“Saltpeter,” replied Monsieur Vandermolen.
“Saltpeter? What for?”
“To make gunpowder, of course,” says Monsieur Vandermolen, “With carbon and...”
The doctor jumps. His eyebrows frown, his lips purse and his beard juts out, his eyes flamboyant with such indignation that I interpose myself anxiously between him and the man from Harlem.
“So!” cries the doctor. “So, wretch, you want to reinvent gunpowder! What! You infamous scoundrel, you miserable dolt! We have the fortunate, the marvelous, the miraculous luck that all the powder-kegs are empty, that all the explosives are used up, exhausted, finished, that all the satanic horrors that have ravaged the world and reduced the planet to this state of devastation, woe and misery are abolished, and you want to remake them, reproduce them…you want to start all over again! Nothing can and nothing ever will change! What are you saying? What are you saying? You’re proposing to recommence the work of the monk Schwartz, whose soul has gone to the devil!”
His expression contrite, Monsieur Vandermolen bowed his head in shame. The man with the saltpeter dropped his sack.
Dr. Christiansen turned his back on them furiously and kicked the sack. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me away.
“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” he said to me. “Well, so be it! Let’s go! Let’s plunge back one last time into the abominations of that accursed Science! Let’s go! Listen to me—I haven’t told you everything. I too am, have been, one of those detestable and abominable scientists who have led us to where we are, gradually, step by step, with their pretentious follies, their pursuit of the false progress demanded by the stupid and the imprudent, their rage for false ameliorations transforming the god old ways of life of fortunate centuries, and who rendered possible the frightful adventure, general destruction and universal carnage…that slut Science who has crucified poor unfortunate humanity, the vampire Science, the chimera in spectacles, devourer of man, scavenger of cadavers…that whore science can only be killed by science! Let’s go, let’s force the serpent vomited forth by Hell to bite itself, in order that it does of its own venom!”
The doctor planted himself in front of me; he looked at me with wild eyes, his voice trembling, clenching his fists as if he were about to strangle me.
“I think as you do, Doctor!” I said, swiftly. “You’re right, absolutely right! I too have retreated from the deceitful mirages of false progress, the destroyer of all beauty, the corrupter and demoralizer, and by virtue of that fact, the universal instrument of death. I’ve recovered from the blissful human admiration of that Science, which I curse as you do now that I’ve been able to see and judge the depths of the abyss! You’ve forced me to open my eyes and comprehend! Yes, that Science is nothing, in the final analysis, but the servant of the ferocious and insatiable Moloch to whom she furnishes, more and more abundantly, rations of victims to crush and devour!”
“Yes, yes…Moloch…the last idol, the monstrous idol it’s necessary to cast down…!” The doctor struck me on the shoulder with his fist, as if it were me that he wanted to strike and cast down.
After a momentary pause he went on: “Listen. I didn’t tell you everything when I told you about my miseries in the great German war factory, I didn’t tell you everything! A slave of the factory, condemned to forced labor in their laboratories, I labored…but I also thought, I reflected, I sought…I sought for my own account, and I found! Do you understand? I found…at least, I almost found…yes, yes, it needed so little! And the proof of my success, I was able to obtain it. The proof! The proof...
“You know the explosion that liberated me, that permitted me to escape—well, it was me who provoked it, me who produced it, sooner than I expected by means of…imagine my joy! From the depths of the cell where I was imprisoned, I was able to explode the cartridges in the cartridge-cases of the Landsturmers of the post, then the crates and carboys of explosives in the factory, and then the great depot....”
He could see in my face that I doubted those assertions; he grabbed me by the collar and shook me violently.
“Yes, yes! I repeat to you, I found it, I found it. I have nothing here to demonstrate it by experiment, the proof…I’d need…but you’ll see, you’ll see…since it’s necessary. A few final studies, a verification of the procedure, and it will go. Do you understand? Do you understand?”
“No, Doctor. No. Explain it to me...”
