Vamireh

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  The troop divided into two parties, one led by the old man armed with a carved staff of command, the other under the command of a middle-aged colossus.

  On either side, the march was organized and regulated, wisely making use of the accidents of the terrain. The old man’s group, slightly in advance, was drawing closer, to within bowshot, when the huge leader of the urus herd seemed to become anxious. Raising his red head, dotted with white patches, he sniffed the horizon and stood still, subjecting it to a profound scrutiny. Then he gave voice, as beautifully and as gravely as a lion. The scattered herbivores shivered and drew closer together. After a minute of suspicion and a shake of the spine, the conviction grew that the enemy was approaching—the implacable vertical enemy so well-known to the animals—and the signal for flight was given. The abrupt departure of the enormous caravan accelerated to a trot that made the whole valley tremble.

  Abandoning cunning, the troglodytes climbed up the chain of hillocks that hid them. The most agile appeared at the summits; more than ten bowshots separated them from the laggards of the urus herd. The animals, no longer encumbered by new-borns, were moving away rapidly, but, as soon as the hunters bounded into action, there was no doubt how the expedition would conclude. The most ardent, true barbarians of a victorious race, unhesitatingly engaged in a contest of emulation, insensible to their leaders’ orders. In a few minutes, three of them had arrived within bowshot and launched their arrows; one bull stumbled, with a mighty groan.

  “Ehô! Ehô!”

  More arrows flew; one of the bulls collapsed, and then a female. Five hunters were within firing range. Then, sacrificing themselves, two of the male ruminants came to a halt. The noble protectors of their race pawed the ground momentarily, their huge anxious eyes staring into the void, and then launched themselves forward. More arrows inflicted deep wounds, but the bellicose animals seemed insensible to them, drawing ever closer, and more reckless. Sure of their legs, the majority of the hunters were content to scatter, but two young men, moved by pride in their power and skill, exchanged a glance, stood still and waited, one with his throwing spear in his hand and the other with his club. Having become curious, and feeling a dramatic thrill, the others formed a semicircle.

  The first bull, lowering its horns, charged straight toward the taller of the two young men at a frightful speed. The latter avoided it, with a smooth sideways movement, and plunged his spear into the animal’s side. Bloodied, it almost fell, but it came back at an angle, less rapidly and more artfully. Even so, it missed its target, and again the weapon plumbed its entrails, more deeply and more cruelly. Tottering and falling to its knees, the urus seemed to be defeated, in a position to receive the final blow. As the lance was raised, however, it leapt up again, and its left horn lifted up the man. Carried on the convexity of the crescent, not on the point, the warrior got away in time, and his third, decisive thrust, full in the heart, assured him of his victory.

  “Thérann has killed the great urus!” he howled.

  Beside him, the contest was even keener. As Thérann killed his adversary, the other bull charged the hunter with the club. Recklessly standing his ground, the man brought his weapon down, and tried to fracture the beast’s skull. Turned aside by a gesture of the horned head, though, and glancing off, the blow only made a partial impact and the bull lurched forward for ten meters, dragging the nomad with it. Trampled underfoot, with his belly ripped open, reduced to impotence, the wretch’s entrails spilled out and his bones were heard to splinter. Then the blood gushed forth. Incurable wounds punctured his torso—and the hunters were so horrified that only a few arrows flew from the bows, fired by the best archers. Then, as the bull gored the body of the fallen man, several rushed forward, shouting loudly.

  The monstrous beast did not wait for them. Perhaps sure of dying, but desirous of falling in battle, it ran proudly towards its assailants. Clouds of darts buried themselves in its handsome flanks without breaking its stride, and it suddenly reached a new antagonist—an old man slow to retreat—and knocked him over. A spear-thrust to the shoulder saved the man, and the supple profile of Thérann was interposed between the two.

  “Thérann! Thérann!” cried the hunters.

  Thérann avoided the urus’s charge, but his second thrust, badly-aimed, hit a shoulder-blade. In his turn, he fell to the ground; in his turn, he saw the pointed horns lowered—and everyone thought that he was doomed. Then Vamireh surged forward, as agile as a salmon swimming upstream, his club upraised. He just had time to lift Thérann up and shove him away at random, while the troglodytes cried: “Vamireh is as strong as a mammoth!”

