“Nationality, therefore, defines a temporary agglomeration of races living in the same territory and regulated by the same laws. That does not represent anything stable or tangible. On this point, history expresses only one thing: the general law of sociology shows that the tendency of human societies is for each one to progress from the smallest fatherland to the greatest, without distinction of races, mores or climates. It is therefore a matter of seeing that clearly, and of dissolving nationalities as far as is possible into one, which, by uniting them, facilitates communication between provinces and the altruism of individuals. At that task, the civilizations of Chaldea, China, India, Egypt and Rome labored. In modern times, England has recommenced the work of unifying the world. By comparison with that gigantic labor, what do patriotic concerns matter?”
“So,” I replied, “you forbid by means of torpedoes and aerial bombardment the intrusion of strangers into the domain of the Dictatorship...”
“Because we do not want anyone to come here to corrupt weak souls, neither to sell nor to buy.”
“Nor to violate the customs that constitute a fatherland and a nationality of which, if I’m not mistaken, these are the defenders.”
I pointed to a troop on the march. Coiffed in low helmets in black leather, clad in brown dolmans and breeches like those of zouaves, also brown, long gaiters and light brown shoes, the soldiers, carrying haversacks that were evidently not very heavy, were marching briskly with a long stride, in quintuple file. They were singing a rather beautiful hymn. The infantrymen were the tallest and the cavaliers the shortest of men. I was astonished by that.
“It’s quite simple, though,” said Théa. “The tall, solid fellows are better able to march and carry sacks. On the contrary, men of short stature fatigue the horses less by their weight. Thus one obtains the maximum mobility in both corps. There are military women who drive the regiments’ vehicles, the ammunition trucks and the ambulances. Look!”
They only differed from the men in their uniforms. I also saw some who were marching in infantry companies. I was told that they were employed occasionally on long marches, but they make up the artillery units of the fortresses, and the railway troops who guard the tracks and defend the stations, and the sedentary regiments in garrison in the forts. They are administrative soldiers, secretaries to the general staff, and furnish all the elements of the catering corps and the sanitary service. They do not appear to be any less nimble than our graceful female cyclists.
The column disappeared around a bend in the road.
“There,” said Pythie, “are the forces that bear the best fate in the world.”
“By iron and fire.” I added.
My companions disdained any response, somewhat indignant that I had divined in their altruistic souls the crude dream of all conquering nations, with a slightly different apparent motive.
As one approaches Mars, the carriages suddenly plunge underground, descending the slope of a tunnel, where an uninterrupted glass tube contains incandescent electric wires. Vast in extent, that tunnel contains stations served by elevators. They command complicated branches. From time to time a shaft pierces the thickness of the terrain and allows smoke to escape.
That subterranean part of the line shields the trains from projectiles launched by a possible invader. It permits the arrival of munition trains until the moment of a very restrictive investment. In fact, Mars occupies the strategic center of a system of mountains that closes the territory of the Dictatorship to any incursion coming from the sea by means of the only approachable coast and then through the valley of the only river that gunboats torpedo boats and lighters laden with supplies could follow upstream.
We traveled for nearly two hours through that resplendent tunnel. The phonograph cried the news. Pythie and Théa read, embraced one another and mocked me. In order to thwart them I pressed the switch of a music box and an entire mysterious orchestra played a piece by Schumann, to which they ended up listening silently.
Retuning to real daylight, les agreeable than the light of the broad tube, our track combined with others on which wagons were rolling filled with livestock—sheep, cattle and pigs—heading for the mass of the city huddled behind its ground-level fortifications.
“Where are those animals going?” I asked.
“To the abattoir. All the animals destined for the alimentation of the entire country are killed here. That cloud of dense smoke covers the culinary factories where the cooked and seasoned meats are put into terrines, which depart on other trains for all the parts of the provinces.”
“It’s the city of butchers and cooks, then?”
