Harmadik fejezet

The architecture of Capillária.

The Author introduces himself, and strives to make himself understood.

The first dinner in Capillária.

My astonishment was the greater in that the material, or thread, which thus bound me fast proved wholly invisible, at least to my eyes, or perhaps within this element.

I must observe that the illumination of this country sufficed entirely that with my earthly eyes I might discern the minutest particulars, exactly as though I walked through some English grove or meadow beneath a noonday sun: this even light has no single source, and shadow is thus a notion unknown in Capillária, though it possesses shades in great variety, from the mildest pink to the deepest maroon, from pale lilac through every cloud-tinge of the rainbow, to glaring yellow and angry red.

Of all this there will be further occasion to speak.

For the present it suffices to say that the tenacious bond in which I found myself entangled, like a bumblebee caught in a web, must have been infinitely fine and impalpably slick.

This condition lasted some minutes: I lay upon my back, and beheld, with astonishment, the dome-like hall towering above my head in slender arches.

The construction, architecturally considered, produced a monumental effect — dizzying, mighty columns, as though reared for palaces destined to endure through eternity and to reach into the very heavens.

These columns rested upon vast blocks, proportioned to bear the most terrible weights.

I should have been compelled to believe that this region was inhabited by giants, by fearsome geniuses, by demigods of unknown purpose, had not all that I had hitherto experienced persuaded me of the contrary.

In all that I beheld, moreover, there was something unfinished, something left off half-done, something of the character of a fragment.

The columns, monumental in their foundation, wanted capitals; the roof above had been cobbled together, hastily and provisionally, out of boards.

But the most wondrous contrast yawned between the construction of this palace and its furnishing.

The heavy marble walls were hung about with childishly naive trinkets, laces, and little drawings — toy-like, curious small furnishings, fragile stands of unknown purpose, laden with exotic fruits and flowers: a style recalling that gaudy, graceful, and trifling Japanese art which prattles from within houses of paper.

While I pondered this, the water brushed my face like a light breeze.

Raising my head with difficulty, I could, in my amazement, give voice to no sound: for now, quite close, at a distance of some three paces, stood that very apparition which had a moment before so bewildered me.

It was a tall, exceedingly slender, and yet full womanly figure, clad in a rose-colored cloak, with flowers of marvelous hue set in her floating, flowing hair.

Upon her face, which bathed in a smile, there was no trace of surprise or fear — this face was beautiful, incredibly, immaterially beautiful; the improbable, soft patch of blue that was her eyes floated like two gems above her translucent lips: nowhere was there a fixed, angular line, nowhere any trace of the hard yellow frame beneath.

Raising her small, slender hands to her chin, she looked at me calmly, and smiling.

I stammered out something in the way of a greeting; considering her bearing thus far, I took her for a lady of rank, and, not knowing whether she was wife or maid, tactfully styled her "mylady."

She opened her eyes wide, then all at once burst into laughter.

With this, by a quick and vehement motion, she shook her head, whereupon a rustling undulation stirred the purple-lit water about me, and I felt my bonds loosen.

I raised myself to a sitting posture, and then, as the fair vision once more shook out her curls, I rose to my feet.

Now we stood face to face.

I bowed my head, and in this posture, considering the strangeness of the occasion and my understandable confusion, delivered myself, fluently enough, of a few sentences in the English tongue, upon the supposition that, being the guest of an unknown province, I must at once assert my beloved country's claim upon the land I had discovered, as an English colony.

I told her that I was Gulliver, a surgeon, that I had completed my studies at the finest English universities, and that I was a member of the English Surgeons' Society.

I touched briefly upon those modest merits by which, as a travel-writer, I had enriched the literature of our adored homeland, nor did I neglect to mention the prize with which the National Academy had most lately rewarded my treatise, entitled The Office of the Mucous Membranes in the History of Mankind's Spiritual Advancement.

I informed her, at the last, that my wife and child were cherished and much-indulged members of the better society of Redriff, and that as a soldier I had had the good fortune to stand among the very first who took up arms in that war of defense, forced upon us, which was then being waged for the conquest of Germany.

Having finished my brief introduction, I raised my face, and beheld, with surprise, that some dozen natives, resembling the lady already mentioned, now stood about me: they had glided thither so noiselessly and so lightly that I had not marked their coming.

