Laura (11 page)

Those are basically good creatures, although lazy, said my uncle, seeing them head back into the water. They are worth more than men; they do not refuse work and they ask nothing for their trouble. The more I think about it, the more I tell myself that men will serve my exploitation but I shall not allow my brutish slaves to inconvenience the animals.

We took an entire day to cross this forested region, which was admirable in its power and majesty. There, we saw only evergreen trees, hollies, conifers and diverse
species
of gigantic junipers. Frightful reptiles crawled in the mass of dried needles that hid the ground from us; but these animals appeared harmless to us, and we crossed the woods without having to engage in any battles.

The further we advanced, the more resolution and confidence Nasias showed, while I felt some unknown, secret horror seizing hold of me. In its male beauty, this unexplored world had an increasingly menacing
physiognomy
. In vain the animals proved indifferent to the sight of and contact with man. This very indifference had something so scornful about it that in my mind the feeling of our smallness and isolation increased tenfold. The dome formed by some trees, beside which the most beautiful cedars of Lebanon would have looked stunted; the thickness of the plant-stems; the length of the reptiles which crossed the clearings and which shone in the cold shadows like streams of greenish silver; the rough shapes and oversized thorns of the low-growing plants; the absence of birds and quadrupeds; silent flights of insanely large bombyx and geometer moths; the humid and
debilitating
atmosphere; the murky daylight which seemed to fall regretfully upon a heavy carpet of hundred-year-old debris; great ponds of standing water where monstrous frogs stared at us with glassy, stupid eyes; all this seemed to say to us: “What are you doing here, where man is nothing and where nothing was made for him?”

At last, in the evening, we found ourselves in an open area, and by the light of the boreal crown, which was
becoming more and more intense, we saw that a large lake separated us from the base of the peak. This destroyed all the fantasies my uncle had cherished about the existence of an accessible opening, and confirmed the opinion I had formed for myself when I saw the cone emerging from a circle of mist.

For the first time, I saw that Nasias was discouraged, and, as he remained silent, I was emboldened to speak to him directly. Why had he not foreseen that a deep cavity, wherever in the world it might be, might not serve at all as a reservoir for watercourses, rain or melting snow? I even allowed myself a few jokes which I felt the need to express; for my association with this strange man was merely a series of revolts against my reason, at each moment
paralysed
by the vertiginous ascendancy which had control over me.

He was wounded to the quick, and I think for a moment he was minded to put an end to my doubts, for he was as irritated and as tired with them as I was with his
irresistible
authority; but he calmed down after spewing out a torrent of coarse insults, which I had in no way expected from such a reserved man.

Now, he said, we are both wrong this time; that is why I forgive you. I faltered for a moment, and was punished by a fit of anger that risks diminishing my intellectual and physical powers. Man’s worth resides only in his faith. Take back yours or you are lost.

And he gave me the diamond to look at. Immediately the image of the cone surrounded by purplish flames appeared there as if I was touching it, and, in that
iridescent
lake surrounding the base of the peak, I made out
indefinable but perfectly solid ground, on which Laura was walking confidently and inviting me to follow her. This vision produced its accustomed effect upon me: it transported me into the delicious realm of the
impossible
, or rather it dispelled like a deceptive cloud that word impossible, written at the threshold of all discoveries.

Let us leave now! I said to my uncle. Why stop here? Does night reign in these privileged parts? Our powers are increased tenfold by the effect of the electricity which radiates from everywhere here. Do they have need of six hours’ rest? Let us keep on walking, let us walk forever. I know where we are going now. Laura awaits us on the opal lake. Let us make haste to join her.

We walked all night, which was moreover very short, for I estimate that we were at eighty-nine degrees latitude and that we were approaching the days when the sun is above the horizon for six months.

At sunrise, a terrifying and sublime sight greeted our eyes. There were neither mists nor rocks heaped up at the base of the peak, and we could make out perfectly the circular shape of the gulf out of which it soared up to the clouds. This gulf was indeed filled by a lake; but one splendid detail we had not been able to fix upon was a
circular
waterfall, equally well supplied around its entire rim. It emerged from a cave, also circular, then hurtled down into the lake from a height of twelve to fifteen hundred metres. This marvel of nature threw me into ecstasy, but singularly annoyed Nasias.

