by Théo Varlet
Together, the two leapt out of their seats, and in three bounds were out of the cellar, in the trench. The sky, profoundly blue, was above their heads, and the sun, already high, was bathing them with a dazzling light, as bright and hot as a summer noon.
Putting his hand up to shade his blinking eyes, Renard said, triumphantly: “You can certainly see that the experiment has succeeded!”
“If you say so, old chap, although we’re still in Port-sur-Seille.”
Collecting themselves, they climbed on to the embankment of the trench. The tower loomed up in front of them, with the kitchen building on the other side of the square, which was closed behind them by the Englishman’s villa and the store-house. But that familiar sight was transfigured by the strange quasi-African light. The usual detonations toward the north had ceased; in the warm and vaguely perfumed air, they could hear birds singing.
V. The Fervent Sun
Mechanically, Monocard had looked at his watch. He frowned, examined it at closer range, put it to his ear, and shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you know what time it is?” he asked Renard. “My watch seems to be working normally, and it shows quarter past two—but that’s absurd. According to the sun it’s much later—at least eight hours.”
Renard consulted his chronometer, with a puzzled expression. It showed two-sixteen.
“We’re slow, obviously,” he said. “What do you expect me to do about it? Our watches have stopped...”
“And started again. Or when we fainted…for I have a clear sensation of having fainted, when you set off your petard…we must have been unconscious for several hours...”
On hearing further mention of the petard, the lieutenant, already very nervous, became irritated. “You’re wrong to deny it, old chap. The Machine worked.”
Suddenly seized by a suspicion, though, he left Monocard there, leapt into the trench, went back into the cellar—and came back to the sublieutenant a minute later. The latter, still standing on the embankment, was pensive examining the kitchens and the cooks on the other side of the square. Yawning in the sunlight, the latter were setting about concocting the morning “juice” with studious slowness.
“The Machine worked,” Renard repeated, his fists clenched, and staring the other in the face. “But it didn’t work correctly. Someone must have touched it!”
Monocard could see that it would do no good to contradict him. He decided not to insist, for the moment—but his rancor at what he considered to be a bad joke pierced his reply: “At any rate, we’re still in Port-sur-Seille, and duty still calls. Since our orderlies are sleeping late, would you care to come to the office and wait for the coffee?”
Renard, increasingly demoralized, doubting himself that the Machine had really worked, contented himself with not receiving a formal denial, and seized the pretext that the sublieutenant had offered him to raise the burning question.
Suddenly voluble and excited, he went on: “As to that, you’re right, we’re already late with our reports. The colonel’s been on at me for a week to get things in order. I need to know whether the men have put on their second pullovers. I’m missing three sheepskins. Where have they gone? They must have been cut up again to make socks, obviously. And the parcels from the Dames de France to distribute! What odd ideas people sometimes have! There’s one full of Ninettes and Rintintins,6 and another of chessboards, with black and white confetti by way of pawns! As if the men have any need of that! They have their godmothers, twelve each at least; the famous Nénesse has twenty-three…all that can rot here. We need to write reports.”
Monocard, already somewhat unsure of his companion’s mental integrity, was worried by this sudden excitement. He took the other by the arm, amicably. “Come on, then—I’ll help you. We’ll do it together.”
In the office, they found the clerk installed before his typewriter. In order to find the exact time, he had just gone up to the wireless post, where Dupuy was in despair about not receiving any messages, attributing the breakdown of his apparatus to the night’s commotion.
“A mine, wasn’t it, lieutenant? Or a torpedo. It can’t have fallen far away. I’m still stunned, and I must have fainted—when I woke up, it was daylight. At the infirmary, where I went to look for a pick-me-up, the major was talking about an earthquake... No, he hasn’t gone yet—he’s taking chocolate with the English aviator.”
For an hour, the lieutenants absorbed themselves in paperwork and the methodical drafting of the report for the colonel. Through the wide-open office door, however, distant voices were heard, apparently from the posts. “Good stuff, this juice!” Then there was a hubbub of approaching voices, confused exclamations and cries, getting louder all the time.
