The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (47 page)

And I fell once more into a vast melancholy, into the desire for immobility and extinction. During one whole autumn, I despaired of the universe. I languished in a vegetative state, from which I
emerged only to give way to long groans, followed by painful rebellions of conscience.

I grew thinner still, thin to a fantastic degree. The villagers called me, ironically, “
den Heyligen Gheest
,” the Holy Ghost. My silhouette was tremulous as that of the young
poplars, faint as a shadow; and with all this, I grew to a giant’s stature.

Slowly, a project was born. Since my life had been thrown into the discard, since my days were without joy and all was darkness and bitterness to me, why wallow in sloth? Supposing that no mind
existed which could respond to my own – at least it would be worth the effort to convince myself of that fact. At least it would be worthwhile to leave this gloomy countryside, to go and
search for scientists and philosophers in the great cities. Was I not in myself an object of curiosity? Before calling attention to my extrahuman knowledge, could I not arouse a desire to study my
person? Were not the mere physical aspects of my being worthy of analysis – and my sight, and the extreme swiftness of my movements, and the peculiarity of my diet?

The more I thought of it, the more it seemed reasonable to me to hope, and the more my resolution hardened. The day came when it was unshakable, when I confided it to my parents. Neither one nor
the other understood much of it, but in the end both gave in to repeated entreaties: I obtained permission to go to Amsterdam, free to return if fortune should not favor me.

One morning, I left.

From Zwartendam to Amsterdam is a matter of a hundred kilometers or thereabouts. I covered that distance easily in two hours, without any other adventure than the extreme
surprise of those going and coming to see me run so swiftly, and a few crowds at the edges of the villages and towns I skirted. To make sure of my direction, I spoke two or three times to solitary
old people. My sense of orientation, which is excellent, did the rest.

It was about nine o’clock when I reached Amsterdam. I entered the great city resolutely and walked along its beautiful, dreaming canals, where quiet merchant fleets dwell. I did not
attract as much attention as I had feared. I walked quickly, among busy people, enduring here and there the gibes of some young street Arabs. Nevertheless, I did not decide to stop. I wandered here
and there through the city, until at last I resolved to enter a tavern on one of the quays of the Heerengracht. It was a peaceful spot; the magnificent canal stretched, full of life, between cool
rows of trees; and among the
Moedigen
which I saw moving about on its banks it seemed to me that I perceived a new species. After some hesitation, I crossed the sill of the tavern, and
addressing myself to the publican as slowly as I could, I begged him to be kind enough to direct me to a hospital.

The landlord looked at me with amazement, suspicion and curiosity; took his huge pipe out of his mouth, put it back in after several attempts, and at last said, “You’re from the
colonies, I suppose?”

Since it was perfectly useless to contradict him, I answered, “Just so!”

He seemed delighted at his own shrewdness. He asked me another question: “Maybe you come from that part of Borneo where no one has ever been?”

“Exactly right!”

I had spoken too swiftly: his eyes grew round.

“Exactly right,” I repeated more slowly.

The landlord smiled with satisfaction. “You can hardly speak Dutch, can you? So, it’s a hospital you want. No doubt you’re sick?”

“Yes.”

Patrons were gathering around. It was whispered already that I was an anthropophagus from Borneo; nevertheless, they looked at me with much more curiosity than aversion. People were running in
from the street. I became nervous and uneasy. I kept my composure nonetheless and said, coughing, “I am very sick!”

“Just like the monkeys from that country,” said a very fat man benevolently. “The Netherlands kills them!”

“What a funny skin!” added another.

“And how does he see?” asked a third, pointing to my eyes.

The ring moved closer, encircling me with a hundred curious stares, and still newcomers were crowding into the room.

“How tall he is!”

In truth, I was a full head taller than the biggest of them.

“And thin!”

“This anthropophagy doesn’t seem to nourish them very well!”

Not all the voices were spiteful. A few sympathetic persons protected me:

“Don’t crowd so – he’s sick!”

“Come, friend, courage!” said the fat man, remarking my nervousness. “I’ll lead you to a hospital myself.”

