Vamireh

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  The Sun was setting, its dying light fusing with its image in the water, a colossal bird opening its wings over the fiery horizon; everywhere, flames as short as a sheep’s fleece in autumn ate into the illusory mountains; a few downy bands outlined promontories on the pale waters; three grottoes flared up and melted by turns into the clouds.

  The blonde slave-girl Eyrimah and Rob-In-Kelg, the son of Rob-Sen, contemplated these prodigious things without attempting any analysis.

  Rob-In-Kelg was just 17 years old; as bellicose as his father, the most powerful colossus of Re-Alg, he was proud of his body. Already, the redoubtable muscular strength of Rob-Sen had appeared in his young frame, but his face was gentle in its pride. While still a child, he had been captivated by Eyrimah’s blonde hair and the strangeness of her character. Lacking the dexterity and assiduity of her companions, she seemed to live outside of things. He, whose ancestors had been manufacturers and agriculturalists, steeped in the religion of luck and laws of property, saw utility and conquest everywhere.

  The young captive from the mountains gave a grace to things, being endowed with a more liberated power: a creative spirit, a genius that was less perfect but vast, in which the future was about more than material things. If In-Kelg had a passion for Eyrimah’s dreams, she, in return, admired his promptitude and certainty.

  Sitting on the edge of the platform, their legs dangling over the water, their dreams are as different as their children would have been if he had married a lake-dwelling brunette and she a young man from the blond mountain tribes.

  War and terror, nocturnal landscapes and ambushes, blows struck, wounds, booty, miraculous weapons, luck and victory, herds on the mountain pasturelands, slaves to harvest the wheat or the barley—such are the dreams of In-Kelg. For the lithe and changeable Eyrimah, everything—the lake, like the jumble of villages, the trees on the shore, the long curves and denticulations of the mountains, In-Kelg’s bristling hair, brown eyes and mouth—is graceful. Penetrated by things and penetrating them, she surrenders herself to a quest for slight and merciful adventures, without making any significant effort to combine the various threads of her ideas.

  In-Kelg is reminiscent of broad daylight, avid brightness, cock-crow, harvest-time, ewes with woolly fleeces; Eyrimah offers, instead, moist June dawns in the forest, drifting mists, soft light, trees branching to infinity, free and capricious animals.

  They were sitting thus on the edge of the water, in the sweet fragility of spring, when In-Kelg said: “I shot a crow on the highest branch of an oak with my arrow, when the great Wid-Horg had missed it!”

  Eyrimah looked at her friend, her sincere admiration clouded with sadness. “You’ll become stronger than your father,” she said, “more dexterous than Slang-Egh, and a faster runner than the lean Berg-Got. Then you’ll be scornful of your friend, and you’ll choose a wife elsewhere.”

  In-Kelg looked at her as a young master; she was resentful of it in spite of her enslavement. A pride that had grown over the years was vibrant in her flesh. As slender as a birch-tree, she was known to be more untamable than a virile wolf, and the chief, who had captured her as a little child, had once wanted to kill her because she had refused to obey him. Just as she was not as quick-thinking as her companions, her face remained more child-like, her white skin, her features as delicate as flowering grass and her exceedingly soft blue eyes full of innocence. Her love for In-Kelg was changing at the approach of puberty, anxiously preparing for the crises of passion that were like April storms in the forest, when frenetic hands of branches shake the open splendor of corollas. She dreamed of sacrifice, offering the overabundant blood in her veins to her lover. More than anything else, he loved to talk about his youthful exploits before her feminine tenderness.

  While they were sitting in silence, the evening mist swallowed up the distant villages. There were dark shadows beneath trees with haloes over their branches. A man emerged behind them, heavy-jawed, his eyes lying in ambush beneath his bushy and brutal brows. He stood there watching them, watched in his turn by a thickset colossus with a broad serene face. The man with the massive jaw was Ver-Skag, Eyrimah’s master; the other was Rob-Sen, In-Kelg’s father.

  The night grew darker, and then a large red Moon emerged from behind the jagged summits, as if vomited forth by some monster.

