It was very little; but it was the commencement of everything. For that unreal world that he transported within him was as alive as the real world; Daâh positively felt it agitating inside his skull, like an interior force demanding to be exteriorized, and he experienced a malaise in not being able to project it outwardly. For want of words with which to express it, he had recourse to cries and gestures: gesture and exclamation were the double outlet of his mutism.
Suddenly, without any apparent reason, he started dancing like the Bear, growling like the Lion, mocking like the Hyena. For him, those mimicries were something more than a game; evidently, his perpetual mobility had suggested to him, in preference to any other, that means of translating himself, but they only procured the means, and the veritable cause of those imitations was an almost physiological need that he had to rid himself of a mental residue.
By that means the exonerated himself of his plethora; in the same way that he had nourished his body with meat and fruits, his rudimentary intellect had alimented itself with images, and that spiritual nutrition was accomplished in parallel with the other. Having absorbed and digested visions, he rendered imitations. He imitated everything.
Performing that comedy for Hock was his fashion of talking to her; performing them for himself was his way of thinking. By that means he sharpened his mind, meager as it was, although he was not aware of it—but above all, he augmented his resources and multiplied his means of subsistence, and the benefits of that practical enrichment did not escape him.
He observed it, always rejoicing in it, but always after the fact, and without having premeditated his enrichment. When his simian inclination had made him parody a gesture, and when that gesture produced its normal result, he marveled stupidly, but he registered the event in his storehouse of images, and the following day he recommenced, in order to provoke the opportunity to marvel again: he imitated Daâh imitating an animal.
The parody, many times repeated, became an assimilation, and the assimilation became a habit. What is habit, except a matter of self-imitation? Thus, he accommodated himself to unusual actions, customary to other species, which gradually became customary to him: aptitudes special to other animals, which he only possessed to the slightest degree, were developed in that fashion.
In all the ambient animality he found something to take; a shark of ideas, he swallowed everything; by dint of striving to simulate everything that was animated before him, he identified himself to some degree with everything that he had seen, and the multiple capacities of the animal world, more or less skillfully collected, were totalized in his own.
Those assimilations left him, however, utterly ingrate toward those from which they proceeded; he no more thought of conserving any gratitude to them on account of those imprints, than he did of conserving any to those he ate, on account of their more or less tasty flesh. His admiration for them even diminished as soon as he was able to imitate them; as soon as he had succeeded in amplifying his means by adopting those of another, he considered himself at least equal to his master, if not its superior, and did not deign to remember the origin of the gain. He flattered himself that it was a personal conquest, nothing more—and in that, he was not entirely wrong, for usage, hazard and the astonishments that hazard provoked in him, almost always had the result of revealing new possibilities to him that were totally unknown to their initiator; he recorded them, along with everything else.
XXVI. The Club
Frugivores, rodents, carnivores: he imitated all those that eat; he learned from felines the manner of creeping silently toward a prey in order to surprise it in its lair; he saw Snakes sealing Birds’ eggs and did as the snakes did; insects taught him the patience of dissimulation, and he knew how to cover himself with earth or foliage, curling up on the ground like a rock to wait for a passing Hare or a small bird alighting.
The Wild Boar showed him how one unearths roots, but he mistrusted it, still having the instinct that turns beasts away from an unknown and possibly toxic nutriment. For a long time he contented himself, prudently, with remains in which he recognized the bite of the wild pig; he sniffed them, hesitated, risked a lick of the tongue, a nibble of the teeth, sucked and chewed, reassured himself and acquired a taste—but he lacked solid tusks for digging in the humus, and the brilliant invention of utilizing a stick, a horn or a stone for that purpose would have had to wait a few centuries more, but for the wily instructor to whom Daâh owed more lessons than any other: the Ape.
To that industrious elder, who drew by inheritance on an experience already centuries old, humans owed innumerable borrowings; it was from him that they had learned to sleep in the trees and to take refuge there from Lions, and from him, too, they obtained the subtle trick of breaking the hard envelope of a fruit between two rocks, and they had amplified that find by utilizing the stone to open long bones and such out the marrow. More useful still, it served for scraping, sawing and cutting. It was to the same inventor, again, that they owed the most precious artifice of all, without which they would have perished long ago: the Ape carried a stick!
Daâh picked up a stick in order to imitate the quadrumane. Since infancy he had gone about with a piece of wood in his fist, and his arms apart. Naturally, the branches he chose were of large caliber—as large as possible; as his muscles grew with age he took pride in increasing the dimensions of his weapon. The heavier and more massive it was, the more he appreciated it; ordinarily, he selected one at the limit of his strength.
That size, generally exaggerated, obliged him to hold the weapon by its thinner extremity in order to grip it better. It appeared to him then that the branch became heavier. Stupefied by such a bizarrerie, he gazed at and sniffed the two ends; discovering nothing that could explain that aggravation of weight, he did not try to deny it, as a reasoner would have done, but had the genius to be astonished momentarily, very moderately: just enough to laugh at it but not enough to dispute it.
