Caresco, Superman

by André Couvreur

  “I suspect him, in addition, of having gone on the spree in Paris, where he has a mistress, and at Juvisy, where he has another. That tires him out, poor fellow. In that double life, he will lose both the remainder of his strength and the confidence of Caresco, who knows everything. Then again, why go to seek over there pleasures that we possess in more refined and complete form at home? He finds a certain spice in it, he says, but I don’t understand that reason.

  “Anyway, this is what I want to tell you: we’re arriving; we’ll be landing in less than ten minutes. It’s necessary that, from now on, you resolve to lose all personality. That’s the best way of not regretting your exile.”

  “An exile is never regrettable when one returns from it with the cortege of its virtues...” Choumaque quoted.

  The captain, having accepted that judgment with a shrug of his shoulder, went on: “You are going become things in the hands of a sole possessor, for the sake of your complete happiness. The slightest whims of resistance or disobedience are punished as crimes.

  “Your case is special, Miss Mary; you have come to ask the Superman for assistance, and first among all creatures who have landed on the island since the edification of the realm, you will have the right to return therefrom. That license is a capital infraction of our laws. Let us hope that Caresco will not have cause to regret it. You know that if you do not keep the secret of everything that you are going to see or understand, sentence of death will be immediately pronounced upon you, and carried out within three days. It is probable that another consequence of your loquaciousness would be the rapid extermination of your valiant people. Are you fully decided to submit yourself to all the exigencies of the new life, without recrimination, as a blind and obedient subject?”

  “I’m formally resolved to that,” said Miss Mary, while the reason determining her presence aboard magnified her further in Choumaque’s eyes—who, before that clarification, would willingly have criticized her for renouncing her cause and betraying the admirable work that she had undertaken.

  “That’s good,” said the captain. “Now, Miss, and Messieurs, would you care to lean over the bulwark and look in a southwesterly direction. Perhaps you won’t see anything, for we’re still a hundred leagues from the realm, but act as if you can see something. In your countries, imagination often replaces reality. In ours, by contrast, imagination is an idle faculty, reality far surpassing what chimeras can engender.

  “Lean over, and try to see the morsel of lava that appeared in the wake of the immense cataclysm of 1920, a cataclysm which, as you know, while swallowing up Martinique and Saint-Pierre, provoked a lowering of the waters of the Atlantic and caused our land to surge forth in a volcanic eruption. Caresco took possession of that land, still hot, as a consequence of circumstances with which you are familiar.

  “By virtue of a curious predestination, the island has adopted the form of a human body asleep in the sea with its arms and legs extended. I’m not sure whether or not that anatomical disposition influenced the surgeon’s choice. Perhaps he was dreaming of some colossal amputation! At any rate, our climate is ideal, and in any case, we have the means of maintaining its constancy thanks to Omnium, which also aids our vegetation powerfully...”

  “Omnium?”

  “That’s true—you don’t know about our Caresco’s principal discovery. Like me, you’ll understand why he omitted to communicate it to the scientific Societies on the day when his genius gave birth to it, in 1918, so much power did it give him!

  “Well, Miss and Messieurs, Omnium is the primal element of all matter and force, the essential atomic molecule, whose combination with itself yields, according to the degree of its association, all the substances of chemistry and all the phenomena of physics. Earth, water, heat, light, sound, air, electricity, gas, vapors, metals, animals and human thought are merely Omnium in the infinite varieties of its admixture.

  “Your pretty lips, Miss Mary, are Omnium; the fabric of your protruding undergarment, Monsieur Choumaque, is Omnium. Your gaze, Monsieur Girard: Omnium. Also Omnium, the energy that deploys the wings of my vessel; my voice, which commands it, and the leather that protects me! Always and everywhere, Omnium! What a discovery! The world in the palm of one’s hand! Life in a crucible! Unfortunately, Caresco has only ever been able to analyze omnial bodies. If he had been able to synthesize it, he would be the creator, he would be God!”

  The dwarf wiped away a tear of enthusiasm.

