The Lynx

by Michel Corday

  “But...”

  “I beg you...”

  She reproached him, bluntly piqued: “Do you already have secrets for me?”

  Unwitting irony, alas. She could not have any for him.

  But Jeanne came in. The two friends embraced. For a moment, they remained in a hug, without words. Then, holding hands, sitting side by side, mingling the bittersweetness of their tears, they exhorted one another to forget past troubles in the hope of joys to come.

  After having acquainted his sister with the results of his attempt to see Raucourt, Mirande watched their effusions from a distance, pensively, When Simone had gone, after asking that they inform her of Lacaze’s return, he was still meditating, having retired to his study.

  A capital debate was agitating within him, but he could not succeed in making a resolution. No, decidedly, he deemed the verdict too serious to leave to himself alone. He needed a second judge.

  He got up and rejoined Jeanne in her room. In sum, she alone had recognized the existence of the serum. For Brimmel, a doubt still subsisted.

  He said to her, almost solemnly: “Jeanne, do you believe in Brion’s discovery?”

  “Certainly.”

  “He checked her frankness, because he was still under the influence of the magical elixir. He went on: “You know that Brion demanded secrecy from me. Events have proven his wisdom only too well. At any rate, I have spoken. It is known, it can be known, that the serum exists. In my place, what would you do with it?”

  And as she wanted to interrogate him in her turn, he added: “No, no, I want to know your opinion. Suppose you held this discovery in your hands. What would you decide, at the present moment?”

  While she meditated her response, he followed the labor of her thought, which examined, rejected and returned to each hypothesis. Her choice made, she pronounced:

  “In my opinion, you ought to keep it entirely to yourself. Perhaps Brion didn’t have the time, or the strength, to explain himself, Perhaps he only wanted to engage you to prudence. For me, you ought to convince yourself slowly, by experiment, initiate, put it the proof, around you, in your scientific milieu. And gradually, extend and expand the power that way, until it becomes a new faculty, within the range of everyone.”

  Then he cried, with a violence that surprised him: “Well, personally, I think that it ought to be suppressed, and suppressed absolutely...”

  He stopped, for he had just perceived doubt in Jeanne, horrible doubt. She too, for a second, had wondered whether he was mad…and the injurious thought, in that fraternal heart, reinforced his resolution.

  “Yes, I think it’s necessary to suppress it, to break the full ampoules, burn the formula—in sum, send all of that to oblivion.

  She did not allow all the anguish she was experiencing to show. It was, however, in an anxious voice that she replied: “How? Why? But first of all, you don’t have the right. What about Brion, whose supreme discovery it was? Brion, who confided it to you as to a son...”

  He shook his head. “It’s to give proof of filial respect, it’s also to serve his memory, not to charge him with that false benefit, a baneful work...”

  She exclaimed, in increasing amazement: “What! It’s you, Gabriel, you who are talking about destroying his discovery, today? Have you thought about what you owe to it? Has it not snatched Simone from the tomb? Has it not returned my fiancé to me? Not to mention all that I only glimpsed…the resources that permitted you to act quickly…the influence that earned you Quatrefin’s gratitude, Raucourt’s benevolence. Without that miraculous aid, where would we be today? Castillan would have triumphed. His crimes would remain unknown, unpunished. Henri would already have departed for Guyana, where I would have followed him. It’s impossible that you haven’t thought about all the good that might be done with such a power. What then, can you throw into the other side of the balance, which can prevail over such benefits?”

  He recoiled before the admission, the absolute confession. He hedged: “Is it nothing, then, to lose an illusion, to darken thus the spectacle of life? For a few consoling revelations, for a few harmonious accords, how much disgust, how much pestilence! Can you imagine what it is to plunge into that sewer, into that cloaca, into that base retreat where everyone believes that he alone can penetrate, where so much egotism, stupidity and turpitude is elaborated?”

