THE CIRCEEAN OPERATION
I opened my eyes on thick darkness in a place where there was neither
noise nor smell.
I wanted to say once more, “Do not begin, I am still awake,” but no
word sounded.
The delirium of the night was being prolonged. It seemed to me that the
bellowing had got nearer, so much so, indeed, that I seemed to hear it
in myself. I could not manage to master my ridiculous senses. I kept
quiet.
Then there grew in me the assurance that the mysterious business was at
an end.
Gradually the darkness lightened. Unconsciousness was coming to an end.
As my blindness got better, smells and sounds, ever in greater number,
were like a welcomed crowd coming towards me.
“Oh, happiness, to remain thus--thus for ever!”
But this inverse death struggle came ever on in spite of me, and life
seized me once more.
However, objects, though now distinct, remained shapeless, without
perspective, and curiously colored.
My vision embraced a wide space--a field vaster than before. I
remembered that the influence of certain anesthetics on the dilatation
of the pupil, a phenomenon which no doubt brought on these disturbances
of sight.
I noted, however, without very much difficulty, that they had lifted
me from the table, and laid me on the ground, on the other side of the
room, and in spite of my eye, which functioned like a distorting lens,
I succeeded in recognizing the situation.
The curtain was no longer drawn.
Lerne and his assistants, grouped round the operating table, were busy
about something which their grouping hid from me--probably the cleaning
of instruments.
Through the wide-opened door, one could see the park, and hardly twenty
yards away, a corner of the paddock, where the cows were ruminating and
lowing.
_Only_, I might have imagined myself transported into the most
revolutionary picture of the impressionist school. The azure of the
sky, without losing its limpid depths, had changed into a fine orange
dye. The paddocks--the trees--instead of being green seemed to me to
be red. The buttercups of the meadow, starred vermilion grass with
violets.
Everything had changed color, except, however, the black and white
things. The dark trousers of the four men obstinately remained as
before, as also their overalls, but those white overalls were marked
with _green_ stains.
Green stains were also shining on the ground, and what could this
liquid be except blood, and what was there astonishing in its appearing
green, since greenery gave me the sense of red?
This liquid exhaled a pungent smell, which would have driven me far
away, if I had been capable of budging, and yet, the smell was not that
which I had been accustomed to associate with blood.
I had _never_ smelt it, any more than those other perfumes, or any more
than my ears remembered having heard sounds like these.
It was strange that the aberration of my senses had not been dissipated
along with the vapors of the ether. I endeavored to fight against this
feeling of numbness. No use! They had stretched me out on a litter of
straw, of _purple_ straw.
The operators kept their backs turned to me, except Johann.
Every now and again, Lerne flung into the basin cotton-wool stained
with green blood....
Johann was the first to perceive my awaking, and he told the Professor
of it. There was then a movement of general curiosity with regard to
me, which, breaking up the group, allowed me to see an absolutely naked
man bound to the table, with his hands under it--motionless and white,
the color of wax, like a corpse, the blackness of his mustache making
the paleness still paler, and his head, enveloped in bandages bedabbled
with spurts of green.
His breast rose rhythmically. He was breathing in the air with all his
lungs, his nostrils quivering with each inhalation. This man--it took
me some time to accept it--_was myself_.
When I was certain that no mirror was giving me back my own image,
which was an easy matter to settle, it came into my mind that Lerne had
doubled my being, and that now I was two....
Or else, was I not dreaming?
No, assuredly not, but up to now the adventure had not got beyond the
bizarre stage. I was neither dead nor mad, and the evidence of this
cheered me mightily.
(Protest as one may against the conviction which I felt of possessing
all my reason, the future was to confirm this rash judgment.)
The man on the operating-table shook his head. Wilhelm had unfastened
him, and I beheld my other self awaking to a faint-like condition.
Opening eyes like those of a blind man, he waggled his head about with
an idiotic air, stroked the edges of the table and sat up.
He did not look at all well. I could not accept the idea that my double
should behave so like a brute beast.
They laid the patient in the little truckle-bed. He allowed himself
to be patted; but soon he was convulsed with painful vomiting proving
beyond doubt the total absence of communication between him and me,
since I suffered in no wise from his troubles, except mentally, and
through the effect of a feeling of compassion, which was very natural,
towards a gentleman who was so very like myself.
