City of Endless Night

by Hastings , Milo M. ;

  As a result they swarmed the Royal Level in all capacities of service for which women are fitted. Originally educated for maternity they had to be re-educated for service. Not satisfied with the official education provided by the masculine-ordered state, the women of the Royal Level maintained a continuation school in the fine art of obedience and the kindred virtues of the perfect servant.

  So again it was that Marguerite became involved in a movement that in no wise expressed the needs of her spirit, and from which she speedily withdrew.

  The next time she came to me for advice. ‘I want to do something,’ she cried. ‘I want to be of some use in the world. You saved me from that awful life – for you know what it would have been for me if Dr. Zimmern had died or his disloyalty had been discovered – and you have brought me here where I have riches and position but am useless. I tried to be charitable, to relieve poverty, but they say there is no poverty to be relieved. I tried to relieve ignorance, but they will not allow that either. What else is there that needs to be relieved? Is there no good I can do?’

  ‘Your problem is not a new one,’ I replied, thinking of the world-old experience of the good women yoked to idleness by wealth and position. ‘You have tried to relieve poverty and ignorance and find your efforts futile. There is one thing more I believe that is considered a classic remedy for your trouble. You can devote yourself to the elimination of ugliness, to the increase of beauty. Is there no organization devoted to that work?’

  ‘There is,’ returned Marguerite, ‘and I was about to join it, but I thought this time I had better ask advice. There is the League to Beautify Berlin.’

  ‘Then by all means join,’ I advised. ‘It is the safest of all such efforts, for though poverty may not exist and ignorance may not be relieved, yet surely Berlin can be more beautiful. But of course your efforts must be confined to the Royal Level as you do not see the rest of the city.’

  So Marguerite joined the League to Beautify Berlin and I became an auxiliary member much appreciated because of my liberal contributions. It proved an excellent source of amusement. The League met weekly and discussed the impersonal aspects of the beauty of the level in open meetings, while a secret complaint box was maintained into which all were invited to deposit criticisms of more personal matters. It was forbidden even in this manner to criticize irremedial ugliness such as the matter of one’s personal form or features, but dress and manners came within the permitted range and the complaints were regularly mailed to the offenders. This surprised me a little as I would have thought that such a practice would have made the League unpopular, but on the contrary, it was considered the mainstay of the organization, for the recipient of the complaint, if a non-member, very often joined the League immediately, hoping thereby to gain sweet revenge.

  But aside from this safety valve for the desire to make personal criticism, the League was a very creditable institution and it was there that we met the great critics to whose untiring efforts the rare development of German art was due.

  Cut off from the opportunity to appropriate by purchase or capture the works of other peoples, German art had suffered a severe decline in the first few generations of the isolation, but in time they had developed an art of their own. A great abundance of cast statues of white crystal adorned the plazas and gardens and, being unexposed to dust or rain, they preserved their pristine freshness so that it appeared they had all been made the day before. Mural paintings also flourished abundantly and in some sections the endless facade of the apartments was a continuous pageant.

  But it was in landscape gardening that German art had made its most wonderful advancement. Having small opportunity for true architecture because of the narrow engineering limitations of the city’s construction, talent for architecture had been turned to landscape gardening. I use the term advisedly for the very absence of natural landscape within a roofed-in city had resulted in greater development of the artificial product.

  The earlier efforts, few of which remained unaltered, were more inclined toward imitation of nature as it exists in the world of sun and rocks and rain. But, as the original models were forgotten and new generations of gardeners arose, new sorts of nature were created. Artificial rocks, artificial soil, artificially bred and cultured plants, were combined in new designs, unrealistic it is true, but still a very wonderful development of what might be called synthetic or romantic nature. The water alone was real and even in some cases that was altered as in the beautifully dyed rivulets and in the truly remarkable ‘Fountain of Blood’, dedicated to one of the sons of William the Great – I have forgotten his name – in honor of his attack upon Verdun in the First World War.

  In these wondrous gardens, with the Princess Marguerite strolling by my side, I spent the happiest hours of my sojourn in Berlin. But my joy was tangled with a thread of sadness for the more I gazed upon this synthetic nature of German creation the more I hungered to tell her of, and to take her to see, the real nature of the outside world – upon which, in my opinion, with all due respect to their achievements, the Germans had not been able to improve.

  III

  While the women of the Royal House were not permitted of their own volition to stray from the Royal Level, excursions were occasionally arranged, with proper permits and guards. These were social events of consequence and the invitations were highly prized. Noteworthy among them was an excursion to the highest levels of the city and to the roof itself.

  The affair was planned by Admiral von Kufner in Marguerite’s honor; for, having spent her childhood elsewhere, she had never experienced the wonder of this roof excursion so highly prized by royalty, and forever forbidden to all other women and to all but a few men of the teeming millions who swarmed like larvae in this vast concrete cheese.

