The Children of the Crab

by André Lichtenberger

  Mao of the octopus, whose soul is cowardly, tries to defend himself as best he can. He is dragged pitilessly before the tricolor belly.

  At this coup, no one can any longer be mistaken. The wrath of the god is satisfied. A redoubtable majesty illuminates his features. He draws the unfortunate to him, fixes the bloody mark to his phormium tunic, pronounces the anathema and embraces the condemned man grimly.

  And the thunderous voice proclaims: “Let this ceremony, valiant Oyas, engrave this glorious day in your memory indefinitely. Let us once again cry, all together: Vive la République! Vive la France!”

  With renewed delight, the Oyas slap their palms together, prostrate themselves and repeat, wholeheartedly: “Biba Ulica! Biba Francea!”

  The celebration is concluded. The député grasps Monsieur Pittagol’s shoulder in a familiar manner, as the latter recovers uneasily from his triumph, in order to signal his satisfaction; he will render an account of his services to the minister. In addition, Monsieur Pittagol will submit to him as soon as possible the text of a dispatch relating a summary of this glorious day.

  “I shall ask you, Commandant, to transmit it by wireless to Papeiti, which will be instructed to cable it to Paris.”

  Followed by a company of savages, the detachment from the Citoyen, its mission accomplished, has quit the bluff and gone back into the forest in order to descend to the beach again. Rather tired, Madame de Vesnage is leaning more heavily on the Captain’s arm. There is an ecstasy on his face.

  “You know, Hugues, that we’re going to stay here for a few days…”

  Monsieur Bedeau-Conflans continues to perorate animatedly. He will employ his leisure in making a detailed study of the resources of the island and drafting a report. He has no doubt that transport, once organized...

  He pauses momentarily, gazing in surprise and circumspection at a bizarre couple emerged from the river. Standing up on their backsides, Pippi-kuink and his companion salute Rara and Mémé by clapping their vestigial limbs, quacking gaily.

  Monsieur Bedeau-Conflans leans over mechanically to grip his secretary’s arm again. “We’ll also send a telegram to my constituency...”

  On the bluff, Mao has remained in a state of dejection, resigned to his destiny. Around him, the people of the octopus intone a brief mortuary hymn. Then the sledgehammer falls upon his head, extending him on the ground.

  With trenchant flints and sharpened seashells, his flesh is divided up and put on skewers. The skewers are presented to the flames of a rapidly-erected pyre. And conscientiously, the people of his clan devour him avidly, in order that they might keep his spirit among them and that the accomplishment of the rites might finally appease the legitimate anger of the divine visitors...

  On the beach, by the last gleams of the setting sun, the re-embarkation is taking place. Will the white gods disappear and dissolve again? Who can tell?

  Rara and Mémé trot alongside their brethren of the crab. Is there not anguish in their velvet eyes when the latter separate themselves from their grip?

  “How can we explain to them, Hugues, that we’ll come back tomorrow?”

  The young woman puts her arms around the boy, and then the girl, mingling her caresses with tender inflections, punctuated with kisses on the brown foreheads and coppery cheeks, which have an odor of small animals, the sea and all the perfumed plants of the marvelous forests.

  The children accept the kisses, astonished, because the gesture is unknown to the Oyas. But when the boat draws away, and when the tribe, astonished by so many adventures, has dispersed, they draw closer to one another, join hands, and, hesitantly at first, alternately place their lips on one another’s cheeks, and occasionally bring them together.

  And they are infinitely pleased by the sweet discovery that they owe to the pale gods of the crab and the kiss.

  V. THE FORTUNATE ISLE

  Is the world about to sink into chaos again? Because of all the rage and love they have, humans are confronting one another, colliding with one another, massacring one another, on land, in the blazing atmosphere, and even in the depths of the sea. The entire effort of civilization is concluding in the most frightful catastrophe that has desolated the planet since the deluge.