Like! Was that only a replica of my body, or was it really my body?
Bosh! Absurd! I could feel, see and hear--very badly, it is true, but
enough in any case to convince myself that I possessed a nose, eyes and
ears.
I made an effort, and cords cut into my limbs, so I had flesh--flabby
and benumbed, but still flesh. My body was here, and not there.
The Professor announced that he was going to unbind me. The hempen
thongs were undone. I rose with one shake, and a complex impression
spread terror into my soul and made it sink.
Good Heavens! how heavy I was, and how short. I wished to look at
myself, and there was nothing below my head, and as I bent it more,
with great trouble, I saw, instead of my feet, two cloven hoofs which
ended black and knotty legs covered with thick hair!
A cry arose in my throat!...
And it was that nocturnal bellowing which broke out in my mouth, making
the house shake, and echoing far away amongst the inaccessible rocks.
“Hold your tongue, Jupiter,” said Lerne, “you are annoying poor Nicolas
there, who needs rest,” and he pointed out my body, which had raised
itself in alarm on the bed.
So I was the black bull! Lerne, that loathsome magician had changed me
into a beast!
He abandoned himself to brutal enjoyment. The three servile ruffians
held their sides and guffawed, and my ox’s eyes learned to weep.
“Well,” said the sorcerer, as if replying to the rush of my thoughts.
“Well, yes, you are Jupiter, but you have a right to ask me more.”
“Here is your birth certificate. You were born in Spain, in a
celebrated _ganaderia_, and you come from famous parents, whose male
posterity falls gloriously with a sword at their throat, on the sand of
the bull-rings. I rescued you from the bandarillos of the toreadors,
your pedigree suiting my purpose, and paid a high price for you--you
and the cows. You cost me two thousand piastres, exclusive of carriage.
“You were born five years and two months ago, so you can live as long
again--no more; if we let you die of old age.
“To sum up, I bought you in order to try some experiments on your
organism. This is only the first one.” My facetious relative was seized
with an attack of uncontrollable laughter. When he had exhausted his
superfluous gayety, he went on:
“Ah, ha! Nicolas! you are all right aren’t you? You are not at all
uncomfortable? I am sure your curiosity, you son of woman, your
infernal curiosity, must be keeping you up and I bet that you are less
annoyed than interested. Come! I am a kindly chap, and since you are
discreet now, my dear ward, listen to the information which you desire.
“Did I not say to you, ‘The time is drawing near when you shall know
all?’ Nicolas, you are now going to know all, and indeed it would
not please me to pass as a devil--a miracle-monger, or a sorcerer. I
am neither Belphegor, nor Moses, nor Merlin--I am just Lerne, _tout
court_! My power does not come from the outside, it is my own, and
I am proud of it. It is my science. All that one could say by way
of correction, is, that it is the science of humanity, which I have
continued in my day, and of which I am the most advanced pioneer and
chief master.
“But, do not let us be conceited! Do the bandages stop up your ears?
Can you hear me?”
I made a sign with my head.
“Well, listen, then, and do not roll your eyes about--all will be
explained.”
Good Lord! we are not in Wonderland.
The assistants were cleaning and arranging the instruments. My body was
asleep and snoring.
Lerne dragged his stool up beside me, and sat down, with his mouth on a
level with my ear, and discoursed in the following terms:
“To begin with, my nephew, I was wrong a moment ago, in calling you
‘Jupiter.’ To use words in an exact way, I have not metamorphosed you
into a bull, and you are still Nicolas Vermont, for the name denotes,
above all, the personality which is the soul and not the body.
“As, on the one hand, you have kept your soul, and as, on the other,
the soul has its seat in the brain, it is easy for you to argue by
induction, in the presence of those surgical instruments, that I have
just exchanged Jupiter’s brain with yours and that it now lives in your
cast-off body.
“You will probably say, Nicolas, that it is a disgusting pleasantry on
my part!
“You do not divine either the supreme object of my studies, nor the
series of ideas which has inspired them, and yet, from this logical
series is derived this little pleasantry derived from Ovid; but it is
possible that it means nothing to you, for I have only gone in for this
by the way.
“We will call it, if you like, a workshop joke!
