Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (31 page)

GYRFALCONS OF ISRAEL

In the ship’s parlor, there are four small desks. From early morning, they are all occupied by four passengers, in whose faces one can distinguish a mark of their race: one would think that they have been copied from one of Drumont’s
menageries.

Nearby, several other passengers and I are conversing.

“Speak,” a Frenchman says, “the word
argent,
and you will see all four of them immediately turn their heads this way.”

“
Parce-que l’argent . . .”
I said aloud.

All four of the writing men’s heads rose, and they looked toward our group. The proof was there. They were four heads of robust health, of good rosy color—the heads of birds of prey, with hooked noses and pursuer’s eyes. One could see that those businessmen, those exploiters of prey, were possessed by their ancestral demon, and that their religion, more than in the synagogue, was celebrated in the bank, in the golden houses of Frankfurt, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, London. They were four gyrfalcons sent by the great eagles and hawks of Europe to continue the hunt in the Americas.

And each of us in the group apart—in our conversation—expressed a thought, or told a tale, or narrated a humorous anecdote.

“There’s a very well-known one,” someone said. “Once a little Negro fellow and a Jew were passengers on a ship carrying a load of oranges, and a terrible storm swept over them. And after many hours struggling with the tempest, they realized that they had to lighten the load. The skipper threw the oranges overboard. And then a wooden bench. And then the little Negro fellow. And then the Israelite. And it so happened that when the storm had passed, a huge sea creature was caught in those waters, near the shore. And when the beast’s belly was slit open, they found the Jew sitting on a bench selling oranges to the little Negro fellow.”

“I’ll tell you, those people were forced by necessity to see that the prophecies came true and that Israel became the master of the world, even if they were despised and persecuted. They were looked on as worse than lepers, they were abominated, they were stoned and spat upon everywhere, they were condemned to the ghetto, enslaved, even sent to the stake. They were forbidden to have land. So they found their country in money. They were avaricious and skillful, and Shylock sharpened his indestructible knife. And as civilization has gradually advanced, the power of that race so accursed, yet so active and fearsome, has gradually increased; as the search for gold has grown more and more rapacious, the omnipotence of capital has become a reality, and a cosmopolitan aristocracy of worldwide influence has been created—an aristocracy whose parchments are checks and whose supremacy has invaded all spheres, whetting all appetites. This is the work of the falcons of Mammon, the gyrfalcons of Israel.”

The four Israelites had gotten up from their chairs, but they had left, in a sign of possession, their valises upon the desktops. They were out on the deck, smoking thick cigars, speaking loudly, making grandiose gestures, and walking with great strides upon their long, broad feet. And in them there was a malign and aggressive animality.

THE STRANGE DEATH OF FRAY PEDRO

Not long ago, on a visit to the monastery in a Spanish city, we chanced to pass by the community’s cemetery, and the amiable friar who was acting as our cicerone pointed out to me a gravestone that bore only the following inscription:
Hic iacet frater Petrus.

“This brother,” he said, “was one of those defeated by the devil.”

“That old devil who’s now pretty far along in his dotage,” I muttered.

“No,” the friar replied. “The modern demon that hides behind Science.”

And he told me the following story.

 

Fray Pedro of the Passion was a soul tormented by the evil spirit that instills in men the lust for knowledge. Thin, angular, nervous, pale, he divided his monastery hours between prayer, the brotherhood’s disciplines, and the laboratory he was allowed to keep because of the profits it brought the community. He had, from a very young age, studied the occult sciences. In his hours of conversation he would mention, with some emphasis, the names Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus, and he held a deep admiration for that other friar, Schwartz, who did us the diabolical favor of mixing saltpeter with sulfur.

