Vamireh

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  Then again, he felt a slight religious fear of her. She frightened him with her silence and her large eyes, motionless for hours on end, her mysterious prostration before the evening and morning Sun, and the words that she spoke then, slow, monotonous and musical…

  Branches crackle; heavy footfalls are audible in the clearing. The wolves disappear. Beneath the branches, supported by the round columns of its legs, with white tusks sparkling in rays of moonlight, it is the Quaternary colossus, the great mammoth in its decline. Some slight anxiety or spring fever is agitating it with a desire to refresh itself in the waves of the river. It advances in a sovereign manner, and even the tiger retreats, carrying off its prey. Shivering, Vamireh admires the enormous beast. He has a respect for it inculcated by the elders; he knows it to be valiant but placid, and he knows the melancholy story of its decadence.

  “Llô! Llô!”

  It advances further, its large head profiled more clearly in the semi-darkness. Vamireh makes out its mane and hide, its sober trunk swaying synchronously, and its enormous flanks. It scrapes the shelter, draws away and vanishes in the direction of the river—and Vamireh crouches down, thinking that he might get another hour’s sleep. He closes his eyes. He dozes off, his thoughts becoming dreamlike and then drawing away, and his respiration similarly marks his slumber.

  Then the black eyes of his companion open. She listens to the forest; she sighs. Thoughts of escape haunt her. What if she dared, while he is asleep, to unpick the branches of the shelter and flee westwards, toward the lands of her tribe? But Vamireh would doubtless hear her and wake up—and she trembles at the thought of his cry of anger. Meanwhile, a smile comes to her lips—feminine mockery—and she senses that she is no mere victim. She has seen him embarrassed and timid; she has seen him suppress barbarous desire.

  She understands all that as well as the daughters of the human race that will live in the distant future; she has a knowledge of it that is both confused and subtle. For that reason, her fear is mixed with indulgence—without her being able to forget, however, those among whom she has spent her childhood, the individuals of her race and her family, and the young males who speak her language.

  Oh, if only she dared! But even more than Vamireh’s wrath she fears the ferocious ambushes that surround her in the great carnivorous forest; she calculates her helplessness without her abductor’s club and spear.

  IX. The Nascent Idyll

  In the days of feverish flight, when the blond giant roused her from her slumber in the bright morning, and in the nocturnal alerts, quivering in anticipation of the hunt, the idyll was born in Elem. Through her dark eyes, a dream dressed the entirety of the sylvan surroundings, and Vamireh moved through it, while her native steppes and their pastoral tribes melted away, losing themselves at the confused horizon of memory.

  Even stronger, however, grew the instinct of final resistance, the dread of his fecund loins, the desire to be safe, for a less disturbing fate—and even while their union was sketched out in habitude, in the contagion of bodies, they seemed further away from one another, grim and concentrated.

  Sometimes however, the captivating hours, of midday for the flesh and dusk for the mind, broke the charm of indifference. Then the brunette girl, warmed by the sultry contact of the air or lulled by the vague rumor of the dream, felt a surge of sharp desire, abandoned her eyes to those of the man, and surrendered to a slight intimacy. Some roaring wild beast, some thunderclap or sudden nocturnal dread would throw her against him.

  Sometimes, he persuaded her to sing the melodies with which her tribe accompanied their labor. He listened to them, following the measure, surrendering himself to the music of the unknown tongue, utterly charmed in his savage candor. Like a stammering child he took up the song, lending mysterious articulations to it—for he was the one who was learning the foreign language, already adept at naming objects and vocalizing movements.

  For her part, she interested herself in his weapons: the spears, of which he used several species, some with bases split to accommodate a shaft, some with points wedged in a hole in the shaft; flat or rounded harpoons; daggers and scrapers. She was most excited, however, by the fine eyed needle, and its reindeer gut thread—things unknown to her tribe, which, although it possessed the art of weaving vegetable fibers, only employed awls.

