Vamireh

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  Then he carefully inspected his spears, his club, his harpoon and two rows of fish-hooks, assured himself that the waterway did not pose any danger to his canoe, picked up the paddle again and lightly re-embarked.

  As he moved further downstream, the forest became denser, its banks less definite, made of muddy humus and mud excessively furnished with sylvan debris. The current, blackening, flowed more slowly, the blocks of stone having disappeared, and 1000-year-old trees loomed up intermittently. Large crocodiles slept on promontories and the clamor of parrots covered the august whispers of Life.

  V. The Man of the Trees

  When dusk engulfed the river, Vamireh realized that he had come a very long way within the confines of the forest. He roasted a few slices of a sturgeon that he had harpooned on the way and, his hunger satisfied, recalled the vague legends of the Pzânns.

  Tâh, an old man of 120 winters, with a lucid memory, told of the crumbling of the mountains. Three generations before Tâh, the way south-east was barred by lakes and mountains that neither the Pzânns, nor any other race known to them, had ever crossed. Then the fires under the earth had trembled, and the flanks of the mountains had opened up. The abyss had drunk the great lakes. The terror of it had remained in humans. An entire generation had grown up, none of whom dared to cross over into the new lands. Then Harm, the great hunter, followed by Tâh’s father and brave young men, had ventured into the defiles hollowed out by the cataclysm—and thus were the great savannahs of the south-west discovered…

  Sitting under an aspen, his breast stirred by these memories, Vamireh wanted to be one of those like Harm, who found distant lands. He remembered a sequence of other legends: the story of the adventurous Pzânns who had attempted to cross the forest 100 years ago, some of whom had disappeared without trace, while others came back with tales of the river running on forever between great trees, and perils increasing with every day’s journey.

  None of that discouraged the nomad, however. His curiosity and his courage were excited by the nocturnal rumors, and all the traps that he perceived extended in the shadows. He remained beneath the aspen for a long time, sleeplessly. When tiredness finally weighed too heavily on his flesh, he went back to his canoe, pulled it up on the bank, and then, having found a dry spot, spread out his spelaea hide. Turning the canoe over, he covered himself up with it, shielding him from immediate surprises. With his club in one hand and his spear in the other, he dozed off.

  On that night and the ones that followed, Vamireh was not attacked by carnivores. It was not that the monsters of the shadows did not prowl around his canoe, but none of them attempted to force a way in. Vamireh camped on islets as often as on the wooded shores. In the abundance of everything, there was no lack of the meat or fruits that sustain human strength.

  More than once, confronted by the interminable forest, from which large streams came to join the river, he felt sad and regretted his adventure. He knew that the return journey would be more difficult than the outward one, and the stories of people who had not come back troubled his memory. His heart filled with tenderness at the thought of Zom and Namir, his parents, and his younger brothers and sisters. To be sure, Namir and Zom had sometimes waited for him for two or three quarters of the Moon, having become accustomed to his departures, but how long would the journey last this time? Many obstacles had accumulated—especially the rapids that Vamireh could no longer pass through, where he would have to carry his canoe along the bank. Between the mangroves and the undergrowth, over tangled bends, amid reptiles and wild beasts lying in ambush, these passages had been difficult—but the very obstacles, as he overcame them in greater number, pressed him to persevere, for fear of having endured perils without any reward.

  One morning, he woke up while the birds were finishing their hymn to radiance, and the reeds were rippling in the undergrowth like light rain. A rustle of branches attracted his attention. He saw a shape the color of ash-wood approaching, with a swaying, jerky gait, crouching down on its hind legs. It was larger than a panther. At the sight of its four hands, its face, its circular eyes and its delicately-trimmed ears, a memory stirred in Vamireh—words spoken by Sboz, who had penetrated further into the forest than any other Pzânns. In the peculiar creature with the long arms and the powerful chest he recognized the Man of the Trees.

  A stranger to the peoples of Europe, and almost to those of Asia, every period pushed the species further back into the tropical lands: the profound southern forests conserved a few scattered families, here and there, 100,000 years after the exodus of their race.

