Laura

A Journey Into the Crystal

George Sand

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781908968685
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

While working in a small geological museum, Alexis Hartz meets his cousin Laura, who has discovered a way to enter a geode. Travelling through a vast and glittering landscape of brilliant crystals, Alexis passionately falls in love with Laura, but, when they return to the ordinary world, only friendship remains. He yearns for the perfect world of the crystals, and returning there becomes a perilous obsession. But is the crystal world as real as it seems or is his mind playing tricks on him? Written in 1864 and published in a new translation by Sue Dyson, this little-known work by George Sand is a fantastical novel, in the truest sense of the word: a strange and compelling tale with echoes of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Conan Doyle's Lost World and Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

IV

WHEN HE AWOKE ME, I was very surprised not to find any of my companions around me.

I no longer had need of them, he told me calmly, I sent them away.

Sent them away? I cried out, stunned. But where to? How? By what means?

What does it matter to you? he replied with a snigger; surely you cannot be interested in those coarse, voracious and stupid individuals?

Yes indeed, as much as and more, to be sure, than in faithful and submissive domestic animals. Those ten men and the two we lost when we landed here were the elite of our troop; they showed great courage and patience. I was beginning to understand their language, to become accustomed to their costumes, and even those of them who scarcely had human faces harboured truly human feelings. Tell me, Uncle, where have you sent them? This land is doubtless an Eden where they can wander with nothing to fear.

This land, replied Nasias, is an Eden that I am in no way planning to share with beings that are unworthy of possessing it. Those brutes would not have lived here three days without bringing us into conflict with all the animal forces of nature. I have sent them away; accept that you will never see them again, nor their canoes, their companions, their sledges and their dogs. Here and over all the sea that encloses us we are absolute monarchs. It falls to us alone to find a way of leaving when it so pleases us. There is no hurry, we are quite comfortable here. Get up, take a bath in this charming stream, which murmurs two paces from you, gather your meal from the first branch you find, and let us think about exploring our island, for it is indeed an island set apart from any visible continent and hollowed out like a cup, as I told you; only, there is a prodigiously tall volcano in the middle; but it is a natural beacon of electric light and nothing more.

All objections, all recriminations, were perfectly useless. I was alone in this unknown world with a man who was stronger, more intelligent, more implacable and more of a believer than I was. I must not fight him, but equal him, if that were possible for me to do.

I cast a last glance behind me, and, climbing up onto a promontory, I looked again at the place where we had landed. Either the sea had turned them to dust, or Nasias had saved and hidden them, but there was no trace of our vessels. As for the men, what had become of them? Even the imprint of their footsteps in the sand had been wiped away. I looked down at my feet, and saw light pools of blood; my hands were impregnated with it. I shivered and asked myself if, like my unfortunate companions from the Tantalus, I had not taken part in some frightful scene of delirium and carnage.

Nasias, who was watching me, began to laugh, and, picking a wild blackberry the size of a pomegranate, he squeezed out the juice before me.

What you see there, he told me, are the traces of your supper last night.

I wanted to question him further; he turned his back on me and refused to answer. I must indeed submit to him. As he had already explored the surrounding area, he had one goal, and he headed towards it. I followed him in silence, without weapons or munitions, and as if we had conquered a land where man has nothing left to conquer.

Nevertheless it was not long before we encountered beings that would have been infinitely formidable, had they shown any hostility towards us: these were bison, mouflon, reindeer, aurochs, and elands far larger than those known to us, and all belonging to species which had been entirely lost on the rest of the planet. There were even several that should not have been called by the names I have given them, unsure which one is appropriate for them, for almost all appeared to me to be intermediaries between types which had vanished and present-day fauna. We saw no reptiles there, nor carnivorous animals. As for these great herbivores, which moved in immense herds through the grassy or marshy regions, they were content to look at us with a touch of astonishment, but without fear or aversion. They scarcely bestirred themselves to let us pass, and we could have drawn them at our leisure, had we been armed with the necessary drawing equipment.

