“Slightly late,” he said, shaking the hands of the three doctors, “but I had so much to do...” With a hint of anxiety, he added: “Is everything ready?”
“Everything. A cordial, my dear Master, before the operation, in order to drink to your rejuvenation?”
They went into a small drawing room, were glasses and a glass of Mariani wine awaited them. Paris felt a trifle weak; he stiffened himself, and seized his full glass bravely.
“To your amours, Master!” said Fortin.
“I accept the augury,” Paris replied, and emptied his glass in a single draught.
“Would you like to go into the study now? You’ll find one of my pupils there, who will help you to undress.”
Ernest Paris still had a glimmer of indecision, but he sensed that it was impossible to flinch now. He uttered a sigh, and went into the study.
The three scientists exchanged a triumphant glance.
“Oof!” said Voronoff. “I have a subject who will shine the light on my work that it deserves. To work, my friends, to work!”
“It’s understood that Romeo belongs to us, after the operation?” said Vanel.
“Yes, of course—for if you succeed, it will put the crown on the edifice; we’ll possess grafts at will, and after what I’ve seen, I have the greatest confidence in your success.”
“Without the slightest doubt, we’ll obtain the culture and rejuvenation of glands at will, since we’ll be able to synthesize them.”
While talking, they had gone into the operating theater.
It was a large rectangular room, lit from above, the ceiling being replaced by glass. Above the individuals, a bright white sheet of velum filtered the light, spreading an even glow everywhere. At the four corners of the room, projectors could illuminate the operating table at will. A kind of cabin rose up to the glass, enclosing an apparatus for filming, when the professor thought it appropriate.
The operators, wearing rubber gloves, had prepared forceps, hemostats and scalpels.
Ernst Paris came in, supported by the pupil who had helped him to undress. At the sight of the operators clad in their long white smocks and gloved to the elbows, the poor Academician went pale. At a sign from Voronoff, however, four pupils lifted the patient up and gently deposited him on the table.
“Would you rather be asleep, my dear Master, or anesthetized locally? Either way, you’ll feel absolutely nothing. If you prefer magnetic trance, Dr. Fortin can put you to sleep.”
“Oh no, not Fortin! Do what you think is best.”
“I’ll opt for the local anesthetic, then, because chloroform can cause post-operative malaise. Don’t worry about anything. Chat, Master, about whatever you like.”
A few adroitly disposed injections, and Paris thought he had been cut in two; the inferior part of his trunk no longer existed, so far as he was concerned.
The operation began as for the ape, with shaving and washing with alcohol. An employee held a mirror inclined so that the operatee could follow all the phases of the work.
“Very curious,” said Paris. “I can’t feel anything at all. That’s what we are! To think that a few drops of anesthetic abolishes our will. What use is our intelligence, then? Tell me, Fortin, you who’ve scrutinized, so to speak the slightest creases of mental function, is it possible for a brain like ours to resist chloroform? Can our mind, our self, be annihilated by that small measure of material essence?”
“Alas, yes. The most subtle mind can’t resist it. That, for materialists, is one of the proofs of the impossibility of intellectual survival. In sleep, that false death, our brain can wander, but it conserves its activity; anesthesia is a fall into absolute blackness, devoid of dreams. The mind is abolished; however, it’s still there; it’s like a suspension, an interval, a hole in life. I’ve had myself put to sleep in various fashions, and magnetic trance is the only one that doesn’t suspend thought.”
While the two men were talking, Voronoff and his aides worked on Ernest Paris. For his part, Vanel was working on Romeo.
While speaking, Paris followed the operation in the mirror, without noticing that the mirror hid the photographic operator’s cabin from him. He could hear the motor of the cinema camera, like a coffee-grinder, but he attributed the sound to some other cause.
In reality, he did not see much of what was happening, for the sheets and the hands of the operators masked the flesh. Now and again, he perceived a detail that did not give him any idea of the ensemble, all the more so because the operators were doing their best not to hinder the work of the cinematographer.
