The Germans on Venus Page 6

  “This little difficulty, which naturally injected a certain obscurity into our conversation, prevented me from making them understand clearly how I had succeeded in getting out of the tight spot in which they had found me, but they seemed so enthusiastic to honor that difficult operation, in which I saw no great inconvenience, that I gladly abandoned the attempt to compose an autoptic description for them. I consented, therefore, to the frenetic acclamations of a great crowd of Patagons, who had lined all the streets along their route—to which welcome they deigned to respond with proudly modest benevolence, smiling graciously to the left and the right, to the extent that I came very close myself to believing in the efficacy of the help that they had been taking me. In any case, I was too well-accustomed, and had been for a long time, to the traditions and customs of academies, not to do likewise.

  “I was conducted in this fashion—triumphantly, so to speak—to the palace of the Supreme Consistory, where I was deposited, like an object of curiosity put on display, on the Architrichlin’s green baize: a solemnity much more flattering for its object than for one who is always sure of the approbation of a Patagon audience—for these people are essentially admiring, by virtue of their great innocence.”

  “The innocence of the Patagons is all very well, but I’m not without anxiety regarding the anthropological section. They must have wanted to have you stuffed.”

  “There was no question of that for the moment, Divine Manifafa! The Great Architrichlin made a speech tailored to the Patagon audience, whose galleries were overflowing, which did not at first enlighten me as to the difficulties of that philosophical language. I had a great deal of difficulty distinguishing between the apheresis, the dieresis and the synthesis, getting past the apocope and the syncope, struggling with the contraction, making sense of the syllables and the euphony, invoking the conciliatory paragogy in which to take refuge from the tenebrous anagogy, and I could not, no matter how hard I tried, catch up with my radicals. Wise and savant Edwards,26 if only you had been there!

  “Eventually, the frequent repetition of a locution in which I had captured in passing the mystical metathesis suddenly revealed to me that this beautiful and erudite idiom was quite simply the native patois of Villeneuve-le-Guyard, where I was born, but elegantly inverted in the order of the disposition of the letters, in the manner of a boustrophedon,27 to which I had had the good fortune to have initiated myself in my early youth, by reading signs backwards—which meant that, within a moment, I had as much mastery as the most experienced linguist of all the delicacies of the hieratic language in use in the isle of the Patagons. I therefore began speaking after the Architrichin, with an easy confidence that astonished everyone—and the due reserve that modesty imposes upon historians who are speaking about themselves cannot make me keep my mouth shut regarding the prodigious effect of my speech, since the results of that inaugural session still made themselves felt after 10,000 years of my short life.

  “The thunderous applause that followed my harangue disconcerted me to such a degree that I remained as if enraptured between the four candles on the demonstration table—to the extent that that an idiotic savant, who was fulfilling the functions of a majordomo, was dispatched to the chemistry section to fetch a soothing spirituous beverage, of which they make use themselves on similar occasions instead of sugared water, to calm the senses of an orator during the heat of enthusiasm and the hullabaloo of applause.

  “I only took a drop of it, but I had scarcely finished downing the potion when, instead of impressing on my physiognomy the tonic and hilarifying influence of a salutary liquor, I was seized by a frightful spasmodic yawning, which immediately caused all the spectators to judge—as was only too true—that I had just fallen victim to a philosopher’s mistake. It is necessary to tell you, moreover, that philosophers’ mistakes are even more dangerous than an apothecary’s mistake. The Architrichlin made haste to check the suspect phial, and he had no need to go any further than the label to say, expansively: ‘A fatal and irreparable mistake has been made. It isn’t the water of health and rejoicing that has just been administered to our beloved colleague—it’s the water of eternal sleep!’

  “ ‘Eternal sleep!’ I cried—to the extent that one can cry out when one is yawning, while the hiatus assiduously punctuates one’s every word! ‘Eternal sleep, accursed Arichtrichlin! May the lightning strike you down, along with the entire Isle of the Patagons!’

