THE DEMOISELLE (2)

By: Raymond Roussel
November 2, 2024

AI-assisted illustration by HILOBROW

In Raymond Roussel’s 1914 proto-sf novel Locus Solus, Professor Canterel takes visitors on a tour of the so-rational-they’re-crazy inventions to be found on the titular estate. In this excerpt, translated by HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn, we discover a flying mechanism programmed to create a truly outré work of art.

ALL INSTALLMENTS: 1 | 2 | 3.

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In that part of the esplanade over which the demoiselle was currently hovering, the teeth — packed tightly together in a way that took advantage of the alternation of their colors — had become the components of an as-yet-unfinished work of art. The tooth-painting depicted a rough-looking soldier sleeping in a dark crypt, sprawled loose-limbed on the verge of an underground pool. A faint mist generated by the sleeping man’s unconscious mind revealed a dream-like vision: eleven young men semi-crouched, in awe or fear of a semi-transparent airborne sphere — towards which a white dove in flight seemed to be headed. A dead bird on the ground, meanwhile, was enveloped in the sphere’s aura. The light of a torch jammed into the floor of the crypt revealed, lying next to the crypt’s concrete vault, an old, closed tome.

Yellows and browns predominated in this unique dental mosaic. The other, less frequent hues, offered lively and attractive notes. The dove, fashioned of superb white teeth, was poised in rapid and graceful motion; the grizzled soldier’s gear was composed of skillfully arranged tooth-roots taking the form not only of a red feather adorning a hat crumpled near the book, but also of a large crimson cloak (fastened by a copper buckle ingeniously suggested by gold-caped teeth); a complex amalgamation of blue teeth had been deployed for the soldier’s azure breeches, tucked into large boots made of black teeth; the boots’ soles — very visible — included both nut-brown teeth and silver fillings… which represented regularly spaced hobnails.

At the moment, the demoiselle was hovering motionlessly over the soldier’s left boot.

Scattered around the borders of the tooth-painting were incoherent mounds of teeth that hadn’t yet been pounded into place. Around what one perceived to be the artwork’s outer limits — which is to say, where the concentration of teeth was the sketchiest — a thin cord strung neatly between stakes a few centimeters high defined the zone beyond which observers ought not to trespass. We’d all lined up at this polygonal barrier.

Without warning, the paving-device leaped into the air of its own accord and, propelled by a gentle breeze, alit — after making its slow, straight way across a distance of some fifteen to twenty feet — upon a smoker’s tooth stained browned by tobacco.

Beckoning us forward as he stepped across the cord, Canterel led the way across the verge of grass and approached the aerial device. Following him, we took extreme care not to disturb the scattered piles of teeth, for despite their apparent disorder we intuited that their positioning was the result of in-depth analysis.

As we neared the demoiselle, which shone in the shun, we could hear the ticking sounds it was emitting.

Without bothering to ask us if we had any pressing questions, Canterel drew our attention to the device’s various components.

At the very top of the aerostat, left exposed by the netting that circled it like a collar around a neck, an automatic aluminum valve with a circular shutter opening was situated next to a small chronometer, the dial of which was visible to us.

Beneath the balloon, suspended from the vertical cords that made up the lower part of the netting (which was fashioned of fine, lightweight red silk), and which were threaded through holes drilled in its shallow, flat rim, was a round aluminum tray acting as the device’s nacelle — which contained a yellow-ochre substance spread in a thin layer across its horizontal surface. The nacelle resembled an upside-down lid.

Via a rivet through its center, the underside of this tray was fixed to the top of a vertical aluminum post of a narrow cylindrical shape — the paver’s central mechanism.

Also fashioned of aluminum was a long rod fixed to one side of the post’s upper region; it rose obliquely towards the sky, past the circular tray, before branching out in three directions. At the end of each of these branches was a fairly large chronometer, back-to-back with a round mirror of the same circumference; whereas the three chronometer dials faced away from one another in diverging directions, the three silvered-glass mirrors were oriented more or less towards one another, though one looked west, another south, and the third east. At the moment, the first mirror was reflecting the sun onto the second mirror, which reflected the rays in turn toward the balloon’s nacelle. (The third did not seem to play a role.) Each mirror was attached to its chronometer by four finely toothed horizontal rods, fixed respectively at the top, bottom, right, and left of the mirror-back’s rim; these rods, in all three cases, passed through the chronometer and projected from its far side, on the peripheral edge of its dial, at a diameter a little smaller than the clockwork movement.

The rods, set in motion by hidden cogwheels linked to each chronometer’s mechanism, were capable of angling the mirrors — via a wide variety of micro-motions — in every possible direction; at the tip of each rod was a small metal ball, two-thirds of which was swallowed up by a hollow semi-sphere attached to the back of the mirror in question; this means of attaching rod to mirror made it simple for the reflecting disc to be shifted into the most diverse possible directions.

Every day this triple system followed the sun in its course, from sunrise to sunset. During the morning the mirror facing east was the first to collect all its sparkling beams; after the passage of the star to the meridian it became inactive while its opposite took over. Militant from dawn until dusk, the mirror contemplating the south always reflected second, aiming the radiant effluvia flashed upon it without interruption from one or the other of its brilliant neighboring discs, in an invariable direction.

From the center of the oblique, triple-branched rod rose a short, straight support, which almost immediately split into two curved branches forming a half circumference the horns of which pointed towards the zenith. This semi-circle, perpendicular to the ideal vertical plane in which the oblique rod was located, served as a partial frame for a powerful round lens which, having the same horizontal diameter as the semi-circle, was fixed by two pivots to the culminating portion of the curved branches.

This lens was placed precisely in the path of the light beam reflected secondly by the most distant mirror, and it rested parallel to the rays which flooded it.

A chronometer of minimal size, whose dial adorned the upper exterior part of one of the curved branches, was charged with the mission of turning the lens at certain strictly determined moments, via an ingenious connection between its movement and the adjoining pivot.

Ensuring the stability of the structure, a horizontal metal rod, ending like a half-dumbbell with a spherical counterweight, was screwed into the aluminum post on the side directly opposite the lens and mirrors.

An oversized magnetic needle, apparently liberated from a gigantic compass, crossed the rod, perpendicularly, halfway up. Being of equal length on both sides it served, by its magnetism, to always hold, during flights, the aerial device in a constant orientation. Its northern point was situated directly below the south-inspecting mirror, while its southern point coincided similarly, but at a lesser distance, with the spherical counterweight.

Forming a base, three small aluminum claws, curved and smoothly fashioned, resembling nothing so as the legs of a piece of miniature furniture, supported the lower edge of the bar; each rested its tip on the ground, giving the demoiselle sufficient support while displaying to us, at the very bottom of its elegantly sweeping curve, the dial of a teeny chronometer barely wider than itself.

Halfway up each the three claws one could just spot three thin horizontal nails, which were fixed so as to converge inwards together. Their points sank very slightly into the perimeter of a tiny blue metal washer, which in such fashion was held flat and isolated in the space just beneath the bar’s axis. A second washer, of the same size, but of a light gray metal, was fixed directly above the other, a millimeter apart, and was suspended from a thin vertical rod attached by its tip to the center of its upper surface and disappearing into the bar.

A little higher than the level at which the claws were attached, the dial of one last chronometer was embedded in the extreme lower portion of the bar, at a point on its periphery.

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RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.

SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.