  With a gesture, Vamireh refused all help; then, standing six meters from the bull, he spoke to it: “Go away, brave one, so worthy to live and create the great race of the urus, so worthy to graze the good grass of the plain for a long time yet!”

  Immobile, the ruminant gazed at the hunter with its large blue-tinted eyes. Merciful pity whispered in Vamireh’s inner being, regret for the grandiose beast sacrificed to the fatality of conflict. Meanwhile, painfully, without its earlier energy, its arteries depleted, the bull lowered its horns to defend itself, waiting for the human to attack.

  Vamireh continued: “No, brave one. Vamireh will not strike the great vanquished urus. Vamireh does not want to deprive the plain of the brave one who would protect its race against the lion and the leopard.”

  Having fallen to its knees, the urus seemed to be listening to the hunter, in a vast and vague dream. Then its head shook; a feeble echo of a bellow quivered in its throat; it lay down, its eyes glazing over, and it exhaled its last breath upon the grass.

  Thus the hunt concluded, in a grave melancholy; the five urus that lay scattered on the plain had cost the life of one son of the human race, for Wanhâb, son of Djeb had just returned to the world of things.

  The Pzânn warriors had encountered the strength and courage of the urus once again, but nevertheless, in an indefinite sentiment of wisdom, they felt more sadness than anger. Agreeing with Vamireh’s last words, they knew that the existence of herbivores was necessary to that of humans; it was by virtue of that profound sentiment that, 1000 years before the domestication of animals, they had learned to use all life moderately, save for that of carnivores and parasites, and to be magnanimous towards powerful males, in order that the herds of deer and oxen, and the caravans of hordes, would be fortified against the large predators.

  III. Wanhâb’s Sepulcher

  In the evening light, when the Sun was transformed into a circle of embers, the elders emerged from the cavern, followed by the melancholy horde. Two young warriors were carrying Wanhâb’s skeleton, and the red light shining on the pale skin and through the rib-cage was like a symbol of acute anguish, the sunset of the vernal day over the ruins of a young man, vanished forever into the abysm of metamorphoses. The horde moved slowly over the savannah, and the dull sobbing of the wife and the mother punctuated the taciturnity of the scene.

  When they reached the Sepulcher-Tree and the bearers had climbed the hill, an old man came to stand next to Wanhâb and everyone waited for him to speak, because he was renowned for talking to other people. The old man stood still for some while, allowing ancient things to rise up in his memory: the confused syntheses acquired by his race, which was still entirely natural, not having conceived any mystery beyond material forms.

  “Humans…Wanhâb, son of Djeb, born among us, was an intrepid hunter and skillful worker. The urus, the leopard and the hyena have known his strength. He has carved the bodies of beasts and has made clothes and weapons from them. He has forged tools from the benevolent stone. Humans…Wan- hâb, son of Djeb has left life behind; he will hunt no more, no longer skin beasts or forge tools from the benevolent stone—and because he was a faithful and wise companion, we shall miss Wanhâb, son of Djeb.”

  “We shall miss Wanhâb, son of Djeb!” repeated the voices of the horde.

  Then a weightier silence descended, and the heads of the troglodyte
s were raised to watch an agile hunter climb the Sepulcher-Tree. He slid from branch to branch, between the skeletons of ancestors. When he reached a free branch, Wanhâb, son of Djeb was suspended by a braided thong, one end of which the hunter was holding, and the lattice-work body of the dead man climbed slowly up into the foliage.

  Emanating from the warm horizon and the broad zenith was so gentle a languor, so charming a breath of life and so peaceful a majesty, that Wanhâb’s companions, and his mother and widow, forgot the pain and horror of death. Finally, the skeleton, fixed in place, was swaying feebly among the other skeletons, and the horde dispersed into the dusk. On the headlands of the river and the crests of the low hills, contemplative natures tried to divide the light into a thousand ephemeral figurations.

