In the middle of the angle, sitting on a throne, was a motionless veiled figure. We saw that the veins were swollen in the old man’s hands. The dense air had red, violet, mauve and blue zones, and the currents were acting in rapid waves in its phosphorescent thickness. The frenzy of the music had fallen silent. Shadow filled the theater. The closed glass ceiling trapped a colorless mass of gas in an atmosphere under pressure. At the silver bars the solitaries were still extending hands and lips, banging their foreheads, with their raucous sighs and their fiery eyes.
The form of the scientist did not move at all for an hour, insensitive to the plaints of the tortured. Suddenly, he uttered a cry of triumph, and quit the throne in order to run to the exit.
“He’s found it,” said Pythie.
At the same moment al the grilles turned on their hinges, opening outwards, and the solitaries surged toward the open arms of the women, toward the quivering bodies and the bruised breasts. Scarcely had they stood up, however, than they tottered. Neither the women nor the man could cross the narrow avenue. Bodies sank on to the rose-bushes, from which the jaguars fled. A great sob resounded once more. Desire had abolished the strength to realize the embrace.
Gently, the ceiling was divided. The two glass sections we re-raised. The air escaped through the fissure, whistling. We left.
Outside, the phonographs were proclaiming the miraculous discovery obtained by the patient of the twelfth mathematics group. A celebratory cortege was forming at the crossroads of the gardens.
LETTER IX
Vulcan.
Humming violently, the wings of the airship lifted us up yesterday. The city shrank. The fields lost their colors. The roads diminished. The ground seemed to fall into the luminous abysms of the world, and the clouds enveloped us for a time.
It is difficult to get used to the tumult of the air where the helices spin and the mechanical wings beat. Human speech is inaudible. We’re wearing thick leotards that did not give the wind any purchase. It’s necessary to walk holding on to tringles and cords. Above our heads, the sail that regulates the progress inflates and causes the ship to veer in direction. Placed at the rear, an enormous mizzen plays the role of rudder, supported on the wind; it’s the tail of the artificial bird that is carrying us through the lukewarm mist. The rigging shrieks. The wheel is spinning so rapidly that one can scarcely perceive a great halo of gray light at the stern. Enclosed in a canvas cabin, the mysterious machines and accumulators of force palpitate with their oiled hum. There is a slow tick-tock. But it’s forbidden to approach in order to study the miracle.
“In this,” Pythie said, “we possess the power to change the organism of peoples. When the fabrication of our aerial squadrons is complete, when the necessary number of vessels has been constructed, we shall rise up over the Old World in a dense flock, like the armies of titanic archangels with dark wings announced in the Scriptures. Our formidable force will go from south to north. It will soar. It will illuminate the night with new stars. It will furrow the day with its flags and its streamers. Its rapid flight will cut through the air above the frightened crowds and the tocsin of cities.
“To the cannon-fire and fury of the armies united by the masters of Injustice, the enlightening fall of our torpedoes will respond, and formidable explosions capable of annihilating the Babylons. Afterward, we shall disembark plows and seed-planters. The limits will be leveled, the boundary-markers overturned; crops will cover all the land, for the hunger of all the mouths. We shall surround death, distress and despair in their supreme retrenchments...
“Now, it’s necessary that no one discovers the mystery of our force before the hour of its beneficence. Abide by the rule that forbids delving into it. Listen to the placid life of the machine at a distance. Do you know that the group who invented the miracle agreed to sacrifice themselves for the fate of the world? Nineteen strong, they departed for the mountain with the secret. In a dismal gorge, separated from other humans, the live in the midst of forges and hasten the labor of the Malays and soldiers. You are going to see the city of Vulcan, the fires of its blast-furnaces. There the next transformation of life is being elaborated in the heart of the summits...”
The ship shook the cotton wool of the last layers of cloud from its wings, and we appeared in the warmth of the sun. Rocks heaped up on the horizon emerged, immense and leprous, over the sea of white mists. We were still rising, and discovered, in the midst of that infinite chaos, the smoke of factories occupying a plateau.
