For an instant, he stood still like that, savoring the indescribable joy of being a hero. Was he still alive? Was he not the victim of an illusion in believing that his heart as still beating? Was this Oblivion?
The formidable moment elapsed placidly. Then, with slow strides, trampling the ashes of the victims of the day before, sometimes bumping into little tumuli of human dust, his pulse steady, his nerves submissive, his flesh emotionless, his will directed toward his goal, superb and tranquil, he went to the prestigious Garden.
When he came back, after a long hour, his arms laden with a crop of roses, pressing freshly-cut myrtles to his heart, Formosa had disappeared.
Immediately consulted, the convergence apparatus revealed that his mistress had taken refuge in a room in Phalanstery 117.
The monster Phegor was there, and the idiot Staroth, accompanied by the poet Carminus, Amborix and Flamina. They were all exclaiming in delight before the reproductress’s new finery. The aesthete declared that in future, all the women ought to dress in the same way.
Then Formosa presided over a sort of renewal of an ancient banquet at which, for three hours, they ate animals that had been killed and cooked in heir own blood: lambs, piglets, pheasants, peacocks and bizarre birds with discordant calls that lived in the wildest parts and which no one had been able to capture until now. Phegor showed off his recent erudition; he indicated the names that they had once borne in Greek, Latin or French culinary parlance, but as no one understood the meaning of the terms he was obliged to write them down, which permitted the Creator of Humans to know that, seventy centuries before, they had been called “Numidian fowl,” and later, “Guinea fowl.”
Their temples garlanded by lilies and passeroses, the guests drank a red liquid similar o the contents of human veins, and appeared to glolrify it with virtues known to them alone. Every time the monster, the invert son of culture 1,324, raised his cup with is left hand, Saga noticed that his right hand disappeared under he table in the direction of the cretin, the deformed product of culture 1,758, sitting beside him, whose rump then somersaulted convulsively.
By the unanimous laughter, and the words that reached him, reverberated by the vibratory plates, the Creator of Humans perceived that all those at table were permitting themselves to make what, in Prehistory, had been known as “puns.” Naturally, approval and applause went to the person who had given voice to the most leaden absurdity of that kind of pretension. At one time, Carminus drew vanity from unleashing a considerable stock of them, which he ha obtained, he said from one of the best comedians, a man named Clemenceau who had governed the Land of the Four Seas around the year 1917.45
Confronted by the impropriety of all this behavior, he remembered that until the planetary catastrophe there had been so-called “aristocrats”—which, etymologically, meant “the best”—who had permitted themselves in a similar way to judge moral elegance, the refinement of those barbaric epochs, which nevertheless claimed to be educated.
Soon, the majority of the heads were nodding; some of the gluttons stood up, and, with an unsteady stride, went into the corners of the room to reject a fraction of the cargo of their panic-stricken stomachs. Instead of golden chains of eloquence, scarlet jets emerged from their mouths—which did not prevent them from going back to eat shortly afterwards.
Toward the end of the feast, a sudden horror and despair precipitated Sagax on to his knees with such force that he left a shred of epidermis there. For a long time, he hesitated to get up again, but the need to saturate himself with bitterness brought him to his feet.
His torso bent over, uttering yelps of impotent rage, the Creator of Humans saw Formosa, naked, proudly showing her new particularities to all her fellow-guests, and then, in ecstasy before the excessive but imperfect advantages of the monster, allow herself to be touched by him…rapturously...
In the morning, the Grand Physiologist had decided to die, because an unprecedented torture, a hitherto-unexperienced sentiment, jealousy, was stretching all his fibers painfully. To kill himself was a simple matter; he had only to command his heart to stop for his instruction to be instantly obeyed, for him to abdicate the human condition without regret. The Biometer, in any case, revealed to him that the disorder of his economy as such that his life would be abrogated in five years, seven months and eleven days exactly.
