by Theo Varlet
He lit a cigarette and took a drag, his eyelids narrowed behind his horn-rimmed spectacles she he blew out fine smoke and drank in the glorious incense of our unanimous congratulations. He was right; he had caused out minds to boggle.
“My poor darling!” exclaimed his mother, retrospectively frightened. “I was already very anxious, but if I had been able to imagine the dangers to which you were exposed...”
“Pooh! Risks of the job. And it’s so exciting, this profession of investigative reporter. I have an extraordinary talent for it. Ida said the same, more than once.”
“Is she pretty, then Scar, this Miss Ida?” Aurore asked, maliciously.
Oscar blushed violently, immediately on the defensive. “Pretty? Certainly. Why wouldn’t she be? When my photos have been developed...”
“You haven’t mentioned her in your article?” queried Père Frémiet, half in jest and half seriously.
“Of course not. She’s staying at the Verem for a few more days and I couldn’t blow her cover. Similarly, I wasn’t authorized to mention the identifier MAZ4 and the possible means of locating ‘out there.’ That’s up to the Ministry of War, where I’m going tomorrow. It’s necessary not to tip off the transmitting station.”
My uncle had become entirely serious.
“But divulging the existence of this research in Germany to the French public in your paper will stir things up—especially nationalistic passions—perhaps further compromising the cause of peace, which is already in a bad way...”
“You’re a good man, Father, with your pacifism—but do you want to prevent France from taking precautions? It’s necessary to be as well-armed as a potential enemy if your want to avoid him attacking you.”
Sensing that the political discussion might become awkward, Madame Frémiet raised her eyes to the heavens desolately.
I couldn’t help saying, reflexively: “If one wants peace...”
“One prepares for war,” concluded the photographer, impetuously, carried away by his favorite hobby-horse. “The armaments race, eh? As in ’14. We’ve seen the result. Do you want that to resume, on a larger scale? In recent years, gas-filled bombs have been made in every nation in order to drop them on the enemy from airplanes, but that doesn’t yet seem sufficient—you want them to be exchanged by means of rocket-torpedoes...”
“I don’t want anything at all; I’m merely stating facts,” the young journalist retorted.
Seeing his mother’s anxious and mournful expression, I intervened. “Come on, Uncle—what has so far prevented gas war, whose potentially terrible effects are well known, is the reciprocal fear of future belligerents. No one’s unaware that if he attacks, his neighbor would retaliate in kind. But if one nation—Germany, since that’s the one we’re dealing with—were the only one to have this terrible new weapon, the rocket, at its disposal, wouldn’t it be tempted to make use of it at the first opportunity? Whereas, if France had the means to annihilate Berlin with rockets in the same way, Germany would think twice about launching its own against Paris.”
“Yes, but on the day when it resolves to do that anyway—for whether it’s a matter of rockets and gas bombs or mere rifles and cannon, as in ’14, when too great a stock of weapons has accumulated, the thing always ends up starting of its own accord—when one country risks the assault and the other retaliates, both will be annihilated, along with others that come to the rescue…and it will be the end of Europe and civilization, as well-informed people like Branly, Langevin,18 etc. have prophesied. Your conception of European equilibrium, in which the equilibrist will inevitably end up breaking his nose, is neither more nor less than the militarist thesis. nothing—nothing, you hear—but complete and universal disarmament...”
On being implicitly called a “militarist” I boiled over; in spite of my aunt’s imploring gaze I was about to reply vehemently—but Aurore got in ahead of me.
“Uncle,” she said, with her beautiful sovereign calm, “complete universal disarmament would indeed be an effective means, and perhaps the only one, of preventing wars—but we’re a long way from that. At best, it’s an anticipation. Until it’s realized, it’s illegitimate to attack reasoning based on present reality and the present conduct of individuals and people.”
Her scientific serenity cleared the air. Oscar, in any case, refused to continue the discussion. He knew his “old man’s” pacifist arguments by heart and did not want to hear them repeated again. In a nonchalant and protective manner, he concluded:
“You don’t have any sense of reality, my dear Papa. “You know very well that no one here is a militarist, any more than you are, but that we differ in appreciation of the best means to obtain and maintain peace. Perhaps the problem’s insoluble. At any rate, it’s beyond us. Let’s not talk about it anymore. What we can say is of no use. I think I’m doing my duty as a journalist in publishing my reportage. It’s being set up now—the presses will roll in a matter of hours.”
