The Possibility of an Island (45 page)

That said, my own technological needs were very limited; I helped myself only to a pair of powerful binoculars and a knife with a wide blade, which I slipped under my belt. It was possible, after all, that I might come across some dangerous animals in the course of my journey, and I might even pursue them. In the afternoon, clouds gathered above the plain, and a little later the rain began to fall, in slow and heavy curtains, the drops landed in the castle courtyard with a dull thud. I went out just after sunset: the paths were soaked and impassable; I understood that summer was giving way to autumn, and I also realized that I was going to stay there a few weeks, maybe a few months; I would wait for the beginning of winter, for the days to become cold and dry again. I could hunt, kill stags or deer that I would roast in the fireplace, lead that simple life that I was familiar with through various human life stories. Fox, I knew, would be happy with it, its memory was inscribed in his genes; for my part I needed capsules of mineral salts, but I still had six months’ reserve left. Then I would have to find seawater, if the sea still existed, if I could reach it; otherwise I would die. My attachment to life was not very strong, by the standards of human criteria, everything in the teachings of the Supreme Sister was oriented toward the idea of detachment; on rediscovering the original world, I had the impression of being an incongruous, contingent presence, in the middle of a universe where everything was oriented toward survival and perpetuation of the species.

Late that night I awoke, and saw a fire on the banks of the lake. Aiming my binoculars in this direction, I felt a shock at the sight of the savages: I had never seen them so close-up, they were different from those who populated the region of Almería, they were more robust and their skin fairer; the deformed specimen I had seen on my arrival in the village was probably an exception. There were about thirty of them, gathered around a fire, dressed in leather rags that were probably of human manufacture. I couldn’t bear to look at them for very long, and went back to stretch out in the darkness, trembling slightly; Fox nuzzled against me, pushing my shoulder with his muzzle, until I calmed down.

The following morning, at the gate of the castle, I discovered a suitcase made of stiff plastic, also of human manufacture; unable to produce any kind of object, having developed no technology, the savages lived on the debris of human industry, and contented themselves with using the objects they found here and there in the ruins of the ancient dwellings, at least those they understood how to work. I opened the suitcase: it contained roots, the nature of which I was not able to determine, and a piece of roasted meat. This confirmed how ignorant the savages were of neohumans: they were apparently not even aware that my metabolism was different from theirs and that this food was useless to me; Fox, on the other hand, tucked into the piece of meat. This also confirmed that they looked upon me with great fear, and wished to gain my goodwill, or at least my neutrality. When evening came, I put the empty suitcase at the entrance to show that I accepted the offering.

The same scene played out the following day, then the days after that. In the daytime, I observed through my binoculars the behavior of the savages; I had almost got used to their appearance, their crude, craggy features, their exposed sexual organs. When they did not hunt they seemed to spend most of the time asleep, or coupling—at least those to whom the possibility was offered. The tribe was organized along a strict hierarchical system, which became clear to me after my first days of observation. The chief was a male of about forty, with graying hair; he was assisted by two young males who had rather broad chests, by far the biggest and most robust individuals in the group; copulation with the females was reserved for them: when the females encountered one of the three dominant males, they crouched down on all fours and presented their vulva; by contrast, they violently rejected the advances of the other males. The chief had in all cases precedence over the two subordinates, but there did not seem to be any hierarchy between
them:
in the absence of the chief they benefited in turn, and sometimes simultaneously, from the favors of the various females. The tribe comprised no elderly members, and fifty seemed to be about the maximum age they could reach. In short, it was a mode of organization that quite closely recalled that of human societies, in particular those of the last periods after the disappearance of the great unifying systems. I was certain that Daniel1 would not have been homesick in this universe, and that he would have found his bearings easily.

