The Children of the Crab
Page 18
One last time, Raramémé roll Pippi-kuink playfully in the mud, who seethes and hisses. Come on, Tiparu the armadillo, just for today, poke your nose through the window of your carapace and don’t sulk. Tomorrow, no one will tickle you anymore.
There is one more great adieu to Kouang. Perhaps, in recent times, the children’s minds have often strayed far from him. It is not their fault. They apologize, explain, and politely ask his forgiveness. In order that he will not be sad, they stay with him throughout their last day. They idle, eat and take their siesta together.
Kouang does not grasp the detail of that speech. But this is certain: their hands are caressing him and their hearts are pressing next to his. A tender emotion uplifts he giant’s heart. Has there been such a pleasant day since Koua was snatched away from him? He joins in their games with a naïve gaiety. They run, they hide, they chase one another, they climb, they jostle, they argue over fruits.
Mémé coughs, exhausted and out of breath. In the end, beneath a mulberry bush, the children, overcome by fatigue, fall down and go to sleep beside the monster. He gazes at them blissfully, glad to have them to himself again. After an hour, leaving them asleep, he goes away in order to hunt, as is his custom, for the roots that are solely capable of maintaining his vigor.
When Raramémé wake up, the sun is already low in the sky. Mémé stretches, yawns, peers idly at the parrots quarreling in the foliage. But Rara’s voice tickles her ear. “Mémé is asleep. I’m going on my own to drink the Black Flower. She sits up suddenly, frowns and gets annoyed. He laughs at the success of his teasing. She bites his shoulder, growling, in order to pretend to be very angry, and takes his hand—and they both run to the old man’s hut.
He is squatting on the threshold. In a great calabash he is completing the preparation of the magic beverage. All day, the chosen herbs have been simmering in palm juice over a small fire, while has periodically incorporated secret virtues in them by means of irresistible words. He crushes them carefully with a bone pestle. Three times the liquid boils and rises up. Heady vapors are emitted in violet spirals. The elixir is ready. The old man hands it to Raramémé. Each of them is to drink half.
And he blesses them. “Return among the gods. Let them not be irritated with the Oyas, since, in order to please them, we are sending them the best of our blood.”
The children salute the sage very politely and go away. The walk very slowly, biting their tongues in concentration, in order not to spill a drop of the precious potion.
Here is the beach of golden sand. The tide is already very low. The black heads of the coral are dotting the waves. Raramémé put the calabash down in the sand, carefully, and one last time, clapping their hands, launch the appeal:
Click, clock,
Knock, shock,
Are we asleep
In the deep?
At the call of their race, the blue crabs come out of their lairs, rejoicing, trotting sideways. In a few minutes, the circle has formed. The large protruding eyes are directed at the children. And Rara harangues his people. The hour has come. The white gods of the crab are calling. Water, earth and sky cannot separate those whom the sign unites. Soon, the spirit of Raramémé will take flight toward their brethren, in the Unknown. Let Kroum take responsibility for what will remain lying on the golden sand. Kroum is alive!
“Kroum is alive!” Once again, with a single gesture, the blue crabs stand up on their feet, waving their pincers, making them click, and then at a precipitate trot, return to their retreat while the rhythmic chant accompanies their flight.
Click, clock,
Block, mock,
Shall we go
Back down below?
To take our pride
Away to hide;
Blood will survive!
Kroum is alive!
The setting sun extends its final flames. Raramémé remain alone before its splendor. There is a divine serenity in the air. Are not tender, amicable, fraternal spirits already fluttering around those who are about to depart?
Teasingly, however, the children argue. Each of them, greedily, wants to drink the precious beverage first. Mémé, annoyed, sulks and pulls a nasty face. Naturally, she will give in if Rara demands it, since he is the stronger—but no. Rara will not abuse his preeminence. Has he not always reserved for Mémé the tastiest fruits, the most succulent roots? Mémé will drink first, but only the half that is hers. Then, very politely, her spirit will wait for Rara’s, in order that they might go away together.
