Vamireh

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  The troglodyte, under cover, drew nearer to the group with infinite precaution, but the distance was still too considerable to hope that he would be able to use his only harpoon successfully, so he waited. The animals were grazing and playing, and a hind eventually strayed within arm’s reach of the man. The harpoon flew and struck home. With an agonized cry, the animal collapsed, while the herd whinnied and fled into the thickets, leaving the male immobile, scrutinizing the thick foliage.

  After a minute, the huge deer approached the victim and pawed the ground nervously, torn between a desire for revenge and the fear of the unknown. Meanwhile, lust for the superb antlers haunted Vamireh; in a reflexive and entirely unhealthy movement, he emerged from cover, his lance at the ready and the spelaea fur in his hand.

  The herbivore hesitated, its oblong pupil lost in the dream of the forest; but the man was already recoiling, and the beast’s instinct detected a weakness in him. Immediately, with its head lowered almost to the ground, it charged the barbarian. He watched it come, and stepped aside, suspending his heavy cloak from the forked antlers; then, while the deer was getting rid of the encumbrance with a mighty shake of its head, he stuck the lance in between its ribs and shoved it all the way to the heart. The animal fell.

  Vamireh fell down too, exhausted by the effort—but he soon got up again, lit a fire, and cooked a piece of the hind.

  When his appetite was satisfied, a great sadness overwhelmed him. He had lost Elem. He saw her again, even more precious than before: her brown eyes and her expression, grim and tender at the same time. He recalled the vicissitudes of the battle, in which she had not abandoned him. His gaze searched the undergrowth for her, and he felt a constriction of the heart that soon became intolerable. He shouted the young woman’s name, ardently imagining means of getting her back.

  The woods fell silent in the warm hour. The sunlight mirrored on the river formed showers of little ellipses through the limited density of the trees. The crowns hung like great clouds, and the space enclosed by the high branches, full of scattered gleams of light, had confused gaps and deeper gulfs. Refined by pain and solitude, the sight of these things agitated the troglodyte’s inner being to the point of suffering. He experienced alternating desires for sleep and art, and recalled a day’s work in the caves, when he had sculpted a staff of command—and that brought back the urge to make new weapons.

  Armed with a delicately saw-toothed flint, he set to work. By nightfall, he had detached the antlers from the head. A slight fever gripped him again then, for moving his arm back and forth had irritated his wound. Being idle, and not being able to sleep, he conceived a desire to mount an expedition to recover Elem’s tracks. He slid into his canoe and went downriver.

  The night hid him in the vast darkness. The river seemed the voice of silence, an exceedingly low whisper, broken only by the croaking of isolated frogs, hoarse and mournful. In the alternating surfaces of shadow and reflection, the sweeping and sure flight of blind bats appeared and disappeared incessantly. The strip of starry sky extended above the trees plunged an abysm into the waves.

  A few strokes of the paddle brought him level with the bank where he had fought the Orientals; then he abandoned himself to the current, hiding his silhouette in such a way that the canoe might seem from a distance to be a rootless tree-trunk. To begin with there was a wilderness in which the fauna remained quiet, then vague indications appeared of a fearful presence. Finally, he perceived heaps of stones marking the location of graves and, an hour later, the flames of a fire denounced his adversaries’ encampment.

  For a long time, Vamireh watched. Elem must be lying down on the other side of the fire. One warrior, who raised one of his arms into the air from time to time in order not to fall asleep, was on watch. The firelight projected his gesture as a gigantic shadow across the river. The Pzânn clutched his harpoon, and calculated the possibilities of an attack, his fever and his weakness pushing him to recklessness.

  The rumor of the woods grew as the breeze increased. The water was brightened by a pale phosphorescence, a background halo limited by distant branches and inlets crammed with reeds. The play of the clouds continually changed the surface of the waves, throwing a leaden veil over it, or turning it into a trembling night-light or a stream of constellations.

