The Eternal Flame

by Michel Corday

  Obviously, the same motives animated those who were crying madness and those who had previously spread alarm after the explosion. They were obeying orders by virtue of monetary need, or the hatred of science and progress, or envy, or even simple cruelty, but this time, the attack was more perfidious, viler, and also more efficacious.

  François rapidly felt its effects; there was no doubt that many people were avoiding him. In adversity we have very sensitive antennae, which reveal desertions, treasons and the sound of retreating footsteps.

  The comrades of childhood, college and the laboratory, who had shown themselves so proud to know François when the vogue had put him in the spotlight, who had sought every opportunity to issue invitations to him or to remember themselves to him, were no longer showing any signs of life. They were stealing away in alarm, disappearing, scuttling like rats into their holes.

  Official science no longer knew him. Even Thuilier, who has supported him so stubbornly so long as his discovery made the Center for Studies illustrious, had abandoned him as soon as he promised the planet an infinite destiny, especially since journalists began pretending to doubt his sanity. When François called him from Briolle by telephone, he was curt and reticent, or avoided taking the call personally. When reporters came to the Center in search of news of the inventor, Thuilier refused to be interviewed. Deep down, he and his peers were afraid of appearing to take such far-reaching anticipations seriously. They were afraid of appearing to have enthusiasm, imagination, audacity and courage. They were afraid of compromising themselves. They turned their backs on him out of cowardice.

  But the petty journalists, in crying madness, had not only created a void around him. They had not only injured him in his great need for approval and sympathy. They had hurt him more profoundly. They had succeeded in making him anxious, even though he felt that he was in full possession of his faculties. From time to time, in retreat at Briolle, a doubt traversed him like a dart, a stabbing pain: “What if it’s true?”

  Precisely because he knew the human machine well, because he saw it palpitating as one sees a clockwork mechanism beating under glass, he had a sense of its fragility. He knew that a blood clot, trapped in a narrow cerebral vein, was sufficient to stop that admirable marvel.

  Was he sure that he was still lucid? How could he know? When one loses one’s reason, one is not aware of it.

  When he was assailed by doubt, he scrutinized the faces of his relatives. The splendid serenity of Maman, always so proud and so sure of him, calmed him down. His father’s brow, always slightly furrowed by care, revived his own anxieties. But what was he imagining? His parents did not know anything. Sometimes, as when one leans over the crystal of a spring, he saw his own reflection in the limpid and profound eyes of his two children. They would doubtless betray their surprise, ingenuously, if they found him changed. And when Marianne asked him to take her out in the car with the children, he congratulated himself because she let him take the wheel, entrusting their lives to him. Was that not proof that she was not afraid?

  So, cowardice, envy, hatred and cruelty had been unleashed against him. Was it not derisory, was it not an excessive irony, to announce the apotheosis, the divinity of humankind at the very moment when he was experiencing its villainy? And as yet, he had not touched the bottom of that baseness, he had not fathomed the abyss.

  Then, with his elbow on the top of his little childhood desk, his forehead in his hand, he wanted to lean over that sewer and, in spite of its pestilence, measure its depth.

  How many stupid voices rose from the gulf! Hypocrisies, lies, vanities, prejudices, superstitions, fanaticisms...the custom that it is necessary to observe because it is the custom, the fashion that it is necessary to follow because it is the fashion...

  The blockheads who want both to honor maternity and dishonor the unwed mother...

  The nationalisms choking in the corsets of customs duties, which want to sell everything to foreigners and not buy anything from them. The orators who, having outlawed war, glorify the warriors...

  What barbaric or shocking spectacles glimpsed in the shadows!

  The housewife who calmly shakes the dirty residues of her hearth over the heads of passers-by...

  The early morning crowd that hurls itself into suburban trains, is engulfed like a tidal wave in the subterranean passages of the Metro, rushing to assault the carriages in order to be crushed and faint therein...

  Everywhere, the insolent triumph of cynics and, even more deplorable, of mediocrities...

  The condition of domestic servants....

  The decadence of prostitutes...

  The imbecilic escalation of armaments, applauded by chauvinists, stimulated by rich merchants...

  And social iniquity. Yes, it’s true, one no longer hears its old complaint, by virtue of hearing it all the time. But is injustice any less insupportable because it is evident? Because it is accepted, is the contrast any less revolting between the excess of luxury and the excess of hardship, between the businessman who makes a fortune with a signature and the worker literally condemned to forced labor in order to prolong his life until the following day?

  Lower down, beneath social crime, crimes of violence are outlined, those unchained brutes, those semi-madmen, those mental defectives whom society permits to commit murder on condition of murdering them thereafter, rather than preventing them from being born or from doing harm. Further down, executions, tortures and their incredible refinements, Then massacres, pogroms, even more inhuman and cruel: the father forced by the soldiery to lick his son’s blood from the ground; the mother constrained to hold on her knees her own child, about to be decapitated...

  Lower still, War, the great Collector of all stupidities and all crimes, all lies and all savageries.