Agreed. Once again, they exchange between them the exceedingly pleasant gesture that the white gods have taught them. Then, obligingly, Rara raises the cup of repose to Mémé’s lips. She applies her lips to it sagely, drinks in long sips. There it is, half empty.
Rara takes back the calabash and, before drinking in his turn, looks at his little sister. The little girl’s eyes are becoming vague, misting, rolling slightly. There is a smile on her lips. Then, suddenly, she becomes pale. Oh, how pale she is becoming! What is there in the depths of her pupils that is changing and sinking? Mémé vacillates, lies down lazily and murmurs: “I’m coming.”
She will not go without him, the naughty girl!
With a greedy gesture, Rara raises the cup to his own lips.
He does not have time to drink. His arm has fallen back, devoid of strength. He collapses in a heap, without a whimper, and the sand drinks the spilled liquid. For the precious little beast that Mémé had given him has ceased to palpitate in her left breast. At a stroke, without having touched a drop of the poison, Rara has already died, of Mémé’s death.
In small surges, and petty waves, implacable and eternal, the tide comes in. The waves sing, prance, race, chanting the eternal hymn that they repeat relentlessly, century after century. They sing, climb, rise. Far away, insouciantly, they have swallowed Hugues and Laurette, impalpable grains that are dissolving. Here, gently, implacably, they rise, leaping over one another, brushing the summits of rocks, covering them—and their foam is already licking two little brown heads on the sand.
On the edge of the coconut grove the silhouette of Kouang appears. He catches sight of the double patch at the water’s edge. They are still asleep, the lazy children. He approaches them in order to tickle them. His eyes flatten. His hair bristles. A frisson runs down his back and he leans over with a hoarse exclamation. The two little bodies, which were so warm, are cold...
The sea sings, sells, pushing its wavelets ever higher, ever further. Already, it is feeling the coppery bodies, crawling along their limbs. Are they not hideous octopodes projecting their tentacles? But no, a vast splashing surges from the surface of the waves. Somber disks emerge, bristling with backs, feet and pincers. In their entirety, the people of Kroum have come running. They form a circle around Raramémé. The most robust dig into the sand, insinuate themselves beneath them, brace themselves, and lift them up.
The sea sings. Its wavelets race, redoubling, and—giddy up!—assist the crabs in depositing the brown burden on their backs.
And now, in a long and powerful surge, the whole slides, sinks and disappears.
Above the waves, in the descending darkness, Kouang has taken refuge on a coral promontory.
If Dr. Klagenmeyer could see him, he would note with appropriate interest one curious detail: oozing from the brute’s eyes are drops of the liquid that the special glands of a few mammals distill, and which humans call tears.
And from the formidable breast, a dull plaint escapes indefinitely: a vague and desperate malediction, directed at the Eternal...
And, insensibly, the Eternal replies:
“Silence...
“There is me.
“Me, that’s all.
“What do I hear?
“Mosquitoes?
“Empires crumbling?
“A deluge?
“Or, in the ether, the grating of whirling stars?
“Or did I belch?
“There is me. I am because I am. That’s it. Everything
is. Everything has been, everything will be. There is, perpetually, becoming. Me. That’s all. That’s the way it is. Damn the rest. Anyway, there is no rest. Me, that’s all. I roll. I swallow. I digest. Here I am again. It’s me. It’s you. Us. Everything.
“Nothingness? Atua? One of my pseudonyms. A hollow bubble. There’s me. Always and everywhere.
The creator? Rahuo? One of my false noses. A joke. Yes, it amuses me to spit out planets here and there, and civilizations. One amuses oneself as one can.
You who suffer, moan, think, pray—shut up. You bore me. Stop whining.
What? Your name is Plato? Pascal? Goethe? France? Humanity? Don’t know you. Have I the time to count the lice upon my lice and give them names? I scratch myself.