  Protected from the rest of the world by the girdle of reefs and gulf that surround it, Oaleya the fortunate is pursuing its peaceful, innocent and harmonious existence.

  Patiently, the work of the coral raised it stone by stone above the abysses where the indecisive germs of being sleep. The great central fire sculpted its fragile architecture according to its whim. For thousands of years the wind brought dust, the rain rotted the stone, the sun vivified the mud, and the primitive homogeneity decomposed into an infinite pullulation of kingdoms and species.

  To the top of the scale, but not very high, still in contact with the rest of animality, humankind has risen. Elsewhere, the megalomaniac vermin has broken the bridges behind it, claiming monarchy for itself, and the image of god, has suppressed and rejected its kin, has individualized itself excessively, has multiplied divisions, hierarchies and rivalries within its own bosom. The superior vertebra of the Oyas has not enlarged into the aristocratic and anarchic brain of a superbeast. They have not subjected the whim of Rahuo that has fashioned them to a drunkenness of pride.

  They have conserved the obscure instinct of the links that subsist between the unities of species, and which subsist between the species themselves. They have an intuition of all the unknowns and all the ungraspables that surround them, and which undoubtedly have as much reality as themselves. Alongside the visible, they suspect the invisible. The undulating world of spirits does not appear to them to be more improbable than the one whose designs and colors they discern.

  Besides which, everything that is today is merely the fugitive appearance of that which is eternally. On the great ocean of life, humanity is an oily patch in which the colors of the prism are reflected for a few seconds, and which, floating for an instant on the dormant waters, will dissolve there at the first eddy.

  In the bosom of the harmonious creation, the Oyas unfurl their innocent, mechanical lives, little different from those of kangaroos, and not fundamentally different from those of corals. They are born, grow up, love, suffer, forget and die without making any great fuss about it. They are not obsessed with immoderate dreams. They accept their ignorance and their weakness. They do not revolt against the inevitable. They do think that they are any more eternal, or very much wiser or more sublime than a wisp of sea-spray, and do not imagine themselves to be kings or gods during the blink of an eye in which heaven has projected them from the wave that will break and swallow them up again.

  Into drowsy Oaleya, protected by the immense swell of the Pacific and the laborious army of madrepores from the pernicious fever of the rest of the world, a gust of the universal cyclone has now precipitated a panting handful of the gnats with which it toys.

  A wireless message has sent an instruction to Papeiti, which has transmitted a brief account of events to the Ministry of Marine.

  Attacked by the Boche submarine U-37A, the Citoyen has been fortunate enough to sink it. The damage that it sustained during the combat, aggravated by a typhoon, has obliged it to lay up for a few summary repairs at Île Amélie.

  A more detailed dispatch from the Delegate General has informed the President of the Council of the touching welcome given by the population to the envoy of the Republic.

  It arrives in Paris at a time when the news is bad. Men are dying cruelly and with no result in Flanders, on the Somme and in the Woëvre. The Russians are buckling; defeatism is rearing its ugly head again, the ministry is shaky and the muzzled press is nervous. Let it be given exotic fodder. The edifying robinsonade is inserted between the news of the health of the kaiser (definitely attained by general paralysis) and the last communiqué from Champagne (we have captured two hundred meters of trench at Massiges), Mr. Wilson’s latest note to Germany and the comforting impressions of a neutral regarding th
e famine in Berlin (people are eating bootlaces and brick bread there).

  At the moment when inadmissible maneuvers are multiplying in which it is easy to recognize the hand of the enemy, and for which public vigilance is keeping its eyes open, news has reached us from the antipodes that ought to fill national confidence with a just pride. A dispatch from Papeiti has notified us that the cruiser Citoyen—the democratic name of which tickles our ears agreeably—has succeeded, in circumstances that will be described precisely at a later date, in destroying the redoubtable Boche submarine whose exploits have been terrifying Polynesia for three months.

