The Mysterious Fluid Read online

  “‘Those charred black rocks have been like that since the country’s conquest by the Spanish. You know that it was here, in Nuova Espanola, that Christopher Columbus landed, and, as he had found a great deal of gold in the region, he demanded enormous masses of it from the Caciques—and as soon as there was a delay in the delivery, he and his companions massacred the poor Caribs in large numbers.

  “‘One day, when they had massacred thousands in this fashion, the Caciques had hidden the women, children and old men of the region in this Grotte des dames, but they were soon massacred in their turn and the Spaniards discovered the grotto. They rapidly walled them in with a mountain of green wood, in order to obtain more smoke, set fire to it, and waited. The heart-rending screams of the women and children reached them, and, excited by the priests—very Catholic, Apostolic and Roman—they danced, uttering cries of savage joy.

  “‘Two old men launched themselves through the flames to implore mercy for the women and children, and we cut down on the spot…and the Spaniards were still laughing, excited by their priests—ferocious and cruel laughter—and shouting: They’ll be well-cured, the lovely Carib women!

  “‘When it was all over, a few Spaniards, in accordance with tradition, rushed forward to eat the flesh of the Carib women cooked to perfection as a substitute for salted herring!’

  “And after that,” I said, “Are you astonished that Cuba has had enough of the cruel and fanatical domination of Spanish padres?

  “But damn it—this time it’s two minutes past eight…”

  X. Strange Deaths. Surprising revelations of explorers.

  How people perished in the infernal circle of optical illusion.

  Across the South American pampas.

  But as I launched myself toward the express, a member of the Club Nautico-Agricole de la Colonisation Pratique de Marseilles who had not yet spoken, the likeable Boucairol, a manufacturer of maggots from galvanized bread-crumbs in the aforementioned Rue de la Pierre-qui-Rage, shouted; “We’ll go with you as far as Tarascon.”

  “But the train doesn’t stop until Avignon.”

  “Well, we’ll go as far as Avignon, old man—we owe that to our guest Monsieur Vibert—come on, let’s all go up to the restaurant car, and while we have a glass of beer—I won’t use the horrible word bock61—I’ll also tell mine, for I have one to tell….”

  “Go ahead, Boucairol, my old pal,” Marius put in.

  “Obviously, my adventure is less poignant that those narrated by these gentlemen, but it’s so true, so authentic…”

  “That it’s not to be laughed at,” said the incorrigible Isidore Phétu.

  “And it happened in the middle of South America, which was already been mentioned. One day, we all left in a caravan for a long expedition in search of asbestos mines, for the chief had received a big order for the manufacture of tutus for the ladies of the corps de ballet of the Grand Opera of Carcassonne.62

  “We’d already been crossing the pampas, which alternated with forest, for a week and were heading toward the foothills of the Andean Cordillera—it’s necessary not to confuse Andeans with undines—when all of a sudden, one morning at daybreak, we saw a cloud of flames and smoke coming toward us, in the middle of the boundless grassland in which we had camped.

  “Without wasting any time, uttering piercing screams, the three natives—Redskins, more or less—who were serving as our guides hurled themselves towards the matches, which were fortunately still on the ground, because we’d just struck the tents and were methodically wrapping things up, and set fire to the grass on the opposite side to the flames coming toward us. In the blink of an eye, the immense grassland was in flames in front of us.

  “‘Very well, now let’s run after the retreating fire,’ said our guides, with a good deal of logic, and it was thus that five minutes later, caught between two fires—one coming at us and the other dying—we were saved a from roasting.

  We would have been glad of asbestos garments then...but we lacked the mines…”

  “Bravo!” cried Onésime Lagriffoul, “you sound like a child of the Cannebière.”63

  “No,” said Castagnat, “he reasons like a drum-beater”—and everyone laughed, in that dry and staccato fashion that one always has on an express train.

  “Don’t interrupt me, by Brest’s thunder!”

  “Marseilles’ thunder.”

