THE "TRIANGULAR CIRCLES"
What was known at Meudon as Noel Dorgeroux's Yard was a piece of
waste-land in which the paths were lost amid the withered grass,
nettles and stones, amid stacks of empty barrels, scrap-iron,
rabbit-hutches and every kind of disused lumber that rusts and rots or
tumbles into dust.
Against the walls and outer fences stood the workshops, joined
together by driving-belts and shafts, and the laboratories filled with
furnaces, pneumatic receivers, innumerable retorts, phials and jars
containing the most delicate products of organic chemistry.
The view embraced the loop of the Seine, which lay some three hundred
feet below, and the hills of Versailles and Sevres, which formed a
wide circle on the horizon towards which a bright autumnal sun was
sinking in a pale blue sky.
"Victorien!"
My uncle was beckoning to me from the doorway of the workshop which he
used most often. I crossed the Yard.
"Come in," he said. "We must have a talk first. Only for a little
while: just a few words."
The room was lofty and spacious and one corner of it was reserved for
writing and resting, with a desk littered with papers and drawings, a
couch and some old, upholstered easy-chairs. My uncle drew one of the
chairs up for me. He seemed calmer, but his glance retained an
unaccustomed brilliance.
"Yes," he said, "a few words of explanation beforehand will do no
harm, a few words on the past, the wretched past which is that of
every inventor who sees fortune slipping away from him. I have pursued
it for so long! I have always pursued it. My brain had always seemed
to me a vat in which a thousand incoherent ideas were fermenting, all
contradicting one another and mutually destructive. . . . And then
there was one that gained strength. And thenceforward I lived for that
one only and sacrificed everything for it. It was like a sink that
swallowed up all my money and that of others . . . and their happiness
and peace of mind as well. Think of my poor wife, Victorien. You
remember how unhappy she was and how anxious about the future of her
son, of my poor Dominique! And yet I loved her so devotedly. . . ."
He stopped at this recollection. And I seemed to see my aunt's face
again and to hear her telling my mother of her fears and her
forebodings:
"He will ruin us," she used to say. "He keeps on making me sell out.
He considers nothing."
"She did not trust me," Noel Dorgeroux continued. "Oh, I had so many
disappointments, so many lamentable failures! Do you remember,
Victorien, do you remember my experiment on intensive germination by
means of electric currents, my experiments with oxygen and all the
rest, all the rest, not one of which succeeded? The pluck it called
for! But I never lost faith for a minute! . . . One idea in particular
buoyed me up and I came back to it incessantly, as though I were able
to penetrate the future. You know to what I refer, Victorien: it
appeared and reappeared a score of times under different forms, but
the principle remained the same. It was the idea of utilizing the
solar heat. It's all there, you know, in the sun, in its action upon
us, upon cells, organisms, atoms, upon all the more or less mysterious
substances that nature has placed at our disposal. And I attacked the
problem from every side. Plants, fertilizers, diseases of men and
animals, photographs: for all these I wanted the collaboration of the
solar rays, utilized by the aid of special processes which were mine
alone, my secret and nobody else's."
My uncle Dorgeroux was talking with renewed eagerness; and his eyes
shone feverishly. He now held forth without interrupting himself:
"I will not deny that there was an element of chance about my
discovery. Chance plays its part in everything. There never was a
discovery that did not exceed our inventive effort; and I can confess
to you, Victorien, that I do not even now understand what has
happened. No, I can't explain it by a long way; and I can only just
believe it. But, all the same, if I had not sought in that direction,
the thing would not have occurred. It was due to me that the
incomprehensible miracle took place. The picture is outlined in the
very frame which I constructed, on the very canvas which I prepared;
and, as you will perceive, Victorien, it is my will that makes the
phantom which you are about to see emerge from the darkness."
He expressed himself in a tone of pride with which was mingled a
certain uneasiness, as though he doubted himself and as though his
words overstepped the actual limits of truth.
"You're referring to those three--sort of eyes, aren't you?" I asked.