“No, my ultimate aim does not reveal itself in this form--a funny and
malicious one, you will admit, but puerile, without any results social
or industrial that can be exploited.
“My aim is the ‘introversion’ of human personalities, which I have
endeavored to achieve, in the first place, by the interchange of brains.
“You know my inveterate passion for flowers! I have always cultivated
them with the utmost enthusiasm. My earlier life was absorbed by
my profession, which was interrupted only on Sundays with this
recreation--a day’s gardening.
“Well, the hobby influenced my profession. Grafting influenced my
surgery, and in the hospital I was inclined to give myself up more
especially to animal grafting. I became a specialist in that, and grew
fond of it, finding in my clinics the enthusiasm of the hothouse.
“Even in the beginning I had dimly foreseen a point of contact between
animal and vegetable grafts--a hyphen which my logically conducted
labors made clear some time ago.... I will return to that.
“When I took up animal grafting with enthusiasm, this branch of surgery
was languishing. In fact, ever since the Hindoos of antiquity, who
were the first grafters, it had remained stationary.
“But perhaps you forget its underlying principles. That doesn’t matter.
Learn them afresh. They are based, Nicolas, on this fact, that animal
tissues possess, each of them, a personal vitality, and that the
body of an animal is only the _milieu_ adapted to the life of those
tissues--a _milieu_ from which they may be removed, and live for a more
or less long time.
“1. Don’t the nails and the hair grow after death? You are not ignorant
of that. They survive.
“2. A man who has been dead for fifty-four hours, and has left no
descendants, still fulfills the chief condition for remedying that.
Unfortunately, other essential faculties are wanting. But I will pass
on.
“3. In certain conditions of humidity, oxygenation and heat, scientists
have been able to keep a rat’s tail, which had been cut off, alive for
seven days; an amputated finger, for four hours. At the end of those
periods they were dead, but if during those seven days or those four
hours, they had been cleverly glued on again, they would have continued
to live.
“This is the procedure employed by the Hindoos, who thus restored
to their places reintegrated noses that had been cut off by way of
punishment, or if those appanages had been burnt, they replaced them
by noses made of flesh and skin, taken, my dear Nicolas, from another
part of the anatomy of the man who had been punished.
“The operation thus effected goes into the first category of animal
grafting, and consists in transplanting a part of the individual to
himself.
“The second consists of joining together two animals, by two wounds
which coalesce. One can then cut off from first, the fragment of his
person nearest the point of junction, which thereafter will live upon
the second.
“The third consists of transplanting, without any attachment, a part of
one animal to another animal, always in such a way that it preserves
its own life. That is the most elegant way of the three, and the one
which has attracted me.
“The operation was regarded as a ticklish one, for many reasons, the
principal one of which is, that a grafting is less likely to succeed
the further removed the two subjects are from one another in the scale
of relationship.
“Grafting succeeds when it is done on the same animal; less well from
father to son, and worse and worse from brother to brother, from cousin
to cousin, from Frenchman to Spaniard, man to woman, and child to old
man.
“When I came on the scene, the exchange I am talking about always came
to naught in different zoölogical families, and more so still in the
case of _genera_ and _species_.
“However, some experiments are an exception to this--experiments on
which I have based my own, wishing to accomplish the greater thing,
before successfully accomplishing the lesser, and to graft a fish on a
bird before dealing with humanity alone. I say a few experiments.
“1. Wiesmann tore from his arm a canary’s feather, which he had
transplanted into it a month before, and which left a little bleeding
wound.
“2. Baronio has grafted the wing of a canary, and the tail of a rat on
the comb of a cock.
“This was not much, but Nature herself encouraged me.
“3. Birds cross without any shame, and produce numerous hybrids, which
bear witness to the possibility of fusion between species.
“4. Then, getting further away from man, vegetables have considerable
plastic force.
“Such, reduced to its simplest expression, is the summary of the
situation in the presence of which I found myself, and on which I
staked all.
“I came here to work more comfortably, and almost immediately I
performed remarkable operations, which became very famous. One more
especially. I wonder if you remember it?
“X, the Pickle-King, the American millionaire, had only one ear, and
desired to have a pair of them. A poor devil sold him one of his for
five thousand dollars. I performed the little ceremony. The grafted ear
only died with X two years later, when he succumbed to indigestion.
