Electric Life

by Albert Robida

  “A nation defeated on the battlefield will find itself, by way of compensation, purified, as I dare to put it! Am I not right to qualify that future form of war beneficent and humanitarian? Do I not have the right, definitively, to proclaim myself a veritable benefactor of humankind, since, with the purely medical warfare that I am inaugurating, I am putting an end forever to its former barbarity? Now, give me another two years, or eighteen months—the time to perfect the special machines of which I dream, to get over the final difficulties and to accumulate provisions of sufficiently powerful toxic gases, prepared and measured…and let’s get back to our present business...”

  “The Great National Medicament,” Sulfatin completed.

  “National,” Philox Lorris emphasized. “It’s a national medicament that I want to launch, and for which I’m asking for government support. My great purative and regenerative microbiocidal medicament combines, concentrated and taken to their extreme, the thousand various more-or-less beneficial products exploited by the pharmacy; it’s destined to replace all of them.

  “The State, which supervises everything and everyone, which is occupied with every citizen, often to a greater extent than he desires; which takes him as soon as he is born in order to inscribe him in its registers; which educates him; which determines a large fraction of his actions—and often annoys him, it is necessary to admit; which is even occupied with his vices, since it furnishes him with his alcohol and tobacco; is duty-bound to occupy itself with his health. Why should it not have a monopoly on medicaments, as it once had on matches, when there were matches, and as it still has on tobacco? Yes, it’s a new monopoly that I’m proposing to create, to share with me in the exploitation of my great national medicament...”

  “But are you absolutely certain of the efficacy of your national medicament?”

  “Am I certain! Wait! Sulfatin, go and fetch your patient La Héronnière; it’s on him that we have experimented. You all know Adrien La Héronnière, our eminent fellow citizen, who had reached the final phase of physical and mental anemia, so worn out that, in spite of the enormous fees proposed, no physician wanted to take him on, because of the indemnity payable on lack of success. My collaborator Sulfatin has made the attempt, and you’re about to see what he has made of that valetudinarian about to draw his last breath, within eighteen months. Monsieur La Héronnière is in a good state of repair; before long, he’ll be as good as new!”

  “Very well—but we have to reckon with the opposition in the Chambers,” said one of the politicians, “and the creation of a new monopoly might bring forth strong objections...”

  “Get away! With a well-written explanation of the reasons: the amply-demonstrated morbid state of the nation; the enemy identified; the physical anemia and distress that it causes; the terrible anemia falling upon an organism already invaded by a hundred varieties of various microbes…and then the victory song; the remedy has been found: it’s the great national medicament of the illustrious scientist and philanthropist Philox Lorris! The great national medicament kills all bacilli, vibrions and bacteria; it defeats the terrible anemia, reestablishes the function of all depleted organisms, victoriously combats muscular atrophy, premature senility, etc. And the monopoly is voted in by a majority of four hundred votes! And we have, along with the material profit, the glory and the joy of genuinely rendering strength and health to modern humankind, so horrible overstressed!”

  III

  Estelle, who spent every day in Philox Lorris’ house, did not often see Madame Lorris, who was presumably busy with her famous book on esoteric philosophy. She was aware of the situation of the household and knew that, since the very beginning of their marriage, there had been a divergence of ideas between Madame Lorris and the scientist with the imperious and systematic intelligence. Monsieur and Madame Lorris were rarely seen together, even in the dining room, the illustrious inventor easily forgetting meal-times in the midst of his immense occupations.

  One day, when Estelle was occupied in looking for a document in one of the numerous bookcases of the Philox Lorris house, where books and collections accumulated in every room on ever floor, garnishing every corner and alcove, and even invading the corridors, she suddenly heard some kind of argument rise up, from a small room opening on to the main drawing-room, which had been empty when she came through it.

  She recognized the voices of Monsieur and Madame Lorris, succeeding one another after brief intervals of silence. Madame Lorris appeared to be addressing stern reproaches to her husband, after which the poor woman shut up, presumably prey to a violent emotion—and after a few seconds, the booming voice of Philox Loris went up in its turn, sometimes angrily.