  A surge of sympathy ran through Vamireh. Standing up, he uttered the greeting cry of the Pzânns. The Man of the Trees stopped anxiously, his round eyes searching the thick curtain of foliage.

  Vamireh pushed the branches aside, abruptly exposing himself. “Hoi! Good luck to you!”

  The Man of the Trees stood up. Covered in downy fur, the hair on his head sparse, less tall than the nomad but broader in the shoulders, he seemed to be endowed with a formidable strength. Vamireh was astonished by his fearsome features—the enormous jaws and the eyebrows fused above his yellow eyes—and by his dark and grainy skin, without suffering any diminution of sympathy or pleasure in seeing a fellow human after a week of solitude. Accompanying his words with a gesture he went on: “Vamireh, friend…friend!”

  The Man of the Trees growled, parting his lips, evidently suspicious of the other’s intentions. The nomad, realizing that speech was futile, attempted to communicate by means of gestures, with no result other than increasing the stranger’s suspicion. Refusing to get excited, Vamireh took a few steps forward—but then, his eyes tremulous and clenching his enormous fists, the Man of the Trees struck his chest and threatened the troglodyte.

  The latter became indignant. “Vamireh does not fear the lion or the mammoth…nor the ambushes of men…”

  The Man of the Trees growled again, but without making any move toward the Pzânn, simply by way of self-defense. Seeing that, Vamireh fell silent, his curiosity increasing as his anger disappeared. They contemplated one another for some time.

  The pause seemed to inspire some confidence in the Man of the Trees. His features relaxed and a herbivorous placidity appeared in his ponderous face. Though less analytical than Vamireh, he too perceived the presence of a fellow human—but vague instincts, perhaps ancestral memories or atavistic fears, did not render that presence agreeable. Did he sense that once having been, in the course of the Tertiary Era, the equal of the tall Dolichocephalus standing before him, poverty and poor habitats had condemned his race to die while the other was victorious? Were the dolors, revolts, nostalgias, perpetual migrations and battles lost written in his flesh? Had all of that been transmitted from generation to generation, from blood to blood, vaguely awakening dreams of ancestral life returning to hereditary fibers, worth as much as direct and precise memories?

  He stood there sullenly, his amber eyes scrutinizing Vamireh, but less suspicious.

  The Pzânn, having run out of gestures and concluding that communication was impossible, went back to his canoe in order to refloat it. As he reached the river he turned round and saw that the Man of the Trees had followed him, and was watching him curiously. When he finally re-embarked, a certain benevolence showed on the ashen snub-nosed face, and the hairy arms sketched a vague friendly gesture. Vamireh replied to it immediately, cheerfully, excusing the forest-dweller his suspicion.

  For a long time, while the frail vessel drew away, an attentive face remained immobile among the mangroves—and what panic dream, what impression, as wild and confused as the riverside undergrowth, was wandering through the brain of the Fallen, within the sluggish skull of the Man of the Trees?

  VI. The New Country

  Yet more days elapsed—and still the forest! Vamireh was beginning to doubt that it would ever end. Why should it not be the frontier of the world? The rapids were becoming less frequent, however. Save for the attack of a panther that fell on him from the crow
n of a tree, the entrails of which he had ripped out, the torment of tiny creatures that harassed his flesh, and the threat of snakes, Vamireh had only had to cope with the ambushes of the inanimate, the perfidies of the marshy ground and the tangled plants of coves. Ever more adept at detecting danger, simply by virtue of the appearance of the water and the ground, he became accustomed to laughing at these obstacles, a greater pride surging in his heart and his flesh.

  By the 60th day, however, the vegetation appeared to be thinning out. Two or three gaps appeared: regions of new growth where the trees were smaller and the centuries-old colossi rarer. By means of other indications—the presence of animals that liked open spaces, and the nature of the soil—Vamireh was able to anticipate the success of his enterprise.

  Two days later, his last doubts vanished; the left bank displayed old steppes scarcely transformed into forest, where the trees were ever more widely spaced.