“It was then, when the world was applauding my triumph, and just as
the very moment when love, having come on the scene, was urging me to
make money, in order that Emma should live a life of luxury--it was
just then that I conceived my great idea, which proceeded from this
reasoning:
“If a millionaire, dissatisfied with his physique, pays five thousand
dollars for the pleasure of embellishing it a little, what would he not
give for changing it altogether, and acquire a new body for his _ego_,
for his brain--a covering full of grace, vigor and youth, in place of
an old sickly and repulsive casing!
“On the other hand, how many beggars I know would give up their
magnificent anatomy for a few years of jollification!
“And observe, Nicolas, this purchase of a young body would not only
furnish advantages of suppleness, warmth and endurance, but also the
enormous advantage that in a youthful _milieu_, the transferred organs
are rejuvenated.
“Oh! I am not the first to advance this theory, and Paul Bert, admitted
the possibility of grafting an organ on several consecutive bodies, as
each of these latter grow old, so that by a series of rejuvenations,
he foresaw that one might make the same stomach, the same brain _live
indefinitely_--as an integral part of successive constitutions. This
was tantamount to declaring that a personality can live indefinitely,
by a series of incarnations, in a journey through different carcasses,
each discarded at the proper moment.
“The discovery to be made surpassed my hopes. I was not only pursuing
the choice of a pleasing outward appearance--I had my hand on _the
secret of_ IMMORTALITY!
“The brain being the seat of the _ego_ (for you know that the spinal
cord is only a transmitter, and a center of reflexes), the only
question was ability to graft.
“Certainly the ear is one thing and the brain another and yet this
difference is only a question of the degrees which separate:
“1. Cartilaginous matter from the nerve matter, and
“2. The accessory from the principal organ.
“Logic backed up my conviction, and my reasoning was based on famous
premises officially verified.
“1. Besides their grafts of mucous membrane, skin, etc., in 1861,
Phillippeaux and Vulpian replaced the nerve matter in an optic nerve.
“2. In 1880, Gluck exchanged a few centimeters of sciatic nerve in a
hen for a rabbit’s nerves.
“3. In 1890, Thompson removed a few cubic centimeters of brain from
dogs and cats, and into the cavity thus obtained, introduced the same
quantity of cerebral substance taken from dogs and cats, _or from
different species_. Here we have passed from cartilage to nerve, and
from ear to fragment of brain.
“Let us now turn to the difficulty of the second order:
“1. Gardeners often graft whole organisms.
“2. Besides fingers, tails and paws, Phillippeaux and Mantegazza
grafted rather important organs--spleens, stomachs and tongues. They
made a hen into a cock as a joke, they even tried to graft the pancreas
and the thyroid.
“3. Carrel and Guthrey, in 1905, in New York, came to believe that they
can substitute the veins of the arteries of animals for those of man.
We have bridged the distance between the accessory and the principal.
“4. Finally, Mantegazza maintained that he had grafted spinal cords and
_brains_ of frogs!
* * * * *
“These examples were ample proof that my projects were realizable, so I
said to myself I would realize them.
“I began my task. An obstacle was in the way!
“It being impracticable to employ an ‘attachment,’ it resulted that the
body and the brain, once separated, perished, one or other, or both,
before having been placed in contact with their new companions.
“But here again facts gave me courage. So far as the body is concerned:
“1. An animal can live quite well with one cerebral lobe. You saw a
pigeon circling round, which has been deprived of three-fourths of its
brain!
“2. Often decapitated ducks fly for a hundred yards from the block on
which their severed head remains.
“3. A locust lived for fifteen days without a head--fifteen!
“That is an experiment duly attested.
“So far as the severed organ is concerned, there were these certified
cases.
“This persuaded me that the brain and the body, if _properly_ treated,
would be able to live, each independently, for the few minutes of
separation which the work requires. However that may be, the necessary
slowness of trepanning induced me as a rule to exchange not brains, but
heads, having learned from Brown Séquard that a dog’s head injected
with oxygenated blood, had survived decapitation a quarter-of-an-hour.
“From this period date heteroclite creatures--a donkey with a horse’s
head--a goat with a stag’s head--which I should like to have preserved,
because the beasts which composed them were somewhat distant from one
another, although they belonged to the same family--a distance which I
have never been able to increase by this means.