A week after my arrival, as I was opening, as usual, the gate of the castle, I discovered next to the suitcase a young savage girl, hairy with very white skin and black hair. She was naked except for a leather miniskirt, her skin was crudely adorned with strokes of blue and yellow paint. On seeing me approach, she turned around, then hiked up her skirt and arched her back to present her rear. When Fox approached to sniff at her, she began to tremble all over, but did not change position. As I was still not moving, she finally turned her head in my direction; I gestured to her to follow me inside the castle. I was quite annoyed; if I accepted this new type of offering, it would probably be repeated in the following days; on the other hand, to send the female away would have been to expose her to reprisals from the other members of the tribe. She was visibly terrified, and watched my reactions with a gleam of panic in her eyes. I knew the procedures of human sexuality, even if my knowledge was purely theoretical. I pointed the mattress out to her; she went down on all fours and waited. I signaled for her to turn around; she obeyed, spreading her thighs wide, and began to pass a hand across her hole, which was astonishingly hairy. The mechanisms of desire had remained more or less the same among the neohumans, although they had weakened considerably, and I knew that certain neohumans were accustomed to lavish on themselves manual excitement. I had for my part tried once, several years before, trying to concentrate my mind upon tactile sensations—which had remained moderate, and which had dissuaded me from repeating the experiment. Nevertheless, I took down my trousers, with the aim of manipulating my organ in order to give it the requisite rigidity. The young savage let out a moan of satisfaction, and rubbed her hole with redoubled energy. As I approached, I was overwhelmed by the pestilential odor that emanated from between her thighs. Since my departure, I had lost the neohuman habit of hygiene, my body odor was slightly more pronounced, but this was nothing compared to the stink emanating from the sex of the savage, a mixture of the musty smell of shit and rotten fish. I retreated despite myself; she got back up immediately, her fear aroused, and crawled toward me; once she was level with my sex, she approached it with her mouth. The stink was less unbearable but still it was very strong, her teeth were small, rotten, and black. I gently pushed her away, got dressed again, and accompanied her to the castle gate, signaling to her not to come back. The following day, I neglected to take in the suitcase that had been left for me; overall, it seemed preferable to avoid developing too great a familiarity with the savages. I could hunt to satisfy the needs of Fox, the game was abundant and unwary; the savages, who were small in number, did not use any weapons other than the bow and arrow, my two automatic rifles would be a decisive advantage. The following day I made a first sortie and, to Fox’s great joy, I shot two does that were grazing in the moat. With the help of a short axe I cut off two haunches, leaving the rest of the corpses to rot. These beasts were only imperfect, approximate machines, with a very limited life span; they had neither the robustness, nor the elegance and perfection of the workings of a double-lensed Rolleiflex, I thought as I observed their protruding eyes, deserted by life. It was still raining but more gently, the paths were becoming passable once more; when the frost began, it would be time to set off again toward the west.