Certainly, he said, it is a very beautiful thing and without its like in the known world; but I could gladly have done without it. We have arrived too late. Some unforeseen
cataclysm has opened the waters’ path to the gaping mouth of the terrestrial axis.

Did you flatter yourself then, I said wryly, that you would find an underground passage, a practicable
tunnel
from one pole to the other? No doubt you have seen such a thing in those cardboard globes pierced by an iron skewer, and you perhaps dreamed that our earthly globe revolved on a strong bar magnetised at both ends. I dreamed of that also when I was six years old; but you will permit me to doubt it today and to find it entirely natural that a vast region of peaty mountains arranged in a cirque should have its circular outflow in the deepest place. If yesterday we crossed a healthy, fertile terrace, that was because it was saved from perpetual flooding by the river we crossed on tortoise-back, and because that river plunges down somewhere beneath an eminently compacted soil, and then swirls in invisible caverns below our feet.

What a marvellous explanation! said Nasias
contemptuously
, throwing me fierce looks. So, either you did not see into the diamond properly, or you lied to me. You did not see Laura walking on those deceptive waters, you have never seen anything with common sense and you have mocked me. Misfortune to you, ignorant schoolboy, rebellious and inconvenient companion, misfortune will fall upon you, I swear it, if it is so!

Wait, I told him firmly; do not be in a hurry to
eliminate
me and send me to join the crew of the
Tantalus
and our Eskimo canoeists. There may be a way of settling things and reconciling all our hypotheses. Do you have a sensitive ear? Do you believe that at the distance we are
from that colossal Niagara you would be able to hear its roar?

Yes, most certainly! cried out my uncle, throwing
himself
into my arms, I would hear the powerful din of those gushing waters, and I hear nothing at all! That waterfall is frozen.

Or petrified, my dear uncle!

You have, he went on, a stupid way of joking, but at heart you see fairly clearly. That circular torrent may be a terrible effusion of cold lava, and we must find out for sure; forward!

We then entered the region of sterile debris. It was, on a large scale, a flood of porous lavas and tephrines, like those broad currents one finds in the Auvergne and which occupy so much surface area between Volvic and
Pontgibault
, according to my Uncle Tungstenius. I remember his description, which had appeared grandiose to me, but which seemed very mean before the expanse of volcanic nodules that rose up before me as far as the eye could see, and which simulated the appearance of boiling fluid suddenly petrified at the peak of its activity. It was like a sea whose waves had changed into stony mounds or
innumerable
standing stones. This entire ocean of bare rocks had a uniform colour, desolate, livid, and one would have taken the short, greyish lichen whose leprosy marbled it, for the remains of a rain of cinders that the wind had forgotten to sweep away. That day was difficult, nothing to eat or drink. I know not how our strength did not
desert
us.

At last we reached the limits of this kingdom of death, where what we had taken at a distance for a belt of cacti
or gigantic reeds was merely an efflorescence of enormous pumice stones, calcified into the most bizarre shapes. The lake stretched out beneath our feet, the waterfall gushed from all directions around us, and its vast waves were no more than an admirable, milky-white vitrification, with hints of translucent opal. But how were we to descend it? Our jagged path around it jutted over every side; it was fearfully high, and we were exhausted by fatigue, hunger and thirst. In a fold of the ground, I noticed a trail of debris and soon a small area where plants grew, including the creeping roots of a kind of pink milk vetch. These roots were an unhoped-for gift to us from Providence. After eating some, and noticing how long and tenacious they were, I sought some out and found some which had grown to several metres in length. I made an ample
harvest
, and my uncle, delighted with my idea, helped me to make them into a knotted rope, fifty yards in length. When we tried it out, using a block of lava tied to the end, we saw that it was quite strong, but too short by half to reach one of the first ledges of the glass waterfall. We had to spend the night where we were, in order to devote the entire next day to lengthening our ladder. My uncle seemed resigned to this, and I prepared myself a bed of asbestos in a conveniently cup-shaped hollow in the rocks. Nasias treated me like a sybarite.

