by Theo Varlet
From the antennae of the Tower, the pylons of Saint-Assise and the Croix-d’Hins, within a single second, it is offered as a rhythmic palpitation of the ether to all the receiving stations scattered over the world, simultaneously, at all the hours of the day, dusk and night that the time-zones distribute over the various countries.
Over the entire Earth, as if over a mere town, like a flock of butterflies released from an aircraft, it snows down. Over all the antennae of Europe, Africa and Asia Minor it declares the news in French. London hears it, Berlin hears it, and Brussels and Oslo, Helsingfors, Leningrad, Moscow, Rome, Vienna, Constantinople, Smyrna, Aleppo, Damascus, Madrid...
The retransmission stations pick it up, amplify it, translate it, and it soars, extended, over the entire globe, over sea and land, to the two Americas, Australia, the Southern Seas, Japan, China, Siberia, India, Afghanistan, Persia...
The newspapers of all countries capture it via the antennae on their buildings; it passes from loudspeakers to the ears of editors, radioactivating their brains; copied within five seconds—in French, in English, in Chinese, in Finnish, in Coptic, in Persian, in Tamil…three hundred language—commented upon, dressed up, ornamented with congruous headlines, there it is, composited, set up in type, in proof…and the presses roll, ten thousand, twenty thousand, thirty-six thousand copies and hour, and the sheets are in every hand...
And see, too, in towns and villages alike—in Bordeaux, Pantin, Cassis, Landerneau, Ronchin, Marseilles, Algiers; in Gibraltar, Clapham, Elsinore, Syracuse, the Escorial—in the smallest villages, everyone drinking avidly from the omnipresent spring of waves via the notary’s luxury loop-aerial and ten-valve set, or the schoolteacher’s improvised aerial and crystal set, as it is proclaimed everywhere, a simultaneous intoxication for the whole of humankind, all the way to the depths of the remotest regions...
Even in Tahiti, the little children, coming home from the missionary school or workroom crowned with red hibiscus flowers, are listening, on the loudspeaker in the cabin, to the retransmission from Noumea...
All humanity is thinking about Paris.
Ah, France! And Paris, that land of Cockayne! Envy in all its forms…naïve admiration and grim jealousy. Everyone sees the gold passing through the Arc de Triomphe, the gold unfurling in waves over Paris and France, the marvelous gold, the divine gold...
France has become the tabernacle of the world...
And the bolide too! The Golden Rock!
Since it is known to be on Earth, the entire world is in effervescence, like an anthill near to which a sheaf of wheat has been dropped. All human throats are dry with avarice. All the newspapers are full of “scientific” articles hacked out with a chisel and fake interviews with astronomers. All the newspapers are publishing that an American astronomer anticipates further falls of the same kind...
And in the evening, in the dark, over the entire Earth, in all the countries that see the Great Bar and the Pole Star, and in all those that see the Southern Cross and the Magellanic Clouds, all the people are palpitating with gold fever.
The people—which is to say, two billion human beings, white, black, yellow, red and bronze, who breathe, eat, live and fight over the ten thousand square degrees of the inhabited Earth—rich and poor alike, are palpitating with gold fever.
Bankers are saddened by all that excessive gold—which they do not have in their coffers. Factory workers are dreaming of their pay being multiplied tenfold, or a hundredfold, settled in bolide ingots. Housewives are calculating, sou by sou, passing their lives thereby, paying shopkeepers with a lighter heart this morning, in the hope that everything will go down when everyone has their share in the Golden Rock...
The miners of the South African Rand, those in Alaska on the edge of the frozen Yukon, those in Coolgardie beneath the Australian eucalypti and those in Guiana trembling with yellow fever beside the cayman-filled river, as they think about the Golden Rock, are all becoming discouraged and disgusted with their quotidian labor and the miserable gain of a few ounces of gold extracted from the amalgam of the sluices...
Gold fever!
In every country, inside the frontier lines dividing up terrestrial geography, that fundamental desire, interfering with patriotic egotism, is thinking about its realization by national possession of the gold.
In Berlin, a huge demonstration accumulates and descends Unter den Linden singing Deutchland über alles; people goose-stepping through cabbage-eating villages talk about going to Paris in search of the gold of Île Féréor.