  She was no less open-mouthed at his sculpture and the engraving, frightened by the patience required, the sureness of the notches and the verity of the depictions. She listened curiously to Vamireh trying to explain the Pzânns’ way of life; she followed his pantomimes indicating dimensions, miming ceremonies and describing dwellings. Once, she learned the fate of women; after much effort, she understood their distribution in families under the direction of the elders. She was astonished by it, for she was accustomed to monogamous tribes, periodic unions with friendly tribes, children raised by their mothers, fathers serving both as chaste guardians of wives and vigilant protectors of children. The abduction of young women was customary, so the anger of the Orientals had not been aroused by Elem’s kidnapping but by the fact that Vamireh had committed that offence without any preliminary alliance—and, in addition, the masculine horror of a distant race.

  They understood one another so poorly, however, that any detail was impossible. The long hours went by marching, hunting and cooking. They became close to one another, and acted in common, like two children released by the vast forest. She was submissive to all strategic necessities, almost humble in letting herself be guided, but remaining reserved at every halt, in an attitude compounded out of fear and coquetry.

  He retained a mysterious dignified gentleness, sometimes sad, abrupt with inanimate objects, snapping tree-branches, running after wolves and panthers, but never violent with her. When a perilous passage presented itself, and he took her in his arms, the embrace submerged his heart in a flood of passion, but he maintained the humility of the lion before his mate, a nobility of barbarian aristocracy. In any case, in the faraway caves, trials preceded espousals, an already-exquisite comprehension of fecund apprehensions of loves, griefs and joys, vanquished fevers, intimate struggles destined to become the great battles of future humankind.

  Vamireh accepted the trial that would increase in complication, the slow seduction, the felicities gradually extracted, without overly gross triumphs—by virtue of which, more than anything else, the generations of his descent would in time be glorious.

  X. Combat

  Since dawn, the canoe has been gliding through the abundant freshness on the broad river. Powerful daylight streams through the gap opened on high by the interruption of the foliage. In the distance there is a chain of islets, and the image of trees close to the river-bank—their black shadows and their quivering lives—possesses a vertiginous beauty. All around, the forest is like an alternative darkness with a thousand gaping openings, populated with all the sounds of life: a formidable covert of the eternal struggle; a protector of adversarial races, propitious to attacking traps and defensive ramparts; a common storehouse of foodstuffs for fructivores and carnivores, reptiles and birds.

  Vamireh is holding his notched harpoon, desirous of catching a fish. A quietude has possessed him. After the long hauls of previous days, the necessity for rest often involves him in his petty tasks: the repair of weapons or clothing; the quest for animals with delightful flesh. This morning, he is enthused by fishing. Twice already he has missed his victim, for the water creatures are quicker to flee into the wake of his boat than a man’s hand can throw.

  The harpoon plunges for a third time, and Vamireh, holding on to the shaft, darts the sharp point at the side of a young sturgeon. The fish wriggles and jumps; the barbs prevent the weapon from being dislodged, but the electric bounds of the prey create a considerable risk of the lines breaking, and Vamireh has to maneuver skillfully to avoid thrusts that are too sharp or too perpendicular.

  He paddles with his left hand, pushing his prize in front of him to the river’s edge; there he digs the ha
rpoon in more deeply, finally lifts it out, and throws the bloody sturgeon on to the bank.

  He hastens to prepare the meal. Soon, eaten into by the flames, the dry branches and herbaceous stems have made a heap of gray ashes in which his prey is buried. They emerge with their flesh tender and tasty, and the young people devour them.

  Slightly torpid after the hearty meal, their eyes explore the diversity of things. They are quite a way from the bank, in a circular clearing bordered by enormous beech-trees. The undergrowth is abundant, working to recover the hiatus produced there by some ancient catastrophe and to repair the integrity of the forest. Large Compositae open up, with a bitter scent, and colossal barbed and bristling thistles thrust upwards, superb and terrible.

