THE AMBUSH
The father of Macbeth came to fetch him without delay, accompanied by
his other son. Since Lerne had written to him, nothing new had taken
place at Fonval. The mystery went on, and more arrangements were made
against my person.
Emma no longer came downstairs; from the little drawing room I heard
her busy with her futile amusements in the lay-figure room. Her little
sharp heels went tap, tap, tap on the floor above. My nights were
sleepless. The harassing idea of Lerne and Emma together kept me awake.
I tried to go out once, to take a walk in the cool of the night, and so
weary out my body. All the doors down below were locked.
Ah! Lerne was keeping a good watch on me.
However, the imprudence I had committed in revealing my discovery of
Macbeth had no other apparent result than a renewal of his friendship.
In our walks which had now become more frequent, he seemed to take more
and more pleasure in my society, endeavoring to mitigate the rigor of
my spy-haunted life, and thus to keep me at Fonval, whether it was
really to train an associate for himself, or merely to guard against
the risk of an escape. His attentions annoyed me.
This was the period when, without it seeming to be so, I was more
carefully watched than before. My days were filled in a way which I
disliked. I was eaten up with impatience, between love on the one hand,
and mystery on the other--both forbidden ground for me. Though love for
a pretty woman, who was inaccessible, called me in one direction, the
mystery also attracted me as imperiously in the other--that mystery
which was represented by an old boot.
This filthy elastic-sided boot served as a basis for all the theories
which I built up at night, in the hope of calming my jealousy by
curiosity. It constituted, indeed, the one clear goal to which my
indiscretions could tend.
I had noted that the tool-house stood near the clearing, and that was
convenient for any attempt to unearth the boot--and whatever else there
might be--but Lerne’s displays of affection kept me pitilessly away
from the hothouse, the laboratory, Emma, and everything else.
So I ardently longed for something or other new to happen, which should
revolutionize our relations, and give me a chance of escaping from the
vigilance of my guardians,--a sudden journey of Lerne to Nanthel--an
accident, anything from which I could derive some advantage.
This windfall was the arrival of the two Macbeths--father and son.
My uncle having been informed of their arrival by telegram, announced
it to me with an outburst of delight.
Why was he so pleased? Had I really enlightened him on the danger of
keeping Donovan, ill, away from his family? I found it devilish hard
to believe that. And then, that laugh of Lerne’s, even though sincere,
seemed to have a nasty quality. It could only be caused by his having a
chance of playing some dirty trick.
But, whatever the reason was, I showed the same delight as the
Professor, and that without any guile, for I had every good ground for
it.
* * * * *
They arrived one morning in a trap, hired at Grey, and driven by
Karl. They resembled one another, and both resembled Donovan of the
photograph. They were tall, pale and impassive.
Lerne introduced me with perfect ease of manner. They shook hands with
me coldly, with the same glove-clad gesture. One would have said that
they had put gloves over their souls.
Having been ushered into the little drawing room, they sat down without
a word.
With his three assistants present, Lerne began a long speech in
English, full of movement, illustrated by mimic gestures, and very
emotional.
At a certain point in his story, he pretended to tumble back like
somebody who had slipped. Then, taking the two men by the arm, he led
them to the central door of the _château_, near the park.
There he pointed out to them the scraper, shaped like a sickle and
then, once more went through the tumbling farce. No doubt he was
explaining to them that Donovan had been wounded by the curved blade
which cut his head when he fell backwards.
Good Lord! this was something new!
We went back to the drawing room. My uncle finished his speech with
wiping his eyes, and the three Germans tried to do a little sniffling
to indicate a need for weeping violently suppressed.
The Macbeths, father and son, never budged; they gave no sign either of
grief or impatience.
At length, Karl, Johann and Wilhelm went out of the room on an order
from Lerne, and brought in Donovan, clean-shaven, with his hair greased
and parted at the side, and the appearance of a very fashionable young
blade, although his traveling suit, somewhat worn, dragged on the
buttons at the all-too narrow collar, sending the blood into his big
good-natured face. His hair almost hid the scar.
At the sight of his father and brother the madman’s eye gleamed with
genuine happiness, and a smile lit up that face which had seemed so
apathetic, with affectionate kindness.
I thought that he was restored to reason--but he knelt down at
the feet of his relations and _began to lick their hands, barking
inarticulately_!
