Vamireh

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  “Are you afraid of Tholrog?” he asked.

  Her master’s gentleness made her shiver. A world of emotion rose up before her. “No,” she replied. “Tholrog pulled me out of the abyss.”

  A delightful joy overwhelmed the young man, and then a savage timidity like the perfume of may-blossom. He drew his hand away from the young woman’s shoulder. “You shall see your lakes again,” he said, “if the route is free for the two of us—but Tholrog does not want you to see them again alone.”

  She knew perfectly well that he desired her. The malice of a little while before was sketched in her smile and the blackness of her pupils. Then the pride of a chief’s daughter made her dread impure slavery, in which she would merely be an inferior wife, submissive to another spouse. At the same time, the spirit of rebellion rose up more ardently, fear of the stranger mingling with the attraction of the stranger. Arming herself with coldness and incomprehension, she said: “The gods will decide the future!”

  Her hands rose up in a mysterious gesture, toward the Sun. She remained collected and distant. Her attitude influencing Tholrog’s mind, they drew apart from one another, all their words retreating like a landscape in the dusk.

  Even that distancing was not without charm for the young man. It was like a necessary obstacle, a pause, a repose before a desirable object with which one is instinctively afraid to compromise. Timid, he no longer knew what to say.

  Then the arrival of Dithèv extracted him from his embarrassment. He went back to the stream and, as on the night when he had crossed the threshold of the cave of Môh, Tholrog saw the silhouettes of Eyrimah and Rob-Sen’s daughter fighting within him. They were the cloud passing overhead, the running water, the petal rolling in the wind, the bending grass, the peak eroded by inexhaustible forces. But Eyrimah vanished before the young lake-dweller. The diaphanous charm of her hair and her smooth skin and the finesse of her gaze haunted the young man less than the beauty of black eyelashes, strange pupils, dark hair and red lips—and he sighed like the poplars and the wind. His breast seemed full of a warmer blood and a more anxious respiration.

  He lay down in the grass, and remained there in his confused intoxication.

  Time passed. Tholrog went to hurry the preparations for departure. They were only waiting for the hunters.

  Suddenly, in the distance, they saw them appear, moving rapidly in a disorderly fashion. Tahmen was in the lead, running at top speed, equal to that of a hind.

  “The men of the lakes are less than 5000 meters away—numerous and well-armed!”

  “That’s all right!” Tholrog replied. Fretfully, he gave the order to leave. Anger born of great efforts made in vain rumbled in his breast.

  After an hour’s march, he climbed up on an eminence, and saw the advancing lake-dwellers for himself, on the horizon. There were 100 of them. In spite of the distance, he thought he recognized Rob-In-Kelg, the brother of Eï-Mor among them, by his gait and the details of his costume.

  And the mountain men fled at speed, following awkward and rocky paths that their enemies, less practiced, would travel with difficulty.

  Part Three

  I. The Great Lake of the Ariès

  It is morning: a young and mild morning such as there has been for thousands of centuries, and will be for thousands of centuries more. The great lake of the Ariès is waking up. The world is fresh and new for man and beast alike. Sleep has recreated the gentle illusion that everything is beginning again: foliage, moist corollas, stems and great tree-trunks are deceptive in the immense hatchery of light, in the embrace of that paternity which returns every morning and disappears at dusk.

  Wings beat, the tails of fishes trace spirals, larvae crawl along with snakes and worms, paws march, draw back and pounce. There is joy, terror, love and wrath. Some are tenderly sheltered in their lairs or their nests; others are hiding beneath leaves or pebbles; others still are lying in wait for the enemy.

  And humans too have woken up on the great lake of the Ariès. They are going to work, to fight, to love and to hunt. The will to live is active in their hearts. The race is proud and young; the water, the earth and the firmament are infinite treasures for them. The future opens full of force and bliss.

  How beautiful a fatherland the great lake is! How vast are the plains and mysterious the forests! How confused and full of promise is the universe, how mighty the sky on winter nights, how voluptuous on the nights of summer!