  Soon, only a nucleus of intimate friends and relatives still remained under the tree, and twilight overwhelmed the celestial glories. Another day disappeared into the depths of the past; another night revealed an infinite face. Shivering then, with embryonic imaginations mingling the ideas of death and night together, the humble prehistoric individuals faithful to Wanhâb added one more dream to the millions of dreams from which Worship was born, from the marriage of Fear, the Supernatural and Immortality.

  Meanwhile, the young wife remained prostrate on the grass, her hair running between the stems, as the willow-flowers weep over the water-lilies in ponds—and Thérann the victor, Wanhâb’s friend, took pity on her and felt his heart quiver, because the woman’s tresses were beautiful and her neck was round and white in the final glimmers of daylight. He spoke gentle words then, and she looked up at him—and the promise of universal nature that everything recommences and that the wounded hearts of the young heal up in individuals who are still young, began to be fulfilled for her. She thought that Thérann was strong among the strong, and devoid of ferocity toward women and children—and when the darkness was victorious, they lay side by side, without moving or speaking, but sensing tomorrows rise within them, while the wolves roamed the savannah, the hyenas laughed on the river-bank and the great carnivores got to their feet in the fullness of their strength.

  IV. The Islet

  In spite of his youth, Vamireh, son of Zom, was the wonder of the Pzânns horde. A subtle and powerful hunter, handsome in build and as strong as an aurochs, he also possessed the mysterious gifts of art. The forms of animals and plants captivated his imagination. He was the one who roamed the hilltops alone and marched through the forest or wandered along the river in the dark, for the joy of discovering secret things.

  The dolichocephali of Europe did not make fun of such men, and held Vamireh in profound esteem for knowing how to ply the gravers that carved bone and horn, and the chisels that carved wood and ivory in the round. Devoted to his art, he had become the most renowned artist of the tribes that came south-west in spring. For days or entire weeks on end, he removed himself from the midst of his companions, exploring the wilderness, laboring in some distant retreat, and the works he brought back from his wanderings were the delight of the horde. Neither his father Zom nor his mother Namir worried about these absences, having a diffuse faith in his good fortune.

  One morning he embarked on the river and headed downstream in his slender vessel, which trembled at the slightest eddy, propelling it with thrust of his paddle. As the troglodytes’ lair faded from view, the river broadened out, becoming shallower, and rocky outcrops dressed in mosses and lichens interrupted his progress. There, the deep bass of the current, the rumors of the pebbles and magical resonances sang the hymn of great waters; sometimes the blocks of stone were arranged in architectural symmetry, in halls open to the four winds, in which the voice of the abyss sang.

  Along the virgin banks the forest extended, in edges of fragile willows, gray poplars, mournful ash-trees and birches on the mounds—and, behind them, the populations of giant trees, the cosmos of lianas and the war of little plants, the mystery of creative nature, liberated forces, renaissances in the humus, in partial shade like that of temples, and ambushes in which joy, terror and love quivered in perpetuity.

  Vamireh abandoned his paddle, gripped by the solemnity of the spectacle, delighted by the vacillation of the shadows of trees on the surface and the savage scent of the place, while herbivorous muzzles slid between the tree-trunks and the foliage and groups of sturgeon swam upriver, shaving the erratic blocks of stone.

  Meanwhile, an islet came into view. Vamireh started paddling again. He steered his canoe into an inlet on the southern shore of the little island, where he moored it among the willows. Frogs, water-fowl and a teal ran away. Vamireh parted the foliage and found himself in a clearing where the earth seemed to have been trampled, the wild grass intentionally dispossessed. A smile appeared on his face while he plunged his hand into the hollow of an alder. He brought out scrapers, blades, pointed flints, and fragments of bone, cord and oak-wood. For a few moments, he studied a statuette that was still vague; the top of the head, the forehead and the eyes were nearing completion. An esthetic, religious hesitation made him shiver.

  “It will be finished before the full Moon.”

  Then he threw off his cloak, went to fetch the teeth and bones he had brought from his canoe, and hesitated for several minutes as to whether to continue the statuette or work on engraving. The fangs of the spelaea were particularly tempting. He picked them up and put them down several times over. With the sharp point of a flint he sketched imaginary contours, screwing up his eyes and biting his lip. Then, looking around and wandering about the islet, he seemed to be searching for a model: a tree, a bird or a fish.