  Very embarrassed, Estelle coughed and moved chairs to indicate her presence, but, presumably in the heat of wrath, Monsieur and Madame Lorris paid no heed and continued their exchange of conjugal amenities.

  What should she do? In order to leave, it was absolutely necessary for Estelle to go through the small room, the theater of the strange quarrel. She dared not show herself and expose herself to the irritated gaze of the terrible Philox Lorris, so it was necessary for her to stay there and, against her will, continue to overhear a few scraps of the altercation.

  “I tell you once again,” said Madame Lorris, “that you’re intolerable, extraordinarily intolerable! What life have you made for me, I ask you? You’ve always been the most disagreeable person in the world, with your particular ideas and your theories! I hate your science, if that’s what has formed your character; I despise your laboratories, your chemistry, your physics, and I couldn’t care less about your inventions and discoveries. Yes, Monsieur, I’m glad that our son George won’t be the hedgehog of a scientist that you are—he takes after me too much...”

  A moment’s silence followed the blasphematory declaration, and then Philox Lorris’ voice made itself heard.

  “I don’t like being always contradicted in my plans and my ideas. Do you think I have time to talk about household nonsense and the futilities in which the female mind delights? You’re always complaining; you say that, incessantly plunged in my experiments, I don’t pay enough attention to offering you a few distractions. I can’t argue with that. However, you’re the mistress of your own time and I’m not preventing you in any way from squandering it as you please. You want distractions, soirées, social events—well, here’s one. I have a horror of all that, but you’re finally going to be satisfied. I’m hosting—we’re hosting—a big artistic, musical and even scientific soirée…yes, Madame, scientific too; that part of the program is my concern. For the rest, I’m counting entirely on you...”

  A further silence; then a few more sentences from Madame Lorris that did not reach Estelle’s ears distinctly.

  “That science, Madame, on which your feeble sarcasms are blunted, those projects whose importance your irredeemably frivolous mind cannot even suspect, has created our situation. These preoccupations for which you reproach me, those days and nights spent in laboratories in the dogged pursuit of the unknown, the undiscovered, those hand-to-hand combats with all the elements, those violent struggles with Nature to wrench her secrets from her—all of that, in sum, has created the powerful Philox Lorris Inc. And what about you? What part have you played in all that gigantic effort? You have only to enjoy the fruits of those enormous labors, but you...”

  “Yes, Monsieur, our son Georges takes after me, and I congratulate him for it. He won’t be a morose mad scientist shriveling up among all the retorts and ingredients of your diabolical scientific cookery. Poor dear child. Perhaps, as you incessantly reproach him, the soul of my great-grandfather, who was an artist, and doubtless a man truly worthy of living and appreciating life, loving its beautiful aspects above all, lives again in him. I’ll permit myself to have other ideas than yours.”

  Estelle did not hear any more; the door of the small room, which stood ajar, opened abruptly. Utterly confused by her forced indiscretion, Estelle let herself fall on to a heap of volumes and pl
unged her head into the annual report of the Académie des Sciences.

  “Oh! Estelle?” said the person who came in.

  Estelle raised her head with a joy mingled with surprise. The newcomer was not the terrible Philox Lorris but Georges, her fiancé. In spite of the arrival of Georges, however, who did not seem at all distressed, the quarrel continued in the next room. Estelle, very embarrassed and not daring to speak, pointed at the door.

  Georges burst out laughing.

  “Have no fear,” he said. “It’s a little altercation between my father and mother. They’re always at odds in their views and opinions.”

  “I daren’t go past them to get away,” said Estelle, in a whisper. “I was trapped in here a little while ago, unable to help overhearing.”

  “You daren’t go past them? But you have nothing to fear if you’re with me. Come and look.”

  “Oh, no! I can’t...”

  “Yes you can. Come on!”

