But when, at Comrade Rappoport’s appeal, the red flags surged forth, the aspect of the place suddenly changed; the constituent bodies squeezed more tightly behind the guardsmen and policemen, who, alert to the danger, like bulls or turkeys, surged forward toward the seditious emblems. The syndicalist groups moved forward themselves to absorb the shock.
There was a moment of suspense; a conflict seemed imminent. Was the government about to be carried away by that storm? Monsieur Briand,54 the Minister of Foreign Affairs, calmed for a long time, recalled his youth. Monsieur Barthou,55 of the Académie Française, the Minister of Justice, making a quip, said to his neighbors: “The fools won’t be with us any longer.”
But The Prefect of Police, after having exchanged a few words with the President of the Council, Raymond Poincaré,56 had run forward, and he gave curt orders to which the police had to submit. They arranged themselves so as to double up the hedge of guardsmen.
The prime minister then turned toward the cortege and simply said: “Advance, citizens, advance! The route is clear. Advance, please...”
Everything settled down. Monsieur Barthou said: “The fools will always be with us.”
The human flood was about to move of in an orderly manner when a shrill cry caused all heads to turn. On a balcony protruding from Cécile Borel’s house, where she had been leaning on the wrought-iron rail, a slender pretty woman in mourning straightened up, extending her arms and her vast black veil. Then a long, heart-rending howl escaped from her mouth; she represented an authentic symbol of the statue of despair.
And suddenly, with a formidable leap, she took off like a great nocturnal bird, and came to alight in the middle of the enormous red and black platform.
An emotional hush had fallen over the immense plaza; all gazes were fixed fearfully on the strange apparition, and only Voltaire, fixed in his bronze mask, seemed amused by the scene. Was his simian mask, with its mocking smile, still laughing across time at modern apishness?
Meanwhile, Nora, upright on the platform, was causing the funeral wings of her great veil to fly around her with her rhythmic movements. Then she became animated, and suddenly, she was dancing!
At first, there was a rapid fluttering around the platform, like some bird of mourning: a bird of eternal regret causing its wings to palpitate above the crowd. Then, returning to the center, she mimed dolor: the eternal dolor weighing upon the human race.
And it was a magnificent poem!
First of all there was the ancestor, the savage cave-dweller, struggling against all perils and all dangers, often vanquished, sometimes victorious, and finally, affirming the mastery of the future. Then the first civilizations were sketched: the obelisks, the pyramids, the gigantic profiles of Egypt and Assyria, the dolmens of Gaul, the harmonious and diving temples of Athens and Rome. Then came the invasions, the disasters and the glory, the detail and the ensemble of human glories and miseries. It was the legend of the centuries57 danced by an artiste of genius, every step of which represented a type, an epoch, a tragic scene; and between each scene of her splendid epic, the dancer paused briefly, and then drew herself up to her full height, and uttered her lugubrious and terrifying cry.
The furious dance lasted for a long time, but none of the spectators seemed to perceive that, to such an extent did the fantastic scene exercise a collective fascination. On one side, as on the other, the government and the syndical groups probably attributed that unexpected and captivated intervention to one another.
Nora finished by exhausting that choreographic poem. Then, with one knee on the ground, her head tilted backwards, her arms extended toward the heavens, she mimed dolor turning its hope toward a mysterious dream.
And the cortege set forth, escorting and acclaiming the magnificent statue, while those who had seen nothing came from afar, continuing their song of conquest in muted voices, the red flags fluttering in the faces of the conservatives at the windows, who took fright and stepped back precipitately.
There was a pause in front of the Institut. The large door opened, and the Academicians, costumed in black and green, arranged themselves on the steps in order to send a supreme adieu to one of their own, who was entering into true immortality. Then they fell into step with those marching behind the coffin. The Immortals were groups as advantageously as possible, because all the objective lenses of the photographers and the cinematographers were aimed at them.
Suddenly, abruptly parted, the Immortals, jostled and tottering, nearly fell over. Laughter—formidable, Homeric laughter—burst forth and rolled like a wave.