“One can’t work, with these clowns!” exclaimed the lieutenant.
“It’s intolerable,” said de Lanselles, putting down his pen. “Let’s go see what’s up.”
They went out. In front of the kitchens, a crowd of overexcited poilus was pressing around a small group of suppliers, with empty sacks on their backs but provided with inflated bags from which they were extracting and distributing oranges! Shouts of “Valence! La Belle Valence!” went up on all sides. They were being interrogated, and, while gesticulating, they seemed to be telling a story.
A cacophony of voices reached the officers: Yes, my friend, a camel, with two women, real ones, and six Moroccan fellows with little squeaky voices...”
As the lieutenants approached, silence fell.
“What’s the matter? Why all this racket?”
Several men started talking at the same time. Furthermore, their mouths were full of slices of orange. It was all incomprehensible.
“Put down those oranges for a moment,” said Monocard. “Where have they come from, by the way? Have the Dames de France sent parcels? But first, why haven’t you brought the supplies? Just you, corporal!”
The corporal launched into confused exclamations. A mine had blown up the communication tunnel and half the village. The road beyond had disappeared. The little wood had got strangely closer…to the extent that they hadn’t found the supply depot...”
“What are you talking about?”
But it was necessary to interrupt the investigation. Sergeant Cipriani came running from the guard-posts, angrier than ever, out of breath, sweating and red-faced.
“It’s insane Lieutenant! The men at the guard-posts haven’t had their juice yet. There must be punishments. This can’t go on. Since that mine-blast…the cannon have stopped, the little hamlet opposite has disappeared, the Seille’s dry. Metz is only half the usual distance away; the Boche trenches can no longer be seen, nor the forts. The juice hasn’t arrived…there have to be punishments, Lieutenant!”
Without seeming to attach any importance to Cipriani’s bizarre and incoherent news, Renard tried to calm him down.
“There’ll be punishments, Sergeant Cipriani, there’ll be punishments—but please put a bit of logic into what you’re saying. Go have your juice. Cooks, get on with it, instead of standing there sucking oranges.”
An exclamation from Monocard distracted him, however. Monocard had just caught one of the men who had gone for supplies occupied in secretly showing an unexpected object to his fellows: a scimitar. A superb, damascened scimitar, brand new, and with a sharp cutting edge. Renard came closer.
“It wasn’t a Boche you took that from, was it?” Monocard demanded.
In the midst of whispers and sniggers, the embarrassed man, exhorted by his comrades in low voices, suddenly came to a decision. “Lieutenant, it’s a paper-knife that I rescued from one of the Arbis.”
De Lanselles shrugged his shoulders, but Renard wanted to get to the bottom of the affair.
“It’s ‘Arbis’ now! I heard mention of Moroccans and a camel just now. What’s the story? Was it the ‘Arbis’ who gave you the oranges, perchance? Come on, tell—you, Dudule.”
Dudule started to speak, assisted by the inseparable Totor, who sometimes reminded him of a de
tail or suggested and expression.
“Well, it’s like this, Lieutenant. After the big explosion of the mine in the night, we slept late, and we left to get supplies in broad daylight—eight of us, with four donkeys. Then, when we set off to get out of here by the tunnel, after a hundred meters, we came out into the sun. No more tunnel, no more trenches. It was the mine—had to be…nothing but open country, or, rather, a sort of ravine, but as we couldn’t hear any zinzins any more, we went on all the same, toward the little wood. It seemed to be a lot closer than usual, the little wood, and it had leaves—beautiful green and shiny leaves, but we weren’t sorry to get into the shade, because the sun was blazing down on our noggins. We smelt a funny odor of orange-blossom—you might have thought we were at a wedding. When we went into the wood, what did I see on all the braches? Oranges! The lads must have worked hard, I thought, to hang the oranges on the branches—but they were real oranges, with leaves and everything, and we stopped to pick them. While we were doing that, we heard the voices of two chicks. That was a bit much, we thought, chicks in the lines…and what did we see coming? A camel—a live camel, with the chicks on top, in a palanquin. They came close. Then there were six negroes, who seemed to have sprung out of the ground in front of us...”
