NOEL DORGEROUX'S SON
The spectator who has just been watching the most tragic of films
finds it easy to escape from the sort of dark prison-house in which he
was suffocating and, with the return of the light, recovers his
equilibrium and his self-possession. I, on the other hand, remained
for a long time numb and speechless, with my eyes riveted to the empty
panel, as though I expected something else to emerge from it. Even
when it was over, the tragedy terrified me, like a nightmare prolonged
after waking, and, even more than the tragedy, the absolutely
extraordinary manner in which it had been unfolded before my eyes. I
did not understand. My disordered brain vouchsafed me none but the
most grotesque and incoherent ideas.
A movement on the part of Noel Dorgeroux drew me from my stupor: he
had drawn the curtain across the screen.
At this I vehemently seized my uncle by his two hands and cried:
"What does all this mean? It's maddening! What explanation are you
able to give?"
"None," he said, simply.
"But still . . . you brought me here."
"Yes, that you might also see and to make sure that my eyes had not
deceived me."
"Therefore you have already witnessed other scenes in that same
setting?"
"Yes, other sights . . . three times before."
"What, uncle? Can you specify them?"
"Certainly: what I saw yesterday, for instance."
"What was that, uncle?"
He pushed me a little and gazed at me, at first without replying.
Then, speaking in a very low tone, with deliberate conviction, he
said:
"The battle of Trafalgar."
I wondered if he was making fun of me. But Noel Dorgeroux was little
addicted to banter at any time; and he would not have selected such a
moment as this to depart from his customary gravity. No, he was
speaking seriously; and what he said suddenly struck me as so humorous
that I burst out laughing:
"Trafalgar! Don't be offended, uncle; but it's really too quaint! The
battle of Trafalgar, which was fought in 1805?"
He once more looked at me attentively:
"Why do you laugh?" he asked.
"Good heavens, I laugh, I laugh . . . because . . . well, confess
. . ."
He interrupted me:
"You're laughing for very simple reasons, Victorien, which I will
explain to you in a few words. To begin with, you are nervous and ill
at ease; and your merriment is first and foremost a reaction. But, in
addition, the spectacle of that horrible scene was so--what shall I
say?--so convincing that you looked upon it, in spite of yourself, not
as a reconstruction of the murder, but as the actual murder of Miss
Cavell. Is that true?"
"Perhaps it is, uncle."
"In other words, the murder and all the infamous details which
accompanied it must have been--don't let us hesitate to use the
word--must have been cinematographed by some unseen witness from whom
I obtained that precious film: and my invention consists solely in
reproducing the film in the thickness of a gelatinous layer of some
kind or other. A wonderful, but a credible discovery. Are we still
agreed?"
"Yes, uncle, quite."
"Very well. But now I am claiming something very different. I am
claiming to have witnessed an evocation of the battle of Trafalgar!
If so, the French and English frigates must have foundered before my
eyes! I must have seen Nelson die, struck down at the foot of his
mainmast! That's quite another matter, is it not? In 1805 there were
no cinematographic films. Therefore this can be only an absurd parody.
Thereupon all your emotion vanishes. My reputation fades into thin
air. And you laugh! I am to you nothing more than an old impostor,
who, instead of humbly showing you his curious discovery, tries in
addition to persuade you that the moon is made of green cheese! A
humbug, what?"
We had left the wall and were walking towards the door of the garden.
The sun was setting behind the distant hills. I stopped and said to
Noel Dorgeroux:
"Forgive me, uncle, and please don't think that I am over lacking in
the respect I owe you. There is nothing in my amusement that need
annoy you, nothing to make you suppose that I suspect your absolute
sincerity."
"Then what do you think? What is your conclusion?"
"I don't think anything, uncle. I have arrived at no conclusion and I
am not even trying to do so, at present. I am out of my depth,
perplexed, at the same time dazed and dissatisfied, as though I felt
that the riddle was even more wonderful than it is and that it would
always remain insoluble."
We were entering the garden. It was his turn to stop me:
"Insoluble! That is really your opinion?"
"Yes, for the moment."
"You can't imagine any theory?"
"No."
"Still, you saw? You have no doubts?"
"I certainly saw. I saw first three strange eyes that looked at us;
then I witnessed a scene which was the murder of Miss Cavell. That is
what I saw, just as you did, uncle; and I do not for a moment doubt
the undeniable evidence of my own eyes."
He held out his hand to me:
"That's what I wanted to know, my boy. And thank you."
* * * * *
I have given a faithful account of what happened that afternoon. In
the evening we dined together by ourselves, Berangere having sent word
to say that she was indisposed and would not leave her room. My uncle
was deeply absorbed in thought and did not say a word on what had
happened in the Yard.