In any case, Nasias paid them scant attention and did not allow me to stop for very long. I followed him regretfully, for, now that we were in no danger of any kind, no one was waiting for us anywhere any more, and we belonged entirely to this new life into which we had resolutely thrown ourselves, I scarcely knew what we were looking for any more, and why my uncle, instead of being content with seeing his premonitions made real within the limits of the possible, still insisted on pursuing their chimerical aspect. I shared my reflections with him at my own risk and peril, for he had become imperious, feverish, wild, and I saw clearly that in the event of open resistance, he would not hesitate to rid himself of me. He scarcely answered me, or, when he deigned to explain, it was to reproach me bitterly for my lack of faith and the wilful dulling of my most precious faculties.

What struck me most in the region we were crossing, was not that we constantly encountered new species within all types of animals, plants and minerals: that was to be expected in these latitudes; it was seeing them grow in size as we walked northwards and this fact, which destroyed all my rational notions, could not be explained except by the rapid increase in the heat of the climate. Nevertheless we had not yet reached the region of humid heat and gigantic development.

We had reached the high plateaux supported by the tourmaline cliff. Once again the central peak appeared to us in all its splendour; but it was impossible for us to make out its base, which lay in a misty circle. I calculated that it was five or six good days’ walk away, assuming that we could reach it in a straight line; and, assuming again that it occupied the central part of the island, I calculated that in this direction this island was at least one hundred leagues in diameter.

After two days’ march, during which we continued to walk across hills that were easily climbed, we halted on a last high point, from where the entire island was laid out at our feet. It was a magnificent view of the place as a whole. This entire land had resulted from an immense movement of the earth, which took place in various different geological periods. I was able to make out the traces of great volcanic disturbances; but, in general, the primitive stages were laid bare, and the sedimentary lands occupied only a small surface area. Moreover, none had resisted violent dislocations or the continuous action of a general subsidence, increasingly marked by crumbling the more the eye inspected the central point, which now presented only a terrifying collection of confused ruins.

After three or four days we left the fertile regions inhabited by quadrupeds. The shady ravines and forests picturesquely spread over imposing rocks, the narrow ravines irrigated by lively waters and dotted with bright flowers, were succeeded by interminable slopes of peaty meadow so deeply waterlogged that the herbivores no longer ventured there, and it soon became impossible for us to go any further.

As these slopes—which were probably supported by a wall of tourmaline equivalent to that which extended on the other, maritime, side—overhung the bottom of the cirque, we could only assume there were considerable freshwater courses running along the lower part of our plateaux. The parts ahead of us seemed more arid; but the distance was too great for us to be certain.

Forced to halt and sustain ourselves with purslane and mosses, which moreover were extremely good, we were thinking about retracing our steps to seek an easier slope, when I was terrified by a roaring sound of such a peculiar nature that no comparison with the cries of animals we know can describe it. It was like the prolonged sound from a belfry, mixed with the purring of a steam-powered machine. As I was looking around on all sides, I heard this sound above my head and saw something so enormous fly over, that instinctively I ducked down so as not to be struck by this incomprehensible being as it passed by.

It came down close to us, and I recognised an individual that—apart from its unfeasible size—appeared to me to belong more or less to the genus megalosoma. It was the size of a buffalo, and it had, moreover, a buffalo’s flat horns and dark pelt. Although this monster caused me real terror, I could not prevent myself admiring it, for it was in all respects a fine animal. Its wing cases and its impenetrable cuirass were clad in a thick olive-green fur highlighted with gold, and from its back rose up that majestic, fork-shaped framework made of horn that is characteristic of the male. Only it appeared not to notice our presence, and began to browse around us as a tame animal might do; then it raised its powerful wing cases, opened up the folds of its broad, iridescent, gauzy wings, and, without rising more than two or three metres, set off and landed a few hundred feet further away.