  Choumaque began once again to doubt his reason. He was soon obliged to recognize that he was mistaken. “That’s understandable, Monsieur,” he said. “Omnium gives you useful forces and can, in fact, modify your climate; our scientists have foreseen for a long time that something of the sort ought to be possible. But how is it explicable that vegetation can be born in thirty years on rocky soil? Doesn’t humus require centuries to form?”

  “That’s a question that neophytes of your sort generally ask us, Monsieur Choumaque, because they don’t know the practical genius of our master. In fact, the morsel of lava was not covered by the slightest patch of humus; it was new, sterilized by fire; nothing could grow there. Caresco was thus obliged to cover it with earth, and that earth was brought from America.”

  “From America!”

  “Yes, from America, quite simply. That even gave rise to a marvelous bluff, the only story that has ever made the Superman smile, to my knowledge. I was twenty years old then, and I remember it perfectly. I was in command of one of the twenty airplane-barges that brought, from the vicinity of Chicago, the earth moved by a hundred thousand workers aided by a thousand steam-cranes.

  “This is the story. When we had loaded enough earth and had abandoned the immense enclosure from which we had extracted it—I was greatly overworked at the time by the numerous trips—the Americans, seeing the place cleared, assumed at first that we were mad, and then, in the second place, decided that there must be a reason for that removal of their soil. Being unable to imagine what it was, for they knew nothing, they imagined that there were deposits of a precious metal that was then called radium. Those people were very stupid, when one thinks about it.

  “The opinion of a few licensed chemists accredited the mirage of their cupidity. An enterprise was organized. A great businessman, Koxterbury, the emperor of nickel buttons—you’ve obviously never had recourse to his products, Monsieur Choumaque, for your trousers are getting away—set up a company with a colossal capital to exploit the mine. It was called the Chicago Radium Company. The five continents got involved in the scheme; gold flowed; the delirium became universal.

  “I wouldn’t dare say that the affair wasn’t powerfully aided by our Zadochbach, who gambled on the rise of all the world’s stock markets, with the result that millions of shares he bought at a hundred francs were resold when they reached twenty thousand five hundred…you can see the profit! Part of that terrestrial fortune entered our coffers. But when the crash came, when Koxterbury committed suicide, according to the custom of financiers disappointed in their calculations, the Americans venerated his memory, and were exultant with joy at having been the country with the biggest Trust followed by the biggest Crash. Oh, the fools! We were greatly amused.”

  “I remember the story,” said Choumaque. “Like you, I was twenty years old then, Monsieur Tronc-de-Jatte.”8

  “Call me Captain.”

  “Yes, Monsieur le Capitaine, I was twenty years old, and I haven’t forgotten, the great stir that the collapse caused in our country. My father was ruined at a stroke, and I remember that my concierge hanged herself with her bell-rope. Her tongue was sticking out of her mouth when I saw her, dead, and that spectacle has remained with me, very vividly. Your Caresco caused the ruin and chagrin of a great many humble individuals.”

  The smile fixed on the cheeks of the man on the pedestal suddenly vanished, or very nearly. Choumaque understood his imprudence in having spoken so freely. Had he not done so, though, the shrill voice would quickly have informed him.


  “Pray, Monsieur le Professeur, that I don’t report to the Superman the words you’ve just pronounced, and that he doesn’t have his ear to the microphone at this moment listening to what we’re saying! I prefer merely to criticize your stupidity and enable you to imagine the magnificent compensation that the Master is offering you in accepting you into his realm. I’ll forget your reflection, if you agree in due course that you’re as happy as me. For the moment, let me finish what I was saying…or rather, no, here’s Zadochbach, who will tell you the rest. Approach, Inexhaustible.”

  Then, divining the surprise that the epithet produced in his listeners, he added: “Monsieur Zadochbach is known familiarly as the Inexhaustible, as much by reason of his pecuniary resources, which are unlimited, as his generic virtues, which permit him, at the age of eighty—the same age as the Superman, Messieurs—to warm a woman’s bed on a daily basis. Monsieur Zadochbach, the Superman’s Chief Representative, is, apart from Caresco, the only Semite in the realm. The plastic Israelite is not suited to our master’s esthetic conception. Now, Inexhaustible, speak.”