His brother could not get anything else out of him. His father failed
also, whereupon the Macbeths prepared to take leave of Lerne.
My uncle spoke to them. I grasped that they were declining some
invitation or other to lunch. The other did not insist, and everybody
went out.
Wilhelm put Donovan’s trunk on the box of the carriage.
“Nicolas,” said Lerne to me, “I am taking these gentlemen as far as the
train. You will remain here with Johann and Wilhelm. Karl will come
with me. I leave the house in your charge,” said he, in a jovial tone,
and he gave me a frank handshake.
Was my uncle making a fool of me? Not much chance of being master of a
house when there were two such watchers there.
They got into the trap, Karl and the trunk in front, Lerne, the madman
and the two Macbeths behind.
No sooner had the door slammed, than Donovan rose all at once, with a
face of terror, as if he had heard Death sharpening his scythe.
A long howl, quite distinct from all others rose from the laboratory.
The madman pointed in that direction, and replied to Nell with a
long-drawn bestial cry, the horror of which made us all turn pale.
We awaited the end of it, as if for a deliverance.
Lerne, with his imperious eye, and harsh speech, gave orders,
“Vorwärts, Karl, vorwärts,” and without any consideration, he thrust
down his pupil, with a blow, on the seat.
The carriage moved off.
The madman, sitting close to his brother, looked at him wildly, as if
he were the victim of some misfortune he could not understand.
The dreadful mystery was on me again. It was around me, coming nearer
and nearer. This time I had felt the touch of its wings.
Far away, the howlings were redoubled, then the elder Macbeth
exclaimed, “Nell, where is Nell?” And my uncle replied, “Alas, Nell is
dead.”
“Poor Nell!” said Mr. Macbeth.
Duffer as I was, I knew enough English to translate this school-book
dialogue. Lerne’s lie made me indignant. To think of his daring to
say that Nell was dead, and that that was not her voice! What a piece
of villainy! Ah! why did I not shout out to this phlegmatic couple,
“Stop, you are being fooled! There is something strange and terrible
here!”
Yes, but I did not know what it was, and the Macbeths would have taken
me for another madman.
Meanwhile, the hired horse trotted along towards the gate, where Barbe
stood ready to shut it.
Donovan had sat down again, in front of them. The Macbeths, father and
son, maintained their stiff dignity, but as the carriage turned at the
gate, I saw the father’s back suddenly bend and quiver more than could
have been explained by the jolting over the stones.
Then the old cracking halves of the gate closed again.
I am sure that the brother Macbeth broke into sobs not much later.
* * * * *
Johann and Wilhelm departed. Were they going to relieve me of their
company? I tracked them along the park as far as the laboratory. Nell
was continuing her lamentations. They probably wanted to silence her,
and, in fact, her howls ceased as soon as the assistants got into the
yard.
But my fears were groundless. Instead of going up to the _château_ to
lock me in, the black-guards, having lighted cigars coolly sat down
for an obvious _siesta_.
Through an open window of their block, I could see them in their shirt
sleeves, smoking like chimneys, and rocking in their rocking-chairs.
When I had assured myself of their intentions, without asking myself
whether they were acting thus against Lerne’s orders, or with his
consent, and a thousand miles from thinking that, as they puffed away
at the open window, they were carrying out his instructions point by
point, I betook myself to the tool-house.
Soon I was digging at the ground round the old shoe. I may now say,
“round the _foot_.”
With its point upwards, it stood up at the bottom of a hole where
Donovan’s nails still showed their marks, among less recent scratches.
When one examined these latter, which had been made by strong and
powerful paws, the only possible conclusion was that the first digger
must have been a dog of large size--apparently Nell, at the time when
she wandered about the park in complete freedom.
A leg was attached to this foot, and only lightly covered with earth.
I clung to the possibility of some anatomical _débris_, but without
much conviction. A hairy body followed the leg--a whole corpse, hardly
clothed, and far advanced in decomposition!
It had been buried aslant--the head, lower down than the feet, still
remained buried. It was with a trembling spade that I uncovered the
chin, whiskers that were almost blue, then a thick mustache--finally a
face.
I now knew what fate had overtaken all the personages who were grouped
in the photograph.... _Otto Klotz, half unburied, with his head in the
earth, was lying there before me!_
I identified him without any hesitation. It was quite unnecessary to
uncover him completely--on the contrary, it was best to fill in the
hole, so as to leave no traces of my escapade.