“There’s me. My perpetual snore, from the breath of which, without my noticing, worlds are born, rotate and collapse, with their knick-knacks and their mites. The universe that you conceive is one of my frissons. I’ve just sneezed out a few dozen more.
“You too, dear. Be proud. The least of your bowel movements is a genesis and an apocalypse. You shout your works, your virtues, your genius at me. Easy, now. Known. If you knew! In the gut of one of the bacilli that’s already gnawing your marrow, there’s a darling of a little solar system, every earth of which is pregnant with several Shakespeares. What if all of them made as much racket as you!
“In truth, you fidget even more than those diabolical corals that have built you a continent before you have time to turn round.
“Don’t cling. Let yourself go. Yesterday, your mother, the Moneron, gave birth to you. Little imp! And here you are, already, finishing, dissolving the bones of your great-grand-nephews under frozen ground denuded of humans.
“Anyway, it happens. It’s all the same to me. Worlds: born, live, die, engender in dying. Shivers. Smoke. Scoria. There’s me, who breathes and rolls, incessantly, forever—forever, you hear?—there’ll be me.
“There is no nothingness.
“There is no Creator.
“There is no individual.
“There is no repose.
“There is me, the eternal oven, God and slave-laborer, me and my sweat, each bitter drop of which contains a world of worlds and of suffering.
“But it’s already wiped away.
“Whose turn is it now?”
Notes
1 Available in a Black Coat Press edition as The Centaurs, ISBN 9781612271842.
2 The preface to the 1921 edition of Les Centaures is included in the Black Coat Press translation; that volume also contains an introduction offering a brief account of Lichtenberger’s life and career, whose details it would be superfluous to repeat here.
3 Available in a Black Coat Press edition. as Ouha, King of the Apes, ISBN 9781612271156.
4 Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse was a French naval officer appointed in 1785 by Louis XVI’s Minister of Marine to lead an expedition to continue and supplement the Pacific explorations of Bougainville and James Cook, drawing up maps, opening up communications and collecting specimens for scientific research, before completing a circumnavigation of the world. The young Napoléon Bonaparte applied to go on the voyage but was not accepted—a decision that probably changed history, as is wryly and obliquely acknowledged by an unobtrusive detail in Lichtenberger’s plot. La Pérouse sent back the documents relating to the early phases of his voyage when he repaired and resupplied his ships at Botany Bay in 1788, but they disappeared after setting off to carry out further explorations in March of that year. It was not until 1826 that wreckage of the ships was discovered on the coral atoll of Vanikoro; some of the artifacts were returned to France by Jules Dumont-d’Urville, who called at Vanikoro during the second of his three expeditions to the region.
5 The ornithorhynchus is nowadays better known as the duck-billed platypus.
6 In the language of Samoa, Atua means “god,” and the term is often used as a plural to refer to the gods of Polynesian peoples in general, so Lichtenberger’s appropriation of the term is highly idiosyncratic. Rahuo is an improvisation, as is the rest of the mythology of the Oyas, although it contains obvious echoes of actual Polynesian mythologies.
7 The final couplet is this version of the song, repeated three times, is Sang fait du sang,/Kroum est vivant [Blood makes blood; Kroum is alive]. The former line is not invariable in later renderings, however, when lines encouraging the use of such rhymes as “revive,” “arrive” and “survive” are used; given their general propriety in the context of the plot it seemed reasonable to use them here as well, in the absence of any rhymed improvisation closer in significance to “blood makes blood.”
8 The reference is to a light opera by Jacques Offenbach, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867). The eponymous anti-heroine is a tyrant used to having all her whims satisfied; her chamberlain, Baron Puck, starts a war simply to amuse her. The metaphorical relevance to the present text probably ends there, but it might be worth noting that the Duchess, chastened as a result of her erotic misadventures, eventually formulates a famous line whose approximate translation is “if you can’t have the one you love, you might as well love the one you can have.”
