to Their Majesties the King and Queen, the Academies and other scholarly societies
I’ve been presented to the Institute of Zoology, presented at liberty, as they say in circuses and menageries. I was taken through the streets in my crate covered with drapes. Bibouf and Galibou don’t like waste; it’s necessary that the passers-by don’t see me without shelling out the fee of two silver piecettes.
The Institute of Zoology occupies one wing of a vast edifice in which there are amphitheaters for lectures and galleries for collections, exactly like those here.
On arrival, Pingo opened my cage and, preceded by Bibouf and Galibou, I was taken into a beautiful hall were a large number of centaurs were gathered mostly bald old messieurs in spectacles, who uttered exclamations on seeing me.
I was immediately surrounded, examined, turned this way and that. Bibouf made a little introductory speech. Galibou spoke in his turn, and then there was a hubbub of animated discussions and loud arguments, almost disputes, for two full hours, of which I didn’t understand very much, except that all those eminent zoologists were far from being in agreement as to my true nature. Some talked about trickery and were absolutely convinced that I was an amputated centaur to whom an ape’s legs had been adapted, unless I was a pure phenomenon, a monstrous error of nature. Bibouf and Galibou had to argue for a long time to pulverize the skepticism of some of their savant colleagues—but how they rubbed their hands on the return journey!
The afternoon was occupied in the same fashion. I appeared before other scientists, physicians and philosophers, who studied me for three hours, made me talk, walk, jump and run, taking copious notes, and after the end of a stormy session they went away in groups, which continued a lively and animated discussion all along the street, where surprised centaur shopkeepers watched them gesticulating.
“It’s going well,” said Galibou. “The polemics are about to commence.”
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