However, all of a sudden, I seized the pick in frenzy, and began
digging away by the side of the dead man. _Here_ rose up a bone like a
white and spongy mushroom. Were there other things buried _there_? Oh!!
I dug and dug. I was in a fever. White spots flickered before my eyes,
and it seemed to me that tongues of fire were raining on my maddened
eye like a pentecostal deluge.
I dug and dug, and uncovered a whole cemetery, but thank God! a
cemetery of animals--some, mere skeletons, others, with their feathers
or fur--dry or oozy! Guinea-pigs, rabbits, dogs, cats--sometimes whole,
sometimes in bits, the rest of which had gone to feed the pack. The leg
of a horse! Ah, dear Biribi, it was yours; and under a layer of earth
which had been recently stirred, bits of butcher’s meat wrapped up in a
dappled skin--the remains of Pasiphaë!
A fetid stench choked me. Exhausted, I leaned over my filthy pick, in
the midst of the charnel-house. The sweat which poured from me, stung
my eyes. I was gasping for breath.
At that moment, my eyes lighted, by chance, on a skull--that of a cat.
Immediately I picked it up. It was a regular pipe’s bowl! That is to
say, a great circular hole took the place of the crown.
I then took up another--a rabbit’s, if I remember rightly. Here too,
was the same peculiarity.
Four--sixteen other skulls, each showing its gaping hole, but with some
differences in its position.
Here and there the bony tops of skulls strewed the clearing with their
large or tiny cups--some deep--some flat.
One would have said that all those creatures had been massacred in a
scientific hecatomb--a carefully reasoned-out sacrifice.
Suddenly, an atrocious idea seized me. I bent down over the dead man,
and succeeded in getting the mud off his head. Nothing abnormal in
front. His hair was closely cropped, but behind, encircling the whole
occiput, like Macbeth’s scar, from one temple to the other, a horrible
cut laid bare the broken brain.
* * * * *
Lerne had killed Klotz! He had suppressed him because of Emma, in the
same way that he knocked the life out of animals and fowls, when he had
exhausted their power of enduring his experiments. It was a surgical
crime. I now imagined I had probed the mystery to the bottom.
I thought to myself, “Macbeth’s madness comes from this, that Lerne
missed his blow. The poor doomed creature saw a dreadful death coming
on him. But why should my uncle have missed him? Perhaps in his blind
fury, he suddenly saw clear, and feared reprisals from the Macbeth
family.”
As for Klotz, he was an orphan and a bachelor, as Emma assured me, so
there he is! and the same fate awaits me--awaits her, perhaps, if we
are found together!
“Oh, to flee, to flee, she and I together, to flee, it’s the only
reasonable plan, and opportunity favors us! Will it ever occur again?”
We must make for the station, through the forest, in order to avoid
Lerne and Karl, who are coming by the road. But the labyrinth!--Perhaps
it would be better to use the motor-car and pass over their bodies. I
do not know, we shall see!
Shall I be in time? Quick, for God’s sake, quick!
I ran panting, striving to outstrip the light, swift, unseen feet of
Death.
I ran, twice falling and twice picking myself up, and gasping with the
fear of that Pursuer.
The _château_! No Lerne yet! His felt hat was not hanging on its usual
peg in the hall. I had won the first lap. The second was to get us
away, without return. I dashed up the staircase, crossed the landing,
went through the dressing-room at a bound, and burst into Emma’s room.
“Let us begone,” I blurted out. “Come, sweetheart, come, I will explain
all. There is murder being done at Fonval!”
“What’s the matter? What is it?”
She remained rigid in the presence of my excitement, standing stiffly
up.
“How white you are. Don’t be afraid.”
Then, and then only, I perceived that terror possessed her, and that
with frightened eyes, and bloodless lips, her poor dead face was
signing to me to be silent, and announcing the imminence of a great
danger, close at hand, too close for her to be able to warn me of it
with a gesture or a sound, without the watchful enemy taking revenge
upon her.
And yet, nothing happened. I took in the whole peaceful chamber at a
glance. Everything in it seemed to me mysterious. The air itself was a
hostile fluid--an unbreathable ocean in which I was sinking.
I felt a terror of what might happen behind me. I waited some legendary
apparition.