"What's that?" he exclaimed, with a start. "Who told you? Berangere, I
suppose! She shouldn't have. That's what we must avoid at all costs:
indiscretions. One word too much and I am undone; my discovery is
stolen. Only think, the first man that comes along . . ."
I had risen from my chair. He pushed me towards his desk:
"Sit down here, Victorien," he said, "and write. You mustn't mind my
taking this precaution. It is essential. You must realize what you are
pledging yourself to do if you share in my work. Write, Victorien."
"What, uncle?"
"A declaration in which you acknowledge that . . . But I'll dictate it
to you. That'll be better."
I interrupted him:
"Uncle, you distrust me."
"I don't distrust you, my boy. I fear an imprudence, an indiscretion.
And, generally speaking, I have plenty of reasons for being
suspicious."
"What reasons, uncle?"
"Reasons," he replied, in a more serious voice, "which make me think
that I am being spied upon and that somebody is trying to discover
what my invention is. Yes, somebody came in here, the other night,
and rummaged among my papers."
"Did they find anything?"
"No. I always carry the most important notes and formulae on me.
Still, you can imagine what would happen if they succeeded. So you do
admit, don't you, that I am obliged to be cautious? Write down that I
have told you of my investigations and that you have seen what I
obtain on the wall in the Yard, at the place covered by a black-serge
curtain."
I took a sheet of paper and a pen. But he stopped me quickly:
"No, no," he said, "it's absurd. It wouldn't prevent . . . Besides,
you won't talk, I'm sure of that. Forgive me, Victorien. I am so
horribly worried!"
"You needn't fear any indiscretion on my part," I declared. "But I
must remind you that Berangere also has seen what there was to see."
"Oh," he said, "she wouldn't understand!"
"She wanted to come with me just now."
"On no account, on no account! She's still a child and not fit to be
trusted with a secret of this importance. . . . Now come along."
But it so happened that, as we were leaving the workshop, we both of
us at the same time saw Berangere stealing along one of the walls of
the Yard and stopping in front of a black curtain, which she suddenly
pulled aside.
"Berangere!" shouted my uncle, angrily.
The girl turned round and laughed.
"I won't have it! I will not have it!" cried Noel Dorgeroux, rushing
in her direction. "I won't have it, I tell you! Get out, you
mischief!"
Berangere ran away, without, however, displaying any great
perturbation. She leapt on a stack of bricks, scrambled on to a long
plank which formed a bridge between two barrels and began to dance as
she was wont to do, with her arms outstretched like a balancing-pole
and her bust thrown slightly backwards.
"You'll lose your balance," I said, while my uncle drew the curtain.
"Never!" she replied, jumping up and down on her spring-board.
She did not lose her balance. But the plank shifted and the pretty
dancer came tumbling down among a heap of old packing-cases.
I ran to her assistance and found her lying on the ground, looking
very white.
"Have you hurt yourself, Berangere?"
"No . . . hardly . . . just my ankle . . . perhaps I've sprained it."
I lifted her, almost fainting, in my arms and carried her to a wooden
bench a little farther away.
She let me have my way and even put one arm round my neck. Her eyes
were closed. Her red lips opened and I inhaled the cool fragrance of
her breath.
"Berangere!" I whispered, trembling with emotion.
When I laid her on the bench, her arm held me more tightly, so that I
had to bend my head with my face almost touching hers. I meant to draw
back. But the temptation was too much for me and I kissed her on the
lips, gently at first and then with a brutal violence which brought
her to her senses.
She repelled me with an indignant movement and stammered, in a
despairing, rebellious tone:
"Oh, it's abominable of you! . . . It's shameful!"
In spite of the suffering caused by her sprain, she had managed to
stand up, while I, stupefied by my thoughtless conduct, stood bowed
before her, without daring to raise my head.
We remained for some seconds in this attitude, in an embarrassed
silence through which I could catch the hurried rhythm of her
breathing. I tried gently to take her hands. But she released them at
once and said:
"Let me be. I shall never forgive you, never."