  Vamireh’s inner being was animated by a drama. Beyond the fire, her face in the firelight, Elem showed herself. Oh, to get her back, to carry her off as before! But the internal effort made him feel his ill-closed wound, and his powerless arm. In a few more days, he would regain all his strength; in the meantime, he could follow the trail and choose his moment. Gently, he set the harpoon down, took hold of the paddle and, before returning to his latest refuge, let the current take him to the other bank. There, he paddled prudently, at a speed that was almost negligible at first, but increased gradually.

  An hour went by. The canoe was making slow progress, although Vamireh kept close to the bank. In addition to the current, he was obliged to battle the algae in which his prow became entangled and which stuck to his paddle. He was about to put in to shore when a sort of channel through the reeds attracted his attention, He steered his boat into it and, for a short interval, navigation became easier again—then the channel was blocked by water-weeds.

  In the hope of finding open water again within short distance, the feverish Pzânn moved the obstacle aside and went further in. Unfortunately, there were only small pools covered with lentils, reeds, algae and bulrushes—to the extent that the man was overtaken by an extreme lassitude, and had to lie down momentarily in the bottom of his canoe.

  The night wore on. A presentiment of dawn paled the sky and the cries of sylvan cockerels sounded in the thickets. The faint speech of pointed leaves brushing together and ruffling like feathers, the splash of an otter and the eternal rumor of the river, punctuated by clear notes, were the only sounds of the wilderness. Everything seemed to be plunged into a gray semi-transparent mist; the black fringe of the forest on the far side of the river was hardly perceptible between the waves and the pallid sky.

  Vamireh sat up. An extraordinary torpor was numbing him, urging him back to sleep. He felt an urgent need to contrive a shelter, and measured the distance to the bank. It seemed considerable, all the more so because the vegetation was even thicker. For a moment, he thought of abandoning the effort and sleeping in his canoe, but it would only require a single movement to overturn the vessel, and his wound would not permit ample swimming strokes. Resigned, he headed back toward the bank, aided by his paddle, bloodying his hands on the sharp-edged leaves of the reeds, pulling and pushing the frail canoe, extremely tired, with frayed nerves, making long pauses.

  Day broke, and everything seemed extenuated: the water, the sky, the forest. The broad river emerged from a horizon of mist, and lost itself in mist again.

  He reached the bank. As he disembarked, separating the tall stems, he saw a panther battling with a very young mammoth. The pitiful little herbivore was trying in vain to repel its adversary with its trunk. A female was visible in the distance, running impetuously to the aid of her offspring, and the trumpeting of a male in the reeds announced that he was about to swim to the bank. With one bound, however, the panther set itself on the back of the elephant cub; its claws were already raking the thick hide, and its fangs reaching for the belly when the compassionate nomad intervened.

  Scarcely had the harpoon drawn blood from the spotted coat than the panther retreated, growling. Meanwhile, the vast head of the male mammoth emerged, almost at the same time as the female appeared.

  Then the panther darted into a thicket, and the enormous proboscideans, swinging their trunks, drew away. Vamireh watched them diminish into the distance, touched by their good fortune and their strength. Then he hauled his canoe up on to his shoulders, went into the trees, and expended the last of his strength in collecting thick branches for the consolidation of his refuge beneath the boat. Feeling heavy and unsteady, he began wedging the most suitable bran
ches for that purpose in the ground at the foot of a tree—but he had to interrupt his work; a greater torpor overwhelmed him, and while he was trying to sit down he rolled unconscious into the Nirvana of sleep.

  XII. The Mammoth

  In a clearing between beech, oak and elm-trees, sedges and rye-grass grew, mingled with daisies, woolly groundsel and dioecious nettles. Beneath the seed-heads of the grass, amid the leaves, flowers, stems and roots, the society of insects proceeded, a material sketch of the intellectual society of human beings, practicing physics and chemistry, the industrial use of tools and acids, creating the auger, the borer, the saw, the spatula and the die, digging with spades, perforating with caustics and hollowing the tunnels of mines, forging social habitations, diving-bells, swords and armor, producing light, silk, fabrics, wax, sugar and honey.