Laughter was, in him, the sign of adoption. He had only three ways of greeting the observations of his senses: for known phenomena, a manic, rapid recording designed to clear it away, followed by an immediate indifference; for unusual cases, a start of anxiety or a burst of laughter, according to whether he glimpsed a danger or a profit.
Before that stick, which had not changed and yet changed its weight, he remained open-mouthed and wide-eyed; he repeated the experiment of lifting the branch and brandishing it, sometimes by one extremity and sometimes by the other. Now the stick is lighter! Laughter. Now it is heavier! More laughter. He recorded the two facts, and, above all, a third: his blows struck more forcefully when the heavier was distant.
Daâh did not ask any more of it; he resigned himself to inventing the club and making use of it, without understanding it.
XXVII. The First Pact
That precious discovery went back to the days of his adolescence; it preceded the encounter with Hock by several years. The club had, therefore, been his first companion. He loved it. It flattered him. He was proud of it, as a badge by which he was distinguished from the quadrupeds, and he admired himself in it, as if it were an extension of his own being. He was nevertheless able to remember that it was neither him nor his, and to recognize what assistance that stranger brought to him in battle.
Long accustomed to attributing motives similar to his own to things, and a determination to harm him or serve him, he had less mistrust of them in this instance than any other; he had the very clear sentiment of receiving a consensual and faithful aid; the weapon that never betrayed him at difficult moments was not a tool, or even a servant, but rather an ally.
At the moment of going into combat, he gripped the hilt as one shakes the hand of a friend, shaking it with an abrupt gesture, and mentally stammered conjurations in order to give himself courage and renew their pact. After the battle, he caressed it in the manner of a hunter passing his hand over the back of his dog to compliment it; it was almost thanks; the harder it had struck, the more esteem he experienced for
it. He did not quit it either to eat or sleep; when it was not in his hand during a halt, it rested by his side within the reach of his hand; while he slept in the tree, he held it against his breast.
That friend of the first hour, therefore, not only brought him the benefit of its material utility; it furnished him additionally with an item of social information, which seems to have been the first of all. It is to the club, in fact, that the role fell of initiating humans into the idea of a cooperation, and showing them the profit to be gained thereby.
Long before he had associated with his fellow, and even his female, a broken branch had revealed to the human male the possibility of uniting his strength with other strengths; thus was prepared in humans the notion that would determine their mental and mechanical superiority and ensure their triumph over the globe, since, thanks to the club they were able to enslave and devastate the world, exploiting for their usage the animals, the plants and the very entrails of the earth.
XXVIII. The Whirl
At length, the necessity of always brandishing the club in order to strike down the branches that barred the way ends up engendering in Daâh a mechanical gesture: his arm rises up and comes down without his being aware of it; as long as there is an obstacle in front of him, he strikes; when, by chance, there are no more of them, his arm becomes bored and, after a brief rest, it recommences striking empty air.
Then the free space permits a broader gesture, and the stick describes a semicircle, which ends up flattening out in the mud. Sometimes, however, it happens that the club, not encountering the ground, continues its circular course, and Daâh applies himself to perfecting that result, so well that he soon succeeds in obtaining a complete rotation. By means of further progress he becomes capable of realizing several successive rotations, and is able to turn the club with increasing force and increasing rapidity; he laughs at no longer being able to perceive it, so rapidly does it pass by; he laughs at hearing it whistling like a bird; he admires the transparent disk that it traces in whirling around the axis of his wrist.
“Haâh!”
In order to make Hock admire it, he calls her, and the woman approaches.
“Ta! Ta!”
She laughs in her turn, delighted by no longer being able to see the club that existed and seeing in its stead a great round object that did not exist. Curious, she advances her nose, sniffs, and felt a wind on her face that has no explanation. To listen to the whistling bird, she inclines her head sideways, and stays there, motionless, in the attitude of a fowl listening—but the temptation becomes too strong; Hock can no longer resist it. She puts a finger into the circle, and immediately utters a cry, withdrawing her bloodied hand.
Daâh cannot help laughing at the imprudent woman’s surprise as she licks her wound and clutches the injured index finger of her right hand. Then, when he has laughed until he is satisfied, he wants to look at the wound—not out of pity, of course, but to convince himself of the damage he was able to inflict in that fashion.
He leans over the hand, examines it and turns it over. The flesh is well and truly torn, the blood streaming, the bone laid bare. The effect is good: Daâh asks no more of it, and he records it. He is content; he has gained something. He knows that one must not venture too close to him when he is whirling his club, and that behind the circle he is sheltered by a rampart.
“Haâh!”
He dances with joy in front of the patient, who continues to whimper and lick her finger.
In all the days that follow Daâh does not fail to take advantage of the clearings to practice the game that pleases him by virtue of its novelty. In doing so, he has little idea of multiplying his means; he does not even suspect that he is on the path of invention; he is simply amusing himself, and glad of the improvement that practice brings.