  Finally, the mire at the bottom of the drain: all the perversions, all the debauchery, all the aberrations, all the turpitudes; the base reality that no book has every dared to depict, the unspeakable life...

  François raised his head.

  Well, no, in spite of everything, he would not despair. He retained his faith in the future, in a more beautiful life, indefinitely more beautiful. From the depths of the execrable gulf, humans would be able gradually to raise themselves up. They would slowly hoist themselves toward the light, step by step, millennium by millennium. A few were already showing them the example, the road. And when they emerged into the light, freed of their stains, they would appear in divine perfection.

  François collected the pages of his article, “The Better Life.” He sent it to the magazine, unchanged. And it spread his message throughout the world.

  IX

  One afternoon in September, at Briolle, François was summoned to the telephone by Chérance.

  “Hello…? Monsieur Chérance here... Ah, it’s you, my friend. Is everyone there is good health? Good. Here it is: Sandler—yes, the great Sandler of Mondial Oil—has just arrived by plane from America. He wants to see us. He’s invited us to diner tomorrow evening at his hotel, the Imperial. Is that all right with you…? Agreed. Come to find me at Boulogne, then, about midday. That way, we can chat before the meeting and arrive together.”

  He concluded, as was his custom, with polite formulas. He sent his best wishes to Marianne, and he never forgot to be asked to be remembered to “the worthy master” Pierre Contal. Was the tenacious bibliophile not desperate to obtain the manuscript of Génie antique?

  Chérance had always been perfectly obliging since François’ departure for Briolle, He kept him up to date by telephone with the progress of Sidereal Energy, which the absurd rumors spread about the inventor did not appear to be affecting. He had also given signs of life while taking the waters at a health spa and then during a sojourn by the sea. And as it was easier to perceive his interlocutor’s true intentions over the telephone than face to face, François had been able to convince himself that Chérance was not manifesting any anxiety regarding his mental condition. More sensitive than ever to sympathy, he
was truly grateful to the financier for marching by his side and supporting him in that difficult pass.

  François left by himself. Marianne and the children would take advantage of a few more of the beautiful amber-tinted days of the Burgundian autumn.

  He congratulated himself for resuming contact with the world, for confronting its gaze. He would be able to demonstrate that he was lucid, but he would have preferred a less sensational reentry. He was apprehensive of the meeting with the president of Mondial Oil. Doubtless it would be rich in consequences.

  Once again Chérance had anticipated correctly; the big oil men were coming on to the stage—and the journey by air was evidence of Sandler’s haste. Such crossings were certainly becoming frequent; in the high atmosphere, at a thousand kilometers an hour, it took no more than six hours to cross from one shore to the other—but was Sandler still of an age to tolerate the trip without fatigue? He must be in a hurry to arrive.

  François realized that he knew very little about the individual whose name was known all over the world. He did not know what he looked like. He only knew that he had repeated the endeavors of Rockefeller on a larger scale, that he had aggregated half the oil companies in the world. For François, however, he was more a symbol than a living being: one of those men as rich as a nation, who considered themselves more as the custodians than the possessors of their fortune. They only accumulated it in order to spread it. They were rich in money as the heart is rich in blood.

  But what did Sandler want, exactly? François hastened to ask that question of Chérance in the car that took them to the Imperia. The financier appeared to be in an excellent humor. Comfortably slumped in the front of the car, with his wrist passed through the arm-rest, he mimed his ignorance, arching his eyebrows and making his little moustache bristle with a grimace.

  No, truly, he did not known, exactly. Apparently, Sandler, whom he had met at a conference in the United States, was bringing a proposition for the chairman of Sidereal Energy in the name of two English and American groups, united in the face of the peril. But what proposition? Chérance was incapable of guessing.

  The certain thing was that Sandler must feel threatened in his sovereignty. And, not without self-satisfaction, the financier reminded François of the primary role played by oil at the moment when the Starter was about to dethrone it. Oil? One not only obtained the gasoline necessary for all automobiles therefrom, but also the heavy fuel-oil that would soon be necessary for all ships. In brief, it animated all the engines in the world. It haunted all peace negotiators, all the great international conferences. Wars were fought over it. An oil consortium was ready to do anything to obtain a concession. Was it refused? It had been seen to foment troubles, assassinations, even revolutions, in order that the refractory government might be replaced by a more accommodating one. One of its potentates, furious that a major nation had refused him the concession of its oil, had been known to attempt to isolate it, to asphyxiate it, to sever its diplomatic and mercantile relations with the rest of the planet.

  Oh, such fellows had tusks. They did not give in without striking a blow.

  But Chérance seemed to be enjoying himself, like a lover of fencing smiling at the thought of a hard-fought match.

  The president of Mondial Oil had an apartment at the Imperial furnished like a luxury liner. Sandler was quite different from the image that Francois had formed of him: short, gray-haired and solicitous, he had a face and complexion that were almost Japanese, a modest expression, gold-rimmed spectacles and child-like hands. His smile uncovered upper teeth that were powerful and jutting.

  He excused himself for not speaking French very well. Alas, François had completely forgotten English. For want of aptitude in languages, he had not obtained any benefit from his college lessons, or even from a holiday in Derbyshire.