  Dawn found them all at work. The large Magdalenian flies took flight at acute angles in the first rays; wasps visited corollas; enormous butterflies swayed on their velvet-covered wings; clouds of mosquitoes came back from the river to take shelter under the leaves; legions of ants carried off aphids, stamens, seeds and all the debris of minuscule vital battles; tiger-beetles lay in wait for prey in their pits; finely-ridged dung-beetles sought carrion in which to deposit their eggs; boring-beetles hammered their foreheads into the bark of elms; crickets went to sleep, wearied by excessive vibration; earwigs raised their pincers in the depths of corollas; and agile ground beetles pounced like tigers on smaller scarabs.

  The forest seemed wary of the unconscious man. The zone circumscribed around the Sovereign biped by the hearing, sight and sharp sense of smell of the ferreters of the roots and branches began gradually to decrease; pointed noses, delicate ears, black pearls of bulging eyes and long antennal moustaches scrutinized the essences emanating from the human, realizing his weakness. Rats approached, enticed by the thongs imbued with bone-marrow; then came the curious heads of dormice and squirrels, on the lookout for the large Quaternary lynx in the forks of trees.

  Time went by. Sunlight steeped the clearing. The stream of life increased with the radiance; the flies became more numerous in tracing the enigmas of their flight, the bumble-bees and honey-bees more rapid and more sonorous; the hunting of the birds more active in the branches.

  Meanwhile, disappointed in its nocturnal hunt and famished, a hyena limped through the thicket. Its nostrils perceived the odor of the human amid that of hide and grease. It came closer; the rats fled, and the carrion-eater, without emerging from cover, realized that the man was not dead. Hope, however, caused it to stay in the shade, half-asleep.

  The long silky threads of light were still falling vertically through the gaps in the branches; the shadows reached their minimum and then began to grow again. Vamireh was still asleep, watched by the hyena. The birds became dispirited; the great trees rested voiceless; ants shook the blades of grass; hornets bent their bodies as they hung on to the frail stalks of florets; flies hummed relentlessly; and herds of roe deer broke branches with the rapidity of their running.

  About two hours after noon, jackals caught wind of the fetid stink of the hyena and gathered in the part of the woods where it was. In their turn, they set up an ambush in a thicket, and in their gluttonous anxiety, their sinister calls attracted crows to the prospect of a large quarry. They came in large numbers, croaking, their black flock darkening the clearing momentarily; then they selected a beech in which to perch. From an altitude of 4000 meters, three vultures noticed the excitement of the crows and descended vertiginously into a neighboring tree.

  These covetous individuals encircled the prostrate Vamireh, distrustful of one another, the nocturnal species looking forward to darkness, the diurnal ones dreading the daylight’s decline. A hesitation made them coy and watchful to begin with; then the jackals retreated, fearful of the hyena, and panic dispersed the vultures in a trice. Nothing deterred the crows, massed in their hundreds, their chisel-like beaks ready for any aggression.

  They opened the celebrations; grave and comical on the branches of their beech, they began a sort of preliminary dance, advancing toward the extremities of their perches until one of them fell; that one flew back and forth for a minute, croaking furiously, then returned to the file. The squawking and the game alarmed the nocturnal individuals and when the vociferators descended on the man in a cloud, with a racket like a hailstorm in the forest, the hyena made off and the alarm spread to the jackals. The latter, however, moved forward myopically, sagacious and grotesque, their terrible jaws like a huge nose at the tip of the head, a blue-black sheen over their entire bodies.

  Two meters from Vamireh, doubt set in; the crows ceased croaking, and the oldest held a conference in low gurgling tones, alternated with dances. A movement from the Pzânn started the rout, however; the birds returned to the branches.

  There was a pause; the hyena was heard laughing and the jackals weeping; then, in the re-established silence, the vultures’ wings clicked heavily, and the three raptors jumped down to the ground. Their bald necks emerged stiffly from fine collars of white fur; their long gray heads were somewhat reminiscent of the head of a benign mammal: a camel, kangaroo or antelope. For a long time, they stood like motionless sentries, the elbows of their wing-bones like high pointed shoulders, their necks appearing to spring forth from their breasts, their wings forming mantles garnished with fine distinct fringes of pinion feathers. From a mighty race, their wingspan extended to eight feet; their powerful claws, avid to rake dead flesh, grasped animate prey in times of famine.

