The Ark

by André Arnyvelde

  “Dance! Dance, idiots!” he murmured. “Tomorrow, you resume your stupid labors. Laugh, cry with pleasure as you spin, rub one another’s dirty epidermis, consent to these poor joys...around you, over you, beneath you, flourishing and reaching out to you, are sublime delights, ineffable orchestras—but content yourselves with the cacophony of those three loud-mouthed musicians and your leaden tournaments...”

  The sight of a red-faced soldier, his mouth immeasurably open, in a laugh that lacked twenty-five teeth and was disgraced by the yellow and black survivors, his violet-tinted hands plastered on the back of a fat scarlet-clad woman whose hair was dangling down over her face, stiff and shiny, pricking the nose and fluttering around the nostrils, cut his monologue short and caused him to put his clenched fist to his heart.

  “True pigs,” he murmured—and his soul vacillated. “They don’t give a damn about sublime delights and ineffable orchestras. And yet, it’s necessary for them, too, to join forces with those of us who know and want Joy…the immense movement of human beings stamping their feet outside the closed doors of Happiness, because there are thousand more like those...”

  The hallucinating vision passed before him of the slow, gradual comprehension of the necessary revolt, of a superior love, which would unite all humankind for the splendid Aurora. How many hours had gone by that might have been fecund! Poets sang about the smiles of women, painters represented pools and trees... Oh, there would be plenty of time to dance, to sing, to paint... When curable misery was howling from all directions, the hatred and the mediocrity of which the age was replete, and a realized paradise could be glimpsed!

  No more dancing! Sop dancing! Make that abominable orchestra shut up! If you knew! If you only knew!

  He had come away from the statue; he advanced among the indifferent dancers, who jostled whim with their shoulders, and went, with eyes dilated, extending his joined hands, imploring, between couples, above heads.

  The worker with the demented gaze was noticed, but what he was saying was inaudible; the musicians carried on playing but the dancers paused.

  “He’s drunk,” said some.

  “What is he saying?”

  “Bah! Today, the people celebrate their victory!

  “A little glass on such a day...”

  “Watch my dress, if he vomits!” said one young woman.

  People laughed; the king’s lips moved; he lost his footing; all the faces, alarmed or sniggering, leaned toward him—so far from him, all those gazes, placid in their drunkenness, in which he searched in vain for the reflection of his dream...

  He staggered, he buckled, and fell to the ground as if pole-axed, amid the loud bursts of laughter.

  “Bonne nuit!”

  “Call a cop!”

  “Get him away from here—he’ll get in the way of the waltz.”

  “Hey, comrade, get up.

  “Such a state! It’s shameful!”

  People had bent over him, turned him over, lifted him up, and looked at him while they carried him a little further away.

  “He’s a handsome fellow,” said one woman. “He must have been drinking to forget…a faithless mistress…I’d gladly replace her…if I didn’t love you, my beau,” she added, hanging on to the arm of a man.

  “Divine bounty,” said someone in the chattering crowd.

  And someone advanced toward the king, who had been placed on a bench. “I know him,” he said to the crowd. “Don’t worry—I’ll take care of him.”

  It was an old man with a slender face and bright, serious eyes. He did not have the appearance of a malevolent man. The drunkard could be confided to him, since he knew him, and they could go back to dancing.

  “Divine bounty!” repeated the old man, loosening the king’s collar—and he looked at him passionately, and rubbed his temples gently.

  Gradually, the king opened his yes, and, recovering consciousness, recognized Mnektes.

  Just as there was no reason for Mnektes—you shall see in due course how he was able to leave Galade—to be looking for the king, in complete ignorance of the five continents of the world, all of the cities of the five continents of the world, and all of the places in any of those cities, to be in any of those cities and any place within one of those cities, rather than any other, there was no reason why he should not have been in the very city and the very place where the king was, and where he found him. There are as many reasons to be astonished by the fact that he was there as there would have been to for him to be anywhere else. And so, if the slightest reason comes between their equal astonishments, the party that can supply the slightest reason will necessarily hold sway over the other. Now, that slight reason, which ought to appease any overly prolonged astonishment, is that this is a fantastic story.

  But let us listen to Mnektes speak.

  “In your haste to depart,” he said to the king, “you had forgotten to tidy away the manuscripts that you and I were the only people in Galade capable of deciphering. It was thus, after a certain amount of effort, that I was able, always having doubts regarding your supposed monastic retreat, to discover the existence of the transgaladian world, comprehend that it had attracted you, learn about the road of the Grotto, and depart after you by the same route.

  “I went straight on and traversed Traese. The express train that must have taken you away took me. I was very frightened but soon reassured, because I saw that my companions were tranquil. I arrived in Paris. I commended myself piously to Hazard to bring us together in all that pullulation. Both to find you and—shall I confess it?—stupefied, disorientated and dazzled by s many new spectacles, in order to learn, to know, and to bring marvelous information back from such a voyage to Galade—I traveled the world.