  The formal invitations set no hour for the excursion as it was understood that the exact time depended upon weather conditions of which we would later be notified. When this notice came the hour set was in the conventional evening of the Royal Level, but corresponding to about three a.m. by solar time. The party gathered at the suite of the Countess Luise and numbered some forty people, for whom a half-dozen guides were provided in the form of officers of the Roof Guard. The journey to our romantic destination took us up some hundred meters in an elevator, a trip which required but two minutes, but would lead to a world as different as Mount Olympus from Erebus.

  But we did not go directly to the roof, for the hour preferred for that visit had not yet arrived and our first stop was at the swine levels, which had so aroused my curiosity and strained belief when I had first discovered their existence from the chart of my atlas.

  As the door of the elevator shaft slid open, a vast squealing and grunting assaulted our ears. The hours of the swine, like those of their masters, were not reckoned by either solar or sidereal time, but had been altered, as experiment had demonstrated, to a more efficient cycle. The time of our trip was chosen so that we might have this earthly music of the feeding time as a fitting prelude to the visioning of the silent heavens.

  On the visitors’ gangway we walked just above the reach of the jostling bristly backs, and our own heads all but grazed the low ceiling of the level. To economize power the lights were dim. Despite the masterful achievement of German cleanliness and sanitation there was a permeating odor, a mingling of natural and synthetic smells, which added to the gloom of semi-darkness and the pandemonium of swinish sound produced a totality of infernal effect that thwarts description.

  But relief was on the way for the automatic feed conveyors were rapidly moving across our section. First we heard a diminution of sound from one direction, then a hasty scuffling and a happy grunting beneath us and, as the conveyors moved swiftly on, the squealing receded into the distance like the dying roar of a retreating storm.

  The Chief Swineherd, immaculately dressed and wearing his full quota of decorations and medals, honored us with his personal presence. With the excusable pride that every worthy man takes in his work, he expoun
ded the scientific achievements and economic efficiency of the swinish world over which he reigned. The men of the party listened with respect to his explanations of the accomplishments of sanitation and of the economy of the cycle of chemical transformation by which these swine were maintained without decreasing the capacity of the city for human support. Lastly the Swineherd spoke of the protection that the swine levels provided against the effects of an occasional penetrating bomb that chanced to fall in the crater of its predecessor before the damage could be repaired.

  Pursuant to this fact the uppermost swine level housed those unfortunate animals that were nearest the sausage stage. On the next lower level, to which we now descended by a spiral stair through a ventilating opening, were brutes of less advanced ages. On the lowest of the three levels where special lights were available for our benefit even the women ceased to shudder and gave expression to ecstatic cries of rapture, as all the world has ever done when seeing baby beasts pawing contentedly at maternal founts.

  ‘Is it not all wonderful?’ effused Admiral von Kufner, with a sweeping gesture; ‘so efficient, so sanitary, so automatic, such a fine example of obedience to system and order. This is what I call real science and beauty; one might almost say Germanic beauty.’

  ‘But I do not like it,’ replied Marguerite with her usual candor. ‘I wish they would abolish these horrid levels.’

  ‘But surely,’ said the Countess, ‘you would not wish to condemn us to a diet of total mineralism?’

  ‘But the Herr Chemist here could surely invent for us a synthetic sausage,’ remarked Count Rudolph. ‘I have eaten vegetarian kraut made of real cabbage from the Botanical Garden, but it was inferior to the synthetic article.’

  ‘Do not make light, young people,’ spoke up the most venerable member of our party, the eminent Herr Dr. von Brausmorganwetter, the historian laureate of the House of Hohenzollern. ‘It is not as a producer of sausages alone that we Germans are indebted to this worthy animal. I am now engaged in writing a book upon the influence of the swine upon German kultur. In the first part I shall treat of the Semitic question. The Jews were very troublesome among us in the days before the isolation. They were a conceited race. As capitalists, they amassed fortunes; as socialists they stirred up rebellion; they objected to war; they would never have submitted to eugenics; they even insisted that we Germans had stolen their God!

  ‘We tried many schemes to be rid of these troublesome people, and all failed. Therefore I say that Germany owes a great debt to the noble animal who rid us of the disturbing presence of the Jews, for when pork was made compulsory in the diet they fled the country of their own accord.

  ‘In the second part of my book I shall tell the story of the founding of the New Berlin, for our noble city was modeled on the fortified piggeries of the private estates of William III. In those days of the open war the enemy bombed the stock farms. Synthetic foods were as yet imperfectly developed. Protein was at a premium; the emperor did not like fish, so he built a vast concrete structure with a roof heavily armored with sand that he might preserve his swine from the murderous attacks of the enemy planes.

  ‘It was during the retreat from Peking. The German armies were being crowded back on every side. The Ray had been invented, but William the III knew that it could not be used to protect so vast a domain and that Germany would be penned into narrow borders and be in danger of extermination by aerial bombardment. In those days he went for rest and consolation to his estates, for he took great pleasure in his thoroughbred swine. Some traitorous spy reported his move to the enemy and a bombing squadron attacked the estates. The Emperor took refuge in his fortified piggery. And so the great vision came to him.