In London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Manchester, throughout the British Isles, John Bull, with his pipe of shag in his mouth gets on his high horse in front of his glass of gin at the pub counter: “Well! Those damned Frenchies! They think everything’s permissible! But halt right there! Equal shares! The Mistress of the Seas is more than ever…Rule Britannia! It’s for us that France has found this Île Féréor!”
In Dublin, in the guard-room, the militia of the Free State measure on the map the supposed distance of Île Féréor. “Ireland is the closest to it!”
In Madrid, Puerta del Sol, threadbare hidalgos gravely discuss this new and prodigious galleon: “Won’t there be a few nuggets for the valiant Spaniards?”
“Our Latin brothers,” say the lazzaroni of Chiaia, guzzling lasagna or fried calamari while Vesuvius fumes placidly in the violet sunset, “and our transatlantic brothers are pirates...”
“It’s ours by right, that rock of iron and gold,” people say in Chicago, New York and Saint-Louis...
“And why not ours?” thinks the half-breed docker in Rio de Janeiro, loading sacks of coffee on his back...
“Ah, we had a chance, once, to be French citizens,” sighs the curly-haired Hova of Tananarive, the bronzed Hindu of Pondicherry, putting on his turban again after his ablutions, and the wretched man waxing shoes on the quays of Sfax...
And everywhere, people begin to talk about the act of violence that will probably be necessary to settle the question. They talk about it foolishly, with idle notions of present strengths and real possibilities...
All that talk is, to tell the truth, of scant importance. It is merely the degenerate phonographic reflection of opinions emitted by the newspapers, the newspapers that form opinion. There are governments to watch over the destiny of nations.
The one in Berlin senses that Germany is impotent before rampant France, supported by her gold. There are black troops on the Rhine; Cologne, Mayence, Karlsruhe, ten large German cities would be bombarded, destroyed, at the first hostile gesture…and then there is England, which will be allied with France tomorrow, the two robbers ready to cheat Germany out of her share of the Golden Rock... Nothing to do on land, for the moment…at sea, it remains to be seen. For lack of ironclads there are the new submarines…and for a lightning strike on Paris or London, those two thousand aircraft in the Black Forest, and those Zeppelins in factories in Russia, Sweden and Holland, ready to rally at the first sign...
And just in case, Germany arms herself; secret factories are activated; gas is stockpiled, cannons and munitions...
People arm themselves everywhere on Earth, preparing—just in case—for war...
Scientists, in their laboratories, take fright momentarily. They think about the employment that will be made of their discoveries, hesitate…and go on, driven by the demon of modern science, by the implacable acceleration of progress, by the multiplied gush of discoveries, the benevolent and the harmful all mixed up…does one ever know which is which? One does not have the right to choose. The scientist limits himself to knowing, finding and delivering to humankind the secrets of nature—and the manner in which they are used... Too bad if it is the ferocious and barbaric instincts that want to use them!
Here are the new, monstrous products procreated by the incest of human genius with Mother Nature, who never anticipated them in this phase of planetary life...
Here are the explosives that evoke by the magic of chemical formulae the residual energ
y of creative chaos, hidden in the depth of heavenly bodies. Here, docile slaves of destructive humankind, are the cosmic forces that ought only to be deployed in the great conflicts of meteors. Here is the condensed electricity, in imitation of ball lightning, the deflagration of which produces four times the effect of an equal volume of dynamite. Here are new powders, asphyxiating gases, microbe-bearing shells. Here is the Ardent Ray...
All that will be used, perhaps imminently.
People are arming themselves on land. They are arming themselves even more actively at sea, for if there is a war for possession of the Golden Rock, it will be of paramount importance to be able to put a grappling-iron on it, to have a few ships within range of the bolide...
And from now on, the bolide attracts warships like a magnet, which are making ready to ail in every port. Portsmouth, La Spezzia, Cadiz, Kiel, Kronstadt and Odessa are unleashing their squadrons…and the sea foams beneath the bows of ironclads and torpedo-boats: the gray of the Channel, the blue of the Latin sea, the emerald of the Atlantic, the jade-green of the Baltic. The flags of nations flap, proudly, in the wind. Tons and tons of coal and oil and burned every minute, maintaining pressure in the boilers of a hundred ships steaming toward the Golden Rock...
