Chapter VI: An Enthusiast Discourses on Pre-Historic Remains

"Then really," said Wanda, "you are not worried?"

The priest turned his glance upon her. He observed her anxiety. Although she forced herself to hide it, her pale face was shadowed and her eyelids fluttered lightly. He tried to reassure her.

"No," said he, "certainly I would prefer to know that Redeski had reached Post 28. He ought to have got there last week, but when you come to think of it, what of it? He is only six days late on his schedule, and in the forest that's nothing--especially at this season...."

Pierre nodded agreement.

The three of them were finishing their lunch on the balcony of the priest's house. Once more clouds had invaded the sky, and across the courtyard of the Mission their shadows lay and sped swiftly between two shafts of sunlight.

The young girl lifted her relaxed face to the priest with a brave attempt at smiling.

"I suppose I am absurd, but Michael means so much in my life.... I have no one but him...."

"I understand," said the missionary with tenderness, "but do not torture yourself unnecessarily. He will be here in a fortnight at most, telling us why he was late.... Besides...."

He broke off, for the serving boy who had placed a basket of fruit on the table asked:

"Will the Father take his coffee here?"

Father Ravennes consulted his guests with a look.

"No," said he, "we will take it in 'the Cave!'"

Wanda, who was picking out a fruit, made a sudden movement. The purple and yellow pyramid of mangoes and lichis rolled scattered about the table. Absent-mindedly she queried:

"The Cave?"

The boy had silently disappeared.

"The room reserved for my prehistoric collection," explained the priest, stretching out his legs, and with a laugh he continued:

"It is true ... though of course you could not know it! I am absorbed in everything prehistoric, and I realize that this prepossession has become a regular passion with me!"

And with a sort of ingenuous doubt he enquired: "You don't see anything sinful in that, do you?"

Lursac smiled.

"No," said he, "and I absolve you in advance! Although this scientific pre-occupation seems to me neither very Christian nor warranted by the doctrines of the Church, and that...."

The missionary protested strongly:

"You are wrong," said he, "there is nothing to prevent priests from making a study of this sort.... I was already taken up with it while I was at the Seminary of Foreign Missions at Paris, and my masters never told me...."

"However," said Wanda in her turn, "doesn't the Old Testament tell us that man was created by God not more than six thousand years ago?"

Pierre remarked:

"Well, well, Mademoiselle, I would not have believed you so versed in theological matters."

Then turning towards the missionary:

"Well, what have you to say to that?"

Father Ravennes shrugged his shoulders.

"Simply this," said he, "that Mademoiselle is making a very common mistake. You can open the Sacred Book and you will find in Genesis no precise date at which primitive man must have been born. It is the chronologists who, since the fifteenth century, have endeavored to force biblical facts into their system of chronology. The best proof of that is that the Church has never consented to making it an article of faith that the creation of man took place six thousand years ago."

Lursac, who had just finished peeling a mango, went on teasing him:

"But I don't think, however, that many priests occupy themselves with such problems as this."

The missionary disputed the statement:

"Yes indeed!... Abbés Bourgeois and Delaunay, Monseigneur Meignan himself--just to quote those who are in some sort my predecessors--have all written important works on this very question. Of the present day I can cite you Abbés Breuil and Bremond...."

He got up, and walking in front of them he guided them towards "the Cave." It was a long room, of which the entire furnishings consisted of a narrow bench which ran round the walls and was divided by partitions, and a long table on trestles littered with stones, arms and other strange and primitive instruments. A large bay with the usual screen of plaited bamboo lighted the room, cutting a great rectangle in the mud wall through which the sun poured in. On the other walls, from the bench up to the ceiling, hung all sorts of prehistoric remains, forming an extraordinary mixture. Crowded against each other, each one provided with its label or its inscription, they enriched the gray background with outlandish patterns. Rough, heavy knives, axes and scrapers of flint hung close together beside bone daggers and bodkins worn smooth by the lapse of centuries. Further along, gruesome fragments of human skeletons colored like old ivory were mixed with pieces of animal bones on a large panel, flanked by rags of clothing and strips of hide. In an angle near the bay two yellow and angular skulls lay on a shelf. Their empty jaws with the mouths hanging open and their hollow eye-sockets formed great holes filled with shadows.

The room thus decorated gave the strange and complex effect of a museum of bric-a-brac and a tomb combined.

Wanda and Pierre had sat themselves down on the bench.

Standing before the table Father Revennes gazed affectionately at his collection.

"My harvest, gathered in the three years that I have been here," he said with naïve pride.

Lursac showed his surprise.

"Three years? I didn't know that Laos was so rich in prehistoric remains!"

The missionary had taken one of the skulls between his sunburnt hands and while he spoke he handled it gently with motions that were almost caressing. He did not seem to have heard Lursac's remark. With his eyes full of admiration he repeated:

"My most beautiful specimen.... A quarternary human skull! A real wonder, for it is unique.... Do you realize it?... Unique! And I defy anyone in Europe to show me one as truly characteristic and in such perfect condition. Their 'Cro-Magnon'? Pooh! Trash compared to this one...."