An inspiration of mensigene permitted him to take account of the fact that the lesions in his intelligence were so profound that they could never be remedied, however great his genius was. What point, then, was there is suffering any longer, even admitting that if he went to beg for forgiveness as Mathesis’ feet the latter would give him any quarter? To immerse the little consciousness that remained to him in the Unconsciousness of he Great All was the only honorable expedient. He decided to do it—but as he desired to die standing up, he threw himself off the couch on which he had not been able to sleep.
And, at the precise moment when he was about to give the order to his organism to suspend the course of its functions, at the very moment when he was about to disengage his interior mechanisms, Formosa came in, with a provocative gait and a buoyant stride.
Her immense hat, tilted sideways, was partly detached from the veil, ripped by sharp teeth. Soaked by amorous saliva, curls hung down from her forehead to her cheeks like limp screw-threads, and her toga was constellated with unusual stains. Her blurred complexion was a mousy shade of gray; two violet crescents were displayed beneath her eyes. Furthermore, impregnated with nasty odors and sour reeks, the nocturnal orgy had made her foul-mouthed.
Enervated, she took off her hat with an abrupt gesture. Horror! She had cut her adorable hair, a source of lust for Sagax. She had been shorn!
As the Creator of Humans seemed dumbfounded by the irremediable disaster of his mistress’s nape, she explained: “Why should I have kept my hair long? Don’t we women have the right to resemble men? All my companions in the City are imitating me. From now on, we want to have a boyish look.”
She paused, satisfied with her mutilation, which gave her an androgynous appearance; then, volubly, she exclaimed, almost in a single breath: “You know, my dear, Sulpicia,46 my companion at the gynaeceum is in danger of dying, and people are astonished that you’re still baffled on that subject, since you’ve fund means to preserve people against illness by immunizing the germs…so yesterday, when you left me alone, I thought it was my duty to go and care for her. I ran there, and I spent all night at her beside. Oh, she’s suffering. She cries and cries so hard that her plaints ought to be audible from here. Listen, my darling—can’t you hear them?”
With a compassionate expression she tilted her head slightly, cocking an ear attentively.
Sagax, outraged by so much cynical imposture, had seized her by the wrists and draw her toward him, seeping her face with his angry breath. “You’re lying! You’re lying!”
“I’m lying? You no longer love me, then, since you don’t believe me?”
Deflected by the unexpectedness of that reasoning, Sagax stood still. Fixing her iridescent irises on the darkened irises of her lover, Formosa went on: “Coward, who insults a defenseless woman, repeat that I’m lying. Look me in the face. Could I support your gaze if I were lying, as you say?”
And her eyes were pure.
The Creator of Humans released the ardent bracelets that his hands had formed around his mistress’s wrists and, shivering with horror, gradually recoiled.
The Reproductress followed him, step by step, came almost close enough to be touching him, and suddenly took a bizarre object out of her pocket, composed of a plate of phosphorescent material supporting two stalks: two little metal brackets facing one another, between which shone a blue stone prism. Abruptly, she brought it toward Sagax’s face, raised it to the height of his eyes, and pressed a switch.
A mauve flame flared, filling the Grand Physiologist’s brain with a far-fetched brightness, which seemed to explore the smallest corners of his gray matter at high speed. He had the
sharp impression of having been struck by a thunderbolt; it appeared to him that a rapid lightning-flash, whose zigzag was articulated on five fiery hinges, illuminated the interior of his cranial cavity, and that all his thoughts were furiously torn away, dragged outside, delivered to someone else.
Although he had not felt any pain or physical disturbance, he thought he was dead, touched by a starry spark. And he was not certain that he was still alive when he saw Formosa swiftly lean over the sheet of phosphorescent material, where white parallel lines appeared, in which words were already legible in complete clarity. Stubbornly, a tongue of fire was still plunged in the Grand Physiologist’s circumvolutions; unreal glow-worms traveled nonchalantly through his meninges, and in his stupor, his jaws clicked sonorously against one another.
Formosa, whose voice was amplified, fled, trumpeting: “He wants to kill himself…he want to kill himself, the villain who refuses to give his brethren the virility he had promised them. I’m going to tell them, in order that, after his death, his name will be forever cursed as that of a renegade and a perjurer...”