  “If you like. Two days later, by some unknown fatality, the expedition leader noticed that our compasses were going crazy—which is to say that they were shaky, and we could no longer count on them to guide us through the quasi-deserts of the prairie and clumps of trees—in a word, across the pampas.”

  “Our guides told us that we were close to a mine rich in magnetic iron. ‘I can see that,’ said the boss, ‘but I’d much rather we were near an asbestos mine, which wouldn’t make us lose our bearings—no pun intended. Now, if we can’t get out of the magic circle of the mine of magnetic iron, my lads, make no mistake about it, we’re all f…’ And he sketched an expressive gesture which only served to punctuate what he said and make it more energetic. The gesture wasn’t pretty, but he was upset.

  “We were in the middle of an endless grassland; we marched all day and much of the night, but we didn’t emerge from the magic circle.

  “Early the next morning, the leader of the expedition, who was a sly dog all the same, in accord with the three guides, told us that we mustn’t lark about—no one had any desire to—and had to march straight ahead, without ever deviating to the left or the right, in order to get out of the infernal circle of the mine of magnetic iron and the endless pampas, as large as a sea of burned hay, and that, to keep us in a straight line, we were going to light fires every five hundred meters, putting the grass in heaps so that the fires wouldn’t spread.

  “By dusk we were exhausted. We’d made the fires, and when darkness fell, we could see them, dying but still distinct, forming an immense circle, in which we were enclosed.

  “‘There’s not only an infernal circle of iron,’ said the boss, ‘but of fire—the result of an optical illusion, frequent in these grasslands, desolate solitudes without end. This time, my lads, we’re well and truly f…’

  “Three days running we began the fires in a straight line, and three days running we enclosed ourselves in the same magic circle of iron and the optical illusion.

  “Then gripped by despair, we sat down to die, and one of us, thinking about his sweet fiancée, wept so much that he put out the fire—the half-fire—with his tears…”

  The train was still rolling along; we were not only long past the Pas de Lanciers tunnel but had gone around the Étang de Berre, and no one had noticed, so engrossed were we all in that deceptive contest of man against the succession of magic circles—that of magnetic iron, that of fire, that of optical illusion, and the bated breath of our own oppression.

  Finally, the ever-valiant Marius was the first to break the solemn silence. “And how did you get out of it, my old Boucairol, since here you are, alive?”

  “It’s quite simple. On the fourth day, the boss had an idea of genius. He had us build a huge circle of fire around us, and by nightfall, having tried to make a circle, we’d made a straight line and got out of the magic circle, and our compasses were working again…but eleven of us had died en route…”

  Such a prodigy leaving us all open-mouthed, the narrator went on, by way of conclusion: “Optics, my lads, always optical effects, which claim to many victims in the desert…”

  “And even in Marseilles.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The Mirage!”64

  And we all shared in a in loud burst of laughter, which, emerging from the windows of the restaurant car, shook the Camargue and the Crau so mightily that in Saintes they thought it was an earthquake.

  XI. Strange deaths. The surprising revelations of explorers.

  A month underground. The strange practices of yogis.

  As we were in the vicinity of Tara
scon, it was decided, so as not to waste time, that the floor should then be given to Castebide to tell a good one.

  “Needless to say, the ambient air ought to inspire you, old chap.”

  “One will do one’s best,” Castebide replied, simply, and began as follows:

  “It was in the days when I took up residence in India, after serving in the navy, as a teacher of Belgian, Swiss and Javanese, which I knew perfectly—not to mention the French of our beautiful southern dialect—five languages in all, to which I didn’t take long to add Luxembourgian, with the result that I rapidly acquired a brilliant clientele of pupils. All the young Englishwomen and sons of Rajahs came to take lessons from me, or I went to their homes.

  “One day, an Indian prince invited me to witness a very curious ceremony in his kingdom. It was a matter of seeing two priests buried alive—two yogis, who would be taken out again a month later, still alive.

