Future Times Three Page 5

  “Quick!” shouted the scientist “Annette, lamp 8!”

  The young girl rushed to a switch. An enormous tube was lit on the ceiling. A blinding light enveloped the room, pushed aside the clarity of the day, pursued it outside the windows, burned the snow, made the trees snap, invaded the gardens, submerged houses, reached the entire quarter and climbed to the apex of the sky. Passersby raised their heads, stopping a second and shrugging their shoulders. “It*s still this filthy war!” Nothing astonished them anymore. The next day the newspapers pointed it out as the aurora borealis and Abby Moreux made a statement about sunspots.

  In the laboratory, everything grew incandescent. In a few seconds St. Menoux’s phantom had shortened, contracted and solidified. The young teacher stood solid before the invalid. He finished sneezing. Essaillon held out an earnest hand, pushing on the return button of the apparatus.

  “Close!” he shouted to his daughter.

  The red light left the clouds, the streets and the roofs, reentered through the windows, and was reabsorbed in the tube, which then went out.

  “Well, you see, I did not change place,” said St. Menoux through the material of the diving suit.

  “Nor time, my dear friend,” answered Essaillon.

  “Ah, I thought that I had arrived.”

  “No, you didn’t leave.”

  The young man opened the hood. His face showed disappointment. By examining the apparatus and combining Annette’s memories with St. Menoux’s impressions, the scientist got a clue to what had happened.

  “It’s fascinating!” he said. “You didn’t push the button down to the bottom. You received a very weak impulse and left your time without being able to reach another. You remained wedged between the present and the future. In short, you were in the conditional!”

  He struck the arm of his chair and laughed like a child.

  His beard rippled like a golden tide. St. Menoux began to understand the danger he had narrowly escaped. He did not find it very funny. He didn’t feel fear however, but a purely intellectual consternation. His body recalled with delight his exquisite departure, the ethereal explosion of his senses. He could not resist a desire to begin again immediately. He closed the hood, adjusted his glasses, waved goodbye to his hosts and this time pushed down firmly on the button.

  He almost fell. His foot struck a step. He saw nothing there. He recalled that he had adjusted his apparatus for a voyage into the future by only a half day. The scientist had advised him not to go too far for the first time and to set his arrival at night, in order to easily pass undetected.

  The obscurity which surrounded him convinced him that he had arrived. He was astonished at the ease of his passage from the present to the future. He had felt nothing. If the apparatus was functioning properly, it should be around eleven o’clock in the evening. But where?

  He took off his glasses in order to see more clearly. A vague odor struck his nostrils—an odor that seemed familiar. It smelled both like floor polish and the water closet, with a mild base of burned cauliflower. Taking a guess, he extended his hand and recognized the wooden banister. He was on the stairway of his hotel.

  He began to laugh in the dark. He wanted to shout “fireM to wake up the whole house. His decent, middle-class reflexes restrained him. He was, however, too happy over the success of the experiment to let it pass. He was as delighted as a child with a new toy. He was, in any case, as naive and simple as a child in many ways. The solitary company of mathematics matures neither the heart nor the character. He decided to play a joke on Mr. Michelet. He would pass through the door, tickle his feet and pull on his beard. What a great ideal

  He began climbing the stairs when suddenly the corridor light went on. Someone was coming. He put his finger on the button of the vibrator, but remembered in time that he had taken off his glasses. While he adjusted them, his hands trembling in haste, the hall door opened and St. Menoux saw climbing toward him, taking the steps two at a time—St Menoux.

  It took his breath away. The other himself, the one who was arriving, clothed as usual, smiled at him, pleased over his astonishment. The meeting did not surprise him. He already knew it. He was older by twelve hours. The two St Menouxs found themselves standing face to face on the narrow landing. The lamp of the time switch lit them with a yellow light. St. Menoux in the diving suit was filled with emotion. His heart was beating with great thumps. He looked at himself avidly. He removed his glasses and then his gloves.