  The human dream is already elevated for the Ariès; from the lands of Asia and the plateau of the Himalayas, the emigrants have brought complex notions. Their brains hold an imminent civilization; they have learned to count animals, select plants, love flowers and trace the outlines of a few hieroglyphs.

  Although the sky is still close, they have already grown tall; they have classified the stars. Gods roam in the winds; immense waters surround the Earth. They have industry and art, ingenious and naïve speculations regarding the nature of things, a marvelous sense of the ideal, a confused respect for everything that breathes, from which will emerge the gentlest religion that humans will know. The Earth, the Winds, the Dusk, the Waters, the Plants and their metamorphoses, the Beasts large and small, the Soil that bears everything that grows, the Star that always steers toward the Occident, Light and Darkness, Death and Life, Tools, Weapons, the domestication of certain animals, the Egg, key to Mysteries—on all of that, their elite minds have already reflected and divagated. The experience of their Sages, minutely transmitted, has taught them things that their more civilized ancestors have sometimes forgotten. They know secrets about life that are unmethodical, but fine and delicate, which will be lost in part when wisdom migrates to Cities, and when Wisdom forgets immediate nature.

  It is morning. The night watchmen, standing on the shores and at the corners of aquatic villages have gone away to sleep. Other watchers are replacing them. On the distant hills a few warrior encampments can be seen; the Ariès are expecting enemies from the high lakes—the dark lacustrians they call the Ou-Loâ. Combatants are ready throughout their territory. The horizon is monitored; emissaries have gone down the river to warn the other tribes of the race. Already, 3000 men can be brought together at the first alert. It is war; the Ariès have accepted it, for themselves and their blond friends from the mountains.

  In spite of anxieties regarding the numerous army of Ou-Loâ denounced by Kiwasar’s envoys, the Ariès have not interrupted their customary way of life—and in the morning, the priests have sung to the Dawn-Gods, then to the Great God of light sprung forth from the mountains, the immense Egg of the World.

  Tjandrinahr, the most subtle of the Ariès of the great lakes, thinks during the prayers. He knows that men are not alone in praying to the Sun. He knows that the birds have a religion, that the aurochs venerate the light, and that a beast exists—a beast that the ancestors have seen—which taught humans adoration.

  The Sun has risen. An egg of red flame at first, the furnace of the firmament has become brighter. Tjandrinahr, knowing that the Sun sees every blade of grass and visits every seed, opens his own eyes wide in order to let in its divine caresses.

  The Ariès have taken the first meal, of wheat cakes, fish and cream from goats or cows. It is a dulcet moment. In huts that are already intimate, families have the joy of shelter, the stimulation of caresses, the strength of paternity. Tjandrinahr has eaten with his own family. His sons and daughters are happy; he has the gravity of his great race. Happiness is within him. His strength protects and does not oppress. He accomplishes things more astonishing than other men with less effort. His one fault is an excessive love of watching plants, animals, the Earth and the waters. As subtle in war as in peace, he would have been the supreme chief if he had not wasted his time penetrating mysteries; he is only a tribal chief.

  In the sacred morning, he contemplates the lake. The water is vaporous. The mists are rising slowly. Everywhere, one sees islets on pilings, human dwellings, groves covered with rushes and grass, straw and reeds. And Tja
ndrinahr’s sensations have the vigor and imprecision of a child’s; they are naïve and complex, mingled with delicate visions and erratic conclusions. His thoughts sometimes see logically, and then drift into chimeras or gross hypotheses. Life, which seems natural to others, astonishes him. Everything astonishes him.

  Work was beginning, however. Women were weaving pale linen, the marvel of solid fabric made from the skillful alternation of threads. Men were carving bows and clubs, and sharpening bronze axes. Others were making fishing-nets or lance-heads, or milling wheat or barley between polished stones. Meanwhile, young girls were extracting milk before the departure of the herds. Soon, cows, urus, goats, black pigs and sheep were spreading out into the vast pasturelands, guided by skilled dogs. As it was not yet laboring season, the carts made of tree-trunks and sharpened branches remained idle on the shores of the lake.

