The Apes of Wrath

by Richard Klaw

  Tiglari felt as if he were sinking into some obscure and terrible fen. He could comprehend nothing of what had befallen Athlé; and his own fate was an equally dark and dreadful enigma, beyond the solution of a simple hunter.

  Now the blossoms had lifted about his shoulders, were laving his arms, his body. Beneath their abhorrent alchemy the transformation continued. A long fur sprang up on the thickening torso; the arms lengthened; they became simian; the hands took on a likeness to the feet. From the neck downward, Tiglari differed in no wise from the apish creatures of the garden.

  In helpless abject horror, he waited for the completion of the metamorphosis. Then he became aware that a man in sober garments, with eyes and mouth filled with the weariness of strange things, was standing before him. Behind the man were two of the sickle-handed iron automatons.

  In a somewhat languid voice, the man uttered an unknown word that vibrated in the air with prolonged, mysterious aftertones. The circle of craning flowers drew back from Tiglari, resuming their former upright positions in a close hedge; and the wiry tendrils were withdrawn from his ankles. Hardly able to comprehend his release, he heard a sound of brazen voices, and knew dimly that the demon heads of the columns had spoken, saying:

  “The hunter Tiglari has been laved in the nectar of the blossoms of primordial life, and has become in all ways, from the neck downward, even as the beasts that he hunted.”

  When the chorus ceased, the weary man in sober raiment came nearer and addressed him:

  “I, Maâl Dweb, had planned to deal with you precisely as I dealt with Mocair and many others. Mocair was the beast that you met in the labyrinth, with new-made fur still sleek and wet from the liquor of the flowers; and you saw some of his predecessors about the palace. However, I find that my whims are not always the same. You, Tiglari, unlike the others, shall at least remain a man from the neck upward; you are free to resume your wanderings in the labyrinth, and escape from it if you can. I do not wish to see you again, and my clemency springs from another reasom than esteem for your kind. Go now: the maze has many windings which you are yet to traverse.”

  A great awe was upon Tiglari; his native fierceness, his savage volition, were tamed by the enchanter’s languid will. With one backward look of concern and wonder at Athlé, he withdrew obediently, slouching like a huge ape. His fur glistening wetly to the three suns, he vanished amid the labyrinth.

  Maâl Dweb, attended by his metal slaves, went over to the figure of Athlé, which still regarded the mirror with astonished eyes.

  “Mong Lut,” he said, addressing by name the nearer of the two automatons at his heels, “it has been, as you know, my caprice to eternalize the frail beauty of women. Athlé, like the others before her, has explored my ingenious maze, and has looked into that mirror whose sudden radiance turns the flesh to a stone fairer than marble and no less enduring.... Also, as you know, it has been my whim to turn men into beasts with the copious fluid of certain artificial flowers, so that their outer semblance should conform more strictly to their inner nature. Is it not well, Mong Lut, that I have done these things? Am I not Maâl Dweb, in whom all knowledge and all power reside?”

  “Yea, master,” echoed the automaton. “You are Maâl Dweb, the all-wise, the all-powerful, and it is well that you have done these things.”

  “However,” continued Maâl Dweb, “the repetition of even the most remarkable thaumaturgies can grow tiresome after a certain number of times. I do not think that I shall deal again in this fashion with any woman, or deal thus with any man. Is it not well, Mong Lut, that I should vary my sorceries in future? Am I not Maâl Dweb, the all-resourceful?”

  “Indeed, you are Maâl Dweb,” agreed the automaton, “and it would no doubt be well for you to diversify your enchantments.”

  Maâl Dweb was not ill pleased with the answers that the automaton had given. He cared little for converse, other than the iron echoing of his metal servitors, who assented always to all that he said, and spared him the tedium of arguments. And it may have been that there were times when he wearied a little even of this, and preferred the silence of the petrified women, or the muteness of the beasts that could no longer call themselves men.

  QUIDQUID VOLUERIS

  Gustave Flaubert

  Translated by Gio Clairval

  Immersed within the insensitive racial-stereotyping that dominated the early Victorian era, the sixteen-year-old Flaubert successfully presaged the future of horror when he penned this grotesque tale in 1837. The forced mating of an orangutan with a Brazilian female slave as part of a cruel interspecies experiment leads to the tragic story of the resulting hybrid’s life.

