The Givreuse Enigma

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  The thorny bushes and the sly lianas pierce you with hundreds of darts or strangle you like reptiles; the marshy ground gives way under foot, covering you with a stagnant and fetid mud in which disgusting creatures swarm…

  The Amdavas, the Sumatrans, the giant, the Grafina and Karel cleared a passage with hatchets or knives, instinctively finding the least obstructed paths. Sometimes, the tropical forest thinned out; then the march became comfortable, and life would have been tolerable without the inexhaustible multitude of the true kings of the jungle, who will probably see the end of man.

  Finally, they reached less awkward terrain. The plain was dominant, the forests became practicable. They reached the region where the catastrophe had occurred: the tumultuous river that had carried away the Carabao-Men’s raft, the circle of rocks where the caravan had camped, and, on the other bank, the Red Forest, full of wild beasts.

  Frédéric relived the fatal hours: the rapid dusk, the siamangs howling in the branches, the fearful beasts whose least imprudence would deliver them to the teeth of carnivores, the crocodiles sleeping on the islet, like rough tree-trunks…

  “Oh, what troubles we have cost you,” the young man said to Louise. “What perils you have run for us! And those poor fellows who perished…”

  “It’s necessary to regret nothing,” she replied. “We’re all accustomed to adventure. Who knows whether we might not have run as many risks staying at home, and our savage friends by remaining in their forest? Death is always ready to devour us. We have been lucky—that’s all that needs to be said!”

  “Evening’s approaching,” said Dirk, at that moment. “I propose that we camp here. Then it will be time to settle our accounts with the Amdavas.”

  They summoned the leaders, and Karel spoke to them.

  “Chief of the Amdavas, your warriors have been braver than tigers; once more you have shown that your oaths are as solid as the rocks. The recompense we have promised you is inferior to your merits, and we also wish to give you a ransom for your dead.”

  “Do not pay us for our dead!” the chief replied, proudly. “Did we not depart for battle? Did those who died not know that they were risking their lives? They did not hesitate!”

  “We know your pride, Amdavas. It is not payment that we are offering you; it is a gift from friends, and it would hurt us if you refused it.”

  “A gift from a friend warms the heart,” said the chief. “We can accept.”

  “We promised you a rifle for each warrior, 100 cartridges and 25 guilder. In addition, we offer each of you a revolver with 100 bullets and 50 guilder. It will take us a fortnight to fulfill our promises.”

  The leaders’ eyes sparkled with joy. “The tall whites are generous,” said the chief. “The Amdavas will come whenever they are called, always ready for battle!”

  “They’re men, in spite of their short stature,” said the planter, when they had gone. “Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

  “I know what I owe them,” said Frédéric, “and I won’t forget—and you certainly won’t oppose my repaying that small debt.”

  “It’s us who must do that,” said the Grafina. “We are responsible for our guests—but it will be done, Monsieur, as you desire.”

  She smiled; he admired her red lips and large eyes of black fire passionately.

  The siamangs were howling frightfully on the other bank; furtive beasts were passing by; the diurnal insects were going to sleep, while their nocturnal kin were beginning to hum, and the twilight faded rapidly. As on the evening before the embarkation, Karel contemplated the pale and charming face of Corisande, while the giant fruit-bats and the moths fluttered around the red fires…

  Epilogue

  “Another season gone already,” Frédéric murmured, as the morning Sun rose above the summits.

  Dirk’s domain, distributed along the large valley as far as the eye could see, extended to the foothills of the mountains. The young man examined the papers, in which human chimeras mingled with phantasmagorical realities. Beneath the formulas as dry as algebraic theorems, they assured the Rouveyres a specious territory and mineral deposits for which an agreement with the Anglo-Dutch Mining Company had just been concluded.

  “A strange power!” muttered Frédéric. “Almost imponderable...but which confers as much wealth upon us as a duchy or an earldom conferred on a powerful Medieval lord. What have we done to merit that enormous privilege? The organization that assures us of it rules over us like the weather. It’s necessary, according to circumstance, to resign oneself to misery or a fortune—two faces of the same fatality!”