“In brief, this is it: I have...yes, I have the means, with a simple little instrument on the table of my study, or even in my pocket, to cause the explosion, at a distance of x—that remains to be determined—to cause the explosion, I say, of the cartridges in the cartridges cases and the rifles of the enemy soldiers, the shells in the caissons, the depots of munitions or explosive products, the mines, the ammunition-stores of ships, the torpedoes in the bunkers, the powder-kegs, the arsenals…in sum, everything. Everything! To make, at will anything at all capable of explosion, inside or behind no matter what, suddenly enter into deflagration and explode! Do you see now? Do you understand? At will. Whatever, and whenever and wherever I want!
“What?” I said, a trifle bewildered. “What?”
“Simple!” I was led to my discovery by the study of Hertzian rays—I’ll explain all that to you later. You’re going to help me; I’m almost at the end, I only need to determine certain points, regulate the mechanisms. Out there, in the German factory, I reached the final experiments. It was difficult; I had to hide…I wasn’t entirely certain of my discovery yet, I tried somewhat at hazard, hesitantly, but it worked, since the explosion as produced more rapidly than I thought, and in conditions that I can easily rediscover, with a little more research. It’s necessary, then, for me to take up my work again, to go a little further. I lack many things, but when I find a laboratory, it won’t take long. After a few trials, certain difficulties regulated, I’ll soon have it perfected. And then…then, you’ll see!”
“So,” I said, “you’ve become one of the instruments of that accursed Science again?”
“Since it’s necessary! Since, as you can clearly see, humans who haven’t understood anything, haven’t learned anything, want to start again, and will start again. Oh, they want to bring back explosives, powders, mines and torpedoes! Well, I’m going to blow them up in their hands, and make the usage of all that impossible, forever! Do you understand? No more powder, black or gray, no more terrifying explosives to devastate one’s neighbor, no possible artillery! Definitively vanquished, the monster cannon, no more bombards, no more mines, no more anything—I’ll blow it all up, and I’ll even cause all explosive matter, no matter where, to blow up by itself, automatically... That will hinder the industries that use explosives, it will render impossible or difficult certain large-scale works—too bad! We’ll go back to tools alone, to the only means of old. Antiquity didn’t make use of explosives, I think, and it still left great works! So, humans will be forced to revert forever to the old natural weapons! Since humans are determined to remain the arch-tiger of humans, I’ll erode their claws and teeth as far as possible...”
I had understood, and I shook the doctor’s hand vigorously.
“Come on,” he said. “In the meantime, let’s train ourselves with these old weapons for the final assault!”
XIV. The death-throes of the scientific Bellona.
They were all in full swing, the friends of our refuge, the burrow under the ruins of the Vandermolen house, those soldiers of such diverse races, who had fought the common enemy so far from their fatherlands, and those civilians caught up in the torment and washed up here, all of them felt hope gradually reborn in the depths of their hearts.
The somber motto of the bell-tower of Alost, so discouraged in its resignation, Neither hope not dread, no longer came back unintentionally to chill the blood in my veins and overwhelm my energy. Yes, I have hope now; Dr. Christiansen has hope; we all have hope.
The professor-artilleryman, Monsieur Jollimay, and the doctor no longer
engage in those duets of bitter pessimism in the long evenings, in which the historical arguments of the former alternated with the anti-scientific imprecations of the latter, furnishing us with lugubrious dreams and nightmares for the long nights.
“The history of the world is about to commence an entirely new volume,” says Jollimay.
“Blank pages!” says the doctor. “But watch out—I’d like to be able to burn all the old books, too full of dangerous lessons!”
The aviator Miraud no longer has those fits of humor, or black humor, which sudden caused him to pass from an expansive and torrential loquacity—just like a Montmartrean from Toulouse—to the most complete mutism for hours and days on end. He’s started to sing again. In the morning, from his bedroom next to mine, he wakes us up with refrains, murmured at first, and then resumes in a voice that grows gradually louder. He repeats himself, he begins again, he modifies...
Here come all the toxic shells.