“That’s Vulcan,” Pythie announced. “That’s the city of iron and fire. There’s the open head of the metalliferous mountain, and the plain that resounds with human activity; and there’s the flock of new ships circling in the air to practice the strategy of the commandants...”
From all points of the sky, squadrons were soaring, rising and descending over the mask of clouds hiding them from the curiosities of the ground.
I recalled those spring afternoons when, in our Europe, the returning swallows streak through the sky in search of their dwellings. The voices of sirens, the whistle of machines suspended high in the azure, descended distantly, like the cries of birds.
But it was not the placed white facades of our house toward which those efforts were directed. Arcades of iron, low down on the ground, enclosed the din of iron. There were scaffolds for giving birth to the carcasses of ships under construction. Hydraulic cranes were hoisting enormous sections of helices. The foundations of the masts were being fitted with great hammer-blows. On a platform supported by four lattice-work towers, a few minuscule beings were finishing off the trimmings of completed ships. Vast and light, the aerostats thus maintained spread their wings to either side of the towers. Their shadow, on the ground, protected the labor of many crews.
Our ship began flying in vast circles. The sails inclined. From the tips of its masts, the jibs quivered along the cords. We traced concentric curves in the air, which gradually spiraling inwards toward the platform of the four towers. The wind whirled and vibrated; and we ended up, having grazed the edge of the landing-stage once, settling on it gently.
Elevators took us down to the ground. It’s the same city of broad avenues, long painted facades and arcades where comfortable salons open between the glasshouses of refectories, and where phonographs speak. A thousand jets of water rise over the lawns of nymphaeums constructed around statuary groups that perpetuate the memory of inventions. The spindles of trams slide within the rail of the causeways. One hears the voice of the great organs. The multicolored blooming of flowers inebriates the air.
In read jackets he workers of both sexes go about their business. At the entrance of factories stand admirable porticos whose sculpture represents the labor of Vulcan, that of kobolds and gnomes stirring the riches of the earth with their short spades. The racket heard in the distance increases as one approaches the factories. Ingenious hydraulic mechanisms maintain gentle compressions. The iron is crushed almost without noise under muffled pile-drivers. It is a crumb of fire kneaded by a thumb of steel. Ventilators maintain an even temperature. Sitting down, the engineers regulate the effort by pressing numbered keys. Very little burden is put on human arms. A hundred pincers of steel seize the blocks and the bars, lift them, present them, withdraw them and drop them, without human aid.
Metal antennae rise from the floor, along with jointed pincers and articulated claws that work. A few women, with keyboards of force, direct those movements with a brisk drumming of the fingers, which controls a formidable and complicated underfloor mechanism submissive to the currents dispensed by the keys. The energy runs along wires, is launched into the network of rapid belts, sending forth tentacles that bite the molten iron in the furnaces. No human cries, no clamors of metal dropped on metal. Jets of sparks leap in the sunlight coming through the glass panes.
In spite of the promise made, I cannot help wanting to penetrate the industrial mystery.
I think about the peril threatening the world when the squadrons are ready. I
t is up to me to protect our fatherlands by furnishing them with similar engines of defense. In my heart, all the atavisms of a proud race are stirring, crying out to me to provide protection to Europe by warning it of the danger, and discovering the secret of the constructions.
And there it is: I study with a sly intelligence, I listen to the beating heart of the mechanisms. I sniff the exhalations of gas enclosed in the tubes. I spy on the march of the machines.
“Oh,” Pythie repeats, “why allow yourself to be tempted? Think of the Only Interesting Thing. Remember the fables in which the curiosity of the hero brings about his defeat. A sphinx is watching here that will devour your existence if you don’t divine the enigma skillfully enough. The destiny of the world is too heavy a dogma not to outweigh one human liberty before those of the Dictatorship who maintain the just balance. I sense your impotence against such a fate. Be careful…you’re soliciting the termination of your actions and the annihilation of your strength.