  Her passion growing, Eyrimah placed her hand on the young man’s arm. “Can the slave Eyrimah never become your wife?”

  “If my father buys you from Ver-Skag,” In-Kelg said, “or you run away and I recapture you!”

  She thought about that, annoyed to be a slave that he could not take without lowering himself—but In-Kelg continued: “When I am entirely a man, I shall want no other than you.”

  She shivered, and raised her eyes toward him—and then Ver-Skag grabbed her, roughly. In-Kelg moved as if in opposition, but Rob-Sen stopped him. Then Ver-Skag took Eyrimah away with him.

  Side by side, Rob-Sen and In-Kelg gazed at the lake; the young man was in a somber mood, because Ver-Skag had almost beaten his friend. Having thought about In-Kelg’s love for the blonde captive, Rob-Sen reproached his son for that love. In-Kelg defended Eyrimah—her courage, her art of penetrating dreams, which rendered her precious to Vi-King, the high priest—and Rob-Sen listened, torn between the annoyance of an ignoble marriage and the desire to obtain an alliance with the mountain-girl for his son. He had been pressing for it for years, almost alone in wanting it, so rigorous was the hatred between the two races.

  Thirty years before, Rob-Sen had followed the aged Teb-Sta, his maternal uncle, in founding a new settlement, according to custom. Now that Teb-Sta was dead, Rob-Sen was the foremost among the founders, yielding to no one except the priests. The colossus loved the village, the lake, the mother isle and his entire race in his own powerful fashion; he was the flower of his family, one of those men created at a time when a nation is approaching a dangerous apogee, when the future trembles before it and the past glorifies it.

  In-Kelg admired the lake silently, respectful of its victorious beauty, and the moonlit night penetrated both of them with a grave ardor, while life, close to its conclusion, excited the village.

  II. The Flight

  The bridges had been raised. The village, gradually overtaken by sleep, fell silent. The children were in bed, a few women were finishing baking flat cakes of bread on beds of superheated stones, and a few men were praying before fetishes when a watchman’s cry resounded over the water in sonorous circles, as far as the neighboring villages.

  Everyone surged out of the huts in a disorderly fashion, even the women and children; only the swift and stout men, however, armed with lances, axes or bows, advanced as far as the series of bridges, with raucous shouts full of wrath or alarm.

  Far away on the shore, almost out of bowshot, there was a company of about 15 men, moving furtively. At first, they made no reply to the shouts of the lake-dwellers, but when an arrow had been fired from the village they advanced to the water’s edge, and the cry that emerged from their throats echoed like the mountain lairs.

  The lacustrian chiefs, hard and headstrong, forbade the firing of arrows. For several minutes the crowd was swayed by various sentiments, primarily led to vanquish fear with fury: hundreds of squat bodies with cunning and cruel eyes, imbued with bellicose electricity, the rage of worker-bees against an enemy of the hive.

  Meanwhile, the men on the shore now appeared in the moonlight. They were quite tall, with long torsos and slightly short legs; they were striking their immense breasts with their free hands, and roaring, as if in challenge and reproach. Their shoulders bore furs of chamois, ibex and bears; long blond hair fell over their cheeks; an inexpressible nobility surged forth from their appearance like the grandeur of the mountains where they lived.

  At the sight of them, the lacustrian multitude was possessed by a rage even more profound than before: the rage of the conqueror against the beauty of the vanquished. Prompt and ferocious, drowning remorse in fetishistic pract
ices, the desire for its absolute destruction made them howl in shrill voices. Knowing that they were more numerous and better-armed than the adversary, the majority would have engaged in battle, without any thought of the consequences.

  The chiefs did not think like that, however. They knew about the wars of old, the courage of the mountain men—and besides, a few of them were fearful for their wealth. They imposed silence on their men. When a few protested, they struck them roughly. Then the darkness reigned again, for the mountain men also fell silent. Following custom, a priest advanced along one of the bridges and raised his hand in the moonlight.

  A few common words, introduced to the lacustrians by the vanquished autochthons, served for the exchange of ideas. Gravely, almost sadly, the mountain men declared their peaceful intentions, but affirmed their intrepidity. They scorned insults; they would not permit anyone to attack them.

