“The specter moved. To me, it was as if its lines were traced in phosphorus on a blackboard. I noticed a sort of violet nebulosity between them—some of them were as thin as hairs—which, filling the empty spaces, completed the contours of the structure and outlined the mass of an individual.
“ ‘What am I seeing?’ I cried, in horror.
“Then, in the lower part of the face, the phosphorescent threads began to expand and contract; those of the throat were similarly activated, while the brightness of the brain intensified on the left side of the front—and all these filaments glowed with a changing and concentrated light, like embers when one blows on them. The specter leaned over me and spoke.
“ ‘You can see? You can see? Lebris, is it really true?’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said, recognizing the voice of Doctor Prosope. I see an unimaginable spectacle, through my eyelids and the layers of the bandage.’
“ ‘You’re sure? Tell me—tell me what you can see…’
“I told him—and I had the supplementary surprise of seeing the thread-man execute a few sliding dance-steps as he spun around. Others might have fallen to their knees to thank the Lord; Prosope, content with Fate, danced the tango.
“ ‘Please, explain…’ I implored.
“ ‘Soon. Wait a moment. We need to know…’
“I saw the bizarre aspect of Prosope suddenly diminishing and pivoting—the door clicked—changing appearance by an effect of perspective. I heard his footsteps going down the stairs—and I realized that he was moving away through an infinity of vaporous planes and more-or-less discernible frames, which comprised for me a fogbound world, translucent here, transparent there, geometrically transected by vertical lines, partitioned by diaphanous walls and strewn with innumerable haloes.
“At that moment, at the very beginning of my prodigious transformation, the mixture in question was, from my viewpoint, only a very pale chaos, scarcely sensible; and behind those vague traces, colored in variable mauves, the ink-black darkness—the terrible night of blindness—subsisted. It was then that I looked at my own body, and was only able to perceive myself as a sort of monster similar to the one that had just gone away…
“Four forms—four frameworks, four human luminous ramifications—now hastened to my bedside. One of them was hunchbacked. Another was bent and wizened. I distinguished, on the torsos, the almost-imperceptible silhouettes of watches and chains, and other little round shadows, which might, it seemed to me, have been buttons and coins…
“Prosope was recognizable by his height and his vast encephalum. My bandage was removed and I opened my eyelids without any alteration in my sensations. As you can imagine, the idea of radiography came to mind; however, I reminded myself that with radiographic eyes, I would have seen the skeletons of people, not their nervous systems…
“Prosope, left alone with me, gave me the explanation for which I was waiting. ‘Lebris,’ he said, ‘you asked me just now, with an astonishment tainted with fear, what you were seeing. Forgive me if, in order to explain it, I need to remind you of some principles that you already know—but I want everything to be clear.
“ ‘You know, Lebris, that the eye is connected to the brain by the optic nerve, which transmits to the brain the luminous impressions that the eye has received. You also know that the optic nerve cannot send the brain anything but luminous impressions, and no others. Pinch it, and the result is not pain but a sensation of brightness. Let us take note, in passing, of that luminous sensation of a contact, which is nothing other, all things considered than a vision of touch.
“ ‘Any excitation of the optic nerve is, therefore, translated for an individual into luminous manifestations, whether there is an eye at the end of the nerve or not. Consider a man in possession of his eyes. In him, the optic nerve communicates to the brain the indications furnished by the retina. That man has the sensation of images, colors, shadows and brightness; in brief, he perceives all that the eye registers by courtesy of its admirable complexity. Eliminate the eye and excite the nerve directly. No more images, alas, but merely confused luminosities, scarcely expressive, which reveal next to nothing of the external world and only inform the subject of some vague incident.
“ ‘But what if, instead of the eye, I were to install another organ, and put that organ in communication with the optic nerve? If, for example, I were to replace your eye with an auditory apparatus—or, which comes to the same thing, connect your ear to the optic nerve instead of leaving it connected to the auditory nerve—what would happen? This: your ear would continue to register sounds, but you would perceive those sounds in a luminous form, since that is the only language that the optic nerve is able to speak and transmit. You would see sounds. You would no longer hear them; you would have a visual perception of the sonorous world.
