by Theo Varlet
“The criminal imprudence of the communists, who have violated the electric law and started up the power-station at Saint-Denis, has brought forth a new danger, with infinitely grave consequences. A generation of Xenobiota has been born, whose first representatives have sown death and terror in the capital. These creatures have returned to the plant, and measures will be taken to prevent them from effecting a further sortie. But, ignorant as we are of their possible scope of action, it is to be feared that, if they are allowed to multiply, these precautions might perhaps become ineffective. The plant at Saint-Denis will therefore be drowned in gas in the course of the night, by military engineers and aviators.”
At the time, in the condition of mental aberration and high fever into which that terrifying adventure cast us, it was thought quite natural and straightforward that the bombardment had occasioned the partial destruction of the power-station, but on reflection, I wonder, along with many others—Monsieur Hénault-Feltrie, for example—firstly, whether that measure was not further justified by certain circumstances unknown to the public, and secondly, whether such damage could have resulted from simple gas-shells, or whether the Monsters of Saint Denis might have had far more to do with it. Might they not, despairing of their cause, have destroyed their own lair?
It was claimed the next day, in fact, that the Ardent Chimeras’ raid on Paris was only mounted by a small fraction of their total number, and that the larger contingent, entrenched in the plant, had taken possession of the controls in order to maintain its activity and provide alimentation to the entire tribe. The skeptics, however, made the observation, firstly, that the power-station, being equipped with the latest improvements in automation, would have continued to function just as well by itself until the coal stocks were exhausted; and secondly, that the burning of the plant could be explained by the mere presence of the vagabond fulminating globes, and that there was no need to attribute rational intelligence to them.
It seems probable, at least, in spite of the silence of the newspapers on their reappearance, that the 20 Chimeras seen in Paris were not the only ones to emerge from the plant. Another band of similar size must have headed northwards. It must have delivered somber blows during the night in Chantilly and Creil; then their excursion must have continued through a healthy region, deprived of current on their approach. Starved, without nutritive electricity, decreasing in size although still redoubtable, their last survivors might have been seen in the vicinity of Longueau, where all trace of them was conclusively lost...
Even taking into account only the facts duly certified—the march on Paris and the return to the plant at Saint-Denis, the behavior of the globe, the deliberate choice they seemed to make of their victims in order to strike them down by contact—scientists such as Professor Nathan, Dr. Charles Richet and the philosopher Henri Bergson have concluded that it is necessary to see the Chimeras as thinking beings, the first-born of a higher order of Xenobiota, something equivalent in their special creation to humankind in ours—and Monsieur Bergson has even deplored the fat that their destruction interrupted the experiment prematurely...
It is true that other scientists of no less great repute, such as Dr. Gustave Le Bon and M. Jean Perrin will not consent to see the mobile globes as anything more than simple electrical phenomena, concentrating within themselves a formidable reserve of energy, akin to “ball lightning,” an aberrant form of the classic zigzag flash.30
The attempts of Professor Nathan to reproduce that particular variety of the Lichen in the laboratory having been fruitless, the question has every chance of never being elucidated.
XVI. The Electric Terror
Whether they were intelligent or not, the Chimeras were redoubtable beings, and their appearance was a decisive reply to those who thought the continued observation of the decree superfluous.
Given such a terrifyingly conclusive example of the unknown dangers the Lichen still harbored, there was everything to fear from the resumption of the functioning of the smallest source of electricity.
There was an immediate and absolute reaction. The notion of the latent danger, which had weakened and had been replaced the previous day by a presumptuous confidence, flared up again, brutal and excessive, and became a panic terror, a virulent phobia which was maintained in a sharp state during the two days that historians have baptized “the Electric Terror.”
On October 27, Paris awoke prey to that species of rage which derives from fear of an invisible and omnipresent menace that might explode at any moment. The official exhortations to increase vigilance diffused by the loudspeakers were superfluous. The terms of the decree seemed too moderate. No one any longer admitted that there were inoffensive sources of electricity. Even from a pocket electric torch, people almost expected to see an ardent lichen or something worse spring forth.
The new powers conferred on the anti-electric brigades and the new orders they were given stimulated them all the more because the agents, previously mocked and unpopular, now felt that they were supported by popular opinion. Puffed up by their importance, the Xs made arrests like other policemen, and entered houses, on the invitation and with the encouragement of citizens. Everyone became a benevolent auxiliary, and, if necessary, informer. The neighbor who possessed a radio set became a public enemy if he did not surrender his batteries of his own accord.
All motorized vehicles, including those with Diesel engines, became suspect. They were stopped on the strength of any denunciation; at the slightest trace of lichen on a poorly-shielded motor, the driver had to take to his heels to escape a beating, and if there was no policeman there to take the vehicle away to the pound, the exasperated crowd set fire to it. Detachments of boy-scouts were circulating on patrol, armed with real Brownings, of which they threatened to make use if a vehicle did not comply with their order to stop. Well-off motorists, in order to circulate freely, hired an X for the day, installing him permanently in the front seat.
More considerable sources of electricity still remained in Paris, however.
