The Doctored Man

by Maurice Renard

  At daybreak, incapable of restraining myself any longer, I went up the stairs stealthily, not even knowing how I was going to explain such an early visit to Madame Fontan.

  The door of the apartment was ajar. I knocked. A yellow gleam tinted the top of the door-frame.

  I knocked for a second time, and pushed the door a little further open—which permitted me to perceive, beyond the reception-room, the young woman’s bedroom, in which a lamp was still burning.

  “Fanny!” I called, furtively. “Fanny!”

  I went in without any further ceremony, suddenly unconscious of what I was doing.

  A moment later, I knew how one goes mad.

  Three times in the space of two days the same disillusionment had struck me! But this time, it was straight in the heart. The testament had escaped me, the inestimable eyes had been snatched from me, and now…oh, now…!

  The beds were not unmade. The dress that Fanny had been wearing the day before lay on the floor, next to the indoor slippers carelessly cast aside. In a wide-open cupboard, the traveling clothes that I knew so well were not with the others. A frightful solitude chilled the dwelling.

  Unable to believe what I saw, talking to myself incoherently, I went from room to room, stupid and miserable. I told myself that I was the victim of an atrocious misunderstanding; that everything would be explained in due course; that it was all some abominable coincidence. She would come back, of course! She had not gone away! She was not the one who had taken the eyes! Nor was it her who had taken the testament! Fanny, a thief…and an arsonist? Get away! One could not suppose such a monstrosity!

  Logic raised its clear voice, though. Connections formed in my memory. The horror gradually became possible; soon, only my heart refused to admit it.

  While letting my stupefied gaze wander over everything, however, I discovered a screwed-up ball of paper in the depths of an empty hearth. It was a note, written by an unknown hand, in an incomprehensible language…

  And all of a sudden, despair acquired dominion over my entire being—for I recalled very clearly the rumble of the automobile that had died away into the night, after 11 p.m. had chimed; and on the note—in the orders that the traitress had received—I was able to read the number 11 closely following these words, untranslatable from French: Botasse and Saint-Fortunat—the names of two streets that intersected in the vicinity.

  Then I sat down, like a sick man in great pain. I lifted up Fanny’s dress in my trembling hands and, immersing my hand in the perfumed muslin, I wept for all the time I had spent on Earth without weeping.

  Afterwards…afterwards, it was necessary to go back down, to feign surprise, to calculate a dose of indifference, and to stay silent. To stay silent forever!

  Autumn was advancing; it was, therefore, quite natural that Madame Fontan and her niece should leave our rural town to return to the city. People were only surprised that they had left so quickly—“in the English manner”—without even staying for Jean’s funeral. Madame Lebris, shamed by the insult, put it about that a letter had summoned them urgently back to Artois.

  What do I think? What do I think, today?

  Sometimes, I tell myself that she did not love me. I break my heart in convincing myself that she was playing the most ferocious comedy, going so far as to suggest to me the crime of cutting Jean Lebris’ days short!

  But when I recall, hour by hour, our life; when I evoke the memory—irremediably cherished!—of her gaze, her smiles, her kisses and her tears, I can no longer see as many lies and villainies.

  No, no, it isn’t so, is it? Fanny, you who are doubtless not named Fanny, you who were only here—oh, God!—as a spy, under a false name, isn’t it the case that it’s unnecessary to believe in the felony of your eyes? Isn’t it the case that you didn’t deceive me in the domain of the heart? Your odious mission…oh, I want it to have been imposed on you by force! Did you not fulfill it without spilling a single drop of blood? Must not the gentle weakness of Jean Lebris have excited your pity, since you let him fade away slowly?

  It might be objected that nothing sharpened your hatred—that, being sure of his imminent death, it was sufficient for you, until then, to keep watch on Prosope’s diabolical work…

  But it might also be argued that you had less cold reasons for prolonging your sojourn among us—reasons that cause me to hope, in a cowardly fashion, for some unknown future of rediscovery, unworthy forgiveness and happiness in spite of everything! For I, Fanny, I who possess a part of the secret that you serve, I who retain in the incomplete manuscripts in my safe, a little of your master’s treasure…would you have spared me, Fanny, if you did not love me?