“Then,” Totor continued, “I ask them: what are you doing here? They jabber at me in some argot that no one can understand, and they have little shrill voices more piercing than girls. Then Bec-d’Ombrelle, the donkey-boy, tries to get fresh with the chicks on the camel. An Arbi gets annoyed, and wants to knock him down. Me, I jump the Arbi and land him with a kick in the solar plexus. But other Arbis turn up. They have clubs, spears, shields, and as we didn’t have any weapons, we couldn’t go any further, and we beat it, at the double…but I grabbed my Arbi’s paper-knife all the same...”
The men of the supply-party expected a severe reprimand, but the two officers, who had listened to the amazing tale until the end without interrupting, exchanged singular glances.
“What do you think of that?” asked Monocard, in a low voice.
“Well,” said Renard, “I think…come back to the cellar, where we can talk more freely. You, the cooks, distribute the juice to the men on watch, and everyone get back to his dug-out. Sergeant Cipriani, I don’t want to see anyone outside before they’re summoned to roll call, understood?”
Monocard and Renard headed for the cellar. They did not find anyone these, but the coffee was ready.
“Well?” Monocard queried, as soon as they were sheltered from indiscreet ears.
“Well…the sun, the heat, the oranges, the camel, half the village disappeared, the landscape transformed, and all the rest? We’re in Africa.”
“And in Port-sur-Seille at the same time?” Monocard riposted, not wanting to yield to the evidence.
At that moment, Jasmin made his reappearance, followed by Saucisson. Both looked away on seeing their bosses occupied in examining the Machine, and set about dusting in a sheepish and furtive manner.
“Yes, and in Port-sur-Seille at the same time,” Renard replied to his colleague’s ironic question. “It’s not my fault if someone touched the controls.”
Jasmin began trembling under Monocard’s stare, the latter having been alerted by their suspicious behavior.
“And I preset the guilty parties,” de Lanselles pronounced “Remember their expressions when we came in last night, after the attack.”
“God damn it, that’s right!” cried Renard, marching upon the orderlies. “It’s the fault of these wretches that we’re in Africa!”
Jasmin had thrown himself to his knees, theatrically. The vigorous Saucisson, his eyes wide, bent his back, brutalized by fear.
“We didn’t mean to do it, Lieutenant!” the latter stammered.
“Mercy, Lieutenant—I put all the levers back in place myself, ten minutes ago,” Jasmin added, raising his arms to the heavens.
“Villains!” howled Renard, brandishing his fist. “You ought to be shot!”
But de Lanselles intervened. “What good would that do, old chap? Leave them be. At any rate, the damage is done. They’ve been punished enough. Rather than come down on them, it would be better to try to find out where we are, and get back as quickly as possible.”
“That’s true,” Renard concluded, darting one last wrathful glance at the orderlies. “Get up, Jasmin, you idiot, and go fetch Sergeant Dupuy.”
Jasmin did not need to be told twice, and hastily made himself scarce, escorted by Saucisson.
“Are we even in the future?” Renard murmured, collapsing into the seat of the Machine.
“In any case, we’re deserters,” said Monocard, in a stinging voice, having ceased to doubt. “It’s nearly nine o’clock—our absence must already have been notified to GHQ!”
After three minutes, Dupuy arrived. He listened to Renard’s confession regarding the experiment in a bad humor.
“And you didn’t take me, Monsieur Renard? That’s not very polite.”
“Alas, if only I had taken you…too bad!”
“Good God! I do believe you’ve pushed the PERIMITER indicator all the way—a diameter of 200 meters. You’ve carried off half the sector!”
“It wasn’t me who touched it…someone altered your settings…but that doesn’t matter. The thing is to get back. Put the machine in order, old chap, and let’s get back right away!”
