The Absolute at Large

by Karel Čapek

  No value means no market. No market means no distribution. No distribution means no goods. And no goods means greater demand, higher prices, bigger profits and larger businesses. And you had turned your backs upon gain and conceived an uncontrollable antipathy to all figures whatsoever. You had ceased to look upon the material world with the eyes of consumption, market, and sale. You stood with clasped hands staring at the beauty and the profusion of the world. And in the meanwhile the supply of tacks ran out. At last none remained. Only somewhere, far away, they were piled up as by an inexhaustible avalanche.

  Even you, ye master bakers, went out in front of your shops, and cried, “Come then, children of God, in the name of Christ, our Master, come and take these loaves and flour and biscuits and rolls. Have pity on us and take them for nothing.”

  And you, ye drapers, brought your bales of cloth and rolls of linen out into the street, and wept with joy as you cut off five or ten metre lengths for everyone who went by, and begged them for the love of God to accept your little gift; and only when your shop was completely empty of its wares did you fall on your knees and thank God that He had given you the opportunity to clothe your neighbours as He clothes the lilies in the field.

  And you, ye butchers and dealers in cooked meats, you took baskets of meat and sausages and polonies on your heads, and went from door to door, and knocked or rang, and begged everybody just to help themselves to whatever they fancied.

  And all you who sell boots, furniture, tobacco, bags, spectacles, jewels, carpets, whips, ropes, tin-ware, china, books, false teeth, vegetables, medicines, or whatever else one can think of—all of you, touched by the breath of God, poured out into the street, a prey to the generous panic born of grace divine, and gave away all you possessed; after which, either coming together or standing on the threshold of your emptied shops and warehouses, you declared to one another with glowing eyes, “Now, brother, I have eased my conscience.”

  In a few days it became evident that there was nothing left to give away. But there was also nothing left to buy. The Absolute had pillaged and completely cleaned out every place of business.

  Meanwhile, far away from the cities, there poured from the machines millions of metres of wool and linen, Niagaras of lump sugar, all the teeming, magnificent and inexhaustible profusion of the divine over-production of every kind of goods. Some feeble efforts to divide and distribute this flood of commodities were quelled at the outset. It simply could not be mastered.

  For that matter, it is possible that this economic catastrophe had also another cause: currency inflation. You see, the Absolute had likewise taken possession of the Government mints and printing establishments, and every day it flung out upon the world hundreds of millions of banknotes, coins, and securities. Utter devaluation was the result: before long a packet of five thousand mark notes meant nothing more than so much waste paper. Whether you offered a halfpenny or half a million for a child’s lollypop, it was all the same from the business point of view: you wouldn’t get the lollypop, anyhow, for they had all disappeared. Figures had lost all significance. This collapse of the numerical system is, in any case, the natural consequence of the infinitude and omnipotence of God.

  At the same time, food shortage and even famine had already made themselves felt in the cities. The organization for the maintenance of supplies had broken down completely for the reasons just mentioned.

  Of course there were Ministries of Supply, Commerce, Social Welfare, and Railways, and by our ideas it should have been possible to get control of the gigantic stream of factory production in time, prevent the goods from spoiling, and transport them carefully to the places which the liberality of the Absolute had despoiled. Unhappily this plan was not followed. The personnel of each of the Ministries were the victims of grace in unusual power, and spent their office hours in joyful prayer. In the Ministry of Supply a lady clerk named Sarova controlled the situation, preaching on the subject of the Seven Degrees; in the Ministry of Commerce the head of a department, Mr. Winkler, proclaimed a severe asceticism which resembled the teachings of the Hindu Yoga. True, this excessive zeal lasted only a fortnight, being succeeded (doubtless through special inspiration from the Absolute) by a period of extraordinary devotion to duty. The departments responsible worked feverishly day and night to avert a breakdown of food supplies, but apparently it was even then too late. The only result was that each department produced daily from fifteen to fifty-three thousand bills and enactments, which by decree of the Inter-Ministerial Commission were carted away daily on motor lorries to the Vltava River.

