by Theo Varlet
What will be the probably duration of the scourge? Ought we to wait to see it decrease and cease of its own accord, as certain optimists have hastened to declare? The disappearance of the giant forms, growing in an ultra-rapid fashion, observed in the tunnels of the Metro is primarily due to the cessation of traffic and the current; it does not necessarily signify that the pressure of life is decreasing and that we no longer have to fear the emergence and proliferation of analogous or even more harmful forms in other electrical fields. Nevertheless, the eminent Professor Nathan is of the opinion that hope is authorized in that direction. In addition, it has been observed in the refrigerated chambers of Les Halles that the lighted bulbs remain entirely clear of lichen, although the remainder of the building is badly contaminated. This observation confirms M. Nathan’s assertion, in his article of the day before yesterday, that the spores cannot withstand a temperature below zero. This vulnerability of the enemy gives us, in any case, the certainty of being rid of it at the first frost...
Paris under snow? My painter’s eye caresses the sovereign panorama that I discover from the height of the square. Instead of those glistening windows, those scintillations of gilded cupolas, that tenderly polychromatic Paris whose shades are delicately meting into one another in the autumnal morning, I evoke the infinite whiteness of snow, with blue shadows beneath an antimony sky.
I shrug my shoulders, pushing away the heap of crumpled pages. The first frost! And it’s only October 22. Another month, perhaps two. That’s a long way off…
Suddenly, I cease to be interested in events; I shake myself like a dog coming out of the water, casting off social consciousness in order to free my egotistical self: Gaston Delvart, the painter in love with the angelic astronaut.
Quarter to nine. Time to phone her. Abandoning all my newspapers to the old woman with the shopping-basket who is eyeing them covetously, having come to sit down on the other end of my bench, I return to a shop on the Rue de Mont-Cenis, where there’s a telephone,
“Hello? Yes, Aurette here. Bonjour, my dear friend! Meet me? Alas, no—impossible for today. My father…I can’t leave him. We have to work furiously: all the material to gather, transport to plan and organize. He has accepted on his own behalf and mine the proposals of Monsieur Nathan. No, my dear, we’re not leaving! The borders are closed to us—don’t worry, we’ll have all the time in the world to see one another again. So, Lendor, in view of the prohibition on astronautical experiments, has set us at liberty, temporarily—he’s going to form a cartel, I believe, with Moon Gold at its center; thanks to Mademoiselle Luce, he’s due to meet the great businessman Rosenkrantz today...
“To get back to Monsieur Nathan, he had a long conversation with my father yesterday evening, and is so smitten with some of his views that he immediately offered us a fine situation: director of a technical research service concerning the Lichen. My father has accepted, and as he can’t dispense with me, because I’m familiar with his working methods, he’s contrived to have me named as joint director. See you this evening, you say, my friend? I’m afraid that I’m tied up...
“Well, if I find that I have an hour free during the evening, I’ll send you a telegram—for you won’t be able to phone me; I’ll be away from the hotel all day…pardon me, my father is demanding me. Excuse me my dear Gaston...
“What? You think that I’m not…but yes! I have a great deal, a great deal of friendship for you…too much…no, no, shh! Not now. Au revoir. Perhaps this evening—or, if not, tomorrow...”
Certainly, I’m not very content; at first, I’m even furious—but after all, with the laboratory to install—where, though? she didn’t tell me—I have to concede that she’ll be busy and can’t see me today.
And she hung up so quickly, damn it, that I wasn’t able to ask her another question, which is going to torment me all day: since the association between Cheyne and her father is broken, have the interests that, as I understood it, led Cheyne to want to marry her, ceased to exist in consequence? Is the fundamental obstacle between us about to be lifted, sooner or later? If only she’d told me that clearly. I wasn’t even able to make out from her tone what mood she was in. Joyful, or merely busy? These receivers distort the nuances of the voice so much!
Even without certainty, there appears to be a high probability of that. And on top of that hope, to enable me to be patient, I know that nothing is lost—on the contrary, that she isn’t leaving. If I don’t see her today, I’ll see her tomorrow, and I can, at any rate, continue the battle, trying to secure the victory of my love.
