“ ‘Why don’t you marry me, Pete dear?’ she asked, her feminine sentimentality reasserting itself.
“ ‘I shall return in a few centuries, Jackie, my love. Perhaps by that time, you will have developed a mentality compatible with your magnificent physique…’
“She did not wait for me to finish my sentence, gave me a violent blow on the chest and left me, shouting: ‘You’re a nut!’—which I learnt later was a man who had different views from the others, thought differently, or whose appearance suggested culture. ‘You’re a nut!’ is as terrible an indictment in modern America as ‘You are a witch’ was during the time of the Puritans. Indeed, so fearful are the Americans of being ‘nuts’ that even the cultured and the learned vociferate: ‘We are just like the rest; we are lowbrows; we are not “nuts”!’
“In a world of geese, can you conceive the hatred they would bear a swan who suddenly raised his graceful neck like the one who seeks your lovely hands, ma chère?”
Salome smiled.
“A week later, I left the New World. I shall return, as I promised, in a few centuries…”
“And the American man, Cartaphilus?”
“The American man,” I laughed. “His history is divided into three chapters—he is successively the slave of his mother, of his wife, and of his daughter. The American man? Salome, even the most zealous feminist would be inspired with pity. The African Tribe over which you ruled, ma chère, has been transplanted to the New World…”
“I am right, Cartaphilus,—the earth must be populated with a new race. The descendants of Adam are intolerable in whatever continent we place them.”
“There are still a few men here and there, Salome, whose existence compensates for the ugliness and stupidity and cruelty of the rest.”
“You are the eternal optimist, Cartaphilus.”
“In England, there is George Bernard Shaw, a white-headed Lucifer,—witty and wise. He believes that if man willed intensely to live, he could prolong his life indefinitely.”
“Truly, I must hurry with my Homuncula before the children of Jahveh discover the secret of longevity,” Salome interposed.
“In England, also, I met a man by the name of Havelock Ellis,—the purest intellect since Apollonius whom he resembles, physically even, save that the beautiful dark eyes of the Greek have become a magnificent blue. He lives as simply as Spinoza. He has written as no man before him of the delights of sex. If such a man lived for a thousand years– —”
“We cannot populate the earth with a handful of men.”
“Then there are a few Jews who have revolutionized the torpid mind of man. Einstein has rediscovered and amplified my law of relativity, Freud has reinterpreted the meaning of immortality…”
“How?”
“Within our subconscious minds, we carry our own history and maybe the history of the race.”
“That is not a new conception. In Greece, and in India, I knew several philosophers who held similar ideas.”
“Freud has given life a new face. He teaches man to know himself without being ashamed of himself.”
Salome shook off the particles of bread that clung to her fingertips and taking my arm, we walked slowly between the rows of palm trees.
“In Switzerland, I met a man by the name of Lenin,—a strange being, a Russian nobleman. He was a veritable volcano. If this man ever seizes the reins, the world will certainly accelerate its rotation.”
“In what way?”
“There will be neither slaves nor masters, neither rich nor poor, neither– —”
Salome laughed. “It is inconceivable, Cartaphilus, how a man who has lived for nearly two thousand years can still harbor such youthful illusions. How many messiahs have we not seen and heard! Truly your glands must function with the accuracy of a clock.”
We laughed.
“No, caro mio, only a new superhumanity deserves our consideration.”
“I remember once some years ago, I met a scholar and a poet whose name was—let me see—Nietzsche, of course. A great poet and a great scholar. He lived alone upon the top of a hill—a thin, sickly individual with an enormous head. He spoke in ditherambs, like an Athenian god. ‘Superman! Superman!—A new humanity!’ I asked him: ‘But master, if at last the superman appears in truth, what joy will it be to us men? The superman will lock us in cages and exhibit us to the youthful superman as we exhibit the monkeys. What delight is there in being an inferior animal?’
“He rubbed his forehead and covered his eyes, which could not withstand the light of the sun. ‘Perpetually create new values, new vistas, new heights! Let your purpose be a sword! Overcome yourself! Go beyond good and evil! Beyond life! Beyond death!’ he exclaimed.
“He grasped my arm. He was overcome with vertigo. I led him back to his room and left shortly after.”
“Nietzsche understood, Cartaphilus. He understood the meaning of creation!” Salome exclaimed. “I should have met him. I shall accomplish what he hoped. I shall mother the Superman and the Superwoman.”
“Salome, you are the Eternal Mother. This enables you to visualize your dream. You love the child before it is born. You create him mentally before he is created in truth. But I am the Eternal Father. I must learn to love my progeny. The child must exist before it can gain my affection.”
“Perhaps that is true, Cartaphilus,” Salome said, thoughtfully.
“It is for this reason, no doubt, that I prefer the great men who are already alive to the supermen who dwell in the poet’s brain, or the homunculae in the womb of creation…”
Kotikokura, arm in arm with the majordomo, passed us, followed by the tortoise whose efforts at speed were a pity to behold, and two monkeys who jumped like drunken grasshoppers. The procession made us laugh. I related Kotikokura’s adventure in the salon of Madame du Deffand.
“He is becoming more and more human,” Salome remarked.
“Perhaps he is the superman of the future. Who knows to what mental stature he will grow within the next ten thousand years?”
“It is not such a wild notion as it may seem, Cartaphilus. He grows slowly. That is a good sign. We grew too rapidly. What difference is there really between Cartaphilus and Salome in the time of Pilate and now? At most, a mellowing, a ripening, a tolerant outlook.”
“Is not all this a dream, Salome? Have we really lived as many centuries as it seems to us? Have we not, by some strange mathematics, calculated days as years?”
Salome sighed a little.
“I have not visited the Garden of Eden today. Will you accompany me?” she asked.
“Cartaphilus does not exist for himself. He is but the shadow of his Love…”
“And Salome is becoming so enamored of her shadow that she may feel as lonesome without him.”
“How long will she drag her shadow after her as a futile train, O Queen?”
“Look, look! It is climbing the tree like a squirrel.”
“Both shadows, Salome, interlaced like branches. Is it symbolic, ma très chère?”
She nodded.
“If I seem to walk Salome, it is an illusion. I am flying. My feet have turned into wings.”
She pressed my arm. “Come, Cartaphilus.”
The Garden of Eden had a different complexion. Colors, sounds, perfumes had changed.
“When at last my experiment proves successful,” Salome exclaimed, “the earth shall not be the monotonous singsong of an old woman which it is today. It shall be the mad dance of a young girl who– —”
She was interrupted by a shrill cry.
“Let us see what has happened, Cartaphilus,” she said anxiously.