“Truly,” said Ernest Paris, “if I couldn’t see this environment, so new to me, I could believe that I were lying tranquilly in my bed. It’s marvelous, and that gives me a confidence that, I’m ashamed to admit, I was lacking. Tell me, Fortin, how is Romeo doing?”
“Romeo? We’ve anesthetized him completely, because we haven’t finished with him. As the fellow was amply provided, we’ve left him a piece of the seminal gland, and on that strip, we’ll heap up, not a graft, but a molecular culture that ought to—that will—reconstitute the organ.”
“What! You’re not grafting all of it? What if there’s insufficient for me?”
“Don’t worry about that. You too will be an ace. Do you know the story Deus vobiscum?”
“No, but I scent some lewdness. Go on, then—tell me a dirty story.”
“Once upon a time—it’s always in an indecisive era that these things happen—there was a village curé who, like you, felt more desires than effects. One day, by the roadside, he saw a poor devil who seemed to be in a bad way. As our curé was compassionate, he took the mendicant home with him, did his best to restore him, gave him a few clothes, and finally permitted him to sleep there. The next day, the pauper took his leave of the curé and asked whether, in recognition of his hospitality there was anything he could do for him.”
“‘Alas, my friend,’ the curé replied, ‘I don’t lack anything, for the locality is good. I’d be very happy here if...’
“‘If what, Monsieur le Curé? Speak…one never knows...’
“‘Well, if the women weren’t so pretty and the temptation stronger than my means of satisfying it. But, there…no longer than that.’ And the worthy curé showed the last phalanx of his little finger.
“‘Monsieur le Curé,’ the poor man replied. ‘God will provide. Every time you say Deus vobiscum, the thing you’re talking about will grow by an inch...’
“Wings suddenly sprouted on the shoulders of the mendicant, who was an angel, and he flew away.
“Now, as our curé had a great many occasions to pronounce the fateful phrase,48 our man, who had initially seen his…hope growing, was soon obliged to wrap it around his waist like a rope, and in the end, was only able to make contact with a beauty at improbable distances. He was obliged by that fact to hand in his resignation as a curé, and his sole resource became exhibiting himself as a phenomenon, a living greasy pole...
“Which old story, my dear Paris, should serve you as a lesson, to be content with a juste milieu and not to desire the superfluous.”
“You’re a wise man, Fortin, because science raises you above our petty sentimental miseries. But we men of letters put our passions under a microscope, so to speak; in order to amuse our readers we’re obliged to mask our desires, so as not to resemble the common run of mortals. If, like you, I’d been able to detach myself from society, I would have been able to abandon myself without remorse to my instincts—but no, our epoch and our mores oppose that. The belle époque for a builder of voluptuous dreams was that of Olympic Greece! How I admire it, for having created those immoral, impulsive, unjust gods, so similar to humans! In acting thus, what logic it displayed! While our just God, who created this enraged, cruel universe in which we live, appears to me too absurd, too malevolent in his consciousness, his omnipotence and his perfection....”
Dr. Fortin glanced sideways; the operation was progressing. He had brought Paris to the pe
ak of his inexhaustible loquacity; the Immortal was following his idea, and, believing himself at home, talking to his admiring public, he went on, untiringly:
“How can we believe him to be god, that God, considering the atrocious way in which he works? He has thrown us on to the earth full of instincts and desires, and he demands that we be moral. Furthermore, he menaces us with Hell and Purgatory if we fall, when he has organized everything around us to trip us up. His malignity and his perversity seem unwarranted, putting as a condition on his grace that we save our souls while he works to doom us!
“The Greeks, by contrast, didn’t mingle religion with virtue; they didn’t introduce morality into it, that strange attempt to mask the foundation of life, which is amour, amour devoid of restraint and devoid of regulation. For them, Olympus sheltered gods superior to humans in beauty and strength—human attributes—and not by virtue or morality, which are conventional, and what’s more, inhuman...