Everyone will discover the island for themselves, even if it is not in the indicated location. It’s the scent of gold, isn’t it? And then again, will there not be squadrons all around it, their smoke perceptible in the sky for fifty miles around?
Pragmatic America begins the search. The aircraft-carrier Lexington was in the Gulf of Texas during the cyclone, protected by the Florida peninsula; it arrives first: 270 meters long, 33,000 tons, costing 45 million dollars—225 million gold francs. And as soon as it reaches the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the four twenty-meter catapults launch the 72 aircraft on board in batches of four, one after another, which fan out as they fly off...
And as America, in a fever of avarice, allows herself to be taken in by the beaming smiles of Japan, in order to survey the seas more efficiently, she sends two Pacific aircraft-carriers to the Atlantic: the Saratoga, twin of the Lexington, and the Langley, a dwarf of 19,000 tons with only 34 aircraft...
But it is necessary to anticipate everything…and the Pacific coast, Hawaii and the Philippines are stripped of their squadrons, which head for Panama...
Japan does not budge. The bolide is unimportant to her, that’s true…but in secret, the arsenals of Sasebo, Koure, Yokosuka, Muroran and Maidzuru are working day and night to ensure the glory of the empire on land, sea and air. It is now or never: with the American gone, what good are the British in Hong Kong and India, the Dutch gunboat at Batavia and the old French corvette guarding Indochina?
XIX. The Condominium Mission
Our journey to London? Bah! A hop over the Channel in an airplane. Not even two hours in either direction from Le Bourget to Croydon and Croydon to Le Bourget. Does that warrant description? For Frédérique, as familiar with air transport as international sleepers, it was pure banality, and even I was beginning to get used to it...
Our marriage? An episode of a quarter of an hour, in a lateral chapel of the old St. Martin’s Church, on a gray and splenetic day.
There was nothing to stop us going back the same afternoon, but when I made that suggestion—we were just coming out on to Trafalgar Square in front of Nelson’s Column—Frédérique said to me, in a coaxing tone: “Oh, my love, let’s not leave yet. Wouldn’t you like to spent the evening in London? Let’s go see an English dance-hall...the Coliseum. I’m only familiar with official society balls.”
“You, my love! You want to see a dance-hall?” I said, dubiously. “But you’ll soon get bored if you aren’t dancing with me...”
“And why won’t I be dancing with you, Monsieur?” she said, narrowing her black lashes over her beautiful ultramarine eyes, full of charming insolence. “What do you take me for, my love? You imagine that I’m a wallflower because I have a doctorate and have been congratulated by Einstein? Don’t worry—the pleasures of the mind have been sufficient for me until now, but, in the same way that I’m no stranger to literature, that hasn’t prevented me from playing sport for hygienic purposes…as a duty to myself…in order not to be ignorant of anything. I can dance, and swim, and cycle, and drive an automobile, and play tennis, and everything. Perhaps, deep down, that was to prepare me to live, if the opportunity presented itself. Well, it’s presented itself; you’ve given it to me, my love! You’ll see—I have years of non-existence to catch up on...”
That evening, in the great London dance-hall, Frédérique revealed herself in an unexpected light, as the animator of our new life: supple and ardent for pleasure, exquisitely feminine in the modern fashion, more seductive than the most beautiful, by virtue of her marvelous intelligence. She “no longer recognized herself...”
“Well, darling, what do you say to that?” she whispered to me tenderly, at two o’clock in the morning, in the taxi taking us back to the Savoy. “Not too bad, eh, for a mathematician.”
My only reply was an ecstatic kiss; with her held tightly against me, her soft warmth penetrating me, I was the king of the world...
The last two days that we spent in Paris went by in a whirlwind. In those days, a warm fever of pleasure expanded over France, and we participated in it delightedly; no atmosphere could have been more appropriate to our honeymoon.