  “Why have I finally found you? And this evening? And in this state? Blessed be Hazard, friend of philosophers. Furthermore, having admired the ability of a dog to find its master or a friend by sniffing a trail, I can also admit—and admire even more—that there is in the human soul a sense even more penetrating than that in a dog’s nose. At any rate, here you are. Sire, it’s really you that I’m holding in my arms…forgive the unworthy weakness that I owe to too much weeping...”

  The king was also weeping in warm and delicious contentment.

  “Now, it’s necessary for us to return. Strange events must have happened in Galade. When I left, certain singular whims had appeared among the people. I don’t know what you can have done to excite them, but something about you must have discontented them, and their fine docility, their virtuous respect for laws and customs seemed to be beginning to break down. Gasp was not much liked, because he liked young women too much. He was accused of having got rid of you. Your welcome return will return good order to that slight disturbance.

  “Yes, let’s go,” said the king. “And blessed be any effervescence that might be observable in my people. Into then, I shall throw the seeds of new florescences, the foundations of new palaces. Can my people have revolted? Those who revolt are right. The world in which we live is iniquitous. Joy exists for all, and no one profits from it fully. The powerful drag the heavy weight of the oppressed, and all the wretched are victims. Come—I shall organize Happiness.

  “Uh oh!” said Mnektes. “Can you get up, my child. Lean on my old shoulder and take a few steps. Let’s find a peaceful street and get out of this festival crowd. Tell me, what is this costume?”

  “I ran out of money. I wanted to work with my hands, like Georgis the Headstrong, and I became a laborer, as he became a miner. I had no means of returning to Galade or of informing anyone there. I had to eat. I’ve experienced a great pride in sensing my vigorous and capable body serving me faithfully. Then I discovered human distress, after I had contemplated the splendor of the earth and human greatness.”

  “Instead of ‘human,’” said Mnektes, softly, “it’s necessary to say ‘humans.’ Humans are innumerable, and no two are alike...”

  “Father!” said the king, his face red. “Don’t go on. Y
ou’ve come from a world six centuries old. I’ll teach you the laws that have edified modern times.”

  “Do you think that I haven’t seen them?” replied Mnektes. “And that I haven’t perceived the great rebellion of the masses? What are they, the laws of modern times? The equality of men, the right to happiness…… Admirable laws. Do you take me for a wolf, my son?

  “If I haven’t lost all clear-sightedness, it appears to me that you’re suffering, and I believe I’m able to deduce the cause of your distress. At first, my king, I imagine that after a too-sudden vision of a world that is, indeed, transformed in many aspects, and being of a nature to persuade yourself of great joys promised to human beings and unsuspected in Galade, you found yourself, without having had time to learn by how many centuries of perpetual and permanent effort, that world had been edified, suddenly cast into its underside, which is the eternal misery of the wretched...”

  “Eternal!” said the king. “Father...”

  But they were walking under the bright stars through the silent streets that surround the Panthéon. Mnektes had taken the king’s arm in his turn, and he squeezed it gently, both like an old man seeking support and a rider restraining his horse...

  “And there,” Mneketes continued, “you were obliged to stay. Unconsciously, all the delicacy and refinement of your being, desperately sought a refuge from the dirty promiscuities and animal habits of the milieu in which you were imprisoned. Having no external viewpoint, in the base, nauseating or lamentable spectacles, it searched internally, and found, vivacious and fresh, the idea of Joy that you have just affirmed. It recreated it, amplified it and exaggerated it for the needs of its existence—because, my dear king, without a refuge, you would have ended up falling into the gutter, no longer being my handsome king! You would have become one of those brutes! It aggrandized your idea of joy and light, in proportion to the distress and darkness in which you were living. And your great suffering comes from the fact that, all your strength being necessary to withstand the perpetual siege of your ideative refuge, gradually, it nourished itself on your entire being, aspired the blood of your heart, drew life therefrom, and became vibrant...and then, what was only an Idea, nourished with blood, became Reality!

  “Sire, there is for humans a mysterious world, of which all heavens and all hells are merely dull reflections. No one can enter into it, without deadly peril, who has not slowly climbed, one by one the ardent steps that lead to it. That is the realm of Ideas. For the man who can move freely there, it is heaven, and no voluptuousness, no sensation of power, is comparable to their contact. For those whom it directs and possesses, it is the death that humans call Madness.

  “Sire, you have been the slave of Ideas.

  “Once, you went among them cheerful and nimble. They were merely passing subtleties, sparkling veils, that one caressed while brushing pat them. A thousand beautiful attractions appealed to you then, and the gallop of a good horse in the forest, and the last beams of the sun at dusk, and tournaments with the sword, and charming ballets, were much more real than they were.

  “They were only ideas. The idea of love, the idea of feasting, the idea of labor—they were simply evocative.

  “Now, whoever gives the blood of his heart to an Idea penetrates into the realm of Ideas, and his entire being is transposed. He sees them rushing upon him, alive, sovereigns of men and their actions.