  I

  Memories of sleepless nights, come to me! Come to me, my wretched, foolish dreams. Come one, come all, my good friends the imps. You who jump on my feet at night, who run across my window panes and up over my ceiling; you, purple, green, yellow, black, white, with great wings and long beards; you who rattle my walls and the irons on my door. Under your breath the lamp shivers and pales as your greenish lips blow it out.

  I see you, more often than not, creeping quietly through pale winter nights, vested in greatcoats that stand out, brown against the snowy rooftops, with your little heads as bony as skulls. You come through my keyhole, and each one of you warms up its long nails at my fireplace, which still diffuses mild warmth.

  Come all, spawn of my brain, lend me some of your craziness, let me use your strange dreams. Your presence will spare me a preface in the fashion of the Moderns or an invocation to the muse in the Ancients’ tradition.

  II

  “Tell us the tale of your trip to Brazil, my dear friend,” Mrs. de Lansac asked her cousin Paul. “It will entertain Adele.” In fact Adele was a nonchalant pretty blond who hung on her cousin’s arm while walking the paths across the park. Mr. Paul answered: “But why, my aunt, my trip was delightful, I assure you.”

  “You already said so.”

  “Ah!” he said.

  And then he said nothing.

  The walkers’ silence lasted a long time, each walking without being aware of the other. One plucked the petals of a rose, the other churned the sand of the path with his shoes, and the third watched the moon, which appeared bright and calm through the intertwined branches of the great elms.

  The moon, again! But surely the moon must play some major role in this story! It is the sine qua non of every lugubrious piece, like teeth clattering and hair standing on end. At any rate, on this day, there was a moon.

  Why take it away from me? O my moon, I love you! You shine gracefully over the castle’s steep rooftops. You turn the lake into a stretch of silver, and under your pale light every drop of rain that falls, every drop, I say, that hangs from a rose petal is like a pearl on a beautiful woman’s breast. Those are old memories! But let’s end this digression and go back to our story.

  Still, in her affected nonchalance, in her dreamy relaxed attitude, this tall girl whose figure bent gracefully over her cousin’s arm held something languorous and flirty about her, as in those pretty white teeth that appeared briefly through her smile, in this blond hair framing with ample curls her pale and lovely face, in all of this there was a fragrance of love that raised a delightful sensation in the soul.

  She was not a vibrant Mediterranean beauty, not one of those girls from the South with eyes alit like a volcano, full of burning passion. Her eyes were not black, her skin did not have the velvety touch of an Andalusian complexion, but it had a vaporous and mystical quality, like the Scandinavian faeries with alabaster necks who stand bare-footed in the mountain snow, and who appear on lovely starry nights on the shores of torrents, light and ephemeral, to the bards who sing their love songs.

  Her gaze was blue and moist, her complexion pale. She was one of those girls born with gastritis, who drink water, who tap on a noisy piano some music from Liszt, who love poetry, wistful daydreaming, melancholic love, and who have fragile stomachs. She loved...whom? Her swans sliding on the pond, her m
onkeys cracking the nuts slipped through the bars of their cage by her pretty white hand, and also her birds, squirrels, the flowers in the park, her beautiful books with golden spines, and...her cousin, her childhood friend, Mr. Paul, who had long black whiskers, who was tall and strong, and whom she was supposed to marry in a fortnight.

  You could be sure that she would be happy with such a husband. He was a most sensible man, and I include in that category all those who do not love poetry, who have a strong stomach and a dry heart, essential qualities to live a hundred years and be wealthy. A sensible man is a man who knows how to live without ever paying his debts, how to taste a fine glass of wine, who enjoys the love of a woman like a shirt to wear for a while and then throw away, along with the worn old feelings that have gone out of fashion.