  As he completed this soliloquy, he saw Corisande approaching. She wore the tragic expression that he had seen on her face for months. Horror persisted within her like a monstrous beast.

  “My dear sister,” Frédéric said to her, “you don’t have the right to be unhappy any longer.”

  “What can I do about it? If I were ill, would you reproach me for my sickness?”

  “Yes, if you were to refuse the cure, and that’s what you’re doing. I’ve suffered as much as you from…the adventure—but in the end, the memory of it must be banished.”

  “Am I not to be reckoned dishonored?”

  “No one here believes that! Certainly not the master, nor Karel, nor Hendrik…nor the Grafina either. They all feel sorry for you, yes, but for them, none of that matters any more. They hold you in full esteem!” After a pause he continued, almost timidly: “You’ve told me, Corisande, that life in this country wouldn’t displease you any more than life back home. I need to be sure of that.”

  “You can be.”

  “Have you really thought about it?”

  “So much that it’s futile to think about it any more.”

  “I’m afraid of being selfish—for I, personally, love this country.”

  “Then I shall love it too, Frédéric. What does it matter to me? The place where you live will be the one I prefer.”

  “All the same, Corisande…”

  “That’s the way it is,” she said, with a gesture of impatience. “Besides, there’s nowhere I’d be better off than among these brave folk.”

  She sat down, and looked sadly at the conclave of mountains.

  Two buffaloes were dragging an antique cart with solid wheels, laden with sugar cane. Frédéric loved the composure of those beasts, which could stand up to tigers and which men had not completely tamed. He admired their formidable hindquarters, and their muscles, almost as powerful as those of a rhinoceros.

  Nature has certainly gone to as much trouble to produce them as the paltry Malay who is leading them! he thought. They’re certainly more handsome than he is—nevertheless, that frail animal is leading them!

  A horseman appeared, mounted on a bad-tempered animal, still untamed, but which he mastered nevertheless. The beast was even more handsome than the buffaloes, with a noble conformation and wild eyes, but the man, solidly planted, lithe and audacious, with the sure gestures of a conqueror, also had his beauty.

  “Look,” said Frédéric. “Look, Corisande…”

  Corisande looked, indifferently, at Karel de Ridder, whose horse, after an attempt at rebellion, yielded to its master.

  “Is it possible that you can’t see anything, Corisande? If you could love that man—and I believe that he belongs to the finest human race—you would be saved…saved from your intimate enemy: yourself.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would I be saved if I loved Karel?”

  “Blind woman! By virtue of retreating into yourself, you’ve lost all your feminine intuition! Otherwise, you’d have seen that that man loves you as few men know how to love, with an admirable discretion and a constancy that, I feel certain, will never waver. You haven’t even noticed that he’s learned our language in three months…and that he speaks it as well now as his brother Hendrik.”

  Corisande listened, tremulously. She was a traveler lost in the darkness of a carnivorous forest, who glimps
es the glimmer of dawn. Obscure hopes rose up in migratory swarms.

  “Love me!” she whispered. “It’s possible, then, for someone to love me?”

  “Is it possible! For Karel, as for me, you have never ceased to be the purest of women, and I’m certain that your very unhappiness is a reason for him to respect you more. I’ve observed him, and observed him closely, while you’ve been living and suffering entirely within yourself. He’s a soul without pettiness…”

  She looked avidly at the bold rider; the impetuous beast, whose fury he was dominating, carried him away. Already, he was transfigured in the eyes of the young woman—already, because reaction has to be as rapid as the suffering has been violent. Corisande mingled images of a new life with the image of the man…

  “Are you sure?” she murmured. “Are you sure you’re not mistaken?”

  “I’m perfectly sure. He has admitted it to me!”

  She raised her eyes toward her brother, and on that hollow face, still bearing the full imprint of her long suffering, the first smile appeared.

  She will get better, Frédéric said to himself. And he thought about his own adventure.