  ‘I have read the exact words of his thoughts as recorded in his diary which is preserved in the archives of the Royal Palace: “As are these happy brutes, so shall my people be. In safety from the terrors of the sky – protected from the vicissitudes of nature and the enmity of men, so shall I preserve them.”

  ‘That was the conception of the armored city of Berlin. But that was not all. For the bombardment kept up for days and the Emperor could not escape. On the fourth day came the second idea – two new ideas in less than a week! William III was a great thinker.

  ‘Thus he recorded the second inspiration: “And even as I have bred these swine, some for bacon and some for lard, so shall the German Blond Brutes be bred the super-men, some specialized for labor and some for brains.”

  ‘These two ideas are the foundation of the kultur of our Imperial Socialism, the one idea to preserve us and the other to recreate us as the super-race. And both of these ideas we owe to this noble animal. The swine should be emblazoned with the eagle upon our flag.’

  As the Historian finished his eulogy, I glanced surreptitiously at the faces of his listeners, and caught a twinkle in Marguerite’s eyes; but the faces of the others were as serious as graven images.

  Finally the Countess spoke: ‘Do I understand, then, that you consider the swine the model of the German race?’

  ‘Only of the lower classes,’ said the aged historian, ‘but not the House of Hohenzollern. We are exalted above the necessities of breeding, for we are divine.’

  Eyes were now turned upon me, for I was the only one of the company not of Hohenzollern blood. Unrelieved by laughter the situation was painful.

  ‘But,’ said Count Rudolph, coming to my rescue, ‘we also seek safety in the fortified piggeries.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said the Historian; ‘so did our noble ancestor.’

  IV

  From the piggeries, we went to the Green Level where, growing beneath eye-paining lights, was a matted mass of solid vegetation from which came those rare sprigs of green which garnished our synthetic dishes. But this was too monotonous to be interesting and we soon went above to the Defense Level where were housed vast military and rebuilding mechanisms and stores. After our guides had shown us briefly about among these paraphernalia, we were conducted to one of the sloping ramps which led through a heavily arched tunnel to the roof above.

  Marguerite clung close to my arm, quivering with expectancy and excitement, as we climbed up the sloping passageway and felt on our faces the breath of the crisp air of the May night.

  The sky came into vision with startling suddenness as we walked out upon the soft sand blanket of the roof. The night was absolutely clear and my first impression was that every star of the heavens had miraculously waxed in brilliancy. The moon, in the last quarter, hung midway between the zenith and the western horizon. The Milky Way seemed a floating band of whitish flame. About us, in the form of a wide crescent, for we were near the eastern edge of the city, swung the encircling band of searchlights, but the air was so clear that this stockade of artificial light beams was too pale to dim the points of light in the blue-black vault.

  In anticipating this visit to the roof I had supposed it would seem commonplace to me, and had discussed it very little with Marguerite, lest I might reveal an undue lack of wonder. But now as I thrilled once more beneath their holy light, the miracle of unnumbered far-flung flaming suns stifled again the vanity of human conceit and I stood with soul unbared and worshipful beneath the vista of incommensurate space wherein the birth and death of worlds marks the unending roll of time. And at my side a silent gazing woman stood, contrite and humble and the thrill and quiver of her body filled me with a joy of wordless delight.

  A blundering guide began lecturing on astronomy and pointing out with pompous gestures the constellations and planets. But Marguerite led me beyond the sound of his voice. ‘It is not the time for listening to talk,’ she said. ‘I only want to see.’

  When the astronomer had finished his speech-making, our party moved slowly toward the East, where we could just discern the first faint light of the coming dawn. When we reached the parapet of the eastern edge of the city’s roof, the stars had faded and pale pink streaked the eastern sky. The guides brought folding chairs from a nearby tunnel-way and most of the party sat do
wn on a hillock of sand, very much as men might seat themselves in the grandstand of a race course. But I was so interested in what the dawn would reveal beneath the changing colors of the sky, that I led Marguerite to the rail of the parapet where we could look down into the yawning depths upon the surface of German soil.

  My first vision over the parapet revealed but a mottled gray. But as the light brightened the gray land took form, and I discerned a few scraggly patches of green between the torn masses of distorted soil.

  The stars had faded now and only the pale moon remained in the bluing sky, while below the land disclosed a sad monotony of ruin and waste, utterly devoid of any constructive work of man.

  Marguerite, her gaze fixed on the dawn, was beginning to complain of the light paining her eyes, when one of the guides hurried by with an open satchel swung from his shoulders. ‘Here are your glasses,’ he said; ‘put them on at once. You must be very careful now, or you will injure your eyes.’

  We accepted the darkened protecting lenses, but I found I did not need mine until the sun itself had appeared above the horizon.

  ‘Did you see it so in your vision?’ questioned Marguerite, as the first beams glistened on the surface of the sanded roof.

  ‘This,’ I replied, ‘is a very ordinary sunrise with a perfectly cloudless sky. Someday, perhaps, when the gates of this prison of Berlin are opened, we will be able to see all the sunrises of my visions, and even more wonderful ones.’