The electric train stations were mobbed by huge crowds. Train tickets were purchased for huge sums or obtained by force. People spent entire fortunes for seats on piloted balloons that could not ascend with more than ten passengers … Just as a train was departing, more people would force their way into the carriages and refuse to give up their hard-won places. Crowds stopped hospital trains, dragged the patients out of their carriages, took their places on the berths and forced the driver to continue on. By the end of May, the entire rolling stock of the Republic’s railways ran only on the routes between the capital and the ports. Trains coming from Star City were packed; passengers stood in every passageway, and even dared to stand outside, although the modern electric trains went at such high speeds that this put them in danger of suffocation. Steamship companies from Australia, South America and South Africa made money hand over fist transporting emigrants from the Republic to other countries. Two southern companies specialising in balloon travel made equally enormous fortunes, managing to make ten or so trips to evacuate the last billionaires remaining in Star City. Trains travelling towards Star City, on the contrary, were all but empty. Not for any price could a person be found who was willing to work in Star City; only the occasional eccentric tourists—thrill-seekers—would go to the plagued city. It has been calculated that from the beginning of the emigration to June 22nd, when the trains ceased to run properly, one and a half million people—that is, almost two thirds of the population—left Star City via the six railway lines.
Chairman of the City Council Horace de Ville earned everlasting fame at this time for his resourcefulness, strength of will and courage. On June 5th, a special session of the City Council, in accordance with the decisions of the Legislature and the Council of Directors, granted de Ville the title of Commander-in-Chief and dictatorial power over the city, placing city funds, the national guard and the city works at his disposal. Government institutions and archives were thereupon moved without delay from Star City to North Port. The name of Horace de Ville should be written in gold letters alongside the noblest names in humanity. For a month and a half he fought against growing anarchy in the city. He managed to gather about him a group of equally self-sacrificing assistants. For some time he was able to maintain discipline and obedience among the national guard and municipal workers, who were gripped by terror at the scope of the disaster and steadily decimated by the epidemic. Hundreds of thousands owe Horace de Ville their lives, since it was due to his energy and good management that they managed to escape. He eased the final days of thousands more by making it possible for them to die peacefully in hospital instead of beneath the blows of a maddened mob. Finally, de Ville preserved for mankind a chronicle—there is no better word for the brief, but informative and precise telegrams he sent daily, and sometimes even several times a day, to the Republic’s provisional government at North Port—of the entire catastrophe.
De Ville’s first task in the capacity of city Commander-in-Chief was to try to calm the anxious population. Manifestos were issued, pointing out that the mental infection was transmitted most easily to people who were agitated, and appealing to healthy, stable people to exert influence on those who were weak and highly-strung. In addition, de Ville established relations with the Society for Combating the Epidemic and gave its members jurisdiction over all public places, theatres, assembly halls, squares and streets. In those days hardly an hour went by without the discovery of more cases of illness. First here, then there, the behaviour of individuals or whole groups of people would clearly demonstrate their madness. For the most part the stricken, aware of their condition, would immediately try to get help. But under the influence of a disordered mind, they would express this desire through some kind of hostile action against whoever was nearby. They might want to hurry home or to a clinic, but instead they fled in panic to the city’s outskirts. It might occur to them to ask someone for help, but instead they would seize random passers-by by the throat and choke them or give them a beating, sometimes even wounding them with a knife or stick. Because of this, the appearance of a person infected with “contradiction” would cause crowds to flee en masse. It was at such times that the members of the Society would come to their aid. Some of them took the ill in hand, calmed them and directed them to the nearest hospital; others tried to reassure the crowd that there was no danger whatsoever, that it was just a new misfortune that everyone had to contend with, using whatever strength they had.