  The Grafina, who had arrived that evening, was to spend a week with Dirk. She had come on horseback, only accompanied by Rak and her favorite dogs.

  Frédéric did not see her until the evening meal, by the light of electric lamps powered by the nearby torrent. She had changed out of her riding costume and seemed comparable to luxuriously beautiful young women carried off by the conquistadors or the lords of the Sierra. Frédéric scarcely dared to look at her, and when she took him by the arm after the meal, he was gripped by a great anxiety.

  “Aren’t you weary yet of living on our island?” she said to him, in a soft contralto voice.

  “I’ll never be weary of it.”

  “Ah! You think so? It’s true that you have an admirable host. Would you like to take a short walk with me in the clear night? I have more than one thing to ask you.”

  As they went out, she unsheathed her carbine. “A tiger has been seen prowling around Eagle Rock.”

  He armed himself too.

  “Karel tells me,” she said, “that you’re on your way to becoming a great marksman.”

  “I wouldn’t miss a horse at ten paces!” he replied, laughing.

  A sparkling Moon was making its way through the constellations. Beyond the pastures and the plantations, the mountains displayed their deserted slopes in the nocturnal glow, red and pitted, eroded by the weather: the skeletal peaks, the fissures of its valleys, the gulfs through which torrents ran, the forests and pastures suspended on the ruinous slopes, the caverns and the crenellations, the colossal pillars, the extinct craters ready to resume their devastating life, the pyramids the needles, the cathedral spires, the plateaus, the glaciers and the moraines—a splendid and funereal world, where plants battled hectically, obstinate in the creation of that life which makes foliage and flowers of the mineral, and flesh of the flowers and foliage…

  Louise de Gavres and Frédéric drew away into the solitude, accompanied by the dog Vos. She questioned him and gave him advice, and when they went into the wilderness, she asked: “You know, don’t you, that Karel is in love with Mademoiselle de Rouveyres?”

  “Yes,” he replied, “and she knows it, since this morning. And I think…I believe that she will be healed.”

  A forest extended before them, but in the foreground, the trees were sparse; the axe had made considerable inroads, with the result that the strollers found themselves in a sort of clearing, where the waters of a stream raised their naiad voices.

  “Yes,” he went on, in a tremulous voice, “I believe she’ll be healed. Hope has entered into her, and the hope will create love.”

  “All is well!” said the Grafina.

  “All is well,” he sighed. “I’ve received more than I deserve!”

  “There is no merit in nature,” she murmured, “and there’s little enough among men. Everything is given to us. Have we constructed our bodies and fashioned our minds? Our privileges and disgraces are already commenced with them!”

  The dog Vos growled dully and raised his intelligent head toward his mistress.

  “A powerful beast, isn’t it, Vos?” she said, passing her hand over his tawny head. “If not, you would have leapt forward. Is it the tiger?”

  The growling resumed, and extended, the dog’s eyes staring into the Grafina’s.

  “It’s the tiger!” She seized her carbine, immediately imitated by Frédéric. “I fear,” she said, “that I haven’t acted wisely in making you run this risk.”

  Frédéric’s heart was beating with excitement, not with dread. “Ah!” he whispered. “If there’s a risk, how glad I am to be running it with you.”

  She turned her gaze of shadow and fire toward him, keenly. “Is that true?”

  “How true it is! All my being…”

  A monstrous head had just appeared among the ferns, in which two phosphorus fires gleamed: the ancient ruler of the jungle!

  Involuntarily, Frédéric stopped speaking. The tiger was looking at him with the gaze that it directed at prey.

  “Had we not received all the gifts of the spirit,” said Louise, “at this moment, without our rifles, we would be poor creatures, less than wild boars…how handsome it is!”

  The tiger had taken three steps forward; now, already braced to pounce, it was watching the vertical silhouettes.

  “I’d like to spare it!” Louise went on. “That would, however, cost the forest dear, and might perhaps cost our friends dear. Count up the deer, boar, tapirs, buffaloes and siamangs it must kill in a year! Count up the beautiful lives that must end to feed its own…all the creatures it devours! But it’s so beautiful! If it goes away, I’ll spare it.”

