The Givreuse Enigma

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  “Apart from a singular impression of fragility and an inconvenient weariness, no…I’m not in pain.”

  Like the young nurse, the doctor was struck by that voice, more faint than indistinct, more distant and discontinuous than weak. “It’s quite simple,” he declared. “Remember that you haven’t eaten anything for 60 hours and that you’ve lost a lot of blood. You won’t feel like that for long.” He made a discreet sign to Diane. She followed him. In the corridor, they met Louise de Bréhannes and a young man, an intern from the Quinze-Vingts.5

  “Is the other one awake too?”

  Madame de Bréhannes nodded affirmatively. “That was fated.”

  All four of them went into the chief’s den—a drab little white room with wretched chairs in each corner, sheltered from microbes and dreams.

  “It’s virtually unnecessary to question you,” said the major, with a resigned smile. “They’ve confirmed everything they said back there.”

  Louise de Bréhannes and Diane Montmaure looked at one another. “Everything,” said Louise, eventually. Diane nodded in acquiescence.

  “Is that terrible or consoling?” murmured Formental, hoarsely. “I don’t know. Here I am, open to any mysticism.”

  “Religion is sufficient!” said Louise, dryly.

  “I don’t think so,” sighed Diane. “No definite religion, at least.”

  “Nor any faith at all,” the young intern put in, softly. He had grown tall, with long arms with which he did not seem to know what to do, but which were singularly skilful. He resembled Pierre Curie. “And why invoke faith?”

  “What do you mean?” said Louise, rudely.

  “Excuse me, Madame,” he replied, bowing. “I mean that facts have always confounded the imagination. For example, however extravagant a philosopher or a storyteller might be, don’t the most humble phenomena surpass him? Nature never ceases to demonstrate that it has no regard for logic—but every time it strikes down one of our theories, we hasten to construct another. Why do you want the case of these men to be more astonishing than gravitation, magnetism or radioactivity—or even the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly?”

  “More astonishing?” replied Formental. “That’s not the issue. It’s outside.”

  “Yes, it’s outside,” sighed Diane. “It’s on another plane.”

  “Supernatural, then,” Louise specified.

  “If our plane is the only natural one—but what does that prove?”

  “Let’s see,” said the intern, softly. “It is, however, certainly happening among us, with the most striking evidence and in the domain most accessible to our senses. We have no need of a microscope, as for bacteria. We have no need of hypotheses, as in the case of atoms. They’re here, perfectly visible, in flesh and blood.”

  “But much more inexplicable than a thousand invisible things,” Formental added.

  “Presently inexplicable!” the young man insisted.

  “Come on!” exclaimed the major, with a hint of anger. “They’re not twins; their identity-papers make them one and the same person. Their wounds are identical; the soldiers in their regiment only know one Givreuse.”

  “Their combined weight makes up the weight of a single man,” Diane added, vehemently.

  “And who knows whether they might not be twins all the same?” said the aide. “Perhaps one of the sets of identity-papers is a duplicate and only one of the men has served in the regiment. A novelist could arrange that story—I can already see three or four ways to do it. It might be that they know one another and don’t want to say, or that they’ve forgotten as a result of the shock, or that they don’t know one another and someone—an enemy or a mysterious friend—has intervened, or that only one of the two knows the other… Note that it’s not even necessary for them to be twins—in which case one can have recourse to other conjectures. With imagination, it can all be resolved…”

  “But not the identity of the wounds.”

  “There, we have recourse to another set of explanations. Those who have studied the calculus of probabilities admit all coincidences as possibilities. In the trillions of trillions of millennia that our nebula has existed, why should there not be one occasion on which, not merely two men, but two twins, are wounded in the same fashion on the same battlefield. It’s infinitely improbable…but it’s not impossible.”

  “What about the weight?”

  “There are men whose weight is low in proportion to their height…men who weigh very little, that’s all.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Both of them. Their resemblance virtually demands it.”

  “It’s the most awkward paradox!” declared Madame de Bréhannes, stubbornly.

  “I agree, Madame. The truth doubtless lies elsewhere—but the paradox gives a direction to thought.”

  Formental was scarcely listening. All speech seemed to him to be illusory. He was prey to facts; they drew him towards unknown realities. Finally, he heard the words: “We have to confront them with one another!”

  “That’s not difficult,” said Louise.

  “Oh, really? What about the mental effect?”

  “I think they’ll take it marvelously.”

  “Me too!” said Diane, timidly.

  “You’re very reckless,” groaned the doctor. He looked through the window at a mild and modest landscape descending to the river. In the distance, exceedingly tall and slender poplars were shaking beneath slate-colored clouds. The plants were dying, their exhausted flowers hanging down on their stalks. Three recently-sheared sheep were grazing miserably. An old donkey raised its head, like a moth-eaten pullover.

  “Please don’t interrogate them any further as to their origins,” Formental said, finally. “And above all, don’t distress them with any insinuations. Their nervous state is good, but I believe they’re very weak…”

  IV.