He gave a smile of triumph at once naïve and solemn.

"And when I think," said he with enthusiasm, "that in this bony cup, over forty thousand years ago, there used to be a brain that created thoughts, desires, and feelings, which were doubtless exactly the same as our thoughts, desires and feelings...."

He stopped, regarding with a sort of affection the skull which he had put on the table before him. Then touching his own forehead with his fingers he murmured:

"The same forehead, and--who knows--perhaps the same soul, which time has simply kept apart from this one without separating them."

The voice of Wanda broke in.

"O Father! can we have the same soul as a superior ape?"

Father Ravennes jumped round.

"Primitive man, an ape!" said he, "where have you read that heresy? In Lamarck, in Carl Vogt, or in Huxley? But it is an outrageous theory, long ago given up."

He went on, his voice trembling with excitement:

"It is enough to have eyes and to look at them; a child couldn't be deceived. How could such a gross error have originated? Everything proves that the human type is independent of the animal.... Look!" he said, as he took from the shelf the second skull and placed it on the table beside the first, and emphasising his words with his finger, he continued:

"They pretend to base their opinion on anatomical comparison. The ignoramuses! Look! Here is a man's skull from the earliest of primitive ages, and here is a baboon's, the simian species which is nearest to the human type. See here and here: the chin, the teeth, the general appearance, the structural lines of these two skulls proclaim their distinct origin and prove that the ape belongs to a totally different species from man."

Relieved by his own violence he shrugged his shoulders with scorn. Lursac and Wanda had risen and were standing one on each side of the missionary. In silence they regarded the hollow bony forms standing on the table before them, which, dull and dirty, grinned back at them with toothless mouths and missing noses and their whole surfaces spotted as with leprosy.

"What does it matter?" said Wanda. "What surprises me as it does Lursac is this extraordinary abundance of fossils in the neighborhood."

Father Ravennes turned to them.

"You are right; and my astonishment was even greater than yours. I didn't expect such rich discoveries! Just remember that usually it needs ten, a dozen, perhaps fifteen years of exploration and of digging to discover and bring to light a few anthropological specimens, less rare and, above all, in a much worse state of preservation than most of these you see here. But what is really extraordinary about it is the way in which I found them. It would be natural enough to find here in the depths of the Lao-ese forest some remains of quaternary man. General opinion agrees, as a matter of fact, that our first ancestors were born and lived in central and southern Asia before spreading themselves over different parts of the globe.... Yes, here! somewhere around us, must have been the cradle of the human race...."

"You said," interrupted Pierre, "that you found these things in some extraordinary way.... How was that?"

The missionary smiled mysteriously.

"Listen," said he. "When I first arrived here I built myself a hut, and every morning, after I had said mass, I started out on horseback. I just followed my nose, attempting to spread the Word of God. One day I lost myself in the forest on the border of the Moï country, opposite your fort."

Lursac cried:

"Ah! in the Dead Zone?..."

"Yes," said the missionary. "Yes, that is where I have made all my finds; and on each occasion the axes, the tools, the arms, the skeletons or the clothes were in a heap, piled round a black stone curiously shaped, erected like a fetich before a _nihuer_.[8] Therefore it is absolutely certain that it was the natives who must have brought them there. But where did they find them and why do they attach to them this sacred character which seems to be denoted by their presence before the altar of incantations?"

[Footnote 8: Altar for performing incantations.]

Lursac thoughtfully listened to him. With his thoughts dwelling on these savage hosts in the midst of which the fort and the Mission stood up like two lost islands he called to mind the counsels of prudence which the missionary had given them the evening of their arrival. And suddenly there flashed across him the mysterious fate of Longères and Dorcel. With some abruptness he asked:

"Don't you think that this may be one of the elements of this unknown religion whose presence we feel all about us?"

Father Ravennes lighted his pipe. Through the open window, beyond the bamboos and the trees which surrounded the Mission, the russet-colored plain was visible, with the widening line of the canal marked by its border of mangroves, and further away the bulk of the Pou-Kas, holding up against the luminous sky the dark wildness of its vast flanks.

The missionary, after a long silence, looked at the young man.

"It is a question," said he, "about which I have often thought. It seems probable, as a matter of fact, that these prehistoric remains do serve some function in the mysterious religion which holds in its grip this entire region from the mountain to the plain! Perhaps, indeed, it is even the very essence of it."

"Perhaps?" enquired Wanda. "Have you never then tried to find out? That surprises me! It seems that I...."