  “ ‘Eternal isn’t strictly accurate,’ the Architrichlin put in, benignly. ‘The dose wasn’t strong enough for that. You haven’t had enough for more than 10,000 years, according to the prescription, which is calculated to perfection, and you’ll obtain a great advantage from this slight interruption to your academic work, since you’ve dedicated your life to the search for the perfect man. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll find him when you wake up.’

  “Meanwhile, I yawned with all my strength. ‘A slight interruption!’ I replied, in the most violent fit of temper that can grip a man who is falling asleep. ‘10,000 years, a slight interruption! You don’t imagine, then, pitiless Architrichlin, that I have business to take care of at home! My civil list pension is in jeopardy, for want of a certificate of life, and I was in a position to formulate a nice establishment with a rich and pretty young woman who will probably not wait for me!’

  “ ‘I dare not make you any promises with regard to her,’ the Architrichlin replied. ‘If she were here, and if she agreed to it, I could offer to put her to sleep with you; it wouldn’t cost me anything more—but that’s the only condition in which young women can await a future that has 10,000 years to sleep. It’s a petty inconvenience anyway. Good-looking as you are, you’ll easily find other mistresses, and 10,000 years pass so quickly when one’s asleep!’ ”

  “They aren’t squeamish,” said the Manifafa.

  “And having said that, the gentleman bore me away, without my being able to put up much resistance, in view of the soporific state into which their infernal specific had put me. By one corridor after another, I arrived, still yawning, in the Hall of the Oneirobes.28 That’s a local sect of sages who spend almost all their lives asleep.

  “I perceived in the blink of an eye, beneath glass bell-jars numbered in indelible ink, a number of worthy individuals who had spontaneously embraced that vocation of centuries-long sleep, whether out of disgust for the world in which they lived, or by virtue of a quite natural impatience to see another. It was, I swear to you, a perfectly select society. There were some there who were stirring already, so near were they to resuscitation. As I no longer had any need but sleep….”

  “Me neither,” said the Manifafa.

  “As I was half asleep…” Berinquet continued.

  “Me too,” said the Manifafa.

  “I wished them much pleasure, internally,” the jester went on. “I went unceremoniously into my bell jar—which covered a bed that was very comfortable, at least for a man who is asleep—and I went to sleep in a flash.”

  “Good night, Berniquet,” said the Manifafa, letting his pipe fall. “Sleep well and don’t have bad dreams.”

  “The first thing I did, when I woke up, was to look at my watch; it had stopped. When I was woken up…”

  “What? Damn it!” the Manifafa put in, arranging himself on his divan. “When you woke up, I was probably asleep! At least, if the Devil doesn’t take a hand, I can surely sleep for an hour or two during the 10,000 years that I’ve had the pleasure of granting you between the beginning and end of your long story. Not that I didn’t take a certain pleasure in it, Berniquet—I was particularly amused by the naval combat between the seahorses and the genteel saraband of the four little blue guenons. It’s really very amusing.”

  Berniquet, who had an extremely penetrating mind—as was noticeable at various points in his narration—saw clearly that the Manifafa had not been listening thus far without taking the time to have an occasional nap. “It is necessary that kings be very stupid,” he murmured, in a very low voice, �
�else they are every ill-intentioned. Here’s one with whom I’ve been discussing the most transcendent and abstruse questions of morality, philosophy and politics for an hour, and who takes advantage of such precious moments to dream about seahorses and sarabands of little monkeys!”

  “What are you muttering between your teeth, Berniquet?” cried the Manifafa. “You look as if you’re making faces at me!”

  “I thought, Divine Hurlubleu, that my expedition was worth the trouble of being recounted to its conclusion—and I intend, moreover, to make it an element of a trilogy whose title will be of some consequence to my editor. That’s what will make it a success.”