  “Indeed,” would he reply, “what is love? A silly thing of which I take advantage. And tenderness? Stupidity, the geometricians said, and I have none for anyone. And poetry? Does poetry prove anything? And so I stay away from it. And religion? Homeland? Art? Nonsense and twaddle. As for the soul, long ago Cabanis and Bichat demonstrated that the veins reach the heart, and voilà.” Paul was a sensible man, one that was respected and honored, for he was a member of the Home Guard; he dressed like everyone else, talked morality and philanthropy, voted for the railways and the abolition of brothels. He would have a castle, a wife, a son who would become a notary and a daughter who would marry a chemist. If you had met him at the Opera, you would have seen that he wore spectacles and a black coat, carried a cane and took mints to cover the smell of cigars, and never tackled a pipe because it was so horrid, so unfashionable!

  Paul had no wife yet, but he would take one, without love, and for the reason that this marriage would double his fortune and he only needed to make a simple calculation to view that he would be fifty thousand a year richer. In college he was good at mathematics. As for literature, he had always thought it stupid.

  The walk lasted for a long time, in silent contemplation of the beautiful blue night that enveloped the trees, the grove, the pond under azure mist pierced by the moonlight as if gauze had been draped on the landscape. The three walkers didn’t return to the parlor until after eleven. Candles twinkled and a few roses had fallen from the mahogany planter to lie on the polished floor, pell-mell, petals scattered and trampled underfoot.

  Who cared! There were so many of them!

  Adele felt her satin shoes moistened with dew. She had a headache and fell asleep on the sofa, one arm hanging loosely, the hand resting on the floor.

  Madame de Lansac had left to instruct the servants for the following day and lock all the doors. Only Paul and Djalioh remained. The first looked at the gilded candelabra as the bronze clock struck twelve with silvery tones, and he gazed at Pape’s piano, the tables, the chairs, a table with a white marble top, the upholstered sofa. And then he went to the window and peered at the thickest corner of the park.

  “Tomorrow at four there will be rabbits.”

  As for Djalioh, he watched the sleeping girl. He wanted to say something, but the single word he uttered came out so soft, so timorous that Paul took it for a sigh.

  One word or a sigh, it did not matter. But he had put his entire soul in it.

  III

  The next day, in fact, by a beautiful sunrise, the hunter went out with his favorite greyhound bitch, his two basset hounds and the gamekeeper, who carried an ample game bag containing powder, bullets, lead, other stuff needed for hunting, and a huge block of Pâté of Duck Foie Gras that our bridegroom had ordered for himself two days before. The huntsman blew the horn, and they advanced rapidly across the plain.

  On the second-floor window, a green sliding shutter opened and a head of long blond hair appeared through the jasmine that climbed the wall and lined the castle’s red and white bricks with its foliage. She was wearing a negligee, or at least you would have suspected so by the hair flowing freely, her relaxed pose and her unfastened shirt hemmed with muslin, cut low at the shoulders and with sleeves that reached only the elbows. Her arms—round, white, fleshy—she grazed against the walls as she hastily opened the window to glimpse Paul. She waved and blew him a kiss. Paul turned around, after letting his gaze linger on the young girl’s head, so young and pure among the flowers, after thinking that all this would soon be his: the flowers, the girl, and the love these things offered. “She is nice!” he said.

  Then a white hand closed the canopy, the clock struck four, the rooster began to crow, and a sunbeam punching through the bower darted over the slate rooftop. All was silent and calm.

  At ten o’clock, Mr. Paul had not yet returned. The lunch bell rang, and everyone but he took place at table. The room was high and spacious, furnished in the Louis XV style. Over the fireplace could be seen, half-obliterated by dust, a pastoral scene: a much-powdered shepherdess covered in black-velvet beauty spots, with baskets on her arms, sitting among her white sheep. Cupid fluttered above her, and a pretty pug lay at her feet, curled on an embroidered cloth sporting a bouquet of roses tied with a thread of gold. From the cornices hung pigeon eggs strung together and painted white with green spots.