Through science, he had even managed to penetrate certain astrological and chiromantic arcana; Science had turned him from contemplation and the spirit of Scripture. The sickness of curiosity—that canker that infected our first parents—had taken up residence in his soul. Even prayer was many times forgotten, when some experiment held him, cautious, feverish, in its spell. Since he was allowed any sort of reading, and he had access to the monastery’s rich library, his authors were not always the least questionable, or least misleading. And so he even decided one day to try out his powers as a water-dowser, and to test the effects of white magic. There was no doubt that his soul was put in great peril by this thirst for knowledge, this ability to forget that science was, in principle, the weapon employed by the Serpent who is the Antichrist’s essential potency, and this neglect to remember that, for the true man of faith,
initium sapientiae est timor Domini.

Oh, happy Ignorance, holy Ignorance! Fray Pedro of the Passion did not understand thy celestial virtue, which has created the certain Celestines! Huysmans has expatiated upon thee, oh virtue—who, amidst the mystical splendors and miracles of hagiography, cast a special nimbus around some of those followers of St. Francis de Paul so beloved by God.

The doctors of the Church go to great lengths to explain that in the eyes of the Holy Spirit, the souls of love are more greatly glorified than the souls of understanding. In the sublime
vitraux
of his
Physionomies des saints,
Ernest Hello has depicted those made worthy by charity, those favored by humility, those dovelike beings, as simple and white as lilies, clean of heart, poor in spirit, blessed brothers of the Lord’s tiny birds, looked upon with affectionate, sisterly eyes by the pure stars of the firmament. In that marvelous book in which Durtal is converted to Catholicism, Joris-Karl—so deservedly blessed, perhaps hereafter sainted, despite his literature—clothes in paradisal splendors the lay swineherd who brings down to the sty the hosannas of choirs of archangels and the applause of the potencies of heaven. Fray Pedro of the Passion did not understand that simplicity. . . .

He, of course, believed—believed with the faith of an unquestionable believer. But the lust for knowledge goaded his spirit, propelled him to ferret out secrets of life and nature—so avidly, in fact, that he failed to remember that that thirst for knowledge, that indomitable desire to penetrate into the forbidden things, the arcana of the universe, was a sin, and a snare laid by the Evil One to prevent Fray Pedro’s absolute dedication to the adoration of the Eternal Father. And the last temptation would be fatal.

 

The case occurred not many years ago. Into Fray Pedro’s hands there came a newspaper that spoke in detail of all the progress achieved in radiography thanks to the discovery, by the German scientist Roentgen, of a process by which photographs might be taken through opaque bodies. The friar learned what was involved in the Crookes tube, the cathode-ray tube, the X-ray. He saw the facsimile of a hand whose anatomy could be seen clearly through the now-transparent skin, and the patent shape of objects contained in tightly sealed boxes and packages.

From that moment on, he was unable to keep his mind still, because something—a lust in his believer’s desire, although he did not see the sacrilege in it—pricked him on. . . . How might he, Fray Pedro, get his hands on a device like the machines created by those wise men, so that he might to put into practice a certain occult thought in which his theology and his physical sciences were intermingled? . . . How, in his monastery, could he perform the thousand experiments that thronged his fevered imagination?

 

In the hours set aside for the liturgy, and for prayers, and for chanting, all the other members of the community would see that Fray Pedro would sometimes be lost in thought, sometimes agitated, as though startled, or frightened, sometimes his face would be flushed by a sudden rush of blood, sometimes it would have a look almost of ecstasy, and his eyes would be fixed on some high spot on the wall, or on the ground. And that was the work of the sin that had made its dwelling in the depths of that combative breast—the biblical sin of curiosity, the omnitranscendent sin of Adam as he stood beside the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And there was much more than a mere tempest in that cranium. . . . Many a strange idea filled the brain of the poor friar who could find no way to secure one of those precious devices. What would he not give—how many years of his very life—to see one of those savants’ outlandish instruments in his poor laboratory, and be able to perform the hungered-after proofs, do the magical exercises that would open the door to a new era of human wisdom and conviction! . . . He would offer more of what St. Thomas offered. . . . If the interior of our bodies could now be photographed, soon man would be able to uncover to sight the nature and origin of the soul, and, applying science to divine matters, as the Holy Spirit surely should allow him, why not also be able to capture the visions of ecstasy, and the manifestations of the celestial spirits, in their true and exact forms?

