Horror! Terror! Abomination!
III. Strange game, wild dogs and horses.
My young companion in shipwreck, Marcel Blondeau, has entered into full convalescence. The doctor had given him permission to go out and breathe the sea breeze on the dunes. He is delighted. He has gone with Madame Vitalis and Mr. Gibson, the American billionaire. Two wooden legs constitute a guarantee against the dangers of too long a walk.
The young man is overflowing with cheerful spirit. The return of health is making him see everything rose-tinted. War, massacre and famine, bombs and flames, gas and miasmas—bah! What’s all that? One has heart and solid legs again, the sun is shining…and Jeanne Vitalis’ smile is blossoming frankly again, whenever their eyes meet.
Madame Vitalis has taken a basket in order to bring back vegetables, if she can. Mr. Gibson is hoping to catch crabs on the sand, or catch a few fish on the way. One hears the two wooden legs going tick-tock over the stones of the ruins, and Marcel Blondeau, impatient, runs on ahead. I have to catch him up in order to give him his mask, which he has forgotten.
When they came back, three hours later, Madame Vitalis pulled a face, because her basket only contained a little greenery destined to be converted into spinach, and Mr. Gibson could only display a single eel of very small dimensions, two octopodes and various shellfish. But the young convalescent came back even more joyful than when he set out, and more alert. He had seen the clouds racing across the sky again, under the great breath of the breeze, and the sea sparkling green and yellow under the sun, and the fringes of foam of the yellow sand, and the verdure of the dunes dotted with flowers of every hue.
He brought back a bouquet. Oh, flowers! No one even spared them a glance; my companions gave a better welcome to the fake spinach and the eel. Marcel Blondeau was desolate.
“Bah!” said the doctor, to console him. “Do you think that a bunch of the rosiest and freshest roses, with the accompaniment of pearls of dew, would have had any great effect on the castaways of the Medusa? You don’t suppose so? Well, as I’ve already told you, we’re on the raft of the Medusa.”
Poor Marcel was welcomed more kindly when he offered his bouquet to Mademoiselle Vitalis. The young woman gladly breathed in the perfume of the flowers, which smelled most of all of the open air and the briny mists of the sea. But Marcel had something else to offer: two dozen little strawberries, which he had discovered in a sheltered hollow, doubtless an old shell-hole, behind Monsieur Vandermolen’s old gardens. It was Jeanne, again, who divided them between us all.
A few days later, our society was able to rejoice in two windfalls of greater importance. Firstly, it was Mohammed Bamakou, the Senegalese, who came back from a long-distance hunting expedition with the cadaver of an enormous dog over his shoulder and two geese in a sack. As he was beating the country in quest of some sort of game in the direction of the old polders reconquered by the sea since the destruction of the dykes and drainage mills, he had become game himself, attacked by a pack of hungry roaming dogs, living—as I had already had occasion to observe—by hunting.
“Fortunately,” Mohammed told us, showing us the saber-bayonet passed through his belt and the iron hook on his right hand, “I thrust into the dog-pack left-handed, and struck down from above with the right.”
He had got out of it fairly lightly, with only a few nips, and had brought back one of his assailants.
“The biggest one,” he added, with a legitimate pride. “The fattest one too—good to eat!”
My companions palpated the prey and congratulated Mohammed. The Senegalese went to skin his dog right away, and two haunches were salted in order to conserve them as provisions for the winter, since Madame Vitalis was not overstretched with regard to food supplies for the present.
“But what about these two geese, did they attack you too, Mohammed?” asked Monsieur Jollimay, when the Senegalese showed off his other catch.
Mohamed smiled. “These are wild geese that I trapped, wild geese passing through the dunes.”
“Ha ha!” went some of our companions. “Very fat, your wild geese. Mohammed always has good luck hunting!”
“Be careful, Mohammed,” said the doctor. “Hunt as much as you want, but no marauding!”
“Only pilfering,” said the Annamite smiling at Mohammed’s protestations.