At theatres and meetings cases of sudden illness very often led to tragic consequences. At the opera several hundred in the audience were seized by mass insanity, and instead of expressing their delight by applauding the singers, they rushed the stage and showered them with blows. At the Drama Theatre a suddenly stricken actor who was supposed to portray a suicide fired several shots into the audience. Of course the revolver was not loaded, but the nervous tension generated by the incident caused the illness already latent in many of the spectators to surface. In the subsequent confusion, during which the understandable panic was aggravated by the “contradictory” behaviour of madmen, several dozens were killed. But the most horrifying event of all took place at the Fireworks Theatre. In a fit of illness, a unit of city police, there to enforce fire safety rules, set fire to the stage and the veils screening the illumination effects. No fewer than 200 people perished in the fire and the ensuing panic. After this happened, Horace de Ville ordered the termination of all theatrical and musical performances in the city.
Residents were faced with an enormous threat from robbers and thieves, for whom the general disorganisation provided vast opportunity. It is alleged that some of these came to Star City from abroad during that time. Some pretended to be mad in order to escape punishment. Others did not even consider it necessary to conceal their open theft with pretence. Gangs of bandits brazenly entered abandoned shops and carried off the more valuable items, broke into private flats and demanded gold, stopped people in the street and took their valuables, watches, rings and bracelets. Violence of every type soon joined company with the thieving, especially violent attacks on women. The city’s Commander-in-Chief sent out entire units of policemen after the criminals, but the criminals were so bold as to meet them in open battle. There were frightening cases in which “contradiction” suddenly broke out among either the criminals or the police, and the stricken turned their weapons on their own companions. At first the Commander-in-Chief exiled arrested thieves from the city. But civilians would free them from their prison wagons so as to take their place on the train. Then the Commander-in-Chief was compelled to condemn convicted bandits and rapists to death. Thus, after an interval of almost three centuries, public execution was reinstituted on earth.
In June the lack of essential items became evident. Provisions and medicines were in short supply. The transport of goods by rail began to be curtailed; production in the city came almost to a complete standstill. De Ville organised city bakeries and the distribution of bread and meat to all residents. Public canteens were established in the city on the model of those already existing in the factories. But it was impossible to find sufficient numbers of workers for them. Volunteers worked themselves to exhaustion, but their number was decreasing. The furnaces of city crematoria blazed around the clock, but the number of dead bodies in the mortuaries failed to diminish—on the contrary, it increased. People began to find bodies on the streets and in private homes. The city’s public works—the telegraph, telephone, light, waterworks and sanitation—served an ever-decreasing number of people. It is amazing how de Ville coped. He had his eye on everything and kept track of it all. From his communications one might think that he knew no rest. And everyone who was saved from the catastrophe has unanimously testified that his work was beyond the highest praise.
In the middle of June the shortage of rail workers began to make an impact. There weren’t enough drivers and conductors to maintain the trains. The first derailment occurred on the Southwest line on June 17th, caused by a driver who ha
d been stricken with “contradiction.” In a fit of illness, the driver flung the entire train off a ten-metre embankment onto an icy field. Almost all the passengers were killed or maimed. The news of this, brought by the next train to the city, was like a thunderbolt. A hospital train was sent without delay. It brought back corpses and mutilated, barely breathing bodies. And then, towards evening of that very same day, news spread of an analogous catastrophe on the Number One line. Two railway lines connecting Star City with the world had now been rendered inoperable. Detachments were sent both from the city and from North Port to repair the rails, but during the winter months in those parts work is all but impossible. It became evident that any hopes of restoring the lines in the near future must be relinquished.
These two catastrophes merely set the stage for what was to follow. The more anxiously the drivers went about their work, the more certain it was that, in a morbid fit, they would repeat the tragic mistakes of their predecessors. Because they feared somehow destroying the train, that is precisely what they did. In the five days from June 18th to 22nd, seven trains crammed with people were flung off precipices. Thousands of people met their death by injury and starvation on the snowy plains. Only a very few were able to find the strength to get back to the city. With these disasters, all six trunk lines joining Star City with the world were ruined. Balloon transport had come to a halt even before that. One balloon had been smashed by an angry mob, enraged that air routes were being reserved for the very rich. All the other balloons, one by one, were also destroyed, most likely for the same reasons that led to the rail catastrophes. The city’s population, reduced by then to 600,000 people, was now cut off from all humanity. For the time being the only remaining connection was the telegraph line.