  THE MAN WHO WANTED TO BE INVISIBLE

  A Story in the British Vein

  To Octave Uzanne31

  “These things didn’t happen at Iping, of course,” said Mr. Patpington.

  Hopkins looked at him in alarm.

  “Well, obviously!” his uncle went on. “I mean, in all the time that I’ve spent here, I assume that someone would have mentioned it to me, if it had happened here!”

  Hopkins just sat there, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

  Mr. Patpington was swaying back and forth in a rocking-chair. He was a short, stout man, dressed in black. He had plump rosy cheeks and an exceedingly high forehead, and his unkempt white hair came down over the collar of his frock-coat. A fat little old woman dressed as a man, that was what Mr. Patpington resembled—and to tell the truth, when Dr. Hopkins contemplated his uncle, he sometimes experienced the disturbing sensation of being confronted by his late mother, who had been born in Iping, strangely resurrected and in drag.

  “I think, therefore,” Mr. Patpington went on, “that Wells wanted to put his reader on the wrong track, by setting the principal exploits of his invisible man in and around Iping.”

  “But you aren’t claiming that those adventures ever actually took place somewhere?” said Hopkins, eventually.

  Mr. Patpington darted a disquieting sideways glance at him, and continued swinging back and forth, which he could only do by sliding his arms back and forth along the rocking-chair’s arms, given that his short legs were quite unable to touch the ground. An open book lay on Mr. Patpington’s rounded thighs. “Personally, Arthur,” he said, emphatically, “I maintain that the story is true. It’s only too plausible, you know—too plausible not to be true. And don’t forget that it’s a chemist who’s speaking to you!”

  At these words, Hopkins—like the narrator of The Invisible Man himself—began to see clearly…and he repented of having left a work so liable to excite the imagination in Mr. Patpington’s hands. It was, moreover, the only book of that sort to be found in his bookcase. Hopkins, like all scientists in general, and physicians in particular, professed a remarkable disdain for the fantasies of Wells; if he had bought The Invisible Man at one time, it was solely because it was set in Iping, because it is always amusing to read things about the place where one lives.

  Uncle Patpington had long fulfilled the functions of Professor of Chemistry at the Technical Society in the Strand. Until now, his nephew had only had the pleasure of receiving him at Iping during vacations. Mr. Patpington had, however, arrived two days before, without any warning, even though the school’s studies were in full swing, simply saying that he was a little tired and had been advised to take a fortnight’ rest. Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins had not asked for any fuller details on that score, happy to observe that the dear old bachelor—who was, in truth, very well-to-do—nourished a faithful affection in their regard, full of future promise.

  The strange statements he had just heard regarding The Invisible Man, had given birth in Hopkins’ mind to the idea that Mr. Patpington had quit the Technical Society in response to solicitations more pressing than he had admitted. He determined, therefore, to maintain a close but covert surveillance of the professor’s actions and gestures.

  “Just imagine, my love,” he said to Mrs. Hopkins. “I was ready to believe that Uncle Pat had gone off
his trolley!”

  “Is it possible?” asked Mrs. Hopkins, anxiously.

  “Judge for yourself. Mary. Do you recall Wells’s The Invisible Man? Well, Uncle Pat maintains that it’s not a fable invented to amuse.”

  “Heavens!” cried Mrs. Hopkins, putting her hands together and widening her eyes in her turn.

  “So, I entreat you to keep an eye on him whenever I’m forced to absent myself. Try to make him talk, too…hmm…I’m wondering whether I ought to go up to London to have a chat with the director of the Technical Society. We’ll see about that in a few days.”

  Thus commenced the methodical observation of Mr. Patpington. Two days passed during which nothing noteworthy occurred. It was merely remarked that Mr. Patpington talked about himself much more than he ever had before. He waxed lyrical about his past endeavors, the papers on chemistry that he had published, and the rewards and distinctions he had obtained. By way of compensation, when he fell silent, one could have said that he fell more silent, so obviously did his silences testify to intimate labor. He had finished reading The Invisible Man; Mrs. Hopkins had immediately hastened to hide the book, and the old man made no attempt, overt or covert, to find it again. That did not prove anything, though, for his memory was legendary, and it was well-known that a work read by Mr. Patpington was a work integrated, as it were, into Mr. Patpington’s soul.