  The Givreuses’ health was restored with surprising rapidity. They had no more fever; their wounds healed well and they manifested an avid appetite, which Formental allowed them to satisfy. They remained very thin, though. Their cheeks were hollow, their hands seemed almost translucent and the thinness of their eyelids was slightly bizarre—one might have thought they were eglantine petals.

  “They’re not getting any fatter,” the intern remarked, one morning. “If they were weighed…”

  Formental agreed to that. Charles brought his American balance to the bedside of the first Givreuse.

  “40 kilos, 110 grams,” he announced. “That’s amazing. I would have thought that he’d actually got thinner.”

  Formental and Diane Montmaure looked at one another. They had thought the same as Charles. “In that case,” the doctor stammered, “his density must have increased.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Diane replied.

  After a moment’s pause, however, the wounded man asked anxiously: “40 kilos! You don’t mean that that’s what I weigh?”

  “40 kilos, 110 or 111 grams—yes, that’s it exactly. There’s no mistake.”

  “Go on!” said the other, with a hint of agitation. “That’s not possible. Before I left I weighed 73 kilograms.”

  There was a long silence. Formental’s head slumped on to his breast. Then he whispered: “It’s even more peculiar!”

  An almost identical scene unfolded with the other wounded man. He too now weighed about 40 kilograms, and he too claimed to have weighed 73 at the time of his mobilization.

  Formental resolved then to risk a confrontation—which the state of the wounded men seemed to permit, their sensitivity being moderate, or less than moderate. In a sense, they were already prepared for it. Each of them knew, from what Madame de Bréhannes and Diane Montmaure had said, that he had a double of some sort. Gradual confidences had ended up preparing them for a singular scene.

  The scene in question took place at about 4 p.m., the time that Formental judged to be the most favorable. The two Givreuses waited for the introduction impatiently, but there was nothing
extreme in their impatience; their nervous excitation remained less than average.

  They were brought to the doctor’s office almost simultaneously.

  They studied one another profoundly. Their breasts were visibly palpitating. Their eyes, habitually slightly lackluster, filled with a joyous gleam. Their emotion was unexpectedly obvious; there was nothing restrained about it; it resembled a sort of ecstasy.

  Their hands came together spontaneously.

  “Do you know one another, then?” asked Louise de Bréhannes.

  “We’ve never seen one another before,” they replied, in unison, “and yet…”

  “Which of you is Edouard-Henri-Pierre Givreuse, born in Avranches in 1889?” asked the major, anxiously.

  “It’s me!” they both said. Only then did they seem astonished.

  “Surely only one of you left with the nth regiment,” said Formental.

  When they both acquiesced, Diane intervened. “Where did you go first?” she asked the first Givreuse.

  “To Montargis,” he replied. “I arrived in the morning.”

  “An immense column went up to the barracks,” continued the other.

  “The enthusiasm was fearful…”

  They stopped; their entire manner testified to an intense perplexity, but also the most ardent sympathy.

  “And you left from Avranches?” asked Louise.

  “Yes,” they said, together. Both then added: “I stopped off in Paris.”

  “At a hotel?”

  “No, in my own house.”

  “Wait!” said Formental. “It would be better if you took turns to speak. I’ll alternate the questions. Where do you reside in Paris?”

  “15 Rue Cimarosa.”

  “What floor?”

  “My mother and I live in a town house.”

  “Where did you eat on the last night?”

  “At the Carlton.”

  “How did you get to the railway station?”

  “I took a fiacre, for lack of a motor taxi.”

  “What time did you board?”

  “10:20 p.m.”

  “Do you have any particular memory of your stay in Paris?”

  “Yes. As I was coming back from the Carlton, two young women gave me flowers.”

  The doctor had alternated the questions rigorously. “Are you in agreement?” he asked, in a tremulous voice.

  “Yes.”

  The same shiver seemed to run through all the witnesses; the two soldiers were almost tranquil.

  “Very well!” Formental exclaimed, feverishly. “What do you think of your adventure yourselves?”

  The one to whom he had turned replied: “It ought to confuse me…and yet, in a strange way, it corresponds to something mysterious within me. Without being able to explain how or why, I have a profound feeling that some extraordinary event has fractured the unity of my being. A part of myself is outside me!”

  The other listened, as if he were listening to the echo of his own voice. “A part of my being is in you,” he said.

  The doctor took out his watch and observed that the confrontation had lasted much longer than he had anticipated. “I hope this hasn’t tired you?” he said, with a hint of remorse.

  The wounded men smiled gravely. “It’s rested us. We’re much stronger and we feel better.”

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t continue any longer, though,” Formental replied, anxiously.

  They lowered their heads. The intern pressed a button controlling an electric bell. Two male nurses came in and, in response to the major’s instruction, took away one of the wounded men.

  Half a minute went by. “Ah!” sighed the other. “The tiredness! It had disappeared…but it’s come down on me again like a block of stone. Everything’s slowed down… everything’s nebulous and sinister…” One might have thought that he had diminished. His eyes were hollow; a tragic pallor invaded his cheeks. He went on: “He has taken away my strength. Doctor, don’t leave me without the other one. I’m certain of it now—without him, my life is fragmentary…”

  “I was sure of it!” stammered Diane Montmaure.