  The food situation assuredly offered the most terrible problem. Luckily, however, there remained (I am, of course, describing conditions only in our own country) Our Jolly Farmers. And here, gentlemen, you must learn that from time immemorial we have had the saying: “With all due respect to anyone else, our countryfolk are the backbone of the nation.” In fact, there’s an old rhyme about it, something like this: “Who is the man so strong and tall, Whose daily labour feeds us all? The farmer!”

  Who was the man with whom the feverish prodigality of the Absolute came to a halt; who was the man who stood unmoved amid the panic of the markets of the world; who was the man who did not fold his hands in his lap, who did not let himself be carried off his feet, but “remained faithful to the law of his being”? Who was the man so strong and tall whose daily labour fed us all? The farmer!

  Yes, it was the farmer (and the same thing happened elsewhere), who by his conduct saved the world from starvation. Just imagine the consequences if he had been seized, like the townsfolk, with the mania for giving everything away to the poor and needy; if he had given away all his corn, his cows and calves, his chickens and geese and potatoes. Within a fortnight famine would have stalked through the cities, and the country-folk themselves would have been sucked dry, starved out, left stripped of all their supplies. Thanks to our sturdy farmer, this was not to be. Whether you explain it after the event, as being due to the marvellous instinct of the country-dweller, or to his steadfast, pure, deep-rooted tradition, or finally to the fact that in the rural districts the Absolute was less potent, because in the small argricultral holdings the Karburator was not so widely used as in industry—in short, explain it as you please, the fact remains that amid the general collapse of the economic and financial structure, and of the whole market, the farmer gave nothing away. He did not give away even a wisp of straw or a grain of oats. Calm and unmoved amid the ruins of the old industrial and commercial order, our farmer went on selling what he had. And he sold it dear. He sensed through some mysterious instinct the calamitous significance of over-production, and so he put on the brakes in time. He did this by raising his prices, however crammed his granaries might be. And it is a testimony to the amazing soundness of the core of our countryfolk that without saying a word to each other, without any organization, led only by the redeeming inward voice, they raised their prices everywhere and for everything. By thus putting up the price of everything, the farmer saved it from destruction. In the midst of insensate profusion he preserved an island of scarcity and costliness. He foresaw, of a surety, that thereby he was saving the world.

  For while other goods, being made valueless by being given away gratis, vanished from the market at once as a natural result, foodstuffs continued to be sold. Of course you had to go out into the country to fetch them. The baker and butcher and retailer had nothing they could give you except brotherly love and pious words. So you took up your knapsack and went a hundred and twenty kilometres out. You went from farm to farm, and in one place you bought a kilo of potatoes in exchange for a gold watch, in another an egg for a pair of opera-glasses, in another a kilo of bran for a harmonium or a typewriter. And so you had something to eat. You see, if the farmer had given it all away, you would have been done for long ago. But the farmer saved even a pound of butter for you—of course only in order to dispose of it for a Persian rug or a costly national costume.

  Well, who brought the
mad communistic experiments of the Absolute to a halt? Who did not lose his head amid the epidemic of righteousness? Who withstood the disastrous tide of superabundance and saved us from destruction without sparing our persons or our purses?

  Who is the man so strong and tall

  Whose daily labour feeds us all?

  The farmer!

  CHAPTER XVI

  IN THE MOUNTAINS

  IT was noon at the Hut in Bear Valley. Rudolf Marek sat curled up on the veranda; he looked at a newspaper, but he soon folded it up again, and gazed out over the far-stretching chain of the Giant Mountains. Stillness, a vast and crystalline stillness, lay upon the mountains, and the man curled up in the chair straightened himself and took a deep breath.

  Then the tiny figure of a man appeared from below making towards the Hut.