That unbridled intoxication was due in part to the presence of the Bolide—as if the celestial visitor had brought to our planet the spores of a superhuman joy flourishing elsewhere in a world created purely for happiness. There was also the pride of having being transformed, in a matter of days, from a nation doomed to imminent bankruptcy into the richest people in the world.
What made it even more acute, however, I believe, was the muted presentiment of an enormous danger—wondering whether we might be living in the final days of civilized peace rendered the moments more precious, obliging us to extract the maximum enjoyment from them.
The newspapers, while praising the efficacy of the Franco-Britannic alliance in maintaining world peace, allowed menacing possibilities to be glimpsed: envious and frustrated Germany meditating some treacherous blow; America proclaiming its claims, not to the Bolide’s gold—it was overflowing with that!—but to its iron...
American aircraft were flying over Île Féréor. Numerous Brazilian, Italian, Spanish and even Russian ships had been seen in its vicinity—and we certainly did not know everything; censorship of the news was in operation, and the regime of communiqués, as in the war, was inserting a kind of vague anxiety into that culminating frenzy to enjoy the lull.
Amidst the idleness of Paris, warlike spectacles suddenly appeared. Troops were seen marching through the city, led by bands; Senegalese battalions arriving at the Gare de Lyon were embarking at the Gare de l’Est to reinforce the troops on the Rhine. Every day, squadrons of aircraft were traversing the sky and dirigibles were circulating, as if on patrol. The searchlight on the Tower was scanning the nocturnal sky again, as if there were cause to fear an air raid.
A persistent rumor ran around that one of the two transport vessels, the Girondin or the Saint-Thomas, had been sunk by a submarine as it returned from the island—and Rivier, when I interrogated him, did not deny it.
But all these sights and this news did not disturb Frédérique and me, and only affected us, as it were, without our being aware of it, for we had very little time to reflect, or even to talk, so busy were those last two days.
On Rivier’s advice, I had sold the few kilos of gold I had brought back from the island without further delay, and got 28,000 francs for them, to add to the 3000 of the last installment of my wages from the Erebus II and six months’ advance on my new salary of 60,000 a year, matched by Frédérique. With that, in addition to a few items of jewelry bought during our trip to London, it was a matter of running around the stores for our equipment, our luggage, our wardrobe…suits and evening dresses in anticipation of celebrations on
the Ile-de-France...
We got some use out of them in Paris, one evening at the Jolliots’ and the next at Rivier’s—for Madame Rivier and her daughter, back from Biarritz, were inaugurating their season by giving a ball “in the strictest intimacy” for fifty important people.
The departure of the Ile-de-France from Le Havre was fixed for 14.00 on the sixth of October. We left Paris at eight o’clock in the morning by the special train organized for the three hundred members of the French mission and the important people coming to watch the ceremony, including Rivier. The Jolliots were in our compartment, for at the first news of the mission, the star and the director had begged me to let them tag along.
Our ship was the most beautiful of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. Normally devoted to the Le Havre-Plymouth-New York service, the Ile-de-France weighs 40,000 tons. Launched in 1926, it is 241 meters long, 30 broad on the promenade deck, 21.50 inside, with a water draught of 9.75 meters. She is moved by four direct Parsons turbines producing 52,000 horsepower, the steam for which is provided by twelve oil-fired double boilers and eight single ones. She can embark 1740 passengers in her three classes and carries a crew of more than a thousand officers, sailors, stokers, waiters and employees of every sort—in sum, the population of a small sub-prefecture. For the voyage to Île Féréor, however, it was only departing from Le Havre with 125 first-class passengers: the French mission of the Condominium and a few Belgian, Polish, Rumanian, Czechoslovakian and Yugoslavian delegates. At Plymouth we would embark our English colleagues, only a little less numerous. In third class there was a company of colonial infantry, whose officers occupied second class, along with a hundred journalists and cinematographic reporters.
What a difference there is—entirely to the advantage of the later occasion—between my present departure and that of a month ago, surreptitious and adventurous, when I had set out alone, a petty doctor in the Barcot expedition, toward the unknown. This time there are two of us, two newly-weds, in possession of an enviable situation, departing for an expedition to which the eyes of the entire world are fixed, in the sumptuous glory of an official ceremony.