"Come, Berangere, you will forget that."
"Leave me alone. I want to go indoors."
"But you can't, Berangere."
"Here's god-father. He'll take me back."
* * * * *
My reasons for relating this incident will appear in the sequel. For
the moment, notwithstanding the profound commotion produced by the
kiss which I had stolen from Berangere, my thoughts were so to speak
absorbed by the mysterious drama in which I was about to play a part
with my uncle Dorgeroux. I heard my uncle asking Berangere if she was
not hurt. I saw her leaning on his arm and, with him, making for the
door of the garden. But, while I remained bewildered, trembling, dazed
by the adorable image of the girl whom I loved, it was my uncle whom I
awaited and whom I was impatient to see returning. The great riddle
already held me captive.
"Let's make haste," cried Noel Dorgeroux, when he came back. "Else it
will be too late and we shall have to wait until to-morrow."
He led the way to the high wall where he had caught Berangere in the
act of yielding to her curiosity. This wall, which divided the Yard
from the garden and which I had not remarked particularly on my rare
visits to the Yard, was now daubed with a motley mixture of colours,
like a painter's palette. Red ochre, indigo, purple and saffron were
spread over it in thick and uneven layers, which whirled around a more
thickly-coated centre. But, at the far end, a wide curtain of black
serge, like a photographer's cloth, running on an iron rod supported
by brackets, hid a rectangular space some three or four yards in
width.
"What's that?" I asked my uncle. "Is this the place?"
"Yes," he answered, in a husky voice, "it's behind there."
"There's still time to change your mind," I suggested.
"What makes you say that?"
"I feel that you are afraid of letting me know. You are so upset."
"I am upset for a very different reason."
"Why?"
"_Because I too am going to see._"
"But you have done so already."
"One always sees new things, Victorien; that's the terrifying part of
it."
I took hold of the curtain.
"Don't touch it, don't touch it!" he cried. "No one has the right,
except myself. Who knows what would happen if any one except me were
to open the closed door! Stand back, Victorien. Take up your position
at two paces from the wall, a little to one side. . . . And now look!"
His voice was vibrant with energy and implacable determination. His
expression was that of a man facing death; and, suddenly, with a
single movement, he drew the black-serge curtain.
* * * * *
My emotion, I am certain, was just as great as Noel Dorgeroux's and my
heart beat no less violently. My curiosity had reached its utmost
bounds; moreover, I had a formidable intuition that I was about to
enter into a region of mystery of which nothing, not even my uncle's
disconcerting words, was able to give me the remotest idea. I was
experiencing the contagion of what seemed to me in him to be a
diseased condition; and I vainly strove to subject it in myself to the
control of my reason. I was taking the impossible and the incredible
for granted beforehand.
And yet I saw nothing at first; and there was, in fact, nothing. This
part of the wall was bare. The only detail worthy of remark was that
it was not vertical and that the whole base of the wall had been
thickened so as to form a slightly inclined plane which sloped upwards
to a height of nine feet. What was the reason for this work, when the
wall did not need strengthening?
A coating of dark grey plaster, about half an inch thick, covered the
whole panel. When closely examined, however, it was not painted over,
but was rather a layer of some substance uniformly spread and showing
no trace of a brush. Certain gleams proved that this layer was quite
recent, like a varnish newly applied. I observed nothing else; and
Heaven knows that I did my utmost to discover any peculiarity!
"Well, uncle?" I asked.
"Wait," he said, in an agonized voice, "wait! . . . The first
indication is beginning."
"What indication?"
"In the middle . . . like a diffused light. Do you see it?"
"Yes, yes, I think I do."
It was as when a little daylight is striving to mingle with the waning
darkness. A lighter disk became marked in the middle of the panel; and
this lighter shade spread towards the edges, while remaining more
intense at its centre. So far there was no very decided manifestation
of anything out of the way; the chemical reaction of a substance
lately hidden by the curtain and now exposed to the daylight and the
sun was quite enough to explain this sort of inner illumination. Yet
something gave one the haunting though perhaps unreasonable impression
that an extraordinary phenomenon was about to take place. For that was
what I expected, as did my uncle Dorgeroux.