There was no emotion of astonishment, during the initial indifference of the Great Shutdown, at the knowledge that the telegraph and the telephone had only been suppressed for public use, and that a few lines continued in operation for official uses. It’s necessary that a government governs, isn’t it? And since the desired precautions were taken, there was no harm in those few items of electrical apparatus, appropriately protected from the lichen, continuing to function on a much-reduced scale. During the panic, however, this sage judgment was forgotten. A band of demonstrators gathered and went to the central telegraph office, declaring its intention of destroying the apparatus.
They did not destroy anything; the building was guarded by a squad of machine-gunners, the mere sight of whom sufficed to cool their zeal, and the two water-cannon summoned to reinforce the barracks at Château-Landon did not even have to be brought into play to disperse them.
A few historians have described that little group as a communist mob. That is, I believe, an error. The defeat of the mob that had begun to form on the evening of October 26th, amid the general hostility of the population, had discouraged the communist leaders, who were counting on a mass rising of sympathizers to support their troops. The demonstration at the central telegraph office, and two or three others of the same sort, had no political character; they were spontaneously-improvised movements in which everyone, regardless of parties, was only demanding one thing: the integral observation of the decree. In the day of the Electric Terror, far from wanting to overthrow the government, even its grimmest opponents expected salvation from it, and were glad that the governor of Paris and the prefect of police were men with “firm hands.”
Under the influence of the morbid horror of the ardent lichen, even the inoffensive zebi was boycotted. The first carts that ventured on to the street on the 27th to sell their merchandise were attacked by exasperated housewives, who abuse the poor Crainquebilles and emptied the pails of “radio jam” into the sewers. The o
riginal source of the product remained, however: the transmitting station at the Eiffel Tower. The neighborhoods of Grenelle, the École Militaire and the Invalides, which believed themselves to be directly threatened by that proximity, supplied a column of volunteers brandishing axes, howling that it was necessary to cut the antennae and demolish the machines in the Tower. There too, precautions were taken and the assailants forced to retreat. For want of anything better they fell on the shed where zebi was being potted and stored on behalf of the syndicate, and destroyed or looted everything.
For fear of seeing their premises invaded and devastated, the great dailies abandoned their loudspeaker broadcasts, and from then on there was absolute silence with respect to all public news. That lasted throughout the afternoon of October 27 and the morning of October 28, until official public information posters were put up.
But none of that seemed serious to me on the 27th, while I remained in a state of suspense and the vacancy of my personality—while I awaited a reply to the letter sent via Alburtin...
It arrived the next day, on the 28th.
Stamped “air mail,” addressed in Aurore’s neat and upright handwriting, I take it from Madame Taquet’s hands with a shiver of intoxicated joy and carry it off like a prey.
The end of the famine, the Ramadan of news!
I am obliged to pull myself together twice in order to finish opening it; my fingers are trembling, and I can only succeed by tearing the envelope apart.
Eyguzon, October 27
Dear Gaston,
My father is sending me to Paris for two days. I shall arrive on the 29th, at 6 p.m. Meet me at the Gare d’Austerlitz. If I don’t see you on the platform or at the exit I’ll come directly to your apartment.
Your
AURORE
It’s nothing, those three lines, and perhaps the final formula is no more than a formula in her mind—but I see it as a testimony of half-confessed love.
Hope! Gratitude! A hectic vertigo of affection! “Good girl! Good girl!” I repeat, over and over again. How can I bear this tension of impatience that is driving me mad for all those hours? How many hours still separate me from her arrival? Thirty-three! That’s terrible!
But I am henceforth immunized against the contagion of the unanimous folly, which I have allowed to invade me; here is my personality re-extended, reinflated...
And it’s with a smile that I welcome the grievances of Madame Taquet, who stops me as I pass the lodge. She tells me that she wanted to talk me just now, upstairs. There’s talk of evacuating Paris and cleansing it by means of gas. What do I think? She’s asking my opinion, as she likes to do in difficult or awkward circumstances.
“Pooh! Yes, Madame Taquet, there is, indeed, talk of such an evacuation in places, but it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yes, yes, Monsieur Delvart—it’s quite serious. A commission has been appointed; the project will be discussed in the Chambre today or tomorrow; I know that from an usher at the Bourbon Palace, who confided it to the sister-in-law of one of my husband’s comrades. The only chance that we still have, it appears, to get rid of it, is if there’s a freeze within three or four days…but you must have heard the bells of Sacré-Coeur ringing for the last half-hour or thereabouts? That’s for public prayers—to ask the good Lord to send us cold weather. Otherwise, if we don’t get any frost, the evacuation will be on the second of November. Then what will become of us? We’ll never find enough carriages to move house, will we, Monsieur Delvart?”
“Oh, you won’t be moving house, Madame Taquet. If this ever happens, this evacuation, we’ll all leave with our hands in our pockets, for 24 hours at the most—just time to go to the suburbs to eat a couple of fritters.”
“Oh drat fritters! And what will we find when we get back? Nothing! The apaches will have stolen everything!”
“Police will remain in Paris, I assume, to keep watch in gas masks. But let’s hope it won’t come to that, and that the frost will come.”