  “How scrupulous can the soul of a jester be, Berniquet? The people for whom you write are so well-accustomed to three-letter monograms that you’ll risk nothing, on my word as a Manifafa, by throwing them a four-part trilogy. They’ll see many others! For God’s sake though, Berniquet, go to sleep and let me sleep!”

  “A trilogy in four parts for a time that goes quickly! Why not?” said Berniquet, in an aside. While he reflected, biting his fists, on this new mode of composition, the sublime sovereign of Hurlubière had already snored three times. He was asleep.

  The jester lay down at full length beneath his master’s feet, to meditate more at his ease on the dignity of the species and its progressive improvement. He went to sleep.

  I, who am transcribing this with difficulty from Berniquet’s manuscripts, as 3 a.m. chimes on one clock after another, by the dying light of an oil-lamp whose price my grocer is clawing back with dishonest lawsuits, feel the quill slipping from my fingers. I’m going to sleep too.

  What about you, Madame?

  Part Two

  Leviathan the Long,

  Archikan of the Patagons of the Savant Isle

  At 6:45 a.m., Hurlubleu sneezed three times in succession. It was the signal in response to which his attentive eunuchs were accustomed to bring him his chocolate.

  Berniquet, who was lying on his back, as is usual when one is asleep—at least when one is not lying on one’s right side, or even the left—perceived that the Manifafa was no longer deigning to sleep, so he turned over on to his belly. That done, he sprang abruptly into a sitting position and resumed speaking thus: “When I woke up, Divine Manifafa—and I admit that I had a bit of a headache…”

  “Is that you, jester? 10,000 years have gone by since you were last seen! Finish, then, if you must. Tell me the rest of your adventures in detail; perhaps they’ll send me back to sleep.”

  “At first, I was as red-faced as a bell-founder to find myself alone under my bell-jar. All the other Oneirobes had departed without the accompaniment of drums and trumpets—which was a matter of indifference to me because, sleeping as I was sleeping, I wouldn’t have been able to hear them. It occurred to me that I might have been forgotten during my siesta, and I hurled myself so impatiently against the walls of my transparent prison that we both rolled along the floor. It was as well for me that it was made of a malleable, elastic and unbreakable glass invented by the Patagons, since I did myself no more harm than a man who falls out of bed wearing an excellent padded dressing-gown.

  “The savant on duty came running in response to the noise, followed by his assistants, and—after having observed from my notes that I had conscientiously completed my 10,000 years, with a small surplus—he obligingly provided me with a passport to go wherever I wished. He didn’t even demand the requisite declaration of witnesses to my identity, which I would have had difficulty procuring. In exchange, to keeps his accounts in order, I gave him a proper receipt for my person, establishing that he had delivered me to myself duly and integrally, in ossibus et cute,29 at the expiry of an interval fixed in advance at 10,000 years, healthy, safe and well-conserved—which is to say, without any apparent breakage, damage or wastage—and in working order, thanks to the expertise of the authorized conveyors, all to the general satisfaction and my own. Then I got ready to leave.

  “ ‘Wait a minute, my good man,’ he said, grabbing my by the sleeve. ‘You European doctors must know almost everything, or not far short of it.’

  “ ‘I know more than everything,’ I told him, ‘since I’m a delegate of the intellectual propaganda of perfectibility.’

  “ ‘That’s good,’ he continued. ‘We won’t ask you for that much—just whether you know medicine. It’s not a matter of drinking the sea.’

  “ ‘As much as is necessary,’ I replied, ‘to cure completely a man who is not sufficiently churlish to insist on dying. I swear to you that the physicians of my time knew no more than that.’

  “ ‘Then you’re my man. Imagine that Leviathan the Long, who is a very imposing prince—he’s more than 40 cubits tall—has promised in petto30 to have us all quartered before sunset if we haven’t brought him a physician capable of curing him. Of what, I can’t tell you: of some trifle, the tedium of some ostentatious speech, the resentment of some ill-received ordinance, a malady of the court—but we take such things very much to heart, for kings are capable of anything.’ ”

  “Take care, Berniquet. There were no physicians in that Academy of philosophers! What the Devil were they playing at that day?”