In the days that followed, I ventured further into the forest around the lake; under the cover of the tall trees there grew short grass, illuminated here and there by sheets of sunlight. From time to time I could hear rustling noises in a denser thicket, or I was alerted by a growl from Fox. I knew that the savages were there, that I was crossing their territory, but that they would not dare show themselves; the shots must have terrified them. With good cause, as it turns out: I now had a good mastery of the workings of my rifles, I was able to reload very quickly, and I could have massacred them. The doubts that had occasionally, throughout my abstract and solitary life, assailed me had now disappeared: I knew that I was dealing with baleful, unhappy, and cruel creatures; it was not among them that I would find love, or its possibility, nor any of the ideals that fueled the daydreams of our human predecessors; they were only the caricature-like residues of the worst tendencies of ordinary mankind, the kind that Daniel1 knew already, the one whose death he had wished for, planned, and to a large extent accomplished. I had further confirmation of this in the course of a sort of party organized a few days later by the savages. It was a full moon and I was awakened by Fox’s howling; the rhythm of the drums was of an obsessive violence. I climbed to the top of the central tower, the binoculars in my hand. The whole of the tribe was gathered in the clearing, they had lit a great fire and appeared overexcited. The chief presided over the meeting, in what resembled a sunken car seat. He was wearing an “Ibiza Beach” T-shirt and a pair of high boots; his legs and sexual organs were exposed. At a sign from him, the music slowed and the members of the tribe formed a circle, delimiting a sort of arena in the center, into which the two assistants of the chief brought—pushing and dragging them unceremoniously—two older savages, the oldest of the tribe, they had perhaps reached sixty. They were completely naked and armed with wide, short-bladed daggers—identical to those I had found in a reserve of the castle. At first the fight took place in the utmost silence; but from the first sight of blood the savages began to shout and whistle to encourage the antagonists. I understood immediately that it would be a fight to the death, with the aim of eliminating the individual least able to survive; the combatants struck each other without inhibition, trying to reach the face or other sensitive parts of the body. After the first three minutes, there was a pause, and they crouched at the edges of the arena, wiping themselves and drinking great gulps of water. The most corpulent one seemed in difficulty, he had lost a lot of blood. On a signal from the chief, the fight resumed. The fat one staggered to his feet; without wasting a second, his adversary leaped onto him and plunged his dagger into his eye. He fell to the ground, his face spattered with blood, and the scramble for the spoils began. With lifted daggers, the males and females of the tribe threw themselves screaming onto the wounded man, who was trying to crawl out of sight; at the same time, the drums started to beat again. At first they cut off bits of flesh that they roasted in the embers, but as the frenzy increased they began to devour the body of the victim directly, to lap his blood, the smell of which seemed to intoxicate them. A few minutes later, the fat savage was reduced to bloody residue, scattered over a few meters in the prairie. The head lay at the side, intact except for the gouged eye. One of the assistants picked it up and handed it to the chief, who brandished it under the stars, as the music was silenced again and the members of the tribe sang an inarticulate threnody, slowly clapping their hands. I supposed that it was a rite of union, a way of strengthening bonds in the group—at the same time as eliminating weakened or sick members; all of this seemed to conform to what I had been taught about mankind.

I woke to a thin film of frost covering the prairies. I devoted the rest of the morning to preparing for what I hoped would be the last stage of my journey, Fox gambolled behind me from room to room. As I continued westward, I knew that I would cross flatter and warmer regions; the survival blanket had become useless. I do not exactly know why I had returned to my initial idea of heading for Lanzarote; the notion of rejoining a neohuman community still did not inspire much enthusiasm in me, besides I had found no further indication of the existence of such a community. No doubt it was the prospect of living out the rest of my existence in areas infested by savages, even in the company of Fox, even though I knew that they were terrified of me, far more than I was terrified of them, and they would do all they could to keep a respectful distance, that had, after that night, become intolerable. I became aware then that, little by little, I was cutting myself off from all possibilities; maybe, in this world, there was no place for me.

I hesitated, at length, in front of my automatic rifles. They were a burden, and would slow down my progress; I had absolutely no fears for my personal safety. On the other hand, it was not certain that Fox would find food as easily, in the regions we were going to cross. His head on his front paws, he followed me with his eyes, as if he understood my hesitation. When I stood up, holding the shortest rifle, after having stuffed a reserve of cartridges into my backpack, he got up wagging his tail joyfully. He had, visibly, acquired a taste for the hunt, and to a certain extent so had I. I now experienced a certain joy in killing animals, in delivering them from phenomenal existence; intellectually, I knew I was wrong, for deliverance can only be obtained through asceticism, on this point the teachings of the Supreme Sister seemed to me more irrefutable than ever; but perhaps I had, in the worst sense of the term, become human. Any destruction of an organic form of life, of whatever kind, was a step toward the accomplishment of moral law; living still in hope of the Future Ones, I had at the same time to try and rejoin my fellow beings, or at least whatever it was that came close to resembling them. On closing my backpack, I thought again of Marie23, who had departed in search of love, and doubtless had not found it. Fox was bounding around me, mad with joy at the idea of setting off again. I looked around at the forest and the plain and in my mind I recited the prayer for the deliverance of creatures.