With his back bent over the convergence square that reflected the City, Sagax spent twelve hours looking for Formosa. His attempt was vain, and, disappointed, he was obliged to conclude that on laving the Fertlization Laboratory, the Reproductress had not gone into the Gem-City. Undoubtedly, her last words were only intended to abuse him and legitimate her disappearance. The opinion that the Neuters would have of him after his death was a matter of indifference to him. He was above the preoccupations that had constituted one of the finest florets of the heraldry of cretinism with which necrophagic humankind had one emblazoned itself. On the other hand, the Perfected would presumably let him alone henceforth, and he had nothing to fear from their rebellion. After the partial extermination that Mathesis had carried out like a great artist, they must have abdicated forever any hope of wearing cock’s-combs in the manner of males.
But how had Formosa been able to know that he was ready to resign life? Was the apparatus that had lit up his cervical cavity fabulously a device permitting someone to read the intentions in the mind of another? He could not believe it.
By a baroque twist of the eternal contradiction of human nature, Sagax no longer wanted to die now. He was reluctant to give his cells a license to disaggregate. The prospect of snuffing out the firefly of his intelligence with the grim extinguisher of Oblivion no longer made him smile.
Why not hope that the woman would be gripped, sooner or later, with nostalgia for is genius and that she would return to him, repentant? Surely it was appropriate to wait—yes, to wait, searching within himself for excuses that would serve as an opium, an anesthetic for his lover’s anguish.
To begin with, it was necessary to find her, at all costs.
As he found no trace of her in the days that followed, as she seemed to have escaped the inscription of her form by the convergence apparatus, he concluded that she must have taken refuge in some subterranean retreat. In consequence, he resolved to manufacture an instrument that would keep him up to date with her conduct—which is to say, one that would inform him of every one of her betrayals.
Sexual pleasure being produced by a violent excitation of certain poles of the cerebellum determined by the visual sense, the olfactory sense and the tactile sense, in close and spontaneous collaboration, it did not take him long to discover the hyperesthesia in question, released by animal magnetism in quantities much greater than other physiological acts. It was therefore sufficient to record the discharges of that fluid at a distance.
Sagax worked throughout the next night. By dawn, the ultra-sensitive plate was set up, the wires linked to a little bell, and the counter placed three feet above his head.
On the first day, the apparatus sounded twice, in the morning and the evening.
On the second day, it vibrated five times, at widely spaced intervals.
On the third day, it remained mute, and the Creator of Humans, drunk with joy, cried: “I’ll forgive her, I’ll forgive her! I’m the guilty one; I didn’t know how to deal with it, because I was totally ignorant of how to conduct myself as a lover...”
And he leapt up in an excess of joy, extending his arms in front of him as if to summon and embrace his mistress.
The fourth day, however, Sagax spent under the continual ringing of the little bell, which no longer stopped, now emitting its acidic sounds in a perpetual flow. Undoubtedly, the act could not be entirely consummated with Formosa, since the partners she chose were still emasculated, but had not he, the Grand Physiologist, restored to his mistress in its entirety the faculty of tasting pleasure? That sensuality she was receiving from others. That was what was torturing him.
Twisting his fingers in despair, the Creator of Humans implored the apparatus, seemingly asking it for mercy, but the inexorable carillon still poured out its sharp, shrill notes, which descended upon him like droplets of madness.
Delirious, he fell to the ground, raised himself up on his knees, his torso concave, whimpering inarticulately, and finally stood up in order to attempt, one last time, to render contrary fate and cruel destiny compassionate.
Ironically, the quivering knell accelerated, vibrating untiringly, extrapolated to the point of frenzy, pitilessly...
Oh, why had he not given himself death before the infidel’s return? Collapsing again, he crawled on his belly, furiously hammering his forehead on the floor in order to leave there, with his life, the indelible black star that was stamped upon it.
Then the bell became exasperated, resounding more furiously still...
Suddenly, a formidable voice—that of Mathesis—split the ceiling and thundered: “Wretch, you have recreated Woman, the being that thinks with the uterus, and which desolated all anterior civilizations!”