  “How pure the air is here!” thought Marek on his veranda. “Here, Heaven be praised, the Absolute is still latent, it still lies under a spell, hidden in everything, in these mountains and forests, in the sweet grass and the blue sky. Here it does not rush about all over the place, waking terror or working magic; it simply dwells in all matter, a God deeply and quietly present, not even breathing, only in silence watching over all. . . .” Marek clasped his hands in a mute prayer of thankfulness. “Dear God, how pure the air is here!”

  The man who had come up from below stopped under the veranda.

  “Well, Marek, so I’ve found you at last!”

  Marek looked up, not greatly pleased. The man who stood before him was G. H. Bondy.

  “So I’ve found you at last!” Bondy said again.

  “Come along up, then,” said Marek, with obvious reluctance. “What the deuce has brought you here? Heavens, man, you do look queer!”

  G. H. Bondy did indeed look sunken and yellow; he had gone very grey about the temples, and lines of weariness made dark shadows around his eyes. He seated himself without a word beside Marek and squeezed his hands together between his knees.

  “Come now, what’s wrong with you?” Marek pressed him after a painful silence.

  Bondy raised his arms.

  “I’m going to retire, old man. You see, it’s got me too . . . me!”

  “What, religion?” shouted Marek, recoiling as though from a leper.

  Bondy nodded. Was it not a tear of shame that trembled on his lashes? Marek whistled softly. “What—it’s got you now? My poor old fellow!”

  “No,” cried Bondy quickly, wiping his eyes. “Don’t think I’m not all right at present; I’ve got under, you might say, Rudy, I’ve beaten it. But, do you know, when it came over me, it was the very happiest moment of my life. You have no idea, Rudy, what tremendous will-power it takes to shake that off.”

  “I can well believe it,” said Marek gravely. “And tell me, what sort of . . . er . . . symptoms did you have?”

  “Love for my neighbour,” Bondy whispered. “Man, I was frantic with love. I would never have believed it possible to feel anything like it.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “So, then, you’ve . . .” Marek began.

  “I’ve thrown it off. Rather like a fox that gnaws its own leg off when it’s caught in a trap. But I’m still confoundedly weak after the struggle. An utter wreck, Rudy. As if I’d have typhoid. That’s why I’ve come here, to pick up again, you see. . . . Is it all clear up here?”

  “Quite clear; not a single trace of it so far. You can only sense it . . . in Nature and everything; but then one could do that before—one always could, in the mountains.”

  Bondy kept a gloomy silence. “Well, and what do you make of it all?” he said absently, after a while. “Have you any notion up here of what’s going on down below?”

  “I get the papers. Even from the papers one can to a certain extent deduce what is happening. Of course these journalists distort everything; still, anyone who can read. . . . I say, Bondy, are things really so awful?”

  G. H. Bondy shook his head.

  “A lot worse than you think. Simply desperate. Listen,” he whispered brokenly. “He’s everywhere by now. I think that . . . that He’s got a definite plan.”

  “A plan?” cried Marek, leaping to his feet.

  “Don’t shout so. He has some kind of plan, my friend. And He’s going about it deuced cleverly. Tell me, Marek, what is the greatest power in the world?”

  “England,” said Marek without hesitation.

  “Not at all. Industry is the greatest power in the world. And the so-called ‘proletariat’ are likewise the greatest power in the world. Do you see the scheme now?”

  “No, I don’t see it at all.”

  “He has got control of them both. He has both industry and the masses in His power. So everything is in His grasp. Everything goes to show that He is thinking of world-supremacy. That’s how things are, Marek.”

