by Theo Varlet
Bravely, Aurore follows me; I feel her stumble.
“Am I going too quickly?”
“No, no! Go on—there’s someone stepping on my heels.”
And in front of us and behind us, in the trotting file, always cries of: “Faster! Get a move on!”
Surpassed, the first two second-class carriages, empty inside, with bloody light-bulbs. Now we’re in the dark; in the light of the acetylene lantern, lost in the distance, red stalactites stand out. I stumble over a bush of warm tentacles; it’s impossible to advance. Has the lichen suddenly blocked the passage? No—the path veers to the left to take the middle of the rails.
We go on between two confused, bristling walls full of crepitations, which rise up to shoulder-level. Above our heads hang stalactites whose tips brush us; my arms and torso bump into warm spongy tentacles, the little ones giving way elastically, the larger ones shattering…and the man in front of me is no more than five meters away! The crazy living growth is still accelerating.
In a funereal nightmare, I march hopelessly, struggling against the Niagara of air that whips us, with Aurore in tow, mute, breathless, stumbling, through that living grotto, the enchanted wood that is slyly attempting to bar our passage, to blockade us among its fronds, to swallow us...
To reach the station! Where is it? There’s no more trace of light visible ahead, not even a signal. Is the tunnel already blocked by the lichen? No, the torrent of air proves that its remains free.
Cries of protest and oaths propagate behind us, getting closer—a furious stampede catches up with us…a violent impact of Aurore’s hand against mine…and I fall down with her, shoved sideways by someone overtaking us in the branches of lichen.
A hideous impression, feeling those branches give way beneath one! Of being buried in a swarming mass of dry, warm tentacles, which yield beneath one’s hand, slip away beneath one’s feet, making me despair of ever being able to get up again. And on the path, the fugitives, who are panicking and howling in fear!
“Aurette! My Aurette!”
Her silence scares me. She has fallen down with a little groan and is still lying there, abandoned. On my knees, leaning over her, I gently palpate her face. She exhales, in a breath: “It’s over. I’m going to faint. Leave me—save yourself, beloved!”
The confession fills me with a surge of triumph and desperation. She loves me! At last!
And we’re doomed!
Those few seconds of immobility have sufficed for the lichen to invade us with its inexorable dust. Like those of an octopus endowed with intelligent purpose, the dry, warm tentacles have multiplied their garrotte around the recumbent body. Blindly, I tear them away in fistfuls, break them and try to free her from them—but they renew themselves constantly, and others elongate. I’m gripped myself, invaded, entangled in the multiple and disgusting embrace of those slender, dry, warm limbs...
It’s over. It’s death...
And, in a despairing surge of ecstasy, I deposit on the lips of my beloved the first kiss, which will also be the last...
What does that clamor of deliverance rising up in the distance of the tunnel matter to me? Those people out there, crying their joy at being saved...
Me, I shall die happy.
But what’s happening? In addition to those cries, and the decreasing roar of the air-current, which is slackening, there’s a kind of enormous silence in the tunnel, an incomprehensible lacuna, the stopping of something. No more crepitations, no more crackling; the enchanted forest of living and aggressive branches has been frozen in immobility, as abruptly as the flick of a switch. And the tentacles over Aurore and me are also frozen…I still remain in their grip, but the octopus seems to have been struck by catalepsy.
Suddenly, I understand the meaning of the cries that are getting closer.
“The current’s been cut off! There’s no more danger in walking on the electric rails!”
The lichen is paralyzed, for want of electrical nourishment; the pressure of life has paused. We’re saved…saved! And Aurore loves me!”
With thrusts of the hips, feet and fists, I detach myself, breaking and tearing away the still-warm tentacles. I free Aurore, take her in my arms and pick her up...
We’re alone, the last to remain; everyone else has decamped, saved. And the memory comes back to me of the occasion of our first meeting, in Cassis, when I held her in the same way in Alburtin’s automobile. But this time, she loves me!
