The excited and emphatic tones he had firstly used to relate the purposes
of his studies, had left place to most calm tones, yet still impassioned, he
sounded now measured with impartial criticism.
From my point of view, I had already forgotten some insane light that I had
glimpsed in his eyes, a little before, during his story. And now reassured by
those noble words, I perceived the mind of a balanced and wise old man. It
seemed to me that also George was expressing in his eyes my same feelings, so that
the man, after having greedily drunk a glass of water, revolved to his narration
in the same calm tone as before.
We were ready to listen to him with much of attention.
«During the sorrowful trip homeward, the young
assaulter, whose name was Adam, told me, amid tears of desperation for his
companion’s misfortune, to be a son of illegal immigrated from Mexico, and to
have quarreled with that companion just for futile motives. As I had foreseen,
every effort to save his life had to reveal useless. When his youth heart uttered
the last faint pulsation I asked to Adam, who had assisted him with me in that
night of agony, what he wanted to do.
Adam said to be prepared to pay for his guilt gesture, but I tried to convince
him the uselessness to decay in a cell for the rest of his days, or much worse,
to end stupidly his life on the electric chair.
I told him, without going down in any details, totally
incomprehensible for him, the big events that would have seen him protagonist
in the future destinies of humanity, and, yet with no little resistance, at
length he accepted to undergo trough the experiment of transmission of the “nouchefalon”,
also encouraged by the fact that perhaps his unfortunate fellow would relived
in him, through the essence of life, and much more, for the reason that I promised
a strong money reward to him .
Which the young man gratefully accepted, not so much for himself, but for the
family of his killed companion. What admirable example of superiority and
excellence! In the scurvy world of money, that man, just little more than a
boy, son of miserable emigrants, grown in a numerous family at the borders of
the disgusting American opulence, abdicated the money that the fate offered to him
for the advantage of other poor people.
Day after day, I realized that my scientific interests
were connected to another, indefinable feeling, utterly new for me, and my
heart was increasingly caring for the life of the young Adam.
From time to time I sent a conspicuous check to his family and that of his
unlucky dead friend, unintentionally offended, to make their lives less poor
and miserable. Also in the choice of the young man, the Fate had shown to be
wise. And how it would have been otherwise?
The founder of the new, future race; the man who would have conducted Manhood
on the straight binary of material and spiritual progress , he who would have
been the head of the new big tribe of the chosen people, couldn’t he have been
perhaps but a sublime mind?
Without delay and with trepidation, but also with lucidity and extreme skill, I
drew, with an apparatus by myself built and already tested, the liquid jewel
and transfused it in the man selected by the Stars, the young Adam, attending
with long live emotion the results.
In the meantime I introduced him to studies, while I was going more and more
fond of him.
The young man learned with unbelievable promptness and, constantly, I saw him
grow in wisdom and intelligence, unstoppable as the rise of the sun. But I would
have stopped, by now, only at the peak of the most perfection.
It happened in those years, that the press, with alarm and indignation,
reported of numerous news of horrid mutilations of dead bodies, that were but
mere brain’s amputations; grisly but necessary holocaust to the prosecution of
my experiments. The unaware journalists didn't succeed in making sense of why
the defaced dead bodies were all belonged to young people aged between 18 and
25 years, dead for accidental causes, and above all why they were been removed
only by the heads.
Of course the investigators attributed the unusual
thefts to a crazy person and being worried from a public opinion more and more
alarmed and timorous (foolish are the men, who instead of worrying about the
threats to the alive people, feel panic for bodies without more soul),
predisposed some more rigorous controls so that I was forced to interrupt my
removals.
When I took back with them, in order to prevent other public alarm, I started
removing only their precious brain, sewing to perfection their craniums shortly
after.
What allowed me to continue to work unmolested at my
project, and the police officers to boast
another, undeserved success.
The job however proceeded very slowly. It appeared to me so evident therefore
that the reversibility of human “nouchefalon” was slower and more
hard-working than that of other animals. But it didn't bother me for nothing. After
all, as I’ve already said, the young Adam became more and more endearing to me,
and together with the scientific successes I also pursued those of father, and
these last involved the accomplishment of duties, that were also means of
pleasures.
Unexpectedly, while the father seemed to overwhelm the scientist, I realized
that I had succeeded.
My student, my pupil, was flowing on the wings of the clearest and pure
intelligence. The Euclidean geometry, Algebra, Galileo’s and Newton’s laws,
Mendelèev’s periodic table, Maxwell, Einstein, had already become patrimony of his
knowledge and his own science.
Even more he was already able to criticize its defects, to make evidence of its
limits, to point out its necessary evolutionary developments.
And the same happened for other branches of science: he was endued with Philosophy,
Letters, Social Sciences, Biology, Medicine.