For Pythie is anxious for me.
Truly, since this desire to know the mystery of the imminent cataclysms has animated me, since she has been assuring me of my certain doom, the irony veiled by her eyelashes has diminished; a sure dolor pleats her blanched lips. None of those invitations that she mimes to handsome men any longer express her grave sensuality. She accompanies me sadly through the avenues of Vulcan, under the cool arcades, in the midst of the mute and active machines. She looks at me with her soul through her eyes. There are often sobs in her voice.
Because I am yielding to the need to save my race, my companion softens, saying: “It’s because all the old people of the Occident live in you. The force of nationalities rises up in your person, and you are everything that anterior history teaches us. How many races are speaking at this moment in your phrases; how many energies are animating your intention. You are That-which-was against That-which-will-be. The crazy impulsiveness of supreme defenses appears in your gestures; you’re drunk on the heroism of those who will succumb... Cease, cease searching for the Forbidden Thing; you will not discover it without disappearing for those who love you...”
I go on, however. I prowl around the factories. I interrogate the workers, the soldiers, the Asiatics with malicious and weary eyes. Undoubtedly, I shall be able to find out.
It will be necessary to reach the chambers of the engineers who are fitting together the pieces constructed in the different studios. Already I’m no longer unaware that the accumulation of force is obtained with the aid of an extremely dense gas agitated by a mechanical means, pursuing the multiplication if energy included in it. One encloses that gas in tubes made with an amalgam of platinum and diamond obtained after long concoction in an electric furnace, at temperatures surpassing a thousand degrees. But the gas in question owes its birth to the decomposition of particular rare and precious metals that are transported with care in sealed crates under the guard of several men.
I’ve tried to visit the mines. Access to them has been forbidden to me. Indigenes are spying on me. I sense that I am being followed stealthily at the corners of arcades. They contemplate beside me the chaos of the violet mountains, the unlimited sea of pink clouds above which the city rises like an island harbor over the ocean. They are close to our table when Pythie and I take our daily meals. Not far from the domicile assigned for our sojourn there is one who watches all night long while playing with marbles and mirrors. I’ve tried to bribe some of them. They remain insensible to promises of gold, the hope of becoming rich in our homelands.
Pythie criticizes my imprudence. She thinks that the people of the Dictatorship are letting me maneuver thus to seduce me into treason, in order to arrest me and enroll me by force in the regiments of Mars. They regret, according to her, having authorized me to visit their estates. They fear that I will inform the world of the existence of their prosperity before the moment when the aerial squadrons can triumph.
Because of all these fears, Pythie’s amour for me is increasing. At dusk, we walk along the promontory that advanced into the sea of clouds. The ships return to port with loud cries. They surge out of the sea here and there, rise into the red sky and circle there somberly, with their sails inflated, the halo of the wheel at the rear, the mizzen of the rudder and the chaplet of torpedoes suspended from their inferior gangway. The cries of sirens assemble them. Between the crimson surface of the clouds and the scarlet sky, the ships sail, rigid, pointed at the bowsprit, toward the platforms supported on four iron towers. The searchlights illuminate and swivel, shining in the darkness over the blue spine of the mountains, great mobile eyes, gold, red and green. The sea of clouds floats beneath the stars, slowly appearing in the blue and turquoise sky.
Then, the emotion of the evening puts Pythie’s lips against mine. Her entire body trembles against my breast.
“You’re going to die,” she says. “I sense that you’re going to die…and I’m beginning to cherish you for your touching weakness. You can see that. I no longer feel generous to those who are not the sheaths of your soul. I only gaze at the lands that attract your vision. No perfume enchants me any longer if it doesn’t please you. I admire the grandeur of your barbarity, which resists the seductions of our favorable and logical life in order to measure your futile effort against that power.