They resembled one another closely enough that, were I to say one was fairer than the next, I should only be using the common figure of speech — for in that moment I could scarce tell one from another.

I was already on the point of resuming my speech, out of regard for the larger company, when a movement made by the lady standing nearest to me sealed the word upon my lips with the shock of the utmost astonishment.

Smiling, and gently, as a bird spreads its white wings to either side, this lady without warning threw open her foaming cloak, whereupon she stood naked before me.

Out of regard for my English acquaintance, I emphasize that in my surprise there naturally played its part that dutiful sense of modesty and decency which becomes a father of a family and a husband — yet I must own that what I beheld cast me into no lesser degree of amazement.

This lady's body — and, as it proved, the body of every one of those who stood about me — while on the one hand it comprised in its forms every beauty and every refinement of grace of which a woman of the dry land could ever have boasted, on the other hand, by the peculiar nature of its substance, far surpassed all that we could ever have conceived touching the delicacy of a living and organic body.

The science that treats of the creatures of the sea enumerates a few exceedingly rare species of fish, upon which learning has chanced to stumble only by accident — for they are not to be seen in the water, their bodies being transparent as the sea itself.

Now then, the bodies of these ladies, besides that the smooth skin drawn taut over their fine and supple contours was clearly to be discerned and felt, disclosed, or rather suggested, in the translucent radiance of milk-glass, or rather of the noblest milk-opal, the organs that lay within.

I remember distinctly that in the very first moment I noticed, standing behind the naked woman before me, another — I perceived her through the first one's body, as a dim glimmer.

And visible within that body was the skeleton, though not the coarse lattice one is used to seeing behind the glass panes of a clinic: it was as though these bones were fashioned of thin, pale-yellow, and pliant glass, delicate and graceful as the spine of some tiny fish.

And visible, too, were the two lungs, two soft blue patches, and visible the heart, a rose-colored patch at the center.

And withal, the whole of her, just as she stood, was translucent, a white alabaster, within which, with the quiet pulsing of the vessels, the rose-colored blood streamed and panted in its circuit, the heart beating rhythmically — and all this together was the very perfection of everything that is delicacy, tenderness, and pliancy: like an animated wisp of white cloud, ready at every instant to dissolve away.

I was so utterly dazed that I might perhaps have stood thus motionless for hours, sunk in the beauty of the sight, had not the unlooked-for approach of the ladies recalled me to myself.

I confess I had expected that my unaccustomed appearance — for it is certain that no man of the dry land had ever before walked among them — would provoke either fear or astonishment in these tender creatures, and that should I speak, whether in words or by signs, they would give voice to a wondering curiosity, and overwhelm me with questions as to whence I came, from what marvelous country, and who I might be, as I had grown accustomed to in the course of my travels.

Yet of all this there was nothing whatsoever.

The ladies were indeed plainly interested in me, but by no means as a stranger come from afar, or a messenger from unknown regions.

The curiosity with which they bent toward me betrayed neither surprise nor wonder.

My face and my figure did not interest them in the least; it was rather my garments they examined — one lifted the flap of my coat, and, uttering a loud, shriek-like sound, turned toward another.

A peculiar short burst of laughter rang out.

Then several further sounds, various and inarticulate.

Holi! Holé! Ujjé! and interjections of this stamp, to be rendered only phonetically.

I attempted to make myself understood: I pronounced one and the same word in several languages, then, following the excellent method of Berlitz, pointed to myself, and said: man.

My procedure had no effect whatsoever; when I opened my mouth they fell silent for an instant; one of them craned forward with curiosity and peered into my mouth, but in the very next moment, as though they had not so much as heard me speaking, they fell upon my clothes once more, tugging, one to the right, another to the left, all the while uttering those small cries without cease — the whole resembled nothing so much as a cageful of birds of many kinds, twittering and chattering.

Even at this point I observed that each cry was accompanied by a different expression of countenance: now they closed their eyes, now they raised their eyebrows, now they ran their tongues over their lips.

I was utterly dazed to see that they paid not the slightest heed to what I said, when one of them suddenly seized my arm, and, as simply as if it were the most natural thing in the world, bit into my thumb, then champed a little, as one who is tasting something.