And it was more terrible, this apparition, than the sudden appearance
of Mephistopheles. _For it was Lerne calmly coming out of a wardrobe!_
“You have kept us waiting, Nicolas,” he said. I was thunder-struck.
Emma sank on the ground foaming at the mouth, and twisting about under
the furniture.
“Jetzt!” cried the professor.
A rustle of dresses in the next room--I heard the lay-figures fall.
Wilhelm and Johann flung themselves on me.
Bound! Caught! Lost! And the terror of torture made me a coward.
“Uncle,” I entreated, “kill me at once, I beg you. No torture! A
revolver; the dagger--poison! Anything you like, uncle, but no torture!”
Lerne sniggered, as he flipped Emma’s cheeks with a wet towel.
I felt myself going mad. Who knows if Macbeth’s reason had not gone in
a moment like this! Macbeth! Klotz!
The hallucination made me feel a sharp pain, which pierced my skull
from temple to temple.
The assistants took me downstairs, Johann at my head--Wilhelm at my
feet.
Were they simply going to put me away in a locked room!
A nephew, damn it all, is not to be slaughtered like a chicken!
They took their way to the laboratory.
In my fainting condition, my whole life, day by day, passed before me
in the moment of a heart’s beat.
The Professor joined us. We went past the Germans’ block, and along
beside the courtyard wall. Lerne opened a door on the ground floor of
the left wing, and I was laid out under the operating theater, in a
sort of wash-house that was as bare as a sepulcher, and all inlaid with
white tiles.
A curtain of thick cloth hanging from a rod on rings, separated it into
two compartments of equal size.
Its atmosphere was that of a chemist’s shop. There was plenty of light
in it.
They had set up against the wall a little truckle-bed, which Lerne
pointed out to me saying, “Your bed has been ready for you for some
time, Nicolas.”
Then my uncle gave some instructions to the Germans, in their native
language. The two assistants having unbound me, undressed me.
Resistance was useless.
A few minutes later I was comfortably lying in bed, with sheets up to
my chin, and tucked in. Johann alone watched over me, sitting astride
on a stool, the only ornament of this austere place.
The curtain drawn aside let me see another folding door--the door into
the courtyard.
In front of me,--through the bay window, I saw my old friend the fir
tree.
My sadness increased. My mouth had a bad flavor in it, as if it had
already tasted its approaching decomposition.
“Oh, to think that in a short time some filthy chemistry would be a
prelude to that!”
Johann toyed with a revolver, and aimed it at me every now and again,
much pleased with his excellent joke.
I turned round towards the wall, and that caused me to discover an
inscription engraved in uncouth letters on the varnish of the tiling,
made by the help, at least so I thought, of the jewel in a ring:
“Good-by, for ever, my dear father; Donovan.”
The unhappy man. He also had been laid on this bed--Klotz also, and who
could prove that my uncle had made only those two his victims before
me; but I cared very little.
The day sank into night. There was a rapid coming and going above us.
At night this slackened and ceased. Then Karl, who had come back from
Grey-l’Abbaye, relieved Johann of his post.
Almost immediately afterwards, Lerne had me plunged into a bath,
and forced a bitter liquid down my throat. I recognized sulphate of
magnesia. No doubt they were going to cut me up. These were forerunners
of an operation. No one is ignorant of that now, in this age of
appendicitis. It would be on the next day.
What were they going to try on my body before killing it!
I was alone with Karl!
I was hungry!
Not far from me a murmur arose from the wretched poultry-yard. There
was a faint sound of stirred straw; timid cackling, strange barks. The
beasts began to moan.
Night!
Lerne came in. I was in a state of wild agitation. He felt my pulse.
“Are you happy?” he asked me.
“Brute!” I replied.
“Very well, I shall administer a sedative.” He offered it to me, and I
drank it. It stank of chloral.
Once more I am alone with Karl.
Songs of toads, light of stars, dawning of the moon, uprising of its
red disc. Mystic assumption of the luminary from star to star. All the
beauty of night....
Then a forgotten prayer--the petition of a little child--went up from
my distress towards the paradise which yesterday seemed a myth, and now
was a certainty. How had I ever doubted its existence?
And the moon wandered in the firmament like an aureole in search of a
brow.
It was long since my eyelids had closed on tears. I fell into drowsy
delirium. The buzzing in my ears became a hubbub. (There are certain
noises almost imperceptible, which seem like the thunder of cataclysms
far away.)