In the meantime, in order not to think too much about myself, to act…let’s see. To begin with, look after my material interests, utterly neglected since my return to Paris. I’m short of money. Deposit Luce’s check at the Société Générale in the Boulevard Haussmann. From there, left bank, visit my dealers: Roussel, Lefort; collect my photos from my uncle’s place...
Bus AM, which I went unhurriedly to catch at the corner of Rue Damrément, was packed with singularly bad-tempered people. I quickly ceased to be astonished, for we had no sooner reached the Pont Caulaincourt than an unscheduled stop immobilized us.
“That’s the fifth breakdown since the terminus!” grumbled the conductor, leaping down to go and help his colleague, the driver.
A spark-plug failure, soon repaired—but which testified to the precarious state of the last means of surface transport. Chlorinated water was becoming impotent as a preservative against the Xenobiota. On the Pont Caulaincourt, another stoppage…ditto on the Rue d’Amsterdam. Five or six passengers, including me, got off to continue on foot.
At the Gare Saint-Lazare, I was curious enough to dart a glance into the waiting-room. Aspirant travelers were coming up against sealed gates. Sitting on their suitcases, others were waiting with the resignation of emigrants. Obvious Britons were jabbering recriminations at the employees at the check-in counters, who were refusing to weigh or accept their luggage and pointing at the posters: No departures for England until further notice. A handwritten notice stuck over the official timetables and superseding them, announced one or two “not guaranteed” daily departures of omnibuses for Le Havre, Dieppe and Cherbourg. In the background, between the deserted platforms, silent and dead, the rails were gleaming.
I went back into the street. From then on, the traffic was visibly thinner; for every two automobiles in motion, one was broken down along the sidewalk. The traffic-controllers with white batons were letting everyone go; the one-way system was no longer being observed, and—a significant detail—mechanical circulation was mingled with horse-drawn vehicles, already numerous: antique coupés, prehistoric calèches, Urban Authority fiacres. So they still existed! Who would have thought that, outside of horse-butchers’ displays, Paris harbored so many dung-producing engines?
Apart from that change, which rendered the retreat of civilization visible—and in which, I must confess, I rejoiced ironically, my painter’s eye being avid for the picturesque—the moral atmosphere of the city did not seem to have altered much. The laid-off workers were staying at home, one had to assume, or at least not venturing into the vicinity of the Opéra, the Madeleine or the Champs-Élysées. The gas-workers, on the other hand, were hard at work. I saw some in the Rue Royale who were re-establishing gaslights on the pylons of electric street-lights.
Also along the length of the Rue Royale, violating highways regulations with impunity, zebi carts were stationed on the sidewalks, but the psychologically-aware merchants were selling two different grades—the difference was probably illusory—one at 10 francs a kilo and the other at 20. The dearer one was disappearing rapidly...
My dealer in the Boulevard Saint-Germain, who was also a “friend,” invited me to lunch so that we could talk business at leisure. If Luce had seen me in such circumstances she would certainly have mocked the ease with which I allowed myself to be “rolled over” as soon as any appeal was made to my sentiments. The impression of having my wallet already garnished by the ch
eck I had just deposited in the Boulevard Haussmann doubtless contributed to it; I am unable to defend my pecuniary interests with the stubbornness that gives so many of my contemporaries the appearance of bulldogs ready to bite as soon as they start discussing a question of money to be given or received. I finally let my man have, at 30% discount on the price I had fixed, a canvas that he had on deposit and which he was evidently intent on keeping.
Even at that price, he affirmed, he was doing me a favor. The invasion of the Lichen was doing enormous harm to business. The art market had been hard hit by the world-wide blockade. For as long as it lasted, there would be complete paralysis.