I slept hardly at all, haunted by the recollection of what I had seen
and tormented by a score of theories, which I need not mention here,
for not one of them was of the slightest value.
Next day, Berangere did not come downstairs. At luncheon, my uncle
preserved the same silence. I tried many times to make him talk, but
received no reply.
My curiosity was too intense to allow my uncle to get rid of me in
this way. I took up my position in the garden before he left the
house. Not until five o'clock did he go up to the Yard.
"Shall I come with you, uncle?" I suggested, boldly.
He grunted, neither granting my request nor refusing it. I followed
him. He walked across the Yard, locked himself into his principal
workshop and did not leave it until an hour later:
"Ah, there you are!" he said, as though he had been unaware of any
presence.
He went to the wall and briskly drew the curtain. Just then he asked
me to go back to the workshop and to fetch something or other which he
had forgotten. When I returned, he said, excitedly:
"It's finished, it's finished!"
"What is, uncle?"
"The Eyes, the Three Eyes."
"Oh, have you seen them?"
"Yes; and I refuse to believe . . . no, of course, it's an illusion on
my part. . . . How could it be possible, when you come to think of it?
Imagine, the eyes wore the expression of my dead son's eyes, yes, the
very expression of my poor Dominique. It's madness, isn't it? And yet
I declare, yes, I declare that Dominique was gazing at me . . . at
first with a sad and sorrowful gaze, which suddenly became the
terrified gaze of a man who is staring death in the face. And then the
Three Eyes began to revolve upon themselves. That was the end."
I made Noel Dorgeroux sit down:
"It's as you suppose, uncle, an illusion, an hallucination. Just
think, Dominique has been dead so many years! It is therefore
incredible . . ."
"Everything is incredible and nothing is," he said. "There is no room
for human logic in front of that wall."
I tried to reason with him, though my mind was becoming as bewildered
as his own. But he silenced me:
"That'll do," he said. "Here's the other thing beginning."
He pointed to the screen, which was showing signs of life and
preparing to reveal a new picture.
"But, uncle," I said, already overcome by excitement, "where does that
come from?"
"Don't speak," said Noel Dorgeroux. "Not a word."
I at once observed that this other thing bore no relation to what I
had witnessed the day before; and I concluded that the scenes
presented must occur without any prearranged order, without any
chronological or serial connection, in short, like the different films
displayed in the course of a performance.
It was the picture of a small town as seen from a neighbouring height.
A castle and a church-steeple stood out above it. The town was built
on the slope of several hills and at the intersection of the valleys,
which met among clumps of tall, leafy trees.
Suddenly, it came nearer and was seen on a larger scale. The hills
surrounding the town disappeared; and the whole screen was filled with
a crowd swarming with lively gestures around an open space above which
hung a balloon, held captive by ropes. Suspended from the balloon was
a receptacle serving probably for the production of hot air. Men were
issuing from the crowd on every hand. Two of them climbed a ladder
the top of which was leaning against the side of a car. And all this,
the appearance of the balloon, the shape of the appliances employed,
the use of hot air instead of gas, the dress of the people; all this
struck me as possessing an old-world aspect.
"The brothers Montgolfier," whispered my uncle.
These few words enlightened me. I remembered those old prints
recording man's first ascent towards the sky, which was accomplished
in June, 1783. It was this wonderful event which we were witnessing,
or, at least, I should say, a reconstruction of the event, a
reconstruction accurately based upon those old prints, with a balloon
copied from the original, with costumes of the period and no doubt, in
addition, the actual setting of the little town of Annonay.
But then how was it that there was so great a multitude of townsfolk
and peasants? There was no comparison possible between the usual
number of actors in a cinema scene and the incredibly tight-packed
crowd which I saw moving before my eyes. A crowd like that is found
only in pictures which the camera has secured direct, on a public
holiday, at a march-past of troops or a royal procession.
However, the wavelike eddying of the crowd suddenly subsided. I
received the impression of a great silence and an anxious period of
waiting. Some men quickly severed the ropes with hatchets. Etienne and
Joseph Montgolfier lifted their hats.
And the balloon rose in space. The people in the crowd raised their
arms and filled the air with an immense clamour.
For a moment, the screen showed us the two brothers, by themselves and
enlarged. With the upper part of their bodies leaning from the car,
each with one arm round the other's waist and one hand clasping the
other's, they seemed to be praying with an air of unspeakable ecstasy
and solemn joy.