“It’s the city of Death. The soldiers cut the throats of the sheep and pole-ax the cattle in order to familiarize themselves with bloody work. The veterans whose declining strength exempts them from service are employed in the culinary factories. They confect the pâtés whose flavor your taste-buds appreciate in our restaurants.”
“Look over there: those blue domes are the crematory ovens.”
“And there, in that blue train, a cargo of human cadavers going to the definitive fire.”
“Look there, after the verdure of the great woods, those edifices…do you see them? They contain the ashes of our fellow-citizens, sealed in a million little boxes.”
With a fearful rapidity, the blue train passed by, leaving in the nostrils a strong pharmaceutical odor. In the lattice-work wagons the cattle were bellowing, the pigs squealing and the sheep bleating. The sounds of military trumpets burst forth from all directions, while a perfume of cooking and grilling reached our sense of smell.
The train circled around immense parks. There, herds of cattle were fleeing the prods of cavaliers in uniform under the command of some sort of captain in tan boots. Elsewhere, sheep were galloping too. An ocean of pink pigs was swarming in limitless mire. Afterwards, we recognized a military esplanade, artillery batteries, gun-carriages, automobile haulage vehicles, armored wagons surmounted by metallic cupolas split by the emergence of long gun-barrels. Not far from there, companies were being briskly drilled, with low helmets of black leather, armed with small double-barreled rifles, very military in their bearing by virtue of their gaiters, broad canvas trousers, and short gray dolmans with brown piping. The artillery, however, wear a flame-colored uniform, because their weapons, operating at a long distance, do not denounce themselves to an enemy by the scarlet color of their costume.
We disembark. Here there are patrols, battalions, drums. The facades of high buildings are red. Made of bronze skeletons raising electric searchlights over their heads, street-lamps border the sidewalks where an armed and helmeted crowd circulates. Sabers resound on the flagstones. We see the blue train again, crossing a viaduct that spans the avenues. The pharmaceutical odor spreads. The smoke of the crematory fires and culinary factories has difficulty rising up because of the heat of the heavy atmosphere. Sealed trams pass by, coming from the abattoirs. Their bloody spindles slide within the rail. The insipid odor of butchery emanates.
In a restaurant hall devoid of plants, the faces of soldiers, similar to those of our European butchers, astonish me with their low brows, and their sanguine and adipose flesh. The seal of crime is revealed on almost every face. I’m not unaware that military service replaces fines and prison here.
“Almost all these people,” Théa told me, “are smugglers who attempted to introduce alcohol, tobacco and other poisons. Many were sent to the regiments for crimes of passion after their anger had afflicted rivals of either sex, those who would not accept their sentimental domination, who wanted to limit the free practice of amour as counseled by law. Jealousy is punished harshly because that base pretention of property over the life of another hinders fecundation and maternity, the maximization of the source of life, and hence the maximization of production. In spite of the severity of the judgments though, those sorts of crime encumber the statistics.”
In order to exasperate my grievances against her, Pythie continued: “It’s har
d to lose the habit of old injustices, difficult to renounce the ludicrous privilege that renders two beings slaves to their reciprocal caprices for life because they’ve confounded their spasms for an hour, in accordance with the hazards of instinct.”
“Really?” I replied. “Have there never been among you, then, two beings who cherish one another to the extent of creating a single soul and a single body with their two forms, and perpetuating that new being in contemplating it with all their joy?”
“There are some, certainly. No one opposes their mania.”
“Are there not also women among you who refuse men, in order only to cherish one?”
“There are a few.”
“And what of them?”
“Their desire is respected. Our laws first warn and then punish anyone who attempts to enslave a woman by obsession or brutality. The group tribunal watches over the repose of each individual. Here, in the course of a year, a considerable number of fellows with an overly active instinct are enrolled.
With her eyes, Théa designated a trio of infantrymen who were staring at both of them without dissimulating an erotic covetousness. I felt ill at ease, all the more so as Pythie, as a game, did not refrain from smiling at the colossi.