“In this weather! It’s as warm as it was in September…and even in September...”
“That might change. Let’s go—au revoir, Madame Taquet.”
I set off for Paris, at hazard. I walked, elevated by a joyful excitement, already living the future, imagining my meeting with Aurore, the hours that I would spend with her…going much further than that first meeting, seeing our definitive union, later…our life together, according to six different scenarios. I let my imagination get drunk on all the possibilities, which it passed in review one at a time, by mean of long sweeps of a spotlight over the most various perspectives of our future happiness...
Unless...
But the moments when obstacles block the horizon did not last long, and I quickly recovered my hopeful course...
All these cinematic dreams were superimposed on the living reality of the street: a feverish and anxious Paris full of policemen with red armbands and gilded Xs, agents on bicycles, motorcycle couriers, Republican guards on horseback, trucks packed with uniforms…and black Senegalese troops grouped at junctions, laughing, beside stacks of Lebels…a Paris in a state of siege.
Where did I go that day? How many tens of kilometers did I cover? It seems to me that I had lunch somewhere near the Trocadero, the silhouette of which remains on my retina, associated with a restaurant table...
The weather was mild and gray, almost lukewarm. At a given moment, I noticed that I was sweating under my gabardine, and took it off to carry it over my arm.
The day was declining when I stopped, mechanically, with a group of idlers that has rapidly grown in front of a billboard, where a municipal poster was just finishing sticking up a white official sheet of paper.
ADVICE TO THE POPULATION IN CASE OF FROST
The Meteorological Office forecasts the arrival of an area of high pressure and an anticyclone that has formed over the North Atlantic and is advancing rapidly toward continental Europe. A considerable drop in the temperature thus seems imminent.
In case of frost appearing in Paris, in order that it might take maximum effect and lead to the complete and definitive sanitization of the capital, the Parisian population is requested to conform to the following instructions:
Firstly, as soon as the frost begins—which will be advertised by the ringing of church bells and the sounding of the sirens on public monuments, proceed in all dwellings with the extinction of fires, for cooking or other purposes, especially central-heating boilers.
Secondly, open all the windows in the building, including bedroom windows, and leave them open for at least four hours. It will be sufficient, in order not to risk any inconvenience to health, to remain in bed, well-covered. As for invalids and delicate individuals, who need warmth, take care to transport them into another room, already sterilized by the cold, in order to be able to aerate their...
The joyous exclamations around the poster were increasing. Finally! Deliverance! Oh, to be sure, no one would fail to carry out the recommendations of the poster—and people would make certain that their neighbors complied with them. Only too glad to have cold weather, if that providential frost materialized and people were thus able to escape the nightmare, without being obliged to have recourse to grand remedies and evacuating Paris! And they booed one bad citizen who dared to suggest that the story of the frost was nothing but a government maneuver, a trick to calm the citizens down...
Personally, I didn’t care whether there was a frost or not. The true deliverance was the advent of Aurore. Her presence would be sufficient for everything to be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
Nightfall caught me outside the Jardin des Plantes. That badly-lit Paris, in which the deployment of police and the military was taking on a sinister aspect, countered my anticipations of joy. I wanted to take refuge in my studio, where I might dream at my ease and sleep—for I felt suddenly exhausted. I had achieved the result that I had sought to achieve by walking: to dissipate the trepidation of expectation, to numb myself with fatigue, to reach
tomorrow in the forgetfulness of sleep...
A horse-drawn omnibus, Bastille-Madeleine, carried me, passively, as far as the Opéra; then one last pedestrian effort, which seemed interminable, to get to the Rue Cortot...
“Monsieur Delvart!”
One foot already on the foot of the staircase, I came to a halt.
The concierge had come out of the lodge to say something to me—but she had a contrite and embarrassed expression, and could not bring herself to speak.
“Come on, Madame Taquet, what is it? Tell me.”
“Well, this is it…it’s very annoying, but you mustn’t hold it against me—it’s not my fault. You know that I waited as long as possible to declare the presence of lichen in the building. But yesterday, an agent came to collect the form and I had to give it to him. Then, this afternoon, about 4 p.m., the Disinfection Xs came, with their vehicle and all their gas-pipe equipment, and they did the entire house. I had to open your apartment for them, and Monsieur Noguès, who wasn’t here either; otherwise, they’d have broken down the doors...
“You know how strict they are at present, the Xs…and to think that there might be frost tomorrow! It’s a blow of fate, this disinfection. I’m afraid they might have done some damage in your apartment, and Monsieur Noguès’...”
They had. The curtains and my clothes weren’t too badly damaged by the bromine gas, the odor of which persisted in my studio in spite of the windows being left open, but on a dozens of my canvases—the most recently painted—the whites had turned black, because of some chemical reaction.
A genuine catastrophe—but my physical weariness paralyzed any violent reaction. I remained stunned for a moment, under the oil-lamp, contemplating the ruined paintings; then, postponing indignation and anger until the next day, I went to bed, mentally bathed in the helpful thought of Aurore, and went to sleep almost immediately.