Any claw of the human knowledge, which he turned his own mind to, surrendered every
inmost secret to him. I already found, despite of my numerous decades spent on
the books, some difficulties comparing my knowledge with his. That was enough!
I decided to adopt him, so that he could take on my name and my titles, and
built up on my patrimony the basis of the new world. He would have stopped the
violence, the wars, the sufferings of humanity. He would sum up in his hands
the power of the whole world and dominate for the sake of Art and Science,
leading Manhood to the discovery of the endless universe and his absolute
dominion.
He would become the uncontested Lord all over the world. Over daily baseness,
over mediocre rivalries between mankind, over the miserable earthling power,
and much more there was to be conquered!”
This new final access, almost declaimed in prophetic and delirious tone,
brought me back to reality.
I found myself wandering, once more, how was that man able to embody lucidity
and folly in such a natural manner. How could cohabit so deeply in his mind those
noble, human feelings with the others, diabolic and perverse?
But by now my interest for his story was at the peak and, however, my mind was
quiet and serene. I was ready, therefore, to keep on listening his telling.
”It was my desire, my friends, that the ransom of the
new world set off from my motherland, the land my mother had loved so much, up
to sacrifice her liberty and even her own life.
We moved therefore to Ireland, my child and I; my mother's country at that time
was still suffering split up in two parts. We moved to the free part, in a
house in the centre of Dublin, since a long time ownership of the Parnells. From
there, as I told you, the new course of the world would have set up.
I married Adam to a sweet, Gaelic, young girl, named Eva, who had to become the
mother of the new world. You can easily imagine, my friends, how great was my
exultation, when I knew that that girl, the Adam’s wife, had been conceived.
I could consider that all my efforts had been well repaid!! I was so happy that
all my past sufferings, fell in to oblivion. But alas! What a grief destiny was
hanging over me! My child, my beloved Adam, in an access of folly, killed his
pregnant wife before killing himself. Only a brief, arid message he left on justification
of his insane gesture:
‘My dear Father, we dared too much.
Might God forgive us.' and nothing more than that.
What did it happen? What did determine on him the insane decision? Perhaps a disease?
A sudden raptus? A premonition? Or
perhaps I had unconsciously transfused him some sick geniuses of craziness???
How much I would have preferred that my experiments had failed!!! I would have
easily given up my life of studies and searches, and also the success that I
got to, yet in the ignorance of the academicians and the official science, for
having still with me my Adam, my dear, beloved family. How I would then prefer,
even to be died!”
This time I didn't have any doubt about it. There were really tears, some
plain, true tears sparkling in those intelligent and tired eyes. But also this
time the man, with a sudden gesture of the hand, got off any trace of them by
his napkin. I thought embarrassed how much force owed to possess the mind of
that strange old man. George seemed embarrassed too. He lit a cigarette, before
passing his packet to me. We were prepared to follow the story of Mr Winningoes
which was going to end.
“I lived innumerable days of sadness and deep sufferings, always thinking to
finish my useless and empty existence. And I would have certainly done it if one
day the destiny had not driven my tired footsteps toward a new dawn.
I was sitting in a solitary bench in O'Connol street, in the centre of Dublin, looking
at the intense traffic of the city, considering inside of me how much the human
provision is vain, when a sudden gust of wind threw me a sheet of an old
newspaper. I picked it up and, when I was about to roll it up, a capital block
title attracted my attention.
The article brought the news that two American biologists, Watsons and Crick,
had succeeded in the admirable and revolutionary enterprise to isolate the DNA,
the nucleic acid responsible of the transmission of the geniuses in all the
animal species.
The news struck me as a light, giving me back the energy and a new desire for
life that I had considered forever lost. If every man had a genetic code and if
this genetic code was transmitted with the acid nucleic DNA, it would have been
possible, then, through the new discovery, to isolate the genetic patrimony of
the cleverest individuals and to transmit it to other human beings, in order to
form the new super-race, the new dominant class, the elite of the new universal
order! For Adam, for me, for my maternal ancestors and for the whole humanity,
I felt to be my duty to take back my studies. That new spark had re lighted on
me the sacred fire of Science. My mission on the earth had to be taken back
‘till conclusion!”
While narrating these last events, Mr Winningoes had transformed again. From
the sad and resigned man who had just cried the death of his family and the end
of his same own life, he was returned a pugnacious and strong man, lifting up
the head and squirting a new and powerful energy from his green little eyes. I
imagined him in the same metamorphosis, in that solitary bench in the centre of
Dublin while he was reawakening from the compassionate numbness of the anguish,
rising to new battles and new aims.
How many times had changed the old man since we
firstly met him on that Friday the 9th of November? How many faces
had he showed us since then? I recalled into my mind even other characters who
now, appeared to be the same man, though pretending to play a different role in
the previous day’s story. Like, for instance, that mysterious and strange Mr
Joking.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento