A Man Among the Microbes Read online

  We see him, momentarily, in the full exercise of his genius. The rotating bookcases are spinning like tops; the doctor himself, transported by enthusiasm, enters into the gyration with his mahogany chair, without ceasing to consult the dictionary that he has just grabbed. Will he ever stop? Meanwhile a “close-up head shot” displays his vast artificial forehead and his actor’s eyes, which are seeking to put on a profoundly scientific gaze, while cursing those damned mercury lamps. Nothing like them for ruining one’s sight, he thinks.

  Finally, one sees a close-up of his hand and a huge pen, which is tracing this so-called immortal sentence:

  Given the present state of physiological knowledge, and, of course, taking everything into account, we are unable to conclude with anything other than diatheses and idiosyncrasies.4

  And beneath it, in capital letters, the magic formula that signifies both Victory! and oof!—the words:

  THE END

  Then, it is necessary that we see how content Doctor Prologus is! He gets up, looks up gratefully into the sky, where God is, and—in order that the audience should understand everything necessary—he gathers up his manuscript, contemplates its title, The Physiology of the Senses, and then takes a calendar for the year 1907 out of a drawer, which bears beneath the date July 30 the following note:

  “Today I began my Physiology of the Senses.”

  After that, Doctor Prologus directs a gaze charged with happy melancholy toward the tear-off calendar hung somewhere nearby.

  OCTOBER 28, 1927

  More than 20 years! What a day! What an hour! All in all, what a minute!

  And now, thanks to a superimposition of images, while the physiognomy of Doctor Prologus reflects the ineffable daze of memory, we see the misty evocations of his labor succeed one another.

  A beautiful feminine face appears, grave and mysterious, with a finger posed on the mouth. It is a portrait of Humanity. But within that face, the eyes first come into focus and then blur again. And the ear. And the nose, to which a rose is raised. And the mouth. And the finger…

  Sight. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch. The Physiology of the Senses…

  Iris and fade. Instead of the face, Doctor Prologus-in-memory appears. He is conducting an autopsy. He is dissecting a tongue. He is observing a night-bird with his eyes. He is leaning over an ants’ nest. He is holding a snail beneath his magnifying-glass. He is following a dog, which is hunting with its nose in the air, over a fallow field. The Physiology of the Senses…

  Everything disappears from view. The scientist has chased it away with the back of his manly hand. Taking up his manuscript again, he consults it. Diavolo! It’s gibberish! Erasures, substitutions, insertions make it quite indecipherable, save for the author.

  Come on! he encourages himself. It’s not finished! It’s necessary to have this cryptogram typed up. And, quite placidly, he takes the dust-cover off a splendid typewriter.

  The action seems trivial—but the orchestra must know something, for it produces a tumult of strangely sensational and, so to speak, ominous Russian music. Those who know what Russia music means immediately have the impression that this typewriter…ah! Pay attention! It will have a role to play, that’s certain, and no ordinary role. The little flute hisses like a Mama Cobra whose soft eggs the mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is about to steal. There are two muted bugles sounding discordant appeals in duo. But above all, there are violins—altos, basses and double-basses! To imitate the noise that typewriters to make, sarcastically interpreted, some of their players execute stifled pizzicatos, while others strike the sounding-boards with the wood of their bows. Ah! How satisfying, allusive and Hoffmannesque that is, my dear! How avant-garde it is, even more than Saint-Saëns once was…but let’s pass on. When you were a child, did you ever play the game of searching for some object that your little playmates had hidden? Do you recall the concert of their young refrain, sometimes murmurous and sometimes strident: “You’re getting warmer, warmer! You’re getting warmer, warmer!” And then, all of a sudden, the fortissimo of that puerile Orphean chant, howling: “You’re hot! You’re hot! You’re hot!”

  Meanwhile, Doctor Prologus does not know that he is “hot,” because he cannot hear the orchestra’s prophecy, being merely, at the end of the day, a photographic image, a humbly conventional mime.