The strangling, choking wave,
All the torpedoes and chemical wells
That Hell hurls at the brave!
That Hell hurls at the brave.
Can you smell in every field,
The clouds of poisoned gases,
Making us keep our faces sealed
Lest they kill our lads and lasses?
Masks on, chaps,
Adjust your straps…
I can scarcely sleep, thinking about what’s in preparation, and I call out from my bed: “What’s that you’re saying, Monsieur Miraud?”
“That’s poetry,” replies Mohammed, my neighbor on the other side.
“I’m rhyming,” says Miraud. “It’s coming back to me. I’m thinking about Montmartre again, you know. One arm less doesn’t hinder me as much as I thought for holding a lyre! It’s gone, but the rhymes come all the same. What you hear there is the Marseillaise of Protest, sadly written in our holes, under the projectiles, with the gases and mephitic vapors raining down from the Boche trenches. You ought to remember it, Monsieur, because I sang it to you the day you arrived, under the wave of gas. My self-esteem as a poet is cruelly offended by your inconceivable forgetfulness. Anyway, let’s pass over the dolorous humiliation. Today, I’m rhyming something else, the Marseillaise of Vengeance—you’ll see, the revenge of the innocent army, courageous and loyal, over the ignoble engines of chemical warfare…and then something else, which you’ll have the politeness to learn by heart, the War Cry of the Troglodytes, for the imminent day of the attack…
Mr. Gibson the American billionaire is making plans. If the shock for which we’re waiting really is the last, if calm finally is to be reborn after the frightful cyclone of devastation, he invites us all to spend some time with him in America, in his vast estates in Illinois, which can’t have evaporated like the dozens of millions he brought to New York.
He’s no longer thinking of adding a wing to the Palace of Peace, in order to constitute a museum of the horrors of war. That museum of the horrors of war is the whole of Europe, in its length and breadth, no matter where; one only has to look around.
Monsieur Gomares, the worthy Spanish businessman, Monsieur Arbydian, the Armenian businessman and Demetrius Manoli, industrialist and financier, huddle together in the evenings in our subterranean kitchen in order to converse mysteriously.
God forgive me, they’re talking about the immense upsurge of business that will be provoked by the reconstitution—or, rather, the reconstruction—of society.
Harlem and the surrounding villages are increasingly animated. Armed bands are arriving from all directions, detachments of men sometimes coming from a long way away, carrying, in addition to their weapons—pikes, clubs and cutlasses—packages and luggage for encampment and nourishment, and all of them, like those here, are entirely disposed, with an appetite for combat and a range of vengeance.
The organization is feverish; leaders are being appointed. Scouts have advanced very close to the Boche positions and have set up observation-posts to keep watch on the enemy.
The Boche retrenchments remain silent; the canons are mute. The batteries that thundered for such a long time and so furiously all around the Palace of Peace, collapsed and turned upside-down, transformed by the interminable battle into an extraordinarily strong and complicated citadel, and improbable labyrinth of covered trenches or uncovered tunnels, sheltered galleries for masked and armored batteries, reservoirs or engines of toxic gases, caverns for giant bombards, fixed or mobile…all of it remains mute and inactive.
A heavy silence weighs upon the factory of death; the satanic engines, having vomited their last breath, are like the impotent cadavers of steel monsters, ferocious Leviathans slain in their turn, finally crushed!
When is the battle? I’m getting impatient; our prehistoric warriors are nervous. Everyone wants to get it over with. It’s Dr. Christiansen who moderates that impatience.
“We need every chance,” he says. “Let me work a little longer…be patient, calm down. Just think, what a catastrophe it would be is, with our primitive weapons, we’re going to run into loaded rifles? What if the enemy has conserved cartridges as a supreme resource, or a few shells? No, no, let me work!”
Emissaries have been able to reach the lines of Amsterdam. We’re assured of the cooperation of the people there, who will launch their own mass attack on the day and at the hour that the leaders fix. And they’ve been able to furnish the good doctor, in spite of a little difficulty, with the various things he requested in order to bring his great project to a conclusion.