On June 24th the city’s underground transportation was halted due to a shortage of workers. On June 26th telephones went out of service. On June 27th all chemists’ except the central one were closed. On July 1st the Commander-in-Chief issued an order to all residents to move into the city centre, completely abandoning the periphery, in order to make it easier to maintain order, distribute provisions and render medical assistance. People abandoned their homes and moved into flats deserted by their owners. The sense of private property vanished. No one minded leaving his things behind, no one found it strange to use someone else’s. On the other hand, there were still marauders and bandits, who ought more properly to be considered “psychopaths.” They just kept on looting, and now hoards of gold and precious stones are being discovered in the deserted rooms of abandoned homes, and lying nearby the half-decomposed corpse of the robber.
It is remarkable, however, that despite this widespread death and destruction, life continued much as it always had. There were still merchants who opened new shops, selling—for some reason at incredible prices—wares that had escaped destruction: delicacies, flowers, books, weapons … Shoppers tossed their useless gold away without regret, while skinflint merchants secreted it away, for what purpose no one knows. There were also secret clubs—for cards, wine and debauchery—where miserable people flocked in order to forget the horrors of reality. There the ill mingled with the well, and no one chronicled the horrible scenes that took place there. Two or three newspapers came out as well, the publishers of which struggled in the general havoc to preserve the meaning of the literary word. Issues of these papers, already being bought and sold today at ten or twenty times their original cost, will surely become the most valuable bibliographic curiosities. A vivid and terrifying picture of everything that unhappy city suffered is reflected in these columns of text, written in the midst of the reigning madness and set by half-mad typesetters. Reporters communicated the “metropolitan news” in these pages, writers hotly debated the state of affairs, and satirists even sought to entertain in those tragic days. Meanwhile, the telegrams that arrived from other countries, telling about real, healthy life, must have filled their readers’ hearts with despair, doomed as they were to perish.
Desperate attempts were made to escape death. In the beginning of July an enormous group of men, women and children, led by one John Dieu, set out on a risky journey by foot from the city to the nearest settlement, Londontowne. De Ville understood the madness of their attempt, but was unable to stop them, and he himself supplied them with warm clothing and food rations. That entire group, approximately 2,000 people, lost their way and perished in the snowy plains of that Antarctic country, in the midst of the black, six-month-long night. A fellow called Whiting began to advocate other, more heroic means. He proposed killing everyone stricken with the illness, the idea being that this would bring an end to the epidemic. He found more than a few followers, and if truth be told, in those dark days even the most insane, the most inhumane proposal promising relief would have found its supporters. Whiting and his friends ranged all over the city, breaking into all the houses and exterminating the ill. In the hospitals they carried out large-scale massacres. In their frenzy they killed even people who could only be suspected of being not completely well. Madmen and thieves joined in with the ideological killers. The whole city became a battlefield. In those difficult days Horace de Ville gathered together the assistants under his command, rallied their spirits and personally led them into battle against Whiting’s supporters. The pursuit went on day and night for several days. Hundreds fell on both sides. Finally, Whiting himself was captured. It turned out he was in the last stage of mania contradicens, and they were compelled not to execute him, but to take him to hospital, where shortly afterwards he died.
On July 8th the city suffered one of the most terrifying blows of all. In a paroxysm of illness, the managers of the central electric station works wrecked all the machines. Electric lighting was shut down, and the entire city, every street and every private dwelling was plunged into absolute darkness. Since the city used only electricity for lighting and heat, all residents now found themselves in an utterly hopeless plight. De Ville had foreseen this danger. He had prepared stores of pitch torches and fuel. Bonfires were lit on all the streets. Thousands of torches were distributed to residents. But those meagre lights couldn’t possibly illuminate Star City’s gargantuan avenues, which stretched out in straight lines for tens of kilometres, nor the menacing height of the thirty-floor buildings. With the onset of darkness, the city’s last vestiges of discipline gave way. People were now wholly and irrevocably in the grip of horror and madness. The healthy could no longer be distinguished from the ill. They were now a people bereft of any hope, and a terrifying orgy began.
