The Eternal Adam and other stories (18 page)

The
New York Herald
article created
a tremendous sensation. It was reprinted in full by every newspaper in the
United States. This topic of conversation was soon the order of the day, and
the most complicated scientific terms were being pronounced by the prettiest
lips in the New World. Great discussions opened up, leading to deductions that
were highly flattering to America, for it was here, rather than in Asia, that
the cradle of humanity was to be found. In conventions and academies, it was
clearly proven that America, which had been inhabited since the beginning of
the world, had obviously been the starting point of a series of migrations. The
honours of antiquity passed from the Old World to the New. Voluminous
dissertations, inspired by patriotic ambition, were written on this very
serious topic. Finally, a meeting of scientists, the minutes of which were
published and commented on by every newspaper in the United States, proved
beyond all shadow of doubt that the earthly Paradise, bounded by Pennsylvania,
Virginia and Lake Erie, occupied at one time the territory that is now the
state of Ohio.

I must confess that all this daydreaming
fascinated me beyond measure. I pictured Adam and Eve in command of packs of
ferocious beasts that actually existed in America, whereas on the banks of the
Euphrates not the slightest trace of them is to be found. In my mind’s eye, the
tempting serpent took on the form of a boa constrictor or a rattlesnake. But
what surprised me most was the slavish and uncritical credence given to this
discovery. It never entered anyone’s mind that this famous skeleton might be a
fraud, a bluff, or as the Americans say, a humbug. Not one of these keen
scientists thought of going to see with his own eyes the miracle that was
causing such a commotion in his brain. I mentioned this to Mrs Melvil.

‘Why bother?’ she said. ‘We’ll see our
precious monster when the time comes. Everyone knows what it looks like,
because you can’t go a mile anywhere in America without coming across a picture
of it in one form or another. Some of the pictures show a lot of imagination,
too.’

That was indeed the true genius of the
speculator. Augustus Hopkins had been very close-mouthed about his proposed
Exhibition, but when it came to planting the idea of his miraculous skeleton in
the minds of his fellow-Americans, he used all the zeal, inventiveness, and
imagination at his command. He could do whatever he wanted, because his
eccentricities had already attracted the attention of the public.

Before long, walls throughout the city were
covered with coloured posters showing the monster in a wide variety of shapes
and forms. Hopkins used every kind of poster known to man, and in the most
striking colours. He plastered them on walls, on dockside parapets, on tree
trunks along public walkways. On some, the lines were printed diagonally, on
others, the message was spelled out in broad brush strokes, which no passerby
could possibly miss. On every street there were men walking up and down,
wearing jackets and coats bearing pictures of the skeleton. In the evening,
immense transparencies projected its black outline against a brilliantly lit
background.

But Hopkins was not satisfied with such
everyday American publicity methods. Posters and page four newspaper
advertisements were not enough for him. He devised a course of studies in
‘skeletology
’, in which he quoted Cuvier, Blumenbach, Backland,
link, Stemberg, Brongniart, and a hundred other palaeontologists. His courses
were so well attended and so highly applauded that one day two people were
crushed to death at the door.

Needless to say, Mr Hopkins arranged
magnificent funerals for them. The flags in the funeral procession displayed,
once again, the ubiquitous outline of the currently fashionable fossil. All
these publicity stunts worked very well in and around the city of Albany, but
now the important thing was to expand the campaign throughout the entire
country. When Jenny Lind was making her debut in England, a Mr Lumley offered
to give the soap manufacturers free moulds, depicting the portrait of the
eminent
prima donna.
The offer was accepted and produced excellent
results, since people were now using the famous singer’s face to wash their
hands. Hopkins employed a similar method. He contracted with cloth
manufacturers to have them produce material for clothing that would appeal to
the good taste of customers by displaying an illustration of his prehistoric
creature. It was printed on the inside of hats, and even plates were decorated
with the outline of the amazing phenomenon! And so on, and so on. It was
impossible to escape it. You could not get dressed, put on a hat, or eat
dinner, except in this interesting company.

All this high-pressure salesmanship had a
tremendous effect. And so, when newspapers, drums, trumpets, and volleys of
musket fire announced that the miracle would shortly be put on display for
public admiration, a cheer went up on all sides. Preparations were begun for
building an enormous hall, large enough to hold, as the advertisements put it,
‘not only the myriads of enthusiastic spectators, but also the skeleton of one
of those giants who, according to legend, attempted to climb up to heaven’.

I had only a few more days to spend in
Albany. I was bitterly disappointed at not being able to extend my visit long
enough to attend the opening of this unique spectacle, but since I did not want
to leave without seeing something, at least, I made up my mind to pay a secret
visit to Exhibition Park.

Setting out one morning with my gun on my
shoulder. I walked north for about three hours without finding any information
about my desired goal, but five or six miles farther on, as I was looking for
the site of old Fort William, I reached my journey’s end.

I was standing in the middle of an immense
plain, one small part of which had been disturbed by some recent, but not
extensive, excavations. A fairly large area was tightly sealed off by a wooden
fence. I had no idea whether this fence marked out the site of the Exhibition,
but that fact was confirmed for me by a beaver hunter whom I met in the
neighbourhood as he was on his way to the Canadian border.

‘It’s here all right,’ he said, ‘but I
don’t know what’s going on, because just this morning I heard a lot of rifle
shots.’

I thanked him and continued my search.

I saw not the slightest trace of any work
going on outdoors. The unbroken plain, to which gigantic construction works
were supposed to bring life and movement, lay wrapped in total silence. Since I
could not satisfy my curiosity without getting inside the fence, I decided to
walk around it and try to find a way in. I walked for a long time without
seeing anything that resembled a door, and had decided, in my disappointment,
to settle for a crack or a hole that I could put my eye to, when I noticed, at
a corner of the fence, some boards and posts that had been knocked down.