“ ‘Since we have five senses, we can imagine a series of five individuals in various conditions with respect to sight. One, being normal, sees all that is normally visible. Of the others—the four who have undergone operations—the first sees sounds, the second sees odors, the third sees tastes and the fourth, more difficult to imagine because our organs of touch are diffuse, sees contacts.
“ ‘Now, Lebris, a number of experiments convinced us that these physiological fantasies can be surgically realized, especially with respect to hearing, taste, odor and sight, the last-named sense being taken as the experimental base. Artificially, everything is visible, provided that the optic nerve is connected to the relevant organ. Everything: perfumes, pieces of music, varieties of succulence! You might tell me that such a demonstration is merely of speculative interest, almost comical, and that, all things considered, being able to hear with the eye is as unimportant as being able to walk on one’s hands—and you’d be right, Lebris. But wait, though.
“ ‘You’re not unaware that the five human senses cannot claim to offer a total perception of matter in its various states. Five senses! Perhaps there would need to be a hundred, perhaps a thousand, to obtain cognizance of everything that exists! Nature is enveloped by a large number of veils. Until now, humans have only been able to lift five of them—those which our cave-dwelling ancestors had already lifted. What do the other veils hide? They hide certain qualities of matter for which we have no perceptive organ, the existence of which reason alone leads us to presume, and the character of which we cannot suspect, because our senses will never perceive them—even indirectly, by echoes or reflections. They also hide certain other qualities for which we likewise do not possess an appropriate sense, but which reveal themselves to us sometimes, in exceptional circumstances, by some visible, odorous or noisy effects—escapes, or escapades, as it were, which bring these things into the domain of sight, odor or hearing…
“ ‘Certainly, Lebris, it’s a fine thing for humans to lift the five veils that we have seized with our trembling hands a little further every day. It’s a fine thing for the telephone to augment the acuity of our eardrum so mightily. It’s a fine thing for the microscope and the telescope to give us, by turns the eyes of Lilliputians and Giants, and for our gaze to pierce walls by means of the light of X-rays. It’s a fine thing, most of all, for the scientific mind to have made up for the inferiority of the senses, and even the absence of sensory organs, by means of intuition and calculation. But think: the man who could endow humankind with a sixth sense; the man who could adapt a new organ to the optic nerve, sensitive to vibrations hitherto unperceived, hitherto imperceptible, to any other nerve…how would he be rated?
“ ‘Listen: among the mysterious elements that are to humans what light is to the blind, but which nevertheless reveal their existence occasionally and furtively, in an indirect manner, there is one, Lebris, that is no longer unknowable for you. Of that element, which we occasionally distinguish, thanks to exceptional luminous, sonic, tactile, and even olfactory and gustatory manifestations; of that element, which our engineers utilize today without knowing exactly what it is, or how it acts; of that redoubtable, occult, unive
rsal element, you alone in all the world, Lebris, can receive a direct impression. I have replaced your eyes with an apparatus that grasps it as the ears grasp sound, as the eye grasps visible light. Personally, I only divine the presence of that element in the sound of thunder and the spark, in the sight of lightning and the odor of ozone, the vibration of a plated bottle, the spectacle of rotating machines and glowing bulbs. Wherever it may be, you can see ELECTRICITY.
“ ‘I have replaced each of your eyes with a much-improved sort of electroscope. They perceive the electrical aspect of the world, and no other—and your optic nerve, naturally, translates that aspect of the world in the form of luminosity.
“ ‘Note this: instead of putting the electroscope in place of an eye, one could equally well substitute it, let us say, for an ear. One could connect it to the auditory nerve rather than the optic nerve; and then the patient would hear the electromagnetic phenomena instead of seeing them. To understand why the optical nerve is preferable to all the others, it is sufficient to think for a moment; it is sufficient to remember that sight is our principal sense, and that electricity is much more closely analogous to light than to sound, odor or taste. That’s why we asked our friends at the front to send us blind casualties for our experiments. You are only the first, Lebris! The first man who has lifted Nature’s sixth veil!’