  “On the appointed day, their companions put them to sleep with ordinary magnetic passes, then they were put into two coffins in the depths of two tombs; the stones were replace placed, sealing them, and they were covered with a foot of earth. The location was sown with wheat—which, it ought to be said, was watered religiously every day—and a month later, to the day, the wheat was harvested, yellow and fully ripe; the earth was removed, the tombstones lifted, the two yogis taken out of their coffins—and after they were put on a table, stark naked, and rubbed energetically all over their bodies with perfumed aromatic oils, the high priest commenced the rhythmic traction of the sleepers’ tongues, one after the other, to the accompaniment of strange chanting. After twenty-two or twenty-three minutes, the worthy yogis slowly opened their eyes again and gradually returned to life. A great religious miracle had just been accomplished in India, and the entire population, delirious with fanaticism and drunk with joy, went to spread the good news in the streets of the town, along the roads, and through the neighboring villages, all the way to the interior of the Himalayan mountains, with lightning rapidity.

  “Six months later, I was invited by another Indian prince to a ceremony of the same sort, and hastened to make my way there, accompanied by a comrade from France, who had been a magnetizer-masseur for some years in Paris before setting himself up as a photographer in Japan. He cultivated sensitive plates after having had an excessively sensitive soul, and fleeing the banks of the Adour following a great heartache.

  “My poor friend—who had long been familiar with all the secrets of magnetism— had no sooner seen what was going on than he demanded to be buried alongside the lone yogi who had been put to sleep. In response to the prince’s pleas, and in spite of mine, the priests spoke to him for a long time—but as, unlike me, he didn’t speak six languages, the poor fellow misunderstood their final instructions….

  “After a month, he was disinterred with the other yogi. The latter was recalled to life, following the rhythmic traction of the tongue. As for my unfortunate friend, he was quite dead, and as even beginning not to smell very good.”

  “Explain to us how these damned yogis can remain asleep underground like that for a month,” said Marius.

  “It’s quite simple; once laid in the coffin, they active a spring by pressing a switch; a side-wall opens into the subterranean tunnel by means which they return to their convent, their bonzery. After a month, on the morning of the day that their tomb is to be opened, they come to lie down in their coffin again; the trick is complete, the great miracle of yogic resurrection is accomplished, and the people are content! Unfortunately, my photographer—who, unlike me, didn’t know six languages…”

  “You’ve already said that.”

  “…Didn’t quite understand the explanations of the monks of Cakya-Mouni,65 and he couldn’t find the release switch. Then again, you see, in spite of the prince’s request, the latter forgot about him and didn’t go to look for him because they weren’t sorry, all things considered, to demonstrate that a westerner, a European—a dirty red devil, in their eyes—couldn’t suddenly become saintly enough, just like that, to live for a month underground without dying, like a true yogi.”

  The train rolled on, and it was agreed that we would take a rest after that curious narration regarding the religious customs of India—when the terrible Boucairol junior, a professor of criminology in Marseilles asked for the floor.

  “It’s understood that you’ll be the last—the brush, as the omnibus-conductors of Paris say—for we’re all getting off at Avignon, and we mustn’t abuse our host’s patience between here and there.”

  I made a gesture of protest.

  XII. Strange deaths. The surprising revelations of explorers.

  On the banks of the Nile. The art of making three thousand livres a year. Conclusion.

  So Boucairol junior, professor of criminology in Marseilles, began:

  “Many years ago, I left to take a little pleasure-trip in Upper Egypt with a friend. We had just left the celebrated island of Philae, with its imperishable monuments, and were getting ready to undertake a serious lion-hunt the following day…”

  “Like Tartarin?”

  “No, old chap, since we were in Upper Egypt, not in Algeria…but I’ll continue without paying any heed to your bad jokes. As we were not leaving until the following morning to plunge into the desert in search of its king, it was decided that we would take two Fellahs and a boat and go do a little flamingo-hunting on the Nile.”

  “How can one kill such lovely animals?”

  “I don’t like them myself, those long-legged animals, because they have a northern name: fleming. Yes, old chap, I hunt them.