A wave of heroic vigor carries me way, and I no longer feel the weight of my cherished burden.
Ten paces, and beyond an unsuspected bend in the tunnel, the noisy platform of the station appears, where silhouettes are agitating in the light of acetylene searchlights. Others come to meet us—rescuers...
In my arms, Aurore is reborn, reanimated, and wants to be put on the ground.
“I can walk, Gaston, I assure you. That ridiculous weakness has passed.”
I refuse. Triumphant, exultant, I’m about to express my joy at her confession—but a nurse comes up to me and asks: “Is she injured? Does she need a stretcher?” And when I set Aurore on her feet in order to demonstrate that she has no need of one, the woman supports her by the other arm, and, when we reach the end of the platform, helps her climb the iron ladder.
The nurse, in her solicitude, as if she is reluctant to let go so soon of her last two refugees, insists that we drink a cordial—authentic Green Chartreuse, no less. Nurses, doctors and firemen surround us, and journalists too—but thanks to one of their colleagues, who happened to be in the train during the accident and is dictating an article to them, we’re able to escape without difficulty. I even see someone make a gesture of surprise at the sight of Aurore, and take a step toward her…but I was already drawing her toward the stairway.
Once through the barrage of agents and the crowd, having covered 50 meters, we finally breathed again, on the Quai d’Orsay.
Aurore disengaged her arm, which I was still supporting.
“The air is doing me good. Shall we walk for a little while?”
Under the half-defoliated trees of the Quai, between the Seine and the road-traffic, it seemed to me that we had returned to real life. The previous minutes, spent underground, in the power of the Lichen, appeared more phantasmagorical than an opium or hashish dream. If the memory of the intimate form of address and the supreme word “beloved” had not been profoundly engraved in my heart, I would have doubted that I had heard them. In any case, I experienced a certain modesty in recalling them; I felt that she had let me glimpse, by surprise, a forbidden underside of her soul; it had been a mistake; after that confession, she ought to have died. Having both survived, there could be no more question of it between us—and yet, since I knew…how could I recover the simple good comradeship that she had imposed on me in the preceding days?
So be it! I could not surrender myself to the triumphant surge that had lifted me up just now, but I could at least, by means of an allusion...
She was walking by my side, pensively, sometimes observing me obliquely. She had guessed what was passing through my mind. She was following the course of my sentiments. At the very moment when I was about to speak, she stopped me.
“No, Gaston, my dear friend—not now. No irremediable speeches. Listen to me. Only one thing happened, in the tunnel, when I fell: that you renounced saving yourself in order to attempt to save me, or die with me. I didn’t say anything. Nothing. It doesn’t count, since we’re here, alive. It’s necessary that it doesn’t count. Nothing should or can be changed between us. Except, the memory of your devotion...”
“Good comrade!” I could not help exclaiming, bitterly.
“You see? You’re incapable of restraining yourself, just now. It’s necessary, for the future of our friendship, that we don’t stay together today. We’re going to go our separate ways. Here’s a taxi”—and, raising her arm, she stopped the car, which came to a stop alongside the sidewalk—“which will take me back to my hotel. I’ll rest, sleep—do
n’t worry about me. In compensation, I’ll come to your studio tomorrow morning, for a sitting.”
“The last...”
“And then we can talk. But I repeat, in the name of our friendship—no allusion to the forbidden word that the supreme danger extracted from me. Is that agreed?”
“Yes, Aurette. It’s agreed.”
“Until tomorrow, then, Gaston—9 a.m.”
And, briskly saying “Hôtel Métropole” to the driver, she climbed into the cab and slammed the door—but she opened the window in order to give me, in the guise of a better farewell, a frank, honest smile of loyal friendship.