  Were they weighing up the man’s death-throes: the residue of his sovereign muscles, the rise and fall of his breast, and his bovine neck? They did not budge, but the famished canines, weary of waiting, began to creep through the bushes. Then the birds flapped their wings noisily; the frightened jackals stopped, and the oldest vulture marched toward Vamireh’s blond head.

  The untidy hair that had strayed over his face half-covered his eyes; his large blond moustache quivered in response to a feverish groan; and a sort of provocative laugh curled his lip amid the resigned forbearance of the folds of his mouth. His half-bared shoulder seemed to be made of polished stone; the twisted cables of his triceps narrated a poem of bundled muscle-fibers, harnessed in thousands to the same task. The spelaea fur hid his torso, where his tumultuous heart was beating.

  The forest continued its labor of a colossal city, more quietly. Sated life, in all its forms, went to sleep in its lairs and nests, including the insects’ tunnels. The crows, interested by the vulture’s action, maintained a discreet queue; the jackals yawned and closed their dazzled eyes; the hyena dug in the ground with its forepaws; faint noises became audible—little cries, muted songs, the fall of ripe fruits—like the diffuse ticking of the clock of existence.

  Meanwhile, the large raptor studied the Pzânn’s half-closed eyelid through a gap in his hair; the sclerotic was visible. The instinct of a bird of prey is to peck out eyes; the vulture decided to do that. A slow approach brought it within range. Its companions also came forward then, and one of them placed a talon on the bare shoulder.

  Vamireh’s hand went unconsciously to the threatened spot, colliding with the bird’s wing. The animal responded with a peck on the wrist. The wound awoke the man’s defensive faculties; as if in a nightmare, his athletic fists found the vulture’s neck, while he hid his face in the grass.

  For two minutes the hooked claws dug into the spelaea skin, and then asphyxia prevailed, and death, without Vamireh’s fingers letting go. Already, the vast wings of the survivors were beating the air, their bodies rising up to the top of the trees, hesitating for a second, and then escaping toward the sky through a large gap.

  Having acted, the tall nomad fell back into his lethargy, to all appearances a cadaver, and the crows delegated ten of their number to clarify the matter. The others undertook a conference in which gurgling sounds replied to croaking sounds, with similar replies. The ten soon found out that the bulky prey was still dangerous, but the corpse
of the vulture attracted them, and they explored it. The man was still holding that corpse in his clenched fist. With minute circumspection, inspired by their avian bravery, they turned the animal over and attacked the bald neck; a breach appeared and the terrible chisels dug into it; soon, only the raptor’s head remained in Vamireh’s hand. Then, taking hold of it collectively, they dragged their prize a few meters way.

  The jackals thought the moment favorable. Yapping and howling, they were heard approaching, like a downpour in the foliage. The ten crows rose up, cawing furiously—but those up above were already falling in their hundreds on the spines of the carnivores, which were quick to flee in response to the unexpected aggression. The black flock remained master of the battlefield, and began to devour the vulture.

  The hyena had stopped digging. The increasingly keen torsion of its gut moved it to audacity. Although still superb, the species was in decline, increasingly losing the offensive. This one was far from the monster of its kind, the elephant-attacking Machairodus, a meter long with a double row of teeth. Perhaps the giant hyena still dragged quivering herbivores into its caves, but in spite of its canines and molars—the most solid of any contemporary animal, capable of biting through the femur of an aurochs—this one, a spotted hyena, preferred to stick to dead flesh, or to dig moles, field-mice and other little diggers out of their tunnels.

  It advanced slowly, lowering its tail and extending its head like a crawling animal, sniffing the man, more anxious with every passing second. At pouncing distance, it paused for calculation, staring at the throat, envisaging the choking thrust of the dog or the wolf. It did not dare, and scratched the ground nervously.