  He limits himself to gazing down at the typewriter, without even sitting down at the keyboard. Ennui is painted on his features. What! he is thinking. Just like that? Straight away? Get right down to that uninteresting task, having just finished a magisterial work? Aren’t I entitled to some relaxation? A week’s holiday? Yes—we’ll get started on The Physiology of the Senses in a week’s time. From now until then, let’s live a little, damn it!

  He puts the cover back on the typewriter, a mortal unconscious of Fate, deaf to the premonitory explosions of that orchestra, which replaces the ancient chorus at this point, and becomes quiet, as if it wanted to say to Prologus: “You’re getting colder, you’re getting colder!”

  In the shadow, however, through the metal of the dust-cover, the typewriter appears, glowing brightly—O expressive prodigy!

  Abrupt resumption, by the musicians, of the suggestive cacophony.

  Doctor Prologus hesitates momentarily before putting his manuscript in the drawer. Once more, he looks in the direction of the machine, which immediately fades away, leaving nothing to be seen but the innocent and ordinary dust-cover. His eyes make a tour of his study. He opens the two shutters of a window overlooking a pleasant boulevard, through which the orchestra precipitates an invasive flood of the sonorities of Life…

  Bah! Next week. Let’s go.

  The drawer closes again upon The Physiology of the Senses, and the door closes upon the determined Doctor Prologus.

  Here he is again—very well-dressed, I must say!—with a knight-commander’s rosette in his buttonhole. He is not at all ridiculous, being the complete scientist that he appears to be and the complete Prologus he still remains—which is to say, bearing within him that slightly impertinent self-confidence that always characterizes Prologuses when they are clowning on stage and speaking to the audience.

  He is in Paris, like a gourmet at a feast.

  All vacations pass like lightning. We recall this one in the “envisioning” that follows. Scarcely has a scene appeared than a mist absorbs it or another scene surges forth, with the effect that the two images are momentarily superimposed—which is rather disagreeable. Thus, we always see two Doctor Prologuses at the same time, one coming into focus and the other fading out. But the most curious thing is that all this emerges and retreats within the frame of a huge eye, a huge mouth, a huge ear, etc. Visual leitmotivs. No need to insist; you understand. And you will even know, exceedingly alert readers that you are, that the sonorous leitmotiv of the typewriter is continually cutting obsessively through the breadth of the music.

  Doctor Prologus is striding through the Autumn Exhibition. Paintings. The sequence of rooms extends to infinity. Thousands of pictures go past in a whirlwind, as if glimpsed through the window of an express train. Sculptures do the same in the opposite direction….

  But Prologus meets some friends. Polite, though lively, discussion on the subject of art: schools, color, aesthetic theory, drawing, personality, expression of nature, etc.

  Ostentatious dinner at the home of the immortally beautiful Madame Dupont, nicknamed Dupont des Arts because she leads to the Institut. Succulent dishes. Gossip. Wit. Elegance. Exposed cleavages, occasionally deplorable. A few gigolos of letters, arts or science. Shot under the table: ladies’ and gentlemen’s feet, some of them in conversation (re-read La Confession d’un enfant du siècle).5 Doctor Prologus smiles in a philosophical fashion, accustomed to imagining the basements of the planet and the wings of society.

  Concerts. Doctor Prologus has his predilections. He particularly likes worrks that have a hint of burlesque and a symphonic interpretation. La Danse macabre, L’Apprenti sorcier and Ma Mère L’Oie satisfy him e
asily.6 He listens admiringly while the conductor of the orchestra dances intelligently with his arms, and attains the height of sensuality in watching Petrushka delightfully choreographed by male and female ballet dancers who have fled the Bolsheviks.

  A walk in the Bois, chatting. Autumn, like an old blonde, exhales its odor of nuts. Many beautiful and well-heeled people of every sort. Not a few gigolos. Nature. The season. Paris entire. Amours and mundane trivia.

  Afterwards: receptions, teas, literary and scientific salons. Balls, and even dance-halls with negroes, jazz, twitching, laborious entrechats, saltatory epilepsies. A large number of obligatory gigolos, on holiday, go almost everywhere.