They were heaping up straw. That poultry-yard is exasperating. The bull
was bellowing. I even had an illusion that it was bellowing louder and
louder.
Did they bring it in every evening, along with the cows, into the stall
of that strange farm?
Good Lord, what a row!
It was while my mind was wandering in that way, under the influence of
the drug, that, condemned to death, or destined for madness, I fell
into a heavy and artificial sleep, which lasted till the morning.
* * * * *
Some one touched me on the shoulder. Lerne, in a white overall
was standing near the bed. The murder idea had sprung up again
instantaneously and clearly in me.
“What o’clock is it? Am I to die, or is your business over?”
“Patience, nephew. Nothing has begun yet.”
“What are you going to do with me? Are you going to inoculate me with
plague, tuberculosis, cholera? Tell me, uncle.”
“No!”
“What then?”
“Come, come, no nonsense,” he said.
He withdrew, and revealed an operating table, which, lying on narrow
supports like an open bier, had the appearance of a rack.
All the sets of instruments and the crowd of bottles shone in the light
of the rising sun. Antiseptic dressings lay on a little table in a
woolly cloud.
The two nickel-plated spheres on their supports, showed round, like
divers’ helmets. A spirit lamp was burning under them. I nearly fainted
with horror. At the side behind the curtain something was going on. A
penetrating odor of ether came from it.
The secret, the secret always!
“What’s behind that?” I cried.
From between the wall and the curtain Karl and Wilhelm appeared,
leaving the room which had thus been contrived on the other side of
the compartment. They also had put on white overalls, though they were
only assistants, but Lerne had seized something, and I felt, on the
back of my neck, the chill touch of steel.
I uttered a cry.
“Idiot!” said my uncle, “it’s a clipper.”
He cut my hair, and shaved my hairy scalp close. At every touch of the
razor I thought I felt the edge in my flesh.
After that, they soaked my skull again, dried it, and the Professor,
by means of a soft pencil and calipers, covered my baldness with
cabalistic lines.
“Take off your shirt,” he said to me. “Take care, do not spoil my
diagrams.”
“Stretch yourself out on that, now.”
They helped me to haul myself up on the table, to which they bound me
fast, with my arms under the bier.
Where was Johann?
Karl, without any warning, put a sort of muzzle over me. An odor of
ether penetrated my lungs.
“Why not chloroform?” I said to myself.
Lerne recommended as follows:
“Breathe deeply and regularly--it is for your own good. Breathe!”
I obeyed.
There is a syringe with a sharp-pointed nozzle in my uncle’s hand.
Hallo! he has pricked my neck with it!
I moved my jaws, my tongue and lips feeling like lead.
“Wait, I am not sleeping yet. What is this virus?”
“Morphia,” said the Professor simply.
The anesthetic was gaining on me. Another prick, on the shoulder--this
time very sharp.
“I am not sleeping! Good heavens, wait! I am not sleeping.”
“That is what I wanted to know,” growled my executioner.
For some moments a consolation had been assuaging my torture. Did not
the cranial preparations seem to show that they were going to slaughter
me without delay? And yet Macbeth had survived his trepanning.
I seemed to get far away inside myself. Silvery bells gayly rang a
celestial chime, which I have never been able to remember, though it
seemed to me unforgettable.
Another prick on the shoulder, which I hardly felt. I wished to say
again that I was not sleeping. Vain effort! My words sounded dully
submerged in the depths of an invading sea. They were held lifeless,
and I alone could make them out.
The rings glide along the curtain rod, and without suffering, on
the threshold of this artificial Nirvana, this is what I seemed to
perceive.
Lerne makes a long incision from the right temple to the left, round
the occiput--an incomplete scalping, and he brings down all the strips
of flesh in front of my face, making my forehead like a shambles. From
in front, one must see me with the bleeding and jumbled head which I
remembered on the monkey.
“Help, I am not sleeping!”
But I cannot hear my cries for the jangling of the silver bells. To
begin with, they are too far down under the sea, and now the sound
of the bells is deafening, like great church bells chiming with a
formidable din, and it is now I who plunge into the ocean of ether.
Am I living, or am I not? I am a dead man who is conscious of being
dead....
* * * * *
Even more so....
* * * * *
Nothingness!----