The Clock of the Centuries

by Albert Robida

  “Yes! Indeed! That’s true! Go on!”

  “That’s not all,” cried a voice from one of the benches at the very back of the hall. “My observation No. 108, the sick man who…”

  “It’s certainly not all!” exclaimed another. “My observations 85 and 318, especially, the rejuvenation…”

  “I’m getting there,” Montarcy went on. “Be patient; all your remarkable observations will figure in my report—no, that certainly isn’t all. Our invalids, I said, seemed to grow old suddenly—but immediately afterwards showed unequivocal signs of an extraordinary rejuvenation! At how many of our medical meetings in the Academy of Sciences have we discussed it? You know it, gentlemen, and the medical journals are there to testify to it… But all of us, as we were then, when we sought to determine the causes and desired to calculate the consequences, were swimming in a sea of errors! Errors as to the causes, errors as to the effects! Errors everywhere!”

  “Well, what of it?” Palluel put in, getting up and taking Montarcy by the sleeve. “You’re simply demonstrating the bankruptcy of the science for which so much was once claimed. In my capacity as a poet, permit me to say that I am delighted to see you recognize the fact.”

  A storm of protests and vociferations broke out in the hall. Everyone stood up; quarrels broke out and angry remarks were exchanged. The president and his assistants rang their hand-bells desperately or rapped the desk with their rulers.

  “No, Monsieur,” cried Montarcy, when the tumult had calmed down somewhat “not the bankruptcy, but, on the contrary, a concordat, which I claim for the Supreme Mastery of Cause and Effect! The concordat of Science with eyes from which the scales have fallen! Science, gentlemen, does not know and will never know more than a percentage of the great Hidden Truths—a percentage that we may increase, but which will still only be a percentage.”

  “Pay it to us immediately!”

  “Here is one new and absolute truth: the general rejuvenation that so many observers have recorded, and which we have been able to observe in ourselves, is not merely a local or temporary phenomenon; no, gentlemen, science today, after several yeas of study and these innumerable observations coming from every part of the word, can loudly and solemnly affirm that it has become…the new rule of Life!”

  Another hubbub broke out in the assembly. Profound sensation, recorded the stenographers.

  “Explain yourself! Listen! What? Silence!”

  “Yes, what was believed to be phenomenal and merely transitory, has become the rules, and constitutes, according to all indications, a new and definitive way of life. An immense change and profound upset. Since the great upheaval, humankind, nature, time, everything, has been borne away by a vast and regular backward movement. There is no longer any question of ancient natural laws; they no longer exist; there is an entirely new set now! The world that almost perished is still working, but it is working backwards! It is no longer the limitless Future that extends before us. In the Course of Time, the Future had a limit, and that limit has been reached. Today…”

  The stenographers forgot to write. They were listening, as pale with emotion as all the rest. How, in any case, could they record the dull murmur that was running in ripples around the room: a rumor made up as much by the halting respiration of the audience as by stifled exclamations?

  Monsieur Montarcy, his arms in the air, brandishing papers, seemed to have grown much larger. His eyes were gleaming. Without being aware of it, he had taken off his white wig, and his pince-nez lay broken beneath the feet of the audience.

  “Today, gentlemen,” Monsieur Montarcy said, solemnly, “it is the Past that we have before us, the Past that is unfolding and offering itself to us for review, the immense, almost infinite Past that we are also going to relive!”

  A cheer went up from the assembly, a formidable cry springing forth from every throat. Everyone precipitated himself towards the desk, knocking it over and jostling one another to get to the Master, who had slumped voiceless into a chair. Everyone was shouting acclamations and enthusiastic interjections at the top of his voice, among which a few protestations and timid objections were immediately drowned out and annihilated.

  Yes, they felt it; it was, indeed, the truth, divined and anticipated by some, which Montarcy, with the incontestable authority of his immense knowledge, had finally extracted and formulated.

  That session of the International Congress of Investigation could not continue with the calm regularity of other seasons. That was now impossible, given the disturbed condition of the audience. Monsieur Montarcy continued talking, no longer at the podium but standing on the desk in the middle of a packed circle of listeners, pushing and shoving one another, climbing on chairs or tables—for, in response to the rumors that had immediately spread outside, the Sorbonne was overflowing, invaded by hordes of new arrivals: students, journalists, passers-by…

  “Yes, yes!” said Monsieur Montarcy. “It’s the Past that we shall relive, and I feel a vertigo take possession of my mind when I think of everything that will follow from this new order of things, of all the consequences of this reversal of the ancient laws of nature! Think about these consequences, in your turn, from the viewpoint, firstly, of the individual, secondly, of the family, and thirdly, of the race! We have already…you have certainly become familiar with certain strange, incomprehensible cases.”

  “My observations 138 and 192!” cried a nearby doctor.