  In the silvery moonlight, the huge orange body striped with black, the massive paws, the granite head with green beacons and the dagger-like canines appeared even more magnificent than terrible.

  You would have thought that it was hesitating. Perhaps it was surprised to see that these pale creatures, whose odor was reminiscent of siamangs, were not attempting to flee—but it had seen hypnotized prey more than once, and it was only fearful of some trick…not a trick of combat, but a trick of flight.

  Suddenly, it rose up with a terrible bound, of some 30 feet. With a second bound, it would fall on Frédéric or Louise.

  Both rifles barked twice. With a harsh cry, the sovereign beast twisted in the air and fell, almost at the feet of the young couple.

  The Grafina examined it silently with the eye of a huntress.

  “Your bullets hit the target!” she said. “That’s very good!” Her own had drilled into the tiger’s skull. “It knew nothing but force,” she went on, sadly.

  She shook her head, her black eyes fixing once again on Frédéric’s eyes. In a soft voice, she said: “Tell me what you haven’t dared to tell me.”

  There was no longer anything there but a beautiful human woman. Trembling, Frédéric murmured the ancient word by which we magnify the instinct that will vanquish death, until the day when all life on Earth is extinct.

  Afterword

  Little comment needs to be added here with regard to “Mary’s Garden,” although the calculatedly oblique assertion that “there are no other worlds” and the corollary remark that “all this is in contact” invite some expansion.

  In Camille Flammarion’s accounts of the human relationship with the stars, the souls of human beings become free after death to wander through the infinite reaches of space, no longer constrained by the limiting velocity of light, and may be reincarnated on other worlds in alien material forms, some of which belong to other “realms” than the animal and the vegetable. Rosny had no sympathy with Flammarion’s Spiritualist faith, and could not believe in that sort of reincarnation, but he was attracted to the notion that the observable universe did form some kind of a whole, bound together by a “planetary physiology” operating through forces much
less limited in scope and velocity than gravity and electromagnetism. If that notion, as expressed in “The Skeptical Legend” and “Mary’s Garden,” tends toward a vision of Unity, it was one he soon repudiated in favor of a calculated Pluralism that extrapolated the notion that “all this is in contact” in a new and unusual fashion, imagining a plenary universe comprised of many different sorts of matter, which do not normally interact with one another—and are therefore imperceptible to any conscious observers they might generate—although rare interactions, and hence perceptions, may occasionally become possible.

  Accounts of such interactions are featured in “The Cataclysm” and “The Mysterious Force” (both in vol. 2), the latter featuring resultant phenomena that include a curious local “duplication” of sectors of the electromagnetic spectrum. That notion is akin to the notion of “atomic bipartition” that provides “The Givreuse Enigma” with its fundamental speculative hypothesis. One of the footnotes in the latter story points out that some such hypothesis might be used as a basis for a theory of immortality not unlike the one adopted by Spiritualists, but markedly different in its extrapolative complications by virtue of being purely materialistic. What the author did not point out is that it might also give rise to a theory of “universal reproduction,” by which entire complexes of matter might undergo a kind of binary fission.

  In “The Givreuse Enigma,” the bipartition has to be a relatively simple and straightforward matter, in order that one person might become two in a perceptible manner, but there is no need for it to be so simple; once the hypothesis has been formed of a plenary “fourth universe” in which “emptiness” is an illusion of the senses—and Rosny had formed a version of that hypothesis long before writing “L’Enigme de Givreuse”—then the possibilities of atomic bipartition can easily be extended to the notion that such a bipartition might produce exotic matter rather than ordinary matter. If such an adjustment is made, then the “cosmic physiology” of the fourth universe may be complicated by new notions of growth and evolution. Rosny never went on to do that—although he certainly complicated the kinds of intermaterial interaction that he was prepared to envisage in “In the World of the Variants” (in vol. 2)—but there is no reason why other speculators should not.