  Marcel and Choumaque immediately recognized in the newcomer the person who had approached them in the restaurant and had so casually become their commensal. In the harsh light, his appearance became somewhat paradoxical, his artificial youth stood out so sharply from his old age. The Representative seemed, in any case, to be in a particularly bad mood today; doubtless he was still under the impression of his fatigue, or a disappointing balance-sheet. He spoke hastily, abridging his words as he propelled them toward the extremity of his plunging nose.

  “Not much to add, sirs…all calculated, all put in order…anyway, your fortune has now been acquired by the State. You, Girard, three million three hundred thousand…I thought it was more—have you given me everything?”

  “I left a million to one of my paternal aunts, who needed it.”

  “Bad, that…bad!” he repeated, several times. “Caresco certainly won’t be pleased...” Then, turning to the professor, he went on: “You, Choumaque, seventy-three francs twenty-five centimes. That’s rather meager...”

  “I was content with it,” Choumaque said, “for I told myself that poverty is merely the absence of the embarrassments attached to wealth...”

  “Fortunately,” remarked Zadochbach, after having smiled pityingly, “you’ll be able to render some service; otherwise...”

  He made a frightful slicing gesture, signifying death. He rounded it out almost immediately in order to address himself to Miss Mary.

  “You, Miss Hardisson, seven thousand two hundred. But you’re a pretty girl, and that’s your excuse. I’ve deposited your money at one percent—given the short duration, a tidy rate of interest. All of it will be returned when you leave. May Caresco operate on you, Miss and Messieurs!”

  He withdrew immediately. The captain had also slipped away on his mobile pedestal, silently. The three travelers felt relieved of two disquieting presences. Thus far, the proximity of Caresco’s representatives had not augured well for the realm in which they were about to land.

  Hitching up his trousers, Choumaque made a gesture that expressed his regret for the past and his perplexity with regard to the future. Marcel, by contrast, engaged himself more deliberately in the adventure. The impressive company of Miss Mary caused him to forget everything else, to the extent of astonishment. He stroked his moustache as he gazed at her.

  Already! thought the philosopher. Already that birdbrain is getting a rosy expression. Decidedly, love is as inconsistent as the reservoir of this airplane, whose valve has just been opened. Love is the cube of inconstancy. A little while ago, Marcel was still only dreaming about Hélène, for whom he committed the worst follies. It did no good to rub his nose in the antics of that whore; it didn’t ease the bite of his passion. My broad philosophy and my advice, borrowed from the great classics of Stoicism, were as futile as the treasons of his mistress. And yet, a smile from that stranger was sufficient to turn everything upside down, to chase away the memory of Hélène, thus proving more efficacious than the efforts of my intellect. It’s enough to put one off either being extremely perverted, like Hélène, or very intelligent, like me.

  He did not have the leisure to extend the discourse any further. Distant harmonies, of youthful voices accompanied by harps, rose up into the azure in gentle waves, reaching their ears perceptibly. At the same time, the temperature became entirely mild. Gusts of sea breeze also rose up and, like the songs, caused them to anticipate the imminence of company. The airplane, obedient to the hidden voice of the captain, gave vast perpendicular wing-beats, like a bird about to alight.

  The passengers leaned over toward the void, but were unable to make out anything at first but a confused gray mass surrounded by a blue sinuosity, which was the sea. The oblique four o’clock sun was, however, radiant over that aggregation of land and water. Finally, they made out the red and green tongue of the island emerging from the shiny splashing of waves.

  In front of them, a little pink dot flying through the air astonished them. Miss Mary aided her sight with a pair of binoculars that she wore suspended from her belt. She declared at first that it was a bizarre bird with and elongated form, but when it came closer she announced that it was a human being who was flying.

  “A human being who can fly!” Choumaque exclaimed. “That’s new, since Icarus of lamentable memory. Pass me the binoculars, if you please, lovely demoiselle...”

  He took a few seconds to adjust the glasses to his vision, with the result that, when he searched the air, the phenomenon was no longer there.

