XX
All these matters I turned over in my mind, but I found no resting place. The whole ship rocked right up to the top of the mast. Though I strictly avoided looking in that direction, my thoughts kept breaking away toward the water hole. My head was still buried in my hands. The Smoky Gray described wide figures of eight in front of me.
My situation had certainly been planned with a purpose. This was obvious if only because the master of the house still failed to appear. Evidently he was either waiting for some result or postponing it. But what kind of result could possibly make sense? I would never be able to leave the park. Should I get up and return to the terrace? Unfortunately I may have shown my reaction too strongly after I had made my discovery.
If, however, my situation had been arranged and, what is more, intended as a dilemma, much depended on the degree of my ability to see through the planned stage effects; then I could choose a direction for my behavior. I might be able to deny that I had seen the object, but perhaps it would be more profitable to respond to the provocation, as was expected. In any case, my remaining in a reflective mood could do no harm, since it was probably anticipated that I would take the discovery seriously and be alarmed. I had to think hard, review the case again, and use all my wits.
The possibility that I had come upon a nest of evil, as I had thought in my first consternation, I now excluded not only as being improbable but as emphatically out of the question. Such an oversight, such an error in staging, was unimaginable in Zapparoni's domain. Nothing took place here that was not part of the plan, and in spite of all the apparent disorder, one had the impression that even the molecules were controlled. I had sensed this at once on entering the park. Besides, who would leave ears lying around, quite near his house, from sheer forgetfulness?
But if it was a question of the horrible sight having been arranged, it was bound to have something to do with my presence here. It must have been included in the parade of automatons as a calculated caprice. To rouse admiration and terror has at all times been a concern of the great. But there must have been stage directions. And who had provided the stage properties?
One could hardly assume that Zapparoni's plant -- where even the impossible was possible -- kept a supply of ears on hand. Where such things can happen, although they may be kept as secret as possible, rumors inevitably spread. Everyone knows what no one knows. That notorious Nobody walks around freely.
Of course, many things that were discussed behind the scenes at the good grandfather Zapparoni's -- like Caretti's disappearance -- were not blazed abroad. But mostly they were ordinary things. This business did not fit into Zapporoni's style. And it was out of all proportion to my circumstances. Who was I to be honored by the cutting off of two or three dozen ears? Even the boldest imagination wouldn't dream of such a thing. And as a joke it was beneath the taste of a sultan of Dahomey. I had seen the interior of Zapparoni's house, had seen his face and his hands. These ears must have been a delusion; I must have been the victim of a vision. The air was sultry; the garden seemed to be bewitched and the swirl of automatons had intoxicated me.
Again I put the field glasses to my eyes and focused them on the water hole. The sun was now in the western sky, and all the red and yellow tints became more spectacular. The superior quality of the glass and the proximity of the object left no possible doubt: they must be ears, human ears.
Were they, however, genuine ears? Supposing they were imitations, skillfully contrived frauds? No sooner had this idea flashed through my mind than it seemed very likely. The expenditure was minimal, and the intended effect of a test remained. I had once heard that the Freemasons lay out a corpse of wax, and that the novice, about to be initiated, is brought before it in a dimly lighted room and ordered by the Grand Masters to thrust a knife into the body.
Indeed, it was possible, even probable, that I was faced with some sort of puzzle. In a place where glass bees fly about, why shouldn't wax ears lie around as well? The moment of terror was suddenly followed by the solution, by a feeling of gaiety, almost of relief. This was even a witty touch, although at my expense; perhaps it was meant to indicate that in the future I would have to deal with practical jokers.
I now decided to fall in with the joke and play the fool; I'd pretend not to have seen through the trap. Again I buried my face in my hands, but now in order to conceal my growing amusement. Then I took up the field glasses once more: the objects were infernally well done -- I might almost say that they surpassed reality. But I was not going to be taken in. After all, one was used to things like these from Zapparoni.
True, I now saw something that took me aback and again sickened me. A big blue fly descended on one of these shapes, a fly like those one used to see around butcher shops. But, although unpleasant, the sight did not shake my confidence. If I had judged Zapparoni rightly -- which I did not in the least pretend to do -- this move of his, these ears, could only be artificial. Heads or tails -- Zapparoni or King of Dahomey.
We cling to our theories and fit the phenomena to them. The fly? The work of art was to all appearance so perfect that not only my eyes but the insect itself was deceived. It is generally known that birds pecked at the grapes painted by Apelles. And I had once watched a small fly hovering around an artificial violet I wore in my buttonhole.
Moreover, who in the garden would swear on oath that this was natural, that artificial? Had any person, had any pair of lovers in an intimate conversation passed me, I would not have liked to stake my life and declare whether or not they were flesh and blood. Only recently I had admired Romeo and Juliet on the television screen, and had occasion to see for myself that a new and more beautiful era in dramatic art had started with Zapparoni's automatons. How tired one had become of the heavily made-up actors who became more insignificant from decade to decade, and how badly heroic action and classical prose, to say nothing of verse, suited them! In the end, one would no longer have known what a body, what passion, what singing really was, had not Negroes been imported from the Congo. Zapparoni's marionettes were of a quite different proficiency. They needed neither make-up nor beauty contests where chests and hips are measured and compared -- they were made to order.
I am not, of course, going to proclaim that they excelled human beings -- that would be absurd after all I have said about horses and riders. On the other hand, I think that they set man a new standard. Once upon a time statues and paintings influenced not only fashion but man. I am convinced that I Botticelli created a new race and that Greek tragedy enhanced the human body. That Zapparoni attempted something similar with his automatons revealed that he rose far above technique, using media as an artist to create works of art.
For magicians like those Zapparoni employed in his work shops and laboratories, it was a trifle to create a fly. In an inventory which included artificial bees and artificial ears, one must admit the possibility of an artificial fly as well. Therefore, even though loathsome and needlessly realistic -- this sight could not disconcert me.
In any case, during this strenuous testing and watching, I had lost the capacity of distinguishing between the natural and the artificial. I became skeptical of individual objects, and, in general, I separated imperfectly what was within and what without, what landscape and what imagination. The layers, close one upon the other, shifted their colors, merged their content, their meaning.
This was pleasant after my previous experiences. And most welcome was the fact that the business of the ears had lost its inner weight. I had been needlessly nervous. Of course they were artificial -- or artificially natural -- and, as with marionettes, pain becomes meaningless. Because this is indisputable, it even stimulates people to cruel jokes. It does not matter much so long as we know that the doll, whose arm we tear out, is of leather, or that the Negro we use as a target is of papier-mache. We like to aim at human forms.
But here the world of marionettes became very powerful and developed a subtle, carefully reasoned out play of its own. The marionettes became human and stepped into life. Leaps, drolleries, caprices -- which only rarely had been thought of before -- now became possible. Defeatism no longer existed. I saw the entrance to a painless world. Whoever passed into it was protected against the ravages of time. He would never be seized by a feeling of awe. Like Titus he would enter the destroyed temple, the burnt-out Holy of Holies. Time held its trophies and its wreaths ready for him.