Awakened, dripping with sweat, thinking her ichor had dribbled on him, he accepted the horrible vision as a just remorse. Yes, D’ginna reproached him for ignoring her once she had delivered; had not the contempt he had shown her contributed to her running off and then to her suicide? The ardor of their passion had so often united their two souls as one! Supposing he had merely been ungrateful towards D’ginna, had he not acted like a selfish coward towards his other mistress, science, to which he had pledged himself, and to which he had promised eternal fidelity, even if this fidelity brought him derision and accusations of criminal behavior? Was it not indeed a case of drawing himself away from the experiments he had conceived and consented to, rather than one of abandoning the poor D’ginna at a time when delivered of her fetus which he feared to be a bastard, she had remained pure, tame, solitary, and finally ready to supply him with a child whom no one could have contested the paternity of, the genuine Hemo which no other male, this time, could have claimed as their son, his hero, his miracle, his god, his immortal half-breed? On this slope of regrets, rather than a D’ginna turning green in the stinking muck, he saw once more the one he had known before, a wounded creature whose gestures were weighed down by weakness; the convalescent whose big eyes, until then dull, were fixed upon him in the soft alacrity of tender gratitude; the lover so burning with desire that upon their bouts in the dark, the black pelt seemed to sparkle, to phosphoresce, and render the surrounding shadows luminous. Delirious, he could well close his eyes, and re-cover his pallet with fresh leaves, but the reignited sparks penetrated his eyelids, his arms caressed emptiness, his whole body tingled, flogged with the nettles of remembrance.
Today, better dreams complemented his hours of rest, coddled his hopes, and left him in a warm nervous excitement, allowing him to better taste the calm of night.
In some bright obscure paradise of the adjoining woods, where an intense release of aromas made the flowers steam and sing; better yet, in the very center of the clearing, far from the curtains of lianas, at midday, on the sand, between the implacable and dazzling bare ground and the sun spread over the immensity of the cloudless sky, he seemed to see Hemo and Kaylinkah, drunk with the sap of their youth, naked, copulating, with no more vile modesty or shame than awesome Nature, which enveloped them, placed in the other matings, infinite in number, of its plants and animals. He gave them his blessing, and soon, gobbling up time, blessed and married their little ones, then their great-grandchildren, who swarm in families of simple, pure giants, forming a people at whose feet the others all together appeared as an anthill. They built cities in the others’ squares to enclose old growth forests, sent out their sons and daughters to the world which saluted their coming to save poor, shattered humanity by infusing it with some of their new blood, their strength, their candor and their goodness.
Sitting in the hut, the sound of the two little ones around him, or with summer returned, when holding their hands during a walk, he often continued this dream, forgetting his usual concern with Hemo’s linguistic education, and remained silent for hours, rocking on his stool. When he took along the two children who skipped and ran themselves ragged at his side, it happened that he, as Moses must have done when leading the Jews to Canaan, turned around to see if he was followed by the peaceful army which he already believed himself to be leading, not to conquest, but to the salvation of the worn down old world.
Forcing himself to get back to the task which he correctly considered to be his most pressing duty, teaching Hemo to talk, he set himself a task. Every night he read aloud for an hour and forced him to listen. Fairy tales were lies of an allegedly religious nature with which one was in the habit of stuffing the imagination of youngsters, placing such an impression on the malleable minds of civilized children that this nonsense was never entirely erased from their memory. Sooner or later it sharply resurfaced, even in their death throes, when the sensible ideas developed later on disappeared in the inverse order with which they were acquired, the latest ones first, the first ones next. Jan wished to spare his student this problem suffered by so many philosophers, falling back in their old age to the superstitions which they had fought all their lives; he never taught him these errors be it even purely for entertainment purposes or in poetry. Rather than torture the Bible with attempts at rational explanations, he hid it entirely from him, agreeing with the preacher, who, denying himself the right to choose amongst the miracles, entreated his brothers to thank God for the evident generosity which he had manifested for their weak-mindedness, in having Jonas swallowed by a whale, when instead he could have had them believe the whale to have been swallowed by Jonas. He told him no more stories, as he only knew a few legends anyway, resolved, besides, to trying to make him understand, to supply him with cornerstones to build a solid base of understanding for any future studies with those concepts whose truth was no longer in doubt.
He spoke to him of the vast Earth, its great rivers and deserts, its poles and its tropics, from its abysses to its Himalayas, turning upon its equator and about the Sun. About the Earth turned its own satellite, the Moon, dead down to its geological activity and concealing beneath the suavity of its borrowed light all the gloomy horror of emptiness; he told of the other planets, of the enormity of Jupiter, of the mysteries of Saturn. All of them, from Neptune the eldest to Mercury the youngest, like Earth, spinning upon themselves and about the Sun which created all of them, and which in turn rotated upon itself as it traversed absolute space at a velocity of 200,000 leagues per day, towards a shore as yet unknown, around another more central sun, star of the constellation of Hercules, of Perseus or even Halcyon, the brightest of the Pleiades. Every star was a sun, ours but a single speck in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way, that agglomeration of solar systems which all the generations of humanity, past, present and future would be unable to number, but a narrow projection in motion through the infinite. His mind unable to grasp the complex concatenation of lunar, planetary and solar orbs, man came back down to Earth, and on this speck of dust found himself, a mere mildew, a nothing, which standing erect on two legs contemplated the universe, dividing it into two parts me and the rest, believing the rest to exist expressly for him, for a him who did not even have his own self.