  The wall panels were painted a tired white and decorated with a few family portraits, colored pictures of landscapes representing views of Norway and Russia, snowy mountains, harvest and grape picking. Farther on the wall hung prints framed in black: the full-length portrait of a president of the parliament in ermine furs and classical powdered wig with three looped curls sewn on each side; a German rider on the back of a prancing horse whose tail, thick and braided, rippled in the air like snake coils; some pictures of the Flemish school with its music-hall scenes, bawdy figures bloated with beer painted among clouds of tobacco smoke, joyful atmosphere, big naked boobs, huge laughter on thick lips and the frank materialism that prevails from the child whose curly head is plunged in a mug of wine. Finally, the fleshy shape of the Blessed Virgin sits in her niche blackened by the smoke, while beside her, the tall and wide windows let a bright light into the apartment, despite the old-fashioned furniture, lending the place a certain freshness, thanks also to two marble fountains at either end of the room and the black and white tiles on the floor. But the main piece of furniture, the one that attracted the eye most, was a huge sofa, very old, very smooth, very soft, all bedecked in bright colors: green, yellow, with birds of paradise and bouquets of flowers sprinkled lavishly on white satin. Surely, after the servants had removed the remains of supper, the chatelaine of old time used to sit on those satin cushions. The poor woman waited for Monsieur le Chevalier, who arrived discretely for a drink, because by chance he was thirsty. Yes, certainly more than a pretty Marquise used to sit on that sofa, a great Countess wearing ankle-short skirts, a pink-skinned woman with tiny pretty hands and tightly fastened bodice, sitting and listening to the sweet words that many a philosopher and atheistic friendly abbot put in amid a conversation about the feelings and needs of the soul. Yes, many little sighs, tears and stolen kisses happened on that sofa.

  And all this had gone! Marquises, abbots, knights, the gentlemen’s words, all had vanished, everything had sunk and fled, the kissing, the love, the tender emotions, the seduction of red heels. The sofa remained in place on its four mahogany feet, but the wood was rotten and the gold trimming had tarnished.

  Djalioh sat next to Adele. She pouted and pushed back her chair, blushed and hurriedly poured herself some wine. Her neighbor had nothing agreeable about him. He had been with Paul in the castle for an entire month and had not yet spoken; therefore some thought him strange and unpredictable. Melancholic, said others. Stupid, mad, dumb, the wisest said. In Madame de Lansac’s home, everyone believed him Paul’s friend, a funny friend, according to everyone. He was short, thin and frail. Only his hands announced some strength in his person. He had squat, flat fingers with strong, half-hooked nails. As for the rest of his body, it looked so weak and feeble, it had such a sad and languid coloring, one would have moaned at the sight of this man still young that seemed
born on the brink of the grave, like a young tree that grows twisted and leafless. His clothing, all black, made his coppery-yellow complexion even more livid. His lips were large and only half covered two rows of long white teeth, like those of apes and Negroes. As for his head, it was narrow and compressed at the front, but behind it reached a prodigious size: this deformity was visible because his thinning hair did not hide his wrinkled pate.

  There was a weird air about him that spoke of savagery and bestiality, which made him resemble some fantastic animal rather than a human being. His eyes were round, large, of a dull yellow, but when this man’s leaden gaze weighed upon you, you couldn’t help but feel a strange fascination. Still, he had no harsh or fierce features; he smiled at every attention, although his smiles were stupid and cold.

  Had he opened the shirt that covered his thick, black skin, you would have beheld a large, hairy chest which seemed that of an athlete, as it contained huge lungs that breathed comfortably within.

  Oh! His heart was too vast and immense, but vast like the sea, as vast and empty as his solitude. Often, in the presence of forests, high mountains, the ocean, his brow smoothed out, his nostrils flared violently, and his whole soul expanded in front of Nature like a rose that blooms in the sun, and he trembled in every limb under the weight of an inner delight as he took his head between his hands and fell into a lethargic melancholy. At that very moment, I say, his soul shone through his body, like the beautiful eyes of a woman behind a black veil. Because his figure was so ugly, so hideous, sallow and sickly, his skull shrunken, his limbs stunted, when he took on such an air of happiness and enthusiasm, such fire and passion lighting up those ugly apish eyes, he seemed shaken by some violent galvanism of the soul. Passion in him had to be fury, and love could only be frenzy. The fibers of his heart were softer and louder than those of other people; in him, pain was converted into convulsive spasms of secret pleasure and joy.