X. Enter Danae
Even in the context of my personal history, the sentiments that agitated me that afternoon and evening are of no great importance. They only influenced the events of my life in a negligible fashion, and it’s better to pass over them in silence. Destiny’s decision was not modified in the slightest by the follies that racked my brain during the hours I spent walking through the city, and then in my studio: by my resentment, in thinking about the separation she had imposed on me for that exceedingly precious day; by my rebellion against the obstacles and my resolution to vanquish them, to take Aurore away in order that she need only listen to the voice of her heart.
During those hours, I believed in the absolute power of the human will; I forgot my habitual belief that we are in the hands of the gods: our interior gods and those of events...
And by virtue of an ultimate inconsequence, I went so far as to reproach Aurore for having made me that confession, for having let me understand that she loved me, when I was beginning to adapt myself to our reciprocal situation, when I had resigned myself to being nothing to her but a good comrade...
How the retrospective illusion of passion can transform and falsify the memory of our own sentiments!
But, I repeat, the moral suffering I endured that day, and everything I promised myself to say the flowing day, during the sitting, are of no importance. None of it was realized—even the last part.
It’s better to offer a glimpse of the situation in Paris, that evening and the following day. That period of my life was, in general, so intricately linked with the history of the Lichen, that I cannot recount my memoirs of one without talking about the other. During the 18 hours in question, however, only the Lichen had any importance, and I can dispense with any mention of my humble person; I do not routinely mistake myself for the center of the universe.
This time, instead of recording events in the order in which I found out about them, I shall anticipate the next day’s news, in order to talk about the facts of communal experience.
The total stoppage of traffic throughout the Metro network, even on lines still unaffected, did honor to the discernment and decisiveness of the directors of the company, who immediately realized the urgency of that measure and dared to institute it at 7 p.m., despite of the consequences for the shareholders.
Admittedly, it required two further incidents and several more “explosions of life” analogous to that of the North-South to make the company understand that it ought not to be stubborn in maintaining the train service. At 5 p.m., the Maillot-Vincennes line was badly contaminated in its turn, the tunnels invade by an ultra-rapid growth of lichen, and two trains were blocked as ours had been, one at the Champs-Élysées station and the other near Bastille—but the current was swiftly cut off and there were no victims. A little later, an obstruction occurred between the Gare du Nord and Les Halles, but the trains were wisely retained in the stations.
From 4 p.m. onwards the tramway authority adopted an identical measure for the tramways, after a dozen incidents analogous to the one we had seen in the Rue de la Pépinière at various points of the network: short-circuit and overheated motor, with or without a consequent fire in the car.
Only then did Parisians understand that it was getting serious. Until then, even in the worst-affected quarters of Paris, everything had been limited to domestic inconveniences, tolerated with more or less good humor—but on learning about that series of accidents, one after another, then the stoppage of the trams and that of the Metro, there was a general stir of emotion.
The users of various tram lines, for want to being able to get home after a day’s work by their usual means of transport, fell back on the nearest Metro station, but even though the official cessation of traffic was only ordered an hour late, by 6 p.m., the rains were only running on truncated lines. At the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Invalides and the Quai d’Orsay, people living in the suburbs ran into a complete disruption of electrically-powered train services, by virtue of short-circuits, as on the tramways. The remaining means of transport: buses and taxis, were overwhelmed, and their insufficiency obliged a large number of suburbanites to get back to their dwellings as best they could—and, having got home, left them with the uncertainty of wondering whether the services would be reestablished the following day.
They were not; they could not be. Every new attempt in that direction had provoked, after a short time, a further series of accidents worse than the first. Experiments were evidently made, during the night, and demonstrated that no clean-up operation or disinfection could clear the tunnels or the vehicles of the calamitous spores. It was necessary, until further notice, pending the discovery of an effective means of destruction, for people to resign themselves to the financial losses and the disturbance of social life that the cessation of economic activity would cause. The staff of the tramways and the Metro were put on temporary leave, on half pay; and each employee, being a germ-carrier, contributed—as the passengers had done—to the diffusion of the Lichen throughout Paris and the suburbs.