  Jeanne shook her head. “No, it’s not that. All of that you expected. You knew full well that we aren’t perfect, that we’re subject to moral infirmities as well as physical infirmities. Those fortunate impressions to which you refer ought to have rendered you indulgent to abjections. The beauties ought to have compensated for the flaws. No, no, it’s not that...”

  He had to surrender more:

  “You don’t sense the necessity, then, of an inviolable refuge, where one can have one’s thoughts to oneself, to oneself alone, in order to live in peace, in happiness, with one’s neighbors? If this power were spread, as you wish, don’t you sense, then, that existence would become abominable, impossible, between individuals linked by interest, by affection, who respire under the same roof? To be spied, on, discovered, at every moment…but you, even you, just now, when I violently affirmed my intention to destroy the serum, didn’t you suspect me of madness? Haven’t I surprised your insulting doubt? And yet, we love one another dearly, the two of us. We’ve climbed the rudest calvary side by side. But what tenderness can resist such a solvent, if its action were incessantly repeated? Yes, a solvent, a poison, and the deadliest...”

  She did not give in yet.

  “But isn’t it a poison that bears its own antidote? Isn’t it a weapon that curies the wounds it inflicts? How do you know that we won’t become better, healthier, if we knew that we were observed, at the mercy of a nearby lucidity, if we knew that we had forehead of glass? The crimes of a Castillan would become impossible, for we would read the confession in him. Finally, how do you know that we wouldn’t have a coquetry of thought, as we have a coquetry of costume because it’s offered to our gaze? Our entire life is founded on lies—so be it. But why shouldn’t it be founded on sincerity?”

  For a moment, he was troubled by that distant vision of an ameliorated future. But there, beneath his skull, in the delicate substance of his brain, the fiery point had left its ardent and profound trace.

  He smiled sadly.

  “All right. I admit that the relations of amity and interest might adapt to that constant investigation. But isn’t there a more fragile, more precious, more sacred bond than all those? Is it necessary to remind you of it? There’s amour...”

  He looked at her fixedly, and read within her. Jeanne had immediately glimpsed the truth. She had understood that he was speaking under the empire of a disappointment, and that he must have experienced it while he was alone with Simone.

  He dispensed with a more direct confession.

  “Do you believe,” he asked, “that a couple united by love could resist that absolute clairvoyance? Seizing on the wing all the little lies, all the little regrets, all the little ironies, all the little ruses, all the little trivialities that escape the purest and most tender heart? Being peppered by those paltry and venomous darts in the most sacred, the most pathetic moments? Imagine them, those two infatuated individuals...do you understand now, for each of them, the necessity of a secret life, of an inviolable refuge in which to isolate oneself, to conceal from the other everything that might offend them, wound them, afflict and diminish their passion? Can you see that it’s necessary to retain a modesty of the soul?”

  She did not reply. She imaged her life alongside the man she had chosen, that she had joined, with an impulsion increased by the frightful ordeal. With a sincere effort, she evoked that absolute frankness, without veils…those penetrating gazes that nothing arrested, which would not respect anything…and entire labor of termites, scrupulous and imperceptible, and which, however, would ruin the beautiful edifice...

  Yes, perhaps he was right.

  But again,
the bell of the telephone vibrated. This time, the communication did come from the Ministry of Justice. Miranda was awaited.

  He had not been deceived in his anticipations. He had been right to count on the benevolence of the Incorruptible. Raucourt was one of those people who await events, and then, seeing them in motion, place themselves at their head with the appearance of a drum-major, in order to appear to be directing them.

  His reports certified Lacaze’s innocence. He assured Mirande that the prisoner, already notified of the abrupt coup de théâtre, would be treated with all the respect due to his misfortune. Quite sincerely, he promised to reduce the formalities to the strict minimum, to present, perhaps as soon as the next day, a decree of grace for the signature of the Head of State.

  He kept his word.

  Yes, Jeanne was right. It was thanks to Brion that the following evening, the two engaged couples were reunited in the small drawing room in the Rue Monge, in order to savor, amid the indescribable delight of deliverance, all the promises of happiness.