  Sandler took his meals in his apartment. Waiters hastened about, as rapid, invisible and mute as a flock of bats. They served a rich parfait and authentic wines. The American tried to congratulate the young inventor on his discovery in French. François understood him imperfectly, but he was not tempted to smile. He thought, humbly: If only I spoke English as he speaks French... He was always irritated to see his compatriots mocking foreign accents. We, of course, have found the best means of having no accent—we don’t speak foreign languages!

  Chérance, a great cosmopolitan, spoke English admirably. He offered to serve as interpreter. Thanks to that improvisation, Sandler was able to interrogate François about his family, his children. He manifested a veritable adoration for his own daughter. Having thus sacrificed to courtesy, however, the American gradually renounced a difficult conversation, and the two potentates, becoming animated, were soon only speaking English.

  Undoubtedly they had broached the debate: the Starter versus oil. Oh, how Francois regretted then not having taken his first invention, a translation machine, any further. It was no more complicated than a calculating machine not a television set. The speaker sat before a microphone; each word “sounded” the corresponding word, and all the listeners received a literal translation through their earphones. Until everyone learned a second language in the cradle, how useful that machine would have been in international conferences! How many misunderstandings it might have avoided!

  From time to time, Chérance kept François up to date with a brief word: “We’re discussing Sidereal Energy” or “We’re not entirely in accord.” His gaze attentive, his nostrils pinched, he maintained a firm and flexible jaw, without ever interrupting. Sandler rubbed his little hands, and showed his teeth in sickly smiles.

  The battle seemed to François to be hard-fought.

  As the American rose to his feet he said to him, pointing at Chérance: “Terrible man.”

  What had they decided?

  When they were back beside the financier’s car, François said: “Well?” That is the question that summarizes all questions.

  Instead of replying, Chérance asked him to go with him. François agreed.

  “Lechartreux’s” ordered the financier.

  The chauffeur must often have taken his boss to Lechartreux’s because he pulled away without asking for the address.

  “Here it is,” said Chérance, when they were on the way. “We haven’t been able to reach an agreement. That’s very unfortunate—but accord is impossible.”

  “What did Sandler ask for?”

  “First he showed me the enormous losses that the generalization of the Starter will impose on the oil concessionaries. You know that he represents them all. The losses are evident. But so what? It’s a fatal law. Every industry installs itself on the ruins of those it replaces. Besides which, oil deposits are limited. They aren’t renewable. They’ll have dried up in the near future, so we’re only going to hasten the moment when the petrol companies will be obliged to cease their exploitation. It’s also necessary to add that oil, so long as it gushes, won’t lose all its value. Its by-products are useful, notably lubricating oils and greases. You’ve told me yourself that engines will rotate faster and faster, so lubricants will become increasingly precious.”

  François was pleased that he had remembered that glimpse of the future. “That’s true,” he confirmed.

  “Those were the arguments I tried to get across to Sandler. Naturally, he didn’t yield to them. To compensate for the loss that the oil cartel will suffer, he asked, quite simply, to buy Sidereal Energy on their behalf.”

  “That’s very serious,” said François.

  “I should think so! I must say that he offered a high price, and I sensed that he was ready to double, or even triple it—but I refused so frankly that he didn’t persist Given that the shares of our company aren’t in circulation, but all in friendly hands, Sandler can’t play his habitual game of buying them up clandestinely, worming his way in and taking over. On the other hand, as our business is irreproachable, it’s impossible to use the classic method of ruining it by means of a lawsuit or a political scandal.”

&nbs
p; “So?”

  “Sandler hasn’t admitted defeat. He made me another proposition, equally intended in his mind to attenuate the threat. I thought I understood that it would also ensure his neutrality. At that price, he’d leave us in peace. He asked me for a partnership.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “An alliance. Sidereal Energy would become a Franco-American company.”

  “What!” François exclaimed. “And you didn’t accept that?”

  “Never in this world!”

  Since he had been obliged to watch the debate between Sandler and Chérance, in which the fate of his discovery was at stake, as an outsider, Francois sensed a muted rebellion rising with him. As highly as he rated Chérance, he thought that the financier ought to have consulted him on each important point, instead of keeping him faintly up to date with the conversation. Now, he had to learn after the fact that Chérance had made a decision...

  Decidedly, whether it is a matter of a newspaper, a magazine or an industry, those who administer an enterprise always tend to eliminate what they have created. They seem to obey a cruel instinct of nature, in which the male is often sacrificed once having accomplished his work of fecundation.

  Finally, François protested: “Why,” he said, “did you take it upon yourself to refuse?”

  “Why?” cried Chérance, imperiously. “To begin with, I could reply that I have the right, that Sidereal Energy has entrusted the helm of its direction to me, that the Board has given me full authority to negotiate with Sandler. But that would be a paltry argument, unworthy of the two of us. No, the true, the real reason, is that we must, at all costs, remain the masters of the situation. I admit that we’ll issue licenses, at our discretion, but we must guard our privilege, our supremacy, our power jealously.”