  The priest replied that the lake-dwellers were the stronger, and that they could raise an army and assail the vagabond tribes of the mountains. Then, one of the tallest fur-bearers set himself ahead of his kinsmen on the shore and said, angrily, that the lake-dwellers would not risk themselves on the summits, and that the life of every mountain man would cost the lives of a thousand adversaries.

  The chief Ver-Skag, a somber brute full of dreams of massacre, shoved his companions aside and brandished his axe, which glittered like a wave in the moonlight, murmuring insulting and warlike words. The priest stopped him, and said that there were 50 villages on the waters, that more than 200 had been built on the low plateau. Every time the mountain men had come down they had met defeat. Why should the vanquished speak like conquerors?

  The heavy sentiment of their weakness must have weighed upon the mountain men, for they fell silent and huddled together, approaching the shore in mute mistrust.

  The priest went on, reminding the mountain men that they did not have the right to trespass on the territory of the lacustrians when the wheat had been sown, or when the herds were beginning to be put out to pasture. The howls of the hate-filled crowd supported the priest’s words, polished axes being displayed over their heads, the points or arrows and lances bristling in the night.

  The clamor increased further when the tall mountain man marched to the very edge of the lake, his breast laid bare. All the priests raised their hands disapprovingly, however, and the ferocious multitude calmed down, listening. In the calm, the deep voice of the blond chief confirmed the peaceful intentions of his troop. They had been surprised by an avalanche, and obliged to cross the low plateau.

  The lacustrian chiefs opposed this speech with insulting quibbles. The prudence of their wealth, the rising of spring sap, and the bellicose and avid blood of their race were all working within them simultaneously. They recalled the days of glory and booty with grunts of enthusiasm and covetousness. But the men of the mountains spoke the names of their allies, and when the lake-dwellers found that they were the powerful villages of the great western lakes, they shivered in hatred and terror.

  The great western lakes, their shores and the neighboring plateau, were the possessions of a triumphant people introduced through the mountain gorges, a young nation. The old round-headed tribes, long preserved from all contact with the mountains, who kept the autochthons imprisoned on the heights, had retreated before the legions of the new men, which had brought with them a more advanced technology, a stronger warrior discipline and voluminous muscles.

  The cunning and prudence of the race was, however, incarnate in the priest, inspired by Rob-Sen; he invited the mountain men to come into the village. They hesitated at first, then, with the cordiality of their vast hearts, they crossed the bridges that the watchmen lowered for them. The mute crowd was as sullen as a woman on a bad day, when the blood that oppresses her bloodies her dreams, but when a conference was held between the priests and the chiefs, it expanded in rapid speech, like a blocked-in river whose channel has suddenly opened, and which makes the pebbles tremble.

  The awakened children were playing noisily, the dogs barking furiously. In-Kelg had sought out Eyrimah again and was holding her hand, telling her how sad he was. Delighted by the young man’s anxiety and the jealous supplication of his voice, she was slightly mutinous, looking at him with her admirable eyes, which were laughing in the moonlight.

  Ver-Skag, annoyed by the peaceful outcome of the adventure with the mountain men, left the group of chiefs, saw the idyll, and was gripped by a rage of frustrated masculinity. The blonde girl fled, and Ver-Skag, seeing her disappear into the house, stopped in front of In-Kelg with an affected scorn.

  “This very night,” he sniggered, “Eyrimah…”

  “Be careful,” said the young man. “If you dare to touch Eyrimah…”

  “I’m not afraid of you, or your father.” He drew away, however, either because he was afraid of In-Kelg’s attitude, or because he preferred to savor his vengeance for a longer interval, or because he thought the moment inopportune.

  The conference between the chiefs and the mountain men came to an end. The disorderly crowd went back home, with grim glances at the mountain men, who were drawing away along the shore.