  Elem and Vamireh are dreaming quietly, in perfect peace, when an arrow suddenly passes within a meter of the Pzânn. His expert eye discovers human silhouettes behind the trunks of the beeches. These silhouettes soon emerge, and a volley of arrows flies. In this moment of peril, instinct throws Elem into Vamireh’s bosom, while the battle is joined, as the enemies—seven in number—approach swiftly. Thickset, they are men of the Orient, with infernal eyes. They know about Vamireh’s speed, and they fall upon him in such a way that he cannot escape their thrusts. Already their bows are flexed, their poisoned arrows ready to follow their deadly trajectories—but raised voices advertise the danger to Elem, and all hands abandon the bows in favor of the spear.

  Proudly, Vamireh looks at them, and his battle-cry stirs the hearts of the bravest. He recognizes his enemies as members of Elem’s race, large-skulled, brown-skinned and dark-eyed. Tattoos ornament their foreheads and arms; a robust old man is leading them.

  Vamireh has picked up his spear. The brown men shelter behind the nearest trunks. Then Vamireh puts his arm round Elem and begins his retreat toward the river, where he hopes to be able to embark…

  At an order from the chief, the arrows fly. The Pzânn wards them off cleverly, and accelerates his flight—a very good tactic, which annoys the Orientals, for three of them race forward. Vamireh’s spear strikes the most agile however, and the Pzânn gives voice to the great triumphal laughter of his race, thinking that the two survivors do not have the strength to fight him…

  His club whirls in the air, challenging them; his robust chest emits hoarse cries; his arm takes pleasure in the extermination.

  The chief sees that his kinsmen are doomed, and orders them to wait; in response to the imperious words, they obey.

  A pause. The Asiatics hide among the huge thistles, cutting off the retreat to the river. In a bellicose melancholy, Vamireh sees once again the obscure colonnade of the gray beeches, the eternal semi-darkness beneath the frail latticework of branches, while the Sun lights the large clearing and the incoherent mass of undergrowth from which the Orientals are watching their enemy. Through the fever of the battle, there is an impression in the Pzânn’s long head of the burden of the conflict, the fear of losing Elem again, of finding himself in the petrifying mutism of things for the long days of his return.

  He no longer has anything to throw but the harpoon. The Oriental captain wants to mount a co-ordinated attack in which, if one has to die, the others at least have a chance to avenge him. Dispersed, in order not to offer too easy a target, they rush the kidnapper all at once…

  The harpoon fails to claim a victim, the horn having detached from the shaft too soon—but Vamireh finds a new resource in an ovoid flint that he carries on his person. He uses it as a projectile, which strikes the aged commander. The latter collapses, stoically, struggling silently against the pain. He conquers it, gets up and rejoins his men; his features express anguish as well as hatred.

  Vamireh tries to flee again. He grabs Elem and bounds away. Arrows follow him—one wound and he is dead. In any case, burdened by Elem, having only a restricted field available, a few steps in advance, he will be caught at the river’s edge before he can reach open water. He puts the young woman down, setting her free. Full of anxiety for the Pzânn, she does not run away. He understands, and, with one last thought of Zom and Namir, in the caves and on the plane, he engages in battle…

  At close quarters, where the use of arrows is impossible, the fight begins badly for the Orientals. One lance is broken by Vamireh’s club, another is seized by him, and he makes use of both his weapons at the same time, with terrible ambidexterity.

  Retreating or advancing, according to opportunity, he succeeds in holding the five brachycephali at bay, and even wounds one of them slightly in the chest—but these maneuvers have taken him away from Elem. He sees her in enemy hands, and sets out to recover her. A lance opens a wound in his side, and blood flows. His formidable revenge breaks the skull of an Oriental and knocks a second one down, his shoulder fractured, while the chief receives a stab-wound in the thigh.

  The Pzânn is weakening, though; the last vestiges of his strength are required for self-defense. Elem screams loudly while the men of her race prepare the ultimate assault, and while the heat of battle causes the old warrior to drag himself forward to attack the wounded enemy. It is the end. Vamireh gets ready to flee. His club makes one more sweep, claiming one more victim; then he hastily picks up a lance and a harpoon. He runs to the river, reaches the canoe, leaps into it—and three strokes of the paddle deliver him to the current.