The contaminated zones were already very extensive. From what I saw before going home at 7 p.m., after wandering for a long time, the great boulevards were affected with a capricious distribution, as occurs in epidemics. Many electric advertising signs were still functioning tolerably well, but some had a number of their lamps “diseased.” The luminous display in the Place de l’Opéra was only offering an illegible broken-toothed text. Several cinemas, in addition to the Paramount, had closed. On the terraces of cafés, even those with non-defective lighting, the faces were bleak. In spite of my lack of interest in external things, I sensed an atmosphere of consternation in the city.
And yet, the calamitous consequences of the cosmic invasion were only just beginning!
In my studio, on its easel, the initiated portrait was awaiting the sitting. At 8 a.m., already up and dressed, I started preparing my palette. A good night’s sleep—unexpected, certainly, after those hours of torment—had settled my mind and restored equilibrium to my heart, reanimating confidence in the future and am accurate appreciation of the situation. It was only too probable that the game would be difficult to win, but my chances had tripled, increased tenfold, since the previous day. Good comrades, in appearance, so be it, to observe the protocol imposed by Aurore—but her confession of the day before gave me the true temperature of her sentiments. In the struggle that I had undertaken in order to cause her to share my love, she was my secret ally.
However, I feared losing my calmness and renewed confidence by virtue of overmuch reflection before the arrival of my model. When the concierge brought me the post, with the Excelsior and the Matin, I gladly let the old woman ramble on.
First, she thanked me for my advice; since lighting the candle, the lodge remained tidy and her husband’s itches had disappeared. I was curious to know what she thought of events, though. She was informed, since her husband was a power-worker at the Metro, but from her comments I understood that the previous day’s accidents were only tragic for those involved in them. Those things could not reach the domicile, so there was no need to worry about them unduly. For Madame Taquet, it was an annoyance mainly because her man had been laid off.
“But it’s only for a day or two, of course—otherwise the Company wouldn’t have given him half-pay. It’ll be fine today, and he’ll take advantage of it by going for a stroll
. He’ll go to the Eiffel Tower with his mates to collect zebi.”
“What?”
“Zebi. You haven’t see it? They started selling it in the neighborhood yesterday evening, on little carts. It’s like jam and grows on the antennae of the Tower. It’s said that it tastes good, but I wouldn’t want to touch it myself, even so. If Antoine’s right, it can all be eaten. Have you eaten any yourself, Monsieur Delvart?”
I remembered young Frémiet’s “raspberry jelly.”
“My word, yes, Madame Taquet. Why not? One must take the benefits of science along with its inconveniences. If the police haven’t forbidden its collection, that’s because zebi is harmless.”
The worthy woman shook her head, unconvinced. “That’s not right—I have a suspicion that it can’t be healthy.”
Parenthetically, I ought to say right away that the repugnance manifested by my concierge was manifested at first by many people of the lower classes, who ought rather have welcomed as celestial manna that edible variety of the Xenobiota, a cheap foodstuff that compensated to a small extent for the inconveniences of other forms of the Lichen. The little handcarts that I saw later that day, in my neighborhood and elsewhere, attracted crowds of curious housewives to the gelatinous ruby-red accumulations quivering in the tin-plate buckets, but few yielded to the solicitations of the sellers and the placards: Top quality raspberry zebi. Eiffel Tower jam. More nourishing than beef, according to the analyses of the Laboratory for the Suppression of Alimentary Fraud. 2 francs a kilo, 25 centimes a quart.
Had the said Laboratory given its authorization, as the Crainquebilles25 claimed? Or were the police turning a blind eye, during those days of relaxation? I don’t know—but the fact is that the newspapers declared the substance to be harmless to the consumer, if not genuinely nutritious. From time to time, a housewife held out a faïence bowl or a jam-jar, which the merchant filled on the scales with a wooden spatula for stirring sauces, but business was slack. The low price of the product caused some disdain in the beginning, so long as its collection was free, but once a syndicate had monopolized it the price rose and zebi became the object of a popular fad.