  During that couple of days, therefore, no eccentricity on the part of the excellent Mr. Patpington was manifest. Perhaps, at one time, he might have asked why Mrs. Hopkins no longer let Bob and Lily play the game of pulling their grand-uncle’s watch-chain or the tails of his frock-coat. Perhaps Mr. Patpington might have made some extravagant statements, if the question of The Invisible Man had come up again; let us say to their credit, however, that neither Hopkins nor his wife found the courage to make allusion to it and thus provoke their uncle to divagation.

  On the morning of the third day, the postman brought a letter addressed to Mr. Patpington. It was from London, and the envelope bore the words “Technical Society” printed in olive-green in the top left-hand corner. Mr. Patpington received it from Mrs. Hopkins’ hands, and then plunged into an intense meditation, pacing back and forth in his room with large and measured steps. Mr. Patpington read the letter, and then, after crumpling it up and hurling it into the fireplace like a cricket ball, with casual expertise, he resumed his meditation as if it nothing had happened.

  It was hard for Mrs. Hopkins to go away without saying a word. She made a private note that a certain fireplace concealed a certain ball of manuscript—but at lunch, Mr. Patpington informed them of his own accord that the aforesaid ball signified a conclusive dismissal, based on infinitely honorable pretexts and accompanied by a profusion of eulogies and thanks. Ostensibly, Mr. Patpington had purely and simply disembarked from the Technical Society.

  Hopkins asked himself more than once whether Mr. Patpington might not have taken this blow harder than he appeared to—perhaps more grievously than he realized himself—and whether the disgrace might have awkward repercussions on the sequence of events. At any rate, Mr. Patpington ate his ham and eggs with a very hearty appetite. All of that, he said, was of no importance whatsoever. He was, on the contrary, delighted to recover his liberty, in order that he might devote himself to certain fascinating endeavors—and he undoubtedly ought to thank Providence, which had been so abundant in support of his desires.

  At that moment, Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins exchanged one of those rapid glances whose spark resembles that of a distant window reflecting sunlight as it is opened or closed.

  “I hope, Arthur,” added Mr. Patpington, “that you—and you too, Mary—will consent to give me hospitality. I have nothing more to do in London now. Your cottage is vast…”

  Such were the circumstances in which Uncle Pat was led to become a citizen of Iping. At his request, Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins installed him on the top floor of their house, and a laboratory was fitted out for him in the attic. Mr. Patpington soon accumulated an impressive quantity of flasks and retorts there. Hopkins, meanwhile, had re-read The Invisible Man, as a sort of precaution. When he saw his home invaded by these battalions of receptacles and machines, he no longer had any doubt that Mr. Patpington had got it into his head to rediscover the chimerical secret—and he resolved to set him straight, if he possibly could.

  Until then, Hopkins had never dealt with any mental illness, but he was a provincial doctor, ready for anything. Mr. Patpington showed himself, in sum, to be so reasonable in his daily habits, that it seemed quite possible to discuss matters with him and to convince him by force of argument. Psychiatrists will smile at that, but I repeat that Hopkins was not familiar with mental aberrations. He hoped that his uncle, apprised of his error, would begin to think like everyone else again. A few weeks of rest would complete the job, and Mr. Patpington’s derangement would thus pass unnoticed—which was singularly preferable for the future of Bob and Lily, because it is always awkward when people can say of you: “Yes, yes, but his great-uncle you know…” and tap their foreheads with their fingers to make the matter understood without saying a word.

  While Mr. Patpington aligned algebraic symbols and moved his labeled bottles around up in the attic, Hopkins set to work on the case, treating the problem very seriously, sensing that the chemist would only yield to scientific reasoning. He spent long hours on it and was finally satisfied that he could bring the discussion to a victorious conclusion.