  Toward the middle of the 68th day, he moored his canoe in a carefully-selected creek, armed himself with his spears and club, and undertook an expedition of discovery on foot, in a westward direction. The ground was firm; grasses and small plants were increasing dominance over the trees.

  After a few hours, Vamireh arrived at the top of a hill overlooking the region. To the north was a dark green landscape tinged with purple and black: the oceanic forest through which the enchantments of Light flowed, to which life clung innumerably and subtly. To the south, the steppes opened up, punctuated by oases: country seemingly made for hunting and free circulation—the new country that Vamireh had wanted to find, and the appearance of which inflated his breast triumphantly. Laughing softly, he thought about the surprise of the Pzânns when he told them about his journey, the blissful delight of Zom and Namir.

  He stayed on the hill for a long time, lost in ecstasy—but the firmament overhead was becoming more agitated. Two huge black clouds fused, rimmed by phosphorescence. Anguished, gyratory updrafts gripped the plants, and thunder rolled majestically over the forest. Vamireh loved that storm; his entire body breathed in its force and movement, emotions concordant with his state of mind. When the waters of the sky began to rain down, he received the cool inundation sensuously.

  The fever calmed, however, as the ragged clouds were consumed by the atmospheric warmth and broken up by electric shocks. The grasses were scarcely able to hold on to the rainwater; the avid earth drank it all up. Vamireh marched delightedly through the post-pluvial landscape.

  The last vestiges of woodland disappeared. Nothing remained but the immense steppes, dotted with clumps of bushes. The scattered clouds threw ephemeral curtains of light shade over the ground from time to time, refreshing the view.

  Dusk was approaching now. Vamireh stopped on the edge of an oasis as darkness fell, and spent the night there. He set off again the following day, resolved to return if he was not overtaken by some adventure, having discovered what he desired: new hunting-grounds. The tracks of urus and aurochs, red deer and horses, assured him of the fecundity of the region, and he anticipated a great expedition of young Pzânns for the following year.

  When two-thirds of the day had elapsed, however, he was overtaken by a rather considerable adventure. It was during a halt, while the nomad was just finishing off a brace of quail that he had killed on the way. Sheltered in a cluster of fig-trees, he saw a woman coming toward him.

  Dressed in bark-fibers mingled with savannah grasses, she came closer. Vamireh hid himself more carefully; the wave that broke within him, from his heart to his brain, bore anxiety and charm. The certainty that she was young was verified not only by her increased visibility as she approached, but by her rhythmic stride, the supple sway of her hips.

  At 30 paces, she was revealed as scarcely nubile, a slender virgin with large eyes. Vamireh was surprised by her dissimilarity to the familiar daughters of Europe, with their elongated skulls and strong build. Her face was slightly rounded, as pale as the clouds in spring; her hair had a sheen like that of pools on starless nights; her short stature had more in common with that of ash-trees than poplars; and her entire bearing, the shape of her lips, as well as that of her forehead and the form of her eyelids, was suggestive of a distant race—of a humankind that had developed for hundreds of thousands of years without any contact with the nomadic hordes of the West.

  As a herbivore, estranged for centuries from regions where predators prowl, retains the atavistic instinct of recognizing a tiger, Vamireh perceived the distinction between his own organism and that of the adolescent girl. He divined that he would find entirely new things in this corner of the world to which his caprice had led him, and that premonition of the unknown made him anxious, hesitant to fall upon the prey of sexual attraction.

  A prickling sensation passed through his flesh, like the effect that the approach of a storm has on the nerves of a bird. In his barbaric imagination, however, lashed by electrified blood and all the amorousness of May, the foreign woman seemed infinitely desirable. A child of art, inclined to the sensuality of contrasts, he was captivated by her long black silken eyelashes, her tremulous gait, the precision of her contours, the charming animality of her eyes—and his resolution was made.

  While he hesitated, though, the passer-by had skirted the ambush and was already 100 paces away. Vamireh leapt out, with the rapidity of a stallion.