Women came in wearing red dolmans trimmed with black. They were coiffed in the same flat helmets, Save for the lightness of their step they were scarcely differentiated from young men. A few of them, in their forties, had faces like those of our priests, but imprinted with a rare impression of cruelty. Their baked and fleshy lips were projected in a disdainful moue. From the nostrils to the chin, the pleat of flesh marked the effects of hatred and rancor.
The men and the women quickly exchanged filthy remarks. The abjection of our European populations was manifest in mouths affecting kisses and their obscene gestures. Couples immediately form. Everyone quarrels, kiss, hug. There is no longer the silence or pedantic speech of other cities. Pythie is amused by the sight of that shameful grunting. One soldier having insinuated his hand into the dolman of a female comrade, our friend stands up and approaches the couple to request her share of merriment. The brutal satisfaction of the two ruddy-faced and drooling individuals tempts her. Théa has to address a reprimand to her in order for her to come back, laughing, and follow us into the street.
“So,” I said, a trifle angrily, to Pythie, “this social condition represents the realization of all the desires of your ideality?”
“Certainly not,” said the music of her voice. “I don’t pretend to sustain such a stupidity. I even affirm that such an opinion doesn’t exist in any of those still alive who disembarked in his latitude with our Jérôme. They possessed a notion of society and human beings very different from what the actual results of their efforts produced. Logically, however, what happened in this country, over fifty years, is what is bound to become of a conflict between a pure ideal and characters, instincts and survivals. Certainly, the Dictatorship has not succeeded in transforming the citizens into gods, as Jérôme and the socialists of 1840 expected, and as Kropotkin and the anarchists expect, as a matter of faith. Everyone runs toward the ideal according to the impulsion of their material needs. It’s not magnificent, but it’s better than what there was before.
“Nothing of what the reactionaries of Europe predict today, in glimpsing the advent of the social era, has occurred. Very few people refuse to work. There has even been a commencement of competition to collaborate in the public good. The majority of alcoholics renounced drinking; some died of it, and with heroism. Jérôme’s companions fought for five years, weapons in hand, against the indigenes suffering the heat, disease, thirst and hunger, to lay down the roads, channel the rivers, dig wells and mines, and created an enormous stock of equipment. In almost all of them, Jérôme encountered the devotion that Napoléon was able to expect from his soldiers and the Mahdi succeeded in obtaining from his dervishes.
“When the heroic times were past, the cities built and ease came, weaknesses became much more numerous. The population of Mars multiplied, and our army comprises nearly a fifth of the citizens. But the education of the colleges is amending the minds of all. You’ll perceive few young soldiers here. The enrolments go back seven or eight years. We’re even studying means of warding off the diminution of our military forces, which are reduced from day to day by the falling crime rate. In the early days, people sacrificed themselves to the ideal of universal ease for the same obscure reasons that counseled Napoléon’s soldiers to risk death with a view to a vain glory that they scarcely enjoyed, or for the benefit of a fatherland that nourished them poorly. It was not their minimal pay that excited the grenadiers of Wagram to combat, nor the hope of becoming maréchals, since the vast majority of them were unaware that they were carrying the baton of command in their kit-bags.
“The belief that money and ambition alone guide effort is a simplistic faith. The movements of enthusiasm among crowds obey mysterious influences much more difficult to define. Your European bourgeois advanced stupid arguments when they showed, the day after the general revolution, weakness overcoming effort. Nevertheless, I think that Jérôme was wise when he instituted the sanction of enrolment and military exile against the abetters of social disharmony. I also think that in a century, perhaps before, that sanction will have become unnecessary, or nearly so. The intelligent egotism of each individual will have progressed to the point of always wanting to act with a view of the general good whose spectacle delights him, whereas its injury would hurt him. Thus, in your Europe, the intelligent egoistic father of a family working for the ease of his daughters and sons, redoubles his effort in order not to encounter hostile faces when he returns home. We are going toward egotism, properly understood.”
“Slowly,” I added.