  Fortunately, Mr. Patpington agreed to the discussion and did not try—as Hopkins had feared—to deny the goal of his research. Voluptuously surrounded by clouds of cigarette-smoke, sipping with a child-like smile on the little glass of sherry that Mrs. Hopkins had just poured for him, Uncle Pat opened up in response to Hopkins’ deferential questions. Of course! He certainly was in pursuit of the discovery of invisibility! He was convinced that an appropriate treatment might render a man as invisible as air. The thing boiled down to a matter of lending the human body the same refractive index as the atmosphere. Wells had explained it admirably…

  Hopkins seized the opportunity to strike an initial blow against Wells, which he knew to be a light one, but which would permit him to test the resistance of his interlocutor. “It can, therefore, only be a question of invisibility relative to a certain medium,” he said. “In water, for instance, Griffin—Wells’s hero, the man invisible in air—would become slightly visible again, like a huge human gas-bubble, since water doesn’t have the same refractive index as air. Wells passed over that in silence, but it’s a flaw nonetheless.”

  “What does it matter?” said Mr. Patpington, simply. “Water isn’t man’s element. For the moment, I’m concerned with the atmosphere.”

  “Agreed!” Hopkins conceded, pretending to adopt Mr. Patpington’s viewpoint. “But Wells didn’t give any indication of the means of transforming animal tissues in an optical sense, and I confess that I perceive difficulties, in relation to this point, that seem to me to be insurmountable.”

  It was this issue on which he had worked assiduously, and he set about enumerating all the histological and physiological reasons opposed to the realization of that brilliant paradox.

  He was wasting his time. Mr. Patpington had but one reply. “Don’t worry about that, Arthur. Patpington is someone, I think, and am I not Patpington? Just remember that every invention has been in the domain of mirages before passing into that of reality. Suppose, Arthur, that someone had told you twenty years ago that a means existed of seeing inside people—what would you have thought? It’s the same with invisibility. Give me credit, and you’ll see. You’ll see…that you’ll no longer be able to see me!”

  “Damnation! You intend to operate on yourself?”

  Mr. Patpington confirmed it with a joyful laugh.

  “But Uncle, you’re not an albino, as Griffin was…”

  “Oh, pigments!” said Mr. Patpington, scornfully. “I’ve made them my business, pigments. I give you my word that it’s no more complicated to di
scolor them than it is to discolor blood. Whoever can do one can do the other, and I don’t understand why Mr. Wells drew a distinction between the two problems.

  Of course! thought Hopkins. Two of a kind! One audacity more or less…

  He remained silent, though, with the result that Mr. Patpington, leaving him bewildered by his check, returned gaily to his calculations and his tinkering.

  Hopkins, temporarily unhorsed, got back in the saddle. He had logic on his side. Since old Pat did not recoil before an impossibility of execution, it was necessary to pass on to the next stage and demonstrate to him that if the tour de force were accomplished and a man were to become invisible, that man’s existence—his rational existence—would encounter insurmountable obstacles.

  Demonstrate—easy to say!

  Very difficult, he thought, but perhaps Wells’s novel is only based on a single sophistry. Perhaps Wells was only dishonest about the invention of the procedure designed to render something or someone invisible. Once that idea is accepted, that postulate admitted, perhaps everything in the book unfolds with irreproachable logic…

  He put it to the proof, and that proof discouraged him. The misadventures of Griffin, the invisible man imagined by Wells, had the ring of truth, down to the smallest detail. On this occasion, Hopkins could not help admiring the artistry with which the author had presented the weak point of his creation, the malicious and admirable fraud he had perpetrated by burying in the middle of the work the weak point that was, however, fundamental, and the clever dexterity with which his illusionist’s fingers had concealed the inadmissible postulate. The transition from truth to falsehood was produced by a flick of the wrist; it was dissimulated beneath and elegant gesture, which seemed secondary. A slight shadow fell upon that spot, while clarity reigned over the rest of the story, and one can follow, in the light of the most meticulous common sense, the actions and gestures of the man who had become—by whatever means—invisible.