The second find that fell into our laps was even bigger. Game again—but the game was a horse.
Horses galloping across deserted and uncultivated fields had already been pointed out to me, in the distance—horses that had reverted to the free and wild state of distant ages, living in groups of three or four, and living rather poorly, because they seemed rather skeletal to me. The Peruvian Lieutenant Bustamente, the New Zealander Clifton and the aviator Miraud had been promising for some time to try to capture one. To that effect they had fabricated lassos and practiced their use in the dunes, without telling anyone about their intention to consider the Dutch countryside as an Argentine pampas.
That day they had gone out hunting rats, taking their lassos just in case.
They came back late in the evening. We were beginning to get anxious about them, because we had head cannon fire in the distance, toward Leyden. Nothing fell on Harlem, though. Doubtless the Boche in The Hague were firing at the lines of Utrecht and Amsterdam, or receiving a few shells themselves.
Finally, night having fallen, utterly black, with no stars in the sky, without the slightest tiny light anywhere, we saw—or, rather, heard—our rat-hunters coming back. They were cheerful, because we could hear muffled laughter and heavy footsteps that were making stones roll. Slightly intrigued, a few of us went up into the courtyard to meet them.
“There you are,” said Monsieur Vandermolen. “How many rats?”
“Only one, but it’s a big one,” Miraud replied.
In a soft voice, to the tune of a funeral march, and bumping into rubble, he sang:
Behold the work of the hideous Boche.
Hideous his soul, hideous his sin.
His Kaiser vomited from the trash,
His princes born of the Devil’s kin...
A great black shadow appeared between two heaps of debris, drawn by the Peruvian lieutenant and driven from behind by the other two, with blows inflicted by sticks. The moon would have been useful, but it did not show its face.
Our companions’ prey was showing a marked reluctance to come into our abode, but, unceremoniously abused, it was obliged to abandon any idea of resistance.
Hypocrite pastors, satanic men of science
Reiters and panders all, slouching to the feast,
Meek poets singing German impenitence
At joyful carnage, slavering like beasts...
“Artillery horse,” said Miraud, recovering his ordinary voice. “A bit thin, but it can be fattened up. Damnation, it gave us a hard time!”
“Where did you find it?” asked the doctor.
“Over there, a long way out between the lines, toward the Palace of Peace. We lay in ambush for three or four hours in holes, at the bottom of a slope with yellowing verdure—which, we supposed, ought to be appreciated by the wild cavalry. In the end, as we were beginning to despair, five horses arrived, trotting toward the provender. That was the delicate moment—we feared being spotted in our hiding place. Then, as soon as the horses had their muzzles in the grass, we fell on them. Devilish cavalcade, pursuit, they got the bit in their teeth, and so did we…you can see the gallop from here, and the Boches could have spotted us…anyway, I’ll pass over the details; we haven’t come back empty-handed, but that’s because this big old nag was limping. With a lasso, Monsieur—we caught him with a lasso, like gauchos!”
“To the stable, quickly!” said the Peruvian, “And above all, tie our prey up solidly, he’s run us ragged, and it’s necessary not to let him get away.”
In anticipation of a successful hunt, they had prepared a little stable of sorts some time before, in an old laundry in the basement. It was sufficiently comf
ortable for a wild horse, and a solidly barricaded door guaranteed it against any escape attempt.
The animal was attached to the iron bars of a small window, a rick of hay brought back from the hunters was put in its trough, and it was left tranquilly to its meditations.
“Artillery horse, a big Pomeranian—a fine animal in his day, for sure,” the aviator went on, sitting down. “He’s slightly lame, but it’s trivial. He must have stumbled in some shell-hole.”
“But what the devil do you intend to do with your Pomeranian?” I asked.
“First of all,” replied the three hunters, all speaking together, “we’re going to pamper him, lavish him with caresses, feed him up—fatten him up, if you prefer—that’s indispensable.”
“And then?”