Enclosed in a redoubt that has been fitted out as an improvised laboratory, he’s working, his eyes shining with a fever of anxiety that causes tremors to pass through his hands, and in his voice when anyone questions him about his results.
Will he discover—or, rather, rediscover—the secret he has already held, in the hazard of trials and triturations, the secret of the sovereign antidote that will cure humankind forever of the infernal chemistry of powders and explosives?
“Well, Doctor?”
Dr. Christiansen emerges from his laboratory, his features convulsed but joyful, We all throw ourselves upon him.
“Well, I finally have it! I hope...I have it…I’m sure of it…I’ve found it again…I’ve reconstituted my machinery. We can prepare for the attack. If the enemy has the slightest quantity of explosives, the smallest munitions store, I’ll blow it up in his hands! I’m going to the Council of Chiefs to make the final preparations. And immediately thereafter, the assault with hand weapons. Their rifles will be nothing more than bayonet-handles; we’ll see the work of our pikes, our clubs, our axes and cutlasses!”
“One more explosive,” I say.
“No, an exploder—the supreme exploder!”
“Bravo, Doctor! Hope! Confidence! Hurrah!”
“Banzai!” cries the Japanese. “Forward march!”
“I’m certain,” the doctor goes on, “but as proof, today, I’m going to make the mines washed up on the coast at Noordwik explode—you know, the ones that gave you such a fright because of your imprudence.”
We shake the doctor’s hand joyfully, and we leap upon our weapons in order to caress the shiny and well-sharpened blades. Yes! They’re going to do good work!
“And forward the Marseillaise of Vengeance!” Miraud shouts to us. “For the deliverance and the great clearance!”
Marcel Blondeau almost dances for joy, and, under the pretext of helping her, squeezes Jeanne Vitalis’ hands as she checks her arrows, as emotional as he is. She doesn’t want to quit Marcel; she will fight by his side.
They appear to me to be symbolic, those two children. Among all of us, old and worn out, lamentable survivors of a generation rushed by the enormity of the fatalities that have descended upon their shoulders, they represent the future in revolt, the future that is detaching itself from the frightful past, the race that will grow and hope—or rather, resume hoping—that will survive the frightful crisis in which it saw the annihilation of the entire heritag
e of centuries, so slowly accumulated.
And Madame Vitalis, who has understood, kisses both of them feverishly.
There is a great stir all day around Harlem, the concentration into numerous troops, making the final preparations for the march toward The Hague, to occupy the advance positions in front of the Palace of Peace—of complete and definitive peace, this time.
In the afternoon, there are formidable explosions in the direction of Noordwik; they are the old mines run aground in the sand blowing up, and with them, old shells buried in the vicinity, in the dunes.
Other explosions are heard in the distance, at sea; they are surely drifting mines, tossed by the waves. Dr. Christiansen has succeeded—succeeded completely! The era of explosives is definitively closed.
And now, to arms! The big push is tomorrow!
I, the peaceful man, pacific until today, caress the point and the blade of the scythe of sorts that has been fabricated for me, and I clench my teeth...I’m waiting for tomorrow impatiently; I’m slightly nervous but I’m not afraid. On the contrary, I already feel completely stirred by joy, by the intoxication of the battle for the human race, finally liberated from devouring Science...
From tomorrow onwards, a new world will begin, which I can already glimpse...
In the years on end during which all study has been suspended, all education abolished, the connecting thread to the centuries abused by fatal Science has been cut; it’s necessary not to fall back into the gulf...
The Tree of Science has been felled; it’s necessary that it doesn’t grow again, to rip it up, root and branch!
Oh, holy ignorance of recovered infancy, I bless you...
Adrien Bertrand: The Rain that surprised Candide in his Garden
Preface
We owe apologies to Monsieur de Voltaire; he even asked that Candide should be left to look after his garden, and that no maladroit amateur should continue the story of his hero’s adventures.
The Engineer Von Satanas Page 21