  At the same time, the delightful naked body of a twelve-year-old boy came, as if falling from the sky, to sit down on the rim of the nacelle alongside them, his legs dangling down into the void. His arms were circled by straps attached to two large emerald wings, presently folded over his back, and hiding a small motor. The gracious line of the vertebrae could be seen melting, at their termination, into the pelvic girdle and the prolongation of plump and admirably formed legs. His strongly-developed pectoral muscles were sketched out like the breasts of a pre-pubertal girl. His head was admirably pretty, the eyes gleaming with animation, a fine straight nose, cheeks and lips vivid with health, an entire robust youthfulness bursting forth in fresh tones beneath long curly blond hair, a curl of which hid the forehead.

  “I’ve got here first!” he cried, in an excessively shrill, almost feminine, but nevertheless charming voice. “The others can’t fly as quickly as me. I’ve won!”

  “My friend,” said Choumaque, swiftly taking off his fur and posing it in such a way as to protect the child’s nudity, “I admit all sports, including this one—unknown among us—of imitating the birds, but it’s still necessary that your game doesn’t offend the modest of a pretty African.”

  “Modesty? What’s that?”

  The little devil had thrust away the garment in disgust, which floated in the air momentarily and then disappeared. Choumaque, torn between the desire to teach the scamp a lesson and find out what had become of his cape, remained hesitant. Miss Mary looked away, and Marcel became confused on her behalf—but that embarrassment did not last long. Joyful cries were heard, and a swarm of other little boys and girls, all similarly naked and winged, came to alight on the deck, on the bridge and in the vessel’s rigging. They were laughing, chattering, panting and jostling one another, still intoxicated by the distance they had covered, paying no more heed to the travelers than if they had not been there.

  It was the real commencement of the marvelous.

  The harmonies from below became more distinct. At the same time, sweet floral perfumes rose up, as troubling as the music. They leaned over again and observed the proximity of the ground, covered with a luxurious vegetation. The flash of golden domes mirroring the sunlight, of great multicolored mosaics, an order magnificent in its symmetry, of lines, contours and panoramas, albeit still confused, already revealed the masterly sumptuousness that had presided over the creation of t
he new city.

  They turned their eyes away in order to admire the superb winged women who were flying toward them, singing, covered by light veils, so vaporous that their splendor was transparent therein. Their upraised breasts, their hair floating in the wind, the firm roundness of their abdomen, the simultaneously delicate and vigorous projection of their buttocks, made them as many admirable works of art, which enthused Choumaque’s lyricism, causing him to pronounce a few aphorisms on the flesh, which he compared to a divine clay.

  All of the women resembled one another, as they resembled the boys and girls. One might have thought that they had been cast from the same mold of beauty. They came closer, forming a cortege for the airplane. They whispered admiring remarks about the couple formed by Marcel and Miss Mary. A hint of lubricity was not unseemly in their bright eyes and the scintillating smiles of their ardent mouths. But Choumaque they mocked; one of them, by way of a joke, brushed his beard with a light caress of her pink foot, shod in a white sandal with mauve laces.

  It’s obvious that I’m not producing as good an effect as my companions, the philosopher thought, breathing in the heady perfume that the touch had deposited in his bushy beard.

  The shrill voice of the captain caused the nude figures to scatter. They were about to land. The airplane folded up its wings in its silvery wing-cases. One last glance at the magical spectacle—in which, along a flowery esplanade, to the sound of invisible harmonies, thousands of couples in polychromatic pastel shades, were dancing rhythmically, enlacing and separating with precise and gracious gestures—and then there was a gentle impact.

  The airplane came to rest at on the landing-platform; and they found themselves in front of a kind of vast portico supported by two red porphyry columns, elaborately sculpted, with a symbolic allegory on its frontispiece of a naked man and woman lying in front of a sun, and offering new life in the form of a vibrion and an ovule. They hardly had time to admire it, for the captain and the Representative ushered them on to a drawbridge that had just come down and steered them toward a black and silent tunnel, into which they entered, and where, by groping, they found soft banquettes.