  Constrained, in order to make repairs, to put into Île Amélie—which has been French since Louis-Philippe, but which, situated far away from the major sea-lanes, has not received a visit from any ship of the metropolis since time immemorial—it has been given the most enthusiastic welcome by the indigenes. Delegate General and député Monsieur Bedeau-Conflans, in an eloquent speech admirably translated by the official interpreter Monsieur Pittagol, has expressed to that sympathetic population the gratitude of France, and has decorated one of its most eminent chiefs with his own hands.

  We are glad to add that, in recognition of his outstanding services, the Minister of Marine has just awarded the croix de guerre, with palm, to Monsieur Bedeau-Conflans, whose resolute attitude has been worthy of our finest traditions. Public irony is sometimes lavished—almost always unjustly—on certain distinctions awarded to our parliamentarians, but there will be unanimous applause for a measure that simultaneously honors the patriot in question and a government capable of recognizing his services...

  The wireless message informing the député of this distinction also invites the commandant of the Citoyen to proceed with his repairs without excessive haste. In any case, let him wait new orders that might perhaps prescribe a detour on the homeward journey.

  To tell the truth, if the united socialists attempt a definite assault on the cabinet, it would be better if Monsieur le député Bedeau-Conflans were not yet reintegrated into the Palais-Bourbon. He is a potential ministerial candidate. The government would be much surer of his loyalty if it were impossible for to him to withdraw it. His proxy votes are admirably placed in the hands of the Undersecretary of State for Moral Replenishment.

  Such is the combination of circumstances that, in the midst of cosmic horror, has becalmed Hugues and Laurette in the most magical oasis.

  By the fault of destiny, and their own, they were leading a lamentable chaotic life. Shadows were oppressing them. There was no light on the horizon. Young as they are, death was already leaning over them; they could not drive it back...

  With a flick of a magic wand, everything that was crushing them has melted way.

  Here they are, in a Cytherean paradise, free, palpitating with love, cradled in the soothing splendor of an inviolate Nature.

  It has not required more than forty-eight hours for the severity of orders to be relaxed. The pacific temperament of the Oyas is as manifest as the resources of the welcoming isle are varied. At the edge of the beach of disembarkation and the coconut palms, Monsieur de Kerfaouët has established a permanent station. A few luxurious tent-shelters have been appended to it. The two most comfortable are occupied, one by Madame de Vesnage, the other by the député and his secretary. A third is shared by Dr. Boujade and Captain de Pionne. Thus, the député and the doctor can devote themselves at their leisure to the labor of their research.

  “And the lovers,” the Commandant murmurs, “will be able to flirt at their ease.”

  To flirt?

  Oh, that harsh and unconstrained Anglo-Saxon term is a poor translation of what unites the officer with the tormented features and his fragile companion. Nor is it what the imagination of the young ensigns on the ship, little inclined to refinement in the chart of tenderness, believe that “the soldier and the little widow are getting up to.”

  Although it would seem stupid to those gentlemen of the forecastle, the embraces of the puerile and chaste lovers are limited to the exchange a few glances charged with emotion and a few slow pressures of their trembling fingers.

  They love one another. They love one another with all the unsatiated tenderness and need for love that is within them, but the rare, unique amour in which they commune is not that which knots feverish arms around necks and sticks lips deliriously together.

  If Hugues begged or demanded, would Laurette refuse herself? No, since she is entirely his, but even if male temptation troubles him, a firm, gentle and implacable will represses it—because, thanks to him, she is no longer in pain; and because he might soon disappear himself, without remorse. What separates them—and what unites them—is the very quality of the sentiment that exists between them. If they cannot be lovers, it is because, for a very long time, with the best of themselves, they have loved one another in a finer fashion, too purely.