On the threshold of the temple of glory, an enormous orangutan dressed, like the Academicians, in a suit with green palm-leaves and a tricorn hat, with an épée at his side, had just appeared, and, with a broad gesture, saluted the crowd. He came down the steps and advanced toward the cubic catafalque. And, making his powerful breast resonate like a gong beneath his enormous fists the orangutan uttered his terrible battle-cry:
“Ouha! Ouha!”
The laughter was succeeded by a frisson of terror.
Drawing himself up to the full extent of his powerful stature, Narcisse howled:
“Vive l’avenir!”
Then, bounding on to the platform, the simian Immortal lifted Nora up at the arm’s length, and held her up toward the heavens, repeating once again his cry:
“Vive l’avenir!”
Meanwhile, the cortege had resumed its march, red flags fluttering in the wind; and behind, the song of ten thousand voices repeated:
The final conflict is here,
Come together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race...
In the square empty of people, a bronze statue was still smiling, and the ape himself, Voltaire, seemed to be saying:
“Poor humans! What apes you are!”
But all along the quais, and across the Boulevard Saint-Michel to the Panthéon, the revolutionary song seemed to be prolonged to infinity, and fearful bourgeois shuddered, as if the voice of the earth were singing.
XXV. The Annihilation of Brains
That summer, Dr. Jean Fortin remained in his retreat on the heights of Saint-Cloud, the Red Nest. The habitation was situated in the middle of a heavily wooded garden, which, abandoned to its own devices for more than twenty years, had the aspect of a veritable virgin forest. Only one pathway, wide enough for an automobile, seemed to be extended in order to reach the house; the rest, abandoned to all the exuberance of brambles, clematis and vines, was inextricable.
That night there had been, as the villa’s only servant, Frédéric, put it, “an orgy in the tower”—which is to say that the four doctors, Goldry, Voronoff, Vanel and Fortin, had dined there. Now gathered in the laboratory, they were chatting and smoking. A fifth individual, devoid of cigar or pipe, Narcisse, was listening.
Marc Vanel was speaking.
“Last night, I was able to enter into telepathic communication with a Commissar of the people, my friend Selikoff, who is perhaps the only one brave enough to resist his Soviet colleagues. That long-distance telepathy will have no limits, I hope, and one day, will permit us to communicate with the other planets, perhaps with other stars.
“You’re dazzling me, Marc,” Voronoff interrupted. “I haven’t been following your experiments, and nor has Goldry. Your telepathy doesn’t tell us anything except its name. One of the inconveniences of science is that the human lifespan is too short to embrace all is branches. You alone, perhaps, thanks to your genius, have been able to reunite the ensemble of knowledge. If you want to be understood, would you care to give us a glimpse of your discovery?”
“You’re not unaware of the noise made in the scientific world by the discovery of extraterrestrial waves.58 That phenomenon, after that of Hertzian waves, and radiography, by virtue of increasingly profound knowledge of the properties of luminous rays, has revealed a new genesis to us. The atom was believed until then to be the constructor of the globe and the principl
e of life; the study of sidereal waves leads us to consider them as creative of the atom. The question regresses infinitely; fundamentally, it’s all the same work. Scientists explain everything by means of atomic progression and religions reply with the word God. Hazard resolves nothing, and the expression ‘creative force’ nothing more. Our role, therefore, obliges us to limit our studies to what we can see, to utilize our knowledge, and to await from the intelligences of the future, subtler than ours, the key to the enigma.”
After a few puffs on his cigarette, Vanel resumed: “That being established, can you not see a correlation between the extraterrestrial waves and the mysterious fluid that regulates or being—and, in consequence, all living beings? One obtains movement, the will of action, by an entire mechanism of muscles, nerves and various organs, but that movement departs from thought, the center from which the ‘waves’ that furrow our bodies continuously escape incessantly. That is so true that thought sometimes continues even in sleep, in the form of dreams.”
