“When shall we leave?” asked Fortin.
“The day after tomorrow,” said Homo-Deus. “I need that time to realize the millions we’ve recuperated; I need to transfer them to Asian banks in order for us to have them accessible.”
After a pause, he continued: “Our first stop will be Russia. If we can bring about an effective alliance between China and Russia, that’s nearly four hundred million people who will stand up against old Europe. India will awaken; its closer contact with the young world will permit it to establish parallels and to be counted. There, too, it will be necessary to spread progress and enlightenment in floods. A people enmired for thousands of years in an exuberant fantastic mythology will be difficult to bring back to reason and verity; we’ll reach that end by awakening the idea of independence among the Hindus. I’ve attracted followers in the past even among the Brahmins and fakirs.
“Woe to the poor in spirit! No ridiculous sentimentality! Intelligence and work must be masters, but it’s necessary to do everything possible and even the impossible to diminish the number of the ignorant. Everything in terrestrial life cries out to us: Woe to the weak!” It’s necessary to diminish the number of the weak. Will we resolve the problem of happiness for all? I don’t think so—but it’s noble and great to try. We ought to: we’re marvelously equipped for it.
“Perhaps we’ll see the result ourselves! But He will see it!”
“Who’s He?” exclaimed Fortin and Georges.
“Our son: the one who will inherit our two conjugated intelligences, who will be, mentally, the son of Jeanne Fortin and Marc Vanel.”
Two days later, the bodies of the three murderers and Jeanne’s having been buried in the park, a large touring automobile, driven by Vanel himself, came to collect Fortin and Georges, who helped Frédéric, still weak but on the way to recovery, to climb aboard. He was hoisted up along with Mardruk, who offered his hand to his colleague in misfortune. Then Dr. Fortin locked the gate of the Red Nest for the first time, and took his place in the vehicle beside the young woman that Marc introduced to him.
“My fiancée, Mademoiselle Huguette de Virmile, Jeanne Fortin’s cousin, who will soon be her wife and mine.”
As they went past the post office in Saint-Cloud, Homo-Deus stopped and put two letters in the box. They were addressed to the Commissaires de Police of his quarter and Saint-Cloud, informing them of their departure and putting the two houses under the protection of the police. A considerable sum of money was enclosed with each letter to ensure the surveillance.
Then, at top speed, the huge red automobile, with the pilgrims—Homo-Deus, the radiant Huguette, Dr. Fortin, Frédéric, Mardruk and Georges Garnier—headed toward the East, where the Sun was rising:
the Sun, which, tomorrow would rise, in the course of their journey toward the light, over the fraternal steeples of the cathedrals of Strasbourg and Cologne, over the Rhine, the river of the bloody beard with the imbecilically disputed banks;
the Sun, which would soon illuminate Moscow for them, dreaming around Lenin’s tomb, standing up like a religious altar in front of the palace of the Kremlin, more radiant for peoples than its famous antique golden cupolas;
the Sun, which would offer the newcomers its flamboyant and joyous host, the source of life, in Constantinople, in an unforgettable communion of the lips of Homo-Deus and Huguette, resplendent with love and the enchantments of the Bosphorus;
THE SUN, which, in a few months, eternal and almost indifferent, the nearest of the millions of suns scattered in infinity, would shine its lamp, in India, over that egalitarian, amicable group of rich and poor, humble and privileged, ascending toward the summits, in the course of a magical voyage, of the most vertiginous and most inaccessible slopes of the Himalaya and the Ideal.
It is necessary to have a taste for summits. It is necessary that, disdaining frontiers, abolishing them by the union of peoples determined no longer to sent to be massacred in the great national abattoirs, the poets, the thinkers and the orators of progress—the precursors, courageously scaling the mountain in spite of the smiles, the insults and the threats—will raise up, tomorrow, on the summits that are lost in the clouds of a petty globe in which human beings are still killing one another, and never be extinguished again, this humanity, torches of peace and love.
Paris, 1924
KILL THE OLD, ENJOY!