My dealer in the Rue des Saints-Pères proved to be even more pessimistic, and not without reason. Two Americans had already come in, that morning, to cancel a 35,000-franc deal. He refused to buy anything from me, but agreed nevertheless to take a look “one of these days” at the “coves” I had brought back from Cassis,
On the Boulevard Saint-Michel, a few last motorbuses, taxis and automobiles, painfully dragging their clusters of lichen or broken down, were already inferior in numbers to horse-drawn carriages, whose good-humored coachmen seemed eager to take their revenge on the order of mechanical devices. What seemed strangest of all, however, at that time of year, was the sight sprinkler-vehicles sending sheets of water over wooden or asphalt pavements, as in the middle of summer. The strong odor of bleach denoted an attempt at sterilization and active opposition to the scourge.
Uncle Frémiet greeted me without his usual enthusiasm; he was slightly resentful because I had introduced the famous Aurore Lescure to him under a false name. The Echo de Paris—which I had not read—had printed my interview at Le Bourget. But he quickly took it as a joke, and his petty pique evaporated. He did not suspect, of course, that he owed to my visits the honor of being one of the first people in Paris to see the lichen manifest itself in his home, but if he had known, given that contagion was inevitable sooner or later anyway, perhaps he would have thanked me—for he found in that priority a sufficient compensation, in the free publicity given to his name and business by the interviews and the photos published in the daily papers. The advantage, however, was rather Platonic.
“I don’t know whether it’s a general measure, but they’ve cut off the current in the neighborhood. We’ve been able, in consequence to clear away the lichen, but it’s vexing to see my lamps apparently intact, and to know that they’re ready to function, but to be obliged to make use of magnesium flashlights to take a picture. It’s true that I’m taking fewer of them; the clients are no longer coming. No one knows what the future has in store; everyone’s abstaining!”
My aunt’s first concern was to inform herself, with solicitude, about the guest of the other evening, whom she simply called “that nice demoiselle.” Her second was to offer me, following a custom of Flanders that she still observed after 25 years in Paris, of offering me buttered scones and spiced bread with café-au-lait.
The dining-room was cluttered with jars of preserves and sacks of beans, peas, lentils and so on. I was astonished by their abundance.
“Are you expecting to withstand a siege, Aunt?”
“You can laugh, my lad, but it’s necessary to be ready for anything, in this nasty business. I’m afraid of shortages, at any rate. Suppose the deliveries don’t come any longer? Already, this morning, there was no milk. And the grocer’s! At Potin’s, a queue of 25 people…like the mobilization in 1914. Prices have gone up almost everywhere—but I managed to get these provisions at a good price, at a small grocer’s shop that I often go to.”
“Bah!” I joked. “You’ll still have the resource of the strawberry jelly that young Oscar collects from his wireless set...”
“Alas, no! That’s finished—and the scamp, who’s gone back to school, explained to me, as he threw down his satchel in chagrin, that his radio, which is a model that can be plugged in to the mains, can’t function any longer without the city’s electricity supply. To replace it, it would be necessary to buy blocks of batteries.”
“And Papa doesn’t want to?”
“This is no time to make superfluous purchases,” said the mother, trenchantly. “Come on, my boy, be good and eat up.”
My worthy aunt also feared “the revolution” as the eventual conclusion of the adventure, and explained her reasons, in accordance with local gossip.
My uncle amused himself by letting her go on, and laughed at her fears—but only to explain his own. What worried him more than the lay-offs was the inertia of the civil authorities.
“What is the government doing? Nothing at all. It isn’t even capable of organizing the battle. It’s waiting for the Chambres to reconvene…talking-shops. If the President of the Republic, in France, instead of being a figurehead, had powers like the American one, at least...”
An hour passed in that family setting had distracted me, as usual. At half past five, on leaving my uncle’s house, I found myself abruptly troubled by anxiety. Dusk was falling, and Paris was scarcely illuminated, as if regretfully.
No trace of the morning’s optimism. Where should I go? What will become of me, deprived of any news of Aurore until the evening or the next day?
The words that she spoke to me that morning on the telephone come back, piercingly: “material to gather, transport to plan and organize.” She isn’t leaving France, no, but what if her laboratory is in the provinces? In her absence, who can tell me? Nathan? He’ll send me backing, the boor! Ah! Géo. He must know something.