It was true! It was true! The frightful Voice coming from the Hall of Machines had not lied! Already, he felt remorse slowly plunging its lacerating drills into his bosom. Was he not dying, then? And while he did his best to withdraw from life, while he smashed his head furiously against the tiles again in order to fracture his bony cranium—for he no longer had enough will-power to stop his heartbeat dead—he heard a bizarre sound...
A distant rumble, like a lock full of tumultuous waves escaped from some frozen ocean to drown the little land that was still inhabited and devour its face with the salt of its seething waves...
Soon, it was a panting, drawing nearer, a muffled cadence that appeared to be emerging from the depths of the Equitable City. Was it an interplanetary tempest, a telluric spasm that was about to rip up the relief of the globe once again, and help it to remove the scab of the last human sore that ravaged it?
No, there was no doubt about it; it was the sound of his arteries, his maddened temples—the commencing rumor of his death-throes, in sum. Yes, it was the voice of Death saluting his approach, calling to him, imperiously and discordantly.
He did not lose consciousness, however; his pulse was still beating behind a mist of blood; his eyes could still see, and searched in vain for the voracious maw of the abyss into which he had to tumble in order to fall a the way to the heart of peaceful and eternal night.
Was he immortal, then?
Surprised, he raised his head, supporting himself on his palms and kneecaps. He activated the spring of his back, and was half-upright when the translucent wall, the northern wall, quivered momentarily, and then collapsed in a prolonged sob of shattered glass.
A vortex of human beings fell upon him. Over his shoulders, his thorax, his loins, his cheeks and his mouth leapt hairy bodies that swept his epidermis with their bristling fleeces, which now gave off the fetid odors of stinking beasts, the musty reek of bitter sweat dispersed by armpits where droplets of thick dew trembled. Vainly, he tried to get up.
Submerged, he rebounded from a swell of densely-packed backs, plunged, reappeared, pitched, disappeared, only to surge forth again—and soon, describing a trajectory, ricocheting several times, crushing human faces,
he fell into the arms of the poet Carminus, and rolled with him on the floor like a harassed barrel.
A hundred hands—the nearest—had gripped him, after each having thrown away an instrument identical in every way to the one that Formosa hand brandished. Demonic throats, whose pestilent breath he was obliged to swallow, howled in his face:
“Do you not know? Mathesis has just launched something more terrible than the exterminating magnetic cyclone of the other day...”
“An accursed invention than surpasses all the other villainous works previously known...”
And as Sagax’s eyes interrogated anxiously:
“He has finally surrendered the secret of the apparatus that permits the thoughts in a person’s brain to be read like an open book! People can no longer lie to their fellows!”
Forty frantic choirs took up the refrain, alternating anathemas and lamentations:
“Yes, yes, the swine has rendered life impossible, for we can no longer have any illusions regarding our peers. And without lies, you know, any society, even that of the Perfected, is destined to perish!”
Outside, the multitude that had not come in, for lack of room, shouted:
“Down with the future! Destroy posterity!”
Inside the Laboratory, an excessive plaint replied and the vibrating windows supported it with successive tremolos.
“Death, death to the lovers! Death to those from whom the evil comes!”
A murderous dementia now took possession of the Perfected, and Sagax, reduced to impotence, sensed his blood congealing in his arteries. A colossal Neuter with a hempen fleece had grabbed Phegor by the heels and was whirling him around, in a windmill motion that cut through the air stridulently—and, with a single blow, brought down the first row of the bottles of zoosperms.
In a tinkling din, the vicinity was sprayed with caseous liquid, and a formidable cheer, taken up by the exterior crowd, roared approval. Pale spots dappled the colored pelts that had drawn together. With a gaping hole in his temple slowly disgorging a vermillion jelly, his arms retracted into a sickle, his fractured occiput like a red sponge from which gaseous bubbles of hick blood were oozing, the invert son of bottle 1,324, hurled away, was lying on his side, palpitating, convulsions agitating his cracked chest.
Love in 5000 Years Page 22