BOOK ONE: A WAR-HERO AND PARRICIDE
I. A Boss who wants to have Complete Control
In every great city, certain quarters are singularized by specialties. In Paris, Grenelle has that of metallurgy. One sees numerous factories there producing all the equipment concerned with telegraphy, heating, electricity and locomotion. There is not, certainly, the intensive and formidable fabrication of the agglomerations of Saint-Etienne or Creusot, but at Grenelle, a very active portion of the iron and steel industry employs thousands of workers.
The Aubert-Coutan Company, founded in 1904 by Firmin Aubert, the father of Antoine Aubert, the present owner, the associate of Sixte Coutan, was in 1923 one of the oldest and most prosperous in the arrondissement. The factory of automobile components and small machinery occupied, in good years and bad, six hundred workers.
Between the two associates the work was thus divided: Antoine Aubert, a man of the métier, was principally occupied with the day-to-day running of the factories, and Sixte Coutan with external affairs, the quest for and the augmentation of orders, publicity, etc.
The factory occupied a vast rectangle in the Rue des Entrepreneurs; the property was terminated on the edge of the Quai de Javel37 by a rather elegant detached building; it served as a habitation for Antoine and his son Etienne, a hero of the five-year war, with several citations and the Croix de Guerre, now liberated from military servitude and murder, one of the eight hundred thousand Chevaliers de la Légion d’honneur. (The inflation of the red ribbon equals that of banknotes, but honor and money are going down and down.)
That detached building, separated from the factory buildings by a long set of railings, had a side door opening on to a small and neat garden behind the proprietorial abode, the principal entrance of which was on the Quai de Javel. Another gate, tall and beautiful, with two battens and two lateral doors, gave access to a broad sandy driveway going around the master’s dwelling, leading to the garage, situated to one side and invisible from the Quai.
Half past six—corresponding to eighteen-thirty in regulation terminology—had just chimed on the factory clock. The workers had all abandoned their tools and quit the workshops half an hour earlier.
Antoine Aubert was in his office, in the company of a tall man dressed in blue overalls, like those mechanics wear, while the boss was settled in his armchair.
“So,” said the latter, getting to his feet, “I won’t get a definitive response today?”
“Wait a little longer, my dear Lafon. You know that Coutan promised to be here at six. He must have been delayed.”
“Your associate is doing everything possible, it seems to me, to avoid concluding this business. It requires all the devotion I have for you, Monsieur Aubert, to prevent me from taking my invention elsewhere, to a rival company.”
“Thank you, Louis. It’s certain that Coutan doesn’t look at this contract with a favorable eye, but I’ve explained to him that it’s in our interest to make a deal with you first, and all your comrades thereafter. Between your two employers, my dear friend, there’s a profound difference of opinion. I, as you know, Lafon, have always lived with the workers; I’ve handled the iron; I’m a craftsman; I can see the advantages and disadvantages. Because of that, I understand that workers ought to benefit from the enterprise whose success is, to some extent, their making. That participation in the profits will create competition among them, make them more interested in their work, improving it and finding means of making it more efficient, by unearthing, like you, inventions that merit consideration.
“Yes, that’s my opinion. Coutan, however, considers the industry to be first and foremost a
source of profits for its shareholders; he only sees the brutal financial returns, and the manual labor carried out by human hands is considered by him as mechanical work. According to him, a worker has no need to think. Think? About what? Let him do what can’t yet be done by machines, but don’t let him imagine that he’s anything but a machine himself. By proposing to Coutan that we pay ten thousand francs for your invention and give you a share of the returns, I’m completely overturning his biases. But he’ll come round to it. It’s necessary that he does—and to all the rest, too.”
“Undoubtedly, undoubtedly, Monsieur Aubert, but you must understand that I can’t wait indefinitely. It’s necessary to reach a conclusion. Today is the fifth of April. I’ll wait until the end of the month—but if I don’t have a favorable response by then, consider our conversation today as giving notice of my departure.”