  The door opened. The intern, who had accompanied the wounded man, came in excitedly. “He’s complaining out there—he claims that without his…fellow…he has no more strength and is suffering.”

  Formental put his hand over his eyes. His lips moved, but nothing audible emerged save for an incomprehensible whisper. Finally, he said: “We must yield to their wishes; they know better than we do what they need.”

  “Lead us not into temptation,” murmured Louise de Bréhannes, “but deliver us from evil. So must it be.”

  V.

  Augustin de Rougeterre was standing under his English oak-tree in his garden in the Rue Malakoff. The oak had lived there through the reigns of kings, the First Republic and the Empire, directly descendant—along with other oaks, over thousands of years—from a forest in Celtic Gaul. It was alone now. It was 700 years old. Its hollows resembled caverns; its bark was like the hide of an old rhinoceros; 20 branches, as thick as trunks, produced myriads of tremulous leaves.

  Comte Augustin loved that tree. On stormy nights, he thought he could hear the clamoring of knights and men-at-arms departing for battle, or the voices of ancient bagpipes. He was a bitter, taciturn and pious man. He had fought in wars, on the veldt and the savannah, in the marshes and the mountains—but in August, having wanted to return to harness, he had been betrayed by his infirmities.

  As the daylight faded, he was daydreaming fervently. Le Temps and Les Débats lay at his feet. Between August 20 and the Marne he had almost died of rage and hatred. Then magnificent fables had renewed his vigor. This evening, he was as ardent and as melancholy as the clouds of fire and smoke that hid the setting Sun. He did not understand this war. It was covered in an execrable fog; it buried heroism in its caverns, it revealed enemies more abject than the Niam-Niams or the Flathead Indians.

  Le Temps reported favorably. Augustin de Rougeterre made the sign of the cross and said, in a low voice: “Rise up, Lord, in Thy wrath; show Thy power against our enemies. May the evil that they do be returned to them, and their injustice fall upon their own heads.” His hands were pressed together; memories of his youth awakened with the prayer.

  Then he took a letter from his pocket and re-read it. “What does this signify? Has Pierre gone mad? Or has he written to me while delirious?” He sat down on a porphyry bench and fell back into his torment. The crepuscular clouds passed slowly over the oak-tree.

  A servant appeared, carrying a card. “All right! I’m coming!” Augustin got up and marched stiffly toward the house.

  Two soldiers were waiting for him in the reception room. He made an abrupt gesture, then became paralyzed, his eyes fixed upon the visitors. Each of them was the perfect image of the other, and their image was that of Pierre de Givreuse. A sensation, almost of terror, passed over the old man. In a hoarse voice, he said: “Which of you is my nephew?”

  The soldiers exchanged a glance; one of them replied: “We both believe ourselves to be Pierre de Givreuse.”

  The Comte started in amazement, with a hint of anger. “Is this some trick?” he exclaimed. “The timing is abominably bad.”

  “Alas, it’s the profoundest truth,” said the one who had not yet spoken.

  Their voices were as similar as their faces. Rougeterre was gripped by a sudden anguish; his temples were covered in sweat. His was a violent soul, in which sentiments emerged wholly formed. At that moment he did not know what to think or believe; the supernatural came in through open windows.

  “So,” he said, “each of you imagines himself to be Pierre de Givreuse. But you cannot doubt, any more than I can, that one of you is the victim of an illusion?”

  They lowered their eyes and made no reply.

  “You can’t possibly doubt it!” Augustin affirmed, with anguish and indignation.

  The one who had spoken first said, in a low tone: “We doubt it!”

  This reply exas
perated the old man. “One may doubt anything, except the word of God. One cannot doubt the identity of things. There are two of you? You don’t deny that there are two of you?” He was trembling with excitement, rebellion and mystic dread.

  “We believe that we’re two…we aren’t sure.”

  Haggard and wild-eyed, Rougeterre remained silent for an interminable interval. His lips were blanched, his cheeks were quivering. Finally, he stammered: “If this is a trial, O my Lord, have pity on me. I have a contrite and humble heart. Do not abandon me to the snares of the One who has tempted us all since the first woman!” Then, passing his hand over his face, he regained a measure of self-possession. “There’s a logic even in the supernatural,” he said. “If your minds haven’t gone astray, you must be certain that you are quite distinct from one another.”

  “We can see perfectly well,” replied the one who was further away from the old man, “that there are two of us—but we also know that our past life is common to us both. We’ve talked to one another at length. Our memories coincide, without any kind of exception, except from the moment when we woke up in the field-hospital at Viorne. Interrogate us separately regarding our childhood and youth…compare your memories with ours…and you will be convinced, as we are, that nothing that has happened to one of us is foreign to the other. Nothing! The duality has only lasted for a few weeks. With respect to everything that happened at Viorne and Gavres, and the incidents of our journey together from Gavres to Paris, our personalities are certainly distinct—with one reservation, however. That is that we only have the full complement of our strength and our faculties when we’re together. As soon as we’re separated, we become weak; the timbre of our voices changes; our memories are less certain, our thoughts less vivid and less complete; our sensibility is attenuated, our sight and hearing less clear…”