  In the atmosphere of the marvelous isle, it is their twin childhood that flourishes again, dilates and blossoms. Under the somber crowns of the trees, beside the dark waters, in this great magnificent garden, to the accompaniment of the murmur of the ocean over the coral, everything that has bruised and aged them is abolished. In the bosom of equatorial Nature, their childhood tenderness is still the same, but multiplied tenfold in their adult hearts. There are no words to express what impregnates them. The only words that rise to their lips are the innocent words of old, those of the time when they played together in the old familial dwelling, when they trotted side by side on the shore of the same immense ocean.

  Laurette’s fingers play with a porcelain animal with a speckled back.

  “Do you remember, Hugues, the glass case with the seashells, the marvelous stories that they whispered in your ear, and which you repeated to me in the evenings?”

  With the tip of his cane, Hugues teases a sea-spider with a rough and spiny back.

  “Do you remember Mitsou, Laurette—the wretched little alley-cat that we found half-dead in a ditch, and for which, fearful of abduction, we made a hiding-place, with the complicity of old Pauline in a corner of the broom-cupboard?”

  They laugh as they have not laughed for years. Their wretched and poor existence has sunk into oblivion; even their adolescence has faded away. Nothing else survives but he magical mirages of the childhood epoch when the world’s new dawn rose before their eyes…and now, they have the enchanted world in which their games took refuge to themselves.

  A few heavy birds, whose tails drag along the ground, take flight in the clearing. Laurette claps her hands. “Oh! Hugues…birds of paradise! The Nautilus run aground in the Torres Strait18…do you remember?”

  Rara and Mémé are their assiduous companions.

  Before the tent-shelters were installed on the shore, the children accompanied the officer and the young woman to the boat every evening and, sitting down, followed the launch that was taking them away with their eyes until it disappeared in the darkness. Every morning, at first light, they watched for their return, and swam out to meet the launch. Now that Madame de Vesnage spends her nights on land, the two children sleep at the entrance of her tent. They offer her their foreheads in the evening before she goes to bed, and in the morning, salute her awakening with twittering. They have soon learned a few words of French. Hugues and Laurette have grasped the fundamentals of the language of the Oyas, which are not very numerous. Thus they have become capable of conversing. Nevertheless, there are such abysses between them that the conversations in question cannot get far away from few very simple themes.

  Well beyond that, however, above words, a subtle and penetrating intimacy has been woven between them.

  And Rara and Mémé embody the empery of the fraternal isle. They incarnate the tender Nature that welcomes the young people, bandages them and coddles them. Perhaps, in them, they find vague echoes of themselves, such as they might have been, if the evolution of the centuries had been different. They too live a single life. They too are separated by a gulf from the rest of the w
orld. That gulf, a mysterious impulse of the brown children has abolished between them, the first moment they met.

  Laurette declares to Hugues, laughing: “I believe in the kinship of the crab, you know.”

  And Hugues replies, laughing in the same way: “Might I hazard a confession, then? Do you know that there’s a family resemblance between Mémé and you?”

  That familiarity is the object of jokes among the young officers of the Citoyen: “Admit that those lovers are funny people, needing to drag an escort of savage kids behind them...”

  It is true. Hugues and Laurette feel more at peace when the children are there. In their intimate conversation, in spite of everything, there are lightning-flashes of the cruel past and the atrocious future, and starts of troubled anguish. When the children are playing around them, they are better protected against destiny and against themselves. If Laurette is better, Dr. Boujade is the first to congratulate the influence of the crab.

  In the exceedingly handsome and exceedingly gentle white gods that have come to them, Raramémé have welcomed without astonishment—why be astonished when everything is mysterious?—those for whom they were waiting. The people of the crab maintain the divinity of Rahuo, who is the Great Crab. Once, they were numerous, and there was the Ancestor, but now their mark is almost effaced. While the people of the octopus, the people of the armadillo and the people of the kangaroo experience a comfort and an enrichment in holding one another by the hand, in living and eating together, Raramémé remained poor and alone. They have only had Kouang.