Moral decline spread with amazing rapidity. Culture that had taken thousands of years to accumulate was shed by these people like a fragile crust, laying bare the savage within—the man-beast as he had once roved over the virgin earth. All notion of law was lost, and only force was recognised. For women, the only law remaining was the craving for sensual pleasure. The most modest mothers behaved like prostitutes, passing from hand to hand with abandon and speaking in the obscene language of brothels. Young women ran about the streets, calling out to whoever so desired to take advantage of their virginity, and they would lead their chosen one to the nearest doorway and give themselves to him on the closest bed, not even knowing whose it was. Drunkards feasted in plundered cellars, undaunted by the uncollected corpses sprawling in their midst. All this was continually made even more convoluted by paroxysms of the illness that held sway. The plight of children, abandoned by their parents to the mercies of fate, was especially pitiful. Disgusting perverts raped some, while others were subjected to tortures by devotees of sadism, who were suddenly to be found in significant number. Children died of hunger in their nurseries, and of shame and suffering after being raped; some were murdered, and others were killed accidentally. It is rumoured that there were monsters who kidnapped children in order to satisfy newly-awakened cannibal instincts with their flesh.
In that final period of the tragedy Horace de Ville could not, of course, help the entire population. But he arranged a shelter at the Town Hall for
all who still possessed their sanity. The entrances to the building were barricaded and guards constantly kept watch. Inside, stores of food and water had been prepared to last 3,000 people 40 days. But there were not more than 1,800 men and women with de Ville. It goes without saying that there were others with unclouded minds still inside the city, but these did not know about the shelter and were hiding in other buildings. Many did not dare to go outside, and at the present time the corpses of people who died alone of starvation are still being discovered in rooms throughout the city. It is remarkable that among those shut up inside the Town Hall there were very few cases of the “contradiction” illness. De Ville managed to maintain discipline in his small community. He kept a journal of everything that took place until the final day, and this journal, together with de Ville’s telegrams, serves as the best source for what we know about the catastrophe. The journal was found in a secret cabinet in the Town Hall, where especially valuable documents were kept. The last entry is dated July 20th. There, de Ville reports that a maddened crowd had begun storming the Town Hall, and that he had been forced to repel the attack with volleys of revolver fire. “What I am hoping for,” de Ville writes, “I don’t know. Help certainly won’t come before spring. To last until spring on the stores at my disposal is impossible. But I will carry out my duty until the end.” These are de Ville’s last words. Noble words!
One can only assume that the crowd took the Town Hall by storm on July 21st, and that its defenders were all slaughtered or dispersed. De Ville’s body has not been found. We have no reliable accounts whatsoever of what took place in the city after July 21st. Judging from the traces left behind and now being found during the clean-up, one must suppose that anarchy had reached its final limits. One can imagine the half-dark streets, lit up by blazing bonfires made from furniture and books. Fire was made by striking flint on iron. Around the bonfires throngs of the mad and the inebriated made wild celebration. A communal cup made its way around. Men and women drank. And scenes of animal lust took place right on the spot. Some kind of dark, atavistic feelings were roused in the hearts of those city dwellers, and, half-naked, unwashed, dishevelled, they danced the circle dances of their distant ancestors—the contemporaries of cave bears—and sang the same wild songs as did the hordes when they fell upon a mammoth with their stone axes. Mingling with their songs, incoherent speech and idiotic laughter were the mad shouts of the ill, who had lost the ability to express in words even their delirious hallucinations, and the moans of the dying as they writhed among decaying corpses. At times the dances turned into fights—for a barrel of wine, for a beautiful woman, or simply without any cause whatsoever, in a fit of the madness that spurred them to senseless, contradictory actions. There was no escape: everywhere were the same dreadful scenes, the orgies, battles, bestial merrymaking and bestial rage—or else absolute darkness that seemed even more terrifying, even more unbearable to a deranged mind.
Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence Page 6