If only there’d been a Kodak at Lourdes, during the times of Bernadette’s vision! If only it were possible for the camera oscura to catch those moments when Jesus, or his Holy Mother, favored certain faithful servants with their bodily presence! . . . Oh, how the unbelieving, the infidels would be convinced, and how religion would triumph!

Thus the friar meditated, thus he furrowed his brow and exerted his brain—tempted as he was by one of the fiercest princes of darkness.

 

And then the day came when, during one of those moments of meditation, one of those instants at which his desire was at its most intense, one of those hours when he should have been in his cell, devoting himself to discipline and prayer, there appeared before him one of the brothers of the community, bringing him a package under his habit.

“Brother,” he said, “I have heard you say that you wished for one of those machines, one of those that the world is marveling at even now. Well, I have found one for you. Here you have it.”

And depositing the package in the hands of the astonished Fray Pedro, the other friar vanished, without Fray Pedro’s having the time to see that under the habit the brother, just as he was vanishing, had shown two hairy goat’s feet.

From the day of that mysterious gift, Fray Pedro dedicated himself to his experiments. With the excuse of a chill, a catarrh, a runny nose, he missed matins, failed to attend mass. The provincial would reprimand him, and all the others would see him pass by, odd and mysterious, and fear for the health of his body and his soul.

He pursued his
idée fixe.
He tested the machine on himself, on fruits, on keys tucked inside books, and the other usual things. Until one day . . .

Or one night, rather, the unfortunate friar dared,
at last,
to test
his idea.
Stealthily, with muffled footsteps, he made his way to the sanctuary. He slipped into the nave and went to the altar where, in its tabernacle, the Holy Sacrament was displayed. He took out the goblet. He picked up a thin, round communion host. And he rushed back to his cell.

The next day, before Fray Pedro’s cell, stood the archbishop with the provincial.

“Most holy father,” the provincial was saying, “we have found Fray Pedro dead. He had not been quite right in the head of late. It was those studies of his that I believe were not good for him.”

“Has your reverence seen this?” said the archbishop, showing him a photographic plate he had picked up from the floor, on which there appeared, with his arms freed from the nails and a sweet look in the divine eyes, the image of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

THE NYMPH

In the castle recently purchased by Lesbia, that capricious and fiendish actress whose extravagances have given the world so much to talk about, six friends found ourselves one evening at the table. Our Aspasia was presiding, and just then she was entertaining herself by sucking, like a little girl, on a moist lump of sugar, white between her rosy fingertips. The hour for the
chantreuse
had come. In the glasses on the table it looked like nothing less than dissolved jewels, and the light of the candelabras played among the half-empty wineglasses, where some of the burgundy’s purple, the champagne’s boiling gold, the
mente
’s liquid emeralds still remained.

After a good meal, there was enthusiastic talk of some promising artists. We were all artists, some more, some less, and there was even an obese sage who flaunted on the whiteness of his immaculate shirtfront the large knot of a monstrous cravat.

“Ah, yes, Frémiet!” someone said.

And from Frémiet the conversation passed on to his animals, his masterful brush, two bronze dogs, both nearby, one of which, nose to the ground, was tracking its prey, the other, as though looking at the hunter, raising its head and the thinness of its stiff, erect tail. Who of us mentioned Myron? It was the sage, who recited an epigram from Anacreon in Greek: “Shepherd, pasture thy flock at a little distance, lest thinking thou seest the cow of Myron breathe, thou shouldst wish to lead it away with thine oxen.”

Lesbia finished sucking on her sugar cube, and with an Argentine burst of laughter, said, “Bah! Give me satyrs. How I would like to give life to my bronzes! And if that were possible, my lover would be one of those hairy demigods. But I tell you, even more than satyrs, I adore centaurs, and I’d let myself be carried away by one of those robust monsters just to hear the groans of the satyr I’d been stolen from, for his flute-song would be filled with sadness.”