  “People who were known to be definitely dead, people who disappeared ten years ago, recently reappeared in the light of the Sun! I have there, in a report that I cannot read in its entirety, more than 600 authentically established cases; my report has gone to press… They are my proofs… My colleagues and I have been working in silenced, resolved not to bring the truth into the light of day until we were able to say: one would have to be blind not to see it! We are all, therefore, eight or ten years younger today than we imagine. Next year, we shall be a year younger, then two, then three…

  “The constitution of the family will change utterly. You will see each human group return slowly to its origins. I shall not waste time in philosophical considerations; some will ascend, others will descend, now as before there will be a game of see-saw, but this time, seemingly, in accordance with a law of fate! That is the way it will be for the family in the utmost detail, and that is the way it will be for the larger group, for the nation, or the race.”

  He could do no more. In his effort to dominate the tumult, so long victorious, he had finished up shouting at the top of his voice. Now his raw throat refused to let anything pass but whispered phrases. It was necessary to carry on talking regardless, to respond to all the challenges, the enthusiastic questions, the bewildered exclamations, the demands for clarification, the timid objections and the protests of a few—for there are always St. Thomases everywhere, who dispute and quibble.

  Monsieur Palluel embraced Montarcy. He made no objection himself, he was almost weeping with joy. He also embraced Robert and the members of the committee; for a little while, the dignity of the Academician, beneath which the ardent poet of yesteryear had been revealed, had responded to the objections of some protesters with blows of the fist. “Montarcy! This morning I behaved like a blockhead. You’re a great man; permit me to address you as tu, illustrious Master! No more Monsieur so far as you’re concerned! I adore you! Long live Montarcy! Shout ‘Long live Montarcy,’ the rest of you!”

  “Long live Montarcy!”

  “And long live the New Era! You down there, the fat red-faced chap—shout it out, if you please! Ah, you’re not happy are you? You’d rather hold on to your soot-colored epoch, to your civilization in shades of black, to your false Progress, to your lugubrious Future…with all its threats, with its universal leveling, its definitive crushing of the beautiful, the good, and the healthy! What luck, my friends, what luck! What incredible and unexpected good fortune! We shall avoid it, that future, we shall turn back! For each of us individually, for all of us, there’s alread
y the joy of reliving the sequence of spring-times in the spring-times of our lives, and for society there’s the return of the most beautiful things of the past…”

  “There’ve been plenty of difficult moments too, damn it!” someone shouted.

  “Who knows? Perhaps all that can be rearranged!”

  “Enlightened by experience!” croaked Montarcy.

  “He said it—enlightened by experience!” cried Palluel. “We’ll surely find ways to render those difficult moments less harsh! With history in our hands, we’ll have the power to it better second time around. You down there, the little student, let yourself go—show a little enthusiasm! What’s the matter with the youth of today?”

  “I beg your pardon,” replied the student, climbing up on the shoulders of a few comrades, “but if all this is serious, I’m doomed. My past isn’t very long, and will soon be used up.”

  “That’s true, though,” said the Academician, turning to Montarcy. “He’s right—he’s doomed. Poor youth!”

  “What do you expect?” said Montarcy. “We have to accept it. Humankind is nothing in the breakdown of the Clock of the Centuries; we must accept the decree of the Supreme Clockmaker and try to adjust to it! If I’m to be charged with optimism, I accept the charge, but I have an intuition that this enormous change, this absolute reversal, will only result for humankind in a sum of advantage much superior to a few foreseeable petty inconveniences…”

  “Once again, I ask leave to speak,” Palluel resumed, “and I propose that the assembly should close this memorable session, in which the extraordinary event has been revealed to us, with three hearty cheers in honor of the New Era!”

  “Hurrah! Vivat! Hoch! Long live Montarcy! Long live the New Era!”

  “No! No! Non! Nein!”

  “Oui! Si! Yes! Hurrah!”

  “No!”

  A small opposition group formed in a corner of the room, composed primarily of English delegates, which was joined by the young student protester and some of his friends.

  “But then, by your count, what year is it?” shouted one member of the opposing group, making a megaphone with his hands.

  “I don’t know exactly! You’ve observed, as we have, the ultra-rapid succession of the seasons in the early days of the New Era. How can you figure it out, exactly?”

  “If I’ve understood your system correctly,” said another, “at a certain moment the world began to live—I mean to work—backwards. From evening it returns to morning?”

  “Doubtless—and what we take for the setting of the Sun is actually, in truth, the dawn that is extinguished. Our hours are radically overturned, like our seasons! You remember what a time of crisis that was for the trees and all vegetable species…they ended up adapting themselves to the permutation of the seasons, and we shall adapt to it as well, as to everything else, after a more-or-less long and difficult time of crisis.”

  “No! No! Absurd!”

  “If you wish!”

  “A word?” said a congress delegate. “Among these returns of people known to have disappeared from the world and legally counted as dead, among all these people contradicted by old acts of the Civil Estate, emerging everywhere in increasing numbers, I see in the observations communicated to the Congress that these people returned from the great beyond, did not all depart on the same dates, and that there are notable age-differences…”

  “That, gentlemen, has preoccupied my colleagues on the central committee and myself for some time. There is indeed a complication…but after mature reflection—and I think that my colleague are of the same opinion as me—I see nothing in that but the result of perfectly comprehensible difficulties in getting the new system of the world under way: difficulties previously observed, I repeat, in the vegetable world. Besides, gentlemen, if a clear-sighted man equipped with scientific notions had been able to witness the first phases of the world’s formation, can we believe that he would not have had occasion to observe even greater difficulties?