  Leaving the island, Tjandrinahr went into the fecund plain, thinking about the work of humankind. One group, which was driving pilings into the lake, caused him to marvel at the power of his brethren. He stopped to watch them dive and return, going down to the bed to dig with their tools. Humans are strong, he said to himself.

  He sent emissaries to the hills, and gave orders to the herdsmen. The Sun rose higher. In the warm morning, hundreds of adults and children were swimming, chasing one another with the ease of semi-aquatic creatures. In the distance, some 50 young people were engaged in a swimming race. Like a living flotilla or a school of cetaceans they were cleaving through the blue water, diving and reappearing. Around them, pikes fled and vipers dived rapidly. The mass of swimmers thinned out, the quickest drawing ahead individually.

  Elsewhere, fishermen were casting their nets; mothers were carrying new-borns; a party of hunters went in search of the flesh of deer, aurochs and wild boar. Some, armed with harpoons, were taking aim at pike in the clear water.

  Walking on, Tjandrinahr arrived in the vicinity of a singular encampment. Slim people with copper-colored faces were standing around fire-pits. They were Immohys. With blue hair in ringlets, in the fashion of wild nomads, their expressions sharp and vague at the same time, their entire being expressed mysterious workings, and a formidable antiquity. Their hands were small, their gestures agile, their mouths cunning and obstinate. Their legends were full of caverns, expeditions deep within the Earth and unknown life-forms: animals, gods and humans living in a universe with neither Sun nor stars.13

  Tjandrinahr and the bronze-forgers greeted one another with friendly words. As was customary, the Ariès chief contemplated the work of the fire and the metal with admiration. That work was no longer a secret for the intelligent race of the Ariès. They had known about it for a long time, but they had not attempted to encroach on the work of their allies, more by virtue of tacit and loyal convention than necessity.

  The Immohys extracted the copper and tin from remote regions, transporting it over immense distances in regular caravans of people of their species. Anyone who stole their materials would have been deprived of them forever. The anathema of the entire Immohys people, marvelously united in that epoch in spite of its dispersal—in bold and ingenious communication from the Ural mountains to the Alps, from the Ocean around the shores of the Mediterranean—would have enveloped the aggressor. Not warlike themselves, the Immohys charged other men with their vengeance, by arming them and telling them ancient secrets, illusory, but calculated to terrify enemies.

  The swarms of the Occidental Ariès, still small in number, had the friendship of the Immohys. That amity was maintained by virtue of the profound respect of the race of agriculturalist warriors for the industrial race. The latter, a race with little future, almost uncivilizable, clung to its monopoly, seeing it as a superiority that was both effective and sacred, and the acceptance of their industrial superiority by the Ariès flattered the Immohys profoundly.

  Tjandrinahr remained there for some time, then went on into the countryside, into the woods and pasturelands. He was thinking deeply about Work, Love and War. Gradually, he made his way into bleaker territory, of woodlands interspersed with grasslands, where a river ran. He was going to visit one of his tribe’s observation posts, half-a-day’s march away.

  II. Tjandrinahr in the Wilderness

  When Tjandrinahr found himself in the wilderness he walked as silently as a crawling worm. His marvelous eyes and his miraculous ears were examining the environment carefully. What he had learned for himself, and what he had learned from his father and grandfather, were recalled by his tenacious memory and mingled with recent things.

  He found among the animals all the essential characteristics of humans, and others too, which he judged divine.

  The plains and woodlands concealed innumerable living organisms. There were Herculean trees and graceful calices everywhere, an abundance of grass and roots, and animals unsubmissive to humans. Enormous aurochs passed through clearings and over grasslands. Still full of strength, their herds encountered no rivals, and all creation fled before them in the months when herbivores are bad-tempered. Tjandrinahr admired them, dreaming of animals more enormous still; glimpsed by his forefathers.