“Then keep him carefully in the larder for the winter. Think about it—an entire horse; that represents a good provision of meat, and we’ll be very glad to find that in December or January, when food becomes scarce.”
“Poor beast!” I said.
“Yes, pity us,” said the doctor. “There’s yet another lamentable consequence of the frightful cataclysm: the disappearance of the best animal species. That infernal science has precipitated humankind into an ocean of misfortunes, and not only humankind, but also the inferior friends of humankind, the good and worthy beasts that have put all their confidence in humans—a wretched placement! The horse, the ox, the dog, the sheep, docile servants or slaves of humankind…they have nothing to expiate; they don’t have any part in our criminal follies! And where have we led them? To a general massacre, to complete destruction! Where are they? Second-class canon-fodder, which no one thought of sparing, poor beasts thrown into incomprehensible terror, amid the thunder and the flames, under rains of metal falling from the clouds, succumbing under overwhelming fatigues imposed by the dementia of the pitiless master, and rotting in the fields, in ravines, in shell-holes…all of them, crushed, exterminated, eaten, except for a few specimens that escaped the carnage, escaped across the empty fields, wandering miserably among the ruins, in terror and stupor...”
“Yes, there are some,” said Miraud, “which must have their own ideas about the devastation of humankind…humans, the dispensers of caresses, work and nourishment, the masters of everything, the God gone suddenly insane!”
“The ox, the sheep, unknown now, abolished, destroyed. Fabulous animals! The horse and the dog almost as rare!”
“A precious capture, that horse! That gives us a respectable number of assured meals for the impending winter. The winter is the hard season, when hunger and sadness reign in our cellars and dugouts. In spite of all the foresight, all the economy possible in the good months of summer and autumn, rationing is necessary…so, a precious capture, that horse! Smoked horse, you know, is very good, and that conserves it. Oh, if we’d had it last winter, when the potatoes and the artichokes ran out and it was necessary to buckle our belts very tightly!”
“Truly? Nothing to buy, then?”
Everyone looked at me, as if astonished by my naivety. Madame Vitalis burst out laughing, frankly.
I ought to have known, however, that there had been no more question of money for a long time among the Troglodytes among whom I was going to live—and it must be the same in all the desolate regions of unfortunate Europe, no one having anything to buy or to sell. Everyone had to strive to produce and extract from the soil by his own industry what was sufficient for his alimentation. A problem bristling with difficulties—and it was with great difficulty that anyone was able to extract anything from that old earth, spoiled and massacred everywhere as well. It was still necessary to protect it—and sometimes to defend it. A frightful and perpetual worry for wan humankind!
All commerce between humans was now reduced to a few meager exchanges of foodstuffs, or wretched items of any sort.
What use could money be in the new conditions of life? That money, so coveted once for all that it could buy, was no more now than base metal, less useful than iron and utterly disdained, which is worse than being scorned. Gibson, the ex-billionaire, told me that he might still pick up a brand new louis d’or or a pound sterling, if he happened to stumble over one in the street, but only as a simple curiosity of an extinct age, to keep alongside his old check book!
IV. Warming discussions for rainy days.
We’re living an existence that I find very miserable, for want of habitude. Our comrades are better adapted to it, having been accustomed to it for such a long time, and they have known worse distress and more frightful situations, before arriving at one they genuinely considered to be a haven of refuge.
The good Madame Vitalis has conserved a residue of affectation in our burrow; she wants to show that she was a woman of the world when there was a world. She cares for our burrow; she has fabricated a feather duster, with which she dusts our heap of bricks and stones continually.
Jeanne Vitalis, who cannot have any memory of better days, is very much sat ease in our miserable encampment; she is cheerful, always laughing, especially now that Marcel Blondeau has recovered his health, disposed to find everything perfect and agreeable in our cellar, in the town around us, and perhaps in the entire world, provided that Marcel is no longer sad and that he continues to aid her in her little tasks in the various gardens cultivated here and there, or to ask her advice about the fabrication of rat-traps and rabbit-snares.