  He made Estelle go out ahead of him. She stopped in amazement in the middle of the room. There was god reason: the voices of Monsieur and Madame were continuing the argument they had begun, but the room was empty!

  With a gesture, Georges pointed out two phonographs placed on the table, amid a host of books and instruments.

  “There,” he said. “My parents are having a little row through the intermediary of their phonographs. Let’s leave them to it—it’s of no great consequence, and I’ll explain...”

  “They argue by phonograph!” exclaimed Estelle, happy and relieved.

  “My God, yes! Admire the benefits of science! You’re not unaware that a certain strife unfortunately reigns between my parents, which goes back a long way. You know my father—a terrible, authoritarian, systematic scientist. Always absorbed, in addition, by his work and his enterprises, he’s sometimes in a rather difficult mood. My mother’s character is the complete opposite; she has very different tastes; that causes conflict and discord—from the day after their marriage, it appears. My father’s last word, when he’s at the end of his tether, at the end of every quarrel, is: ‘Madame Philox Lorris, you’re nothing but…a woman of the world!’ My mother stands firm; although everything bends before the authority of the scientist, she intends to keep her own personal opinions. And every day, by virtue of my parents’ differences of opinion, there’s an argument, a quarrel...”

  “Alas,” said Estelle, sadly.

  “Fortunately,” Georges added, “thanks to the science that my mother obstinately refuses to venerate, the inconvenience is less that you might suppose; they argue by phonograph! When my father has something on his mind that’s stifling him, he immediately grabs his phonograph and obtains relief by charging it to transmit recriminations, admonitions, bitter reproaches and other niceties. No objections and no replies to spoil anything—the phono receives it all; my father has it brought here into this room, once devoted to domestic scenes, and, calmed down, he goes back to work.

  “For her part, my mother, when she has some grievance against her husband, or some observation to make, uses the same method, and, entirely at her ease, also confines her sermon to her phonograph. Tranquil thereafter, the cloud having passed, the sky clears. When one finds her at table at meal-times, the matter does not come up; no one has any suspicion that Monsieur and Madame Philox Lorris have just been berating one another. And I suspect that, a long time ago, each of them stopped listening to what the other’s phonograph had been instructed to tell them. The phonographs are preaching in the desert.

  “My father sends his phono, my mother arrives with hers, starts the machines going and leaves. No one listens to the duet! To avoid wasting his time, my father has fitted receivers to the machines that record replies to the messages, but he refrains from listening to them. Thus, he has recordings of all the conjugal rows that have taken place over the last twenty years—a fine collection, neatly categorized—in a cardboard box.”

  During these explanations, the phonographs had fallen silent; the quarrel had ended.

  “I suspect you, my dear Estelle,” said Georges, “of harboring the same prejudices against science as my mother. You can see, however, that there’s some good in it! Thanks to science, one can live on very bad terms with someone, without scratching one another’s eyes out on a daily basis! When we’re married, if we need to argue, shall we make use of phonographs too?

  “Agreed,” Estelle replied, laughing.

  Having found he document for which she was searching, Estelle left the room devoted to domestic scenes and went back to the secretariat hall.

  “My dear Estelle,” Georges said to her, “you’ve just seen one of the most fortunate applications of the phonograph; there are others as well. Thus, my mother was able to let me hear the first cry I uttered on my arrival in the world and collected phonographically by my father. Just as we have the first whimper of an infant surprised at birth on a phonographic recording, we can retain in the same fashion, in order to be able to hear them again in perpetuity, at will, the last words of a parent, the last recommendations of an ancestor on his death-bed. Hazard has allowed me, these last few days, to appreciate another application, totally different but no less fortunate…I must tell you about it. You know that our friend Sulfatin, the man of bronze, has been causing us anxieties for some time by virtue of his surprising distraction? I have the key to the mystery; I know the cause of that distraction. Sulfatin has simply been led astray; science no longer has entire possession of his heart.”

  “Monsieur La Héronnière already perceived that in Bretagne.”