  “Perhaps they were distributing St. Michael ribbons, Divine Manifafa. I have had the honor of informing you, if I am not mistaken, that the Isle of the Patagons was extremely civilized.”

  “That’s true damn it, but I don’t think so any longer. Unfortunate Leviathan the Long: a king of 40 cubits, and not a single petty physician comes to soothe the anguish of his death, to administer the last rites!”

  “I had no sooner examined the colossal Archhikan of the Patagons than it appeared to me, pending a better opinion, that he had suffered a cut on the index-finger of his right hand.”

  “Don’t deceive yourself, Berniquet—a cut on the index-finger of the right hand causes a sharp pain that would damn a buffoon. I was often subject to them in my childhood; that’s what prevented me from learning to write.”

  “The diagnosis being sufficiently confirmed, in my opinion, by a strict autopsy…”

  “Curses!” cried Hurlubleu. “Did you really have the ferocious courage to eviscerate this Leviathan for the sake of a cut?”

  “Oh, no, milord, I’m only taking about the kind of clinical autopsy carried out on living invalids, whose investigations stop at the epidermis, while awaiting something better. I hastened, therefore, to order 80,000 hungry leeches from the helminthological section, and applied them to my patient.”

  “To your patient—I like that. He was neither more nor less than the Archikan of the Patagons—but I’ll wager that you’d forgotten one thing.”

  “I say nothing to the contrary. One often forgets something in practical medicine. But what, Divine Manifafa?”

  “A mere bagatelle—to give notice to the hereditary prince to hold himself in readiness for his enthronement. 2000 leeches a cubit! My God, what a bleeding! I shall be quite astonished, jester, if the Archikan of the Patagons lasted much longer.”

  “Bah! An Archikan is as strong as a buffalo. I assure you that his cut felt better after six months. He wasn’t able to move a hand or a foot.”

  “There’s an invalid who must have owed you a great deal, Berniquet. I like to think that he died cured.”

  “You have arrived, Divine Hurlubleu, at the most extraordinary part of my story. My invalid did not die at all. After a further 18 months of convalescence, and as many tons of analeptics, the least of which exceeded in capacity the giant cask of Heidelberg, I had the satisfaction of rendering him hale and hearty, save for a sort of hemiplegia, which badly inhibited the movements of half his body, and a rather disagreeable species of claudication, which completely prevented him from walking.”31

  “Which is to say that you had extracted him from the predicament in good order to the tune of 75%. Poor Archikan!”

  “The most honest man in the world. He sent for me in order to give me his thanks in person.”

  “Had
he lost his mind, then, this Archikan of the Patagons?”

  “Impossible, milord. No Archikan of the Patagons has ever lost his mind, or anything resembling it. ‘European doctor,’ he said to me, ‘it’s a pleasure to see you with the one eye of which we can still make use. With the intention in mind of awarding you a prize proportional to your services, and having taken advice, we have resolved in our wisdom, and for your own good, to put you discreetly back to sleep. What do you think, amiable and savant foreigner?’

  “At these formidable words, I shivered from top to toe, and my hair stood on end in terror.”

  “I imagine, Berniquet,” observed the Manifafa, “that you prostrated yourself before him and embraced his knees.”

  “I would have liked to, but there was no way to do it. I simply embraced his ankles. ‘Bright light of the world,’ I cried, ‘my emotion tells you how sensible I am of the gratitude that it pleases you to heap upon the least of your slaves, but that would not be in accord with the duties of my mission, which have been languishing far too long, and injurious to the propagation of a multitude of discoveries that ought to be turned to the glory and the profit of the human race. It is indispensable that I wake up from time to time to correct my proofs.’