9 The term anthropopithecus, originally suggested as a generic label for the chimpanzee, was appropriated by various commentators to describe the “Java man” whose fossil remains were discovered by Eugène Dubois in 1891. Lichtenberger is careful not to name the island on which Klagenmeyer is working or to attribute any identifiable terms to its geography, but he obviously has Java man—widely advertised at the time as Ernst Haeckel’s hypothetical “missing link” between humans and apes—in mind in constructing this element of the story.
10 Like the term “missing link”—and, indeed, closely akin to it—the concept of the Moneron, a hypothetical primal living entity, is due to Ernst Haeckel. Lichtenberger, whose brother was a professor of German literature at the University of Paris, was probably directly acquainted with Haeckel’s work, but it is possible, given certain other significant echoes (including the ornithorhynchus) that he has taken some inspiration from Louis Boussenard’s Vernian fantasy Les Secrets de Monsieur Synthèse (1888; available in a Black Coat Press edition as Monsieur Synthesis, ISBN 9781612271613), which is set in the Coral Sea and makes much of Haeckel’s evolutionary theories, waxing lyrical on the subject of the Moneron.
11 The Murray Reef, off the shore of Australia, was a frequent site of shipwrecks in the late nineteenth-century, but the “Murray Bank” featured in the story is an improvisation—similarly named, one presumes, after Sir John Murray (1841-1914), the oceanographer who proposed a theory of coral reef formation in 1880.
12 The light cruiser SMS Emden, the first of three ships to bear that name, harried Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean in the early months of the Great War, sinking two allied warships and numerous merchant vessels before being run aground after engaging the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney in the so-called Battle of Cocos in November 1914.
13 Albert I of Monaco (1848-1922) developed a keen interest in oceanography and palaeontology, and made a significant contribution to the former science in the latter decades of the 19th century.
14 Tarteiffle [sic] is an Alsatian curse—a corruption of “Der Teufel” [The Devil]—used with sufficient frequency in 19th-century French drama to be familiar in Paris, although it is slightly surprising to hear Klagenmeyer employing it.
15 Rarahu is the Tahitian heroine of Le Mariage de Loti (1880), a quasi-autobiographical novel by “Pierre Loti” (Julien Viaud), which made the author famous.
16 i.e. a Parisian, Paris having been given the nickname Pantin [puppet], corrupted by argot into Pantruche.
17 The Parisian district of Ménilmontant, its name transformed by argot.
18 In chapter 19 of Jules Verne’s Vingt milles lieues sous les mers (tr. as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea).
19 Action Française was a far-right newspaper edited by Léon Daudet, a writer with whom Lichtenberger had probably been a
cquainted while Daudet was still at the heart of the Republican movement and Lichtenberger was active in the same circles, before Daudet converted to reactionary opinions and Lichtenberger surrendered to disenchantment.
20 Guillaume Thomas Raynal (1713-1796) compiled and published the four-volume Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (1770), with substantial contributions by Diderot and Holbach; it became a key document of the Enlightenment because of its strident championship of democracy. Although initially unsigned, the association of the text with its principal author could not be concealed, and he went into exile when the book was burned by the public executioner.
21 One of Lichtenberger’s quirkier early works was Monsieur de Migurac ou le marquis philosophe (1903), an account of the life and ideas of a fictitious Enlightenment philosopher.
22 These data allow the internal chronology of the story to be established with some precision. Maurice Sarrail’s position as commander of the Allied forces in the so-called Macedonian theater was the subject of much controversy throughout 1916—he was eventually dismissed in December 1917—and the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire began in June 1916.
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION
02 Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm
14 G.-J. Arnaud. The Ice Company
61 Charles Asselineau. The Double Life
23 Richard Bessière. The Gardens of the Apocalypse
26 Albert Bleunard. Ever Smaller