In fact, a brawl was assembling gawkers in front of us. Two women were hitting one another, scratching and tearing one another’s hair out. Between the tatters of their scarlet dolmans their flesh was visible, exciting the crapulous reflections of soldiers with the muzzles of murderers. One took hold of the dangling breast of the other and twisted it. The screech of a strangled cat split the air. Outside of that claw, the violet summit of the breasts was bleeding. Then the ten fingers of the wounded woman clutched at that fist, which stopped squeezing. Voices encouraged the fighters. The victim hurled herself at the victor, clamping her jaw on her adversary’s mouth. Blood spurted again, but neither the claws of the one nor the teeth of the other let go. We even saw by the movements of her throat that the woman with the twisted breast was drinking the blood of the cut mouth...
It was ignoble…for, while the hatred in their faces and their arms united them, it seemed that the perversion of instinct mingled their kegs, which entwined in spite of the large rents in the canvas breeches, drawing their bodies together.
I was certainly not the only one aware of the dual impulse of those amorous enemies, for the warmth of Pythie, suddenly leaning against me, came to penetrate me while the secret research of her hand obliged the emotion of Théa, plastered against her.
Around us, couples and trios were uniting. Hands were disappearing into the vestments of others. Toward the brawl, the crowd with warm cheeks and panting breasts agglomerated, sniggering, gasping, and became quieter. Sweat ran down faces; gleams striped blinking eyes...
Glad expirations revealed pleasure.
The two women continued their fight and their game; they ended up by falling into the dust, rolling around there, remaining there, shaken by cries and spasms, until a police patrol, running with bayonets raised, parted the crowd. Seized by rough hands, brought upright, gripped, they were marched off, faces bloody, one with a split and torn lip, the other supporting a breast blue with contusions with her free hand. She was sobbing...
The rest of the crowd dispersed by the patrol took refuge in the gardens of nymphaeums, under the arcades that veiled the bushes and the water jets.
“Those people offend the sense of smell,” said Pythie. “It’s a pity, because they’ll
fill the arcades and stone divans, and I’d really like to soothe my nerves, with the aid of your complaisance.”
“Me too,” said Théa.”
Her eyes searched for a solitary spot. We didn’t find any. Two enormous edifices enameled in red displayed facades with large bays, through which we could see women writing. Down below, the reading rooms and refreshment rooms were full of those tumultuous individuals.
We continued on our way, uneasily.
By way of caryatids, the houses have images of Perseus brandishing the Gorgon’s head, David decapitating Goliath, Hercules slaying the hydra, and similar exploits. Celebrated battles are depicted on the ceramics; one can see Bonaparte at Arcole, Attila in the Catalaunian fields, the cuirassiers of Reischoffen charging through the streets of the Alsatian village, the elephants of Pandjavana crushing the heads of twenty thousand Parsees,35 Hannibal at Lake Trasimene, the battle of Actium, and a thousand other polychromatic images of times of war. From one façade to the next they follow one another, in historical order. Slaves of an outré realism, strongly influenced by nearby Japan, the artists have painted beautiful routs with the cadaverous faces of those fleeing, the grated teeth and haggard eyes of their pursuers, the lividity of sabers in the air, the panics of cavalry, the earthen fists of the moribund. There were pitched battles. To the right and the left, the blood of the images splash the enamel with flowers. There are grimacing heads on the end of pikes, bellies cut upon to let out floods of entrails...
Between those facades swarms a mocking, vulgar population, girdled with belts and brandenburgs. It jeers, abuses, makes obscene gestures and performs ignoble mimes. All the faces are shaven; the lips make violet buttonholes under big noses Brown and sickly after the double projection of the cheekbones, Malay faces glide among the others like the heads of snakes.
We mingled with the flow of pedestrians. To hear their noisy speech, I could have believed that I was in a Parisian faubourg on a holiday. Without having taken any alcohol, all those people were drunk. They affected an ignorance more base than it really was. They called to one another, insulted one another, replied with other fraternal insults. The scarlet dolmans of women contrasted sharply with the gray and brown uniforms of the soldiers.
The Humanisphere Page 34