  St. Menoux in the overcoat watched with a delighted smile as he went through the motions that he already knew. He submitted willingly to the examination, turning around in order to show himself from every angle. St. Menoux in the diving suit finally caught his breath.

  “It’s—it’s you,” he said.

  “You should say *It’s me!’ replied the other, giving him a poke in the ribs. St. Menoux in the diving suit smiled, returning the punch. They both began to laugh, first softly, then howling and gasping, clapping each other on the shoulders. Their peals of merriment filled the house. The corridor light went out. They climbed the stairs they knew so well, arm in arm in the darkness, still hiccuping with laughter. The walls around them resounded from their footsteps.

  When they were seated side by side on the edge of the bed, their hands placed on their thin knees in the same manner, he noticed that he felt an extreme happiness, a warm glow and a feeling of security. Perhaps he had known similar joy during his childhood, when, out of breath from playing, he went to look for peace in his mother’s arms. Since then he had never met a being worthy of a similar trust. Suddenly, he had found the perfect companion, the one men search for in vain, the twin soul. Between them there were no lies, no false reserve. Their egoism was exactly what they shared the best.

  He hugged himself. It was strange to feel his four arms, his two living bodies. As the weather was cold, they undressed and slipped into the narrow bed, which their double presence soon heated. He didn’t try to speak. What good would it do, since he knew everything about himself. Each man only seeks himself, in other men and women. He had found himself.

  The power of their joy kept them from sleep. They would have liked never to leave one another. But the time of their meeting was not to exceed the twelve hours which subdivided St. Menoux. Otherwise, the second himself would disappear.

  They got up around nine in the morning. He had a moment of anguish when he had to determine which one of the two was going to put on the diving suit. He was confused. Finally he smiled. Placing his hand on his stomach, he held out the other one toward his double.

  “It’s you,” he said. “I remember that I ate last night at Essaillon’s house. There was venison and wine. I didn’t digest it very well.”

  Essaillon wiped his mouth and asked, “Do you understand why you arrived in your hotel’s stairway?”

  “Gosh no!” answered St. Menoux, who was attacking the venison and wine stew. “I didn’t ask myself the question.”

  “I suppose you hadn’t fixed your thought on anything. It was your body that decided. It had the habit of climbing or descending these stairs several times a day, automatically, without your mind paying the slightest attention to your legs. Your mind being uncommitted at the time of your departure, your body responded to a familiar movement and led you there.”

  “That’s very possible,” said St. Menoux. “Tomorrow I will try to govern myself better.” Distracted, he was now in a hurry to leave.

  The meal finished, he kissed Annette’s hand, shook the fleshy hand of the scientist and headed home. The trip in the subway seemed endless to him. Once out of the station, he rushed toward his hotel, running in the dark up to the end of the hall, switching on the hall light and pushing open the glass door. He looked up.

  Ten steps from him, St. Menoux, clothed in green, bewildered, watched him ascend the stairs.

  For the second time, Peter relived this night of meeting himself. When his double returned to the past, he went back to Essaillon’s villa. Leav
ing himself was heartbreaking. But he would find himself again when he wished. He carried the memory of his regret within him. He had only left him-self in order to identify with himself better. He dreamed of a suit which would allow him to meet himself, not only with two St. Menouxs but with three, perhaps more. He saw himself as a group, a crowd, a multitude. He peopled the earth with himself alone. What an empathy! That must be Paradise. All the chosen ones in God’s midst forming a single being.

  “Can’t you move over, you beanpole?”

  A fat old woman in a black pleated skirt pushed him with her belly and her breasts. A man holding a briefcase under his arm drove an elbow into his ribs. A woman’s green hood tickled his neck. He felt the head of a child against his rear. The subway was as full as a sardine can. Twenty-seven more people pushed in. The transit employees crammed the last ones in with blows on their backsides.

  After consultation with the scientist, St. Menoux decided to make a more important jump into the future on this day. He arranged the markings on the index for a journey of one month and a supplementary half day to arrive at night It was noon when he was ready to leave.