  “But there’s much more now. Can you imagine that, the other day, in order to make a request for information, I was about to go into the private office where Sulfatin shuts himself away to meditate when he has some major difficulty to overcome, when I heard a woman’s voice saying: ‘My dear Sulfatin, I adore you and I shall never adore anyone but you!’ Imagine my amazement! In truth, I risked an indiscreet glance through the door, which was ajar, but I did not see the lady; it was a phonograph on Sulfatin’s work-bench that was speaking.”

  “And you went away?”

  “No, I went in. As if waking up with a start, Sulfatin immediately stopped his phonograph and gravely said to me: ‘The Chicago Academy of Science again, sending me a few objections relative to our latest applications of electricity. These American scientists are such donkeys!’ You can imagine how hard it was for me to remain serious. They have a pretty voice, his American scientists! Well, we can laugh a little, if you care to follow me to Sulfatin’s office; I think I’ve prepared a little surprise for him...”

  “What have you done?”

  Georges stopped on the threshold of the laboratory. “Now that I think about it, perhaps I’ve gone a bit far...”

  “How’s that?”

  “In truth, I must admit that I’ve been a trifle indelicate. While Sulfatin had his back turned, I stole the ‘American scientist’s’ phonographic recording and...”

  “And?”

  “And I made five hundred copies, which I placed in the phonographs of the physics laboratory, linked by a wire. I’ve prepared everything—it’s quite simple. Soon, Sulfatin, when he sits down in his armchair, will switch on the current, and five hundred phonographs will repeat to him what the American scientist said the other day...”

  “My God! Poor Monsieur Sulfatin. What have you done? Quickly, cut that wire.”

  Georges hesitated. “You think I’ve gone a bit too far? But it’s too late—here’s Sulfatin!”

  In the vast laboratory with its various installations, amid apparatus of all dimensions and the strangest forms and a formidable clutter of books, papers, retorts and instruments, fifty scientists were gravely at work, variously bearded but all bald, plunged in meditation or attentively following experiments in progress. Sulfatin had just come in, walking slowly, with his left hand behind his back, tapping the tip of his nose with the index finger of his right hand—which was, in him, a symptom of profound meditation.
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  Without anyone raising their head, he went to his own corner and slowly pulled out his armchair. He took some time assuming his place, moving papers and apparatus on the large table-top. Georges seeing that he was not yet sitting down, was about to leap forward and cut the wire in order to stop his practical joke, but all of a sudden, Sulfatin, still seemingly preoccupied, let himself fall into his chair.

  It was like a coup de théâtre,

  Ding! Ding! Ding!

  The electric bells of all the phonographs made everyone raise their heads. Sulfatin looked at the little phonograph placed on his desk with an expression of amazement. The bell stopped, and all the phonographs immediately began speaking in unison.

  “Sulfatin, my love, you’re charming and delightful; I adore you, and I swear never to adore anyone but you!”

  “Sulfatin, my love, you’re charming and delightful; I adore you and I swear...”

  “Sulfatin, my love, you’re charming and delightful...”

  The phonographs did not stop. As soon as they arrived at the final exclamation mark, energetically emphasized, the sentence began again, softly modulated.

  All the scientists had snapped out of their meditations or abandoned their experiments; standing up, as bewildered as Sulfatin must be, they looked alternately at their colleagues and the indiscreet phonographs. Eventually, some of them—the oldest—burst out laughing, dating malicious glances at Sulfatin, while others, blushing, suddenly scowled, furrowing their brows indignantly as if they had been personally offended.

  “Sulfatin, my love. You’re charming and de...”

  The phonographs stopped; Sulfatin had just cut the connection.

  Taking advantage of the general confusion, Georges and Estelle closed the door again without having been spotted. They ran away, while a hubbub of exclamations and protests was still resounding in the room: Ohs and Ahs, and comments along the lines of That’s a bit much! That’s scandalous! What turpitude! and You’re a disgrace to French science!