  His adversaries weigh up the hazards of an aquatic battle. The chief forbids them to take the risk. Then they all take up their bows—but it is futile to fire, for the canoe disappears behind an islet.

  XI. Vamireh

  Lying in the bottom of his little boat, Vamireh closed his wound with his hand. Congealed blood covered it. He waited an hour for a favorable opportunity to return to the bank, for the loss of blood threw him into a limbo of dreams, a sort of gentle semi-consciousness, in which clear perception of his body evaded him. Things whirled around, as if thin and fragile, while his breast became lost in the delight of a warm, asphyxiating crushing sensation.

  Then the crisis passed. With the fever of illness, his strength was reborn. The Pzânn was able to take his canoe back to the bank, go ashore and gather the balsamic leaves and resin necessary for a dressing. First, he washed his wound in the river; then he put his lips to it, and applied leaves steeped in resin and a broad band of hide over the top. This bandage, solid enough to resist any strain, permitted sufficient evaporation and even allowed passage to suppuration. After eight hours, it would be necessary to renew it, but in the meantime, thanks to the aromatic leaves and the resin, there was little danger of complications.

  Vamireh felt a great relief; the vague fear that he might have been fatally wounded disappeared, and he felt a considerable pride, a joy of victory. Voluptuously, he appeased his thirst and his hunger, and then went in search of the wood necessary for the fabrication of new weapons. He soon found shafts: a dozen small ones for spears, one large one for the lance. As he worked on them, he was gripped by the temptation of having a bow and arrows in the Oriental manner, in fire-hardened wood. The shaft of the bow was flat but broad, with a tiny round notch for directing the arrow. Vamireh uprooted a young ash-tree, whose extremities he burned, then spent long hours scraping the wood in order to thin it out, making alternate use of fire and flint.

  The Sun set before he was able to finish, and he realized that it would take at least two days, not counting the work of sharpening the arrows. So, while seeking out the best nocturnal refuge, he promised himself that he would finish the lance, the spears and the harpoons first, in order to equip himself in advance against any attack. That was improbable; the Orientals, with their two dead and their wounded—of whom the chief was one—were hardly likely to open hostilities. They would go back to the steppes as quickly as possible, taking the young woman with them.

  Vamireh smiled in thinking that they did not hold her conclusively, and he was late going to sleep, enfevered by stratagems that he formulated for getting her back.

  When he woke up the next day, a great weakness retained him on h
is bed. The scarring was beginning. He could scarcely drag himself to the river-bank, where he went back to sleep as soon as he had taken a drink, at the risk of being devoured by predators. The Sun had reached its zenith when he recovered consciousness. He quenched his thirst again. His head was thumping, his veins throbbing, and his mind was dazed.

  He understood that the day was lost, resigned himself to it, and fortified himself in his canoe close to the river’s edge. With pauses in which he drank, as if in a dream, darkness lay upon his life until the following dawn. He was close to oblivion. All night, his robust chest was agonized in the darkness. The periodic crises followed one another like tidal waves. With the dawn, however, came calm; sleep restored him, and Vamireh woke up hungry at midmorning.

  He checked his bandage. All pain had gone; the flesh, almost knitted as well as before, only had a slight sting; the redness had disappeared from his breast. His head was free.

  Vamireh set off in search of food, armed with his only two remaining weapons, a harpoon and a lance. The undergrowth offered few resources at that moment and, in any case, he had to lie in ambush, for he could not muster any speed while wounded. Three hours elapsed in which nothing passed by but small carnivores with repulsive flesh, and hunger was already beginning to torment the hunter’s gut terribly when a herd of hinds appeared, led by a fine male elk. They were dangerously large prey, but all the more seductive because the male’s antlers would furnish everything he needed by way of points for lances, harpoons and spears.

  At that moment, Vamireh regretted deeply not having a bow that would permit him to attack at a distance, for male elks often avenged the murder of their mates determinedly. This one was a colossal deer, as large as our present-day horses, and its antlers expanded above its head like the branches of a defoliated beech: two forks to begin with, and then a large rack garnished with curved points.