“Doctor Prosope fell silent after pronouncing that emphatic sentence in a proud tone. His victory was carrying him away; I could see his nervous system sparkling with luminescence. For myself, I remained confused. In the first place, it displeased me to play the passive role of a laboratory subject. I was ashamed of it; the man had reduced me to the status of a guinea-pig. If he had made use of a human being instead of an animal it was only because he needed his patient to be able to part his impressions to him. Then, as I’ve told you, after having accepted my blindness, I had hoped to recover my sight, and the deception left me sad and resentful. I had nothing of the explorer in me, and now I found myself suddenly deprived of my old familiar surroundings and thrown, alone—alone of all humankind—into the heart of unexplored physiological regions! Me, a phenomenon! Jean Lebris, a creature to be exhibited! Oh…!
“ ‘Don’t you have anything to say?’ Prosope resumed.
“ ‘I’d rather have been able to see,’ I told him, ill-humoredly. “To see again, as before. Since you’re capable of inventing extraordinary eyes, it would be child’s play for you to fabricate ordinary ones, to replicate Nature, to render to the blind the faculty that they so cruelly lack.’
“ ‘That’s a narrow and egotistical view of things—a paltry conception. Can you compare the curing of a disability—a repair—to the extension of human competence? We’re not bone-setters, we’re pioneers of a greater humanity! Furthermore, Lebris, it’s necessary to know that these items of electroscopic apparatus with which you are equipped are, in a fundamental sense, nothing other than eyes. Yes—just now, a mentioned the analogy between light and electricity. The expression is insufficient; light and electricity are identical. What we call ‘light’ is merely that electricity whose oscillations are rapid enough to influence the retina. That which we call ‘electricity’ is merely light whose oscillations are too slow for our eye to be able to capture them. We have already produced electric currents of 50 billion oscillations a second; when we succeed in rendering these oscillations 10,000 times more frequent, the luminous waves themselves will be reproduced. Your electroscopes are, in the final analysis, merely slowed-down eyes.29
“ ‘You will now understand exactly why we have chosen the optic nerve rather than any other for our experiments One day, perhaps our successors will succeed in creating a complete eye: an eye that is capable of obtaining impressions from the slowest and the most rapid vibrations; an eye that will see both the infra-red rays and the ultra-violet rays, heat as well as electricity; an eye that will finally provide an integral vision of the world. Then there will no longer be any need to distinguish between visible and invisible light; there will no longer be anything but LIGHT. What beauty! If I were to tell you, Lebris, that thanks to you, the first step on that dazzling path has been taken; if I were to add that present-day Science tends to consider electricity as being matter itself, the fundamental principle of everything, would you not be proud of your mission?”
“ ‘You ought to have warned me,’ I complained. ‘I’m a prisoner of war; you’ve treated me like a slave. Besides, I can hardly see anything.’
“ ‘Your sight will gradually improve. Be patient. Give me a description, though…I’ll take notes.’
“ ‘It’s useless,’ I said, firmly. ‘I can’t see anything.’
“ ‘What! What do you take me for, Lebris?’
“ ‘I can’t see anything,’ I repeated. ‘You’re mistaken, my dear chap. You’ve grossly abused my misfortune and my situation. I consider you and your accomplices to be scoundrels. One does not treat a free man, a French citizen, in this way. Wasted effort! You shall know nothing. Ah, these gentlemen carry our experiments on their fellows! Well, know this: I shall say no more than the poor dog that you would have lashed to a board and doctored with thrusts of the scalpel. I can’t see anything, I tell you!’
“ ‘But Lebris, you’re insane! My friend! Come on! We’ve involved you in our noble work, and…’
“ ‘Enough! Enough hypocrisy! Leave me my electroscopic eyes or remove them, but I demand that you have me taken immediately to a camp for French prisoners. Everything that is happening here is a violation of human rights!’
“ ‘No, no,’ said the doctor, with irritating calmness. ‘You won’t leave us that way. You’ll never leave…’
“ ‘I beg your pardon?’