Slowly the ascent continued. And it was then that something utterly
inexplicable occurred: the balloon, as it rose above the little town
and the surrounding hills, did not appear to my uncle and me as an
object which we were watching from an increasing depth below. No, it
was the little town and the hills which were sinking and which, by
sinking, proved to us that the balloon was ascending. But there was
also this absolutely illogical phenomenon, that we remained on the
same level as the balloon, that it retained the same dimensions and
that the two brothers stood facing us, _exactly as though the
photograph had been taken from the car of a second balloon, rising at
the same time as the first with an exactly and mathematically
identical movement_!
The scene was not completed. Or rather it was transformed in
accordance with the method of the cinematograph, which substitutes one
picture for another by first blending them together. Imperceptibly,
when it was perhaps some fifteen hundred feet from the ground, the
Montgolfier balloon became less distinct and its vague and softened
outlines gradually mingled with the more and more powerful outlines of
another shape which soon occupied the whole space and which proved to
be that of a military aeroplane.
Several times since then the mysterious screen has shown me two
successive scenes of which the second completed the first, thus
forming a diptych which displayed the evident wish to convey a lesson
by connecting, across space and time, two events which in this way
acquired their full significance. This time the moral was clear: the
peaceable balloon had culminated in the murderous aeroplane. First the
ascent at Annonay. Then a fight in mid-air, a fight between the
monoplane which I had seen develop from the old-fashioned balloon and
the biplane upon which I beheld it swooping like a bird of prey.
Was it an illusion or a "faked representation?" For here again we saw
the two aeroplanes not in the normal fashion, from below, _but as if
we were at the same height and moving at the same rate of speed_. In
that case, were we to admit that an operator, perched on a third
machine, was calmly engaged in "filming" the shifting fortunes of the
terrible battle? That was impossible, surely!
But there was no good purpose to be served by renewing these perpetual
suppositions over and over again. Why should I doubt the unimpeachable
evidence of my eyes and deny the undeniable? _Real_ aeroplanes were
manoeuvring before my eyes. A _real_ fight was taking place in the
thickness of that old wall.
It did not last long. The man who was alone was attacking boldly. Time
after time his machine-gun flashed forth flames. Then, to avoid the
enemy's bullets, he looped the loop twice, each time throwing his
aeroplane in such a position that I was able to distinguish on the
canvas the three concentric circles that denote the Allied machines.
Then, coming nearer and attacking his adversaries from behind, he
returned to his gun.
The Hun biplane--I observed the iron cross--dived straight for the
ground and recovered itself. The two men seemed to be sitting tight
under their furs and masks. There was a third machine-gun attack. The
pilot threw up his hands. The biplane capsized and fell.
I saw this fall in the most inexplicable fashion. At first, of course,
it seemed swift as lightning. And then it became infinitely slow and
even ceased, with the machine overturned and the two bodies
_motionless, head downwards and arms outstretched_.
Then the ground shot up with a dizzy speed, devastated, shell-holed
fields, swarming with thousands of French _poilus_.
The biplane came down beside a river. From the shapeless fuselage and
the shattered wings two legs appeared.
And the French plane landed almost immediately, a short way off. The
victor stepped out, pushed back the soldiers who had run up from every
side and, moving a few yards towards his motionless prey, took off his
mask and made the sign of the cross.
"Oh," I whispered, "this is dreadful! And how mysterious! . . ."
Then I saw that Noel Dorgeroux was on his knees, his face distorted
with emotion:
"What is it, uncle?" I asked.
Stretching towards the wall his trembling hands, which were clasped
together, he stammered:
"Dominique! I recognize my son! It's he! Oh, I'm terrified!"
I also, as I gazed at the victor, recovered in my memory the
time-effaced image of my poor cousin.
"It's he!" continued my uncle. "I was right . . . the expression of
the Three Eyes. . . . Oh! I can't look! . . . I'm afraid!"
"Afraid of what, uncle?"
"They are going to kill him . . . to kill him before my eyes . . . to
kill him as they actually did kill him . . . Dominique! Dominique!
Take care!" he shouted.
I did not shout: what warning cry could reach the man about to die?
But the same terror brought me to my knees and made me wring my hands.
In front of us, from underneath the shapeless mass, among the
heaped-up wreckage, something rose up, the swaying body of one of the
victims. An arm was extended, aiming a revolver. The victor sprang to
one side. It was too late. Shot through the head, he spun round upon
his heels and fell beside the dead body of his murderer.
The tragedy was over.
My uncle, bent double, was sobbing pitifully a few paces from my
side. He had witnessed the actual death of his son, foully murdered in
the great war by a German airman!