"Find out! ..." said the missionary with a gesture of weariness, "find out! Everything that surrounds us here, as I have already told you, is vague and incomprehensible. We are struggling in a mass of tricks, of lies and hypocrisies from a race that hates us and of which we know practically nothing. Find out! I have tried, certainly!... I began by questioning those who came to me. But directly one touches the subject one finds oneself at a stone wall. Then if one goes on to speak of this sorceress, this Jieng, whose power, although it is hidden, is none the less actual and far-reaching, they tremble and become terrified. Then if one presses them yet further, they say it is a legend and that there is no such person as Jieng and never was."

He turned towards the young people.

"However," said he, "you know that I came on them last night with her in the forest. But she holds them by some sort of magical charm and religious fear.... Never having been able to get anything out of my converts, I made up my mind to look for myself. I paid them back trick for trick, patience for patience. I became desperate, driven by a curiosity which has gradually turned into a strange mixture of fear and obsession...."

He broke off to replace the two skulls on the shelf.

"And this is what I finally discovered," he went on. "It's little enough and it's so vague in meaning that I have almost hesitated to speak to you about it. It was about three years ago--I had just arrived, and Post 32 had just been destroyed for the second time--I was returning from a circuit that I had made towards the mountain and night had overtaken me on my journey--a summer night, warm, milky and starlit. I was riding slowly, letting my horse take his own time. When I got to the bank of the canal I stopped, looking for the ford by which to cross it. Before me, stretching to the horizon, the plain lay lit by the moon with that light at once intense and subdued which one sees only in the night of the far east. Suddenly my attention was drawn to something unusual: across the sandy hills streamed processions of black spots, tiny and almost invisible. From the distance it looked like an army of ants on the march. I made out four, then six, then eight--eight columns, which, crossing the plain, were advancing directly towards me. They seemed to come from the extreme edge of the landscape, beyond the deserted plain in the middle of which the Mission stands. Intrigued, I turned back into the shade of the forest, hid myself and continued watching. The eight columns kept on moving. They joined into one the other side of the canal, crossed it by the ford, mounted the bank on this side and, passing in front of me, commenced to ascend the mountain. I followed them carefully, and I noticed with astonishment that this strange procession was composed exclusively of women. Walking on the edges of it, a couple of dozen men at most, with lances in their hands and crossbows on their shoulders, accompanied them. At the head of the line went a group of sorceresses, dancing and gesticulating, yelling incomprehensible and strident invocations, and lifting towards the pallid moon animal-like faces, seamed with scars. When they reached the threshold of the Sacred Forest they came to a stop. The women lined up in a vast semicircle and I recognized among them girls of every age, of every sort and of every race: Reungaos, Halong, Jelung, Benoun of the great tribe of Banhars; Keumrang, Duan, Hêre, of the powerful clan of the Sedangs; Djiru, Heun, Oy, Sapuan, who all belong to the Bolovens.... Every tribe and every dialect of the Moï country was represented there. A gathering extraordinary and incredible to anyone who knows the love for their own village and the jealous passion of separatism with which each of these clans is animated!... And seeing all these various and dissimilar faces turned towards the sorceresses with the same expression of submission and anxiety upon them, I first realized the danger, yes the danger, of an unsuspected religion, and it was there in that clearing on the border of the Sacred Forest that suddenly I got some idea of the terrible power wielded by Jieng.

"She had at that moment risen up, lame, her face scarred with wounds, and with a single gesture she made them all bend, men and women, in one simultaneous terrified movement of obeisance. Then with a sharp command she sent the men off. 'No males can enter the Dead Country. Your women will be returned to you on the seventh night of the fourth moon from now. Go!' And they went, their heads hanging, without a word; while on their side the great column of women, re-formed under the directions of the sorceresses, resumed its march and continued the ascent toward the Pou-Kas, slowly entering the great forest and disappearing among its shadows...."

He ceased, took several strides about the room, then still holding in his eye the vision of the scene which he had just recalled he said:

"That is what I saw.... I know no more!"

Wanda gave a short sigh and asked:

"But where did they go? And what was the meeting for?"

The missionary made a vague gesture.

"I do not know," he said.

Then hesitating and picking his words:

"I imagine,--please notice that I assert nothing because I know nothing exactly,--I imagine that in the depths of the Pou-Kas there must be a sanctuary,--a temple perhaps--or it may be only a place of pilgrimage, to which only women have the right of approach.... Remember that sentence of Jieng's, 'Males may not enter the Dead Country.'" He repeated thoughtfully:

"A religion of mystery, peculiar to the women and the secret of which no man can penetrate, no man, not even those of their own blood!..."

Still seated on the bench, her chin in her hand, Wanda watched him. With a light burning in her eyes she asked:

"And this temple ... where is it?"

The missionary shrugged his shoulders. He swept his hand across the window and his gesture seeming to include the whole confused mass of mountains which stood along the horizon:

"Without any doubt, there!" he said.

Wanda rose. Her lingering glance for a long time searched the blue slopes of the Pou-Kas, the sharp crest of which, barred with forest and clothed with jungle, dominated the entire range.

She stood, thoughtful, for a moment, then repeated:

"There!..." And smiled strangely.