He spoke of the plant kingdom, from the microscopic to the gigantic, from the athlete’s foot fungus to baobabs and sequoias; he spoke of the animal kingdom, those in existence and those which were extinct, in a word, of life, from its appearance on the primitive landscape—that is, from the Precambrian, including the problematic Foraminifera of the Laurentian strata, and the algae which gave rise to beds of graphite mixed within the same strata, the oldest on Earth—to the creature which incarnated it in sovereign form, man.
He spoke of matter, of the Force of which all other forces, including the soul, were but modalities, all emanating from the warmth of the Sun, true father, supreme creator of that which had lived, lived now and would live, such that in the final analysis, present day man, almost returning to the religion of his savage forbears in the most remote of ages, saluted the Sun as sole God. And the good Jan fell back into his daydreams. The quantity of matter which made up the Earth, if one ignored the negligible input of meteorites, was as invariable and inalterable as the amount of force, since matter and force were inseparable terms. The portion of this matter and force circulating within living things, necessarily limited, must be divided to a greater and greater degree with each rise in births. Did this not explain from a material perspective the wearing down of the human race as the number of individuals rose, and from a dynamic perspective the growing rarity of genius as the surge of mediocrity increased? Did this not explain why wild plants and animals disappeared under domestication and cultivation, as did inferior races upon contact with the civilized races? To these questions which he asked himself, the good Jan remained silent, and listened to Hemo snore.
The latter, like most schoolboys, sitting still with his cheeks in his hands, seemed to listen when the teacher
was watching, but scratched his head, rubbed his eyes, sucked on his tongue, stole a glance at a fly buzzing by or at the sparks crackling from the fireplace when his teacher’s back was turned. Finally, like all schoolboys, he could not stand it anymore and fell asleep. Jan, who never had the heart to wake him would carry him to where Kaylinkah already lay sleeping, and taught him only during their outings.
In the presence of the objects he showed him and spoke to him of—pebbles, flowers, birds—he managed to hold his attention upon those elements of natural history with which he wished to begin his education. He took advantage of every encounter: having gone bathing in the Zondag-Zay, he remarked to what degree a group of cynocephalic apes, crouching on the rocks, exposed the errors of certain modern scholars, sitting-room explorers too quickly discounting the geographers of antiquity thus denying what could easily be understood. For example, would apes seen thus, with no neck and their body bent over below their shoulders, not resemble the fantastic Blemyes described as having faces in the middle of their chests? Were gorillas not the satyrs of which only the face was human? And the Ogipans, with a man’s head on a goats body, whose existence was so commonly accepted that Pomponius Mela did not bother to describe its features,12 contenting himself with confirming that they were indeed those attributed to it, was it not a she-ape in the process of stripping fruit from the garden?
It was upon his return from one of these visits to the Zondag-Zay that Jan felt the first symptoms of malaria. Rather than determination to continue his work and the vivacity of his limbs, of the clear-headedness which the pure waters of the lake usually conferred upon him, he began to tremble, to have cramps, almost drown, this former expert diver from the port city of Rotterdam. He managed to reach the bank, dressed and made his way back quickly. But even upon trails basking in the sun, or cooking before a great fire he had built, he could not overcome the chill which dogged him day and night.
He was surprised to have remained for so long untouched by this fever, endemic to the region, even forgetting about it and believing himself to be immune. One easily accustomed oneself to good health, the true state of man. This was in contrast to the views of some misanthropic individuals who, already bewildered at the very threshold of the anatomy rooms by the infinite ratios of gears which drove the animal machine, were amazed to see that it did not break down at every moment; that neither was disease the law, nor did euthanasia occur by accident. They did not think that if this fabulous machine did not work well it would still have lasted, that it would have broken down completely and not adapted itself in a different manner, that in the latter case they would still be amazed by the state of its final organization, were it entirely different from what it was.
He did not treat himself right away, hoping once again to recover without any help; but the chills, the insomnia, the lack of appetite would not leave him, and he had to resort to the medicines which he was saving for his Pahouin friends. Quinine cut off his fever, but unfortunately his supply of arsenic was exhausted, and the anemia which followed persisted, always serious under such debilitating climates. Soon he was unable to get up, and after long hesitation was finally forced to have both his children, for Hemo would not let his little friend go alone, contact the village. Their trip in this season would pose little danger, by the river they would certainly find some fishermen who would get them across and lead them; and so it happened. As early as the next day, Akayrawiro himself, his ministers and his most trusted shaman hastened to the cabin, led by the two brave little messengers.