  “Remember what I told you last night** advised Essaillon. “If you don’t want to arrive just anywhere, try to fix your thought on something.”

  “That’s easy,” answered St. Menoux. He placed his finger on the departure button and wondered what to think of. Nothing interested him particularly. The first image which came to his mind was the Place de la Concorde. As he was going to press the button, he noticed that his mind was already very far from the Place. He focused on the image of the streets. They reminded him of a graphic solution to a problem, of the paper on which he had designed it, of the merchant who had sold him the paper, of the movie theater next to the stationery shop and of lino Rossi’s face on the billboards. He caught himself humming “Veni, veni, veni…

  His mind came back to the Place de la Concorde. The horse carriages reminded him of fragrant manure piles. This succession of images unfolded in his mind at a frightening speed.

  He brought his mind back a third time to the Square where the Obelisk stands. The Obelisk reminded him of the Pyramids, the Pyramids of Napoleon, Napoleon of Josephine, Josephine of a hammock, a hammock of a sailor, a sailor of the sea, the sea of oysters, the oysters of a lemon.

  Furious, he pressed the button, no longer knowing what he was thinking.

  A chandelier, very faintly lit and colored in green by his glasses, was hanging from a ceiling above him. He was in bed. A woman’s perfume filtered muskily to his nostrils through his hood. Light blankets covered his body; an arm, scarcely heavier, was laying across his chest. He slowly turned his head. Annette was asleep against him.

  She was lying on her side; her face calm in sleep, her breathing slow. Two brown locks traced an arabesque on the embroidered sheet. Her languid body touched Peter’s. He felt the round softnesses of it, her breast slowly rising against his right arm, her thigh against his thigh. She slept peacefully, abandoned and confident. The closed door protected her and the night light chased away gloomy dreams. With his large bones and his rough garments, he had planted himself like a thorn in the tender body of this virgin night.

  He felt, through all of his clothes, the warmth, the roundness and the tender weight of this neighboring body penetrate his body, rounding it, garnishing it with softness and volume. His heart was beating fast. He realized that he loved Annette. He had been too preoccupied to notice it sooner. Normally he was aloof to loving, except the infinite combinations of numbers and abstract figures which delighted his mind. Since he had met Essaillon, he had felt that passion which stifles all others for those whom it arouses: scientific curiosity. His love for Annette had been bom within him without his noticing it. That is how he had come through time and space to the place where he hoped to find satisfaction. Peter reflected that his body had behaved like a pirate. Yet the happiness that flooded him chased away his fear.

  It was different than the egotistical and sterile joy of the preceding night—a feeling of incomparable physical wellbeing, of gold in his veins, of sunshine in his chest A sun—yes, he felt as glorious as the sun on the harvest. A crazy desire mounted in him to take Annette softly and tenderly into his arms. Annette, rounded and soft as a fruit, abandoned close to him. Yet if he moved, she would wake and cry out in terror.

  The force of his love swells his muscles, accelerates his blood, making his temples spin. His ears are burning—he guesses they must be bright red. His burning hands are sweating in his gloves. He doesn’t dare flutter an eyelash. He is bewildered with joy and shame. He loves. A cramp gnaws at his groin. The young girl’s perfume pierces him. His torture equals his bliss. He thinks also that it is unseemly to enter a loved woman’s bed with his boots on.

  Annette is dreaming. She is at the seashore. A tower of white marble rises among the waves. The fine lacework of a spiral stairway twines around her up toward the clouds. “Above all, don’t forget the three ounces of mercury flower,” says her father. Hie golden waves of the scientist’s beard caress the bottom of the tower. A procession of children is climbing the stairway. The three ounces are above her at the summit. Peter is descending in a parachute, a gun in hand. “Peter…” she sighs. She half awakes, opens her eyes. Peter moves under her hand. She stretches, spreading her arms and legs. Her entire body is content; she falls again into sleep.