The billionaire Howard Gibson also accepts things very well, and doesn’t weep over his vanished millions any more than his missing leg. The man has the blood of a rude squatter, a wood-runner of the Far West, and he doesn’t make any kind of chorus with the complaints and furies of Dr. Christiansen. He is full of valor and takes each day as it comes.
When the sun shines, that works. We go out, we devote ourselves to movement. I try to be of some use in the association, in order not to live here as a costly parasite. But what can I do? How can I play my part in the labor and its profits?
In my capacity as a naturalist, I know mushrooms. I beat the dunes in search of Boletus edulis and other edible cryptogams. I garden a little, but I find that I dig ineptly and that it’s better for everyone if I stick to giving advice, which the practical and experienced men follow when they judge it acceptable. That’s a little humiliating.
But what becomes of me during the long rainy days, when it seems almost impossible to emerge from our cellars, when the downpour stings, when the paths over the rubble become slippery and one paddles through the ravines, running the risk of getting stuck in the mud and drowning? It’s already bad enough in the summer; what will it be like in the winter, when Pluviose, Nivose and Ventose14 come to persecute us?
On days of heavy downpours we have to stay at the bottom of our hole. Mr. Gibson has fabricated a chessboard and plays with Mohammed or Madame Vitalis. The Armenian businessman, the Rumanian and the Spaniard talk about business and commerce, and tell one another about fine deals they once made.
These people of various nationalities and mentalities, get along very well and almost understand one another. They’ve created a kind of dialect particular to our burrow, which, with effort, I’m beginning to grasp. But I let them chatter away and I prefer to talk to the two Frenchwomen, Miraud the aviator or Maître Saladin the captain-notary when Dr. Christiansen and Monsieur Jollimay don’t start an argument when the first raindrops fall, designed to be continued more or less excitedly until the downpour ends.
Monsieur Jollimay almost gives us lectures in history when he fulminates against the imperialisms that have upset the world in the course of the centuries, but at least he fulminates without exploding, in a slow, sad voice, while the doctor, in his rages against science—the servant of imperialisms and the purveyor of engines of death—shouts and vociferates, gesticulates and thumps his fist, to the great peril of our furniture, except when he gurgles muted imprecations in the depths of his throat, when his voice fails him.
“Imperialism, Empire: abominable words that ought to be despised and cursed by a
ll human beings and banished from dictionaries. Despotism weighing upon the submissive and conquered countries, the organized exploitation of peoples to the profit of one man, one family or one patriciate. Always and everywhere, in the history of the world, those empires cemented with blood, crumbling after a time over mountains of ruins, always those hegemonies provoking just revolts, always the insensate dreams of universal domination of a man, a caste or a race, end in slaughter, producing frightful misfortunes, hurricanes, whirlwinds and cataracts of dolor over the world! Follow me, Doctor, let’s take the Oriental Empires of old, and we’ll see...”
“No!” exclaims the doctor. “Let’s leave Nebuchadnezzar and Assurbanipal in the Hell where they’re suffering their punishment, I hope. They’re very petty sires and paltry malefactors by comparison with the satanic Hohenzollerns of today! But who, if you please, has forged and prepared the formidable unknown weapons and perfected them ferociously the while, for the frightful organizers of the universal carnage of today? Who, if not Science?”
“…The folly of domination,” Jollimay goes on, without paying any attention, “the imperialism of despots, their rage of domination and hegemony, producing and propagating the dementia of blind and deluded people...”
“…The furious delirium of a race of prey!” shouts the doctor. “Filthy Prussia, eldest daughter of the Church of Satan, vomit of the Devil! We’re living in full Demonocracy, Monsieur!”
“Agreed!”
“Yes, a people of prey aspiring to booty! But it’s the idea of the invincibility of these new weapons forged by Science that decides the movement and brings peoples to make themselves the instruments of despots when, by study, cunning and duplicity, everything has been prepared for the vast rapines and universal looting!”
The Engineer Von Satanas Page 15