Monsieur Aubert did not have time to respond. The door of the office had opened softly. A pretty young woman had heard the worker’s final words. Advancing swiftly toward the desk, she said: “Well, I’ve arrived just in time.” She turned toward Aubert and added: “Yes, it’s me. Sixte wasn’t able to come, and as this business annoys my husband, he’s sent me in his stead.” She turned back to Lafon. “You’re putting a knife to our throat, then? Pay up or I go? Well, get lost, my friend. We won’t keep you. And you tolerate his language, Antoine? But my dear Aubert, the Coutans still count here!”
Antoine Aubert had stood up. Nonplussed at first by that flood of words, he interrupted. “My dear friend, you’re interfering with matters that you don’t understand. We’ll discus it seriously with your husband, who is my associate, as I haven’t forgotten. For today, your intervention is, to say the least, unnecessary, and I beg my old comrade Louis Lafon to disregard it.”
“What? What?” stammered the young woman. “You talk to me like that, Antoine?”
“Would you like to go in there? I’ll explain later, my dear friend.” Drawing the svelte prettiness away, gently but firmly, he pushed her into a room adjacent to the office and then came back.
Lafon, in his blue overalls, was quivering with anger. Aubert patted him on the shoulder.
“Henceforth, it’s a question of honor and the future for me. It’s necessary that reason holds sway over fantasy, if the association isn’t to be broken, for I now regret no longer being the sole master. I wanted to become a great factory owner instead of the petty manufacturer that we were in my father’s time. That’s where ambition gets you.”
“Don’t regret anything, Monsieur Aubert. It’s necessary to move with the times.” He laughed and added: “And that’s what we workers are doing, too.”
“And that’s justice. Come on, my old Lafon, I’ll see you soon. I hope to have good news to give you shortly.
He showed the worthy workman to the door, and parted from him with a cordial handshake.
Then, anxiously, he went into the room where Josette Coutan was waiting for him—a kind of retreat where private or very intimate business was conducted. There was a small eighteenth-century desk, a large divan and four Louis XV armchairs; on the mantelpiece there was a Clodion terracotta and two candlesticks.
Sprawled on the divan, Josette Coutan, very modern with a tomboyish appearance, her black hair cut very short and neatly over the shaven nape of her neck, was twisting her sleeve furiously. Antoine Aubert, plump and good-natured, came to sit down beside her and took her hand.
“You’re angry with me, then, Jo?”
“Of course I am. Such an insult, in front of a worker.”
“It’s not for want of asking you not to get involved with factory matters, which only concern me and your husband. Content yourself with emptying him out.”
“Oh, that’s you all over! If I’m ruining Coutan, you laugh about it, and it amuses you, but if I put my nose in your office, that displeases you. All the same, I don’t regret what I said to that Lafon. Yes, let him get out, with his superior airs. Good riddance.”
“Do you know what would happen if Lafon left the factory at the end of the month? All the workers would follow him.”
“Get away! You’ll swallow anything!”
“I’m sure of it. A rival company, which wants to expand its manufacturing, would take them on immediately. Your husband is skillful at winkling out orders, I’ll give him that; he can’t make things, but he brings work in.”
“Today, that’s almost everything.” After a pause, as he remained impassive, she said: “After all, it’s humiliating for us to give in.”
“There’s a means of settlement,” said Aubert, coldly. “Let’s each take our share. I estimate the value of the factory at eight million. I’m ready to pay him half.”
“Really?” said Josette, amazed. “Four million?”
“Neither more nor less. Think about it, Jo. What you want, your husband will want. Seven years ago, during the war, when he brought me two million, the enterprise was only half-fortunate. Doubling his capital, after pocketing considerable profits, which you’ve played your part in spending, isn’t a bad deal.”
Josette thought about it, to the extent that she could. Fundamentally, the factory didn’t please her. She kept company with exceedingly chic dolls, whose husbands were vaguely “in business,” and those worldly households lived on an income of five or six hundred thousand a year. Her husband, so artful, so clever and so enterprising, could make whatever he liked, especially with an initial capital of four million.