And all at once he, who knew the premonitory symptoms and the course
of the phenomenon, started, as though he had received a shock.
At the same moment, the thing happened.
It was sudden, instantaneous. It leapt in a flash from the depths of
the wall. Yes, I know, a spectacle cannot flash out of a wall, any
more than it can out of a layer of dark-grey substance only half an
inch thick. But I am setting down the sensation which I experienced,
which is the same that hundreds and hundreds of people experienced
afterwards, with a like clearness and a like certainty. It is no use
carping at the undeniable fact: the thing shot out of the depths of
the ocean of matter and it appeared violently, like the rays of a
lighthouse flashing from the very womb of the darkness. After all,
when we step towards a mirror, does our image not appear to us from
the depth of that horizon suddenly unveiled?
Only, you see, it was not our image, my uncle Dorgeroux's or mine.
Nothing was reflected, because there was nothing to reflect and no
reflecting screen. What I saw was . . .
On the panel were "three geometrical figures which might equally well
have been badly described circles or triangles composed of curved
circles. In the centre of these figures was drawn a regular circle,
marked in the middle with a blacker point, as the iris is marked by
the pupil."
I am deliberately using the terminology which I employed to describe
the images which my uncle had drawn in red chalk on the plaster of my
room, for I had no doubt that he was then trying to reproduce those
same figures, the appearance of which had already upset him.
"That's what you saw, isn't it, uncle?" I asked.
"Oh," he replied, in a low voice, "I saw much more than that, very
much more! . . . Wait and look right into them."
I stared wildly at the three "triangular circles," as I have called
them. One of them was set above the two others; and these two, which
were smaller and less regular but exactly alike, seemed, instead of
looking straight before them, to turn a little to the right and to the
left. Where did they come from? And what did they mean?
"Look," repeated my uncle. "Do you see?"
"Yes, yes," I replied, with a shudder. "_The thing's moving._"
It was in fact moving. Or rather, no, it was not: the outlines of the
geometrical figures remained stationary; and not a line shifted its
place within. And yet from all this immobility something emerged which
was nothing else than motion.
I now remembered my uncle's words:
"They're alive, aren't they? You can see them opening and showing
alarm! They're alive!"
They were alive! The three triangles were alive! And, as soon as I
experienced this precise and undeniable feeling that they were alive,
I ceased to regard them as an assemblage of lifeless lines and began
to see in them things which were like a sort of eyes, misshapen eyes,
eyes different from ours, but eyes furnished with irises and pupils
and throbbing in an abysmal darkness.
"They are looking at us!" I cried, quite beside myself and as feverish
and unnerved as my uncle.
He nodded his head and whispered:
"Yes, that's what they're doing."
The three eyes were looking at us. We were conscious of the scrutiny
of those three eyes, without lids or lashes, but full of an intense
life which was due to the expression that animated them, a changing
expression, by turns serious, proud, noble, enthusiastic and, above
all, sad, grievously sad.
I feel how improbable these observations must appear. Nevertheless
they correspond most strictly with the reality as it was beheld at a
later date by the crowds that thronged to Haut-Meudon Lodge. Like my
uncle, like myself, those crowds shuddered before three combinations
of motionless lines which had the most heart-rending expression, just
as at other moments they laughed at the comical or gayer expression
which they were compelled to read into those same lines.
And on each occasion the spectacle which I am now describing was
repeated in exactly the same order. A brief pause, followed by a
series of vibrations. Then, suddenly, three eclipses, after which the
combination of three triangles began to turn upon itself, as a whole,
slowly at first and then with increasing rapidity, which gradually
became transformed into so swift a rotation that one distinguished
nothing but a motionless rose-pattern.
After that, nothing. The panel was empty.