I am, I replied, because I consider that we are
arriving
at our greatest peril. I am not too bad a walker on an empty stomach, as you have seen; but today I have little strength in my arms, and, despite my childhood escapades, I consider myself a very bad acrobat at this moment. However, nothing can shake my resolution to
descend into that abyss. So I need all the vigour I am capable of, and, moreover, if I am to be shipwrecked in port and if I am to sleep my last night here, I should like to savour it and spend it well. I would advise you, my dear uncle, to do likewise.

Scarcely had I lain down, I dare not say gone to sleep, for I had never felt more awake, Walter came and sat down beside me without my experiencing the least
surprise
at seeing him there.

Your undertaking is insane, he told me; you will break your bones and will find nothing interesting in this bizarre place. This is without doubt a remarkable example of the power of volcanic ejections; but all the mineral
materials
of this recently-cooled fire have undergone such a degree of cooking, if one may use such a term, that it will be impossible for you to define their nature. Moreover, how will you bring back specimens that we can submit to analysis, when you are so far off knowing how you will bring yourself back?

You speak well, I replied; but, since you were able to come and find me here, you have some means of
transport
that you will no doubt consent to share with me.

I did not have much difficulty in climbing the staircase to your room, Walter went on with a smile, and, if you were to make an effort of reason, you would recognise that only your spirit is at the arctic pole, while your body is seated at your table and your hand is writing mad words which I am amusing myself by answering.

You mock me, Walter, I cried out, or else it is your spirit that casts itself madly back to our home and our customs in Fischausen: do you not see the polar crown,
the great peak of obsidian and the white, milky sea which surrounds it?

I see only the shade of your lamp, he replied, and your pyramid-shaped inkwell with its faience bowl. Come, rouse yourself to the sound of Laura’s piano; at this moment she is singing a ballad to her father, who is quietly smoking his pipe at the drawing-room window.

I rose to my feet impetuously. Walter had disappeared, the opal sea was shining at my feet, and the aurora
borealis
drew an immense rainbow above me. Nasias, who was seated some distance away, was in reality smoking his pipe, and I could distinctly hear Laura’s voice and the notes of her piano. This mixture of dreaming and waking
tormented
me for part of the night. Laura’s voice, so sweet in my memory, at that moment took on a shocking reality, for Laura could scarcely sing, and she had a little childish lisp which rendered serious music comical. Only in the crystal were her words free from this defect. Impatient, I stood at the window of my bedroom and shouted to her across the garden not to murder the
Ballad from Saul
. She paid no heed, and in a pique I lay back down on my bed of asbestos, where, blocking up my ears, I finally managed to fall asleep.

When I awoke, in broad daylight, I saw that Nasias had worked unstintingly and that our root-rope had reached the required length. I helped him to attach it securely, and wanted to be the first to test it. I descended without
hindrance
, helping myself with my feet when I could make contact with a projection in the lava. In this way I reached a little platform, which the rope did not reach far enough past to render it unnecessary to pull it down and reattach
it once more. Bending over the edge, I saw below me a heap of ashes, white as snow, and I did not hesitate to let myself fall into it. This ash was so crumbly, that I
disappeared
into it completely; but shaking myself, I emerged safe and sound, and shouted to my uncle to follow suit.

He descended with the same success, and we hastened to cut off a good-sized length of rope to take away and eat when we needed to, for it would take us eight or ten hours to cross this lake of glass, and as you can imagine, we saw no trace of vegetation.

Soon the sun heated up this gleaming surface so much, that the glare became unbearable to our eyes, and the heat atrocious to our feet; but we could not retrace our steps: we were halfway through the journey, and we
continued
to walk with a stoicism of which I would never have thought myself capable. The reflection from the circular waterfall was so burning-bright, that it seemed to us that we were at the centre of the sun. Fortunately, a gust of wind dislodged an avalanche of snow from the summit of the central peak, sending it rolling down towards us. We set our course to reach it before walking became
impossible
, and this unhoped-for help enabled us to arrive almost at the base of the cone.