“And you’ll carry on?” she said, already decided.
“Certainly—my son Etienne will help me. Is it yes, then Jo?”
“And afterwards—the two of us?”
“You’ll come from time to time, when you spare me a thought.”
“Yes, I see now—it’s a matter of breaking it off between us. Pig!”
“No. If I want to separate myself from Sixte, it has a great deal to do with my affection for you. Your husband adores you; he listens to all your caprices and acts in accordance with them. If, one day, he learns that he’s been cuckolded, especially by me, it would be a terrible blow for the factory.”
“That, for want of other scruples, is a consideration that’s stopping you a trifle belatedly. As for me, if I’ve deceived my husband, it’s the fault of the war. Mobilized, he was on the Eastern front, while I was mobilized to your factory. I’ve been weak.”
“Don’t reproach yourself, my dear. I’m the guilty one. Your temperament did the rest.”
“You arranged our love in your own fashion. Anyway, we’ll see what follows. Four million, you said?”
“Would you like to see the books?”
“I don’t understand any of your figures. Do you know that you haven’t kissed me yet this evening?”
“That’s your fault. You wanted to talk business. Four million—think about that. Plus a hundred big blue bills for you, my little Jo.”
II. Widowers who Remarry Don’t Deserve to Be
The amorous relationship between Josette and Antoine Aubert dated from May 1918. In spite of what he believed, Aubert had not started it. Eleven years older than his associate, he had not given the slightest thought to Josette, an arrant coquette, who had always striven to provoke him by playing the flirt with him. Josette was then in the full exuberance of her beauty. The husband, always infatuated with his young wife, had only seen playfulness in her lively treatment of an associate at least twenty years old than her. For the spouse blinded by Eros, she was a child teasing her Papa. So when, in a surge of patriotic enthusiasm, emulation and vainglory, he had renounced the tranquil post where he was tucked away to leave for the Eastern Front, he confided his young wife to the care of Aubert, a widower of thirteen years, after the wife he had adored was carried away by a cardiac arrest, leaving him with a small boy of six.
The industrialist, entirely given over to work and money, had placed his heir with an aunt in Touraine, and then the lycée, destining him for the École Polytechnique. Too young when the war broke out, Etienne rema
ined at the factory at first, with his father. It was the only free time he was to enjoy. In 1916, at the age of nineteen, he left to play his own part in the immense slaughter. Having passed from the artillery into the air force, he won the Croix de Guerre after three citations, and in October 1918, the red ribbon. That is quite an achievement, when one is scarcely more than twenty years old.
The more or less tender liaison between Antoine and Josette had, therefore, been going on for five years, and was sometimes far too much for Aubert, ever faithful to the memory of the lost saint, adored as she deserved to be. What was the frivolous Josette compared to that perfect wife and mother? The excellent widower had supported it, until the end of the war, with resignation, for he was certain that his pretty protégée, left to her own devices, would have fallen into easy gallantry with the Allied combatants, French, English and especially American.
The affair of the Lafon patent was, therefore, an opportunity for which he had been waiting for a long time—not to mention that there was another reason for breaking with Josette. A friend of his wife had returned from the province where she had married. Her husband had been killed in the vicinity of Verdun. A young widow, as rich and pretty as she was good and intelligent, Madame Jousselin had conquered the industrialist with the infinite, sovereign, prodigious charm that emanated from her—and he did not displease her.
The frequentation of Aline Jousselin rendered Josette’s intense libertinage and silly gossip even more insupportable. Aline’s ten-year-old daughter, an exquisite child, had all of her mother’s character. Was not an instinctive aversion to be feared on the part of the little girl for the man suspected of wanting to steal her beloved mother from her? No, Ulette, who had befriended him warmly, gaily threw her arms around his neck when he went to visit.
One day, Ulette put on a blue sash and gravely asked: “Monsieur Antoine Aubert, do you take for your wife Madame Alice Jousselin, here present?”
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