  “Yes! Oui! Ja! Si! No! Si! Yes! No!”

  “Then should we not number our years in reverse from now on?”

  “No, gentlemen. I’ve just told you that we don’t know exactly which year we might be in. I propose that the assembly votes on a special numbering system for the New Era, based on the supposition that today is in year X. That would be safest…we might do better, if you want to, to nominate an international calendrical committee to study the question and to negotiate an agreement with the various governments.” 12

  “Yes! Oui! Very good! Perfect!”

  Exclamations of approval in various languages intermingled; all the hands were raised, the opposition finding itself veritably drowned out by the enthusiastic and near-universal agreement. The opposition had to content itself with sniggering and muttering quibbles. In the corner where the young students had taken refuge, an anxious and despairing silence had fallen.

  Montarcy had slumped into an armchair and was mopping his brow, in the middle of a tightly-knit group of congress delegates of all nationalities, who were desirous of debating the great question with the illustrious savant, elucidating, so far as was possible, a few obscure points, and resolving or explaining certain half-glimpsed difficulties. Of obscure points, difficulties and problems, there remained many—indeed yes!—for whose explanation neither Monsieur Montarcy nor any one else could take immediate responsibility. That was the way it was because that was the way it was; for the moment, it was necessary to accept things as they presented themselves.

  At that moment, a man who was trying to force a way through to the desk, in the midst of a sort of furrow of complaints and groans, attracted Robert Laforcade’s attention. The man was signaling to him by waving his arms, imperiling a few skulls and a few pairs of spectacles plunged into deep discussion.

  Robert recognized Houquetot. He was seized by anxiety and attempted to force a way through the groups surrounding him.

  “What’s up?” he shouted.

  “Come quickly!” cried Houquetot. “As fast as you can!”

  “Is my wife’s illness getting worse?”

  “Yes, I suppose so! But there’s something even more extraordinary.”

  “What! Tell me, quickly!”

  “It’s…difficult to say! There’s an old gentleman…it’s your father…”

  “My father? The father I lost 15 years ago?”

  “Yes, that’s what he told Madame Laforcade, who’s terrified… At any rate, your father’s there…”

  Montarcy, who had overheard the conversation, leapt up from his chair. “My dear Laforcade!” he cried. “It’s very simple, and it’ll serve admirable to clear away the last doubts! Your father’s birth has just been announced! Let’s run quickly! I knew him personally—I was his doctor once.”

  “Let’s go,” said Houquetot. “But that’s not all, and you see me distressed on my own account… I came back to your house for another reason. I got…can you guess?”

  “What?”

  “A telegram from my own father! He’s disembarked at Auxerre…”

  “When?” demanded Montarcy.

  “Arrived yesterday, it seems.”

  “No, when did he depart?”

  “Oh, depart? Twenty-five years ago.”

  “You see,” said Montarcy. “Notable differences in dates… Returns confused… Crisis…”

  “And he’s asking me for money for coach-fare,” Houquetot added.

  CHAPTER VI

  The New Era: Official and Other Documents

  REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE

  To the Minister of the Interior,

  Given that it is now proven by the multiple observations of science that the mechanism of the terrestrial universe has recently been subject to a complete and absolute change in its general operation, and that modifications no less radical have appeared in the former order of the succession of time, beyond and above all possible explanation;

  Given that there is certain and absolute evidence that a truly new era has
commenced with the change, establishing the backward march of time and the world officially recognized by the Grand International Congress of Investigation, with the sanction of all the governments;

  Given that the numeration of years following the former Gregorian, Russian, Mohammedan calendars and other previously employed, is now discordant with the reality of things;

  It is decreed that:

  From today, the sequential numeration of years following those of the elapsed era is abolished.

  To avoid errors of calculation, the years elapsed since the great change will not be counted, by reason of the recognized fact that the clock of the centuries, having broken down, operated during the critical period of the crisis with irregular velocity and possibly expended many years in a matter of weeks.

  The Government and the Academies have reached an agreement only to commence the numeration of years of the new era from the date of the official establishment of the backward return.

  In consequence, the present year will be number 1 in all official and unofficial acts.

  Paris, September 17, Year 1

  Despite what was said in the preamble to the decree, the unanimity of nations on the matter of the change of era had not been acquired. England persisted in not accepting absolutely the affirmations of the Congress and in denying the backward march. Let us say immediately that this prejudiced opposition lasted several years, and only yielded in the face of complete evidence. It became impossible to deny the rejuvenation when a prince who was supposedly an octogenarian13 was seen compromising the royal dignity at the feet of a music-hall actress famed for her beauty, and that one of two famous statesmen of a similar age contested the football championship while the other rowed with the Oxford crew in the annual university boat race on the Thames.