The accumulators, indispensable for the return, were, however, flat, and those in the wireless post no better. Just before the displacement, Dupuy had sent his two radio operators to fetch a fresh battery from a shed situated beyond the ruins of the church. They had remained in 1917, with their accumulators!
“Damn and double damn it! We’re in a fix!” Renard moaned. “What are we going to tell the poilus, if there really isn’t any way to get back?”
“Bah! You can demob the enlisted men, Monsieur Renard—there doesn’t seem to be a war on here.”
“The war must have been over for a long time if…if we really are in the future, at least? Take a look at the dials, Dupuy.”
“How do you expect him to figure it out?” Monocard put in. “They’ve been fiddled in all directions!” He began pacing back and forth, with a somber expression.
Renard, overwhelmed, looked at Dupuy, who was trying in vain to obtain a spark from the dead batteries.
“They’re only flat, Monsieur Renard. I’ll try to rig up some makeshift piles, to recharge them, but they won’t be ready today or tomorrow. In the meantime, there’s nothing to be done. Look—the second little dial has moved!”
Captivated by that technical problem, he absorbed himself in the study of the said dial.
The officers started arguing. Monocard wanted them to reveal the situation to everyone without further delay. Renard declared that it would be untimely, and even imprudent, since they still did not know whether they were really in the future, or in Africa. Nothing had been decided when they emerged from the cellar, and found the major and the English aviator walking by the tower. To them, at least, they could tell the whole story; they would understand. When they had exchanged greetings, the major commented on the weather.
“Unexpected, this sunlight—incomprehensible. Damn it, I could believe that I’m in Toulouse in midsummer. This can’t have been seen often, in Port-sur-Seille in January.”
Renard seized the opportunity. “We’re no longer in Port-sur-Seille.”
“Eh? Where are we, then?”
“Africa…perhaps. Let’s see, Doctor, what would you say if I told you that last night…you had aged four years…or more?”
The major looked at him with anxious solicitude. “My poor friend, the sun’s not doing you any good this morning. Offer us a Pernod instead—Monsieur the aviator and me—and then I’ll get on my bike to go back to Landremont. I’ve a little chick waiting for me—I don’t want to miss the boat.”
“No, Doctor—Landremont is a long way away. It’s serious, what I’m telling you...”
T
he explanation was laborious.
The major was willing to admit the scientific possibility, and even the existence of the time machine, but he had formed a very different idea of the “dirty little automobile” he had seen in the cellar. Most of all, he could not resign himself to believed that it had worked to his detriment, had aged him by four years and transported him some five hundred leagues from Landremont and his chick. According to him, everything could be explained by an earthquake.
“But what about the camel and the Arabs?”
“Tch! You haven’t seen them, and nor have I!”
“And the oranges? The scimitar?”
“Parcels from the Dames de France...”
The English aviator, for his part, listened to Renard’s explanation phlegmatically. At the name of Wels he smiled wanly, and declared: “I know him. I’ve seen him drinking whisky in Folkestone harbor.” After rendering this homage to the great novelist, however, he did not open his mouth again. Did he believe in the transfer? Did he disbelieve? His face gave no clue to his intimate sentiments.
While chatting, the four men had advanced as far as the kitchens, and, by means of a side-street descending toward the Seille, they discovered the new landscape that had replaced the gray undulations of Moselle with a yellow-tinted plain parched by the sun, strewn with meager brushwood, with no trace of forts or trenches. Five or six kilometers away, there was the silhouette of a white town, from which trees spread their branches against a blue background above terraces, domes and minaret. All of them, except the English aviator, took out their binoculars.
“They’re palm trees,” de Lanselles declared.
“Damn it!” exclaimed the major. “The Boche have certainly done a good job of camouflaging the terrain!”
“Africa?” murmured Renard, dubiously. But the binoculars told him nothing more.
“We need to go and see,” Monocard declared. And turning to the impassive Bennsbury, he added: “Monsieur Aviator, would you care to do us the favor of going to cast a glance over that town?”