I quickly scrambled into the enclosure, and
found that the ground under my feet had been completely torn up. Huge pieces of
rock lay scattered wherever the gunpowder blasts had deposited them. The area
was dotted with little mounds of earth that looked like waves on an angry sea.
Finally I came to the edge of a deep excavation, at the bottom of which lay a
large quantity of bones.

There, before my eyes, was the object of
all the fuss and advertising. There was certainly nothing unusual about what I
saw. It was a heap of bone fragments of every kind, broken into a thousand
pieces. On some, the breaks appeared to be fairly recent. I did not recognise
any major human bones which, according to the dimensions that had been
announced, would have had to be of a tremendous size. With the help of a little
imagination, I could have believed that I was in a boneblack factory and
nothing more.

Needless to say, I was still very confused.
For a moment I thought I had been on a wild-goose chase. Suddenly, on an
embankment covered with footprints, I noticed a few drops of blood. I followed
the trail of blood back to the opening, and there I found more bloodstains that
I had not seen when I came in. My glance fell on a scrap of powder-blackened
paper lying beside the bloodstains. It had probably come from the wad of a
firearm. Everything fitted in with what the beaver hunter had told me.

I picked up the piece of paper and
painstakingly deciphered a few of the words scribbled on it. It was a bill for
materials supplied to Mr Augustus Hopkins by a certain Mr Barckley. There was
nothing to indicate the nature of the items supplied, but I found more scraps
of paper scattered here and there, which provided the missing information. In
spite of my disappointment, I had to laugh. I was indeed in the presence of the
giant and its skeleton, but it was a skeleton made up of very heterogeneous
parts, which since time immemorial had roamed the plains of Kentucky under such
names as buffalo, heifer, cow, and bull. Mr Barckley was an ordinary New York
butcher who had delivered enormous quantities of bones to the famous Mr
Augustus Hopkins. Those fossils had certainly never piled Pelion on Ossa to
scale Olympus! Their remains owed their presence there to the efforts of the
illustrious scam artist, who had known all along that he would discover them by
chance in the course of laying the foundations for a palace that would never
exist!

I had reached that point in my reflections,
and my hilarity (which might have been more sincere if I had not, like my hosts
themselves, been the victim of this incredible humbug) when I heard shouts of
joy coming from outside the fence.

Hurrying back to the opening, I saw Mr
Augustus Hopkins in person running up, rifle in hand, obviously very pleased
about something. When I walked towards him, he did not seem at all perturbed at
finding me on the scene of his exploits.

‘Victory! Victory!’ he shouted.

The two black servants, Bobby and Dacopa,
followed him at a distance. Experience warned me to be on my guard, in case the
audacious master of mystery should decide to use me as a target.

‘I’m in luck,’ he said, ‘I have a witness
to what has just happened to me. You see before you a man returning from a
tiger hunt.’

‘A tiger hunt!’ I mimicked, determined not
to believe a word of it.

‘And a red tiger at that,’ he added, ‘also
known as the cougar, renowned for its cruelty. As you can see, the damned thing
got into my enclosure. It broke through these gates, which up until now have
kept out the curious public, and smashed my wonderful skeleton into a million
pieces. As soon as I saw that, I decided to track it down and kill it. I caught
up with it in a thicket about three miles from here. When I looked at it, it
stared back at me with its two savage eyes and jumped. But it never finished
its leap, because I dropped it with a bullet just behind the shoulder. That was
the first time I ever fired a gun, by God! It will be quite a trophy for me. I
wouldn’t sell it for a billion dollars!’

‘Now the millions will start to come back,’
I thought to myself.

Just then the two black servants came up.
dragging the carcass of an enormous red tiger, an animal that is almost unknown
in this part of America. Its coat was of a solid tawny
colour
,
except for its ears and the tip of its tail, which were black. It made no
difference to me whether Hopkins had killed it or whether it had been supplied
to him already conveniently dead (or maybe even stuffed) by some Barckley or
other. What struck me was the carefree and indifferent tone with which my speculator
friend talked about his skeleton. And yet, this whole affair must have cost him
more than 100,000 francs.

Not wanting to let him know that I had
stumbled onto the secret of his mystery – he would have been perfectly capable
of giving thanks to Providence for it – I simply said, ‘How are you going to
get out of this fix?’

‘What the devil do you mean by "this
fix"? No matter what I do now, I can’t lose. A wild beast has destroyed
the wonderful fossil that would have won the admiration of the entire world,
because it was absolutely unique, but it has not destroyed my prestige or my
influence. I still enjoy all the advantages of being famous.’

‘But what will you say to your enthusiastic
and impatient public?’ I asked in a serious tone.

‘I’ll tell them the truth, nothing but the
truth.’

‘The truth!’ I exclaimed, wondering what he
meant by that word.

‘Of course,’ he explained, as calmly as
could be. ‘Isn’t it true that the animal got into my enclosure? Isn’t it true
that it smashed up these wonderful bones that I went to such lengths to dig up?
Isn’t it true that I tracked it down and killed it?’

‘Now there,’ I said to myself, ‘is a whole
host of things that I wouldn’t want to swear to.’

‘As for the public,’ he went on, ‘What more
can they expect? Now they’ll know all there is to know about the affair. I’ll
even get a reputation for bravery. In fact, I don’t see anything that I won’t
be famous for.’

‘But what good will it do you to be
famous?’

‘If I play my cards right, I’ll be rich. A
man who is well known can get away with anything. He can hope, he can dare, he
can undertake whatever he likes. If George Washington had decided to put
two-headed calves on display, after the battle of Yorktown, it’s obvious that
he would have made a lot of money.’