  Marek sat down. “Wait a bit, Bondy,” he said. “I’ve been thinking a good deal about it up here in the mountains. I’ve been following up everything and comparing the signs. I tell you, Bondy, I don’t even give a thought to anything else. I certainly don’t know what He is aiming at, but I do know this, Bondy, that He’s following no particular plan. He doesn’t know Himself what He wants and how to get it. Possibly He wants to do something big, but doesn’t know how to set about it. I’ll tell you something, Bondy. So far He’s only a force of Nature. Politically, He’s a fearful ignoramus. In the matter of economics He’s a simple savage. After all, He ought to have submitted to the Church; she has had experience. . . . You know, He sometimes strikes me as being so childish. . . .”

  “Don’t you believe it, Rudy,” G. H. Bondy returned heavily. “He knows what He wants. That’s why He plunged into large-scale industry. He is far more up to date than we ever thought.”

  “That is only His play,” urged Marek. “He only wants something to occupy Himself with. Don’t you see, there’s a sort of god-like boyishness about it. Wait, I know what you want to say. As a worker He is tremendous. It is simply amazing what He can bring off. But, Bondy, it is so senseless that there can’t be any plan in it.”

  “The most senseless things in history were systematically prosecuted plans,” declared G. H. Bondy.

  “My dear Bondy,” said Marek quickly. “Look at all the papers I have here. I follow up every step He takes. I tell you that there isn’t a scrap of consistency about them. They’re all merely the improvisations of omnipotence. He performs tremendous tricks, but at random, disconnectedly, confusedly. His activity isn’t organized a scrap. He came into the world altogether too unprepared. That’s where His weakness lies. He impresses me, but I see His weak points. He is not a good organizer, and perhaps never has been. He has flashes of genius, but He is unsystematic. I’m surprised that you haven’t got the better of Him, Bondy, a wide-awake fellow like you.”

  “You can’t do anything with Him,” Bondy asserted. “He attacks you in your innermost soul, and you’re done for. When He can’t convince you by reason, He sends miraculous enlightenment upon you. You know what He did with Saul.”

  “You are running away from Him,” said Marek, “but I am running after Him, and I’m close at His heels. I know a bit about Him already, enough to get out a warrant for Him! Description: infinite, invisible, and formless. Place of residence: everywhere in the vicinity of atomic motors. Occupation: mystical Communism. Crimes for which He is wanted: alienation of private property, illegal practice of medicine, offences against the Public Assemblies Act, interference with officials in the execution of their duty, and so forth. Distinguishing marks: omnipotence. In short, have Him arrested.”

  “You’re making fun of it,” sighed G. H. Bondy. “Don’t do it. He has beaten us.”

  “Not yet!” cried Marek. “Look here, Bondy. He doesn’t know how to govern yet. He has got into a fearful muddle with His new undertakings. For instance, He has gone in for overproduction instead of first building up a miraculous railway system. Now He’s in the mire Himself—what He produces has no valu
e. That miraculous profusion of everything was a fearful fiasco. In the second place, He turned the brains of the authorities with His mysticism and upset the whole machinery of Government, which otherwise He could now be using to maintain order. You can make revolutions anywhere else you like, but not in the Government offices; even if the world’s to be brought to an end, the thing to do is to destroy the universe first and take the Government offices afterwards. That’s how it is, Bondy. And in the third place, like the crudest of doctrinaire Communists, He has done away with the currency and thereby with one stroke paralysed the circulation of commodities. He did not know that the laws of the market are stronger than the laws of God. He did not know that production without trade is utterly senseless. He knew nothing whatever. He behaved like . . . like a . . . well, to put it shortly, as if He would destroy with one hand what He made with the other. Here we have miraculous profusion, and along with it disastrous shortage. He is all-powerful, yet He’s achieved only chaos. I believe that He once did really create the laws of Nature, the primordial lizards, the mountains, and anything else you like. But business, Bondy, our modern industry and commerce, that I swear He did not create, for He simply doesn’t know a thing about it. No, Bondy, industry and commerce are not of God.”

  “Hold on,” said G. H. Bondy. “I know that the consequences of His acts are calamitous . . . immeasurable. . . . But what can we do about it?”