“Alas! on the night of your arrival, Wilhelm left the doors open, and
those monsters, worthy of Dr. Moreau, escaped, with many other subjects
which were under observation. You may boast of having come into Fonval
like a bull into a china shop!
“I resume; but in order to avoid exhausting the attention of a
convalescent, I shall pass over, as far as details are concerned, the
abandonment of this method, the discovery of the Lerne trepanner with
an ultra-rapid-circular-saw, that of the brain-preserving globes or
artificial _meninges_, that of the ointment for joining nerves, the
recognized efficacy of the injection of morphia, approved of by Broca,
for contracting the blood vessels, and so diminishing the loss of
blood, the generally accepted employment of ether as an anesthetic,
the manipulation of brains for the purpose of fitting them exactly to
skulls, etc., etc.
“Thanks to all that, I exchanged the personalities of a--ah, I can
never remember that word--squirrel and a wood-pigeon. That wasn’t
bad! Then that of a wren and a viper. Then that of a carp and a
blackbird--hot blood and cold blood. It was perfect!
“In face of these prodigies, my aim, that of human substitution was
mere child’s play.
“At this juncture Karl and Wilhelm volunteered to submit themselves
to the convincing test. It was quite epic. Otto Klotz had left me.
Hum! Macbeth was not to be trusted! I operated alone, with the help of
Johann and automatic machines.
“Success! ah! what fine fellows! Who would have imagined that whole
bodies had been amputated? and yet, each of them, ever since that day,
lives in the carnal abode of his friend. Look!”
He summoned his assistants, and raising their hair, showed the violet
colored scar.
The two Germans smiled at one another, and I could not prevent myself
from admiring them.
Lerne went on:
“My fortune, then, was made, and at one stroke, I was assuring my
own and Emma’s happiness, and her love, which is my most inestimable
possession, Nicolas.
“But the discovery, one certain, had to be applied.
“To tell the truth, one dark spot worried me. I mean the influence of
the moral side on the physical and _vice versa_.
“At the end of a few months my patients became modified. If I had
endowed their body with a mentality finer than before, the latter
ruined the former, and I have seen, amongst others, pigs with a dog’s
brain become ill and thin, and die soon.
“On the other hand, intellects coarser than their predecessors, allow
themselves to be overcome by the corporal part, and the composite
animal then becomes stupider and fatter. That is an invariable rule.
“Sometimes, also, the imperious flesh refashions the mind according to
the instincts of brutal matter.
“One of my wolves, my dear nephew, installed cruelty in the brain of
a sheep! But this drawback was bound, was it not, in the case of my
future clients--men--to reduce itself to slight indifferences of health
and character? It was not worth thinking about, and it did not give me
any pause.
“Not caring to leave Macbeth with Emma, I sent him off to Scotland, and
I set out towards America--the land of audacity, of millions, and of
the grafted ear--as it seemed to me the best soil to cultivate.
“That was two years ago.
“The day after my landing, I had thirty-five ruffians at my disposal,
who were resolved to part with an impeccable bodily constitution, for
the benefit of any thirty-five millionaires I should get to know, teach
and convince.
“Check!
“I began with the most dreadful ones, and the most unhealthy.
“Some called me a madman and showed me the door. Others got angry,
looking me majestically up and down with displeasure in their eyes,
thrusting out very consumptive chests or flabby thoraxes; or they drew
themselves to their full height on their twisted legs and expressed
astonishment that anybody should think them ugly.
“Those who were dying were sure they would get well--surer than that
they would not collapse under the ether.
“Some showed fear. ‘It was tempting Providence!’ They stood aloof from
me as from the Devil, and some of them would have sprinkled me with
Holy Water.
“It was no use my declaring, in answer to them, that man is modified
more completely in the course of his life than they would change under
my lancet, and that religious doctrine has traveled some way since
1670, when that Russian was excommunicated, for having had his skull
mended with a piece of a dog’s bone.
“It was no use.
“Many sententiously remarked, ‘One knows what one has got--one does not
know what one is getting.’
“Would you believe it! The women nearly saved me! Crowds of them
aspired to become men. Fortunately, my black-guards--except one or
two--categorically refused to adopt the female sex.