  “It sometimes happens on the shore of the ocean that one is struck violently by the rotating beam of a lighthouse, and that light, having paused momentarily in confrontation with the gaze, leaves behind as it moves on a kind of dazzlement, which renders al nearby images shadows, phantoms and silhouettes. In the same way, the afflicted man will only any longer see there world through the ideas by which he is obsessed. Nothing exists any more outside of them. He can no longer perceive reality except as they allow him to perceive it. He will only take from all the facts he encounters that which belongs to the ideas that grip him, and worse than that, he will soon only encounter the facts that belong to his ideas.

  “Thus, the world and everything it contains will gradually be modeled on the imaginary world that the ideas have created for him. He will carry within him a universe compared with which the real universe is only apparent. And depending on whether he is the master or slave of ideas, he will be like a god who floats over the actions of human beings, and who sometimes, seduced by one of their objects, ravishes and divinizes it—as Jupiter did to Leda—or he will be like a pig marching indifferently through odorous herbs, only able to scent the cherished truffles.

  “My son, you have enclosed the world, and all its realities, within two ideas, which are Distress and Joy, and there is nothing, no fact, no intermediary, that you do not immediately cram inside one of your two universes.

  “Add that you were plunged up to your eyes in a milieu strangely strewn with discourses simplifying all things for simple minds, and simple minds supersimplifying the simplifications of the said simplifiers, where Humanity, Justice, Happiness and Equality emerge as easily from mouths and souls as soap-bubbles blown by infants, round, brilliant and colored but no more durable and solid than is demandable from bubbles obtained by thinning down soap with water and blowing for a few seconds into the end of a fragile pipe: a milieu assuredly ill-equipped for discussing with the critical sensibility so useful in such circumstances, those exceedingly complex and perfidious entities—and agree that you, too rapidly informed about everything, in sum, and also being at odds with yourself in a horrific combat, no longer had your common sense or your sage equilibrium.

  “Sire, let us return to Galade, and along the way, we shall discuss, if you please, various complexities. Among others, it will be necessary for us take some account of the propensity that one has to transfer one’s personal fashions of sensibility on to all beings, and ask ourselves whether the suffering of the wretched or their aspiration to joy are, for them, what you imagine them to be, with your ardent nature and the richness of your soul. And by that means, we shall strive to perceive whether there might be an innumerable quantity of humanities in the bosom of what you call Humanity.

  “And by that means we can examine, again, if it pleases you, whether it is really just or sensible—and worthy—for every man to consider all others as his brothers and equals, and then to weigh up whether every man is not, in a sense, what you call a humanity, in himself alone, bearing within himself the powerful and the plebeian, the noble and the vile, the oppressed and the tyrannical, miseries and joys, revolts and hopes…and thus, whether every man ought to demand of himself, and expect from himself alone, what he wants in the world, or to expect the help of others…whether, if the anarchist who wants to overturn all established things, the man who has to complain of an injustice, and the one who wants to be better, looked to themselves first, sought, reformed, overturned internally, they might not find that the world has changed, that the injustice was just and is repaired, that the reform is accomplished...

  “Let us return to Galade, my son.

  “But as it is possible that we shall find some change in that country, and that it is the only place on earth where modern humans have not been, with their automobiles, their airplanes, their locomotives, their telescopes, their cinematographs and other powers with names as acidic as the juice of the lemons of the Mediterranean coast, and as the Galadians are the one ones for whom it is impossible to conceive of any other idea than eating well, drinking well, sleeping well, embracing well and merited heaven as well, it is necessary to reveal to them as sagely as possible the existence of a transgaladian universe, and the power that certain humans have attained there.

  “And then, it is necessary to let them do as they wish. Some among the Galadians will prefer their customary joys, others will strive to attain a more ample blossoming.

  “Those who will have raised themselves above all the others, it will be necessary to allow to go into the world. That will be the supreme proof, in which the weak will be vanquished, for the
y will remain prisoners of the base attractions of this world, and in which the strong will come back more elevated, and bring back the beautiful acquisitions that they will have made, and which they will complete amid Galadian peace.

  “Then the flower of their efforts will spread through society. For to render to humans what one has received from them, amplified, is the duty of human beings...”

  And, discussing in that fashion, Mnektes developing all these notions for the king, they returned to Galade.

  Part Three

  THE RETURN OF THE KING

  The Revolution in Galade

  Perhaps you have not forgotten the great bitterness of the market-gardener named Fanoche, who had put on her beautiful dress in order to be noticed by the king, and whom the king reproached for the indecency of her neckline. It was from the bitterness of Fanoche that the first tremors issued that were soon to agitate the entire populace of Galade.

  “That king!” she said to her courtiers—you will remember that she had many among the market gardeners. “We’re too insignificant for him. Look how he treated the person that you’re courting! He only has eyes for his beautiful ladies of the court. Well, if, instead of digging the soil that gives them their nourishment—him and them—I only had to laugh, sing and spout nonsense, and dress in silk, he would have looked at me too... It’s necessary to believe that you have no taste, since you find amiable and pretty a woman that the king disdained... Or, rather,” she went on, “that you have to fall back on her because the ladies of the court are not for your clumsy hands…”

  And she persisted stubbornly, no longer wanting to let it go, and the courtiers found themselves rejected. “No! You’re only talking to me like that because you can’t court the others.