“The creation most contrary to the Greek genius is precisely the Israelite region. Look at petty Yahweh, in his origins: he protects the flocks, he is a patriarch, and placid. Quickly, however, he acquires a taste for blood on contact with other semite religions, and it pleases him to exterminate and put to the sword the followers of Moloch and Chemosh. His is so ferocious that he becomes furious.
“One day, when a polite man approaches, in a procession, the holy ark that is about to fall, with the intention of sustaining it, Yahweh strikes him with a thunderbolt, because he dares to touch it—and he demands thereafter that we become just, as if the condition of creation permitted it, as if injustice were not his signature...
“Then again, what light there is in the religion of the Greeks, what union with nature! Although all beliefs are born in fear, and agitated in the nightmare of superstitions, that of the Hellenes is almost an exception. There is only Saint Francis, in the history of Christianity, who seems to have rediscovered, instinctively, a gleam of the fraternity between the creators that the Greeks knew...
“The Greeks were as pessimistic as we are, since, before us, they had looked into the nature of things, but they didn’t make a fuss, they didn’t lament, rending their garments, like the Jews. They were good company! Polite and superior people, they knew how to oppose ill fortune with a good heart. Do you remember the captured satyr, from whom the secret of life was demanded? ‘The best thing for you humans,’ he replied, would be not to have been born, but since you exist, the preferable thing is for you to die soon.’49 That’s how they tried to introduce a smile of beauty into the deplorable promenade that is life!”
“Bravo, Master!” said Voronoff, approaching the litterateur. “The thing wasn’t too painful, as you see. A few days rest, in which you’ll charm us with your amiable conversation, and you’ll only have to wait patiently for the effect of our little operation.”
“What!” exclaimed Paris. “Is it done already? I didn’t perceive anything. It’s true that our friend Fortin, held me constantly under the charm of his conversation.”
“Many thanks, Master! It’s the first time that anyone has ever paid me such a compliment.”
Ernest Paris hastened to look down at his lower abdomen and thighs, swathed with bandages, from which a minuscule rosebud emerged.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“The indispensable, my dear Master, the principal attribute of the god Priapus. But have no fear; although it’s no sword, it will grow...”
“Great God! I’ve never seen it so small. I confess that I’m anxious, my dear friend, very anxious!”
“Once again have no fear. It’s the effect of bleeding…from the nose....”
“Have I lost a great deal of blood, then?”
“No, very little; you won’t even notice it. Not the slightest weakness. Now, you’re going to be taken to your room, and, since you slept badly last night, you’re going to have a little nap until dinner time.”
“You’re all aces! All the same, though, I saw almost nothing of the operation.”
“Although it’s not strictly necessary, I want you to stay in bed tomorrow as well, and the day after, we’ll let you see every detail the grafting operation, with the aid of the cinema.”
“Not mine, I hope?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t permit that. No, one that I carried out on an old man hospitalized at...”
“Very good. Truly, I regret not having followed mine more attentively. It’s Fortin’s fault. By the way, where has he gone? I was in the process of exposing a few ideas to him on the morality of religions.”
“Fortin has gone to join Vanel in the laboratory. They’re both occupied with Romeo.”
“And how did poor Romeo stand up to it?”
“Perfectly—but you’ll be in good form before him. In his case, there’s the entire organ to reconstitute, and we don’t know yet how long it will take.”
“The poor friend! I’ll send a few flowers to his wife.”
“That’s a nice thought, but I think she’d appreciate a few fruits more.”
“Whatever she desires, poor thing! In the meantime, give her my respectful condolences.”
The immortal was delicately lifted up by four orderlies and on that new platform he made an exit every bit as majestic as his entrance to the Voronoff Institute.
In accordance with the anticipations of the celebrated surgeon, Ernest Paris was in a fit state to get up two days after the operation, and Voronoff came in person to invite him to come with him if he wanted to watch the progress of the grafting operation by means of the cinema.
“Gladly,” replied the Master. “I’m weary of lying down like this.”