It is for that reason that the overly frequent impacts of the club against the ground suggest to him the idea of raising his wrist to shoulder level—but the club still hits the ground sometimes, and that is why he raises the wrist to the level of the face; the arm stretches, the fist is closer to the forehead, the circle that was once vertical becomes oblique. A little more, and now the wrist is above the cranium; the circle in which the club rotates becomes horizontal. It covers the man like a roof and protects his surroundings. The enemy can no longer approach him from the front or from behind. Daâh has just built around him a fortress that kills. When beasts in a pack attack him together, they will enter the circle of death of their own accord
“Haâh!... Han!”
Let the Wolves come, now, and the Hyenas! He would like them to be around him, to make the trial. He seeks them with his eyes, calls to them and provokes them with cries. Where are they, in order that he might teach them the master’s discovery? He, who was the naked beast before, so feeble and unarmed, is now the one who can no longer be approached: he has eliminated the mortal body-to-body combat, the choking grip, the tearing claw, the biting mouth; from now on he will stop them at a distance.
He no longer fears anything. Because he feels stronger today than yesterday, he is ready to dream that henceforth he will be the strongest of all, and it would not take much, in the intoxication of his young imagination, for him to exaggerate confidence in his strength to the extent of believing himself to be invincible.
XXIX. Distress
Daâh knows days of depression. They are rare; life in the woods and constant peril keep energy alert, since a moment of forgetfulness is sufficient for one to die. There are, however, moments when death itself no longer causes a tremor, so weary does one become of being afraid. It can come from outside without one deigning to flee, because one already carries it within. Daâh is more subject to these crises than any other beast; his impressionability puts him at the mercy of influences exerted upon his nascent soul by the state of the atmosphere or that of his body. Often, too, these evil hours come to him on the days after his triumphs; when he has had a plethora of delight, confidence and spirit, and believes in himself, and overloaded his nerves or his poor encephalum, a reaction throws him down flat in the mud.
Flouc... Flouche...
He marches, and the rain drenches him, as it did yesterday, as it always does. Today, it bothers him. He has seen too much rain; it discourages him. Limply, in the murky depths of his being, a revolt attempts to rise up, and immediately collapses. He frowns and parades a vaguely hateful gaze around him. He execrates the world and effort, but even anger is too costly an expense for his sluggishness. He is exhausted. Her arms are slack, his club heavy and cumbersome; he no longer loves it. His feet drag, his hamstrings lack resilience.
Go to sleep between two branches of an oak? Yes…no…not even... The forks are too high; the mere idea of an ascent wearies him. He lets himself fall at the foot of a trunk, wedges himself with his back against the rough bark; his arm slides into the moss and he watches the downpour.
The water spills from the height of the clouds and streams from the tops of the trees in cataracts; it floats before him, a dull moving curtain shaken by gusts of wind; under the abrupt pressure of the gusts it goes crazy, whipping the branches, slashing the leaves, peppering the trunks, riddling the puddles, and its innumerable noises mingle in a tumult in which one might believe that all the voices of the forest can be heard.
It is as if thousands of animals were hurling their cries into the distance, which flow toward Daâh. He recognizes them: the Bear that growls, the Lion that roars, the Hyena that laughs. Monkeys chatter and Dogs bark; all his enemies are howling at him and assailing him simultaneously with their convergent menace. There are too many, and he is too alone!
He renounces the struggle. He can do no more. Let them eat him, and it will all be over, since it is necessary to be eaten sooner or later and he cannot escape the rule of existence. At intervals, thunderclaps stir the life in his depths, but as soon as he has started he collapses again.
Hock prowls around the vicinity. A little while ago, seeing him crouched down, she drew away to the far side o
f the clearing, and he watched her back moving away under the downpour. Is she looking for something to eat again? The idea of swallowing things disgusts him, and Hock, who breaks branches as she moves, irritates him.
Has she disappeared? He is annoyed. Can he see her again, over there? He perceives her through the veils of the downpour, like a creature of dream; he can only make her out vaguely; he has the impression of no longer knowing her, so indifferent is he to her and so barely does she seem to exist. So little! She resembles a void that walks...
Certainly, Daâh has not formulated that image, but a sensation of death, sudden and cold, has run through him, and in the penumbra of his mind he has glimpsed a mystery, a hole, blackness, the void: something frightful, like the gulfs of the mountain, with night in the background. No longer to be…!
He shivers. He opens his round eyes and his mouth remains agape. The woman comes back, however...
As she advances, he experiences the impression of coming back himself, and from far away, from a world that he did not suspect a little while ago, and which he is already forgetting.
Hock draws nearer; she is, as yet, only a being of vapors, mist in human form that totters in the haze; at every step that brings her closer she condenses more; it seems that the impact of her footfalls is solidifying her and that she is resuming existence...
Now she is in front of him. He stares at her with a bewildered gaze. Whether or not she is really alive, he does not know and does not care. She leans toward him; she looks him in the eyes; she sees the anguish there and divines it, for she knows that malaise; but when she suffers from it, he pays no heed to it. She remains motionless before those desert pupils, and their distress penetrates her in its turn. From the depths of her throat, a grave and feeble bleat is exhaled:
Daâh: The First Human Page 8