  Ver-Skag growled like a threatened dog. His little round black eyes revealed his anger with no more nuance than the pupil drowned in the smoke of the dark iris: anger as heavy as his spade-like hand, the flattened curve of his shins or his jutting jaw. He lingered in his doorway, saluted by the more ferocious members of the tribe, who observed his mood. He saw the last silhouettes disappear into the shadows; he heard the last quarrels, the foot-stamping of human beasts preparing for bed, and then he went in, feverishly.

  A small window, opened on the side opposite to the prevailing wind because of the heat, let in the moonlight. Eyrimah’s legs were in the light, and a kind of halo encircled her pretty face. She was feigning sleep, a ladybird’s trick, in order to avoid blows or scolding words. He stood beside her, the mire of his being aggravated like an estuary by the tide. It was a dark desire, mingling the horror and poetry of turbulent tides when the acid of fevers floats amid burned vegetation, phosphorescence wanders over the viscous debris of inferior life-forms, the surface is obscured by a plethora of lentils and newts, and tadpoles swarm over the greasy mud.

  Eyrimah sensed a body between her and the light, then a warmth, and harsh breath upon her face. She opened her eyes.

  Ver-Skag was kneeling down, with a broad sardonic smile. Eyrimah read within it the confused danger that either attracts or terrifies a woman. She slipped away, silently running to the doorway. There she was overtaken, dragged backwards and thrown to the ground.

  She struggled and howled, biting and clawing, until a thickset silhouette emerged into the room: Ver-Skag’s wife! Instantly, the latter began to utter cries of fury, the rage of a mole encountering an intruder on its territory. She hurled herself upon the chief, opening the nape of his neck with her canine teeth, ranking his forehead with her nail, and—most of all—stunning him with insults.

  He stood up, with fearful hatred, raising his fist, but dared not strike her, sensing that she was more cruel and determined than him.

  Eyrimah took refuge in a corner, while the man and the woman confronted one another. Then, her jealousy less immediate, the woman relaxed. She let herself be beaten, knowing that she would draw new strength therefrom, compounded from Ver-Skag’s reaction and his grievances against her. The calculation was sound; the chief went into the other part of the house—but he warned Eyrimah that she would be his, not In-Kelg’s, for that was his right as her master, and he would exercise it. When he had said that, he fell into the legendary sleep of brutes, from which the history of fables has drawn so many resources.

  The young woman remained thoughtful in the frosty moonlight. A creature of finesse, cerebral energy and contained, world-conquering power—which are to crude muscle-power what heat and light are to hammer-blows, infinitely surer but restrained by finer and more scrupulous laws—Eyrimah felt that she was capable of vanquishi
ng Ver-Skag, barring the kind of accident that crushes a judicious insect beneath the stone that it is hollowing out. If Ver-Skag used a modicum of violence, she was lost—and by virtue of that fact, the centuries-old effort of balancing force with cunning rose up within her.

  She resolved to run away—but Ver-Skag had closed the door and the window; the noise she would make in opening one of them would awaken the man, and danger with him.

  The frail corollas of modesty had blossomed within Eyrimah since she had seen In-Kelg’s anxiety, and she was trembling with a fever of love and dread. Crawling toward the door, she paused in front of the room where the chief was asleep. He must have heard her; he turned over in his sleep and muttered a few threatening words. She went back to her bed, full of anguish. A few agonizing minutes went by, and then a glimmer of light appeared in the mists of her memory; she remembered that there was a hole in the wall of the hut, in the most distant corner. She resolved to get out that way.

  Slowly, she located the fissure, enlarged it somewhat, slid her slender body through it, and was outside. Clever as she was, though, she risked being seen if she went through the village—nor could she get across the bridges. She decided to aim for the bulk of the island opposite the bank, and in order to do that with the least danger of being recaptured, she crawled to the nearest edge of the latticework and let herself down into the water.

  She was underneath the platform of the huts, in the cavernous space where the pilings hung down like stalactites in a grotto. The damp, the reek of mildew, the darkness and the retreating wave of swimming rats, could not prevail against the youthful excitement of her courage.

  In places, the moonlight extended broad beams or passed through in slender rays. The lake was warm. Far away, reduced in size by the distance, in strips as bright as the bark of birch-trees, whiteness unfurled, marking the end of the latticework.