A few more swirls of smoke emerged from Homo-Deus’ cigarette, seemingly symbolizing the meanders of what he was saying.
“Let us call that rapport between human thought and the sidereal waves ‘universal thought.’ From that, a method of communication through space, not by means of the conventional signs of speech or writing, but by the direct communication of minds—or, if you prefer, souls—will be born. Once, the name of telepathy was given to an ensemble of facts that seemed to be abnormal, and which, having not been proven, passed for accidental or shameless charlatanism. Those facts were real, but, as people were ignorant of their causes, they remained in the domain of fable. But almost always, there is a latent verity underlying the fabulous; the discovery of sidereal waves outs us on the right path.
“Thus having observed the correlation that there is between all undulatory phenomena and human thought, we have judged the transmission of that thought to be possible. And that is why an intelligence, prepared beforehand, will be able to receive my thought, sent across space, not by exterior means but by my personal center of undulations, the brain.”
“And you believe that you’ve succeeded?”
“At any rate, Dr. Fortin and I commune in thought with the son of Sun-Yat-Sen, presently in Canton, and, likewise, with Tekewamei in Japan and Selikoff in Moscow.”
“How do you receive the response?”
“A thought that isn’t mine irrupts in my brain: that’s the response.”
“Eh? But enlighten me: are the undulatory centers not the glands?”
“No. The glands are organs that only relate to the economy, and thought is fluid.”
“We’re turning in a vicious circle,” Fortin remarked. “You’re discussing causes when we ought to limit ourselves to the study and utilization of facts. We’ve realized one fact, which we’ve baptized P.T.C.: Psycho-Telegraphic Communication. The results are conclusive; that’s the main thing. Your role as a surgeon ought to be limited to the study of the material mechanism, ameliorating its functions, prolonging its duration and, if necessary, modifying a few pieces here and there. We all lack time; let everyone contribute his personal effort to the collectivity—that’s our goal.”
Dr. Goldry took his pipe out of his mouth. “May I, who limit myself to the study of apes, and providing you with subjects, ask you what we’re going to do with Narcisse and Nora?”
The orangutan straightened up. “Stop there Messieurs! By giving me a human brain, you’ve equipped me with free will.”
“You’re one of us, Narcisse, taking part in the discussion,” Mark Vanel said, “and we’re pursuing your intellectual progress with your permission.”
“I believe,” said the orangutan, the son of Ouha and Dilou, “that it needs to pause. At the moment, I’m experiencing a kind of crisis of puberty, which it would be good to allow to pass.”
“Comrade Narcisse,” said Fortin, with a brief burst of laughter, “is in love. I told you that you’d be adored. Have you vanquished by eloquence?”
“No, by the appeal of the race. You allowed me to deduce that Nora was a she-ape; I became certain of that in possessing her. The operations you carried out on her in infancy wouldn’t succeed in me, as an adult. I shall therefore remain an orangutan. If I’m a monster, relative to human beings, I know that it’s relative and that I’m their superior in many ways. I’m nevertheless curious about the role you’ve reserved for Nora.”
“First, how do you love her? With your brain, or the rest?”
“In that woman there’s nothing but sensuality—nothing that comes from the intellect. Nora is a magnificent animal of pleasure, no more than that.”
“Good!” said Fortin. “We can count on you. As for Nora, shall we let her go on with her life, or recover her for further experiments?”
“What more do you want to do, damn it?” said Voronoff. “She’s a woman and must remain one.”
“All the more so as Nora, by virtue of her connections, might be useful to me. I’m beginning to lose my taste for politics, though; the people deserve to be exploited.”
“There’s one interesting one,” protested Goldry. “The American people!”
“Oh, no, shut up, old Gold. The United States is an excessively ambitious nation, an unbridled imperialism coupled with religious hypocrisy. We’ve had a fine specimen of that since the war. Admittedly, fifty thousand soldiers got themselves killed in order to aid the business affairs of the great, clever majority who only saw the general conflagration as a means of making money. Intelligent, courageous, hard-working; I’ll grant you that—but do you know where your American people are headed?”