That animal, which nothing astonished, must live on foliage, said Nasias, for it did not enjoy browsing on the low plants that grow here, and it disdained them. I would have thought that, having left the forested areas we have just crossed ourselves, it was going to go back up there, but it is descending towards the arid deserts. So the nooks and crannies of this great heap of shattered rocks must conceal leaf-bearing plants, and consequently a healthy soil. I regret now not having climbed on to the back of that coleoptera, whose heavy but steady flight would have spared us much futile walking.

That is a fantasy we can manage without, I replied, showing my uncle a dozen of those same scarab beetles, which were flying above us and seemed to be following the one which had served as their scout.

We must reach the place where they will land before they fly off again, for, if they do the same as the first one, they will not make long flights.

Indeed the scarab beetles landed quite close to us, and we were able to approach without alarming them. I do not know if our images appeared quite clear to them, through the horny substance that covered their eyes. They seemed very stupid to us, and, although they could have crushed us with their terrible mandibles or torn us apart with the sharp hooks of their claws, they allowed us to mount without resisting. We chose two good-sized males, seated ourselves on the corselet, our arms and legs in the forked horns to hold us on securely, and allowed ourselves to be carried off without a trace of emotion. This mode of riding is very gentle; only, the sound of the wing casings and the wind produced by the wings are disagreeable in the extreme.

I think, I said to my uncle the first time we set foot on the ground, that the future colonists of this island will use the megalosoma only to carry burdens. It seems docile enough to obey an instruction and even …

What are you saying about colonists? cried my uncle with a shrug of his shoulders. Do you by chance imagine that I have spent so much, and confronted so many dangers, to bring a few days’ wealth to this stupid human species, which knows only how to lay waste and sterilise the richest of nature’s shrines? We would not have more than a handful of men here for a month before they blindly wiped out these rare and curious animal species and destroyed the beautiful essences of the forests, instead of husbanding them. Man is an animal that does more evil than all the others, do you not know that? No, no! let us leave the beasts in peace, and keep for ourselves alone the discovery of this precious island.

And yet, I went on, I do not see that we, who are only two, are absolutely respecting these animals’ freedom. I do not know if they like carrying us, and you must agree that, in your thoughts, they seem most appropriate to help you transport the riches you intend to discover.

Not in the least, replied Nasias. The riches I wish to discover will stay where they are until I have taken the measures necessary for me to appropriate them. This entire island, with all it contains in its flanks, belongs to me; no-one will exploit it but my slaves, and, if I need many of them, I shall find many.

In any other circumstances, I would have combated my uncle’s antisocial and anti-human theories; but my megalosoma was heavily raising its wing-casings and beginning to make them purr. I hastily climbed astride and took the beast by the horns, never was an expression more literally exact, and several consecutive flights brought us to the edge of the tourmaline ravine, as I had anticipated. There, our large coleoptera were of great help, for without them we would never have been able to descend that wall, bristling with gigantic crystals.

Scarcely had we reached the bottom of it, I admit not without a touch of vertigo on my account, when we saw a broad, raging torrent, gushing through magnificent forests; but, instead of taking us across it, the megalosomae landed on some trees resembling monkey-puzzles, five hundred metres tall, and began greedily sucking their sticky bark. Their fantastic progress through the sharp-bladed leaves of these giant plants rendered our situation impossible, and we had to leave our mounts and—cautiously and slowly—climb down from branch to branch until we reached the ground.

There, we found flowers and fruits completely different from those of the higher regions. Instead of the berries of rosaceous plants, which had formed the basis of our diet in previous days, we found types of edible thistle with flesh resembling the artichoke and the pineapple, and the eggs of birds (we did not see a single one in these forests) were replaced by butterfly larvae of extraordinary size and a most refined taste.

But we had to get across the river, and we were fortunate in spotting on its banks some amphibious tortoises between five and six metres long. These allowed us to climb onto their carapaces, and, after several rather annoying spontaneous halts on the islets that were dotted all over the river, they brought us slowly to the other bank.

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 str...