  At Annette’s sigh, St. Menoux had pressed the button of the vibrator, which he had not used during his first voyage. The visible world was immediately transformed. The round globe of the night light became parabolic, the bed doubled in size and Annette’s face lengthened as in a mirror. Peter made the necessary movements to get up. But instead of standing, he passed through the bed, found himself under the cross beam, slipped to the side, and was immobilized.

  He had the impression that he was sitting in the middle of the bedroom. Before him, where legs should have been, there was only transparent air. In anguish he touched himself. He felt hard and present Yet when he put his hand in front of his eyes, nothing hid the half-open drawer of the commode from his gaze. He suddenly realized what it was—he no longer saw himself. Essaillon had forgotten to warn him. He himself should have guessed it. The glasses would show him the time in which he had not yet found himself. They could not transmit his image to him.

  When he tried to get up and walk, he sank halfway into the floor, then ascended slowly to the ceiling, in which his head disappeared. He did not weigh on this world which was not his. Only his muscular impetus projected him to the right, to the left, upwards, downwards, without his being able to gain support on anything. Peter struggled for a long time before he succeeded in controlling himself. When he raised his foot to walk, the spring of his leg drew it upward and he began to turn around like the arms of a windmill under a light breeze. He reassembled his limbs, unbent and left like a frog jumping over a wall.

  He got used little by little to his new way of moving around and to the strange sensation of possessing a solid warm body which his hands felt, but which did not exist in his eyes. He almost succeeded in going where he wanted. He threw one limb ahead, letting himself be propelled by the spring which nothing braked. A gesture of his arm drew him through phantom houses.

  At the first gesture which carried him away, he was relieved to find the night again. He did not see himself, but he didn’t see anything else either. He was no different from any venturing Parisian without a flashlight in the blackout Except that he no longer risked a fall or a bump. The night did not bring him any surprises and could not place any obstacle in his path. The material world had lost all substance for him.

  When he looked at the light, he had the impression, since the vibrator changed the appearance of things, of wandering among the images of a film projected by a strange lantern.

  He could begin to look around him. In the transparent beds he saw entwined couples struggling. He entered a tiny basement nightclub through the ceiling. Its walls were covered with
mirrors, to make it look bigger. He descended to the middle of a table and stopped. His left foot was in the champagne bucket and his right hand hung in the congested head of a drinker. The mouth of a drunken girl, who was roaring with laughter, was exactly placed in his groin. He stood erect, invisible and solid in the middle of a visible and soft universe.

  Glimpsing a strange object in the mirror, he looked again, recognising with bewilderment, two steps away from him, two eyes without a face. They were the size of fried eggs, two round eyes with eyebrows and the beginning of cheeks.

  He approached the mirrored wall slowly. Slowly the eyes grew larger, suspended in space like two moonfish in an aquarium. A shiver ran down St. Menoux’s back. A thousand fears disturbed his rational mind. Were these eyes the horrible trace of a spectre, of a demon, which his apparatus rendered visible to his mortal eyes? For how long would they wander in space, at the quest of what paradise, what purgatory, condemned to which awful punishment?

  St. Menoux felt a chill of horror. He had just penetrated the great mystery of a kingdom which is not of this world. The eyes stared out, immobile, at the height of his face. He nearly cried out. The living beings who stirred around him were incapable of seeing him, but these phantom eyeballs saw him, looked into his eyes with an expression of indescribable astonishment and disgust.

  Was he so ugly, so pitiful? He felt himself pierced to the core of his miserable soul by this gaze. He rediscovered the overpowering fear which had choked him as a child when he had to make his first confession. Tears came to his eyes. He saw two identical ones shine in the floating eyeballs. Suddenly he burst out laughing. Now he understood. He winked his left eye. Opposite, the right eye closed. He sniffled and called himself an idiot. They were his own eyes reflected in the mirror. His eyes, the only part of his body which he could see because their image passed through the glasses in both directions!