I’m lucky enough to catch him by telephone at Saint-Denis, at the Hénault-Feltrie factory.
“What’s she been doing today? All that I can tell you, old chap, is that at 9:30 this morning she was anticipating a very busy day. I saw her for three minutes, with her father, in the hall of the Métropole, when I dropped Lucy off... Where’s their lab? At the Eyguzon Dam, in the Creuse—you know, the central hydroelectric generating station that supplies part of Paris. Nathan’s got some smart salaries for them—20,000 a month apiece. The ‘new Edison,’ you know…he’ll find us a remedy for the lichen in five secs...
“Now, listen…I wish you’d been with us yesterday evening! We went to the Rat Musqué, Luce and I, with Rosenkrantz and Cheyne. That worthy son of Prohibition undertook a large-scale comparative study of the cocktails of the modern Babylon—which didn’t prevent him from talking business with Rosenkrantz, who was also putting them down. She’s discovered her type, my sis—the complete American of her dreams. And Cheyne certainly thinks she’s a business genius, for he listens to her like an oracle—but he persists nonetheless in declaring himself a misogynist, while affirming that he’s going to marry Aurore Lescure before long. And those weren’t the words of a drunken man; he had all his lucidity, cocktails or no cocktails…in the end, they went off together, seemingly to cook up some big business deal—and with Rosen on board, I wouldn’t be surprised if it succeeds. I wonder, though, whether it will finish with a marriage, as desired…for Lucy might be very disappointed...”
And me too! How I would bless that alternative marriage, if it could be made! But Cheyne must have good selfish reasons for holding on to Aurore...
Meditation like a Scottish shower, in which hope and discouragement alternate their replies in the fashion of a Greek chorus, while I set off for the heights of Montmartre on foot, in the hope of finding a telegram from Aurore at home...
A walk as somber as my reverie, likewise traversed with fugitive glimmers of light. In conformity with the Préfet de Police’s ban on luminous signs and informational displays, the intersection at the Châtelet offers a quasi-funereal appearance, with somber cliffs of façades instead of the usual flamboyant electricity. Here and there, on the Boulevard de Sébastopol, in islets spared by the contamination, a few electric lamps are still burning, windows dispersing their interior illumination, pink or blue, neon or mercury tubes, but at the junction of the Boulevard Saint-Denis, the perspective of the great boulevards is merely a black death
-trap, a mall in some backward province, peppered with derisory gas-jets. The same on the Boulevard Magenta, which I go up, and where the zebi stalls, under their oil-lamps, aggravate the darkness. One the Boulevard Barbès, in the short journey from the Boulevard Rochechouart to the Château-Rouge, I find electricity again and walk briskly, but all the way from the corner of the Rue Custine to my apartment, depressing obscurity again...
No telegram from Aurore was waiting for me in the lodge, where the Taquets were playing bezique by the light of a couple of candles fixed in the necks of bottles. A miserable Pigeon lamp27 was burning in the stairwell...
XIII. The Presses Stop
Dear Gaston,
Fate has decided it; I shall not see you again before my departure. I had resolved to see you one last time, but events have gathered pace. My father is intent on leaving tonight, in order to set to work tomorrow, and things that I counted on explaining to you at leisure, in person, I have only a few minutes to summarize for you in writing.
Firstly, our mission. The technical details of the research we are going to undertake in the laboratory at the Eyguzon Dam won’t interest you, my dear artist, but this is it in a nutshell. By virtue of its particular radioactive properties, one of the species of the Lichen cultivated by Nathan will doubtless permit my father to solve a problem that he has been working on for many years, and which he considers, with good reason, to be the great work of his scientific life. That discovery, if he realizes it, as we hope, will be the greatest conquest that humankind has ever achieved over the forces of nature. Even if our patron takes all the credit and Lendor Cheyne, to whom we are still bound, reaps all the profits, it will nevertheless be an immortal glory for my father. And moreover, as the discovery will only have been realized thanks to the cosmozoans, its benefits will repair the damage that I have caused by importing the meteorites into the human world.