“In despair, I dangled before them the attractive prospect of a life
prolonged indefinitely, resuming its course at each new incarnation.
“‘Life, replied the three-score-years-and-tenners, is already too long,
as God has limited it. We desire nothing more than to die.’
“‘But I shall restore to you all your desires, at the same time as your
youth.’
“‘Thank you, the fate of desires is to remain ungratified!’
“Amongst adults I often received this reply:
“‘The charm of acquired experience is worth preserving from all things
that might lessen that experience, and let us not risk diminishing it
through the inexperienced rashness of adolescent blood.’
“There were some, however, who were ready to imitate Faust, and sign
the pact of youth, but all these Nabobs I sounded offered me the same
objection--the danger of the operation--the folly of risking life in
the desire to prolong life.
“To tell you the truth, Nicolas, the only people who allow themselves
to be operated on without any qualms, are young people at the point of
death, and aware of their state.
“Understanding the necessity of overcoming the danger they
apprehended, I felt ready for new researches--but greatly
disillusioned, thenceforward knowing that even were these rewarded by
a second discovery, my clients would be few, but also aware that they
would be sufficient to secure me my fortune and happiness. But all this
was deferred till the Greek Calends.
* * * * *
“I came back to Fonval--bitter, silent, and with rage in my heart.
“Emma and Donovan could not have found a more implacable judge. I
surprised them. I took my revenge. You have guessed it, have you not?
Yesterday, the two Macbeths carried off the brain of Nell, and the soul
of Donovan is lodged in the body of the St. Bernard!
“The same punishment awaited both of you for the same fault. Solomon
could not have better judged, nor Circe have better carried the
sentence into execution.
* * * * *
“Now, look here, nephew! I have worked at what, but for your intrusion,
and my need for watching your acts, would in a few days, have been
the beginning of the interchange of personalities without surgical
intervention.
“I was wise enough, you see, not to give up my vegetable grafting. I
had even carried all its developments very far, and this training,
supplemented by my zoölogical experiments, constitutes almost the
whole curriculum of grafting.
“It was the combination of this science with other sciences, which
revealed the probable solution to me.
“People never generalize enough, Nicolas! Devoted to interminable
subdivision, fanatical about the infinitely little, which is always
becoming infinitely less, we have a mania for analysis. We live with
our eyes glued to microscopes. In half our investigations we should
employ another instrument to show things as wholes--an apparatus of
optical synthesis--a synoptic telescope, or if you prefer to call it
so, a _megaloscope_.
“I foresee a colossal discovery! And to think that but for Emma, I
should have disdained financial rewards and never aspired to wealth! So
that love caused ambition, and ambition brought glory!
“Apropos of this, nephew, you very nearly put on the features of
Professor Lerne! Yes, she adored you with such a fine ardor, nephew,
that I thought of disguising my appearance by assuming with your
features, in order to be loved in your place....
“That would have been the very best revenge, and very piquant, but I
have still need, for some time, of my antique and awkward carcass.
Later on we shall see about getting rid of this old trumpery frame. Is
not your captivating appearance always at my disposal?”
At those sarcastic words, my weeping was redoubled.
My uncle went on, affecting consideration for me.
“Ah! I am abusing your courage, my dear patient. Have a rest. The
satisfaction of your curiosity will give you, I hope, a refreshing
sleep.
“Ah! I was forgetting! Do not be astonished if the world appears to
you other than it was.... Amongst other novelties, things must be seen
by you as flat as in a photograph. That is because you look at things
only with one eye at a time, so that one might say--using the terms
jocularly, that many animals are only double one-eyed things. Their
sight is not stereoscopic. Other eyes--other phenomena.
“New ear-drums, other sounds, and so on!
“Amongst men, themselves, each one has his manner of appreciating
things. Habit teaches us, for example, that we must call a certain
color red, but a man who calls it red receives from it a green
impression--that is a common occurrence, and another, an impression of
olive or dark blue.
“Well, good-night!”
No, my curiosity was not satisfied, but I realized that that was so
without being able to fix the points which my uncle had not made
clear, for my awful experience overwhelmed me with anguish, and the
Circeean operation left me impregnated with ether, whose penetrating
vapors upset in me the man’s understanding and the bull’s stomach.