  And yet, Mirande did not regret having realized the project that a night of meditation had further affirmed in him. That same morning, oppressed but resolute, he had gone into the laboratory where Brion had died and where Castillan had committed suicide, and there, without hesitation, he had broken the ampoules that were still full; he had held out to the flame of the Bunsen burner the pages of the notebook in which the master had minutely recorded the method of the preparation of the serum. Of the prodigious discovery, nothing subsisted but a pinch of ash and some broken glass.

  No, he did not regret it. What good would it have done to give themselves to one another if, tempted by the magic power, they had poisoned all their joys with it? At that very moment, would they be savoring, two by two, the ineffable delights of presence, if they had not been able to throw the light veil of mystery over their hearts? And of how many other reckless couples, all over the world, would it have troubled the ecstasy?

  No, he did not regret it, for all the benefits of clairvoyance are not worth as much as the benefit of amour.

  Afterword by the Translator

  As I pointed out in the introduction to this translation, Le Lynx seems to be a deliberate attempt to fuse a conte philosophique with a popular melodrama, in order to make an interesting hypothetical question more interesting for general readers, and perhaps obtain a success that had previously evaded the more serious work of both writers. It failed, but one can hardly blame them for trying, and the failure was not so much down to them as to the stubborn stupidity of the readers of the day, the majority of whom did not want to be asked to think, and were resentful of any such invitation. Things have not changed in the intervening century, of course—if anything, they have got worse—but for the sake of the minority who are, in fact, interested in this sort of thing, it might be worth taking a closer look at what they did and why.

  Why does the story end in the way it does? Why does Gabriel make the decision to destroy Brion’s formula, thus taking it upon himself to deny humankind a great scientific asset, only consulting one other person before doing so, and then ignoring her perfectly justified argument in favor of his own ridiculous conviction?

  The simple answer, of course, is that he does it because he is a coward and an idiot, as the story has proven abundantly. Given that even Jeanne wimps out at the end, the story has only one hero, in Francette, and it is perhaps worth considering what her reaction would have been to Gabriel’s appalling treason. She, of course, knows far more about amour than he does, having been unwise enough to love him—even heroes are not immune to falling for the worst possible member of the opposite sex—so she would know better than anyone whether amour is so precious as to outweigh everything else that Jeanne puts in the balance against it.

  Where has amour got Francette? Stabbed in the heart—which is in essence, where it gets everyone, metaphorically if not literally speaking. It has got her so nearly killed that only a miracle can save her—but miracles are easy to contrive in fiction, where an author simply has to write that “and then there was a miracle.” Even so, she is maimed for life—and for what? So that she can be packed off to the south of France with utter contempt, in order that her continued presence in her loved one’s proximity will not be an embarrassment to him. If she had had the use of the serum, of course, she could have identified Le Crabe without exposing herself to any danger, but her employer, having exploited her affection ruthlessly in order to send her into the jaws of death, did not even think of offering it to her, nor suffer an instant’s regret over the fact that he could have saved her from being stabbed in the heart. Of course, if she had had it, and had been able to read Gabriel’s mind, she might have been very rapidly cured of her infatuation, having seen him for what he really is—but that would only have worked to her advantage, not his, so the repulsive egomaniac does not even consider it.

  In reality, of course, Gabriel would not even have had the chance to favor his own silly oversensitivity over the good of the human race, because Simone would never have given him a second look. She would have married Quatrefin instead, he being by far the better catch and by far the better man. But this is fiction—and that, really, is the whole point. In fiction, the protagonist has to get the girl, and in fiction, amorous servants don’t matter. All that matters is that the rules of fiction are observed, and the rules of fiction say that what qualifies as an ending for a story is that the protagonist gets the girl and that the world is restored to the condition it was in at the beginning of the story: the known, familiar situation, which, however putrid an disgusting it might be, is the way things are and therefore (in fiction) the way things ought to be. Endings are normalizing, because that is what qualifies as an ending, in popular fiction. Innovations have to be eliminated, and the protagonist’s amour, however sick it is, must conquer all, whereas the amour of minor characters can go to hell, which is where minor characters belong, simply for being minor characters, and hence cannon fodder. That is what popular fiction is all about.