“Oh, that’s finished now; you can come and go about the house; your condition is satisfactory, as I expected. Your physiological condition, perfectly healthy, dispels any fear of complications. Besides, it’s very rare for this sort of graft to have unfortunate consequences.”
“It’s a fact that although I felt a trifle enervated yesterday, I’m in perfect condition today, mentally and physically.”
“We has no more to do, then, Master but await the expected result: a progressive rejuvenation.”
“Oh, my dear friend, how I’d like to be a few months older!”
“A nurse attached to the Academician’s service gave him an ample brown woolen dressing gown to put on, which gave him the appearance of one of the learned scholars of the Middle Ages, with a fine and elongated face. He looked at himself complaisantly in the large mirror surmounting the dressing-table. He was shod in sandals of light brown leather; then the nurse offered him a supportive arm.
As she was a well-preserved woman, in spite of being over fifty, and astonishingly fresh, the Academician did not fail to rub up against her like an old tom-cat. In that fashion they reached the projection room, lit by a few electric bulbs. At the back there was a canvas sheet over the smooth white wall, forming a screen. An English armchair had been brought for the unique spectator. Voronoff, Fortin and a few senior staff members sat down on chairs.
“As I told you,” Dr. Voronoff declared, “this operation was carried out on a hospitalized pauper.”
Darkness fell, and the advertised individual appeared on the screen: an old man with a degraded and sickly appearance.
Voronoff then explained, briefly, the physiological condition of the old man, who had almost died in childhood, and was incapable of any manual labor, and, from the mental viewpoint, in a state of complete brutalization.
The scene changes, representing the same individual after the graft: his gaze is keen and interested, the face is firmer; the wasted muscles have recovered their strength and elasticity; he looks at least ten years younger.
Three other individuals were presented thus, before and after the graft. All three presented, before the procedure, the same appearance of physical and mental debility, and showed, after the operation, the same progress in revitalization.
“Now,” said the professor, “we’re going to pass on to the work of the gra
ft.” As the film went on, he explained: “We’ll see the two subjects alternately: the donor ape”—the chimpanzee appeared—“and the human recipient. As you can see, the subject is completely hidden by the sheets, which only allow the sight of the organ to be operated on, the hands of the operator and his instruments.”
A pause.
“Here, on the other hand, is the donor ape. You can only see the testicle ready to be operated on. With one hand, the operator holds the dissecting forceps, in the other, the straight scissors, with which he cuts the skin, and lays the testicle bare, which will be the graft transferred to the receptive subject.”
Another scene:
“The operator splits the testicle, in such a fashion as to make a kind of flower with six petals; it’s the petals that are the grafts. The operation is performed on the ape without cutting the testicular cord—which will permit us, we hope, to reconstitute the organ. It’s that reconstitution which my friends Fortin and Vanel are carrying out this moment on the chimpanzee Romeo, who served you.”
Third scene:
“Here now is the receptive subject: the human, presented in the same fashion. Only the testicles are visible. The scrotum will be cut, as in the ape, but two or three injections of novocaine are made beforehand to render the testicle insensitive. Then the operator takes the testicle between the index and middle fingers, in such a way as to stretch the skin and make the section easier. Then the skin—for the vulgar; the cellulo-crytreo-fibrous envelope, for the surgeon—is pulled back above, below and to the sides. And it’s between the leaves of the parietal envelope that the grafts will be placed, one on each side and another on top. The location of the graft is lightly scarified in order to render the cohesion of the graft with the receptive testicle easier, not on the testicle itself but in the internal face of the parietal leaf of the vaginal—or, in common parlance, the ultimate envelopes of the vaginal gland, which is, as I’ve told you, the organ of revitalization par excellence.50 We have no more to see than the work of closing the envelopes, which is either done with fasteners known as Michel clamps or with a needle and silk thread. As dressings, compresses, padding and an ordinary bandage.”
Nora, The Ape-Woman Page 16