CHAPTER IX
Jan wished to be treated at home. The shaman, upon a sign from Akayrawiro, was formally opposed to it, stating with some dignity that he would never, under such circumstances, take responsibility for a such course of action, when a basic element of the treatment was to distance the patient from any marshy land, placing him in clean, dry, healthy fresh air. Jan, forced to agree with him, was taken on a stretcher into the royal hall. As soon as he was there, and they had proceeded at a quick trot, the shaman, upon a second sign, declared that this location was no better, the mists were still too thick; what was needed were the true mountains, for example, the isolated and fortified palace where his Majesty retired when he himself was sick.
The good Akayrawiro did not hesitate, immediately ordering the warriors who bore the stretcher to get on their way, and following on behind with his servants, ministers, physicians, seraglio, slaves and priests. His people, thus abandoned, cried out, trying to hold him back, tortured with sadness, prostrate at his feet. He calmed them down with the abundant application of a cudgel and a hippopotamus-hide whip, upbraiding them for their ingratitude. How was it that his white cousin cured him, saved him—the Sunbeam—for them, the dregs, and yet they could understand that he must in turn sacrifice himself for his white cousin! It was almost enough for him to give up in disgust his reign over such brutes. They apologized, greased their wounds and contusions, and the procession, having slowed for the moment, picked up the pace.
The countryside where they were headed was only two leagues away but a gorge, impassible in their dugouts, formed an elbow which doubled the distance. Sheltered from the sun by the esparto mosquito netting which formed a canopy over the litter, softly swaying under the porters’ careful cadence, Jan remained in a dull torpor of which he was conscious and which he tried to overcome, but was unable to shake. As they approached the village, the river circumvented, the dying echoes of a gun battle nonetheless made him jump. He bent over to question someone, and realized that the royal caravan, triumphant at first, now seemed to be in a disordered retreat. Worried, he asked after his children. A porter, in answer, showed him, far ahead, the party of chiefs. Besides a rear-guard of slaves, the litter ended the procession. Jan assumed that Hemo had preceded him, and broken by his slight effort, fell back onto his pallet.
It was indeed, in the distance, the echo of rifles, and amongst the ranks, a disordered retreat.
Now, in spite of the sharp slope of the trails, all were running silently: warriors, cooks, musicians, holding up sabers, kitchen utensils and tambourines to stop them from clashing, breaking or resonating. Jan, jostled hard, holding onto the edges of the litter, feared more than once that he would go for a header.
Finally they arrived. The king absorbed in affairs of state, now seldom came to his country retreat; the dozen or so huts making up his palace had collapsed little by little to the ground. They hastened to rebuild one, in which they housed the patient who was now exhausted, delirious, almost unable to speak and moaning constantly.
“What can he possibly want?” the king asked his ministers.
“Your Majesty, we, as yourself, do not know; perhaps Kaylinkah and the ape.”
Hearing this, Jan gathered up his strength and stammered:
“Yes, yes, my children, Hemo and Kaylinkah, Hemo! Hemo! Hemo!”
The king smiled and deigned to lower himself and pat his cheeks in friendship.
“Why, sure as the devil, cousin, you had me worried there, naming as your children that little girl which is not of you, which perhaps you have not even married, and that animal. I was wondering if you hadn’t entered into some sort of secret marriage, that you might not have had a genuine son which I would have been loath to leave behind. For, you see...”
The entire sky was turning red at the point on the horizon which his august finger was indicating.
“Fire,” exclaimed Jan.
“Yes, fire, fire in my capital. Oh the monsters, how fortunate you are that you saved my life. Otherwise I would not have been able to stop my subjects from taking out their vengeance upon you and yours, upon your hideous white brethren.”
“White brethren? What?”
“But your fever...”
“No, no, I beg you, tell me.”
Akayrawiro explained.
Neighboring kingdoms had, over the last several days, told him of the approach of a troop of white men. These whites, in great numbers, an army of no less than six or se
ven people, not counting the natives they borrowed from each successive region they went through, were coming, not like Jan up the river from the sea, but from the other side, the east, and they must have traversed Africa in its greatest and most mysterious breadth. If one impeded their progress, tried to bargain with them with respect to supplying them with food, shelter or other assistance, if one tried to lead them astray, they fought and won, took what they wanted, drew information from even the most ardent of patriots by showering them with compliments and gifts. He thought that having Jan in his capital would facilitate his relations with these pale-faced devils. While he was getting along with his household and his loyal nobles, he had nonetheless preferred high-tailing it out of there. The change in climate which Jan’s sickness required was an excellent excuse, one could not have come up with a better one. His people, towards whom the greatest secrecy had been maintained, would deal with it as they could. He was quite happy to be safe. Even the fire, which could be seen from where they were did not bother him; it proved to him how wise he was to absent himself. Indeed, if the town was burning it was because the people tried to defend it. Present he would have had to fight, either with the white men against his own subjects, or with his subjects against the white men; either way would have been dangerous, very dangerous, too dangerous for he whose sole ambition was to live to a ripe old age so as to devote himself longer to upholding the love, prosperity and glory of his country.
Crack! Boom! It was his throne, two drums stacked one upon the other, which had burst under the gestures which accompanied his eloquence.
The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men Page 10