  Did Michel Corday and André Couvreur believe what they made Gabriel say at the end of the story? Everything about their previous works implies that they did not, that they made him say it because they were trying to write popular fiction, and because the rules of popular demanded that he say it. Were they being sarcastic? Almost certainly. Did they secretly hope that the reader’s reaction to the ending would be to vomit in disgust? Probably. Did it actually have that effect? Who can tell—but if they did, they shot themselves in the foot, success-wise. Did they ever do it again? Yes. If at first you don’t succeed...

  Writing serious speculative fiction is a thankless task, but some people try to do it anyway. Sometimes, they try to sneak seriousness in by the back door, using cunning and trickery.

  Does it ever work?

  Well, does it?

  Notes

  1 ISBN 978-1-61227-368-6.

  2 ISBN 978-1-61227-002-9.

  3 ISBN 978-1-61227-189-7.

  4 Black Coat Press, IUSBN 978-1-61227-253-5.

  5 Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-254-2.

  6 Black Coat Press, ISBNs 978-1-61227 -279-5, -280-1 & 281-8.

  7 i.e. that which warrants wonder.

  8 i.e., Simpleton

  9 Robert C. Schenck and John William Keller published their definitive book The Game of Draw Poker in 1887, the former having determined the rules in 1872. William J. Florence published his Gentleman’s Handbook on Poker in 1892.

  10 Lime [file] and limier [bloodhound, or sleuth], lose their connective pun in translation.

  11 In fact, the ABO system of blood typing had been discovered in 1901 by Karl Landsteiner, which permitted the first successful human blood transfusion to be performed in 1907. Couvreur could not have been unaware of that in 1911; perhaps the novel had been written earlier, although the frequent references to automobile taxis suggests otherwise.

  12 This is completely fictitious; yellow fever is now known to be caused by a virus, and
even if it had been bacterial, the detection carried out by Mirande would have been impossible. The disease is, however, transmitted by mosquitoes, like malaria, and the malarial parasite—a protozoan rather than a bacillus—was detectable by microscopes in 1911, so the authors are presumably reasoning by analogy.

  13 Literally “ball-skin” (as in scrotum), loosely signifying a worthless wrapping.

  14 The shorthand term for the Bataillons d’Infanterie Légère d’Afrique: penal battalions based in Tatouine in Tunisia, made up of ex-prisoners who were still required to do their military service or unruly soldiers.

  15 i.e. Maggot.

  16 Loosely, “Moon Hair.”

  17 i.e, the Eel.

  18 i.e., the Nightingale.

  19 i.e., Billiard Ball.

  20 Short for mêlé-cassis, a mixture of cassis with brandy or absinthe.

  21 The shorthand term for the Triple Alliance forged between Germany, Italy and Austro-Hungary in 1882, which endured until the Great War.

  FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION

  105 Adolphe Ahaiza. Cybele

  102 Alphonse Allais. The Adventures of Captain Cap

  02 Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm

  14 G.-J. Arnaud. The Ice Company

  152 André Arnyvelde. The Ark

  153 André Arnyvelde. The Mutilated Bacchus

  61 Charles Asselineau. The Double Life

  118 Henri Austruy. The Eupantophone

  119 Henri Austry. The Petitpaon Era

  120 Henri Austry. The Olotelepan

  130 Barillet-Lagargousse. The Final War

  180 Honoré de Balzac. The Last Fay

  103 S. Henry Berthoud. Martyrs of Science

  23 Richard Bessière. The Gardens of the Apocalypse

  121 Richard Bessière. The Masters of Silence

  148 Béthune (Chevalier de). The World of Mercury

  26 Albert Bleunard. Ever Smaller