He took me by the arm and set about elbowing the crowd aside, calling, “Way for an invalid!”

Dutch crowds are not very fierce. They let us pass, but they went with us. We walked along the canal, followed by a compact multitude, and people cried out, “It’s a cannibal from
Borneo!”

At length we reached a hospital. It was the visiting hour. I was taken to an intern, a young man with blue spectacles, who greeted me peevishly. My companion said to him, “He’s a
savage from the colonies.”

“What, a savage!” cried the other.

He took off his spectacles to look at me. Surprise held him motionless for a moment. He asked me brusquely, “Can you see?”

“I see very well.”

I had spoken too swiftly.

“It’s his accent,” said the fat man proudly. “Once more, friend.”

I repeated it and made myself understood.

“Those aren’t human eyes,” murmured the student. “And the color! Is that the color of your race?”

Then I said, with a terrible effort to slow myself down, “I have come to show myself to a scientist.”

“Then you’re not ill?”

“No.”

“And you come from Borneo?”

“No.”

“Where are you from, then?”

“From Zwartendam, near Duisburg.”

“Why, then, does this man claim you’re from Borneo?”

“I didn’t want to contradict him.”

“And you wish to see a scientist?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To be studied.”

“So as to earn money?”

“No, for nothing.”

“You’re not a pauper? A beggar?”

“No!”

“What makes you want to be studied?”

“My constitution – ”

But again, in spite of my efforts, I had spoken too swiftly. I had to repeat myself.

“Are you sure you can see me?” he asked, staring at me. “Your eyes are like horn.”

“I see very well.”

And, moving to left and right, I snatched things up, put them down, threw them in the air and caught them again.

“Extraordinary!” said the young man.

His softened voice, almost friendly, filled me with hope. “See here,” he said at last, “I really think Dr. van den Heuvel might be interested in your case. I’ll go and
inform him. Wait in the next room. And, by the way – I forgot – you’re not ill, after all?”

“Not in the least.”

“Good. Wait – go in there. The doctor won’t be long.”

I found myself seated among monsters preserved in alcohol: fetuses, infants with bestial shapes, colossal batrachians, vaguely anthropomorphic saurians.

This is well chosen for my waiting room, I thought. Am I not a candidate for one of these brandy-filled sepulchers?

When Dr. van den Heuvel appeared, emotion overcame me. I had the thrill of the Promised Land – the joy of reaching it, the dread of being banished. The doctor, with his
great bald forehead, the analyst’s penetrating look, the mouth soft and yet stubborn, examined me in silence. As always, my excessive thinness, my great stature, my horny eyes, my violet
color, caused him astonishment.

“You say you wish to be studied?” he asked at length.

I answered forcefully, almost violently, “Yes!”

He smiled with an approving air and asked me the usual question: “Do you see all right, with those eyes?”

“Very well. I can even see through wood, clouds – ”

But I had spoken too fast. He glanced at me uneasily. I began again, sweating great drops: “I can even see through wood, clouds – ”

“Really! That would be extraordinary. Well, then! What do you see through the door there?” He pointed to a closed door.

“A big library with windows . . . a carved table . . .”

“Really!” he repeated, stunned.

My breast swelled; a deep stillness entered my soul.

The scientist remained silent for a few seconds. Then: “You speak with some difficulty.”

“Otherwise I should speak too rapidly! I cannot speak slowly.”

“Well, then, speak a little as you do naturally.”

Accordingly I told him the story of my entry into Amsterdam. He listened to me with an extreme attention, an air of intelligent observation, which I had never before encountered among my
fellows. He understood nothing of what I said, but he showed the keenness of his intellect.

“If I am not mistaken, you speak fifteen to twenty syllables a second, that is to say three or four times more than the human ear can distinguish. Your voice, in addition, is much higher
than anything I have ever heard in the way of human voices. Your excessively rapid gestures are well suited to your speech. Your whole constitution is probably more rapid than ours.”

“I run,” I said, “faster than a greyhound. I write – ”

“Ah!” he interrupted. “Let us see your writing.”

I scrawled some words on a tablet which he offered me, the first few fairly legible, the rest more and more scrambled, abbreviated.