“For the conquest of the globe,” said the Yankee, proudly.
“Perhaps—but for the moral death of humanity.”
“Get away! We’re for progress, above all—above all!”
“We all are, more or less,” said Fortin, “to see who can pull the silliest face. Let’s see, Narcisse, you who, in your capacity as a new man, who has no atavism of old ideas, how do you see the means of realizing, I won’t say the happiness of humankind, but universal peace?”
“Humans are too stupid not to fight one another forever.”
“In any case,” said the American, “I’m leaving for Eze next week. I don’t know whether my apes are missing me, but I’m missing them.”
“That’s understandable. Who resembles....”
“You’re intolerable, Fortin.”
“No, my dear, for I’m leaving with you.”
“You’re leaving too!” exclaimed Narcisse. “What about me?”
“Well, you’ll keep this house, the Red Nest.”
“And you have Nora,” added Marc Vanel, smiling.
What lustful memory passed, suddenly, through the orangutan’s mind, and made him angry? He stood up among the four seated doctors and looked down at them, his eyes shining above his broad muzzle, and he uttered a single word, as if it were an insult:
“Brains!”
Then, to the astonishment of them all, he went on: “Nora, whom I love, has remained, in spite of all your practices of esthetic surgery, a she-ape. And I, in spite of all your scientific tampering with my brain, am still no more than a man of the woods: Ouha! Ouha!”
His arms raised, the orangutan agitated his powerful hands, cried and yelped, furious and terrible, to such an extent that for a moment, the four doctors, thus set at bay, were afraid of the Beast suddenly revealed in the civilized creature that they had made.
Narcisse, now, was beating his large breast like a drum, and repeating, scornfully:
“Brains! Poor brains! Ouha! Ouha!”
Notes
1 tr. in a Black Coat Press edition as Ouha, King of the Apes, ISBN 978-1-61227-115-6.
2 tr. as “The Invisible Satyr” in the Black Coat Press volume Homo-Deus, ISBN 978-1-61227-351-8.
3 tr. as “Kill the Old: Enjoy!” in Homo-Deus, q.v.
4 in the Journal of the History of Sexuality vol. 13 no, 3 (2004),
5 Available in a Black Coat Press edition, ISBN 978-1-61227-045-6.
6 Agni is the Hindu god of fire, acceptor of sacrifices, eternally young because his fire is reignited every day. He has two heads, one symbolizing immortality and the other the mystery of life.
7 Georges Clemenceau (a.k.a. the “Tiger”) died on 24 November 1929, which might have been before the publication date of the novel, but it must have been written while he was still alive. Champsaur had known him for a long time, and thought highly of him. There is no way of knowing for sure whether he obtained Clemenceau’s formal permission to employ him as a character (Clemenceau burned all his private correspondence before his death) but it is probable that the great man was aware of his employment, and approved of it; it is possible that it arose from a conversation between the two men.
8 The actor “Paul Derval” (Alexis Pitron, 1880-1966) acquired a part-share in the Folies Bergère in 1918 and staged revues there until his death
9 The mystic nun Marguerite-Marie Alacoque (1647-1690) was canonized in 1920, not long before Nora was written.
10 The phrase contes de fées, adapted from the title of Madame d’Aulnoy’s classic collection of 1697, was rendered into English at the time as “fairy tales” and that became a generic label for stories supposed to be of the same kind. It is, however, a mistranslation, and is more accurately rendered “tales of enchantment”—which would, in fact, have been a far better label for the genre. In the present text, I have translated fée correctly, as “enchantress,” rather than conventionally, as “fairy.”
11 In Italian cagna means “bitch,” and as La Turbie is close to the Italian border, all the more so as it is dominated by the rocky outcrop known as the Tête de Chien [dog’s head], that would presumably be what the locals mean by it; the word, however, also exists in French slang, adapted from Vietnamese by colonial soldiers to refer to a dugout.
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