  But what books does Doctor Prologus read while he waits to fall asleep at night? Those that have always delighted him—Micromégas, L’Ile des plaisirs, Gulliver—and it is Voltaire or Fénelon that close his eyes when it is not that joker Swift.7 (This is very pretty, thanks to the poetry of apparitions.)

  Following days: theaters, cinemas, circuses, music halls…and ceaselessly galloping, cramed on to the screen, men, women, gigolos, the entire retinue of the epoch.

  Suddenly: halt! The vertiginous race comes to an end. And the calendar takes over, enormous and peremptory, fixing the date:

  NOVEMBER 6

  The week is complete.

  Ah, with what triumphant fury the nasal theme of the typewriter bursts forth in fanfare! What volleys of demonic laughter the instruments make, to greet the entrance of Doctor Prologus in his study! Great gods, what is going to happen to him, to unleash such a musical sabbat, in which the damnedest of arid drums crackle over a crippled rhythm, while the clarinets shout themselves hoarse, like so many mad ducks?

  Doctor Prologus advances placidly into the tranquil place.

  And here he is, sitting down in order to type The Physiology of the Senses.

  The typewriter experiences the touch of his fingers. It’s a sort of preliminary caress.

  The manuscript is inclined upon a lectern. We read on the topmost sheet:

  THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SENSES

  Introduction

  It is regrettable that Cournot, in his treatise De l’ordre et de la dépendance des idées fondamentales dans les sciences et la philosophie, Bonnier, in his Audition, and Laures, in his Synesthésies, have neglected that which Descartes and Condillac had anticipated.8 I mean…

  Etc.

  On a shelf neatly-cut blank sheets of paper are piled up and, beside them, sheets of blue carbon paper, which will permit Doctor Prologus to type two copies of his work at the same time.

  Carefully, He interleaves a sheet of carbon paper between two white sheets. Snap! The three sheets are caught by the prehensile roller. And tap! tap! tap!... The ribbon glides. The keys are struck. The virgin sheet is imprinted…

  THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SENSES

  Doctor Prologus smiles broadly. He is daydreaming, about things and people that are reflected in the polished black surface of the machine: dinners, pictures, concerts, dances, Swift clad in a smoking-jacket, Voltaire in a waistcoat and suit…. And this mingles with the ideas of his Physiology, as he remembers his work, his observations. It is in an astronomical sky, where populated worlds orbit, that couples execute their Black Bottom. It is with the eyes of insects, formed in facets, that Prologus revisits the Autumn Exhibition…

  Damn! he says to himself. Pay attention!

  He smiles again, and continues his task.

  Tap! tap! tap! tap!

  Introduction

  It is regrettable that Cournot…

  The orchestra goes wild.

  Distracted, without breaking any records, the physiologist nevertheless arrives at the foot of the first page.

  The result isn’t too bad. The sheet looks fine. Let’s see the carbon copy; is it clear?

  Stupor! What’s this?

  In a paroxysm of amazement, he reads:

  A MAN AMONG THE MICROBES

  SCHERZO

  Part One

  Marvel of marvels! The carbon paper has not copied The Physiology of the Senses, but something else! Doctor Prologus has just typed, simultaneously, the beginning of his austere treatise and, beneath it, what? The beginning of some sort of fairy-tale…

  It’s a dream, an enchantment!

  Prologus starts laughing, in harmony with the violins.

  A surprising phenomenon of spontaneous generation! he thinks. Like Macduff, who, according to Shakespeare, was not born of woman, at least in the same fashion as everyone else, this story has not emerged from a human brain, at least in the same fashion as other stories!

  And quickly, quickly, quickly, he resumes his fabulous duplicate occupation. He laughs, he laughs, he laughs. His speedy fingers race. What a piano technique! It goes back to Padereweski. His work makes the noise of a downpour on the roof. It progresses, progresses, progresses. The sheets pile up, the Physiology on one side, A Man Among the Microbes on the other…

  Mons Prologus, you may now disappear. You have told us what we need to know. Quit the doctoral frock-coat, dispense with your borrowed face and go forth, in other disguises, to pursue your career as a prefatory mountebank. We know what A Man Among the Microbes is.