  Turning in response to the sound, the young maiden saw Vamireh coming; fearfully, with a plaintive cry she tried to flee. She ran lightly though the long grass, but with no hope of escaping the mighty hunter. Twice or three times she changed direction, trying to slip away at a tangent into clumps of bushes. He gained on her continually, only held back by the pleasure of seeing the fugitive’s hair floating in the wind and the curves of her charming young body flexing. Finally, she sensed that he was right behind her, the wind of his breath on the back of her neck.

  She stopped and turned round. With panic in her eyes, and her breasts turgescent beneath the grasses of her garment, she raised her eyes imploringly, with a stream of confused speech. The nomad stood motionless in front of her, listening, soon convinced of the impossibility of understanding her language, more rapid and more sonorous than his own—but the language of nature, the terror inscribed on the woman’s lips and eyelids, moved him to pity. The new impressions experienced by his physiology became less sharp and more profound, sketching a crude poem, and brutal sensuality retreated before tenderness.

  Did she understand? Had she an instinctive sensation of her triumph over the tall fair-haired man? Less tremulous, she continued to murmur syllables in which an indecisive malice was mingled.

  He attempted to reply, to make her understand that he did not want to be terrible. Attentively, she observed the gestures he sculpted; they were new to her. A daughter of races with no plastic arts, worshipful races, she was only familiar with ample and monotonous movements distant from nature.

  Even more than by the signs, however, she seemed surprised when Vamireh, taking off one of his ivory ornaments, offered it to her. Not without mistrust, she studied the lines engraved on the little plaque—the flight of an urus pursued by a predator—holding the work upside down, uncomprehendingly. With a smile, the nomad set about giving her directions, and miming the design, troubling her even more.

  Vamireh’s eyes, however, and his interjections, gradually reassured her. She began to smile too. Then, with joy in his heart, he placed his hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  She recoiled, her mistrust returning.

  “Vamireh is good!” he murmured.

  Suddenly, she started, and clapped her hands while gazing at the horizon. Following the direction of her gaze, Vamireh saw, to his annoyance, a group of men approaching at a run.

  With a slightly mischievous gesture, the woman suggested to the man that he should run away. Taking hold of his weapons, he counted the newcomers; there were 12, armed with large bows and lances. Given the impossibility of fighting, he was seized by an angry despair, his pride wounded by the frustration
of his idyll.

  “Vamireh is not afraid!” he said, boldly—and as the foreign woman moved away, he went after her and took her by the arm.

  She struggled, and cried out in a loud voice. He dragged her toward him recklessly, lifting her entirely off the ground.

  Terrified at feeling herself as light as a kid goat against the nomad’s torso, she defended herself without violence, with timid jerks. Taking flight in spite of his burden, he tried to run, and contrived a surprising rapidity, excited by the shouts of the pursuers—and for the first, he was victorious. Those who were chasing him, belonging to a thickset race shorter than his own, did not seem to be pursuers of prey—men with the legs of predatory beasts, like the occidental dolichocephali. They were agile, though, and they would doubtless tire more slowly than Vamireh, unless he relinquished his burden.

  He scarcely thought about that, moved by a keen desire to fight. He ran in an easterly direction, toward the bank where he had left his canoe. Even supposing that he kept up the same pace, it would take him at least half a day to reach it—a long time after nightfall, after which the Moon would rise to its zenith.

  After the first few minutes, the young woman abandoned all resistance. She was a woman, after all, carried off by a male who was not ill-treating her; a curiosity had began to arise, such that she allowed herself to rest her head and upper body on Vamireh’s shoulder. In the distance, on the savannah, she could see the men of her tribe, and was able to make out their gestures.

  They were armed with large bows and light arrows, dressed in cloaks woven from vegetable fibers and animal wool. She compared them vaguely with Vamireh, clad in the fur of the spelaea, armed with his club and spear. Undoubtedly, she wanted them to win, but would, however, have liked to save the life of her abductor. A certain vanity, a feminine impressionability to which male violence was not an insult, Vamireh’s strength and the attraction of the unknown floated through her semi-barbaric mind, scattering promises.