  “We had already been sailing for three hours on the Nile, as blue as the sky of that beautiful land, when my clumsy pal, standing up in the boat, fired a rifle-shot that procured him a recoil. He tried to regain his balance but, splash!—he was in the water. We tried to rescue him, but splash! again, and there we were, all in the soup with the boat capsized.

  “‘Quickly—swim to the river bank,’ shouted our two Fellahs, in bad English. ‘for the crocodiles won’t take long to cut us in two and swallow us like common slices of roast beef.’

  “Right away, we cleaved the waves, then bang! A scream—one of the Fellahs had just been caught by a crocodile. Then bang! again; another scream, even louder than the first. This time, it was my friend who’s been swallowed by a huge crocodile, almost as big as a whale.

  “It was impossible to rescue them; we were swimming flat out. Suddenly, I felt something caress the big toe on my left foot—O matchless surprise, it was a crocodile that had missed me, but had carried off a corn in its teeth. What a pedicure, lads!”

  “You’re joking!”

  “Not on your life! We landed—the second or last Fellah, as you wish, and yours truly—on the river-bank. When I had dried off a little and recovered my emotions, I started weeping like a calf, thinking about the sad death of my old comrade—but the Fellah very judiciously remarked that that wouldn’t get us anywhere, and that we’d do better to hide, in order to shoot the two crocodiles, which would obviously come back after their meal to have a nap on the sand and digest it. It would be easy to kill them at point-blank range, to avenge our companions.

  “‘But our cartridges are wet,’ I said.

  “‘We’ll kill them with knife-thrusts, then,’—and he pulled out his long navaja, victoriously.

  “Indeed, we hid behind a clump of esparto-grass, and five minutes later, the two crocodiles came to lie down on the sand to digest their meal and go to sleep.

  “Suddenly, I was seized by horror. My friend’s body was molded in its entirely through the skin of the horrible saurian—and an idea of genius crossed my mind, giving me truly superhuman courage. While the Fellah launched himself upon the other sleeping crocodile, and ripped its belly open with a clean stroke of his knife, I hurled myself upon the one that was as fat as a whale, seized its two jaws violently and, sticking my head into its gaping maw, called loudly to me friend: ‘Come on, my old mate—
get out, quickly!’”

  A loud burst of laughter interrupted the narrator, and everyone said, in chorus: “But that’s a famous monologue that you’re reciting there, you old joker!”

  “I believe so—I’m the one who adapted the true adventure for narration.”

  “Did you make much from it?”

  “Yes, enough—three thousand francs a year, as when one breeds rabbits.”

  “For a long time?”

  “For a week.”

  This time, we all nearly died laughing, confronted with so much innocent wit.

  By the time Boucairol junior had received everyone’s congratulations, we were about to arrive at Avignon. All the members of the Club Nautico-Agricole de la Colonisation Pratique de Marseille bade me a touching farewell, making me promise to come back soon to eat another bouillabaisse at Vincent Roubien’s, along the coast road, with the sea, so blue and so beautiful, at our feet.

  To summarize the two days, Marius said, tenderly: “I think that we’ve just competed with the famous Thousand and One Nights, and if Monsieur Vibert consents to believe us, he’ll find a fine theme for a fairy-tale on his return to the capital.”

  And everyone agreed, warmly.

  I don’t know whether I’ll ever write the fairy-tale, but what I do know is that I came back very cheerfully from my terrible political campaign to defend the Republic of Algeria from all the reactionaries, and that I shall never forget the friendly welcome of my friends in Marseilles.

  The next day, I was in Paris, and no one could believe that I hadn’t left my bones in the hands of the Anti-Semites.

  Unexpected Deaths

  Bizarre explosions. Strange Deaths.

  How one how spends one’s life to die blown up!

  Jean Richepin, who is a neighbor of mine and who wrote a curious volume in his youth entitled Morts bizarres, forgot all those produced by explosions, which are even more bizarre, and it is that lacuna that I want to fill, in part, today. I don’t mean, of course, all those that occur in factories by virtue of the explosion of steam-engines, but those that have a truly unexpected and stranger character.