  The reader is free to assume that the cinema, perservering, will show him the comedy—or, rather, that the irresistible usherettes will spread out through the auditorium to sell the little booklet that you have just insidiously introduced and which, as you have shown him, merely contains a fairy-tale.

  The reader is no less free, while complaining, not to stay for your pantomime, if he thinks that the time for fairy-tales is past, and that candid fantasy can no longer be tolerated.

  Part One: Fléchambeau’s Engagement

  I. A Chapter About a Hat

  At the foot of the high mountain, the little sub-prefecture was reminiscent of an ancient avalanche that had become civilized over time.

  There was an open square in the center, and in the center of that square a humbly monumental fountain sported a République with powerful breasts, the work of some Auguste Barbier of the chisel.9

  Pons—the young Doctor Pons—lived there, between the wig-maker and the notary, in a typical Savoyard house, dressed up to the nines with a huge roof of old tiles and a façade costumed in wisteria.

  A storyteller of old, in beginning this story, would doubtless go back to Doctor Pons’ disappointment when he learned that from one of his masters on leaving college that his health would not permitted him to practice the art of medicine in Paris, or in any other large city, or even to work there, as he desired, in glorious clinical research—which had the result of sending Pons back to Saint-Jean-de-Nèves, the mountain town of his birth, where his only two colleagues held him in high regard because of the few cases that he handled.

  A not-quite-so-old storyteller would be content to start the story by describing the arrival at Pons’ home of his friend Fléchambeau, a trainee advocate at the Paris court, who had come to spent a few weeks of relaxation at Sant-Jean-de-Nèves and was still there three months later, by virtue of an irresistible attraction—that of Mademoiselle Olga Monempoix, the beloved daughter of Monsieur Emile Monempoix, the president of the Civil Tribunal, and his wife, née Sanson-Darras.

  We, being less pretentious, will jump into the dish feet-first.

  “Good luck, old chap!” said Pons

  They were in the hallway. Visible through the doorway that opened on to the square were the roundness of little acacia-balls, the busty Marianne of the fountain and, directly opposite, the house of Monsieur le Président Monempoix.

  Fléchambeau shook the hand that his friend held out to him. As long as a day without tobacco, measuring a meter ninety-six from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, Fléchambeau was even more remarkable by the carroty color of his hair—hair à la Crécy,10 Pons called it, jokingly. He was so tall that it took him 20 seconds and three-fifths to make the sign of the cross, and when he put his hat on his flamboyant head he looked like a candle snuffing itse
lf out.

  His hat, for the moment, was a magnificent shiny topper. A black jacket, sharply cut, was set atop his rosewood trousers. His immense feet reflected nature in the polish of their size 47s. His gloves, size 9¾, gave him hands of soft butter. Three carnations in his buttonhole seemed, by an effect of proportion, to be only one.

  Having adjusted his monocle and rubbed his short moustache, brushed into red spikes, this quasi-giant grimaced like a swimmer about to plunge into cold water. “I’m shrinking in my skin, old chap!” he said.

  Nevertheless, he went out and headed toward President Monempoix’s house, slowly: so slowly that Pons saw him ring the President’s doorbell from the window of his laboratory. The laboratory was on the second floor, and Pons had gone up the stairs thoughtfully, and hence very gently.

  It was a large window, emitting a flood of light, in a state-of-the-art laboratory—for Doctor Pons had not renounced the idea of being talked about. He had sought some study capable of keeping him busy in Saint-Jean-de-Nèves, without their doing any harm to his retreat. He had discovered parasitology—the science of parasites, let us add, for the benefit of ladies and children.

  But parasitology only offered modest satisfaction to his sterile zeal.

  And yet, what a pretty laboratory it was, with its white cupboards, its clean shelves filled with blue, red, green, yellow and other variously-colored jars and bottles, and the three microscopes lined up like an artillery battery in the window-bay on three nickel-plated side-tables, provided with an arsenal of forceps, cupels, phials, little boxes and objective lenses, all arranged like soldiers on parade.