“ ‘We need you. I hoped that you would be intelligent enough to put the love of Science above everything else. I hoped that the joy of no longer being blind, in the proper sense of the term, and the intoxication of new spectacles, would compensate you for the annoyance of a sedentary existence…’
“ ‘I shall never tell you what I see!’ I proclaimed.
“ ‘Yes you will—in time.’
“ ‘You can torture me…’
“ ‘Oh, nonsense, Lebris! What do you take me for? We shall always treat you with the respect due to your remarkable ability…’
“ ‘But after all, you will surely have other subjects than me, in the same condition!’
“ ‘Quite probably. We shall never have enough of them. Come on, Lebris, don’t get hysterical! Know that you’re dead to the entire world. Your mother knows—or soon will—that her son has given his life for his country. There must have been a mix-up at the field-hospital; a nurse has misread a label. You, who cherish tranquility, will be quite happy with us.’
“I trembled with anger. ‘Filthy Boche! Filthy Boche! You shan’t know anything!’
“The other began to laugh, which gave his nervous system a macabre dancing appearance. ‘But I’m not a Boche!’ he protested. ‘Ah, that’s interesting! Let’s make a note of that.’
“What was ‘interesting’ is that the electroscopes did not prevent me from weeping.”
VI. The Doctored Man’s Escape
While Jean Lebris was telling me about his prodigious adventure, the darkness had become intense, and, the electrical tension being maintained, the narrator’s eyes formed two cold clear-cut patches of brightness in the fluid shadows.
“Your mother will be getting worried,” I told him. “Let’s go. Does the gloom weaken your vision?”
“Not at all! Day and night are no longer, for me, anything but an almost inexpressible alteration in shade. Are you coming?”
He was the one who guided me, for, with my eyes designed for visible light, I could not see anything at all.
“Then you were putting on an act for me, my dear Jean, when you groped…”
“Oh! Yes and no. In certain atmospheric conditions, I’m far from being as perspicacious as I am this evening. Dry weather is, for me, gloomy weather, and fog is si
ngularly favorable to my perception. I confess, though, that I’ve sometimes dissimulated…” He hesitated, but then said, not without confusion: “Let’s leave it at that. I’ll pick up the thread of my story. While we’re walking, if you don’t mind.”
If I didn’t mind!
“I stopped at that fit of angry resentment. To stem my tears, I rotated my fists furiously in my accursed eyes, and pressed down on them without any precaution to such an extent that Prosope warned me about my imprudence. By rubbing myself like that I risked compromising his work. The operation was too recent…
“He was right. My unconsidered friction had upset something, put some minute concordance out of order. Now instead of seeing one spectral Prosope, I saw two of them, which overlapped. My electroscopes had acquired a squint!
“That incident cooled my excitement, and I became conscious of the relative good fortune of which I was the constrained and forced beneficiary. The idea of losing that sort of second sight, that replaced faculty, was painful to me. But the consciousness of my dignity kept me from telling Prosope what had just happened and asking for his help. I hoped that the strabismus would pass—which, fortunately, it did. A few hours later, the conjugation of the two electroscopes re-established itself of its own accord.
“The war-weary Prosope having abandoned me to my foul mood, I had the leisure to contemplate the new face that the old world offered me. At that moment, by comparison with what is displayed to me today, I really could see very little, and poorly. You need to understand that, since their insertion into my orbits and their incorporation into my organism, my scientific eyes have not ceased acquiring more penetration. Thus that evening, the background of the scene was still obscure. It bore a slight resemblance to the nocturnal illumination of a festival, when the houses spread streaks of fire through the darkness and one sees their mass merely as a glimmer. Then again, I had not yet acquired a sense of perspective, a notion of depth. All the lines seemed to me to be equally distant, situated in a single vertical plane, as if traced on a blackboard; and as the new appearances of things made them new things for me, sometimes unrecognizable, I was initially only able to discern their apparent greatness or smallness, without being able to reach any conclusion as to their authentic inequality or their respective remoteness.
The Doctored Man Page 15