“At first, I was scornful of the need with which you’re imbued, to believe yourself the center of the world, to imagine your liberty, your nobility, your traditions, to respect the impulse of your race in yourself. For myself, I only understood the fusion of the individual in the social body, and its contribution to the universal soul in which it loses itself. I only understood that, and I gave myself to all the desires of procreation, to the life of all, to the total instinct of humankind. I lived, proud of respiring through all mouths and thinking with all brains. You came, with your ideas of old, with the follies of the other time, with the puerile arrogance of the savage who likes to think himself incomparable. You assembled everything in yourself. I dispersed myself in everything.
“And here we are, this evening, moved by a similar palpitation, without me having denied anything of my faith, without you having denied anything of yours. I know that you are going to betray my idea. My will doesn’t have the strength to vanquish you, and I would allow your caprice to destroy the admirable work…in order to please you; and I would like you to deceive the vigilance of the spies in order to withdraw from the peoples the chance, here concerted, of their liberation. How you’ve changed me, you! You...you who have made me the enemy of my hopes, my beliefs, of everything that constitutes my being...
“And I can’t divine the cause of that change. You’re here; I no longer exist except in you…oh, your lips, and the force of your eyes...
To describe the exaltation of my triumph, over that spirit vanquished by the mystery of amour, over the logical and powerful mind, vanquished solely by the mystery of attractions…I don’t know how.
We consummate our evenings thus, on the edge of the sea of clouds, while the aerial ships cry out in the obscurity of space...
Such was the last letter I received from my Spanish friend. He has not reappeared in Europe. His family, left without news, made enquiries of the ministry to discover what had become of the diplomat and his mission. A note recently sent by the government in Manila supposes that pirates manning a vessel of Philippine insurgents must have captured the corvette carrying the functionary. Thus far, a continuing administrative investigation has not produced any result worthy of mention.
Notes
1 The usual explanation of these “disappearances” is, of course that they were lunar eclipses during which the Moon was covered by the Earth’s shadow.
2 Acta Eruditorum [Reports of the Scholars] was a pioneering scientific journal published in Leipzig between 1682 and 1782. Christian Wolff was one of its many contributors.
3 The pine tree initially classified as Pinus maritima is nowadays known as Pinus pinaster.
4 The term vibrion was once used to refer gen
erally to micro-organisms only perfectible under a microscope; the ones that the writer has in mind are probably rotifers.
5 The notional author’s reference is not as obvious as he pretends to think, but he might mean: “There is in human nature generally more of the fool than the wise.”
6 Andrés del Rio (1764-1849) is famous for his discoveries in chemist, but did visit the ruins of Mitla in Mexico, which later became an archeological site of great importance.
7 The Biblical quotation actually comes from Ecclesiastes.
8 Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) addressed that question in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1695-1697). As a French Protestant, Bayle was naturally in favour of tolerance and opposed to Catholic dogmatism—an opposition that led him to a more thoroughgoing skepticism.
9 Note in the original text, presumably attributable to the execrable Herbert Holms: “How have the negroes been able to misunderstand, as they have done, the evident intention of the creator? To arrive at that, the perversity of the human mind had to be pushed to an extreme in the last century; how was God able to permit that assault on the order he had established? That can only be explained by admitting a modification of his original will.”
10 The journalist and politician Émile Girardin (1802-1881), the pioneer of the French popular press, initially campaigned vigorously for the election of Louis-Napoléon as president of the Second Republic, but became a determined opponent after the coup. His opposition was, however, broadly tolerated, making him the most evident voice of protest, while more radical opponents were ruthlessly suppressed.
11 Paroles d’un croyant (1834) was a collection of aphorisms by Hugues de Lammenais (1782-1854), which denounced the “conspiracy of kings and priests against the people”—a sentiment with which Déjacque agreed, although he had nothing else in common with the author, a conservative Catholic who believed that religion, not anarchism, was the only viable antidote to tyranny.
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