“Perfect!” he said, and a certain pleasure was mingled with his surprise. “I really think I must congratulate myself on this meeting. Certainly it should be very interesting to
study you.”

“It is my dearest, my only, desire!”

“And mine, naturally. Science . . .”

He seemed preoccupied, musing. He finished by saying, “If only we could find an easy way of communication.”

He walked back and forth, his brows knotted. Suddenly: “What a dolt I am! You must learn shorthand, of course! Hm! . . . Hm!” A cheerful expression spread over his face. “And
I’ve forgotten the phonograph – the perfect confidant! All that’s needed is to revolve it more slowly in the reproduction than in the recording. It’s agreed: you shall stay
with me while you are in Amsterdam!”

The joy of a fulfilled vocation, the delight of ceasing to spend vain and sterile days! Aware of the intelligent personality of the doctor, against this scientific background, I felt a delicious
well-being; the melancholy of my spiritual solitude, the sorrow for my lost talents, the pariah’s long misery that had weighed me down for so many years, all vanished, evaporated in the
sensation of a new life, a real life, a saved destiny!

Beginning the following day, the doctor made all the necessary arrangements. He wrote to my parents; he sent me to a professor of stenography and obtained some phonographs. As
he was quite rich and entirely devoted to science, there was no experiment which he could not undertake, and my vision, my hearing, my musculature, the color of my skin, were submitted to
scrupulous investigations, from which he drew more and more enthusiasm, crying, “This verges on the miraculous!”

I very well understood, after the first few days, how important it was to go about things methodically – from the simple to the complex, from the slightly abnormal to the wonderfully
abnormal. Thus I had recourse to a little legerdemain, of which I made no secret to the doctor: that is, I revealed my abilities to him only one at a time.

The quickness of my perceptions and movements drew his attention first. He was able to convince himself that the subtlety of my hearing was in proportion to the swiftness of my speech. Graduated
trials of the most fugitive sounds, which I imitated with ease, and the words of ten or fifteen persons all talking at once, which I distinguished perfectly, demonstrated this point beyond
question. My vision proved no less swift; comparative tests between my ability to resolve the movement of a Calloping horse, or an insect in flight, and the same ability of an apparatus for taking
instantaneous photographs, proved all in favor of my eye.

As for perceptions of ordinary things, simultaneous movements of a group of people, of children playing, the motion of machines, bits of rubble thrown in the air or little balls tossed into an
alley, to be counted in flight – they amazed the doctor’s family and friends.

My running in the big garden, my twenty-meter jumps, my instantaneous swiftness to pick up objects or put them back, were admired still more, not by the doctor, but by those around him. And it
was an ever renewed pleasure for the wife and children of my host, while walking in the fields, to see me outstrip a horseman at full Callop or follow the flight of any swallow; in truth, there was
no thoroughbred but I could give it a start of two-thirds the distance, whatever it might be, nor any bird I could not easily overtake.

As for the doctor, more and more satisfied with the results of his experiments, he described me thus: “A human being, endowed in all his movements with a swiftness incomparably superior,
not merely to that of other humans, but also to that of all known animals. This swiftness, found in the most minute constituents of his body as well as in the whole organism, makes him an entity so
distinct from the remainder of creation that he merits a special place in the animal kingdom for himself alone. As for the curious structure of his eyes, as well as the skin’s violet color,
these must be considered simply the earmarks of this special condition.”

Tests being made of my muscular system, it proved in no way remarkable, unless for its excessive leanness. Neither did my ears yield any particular information; nor, for that matter, did my skin
– except, of course, for its pigmentation. As for my dark hair, a purplish black in color, it was fine as spiderweb, and the doctor made a minute examination of it.

“One would need to dissect you!” he often told me, laughing.

Thus time passed easily. I had quickly learned to write in shorthand, thanks to my intense desire and to the natural aptitude I showed for this method of rapid transcription, into which, by the
way, I introduced several new abbreviations. I began to make notes, which my stenographer transcribed; for the rest, we had phonographs built, according to the doctor’s special design, which
proved perfectly suited to reproduce my voice at a lower speed.