  He picked a flower from a cove—a huge water-crowfoot with a pale corolla—and examined it. An intelligent gentleness, a mental finesse in cerebral contact with nature and an artistic thoughtfulness furrowed his brow and his eyelids. He savored the large, discreetly-polished petals, subtle anthers and naked pink stem, besotted with their shape, with a voluptuous retina—especially the terminal lines, the contours that his graver could reproduce: the flower’s frontiers. Posing it, wedging it with little branches, he tried to restore its natural pose and sharpened his instrument. Finally, taking one of the spelaea’s canines, in a profound absorption and with a grave passion, he began lightly to trace a profile, the outline of the crowfoot.

  Sure and sensitive, his muscular and athletic hand lent itself to the work of Art; already, a graceful outline had appeared: the deployment of the petals, the tips of the anthers on their frail stalks. Excited, Vamireh paused, his lip held more nervously between his teeth, his eyes half-closed. The minutes having been well-spent, the flower seemed likeable on the fine ivory. The man laughed softly, squeezing his torso between his arms.

  Soon discontented with a few lines, however, he erased them with the scraper and began again, while an irritation was born: a conflict, the moment when the labor became hard, imprinted with anger. With the gestures of a colossal child, reproaching his materials, letting his arms fall by his sides, he threw away the graver several times over. The stubbornness of his race soon brought him back to work so that he finished the sketch, succeeding in correcting the maladroit lines. Weary, he got up, no longer wanting to look at his work. Then melancholy invaded his brain, a humility in confrontation with nature. For a long time, he stayed by the river-bank.

  It was a great era of fecundity; the water was filled with a tumult of inferior creatures, many having come from the sea, moving upstream. The equinoctial floods having ended more than a month ago, branches and uprooted tree-trunks had become scarce.

  Noon came—the blazing Sun and shrunken shadows, the air tremulous with heat and ascending columns of air—but on the damp islet, beneath the willows and green alders, the hour was delightful. In the distance, on the river, a large horned animal appeared, which Vamireh recognized as an aurochs. Unhurriedly, he went to the river’s edge, along a sort of stony jetty. His hunter’s heart quivered at the sight of the enormous mammal; he admired its huge skull leaning down over the water, its long legs and its
muscular chest.

  “Ehô! Here’s Vamireh! Vamireh!” he shouted to the animal, in a resounding voice.

  The aurochs raised its head, astonished, and the nomad continued: “Vamireh will let you live!”

  Having finished drinking, the aurochs went away. Vamireh had brought a slice of urus meat, cooked in advance for preservation. He ate it, let himself fall on to the ground and went to sleep.

  After an indeterminate time, a light contact woke him up with a start. He saw half a dozen water-rats fleeing. He stood up with a single bound, his eyes dazzled, immediately thinking about the unfinished engraving on the canine tooth. When he picked it up again, he was pleasantly surprised; instead of the uncertain sketch he had imagined, it was a firm and precise design with elegant lines. He picked up the graver again, carefully deepened the lines, and then, hollowing out a suspension hole in the root of the tooth, he smiled with joy over his new trinket.

  For today, however, his creative power was exhausted; he attempted in vain to resume work on the statuette; invincible yawns and a continual awkwardness accompanied all his efforts. Discouraged, he replaced his materials and tools in the hollow of the alder and raised his eyes to the sky to calculate the hour. Evening was still some way off, the Sun only halfway to setting, although a certain coolness was already descending as the shadows lengthened. Mosquitoes were hovering in columns; translucent clouds were forming above the forest. Then tedium began to weigh upon the dolicho’s heart—the tedium of excessively good health and accumulated strength. Formless promises wandered through his mind, desires for hunting, dangerous work and generation.

  He was tempted by the distant region of the river’s lower reaches, beyond the forests. Unknown to his race, he was overwhelmed by a keen, hazardous and childish curiosity in their regard. Why should he not go and see? In the boldness of his youth, inclined to sudden enterprises and accustomed to solitary wandering, the desire germinated, grew and became clearer in the burning imagination of the frustrated artist.