  Horses were galloping, watched by large wolves or alarmed by the arrival of a bear descended from the mountains. The profound and quavering voices of old deer were audible, the grunts of wild pigs and the bleating of sheep with goats’ horns. Hinds were leaping with their fawns, herons were abundant on the edges of fresh pools, water-fowl splashed around in the reeds near their delightful nests, rails fled through the grass and kingfishers were resplendent. Pigeons flew in infinite flocks, and geese grazed, while ducks, swans and storks dispersed; bands of crows were on the move beneath soaring vultures; magpies hunted; turkeys disputed territory with cocks and hens that had escaped from human care and reverted to the wild; magnificent pheasants screeched in the thickets.

  An equally-fecund population swarmed in the streams: minnows, barbels, trout, bullheads, monstrous pikes and sticklebacks. More than one of the last-named was still guarding its young family—admirable fathers exhausting themselves for their offspring, having been brilliant in the days when they constructed their nests, waiting for females and persuading them to lay eggs in their ingenious nests, then watching over their brood for a month, defending it against large predators, wearing themselves out feeding the young family, multiplying their ingenious cares: a piscine paternity equal to that of birds…

  The joys of hatching and the immense poetry of birth still extended through the whole landscape: shells scarcely broken, or in which frail beaks were still tapping at the door, preparing a way out; mothers listening for the tapping of young captives, delicately assisting them to open the door of the egg. Everywhere, males were bringing food back to the household or, perched on overhanging branches, cheering up the sitting by swaying in the wind. It was a sacred anguish, a vibrant delight: the moist hatchlings drying out in the shade; taut beaks raised agape for feeding; slender feet and bright eyes agitating; and, in the ocean of the air, a hundred thousand living skiffs ferrying seeds, larvae, worms, insects and fruits to the little quivering refuges. Almost all the artists had finished their work: the warblers had long since finished feathering their nests, the turkey-hens digging their holes, the republican sparrows establishing their rotundas, the goldfinches rounding their exquisite bowls, the orioles suspending their cradles, the herons building their heronries.

  Meanwhile, in a more minuscule world, female tarantulas were dragging the sacks in which they have placed their offspring; wolf-spiders teaching their progeny to hunt; ant-nurses bringing pale foodstuffs to the edge of the nest; savage wasps setting forth to seize and paralyze living prey, equipping the nest with a provision of fresh numbed flesh on which the offspring will feed later—when larvae awake in their cells to discover spiders, caterpillars, bees or beetles—while parasites dispose their larvae in other nests, which live on the supplies of others or even devour those which hatch out with them.

  War goes on alongside this poem of love. All
these marvels, so slow to increase in force and finesse, at the price of so much hardship, experimentation, exploration and accumulated heredity, all these treasures of life—birds and chicks, larvae and spectacular beetles, mammals large and small—all that divine economy of forms and organs, all that inestimable labor, will be annihilated in an instant by bites, claws or stings, and cadavers will garnish maws, suckers, muzzles and mouths, to be obscurely interred in stomachs. War is so narrowly linked to love in nature that they shade into one another; against the prodigious fecundity that kills in itself, there is the prodigious voracity that regulates its thrust; against the delicate work, there is the eternity of hammer-blows, of brutal assassinations. Every terrain, immense or minuscule, hides ambushes, weapons, the fury and terror of life. Everything is slain, choked, poisoned, chewed up and devoured.

  Two moles encountering one another at the intersection of their tunnels deliver themselves to a hideous battle, in which the victor devours the vanquished. The marten massacres pitilessly, and defends itself with a bloody heroism against an enemy ten times stronger than itself; the ferret sucks the brain out of a rabbit and devours its prey alive. The swallow only interrupts its carnage at nightfall. The pike and its rival, the perch, devour everything along the river; as soon as one hen is bloodied by a wound the others strike it down and eat it while it is still quivering. The falcon arrives over her heronry; cocks raise their hackles and precipitate themselves on one another in ardent skirmishes; the larva of the ichneumon fly awakes in its living nest, a caterpillar that it consumes at its leisure; the scarab beetle ravages its herbivorous kin; the wasp carries its conquests everywhere, laying low spiders, bees and caterpillars; and the little stickleback falls impetuously on fish 20 times larger than itself. Everywhere, the wolf makes war on the horse, the stag and the hind, and drinks the noble blood of handsome herbivores.