Peter Whiffle

by Carl Van Vechten

Peter, here, went to the shelves, and after a little hesitation, pulled out an old brown volume. He turned over the pages for a few seconds and then began to read: Once, when I had prepared the root (of Napellus) in a rough manner, I tasted it with the tongue: although I had swallowed nothing, and had spit out a good deal of the juice, yet I felt as if my skull was being compressed by a string. Several household matters suggested themselves and I went about the house and attended to them. At last, I experienced what I had never felt before. It seemed to me that I neither thought nor understood, and as if I had none of the usual ideas in my head; but I felt, with astonishment, clearly and distinctly, that all these functions were taking place at the pit of the stomach: I felt this clearly and perfectly, and observed with the greatest attention that, although I felt movement and sensation spreading themselves over the whole body, yet that the whole power of thought was really and unmistakably situated in the pit of the stomach, always excepting a sensation that the soul was in the brain as a governing force. The sensation was beyond the power of words to describe. I perceived that I thought with greater clearness: there was a pleasure in such an intellectual distinctness. It was not a fugitive sensation; it did not take place while I slept, dreamed, or was ill, but during perfect consciousness. I perceived clearly that the head was perfectly dormant as regarded fancy: and I felt not a little astonished at the change of position.

Well, continued Peter, closing the book and regarding me with great intensity, you will admit that would be a sensation worth experiencing. So I tried it ... with horrible results. Will you believe it when I tell you that I became wretchedly ill in that very centre which Van Helmont locates as the seat of thought? I suffered from the most excruciating pains, which were not entirely relieved by an emetic. Indeed, I passed a week or so in bed.

My next experiment, he went on, was made with hashish, Cannabis Indica, which I prepared and took according to the directions of another adept, who had found that the drug produced a kind of demoniac and incessant laughter, hearty, Gargantuan laughter, and the foreshortening of time and space. He could span the distance between London and Paris in a few seconds. Furniture and statues assumed a comic attitude; they seemed to move about and become familiar with him. He was literally aware of what the Rosny have called the "semi-humanité des choses." I took the drug, as I have said, exactly as he directed, but the effect on me was entirely dissimilar. Immediately, I was plunged into immoderate melancholy. The sight of any object immeasurably depressed me. I also noted that my legs and arms had apparently stretched to an abnormal length. I sobbed with despair when I discovered that I could scarcely see to the other end of my laboratory, it seemed so far away. Mounting the stairs to my bed-chamber was equivalent in my mind to climbing the Himalayas. Although Hadji afterward assured me that I had been under the influence of the drug for only fourteen hours, it was more like fourteen years to me, which I had passed without sleep. At the end of the experiment, my nerves revolted under the strain and again I was forced to take to my bed, this time for four days.

My third experiment was made with Peyote beans, whose properties are extolled by the American Indians. After eating these beans, the red men, who use them in the mysteries of their worship, suffer, I have been informed, from an excruciating nausea, the duration of which is prolonged. After the nausea has passed its course, a series of visions is vouchsafed the experimenter, these visions extending in a series, on various planes, to the mystic number of seven. Under the spell of these visions, the adepts vaticinate future events. I have wondered sometimes if it were not possible that the ancient Egyptians were familiar with the properties of these beans, that William Blake was under their influence when he drew his mystic plates.

Be that as it may, I swallowed one bean, which I had been informed would be sufficient to give me the desired effect, and without interval, I was carried at once on to the plane of the visions, which concentrated themselves into one gigantic phantasm. Have you ever seen Jacques Callot's copperplate engraving of The Temptation of Saint Anthony? The hideous collection of teratological monsters, half-insect, half-microbe, of gigantic size, exposed in that picture, swarmed about me, menacing me with their horrid beaks, their talons and claws, their evil antennæ. Further cohorts of malignant monstrosities without bones lounged about the room and sprawled against my body, rubbing their flabby, slimy, oozing folds against my legs. After a few more stercoraceous manœuvres, some of which I should hesitate to describe, even to you, the monsters began to breathe forth liquid fire, and the pain resulting from the touch of these tongues of flame finally awoke me. I was violently ill, and my illness developed in the seven stages traditionally allotted to the visions. First, extreme nausea, which lasted for two days, second, a raging fever, third, a procession of green eruptions on my legs, fourth, terrific pains in the region of my abdomen, fifth, dizziness, sixth, inability to command any of my muscles, and seventh, a prolonged period of sleep, which lasted for forty-eight hours. Nevertheless, I came nearer to success in this experiment than in any other.

My fourth experiment was made with cocaine, which I procured from a little Italian boy, about eleven years old, who was acting in a Bowery barroom as agent for his father. Laying the white crystals on the blade of an ivory paper-cutter, I sniffed as I had observed the snow-birds themselves sniff. Immediately, my mind became clear to an extent that it had never been clear before. My intellect became as sharp as a knife, as keen as the slash of a whip, as vibrant as an E string. I seemed to have a power of understanding which I had never before approached, not only of understanding but also of hearing, for I caught the conversation of men talking in an ordinary tone of voice out in the Square. Also, I became abnormally active, nervous, and intense. I rushed from the room, without reason or purpose, with a kind of energy which seemed deathless, so strong was its power. When, however, I endeavoured to make notes, for my mind seethed with ideas, I was unable to do so. I scratched some characters on paper, to be sure, but I found them wholly undecipherable the next day. They were not in English or in any language known to me. Finally, I ran out of the house and, encountering, on Second Avenue, a fancy woman of the Jewish persuasion, I accompanied her to her cubicle, and permitted her to be the subsidiary hierophant in the mystic rites I then performed. That, concluded Peter, with a somewhat sorry smile, was the last of my experiments with drugs.

This story and, indeed, this whole phase, amused me enormously. An ambition which had persuaded its possessor that in order to become the American Arthur Machen, he must first become an adept in demonology seemed to me to be the culmination of Peter's fantastic life, which, indeed, it was. But I said little. As usual, I let him talk and I listened. There seemed, however, to be a period here and I took occasion to look over the books, asking him first if he had any objection to my copying off some of the titles, as I felt that it might be possible that some day I should want to make some research in this esoteric realm. He bade me do what I liked and, advancing towards the book-shelves with the small note-book which I carried with me at that period in order to set down fleeting thoughts as they came, I transferred some of the titles therein.

I stopped at last, not from lack of patience on my part, but from observing the impatience of Peter, who obviously had a good deal more to say. On my turning, indeed, he began at once.

I have made, he said, some tentative minor experiments but my final experiments are yet to be attempted. Nevertheless, I have found a spring-board from which to leap into my romance. Let me read you a few pages of Arthur Waite's somewhat ironic summary of Dr. Bataille's Le Diable au XIX^e Siècle. Naturally I shall treat the subject more seriously, but what atmosphere, what a gorgeous milieu in which to plunge the reader when he shall open my book!

Peter now took from the shelves a small black volume, lettered in red, and turned over the leaves. First, he said, I shall read you some of the Doctor's experiences in Pondicherry, and he began: