In the morning, it became visible that what had been reckoned an event was about to become a disaster. The policemen responsible for manning the machines were exhausted by fatigue and only working tiredly. At about nine o’clock, when he pale daylight had difficulty piercing the gray backcloth of the sky, the dissolving salts required for the alimentation of the apparatus ran out.
While people ran around all the depots in the city, soon realizing that all the reserves had been exhausted by the exceptional requirements of the night, the snow continued to fall with a ferocious regularity, a scourge more terrible in its mild appearance than a devouring but extinguishable fire or invasive but fleeting floodwater, a pale mass rising in imperceptible layers to disquieting heights, eroding and devouring houses at the base, giving the eye the sensation of an entire city buried in a white immensity.
The electric street-lights, left illuminated since the previous evening, shone at ground level over the snow, sparkling with crystals, when dusk came again; the henceforth-invincible scourge had closed all doors. The sounds of the city were stifled beneath that thick, soft carpet.
A great torpor reigned, when, suddenly, toward midnight, a violent wind blowing from due north traversed space, shaking and breaking up the clouds, tearing them like masses of cotton wool, chasing them across the immense sky. And the moon appeared, cold and pure against the black firmament, where a few rare stars were quivering in the depths.
The thermometer descended well below zero and the snowy mass solidified into uneven ice. Then, clamors rose up from the city, the flames of torches flickered in the streets and the squares, and human masses escaped through windows that had become doors, fearful and dismal, traversed by the shrill cries of women, disrupted by sudden falls, forming terrible eddies in the obscure river of beings in flight.
Forgetting those that the snow slowly buried in obstructed houses, the people ran toward the only possible salvation. At the doors of garages, in the shops where airships, ready rigged, extended in the shadows, awaiting the moment to resume their flight in the open sky, groups collided, swearing at one another and fighting.
There was no longer any right, or law, neither servants nor masters. The supreme struggle for existence commenced.
In the radiant light of the second day the engines of the airships began to make their formidable respiration heard. On the white bed of snow, there were black and red stains, of mud and blood, were crowds had trampled and fought.
Finally, two airships rose up, to the cries of their triumphant passengers. The gigantic machines, of a solid but old model, only had canvas propellers, rendered rigid by the ice, when they tried to turn under the impulsion of their robust metallic armatures, cracks were heard in the canvas, here and there, and the progress of the airships became awkward and heavy. A false impulsion by one of the engineers caused their prows to collide. Both oscillated, drew back, and then resumed their convergent course. Then a collision more terrible than the preceding one occurred. One of the disemboweled ships fell like a great dead bird, and, breaking through the crust of ice, plunged profoundly into the snow, while the other, lurching like a doomed kite, came to plunge, skimming the surface, into the middle of the howling crowd.
No one ran to help the wounded. In any case, the sky overhead was darkening again, snow was threatening. The rigged airships, boarded in haste, were launched into the air. A few soon disappeared into the white depths; others fell, their propellers hanging limply, as if some invisible hunter had pierced them with his arrows. Nothing more: to the first layer of frozen snow a new layer was added by falling flakes.
Outside the suburbs, files extended like caravans of black ants. They could not advance beyond a kilometer; soon, they ran into inaccessible banks, and then, the cold afflicting them with immobility, they stayed where they were, frozen in their march. After a brief interval, everything became white again, and nothing revealed the place where the buried caravan had passed.
In the city—that city of six million beings—the human masses had melted, condensed into a single mass, huddled in the immense central square dominated by the metal tower. Already, the snow had reached half way up the vast arches supporting the first stage. Weary and shivering, men, women and children gazed, waiting for help, incapable of action. Around them, in the immense circle of the horizon, only the summits of edifices any longer emerged. The city had already disappeared, leveled by the snow.
In the air there was no sound, not a single wing.
Finally, among those who were still capable of movement after three days of intense cold and invasive snow, a group formed that began to march toward the tower. There salvation might lie, if the snow continued to fall.
There were cried of “The tower! The tower!” And a counter-movement began among the people, many of whom had not thought at first about that refuge.
The elevators were no longer functioning, already seized by the icy snow. They hastened toward the stairs. There was a frightful struggle there. Before that narrow passage people grabbed one another by the throat or by the hair; in the heavy air, the sound of gunshots was scarcely perceptible, along with a brief flash; and black masses fell, their flesh splashed with blood. With teeth clenched, without a cry, they fought.
Finally, the file of the victorious, pale, their hands red, plunged into the narrow stairway. Shivering in the icy wind, not daring to grip the metal guard-rails, which burned the palms if touched, they climbed the steps. And behind them, and around them, the virgin snow rose too, extending its immaculate cloak over Paris.
When they reached the beacon, night had fallen again: a night as pure as the one before, with a blue-tinted moon, sending darts with a thousand icy points at the earth. On high, in the stairway of the tower and on the platform of the beacon, there was a great and formidable silence. And the moonlight, stiff forms, with convulsed faces, leaned over, through the iron latticework, searching the dark horizon for something that was not there.
At daybreak, on the platform of the beacon, clinging to the bars, there were a few men, eyes terribly open—eyes of stone now—frozen forever, gazing in vain at the four points of the horizon from which something might come.
Paris was dead.
The snow soon changed into an immense glacier. The rains of spring came, which washed the mass and made it shine in the sunlight like a lake of glaucous crystal. And when, in that part of the vast polar desert, a few airships still risked themselves in the south, the explorers perceived quite distinctly, beneath the transparent ice, the enormous mass of the edifices, steeples, bell-towers and terraces of what had once been marvelous Paris.
Léon Daudet: The Automaton
(1898)
I was in Hamburg, the most mysterious city in Europe, where one can find a factory of monsters, a repository of ferocious animals, and houses of joy of a magical luxury.
It was winter: a gray or yellow sky replete with snow, and that indefatigable snow buried the old Medieval houses, the laborers’ cottages in wood sculpted by decay, the churches, the docks and the harbor. It caused a great silence, and the idea of so much mute life under the snow frightened me.
I spent my monotonous days at the hotel. I had brought with me as a companions the Introduction à la médecine de l’esprit by my friend Maurice de Fleury.31 The new and troubling ideas with which that work swarms delighted me. Although I scarcely believe in doctors, and even less in medicine, I marveled to see the mechanistic theories of Spinoza regarding the movements of the soul taken up again and adapted to the context of modern science by a subtle, clever and sincere mind. I thought that the book inaugurated a singular order of research and avenged literature somewhat for the base scoria of a Lombroso.
The door opened. A servant brought me a card: Dr. Otto Serpius.
I knew that unusual name. I got up to go and meet him. He was already advancing toward me, tall and stooped, like an ape; the white hair and beard matched the wan snowy day. The dark eyes sparkled beneath bushy eyebrows. The cheeks and forehead
were broad, engraved with a thousand wrinkles; the features, shriveled like the web of a dead spider, expressed malice and pride. I noticed the hands, large and hairy, animated by a slight tremor.
“I heard that you had arrived in Hamburg,” the individual said to me. “I came to invite you to a little visit, which, I think, will interest you.” With a slight embarrassment, he added: “Bur it’s necessary for you to come with me right away, because today is the one only I have before leaving tomorrow on a voyage.”
“I’ll come with you, Doctor,” I replied.
The people who had recommended me to Otto Serpius had warned me about the eccentricities of the scientist’s character; some people thought he was mad, others that he was the greatest genius in Europe.
His eyes, which were inspecting everything, fell upon Fleury’s book.
“Oho!” he exclaimed, with interest. “You Frenchmen are on the road to wisdom, then. The medicine of the mind—but it’s the only one, my dear fellow, the only one. And has Monsieur Fleury kept the promises of that noble title?”
“You’ll judge for yourself, when you’ve read that fine work. Official science is rampant in my country, but from time to time, a clear audacious and powerful mind emerges that breaks down a worm-eaten door, and one sees admirable horizons...”
After a long and tortuous walk, rendered difficult by the snow, through the sordid and fantastic labyrinth of Hamburg, we finally arrived at an old Gothic building, a town house opening directly on to the street, of which that strange city has many. It resembled a mass of flour beneath the somber crepuscular sky.
“Here it is,” said my companion. He took an enormous key from his pocket.
The lock grated. The snow was blocking the door, and I admired the vigor of Otto Serpius as his muscular hands agitated the batten, which finally yielded and let us through.
The darkness of the dwelling impressed me immediately. I could make out, dimly, suits of armor: warrior carapaces posed as if holding a lance or a sword.
“My guardians and servants,” said Otto, laughing—which showed two gleaming rows of yellow teeth.
We climbed a wooden spiral staircase whose steps creaked and whose handrail was unsteady. My guide opened another door.
We found ourselves in a vast room, suggestive of a workshop and a laboratory. Daylight was coming through a vast bay window. Monotonous files of rooftops extended all the way to the river, where the masts of ships were visible. On a long table, which extended for the whole length of the room, all the instruments necessary for physiological research were accumulated: glass cages, flasks, balances. Sitting before that gigantic display, motionless, very attentive to his work, I saw a bizarre individual dressed in black velvet. There was a little skullcap on his round head. He did not look up when we came in.
“That’s you assistant?” I said to Otto Serpius.
He smiled cruelly. “I’ve forgotten something downstairs. I’ll leave you for a moment, if you’ll permit.”
And I remained alone in the laboratory with the famulus, who did not budge.
The silence and that petrifaction irritated me. “Terrible weather for research,” I said, loudly.
Abruptly, the individual looked up, and I perceived the most comical face in the world: a large nose, a black beard, two globular eyes wide with amazement. Then, with a rigidity of movement that puzzled me, he stood up, pushed back his chair, turned toward me and started singing a song with words by Heinrich Heine, to a tune by Schumann, in a grotesque and nasal voice.
When that brief performance was finished, he asked, in German: “Are you satisfied?” And without waiting for a reply, he resumed his work.
I did not know what to think. The strangest suppositions went through my mind. Undoubtedly, Otto Serpius was employing a madman. I took a few steps toward the phenomenon and saw that his occupation consisted of arranging packets of equal size, similar to those that pharmacists make up, in a long and narrow box. He proceeded with that task in a fantastically rapid and precise manner. The packets succeeded one another between his agile and stiff fingers, which superimposed them with a brief flick of the thumb and a delicate push of the index finger.
“You have a splendid voice, Monsieur,” I said, by way of a compliment, desirous of hearing the sound that had troubled me so violently again.
Without raising his head, he replied, in his nasal but very correct German: “It’s necessary to put on a little performance from time to time.”
Suddenly, he stood up again, his round eyes expressing anger. He thumped the table, which rendered a dull sound, and addressed me furiously. “Are you going to let me work, finally?”
A few gross insults followed. And he remained standing, trembling with fury from head to toe, to such an extent that his hairy chin was twitching convulsively.
He really is a madman! I’m in a pretty pickle. He’s going to attack me and I have no means of defense.
As I made that melancholy reflection, Otto Serpius came back into the laboratory, and laughed.
“What’s this? What’s this? You’re misbehaving again, Vladislas! Give me the pleasure of sitting down and remaining tranquil. Otherwise, I’ll make you sorry.”
The monster obeyed.
Otto murmured in my ear: “Well, what do you think of him?” His face expressed malice.
“I expected, on coming to your home, some curious spectacle. I wasn’t mistaken.”
“He’s excitable, but not malevolent,” said the doctor, inviting me to sit beside him, in a large armchair. He’s a very strange fellow. He doesn’t understand French, so we can speak freely in that language. Can you spare me a few minutes?”
“I’ve nothing better to do in Hamburg.”
Then, in that redoubtable laboratory, in the presence of the snow, the dusk and the impassive Vladislas, the doctor said: “That fellow would astonish all my colleagues greatly, but I conceal his existence carefully and only make use of him for my own research. He has no father or mother. Such as you see him, he’s the child of the flask and the furnace. You seem astonished! Hamburg is the city of prodigies. Ha ha—I’m an old enchanter myself.”
“So Vladislas is an automaton?” I asked, very intrigued.
“An automaton, yes, but of a new kind, made of flesh and bone. More precisely, Vladislas is a homunculus. His manufacture gave me a great deal of difficulty. He’s the triumph of my vigorous old age. I’ll try to explain my efforts and their miraculous result, briefly.”
Otto Serpius commenced, in his colorful language: “Scarcely had I entered the grotto of science than I was struck by the poor research in which my colleagues wore away their brains. It seemed to me that they were afraid of delving into the mysterious grotto, where one could nevertheless glimpse singular dormant miracles—for scientific darkness”—he emphasized those words forcefully—“is nothing but a purée of seeds, the fecund reservoir of the possible. I resolved not to follow their example, and to devote myself, body and soul, to some singular order of research.
“I made a pact with the Devil—ha ha!—which is to say that I made him a gift of the energy that was within me, on condition that he would help me to fabricate a homunculus. A homunculus! That was my dream. A being whom I would dose with sensations and sentiments, who would think in accordance with my law, who would gradually, by the wearing away of the springs, increasingly take on an independent existence. For the great spring that governs us, my dear friend, is fatality: Fatum. That’s where the initial thumbprint of the creator is found.—and haven’t you noticed that with age, that fatality distends, that external powers are removed from our route as we fall apart? I can assure you that old men are much less subject to the stars than young ones. We are gods, in proportion to the energy with which we struggle against the sun.”
After that singular remark, Otto Serpius fell silent for a few moments, as if to allow his prophetic observations time to influence my mind.
Vladislas continued his work. Every time I glanced in his direction, I ex
perienced a slight anguish.
The scientist continued: “I won’t go into the minute detail of my failures, or my recipes. Let it suffice you to know that I recommenced the Great Work twenty times over, with the requisite formulae of conjuration. The house shook. A comet appeared over Hamburg, and great scourges burst forth, for we only wrench the partial secret of life from Mystery at the price of veritable hecatombs. Fortunately, my fellow citizens, prey to the ideas of civilization—the most false and absurd of all—never suspected the true cause of the disasters that overwhelmed them. Amid the horrors of cholera, the death-rattles, in the odor of a universal charnel-house, I continued my rude task. Once—don’t laugh—the Devil appeared to me in the form of a mouse. I was hesitating between two acids; he upset the bad bottle. Another time, it was by means of a great gust of wind that the Evil One announced his presence to me. The wind caused a grimoire whose calculations were false to fly away, and threw another on to my table whose calculations were accurate.
“The cholera continued its vengeful work. A great pride entered into me at having occasioned such a catastrophe. The gleam of my furnace, by night, appeared to me as the breath of the disease. The tocsin deafened me. I had to close the shutters of the laboratory for a month. I dismissed all my servants. Who could be taken into such confidence? I worked alone, drinking stagnant water, nourishing myself on exotic herbs brought back from my travels. Those large tropical fruits, dried up but still alive, pouted into my veins the ardent poison of research. My ideas seemed to be burning; the furnace roared night and day, such that I ceased to hear the tocsin.
The Nickel Man Page 13