My uncle, with defiance in his expression, clutching his beard in his fist, was doubtless ready to reply eloquently in his most sonorous voice, but he hesitated for three seconds and Aurore took advantage of them to ask for a little music. It was a salutary diversion. We went into the drawing-room. It was time for a concert to be broadcast on the radio: Daventry: Modern Music.19
Oscar adjusted the wavelength and the speaker poured out Debussy’s “Gardens in the Rain.”
After a few bars, I suddenly remembered being in that same room two years before, surrounded by the same company, on the memorable evening when young Oscar, still a child, had interrupted the same piece with an exclamation, and collected a ruby-red gelatinous material with his fingers from the valves—a variety of cosmic lichen born in the waves emitted by the Eiffel Tower. I could still hear his shrill schoolboy voice saying: “Oh, Papa, one might think it were raspberry jam. Taste it—and you, Tonton, and you, Mademoiselle!”
In those days, Aurore had been “Mademoiselle.” She was sitting in the same place, in the same armchair. With my gaze fixed upon her, lost in a sort of trance, Debussy’s music caused the whole adventure of which my present life was a continuation to pass through my mind in a few minutes.
Aurore…Aurore Lescure, the young astronaut, Canadian by birth, with whom documentary films had caused me to fall in love…hopelessly, I thought, but was it not, in truth, the sign of a secret predestination! Hazard had caused me to be passing, which returning from an automobile excursion, at exactly the right time and place to see the rocket MG-17, which she was piloting, and which had departed from Columbus, Missouri four hours earlier, coming down in a fir-wood between La Ciotat and Cassis in Bouches-du-Rhône.
I saw myself once again, with my companion, Dr. Tancrède Alburtin, extracting the frail body of the unconscious young woman from the huge aluminum shell, with difficulty. Oh, a marvelous meeting! Her dear face, white in the cover of her leather helmet: Aurore, an angel fallen from the heavens and brought back to Cassis, to the doctor’s clinic!
The next day, I find her there, fully recovered. The joy of walking with her, in the solitude of the sunlit creeks. Immediately in confidence, I confess that I have loved her, for months, in effigy, on the screen…alas, she’s already engaged, in America, Dark schemes are choking her own desires and holding her father, an inventor of genius devoid of practical sense, in the meshes of a businessman, Lendor J. Cheyne, who is exploiting and “rationalizing” his discoveries, including those in astronautics.
Thus, Aurore, a doctor of science and intrepid sportswoman, has become an astronaut pilot. At a cost of millions of dollars, a rocket vehicle has been built—a realization at the extreme limit of the possibilities then attained by science—capable of rising up, with a single passenger, to an altitude of several thousand kilometers. Another two, three or four years and technical progress will make it possible to reach the Moon.
“Time is money,” however, and the Moon Gold Mining Company will not wait for that. It’s immediately that its founder, Lendor
J. Cheyne, wants to dazzle the public and sell shares. He decided to bluff. Rocket MG-17 will be said to have reached the moon on its first flight. The spaceship has even been provided with nuggets of native gold, which will be passed off as having been collected by Aurore on our satellite, specimens of extensive deposits. An entire press campaign has been planned in advance. Scarcely has Aurore cabled the news of her landing than her fiancé, Cheyne, has released the first articles announcing that the Moon has been reached.
Aurore does not like lying however, and refuses to do it. Convinced that journalists are hastening from Cassis to interview her, she flees in the morning to Marseilles, and then Paris. I succeed in going with her.
Financial schemes are unfamiliar to her. She has only undertaken her excursion into space for love of science and astronautical endeavor, of which she in passionately fond, and in order one day to be the first representative of the human race to reach the lunar surface. What she collects during her flight is meteoric dust—the errant seeds of universal life, responsible for inseminating young planets, but which cannot normally, at the present time, reach the surface of the Earth because of the resistance of the atmosphere, which burns them up as shooting stars.
Collected by the astronaut, brought back to the ground, and exposed to the indiscreet curiosity of Dr. Alburtin, experimentally brought into proximity with an X-ray emitter, the seeds begin to develop and reproduce in the clinic. They produce red vegetation, apparently lichenous, which produce seeds in their turn and multiply, emitting a dust of tiny reproductive spores, as light as pollen. We carry it on our clothes and thus propagate in Paris an invasion that gradually takes possession of all electrical wires and apparatus.
In a matter of days, while the heart-broken Aurore, fleeing the reporters, watches the hoax developing in the press of her supposed trip to the Moon, Paris is contaminated by the Lichen, scientifically named Xenobiota by Professor Nathan, to whom we have brought the meteoric specimens on behalf of Dr. Alburtin.
By the time Oswald Lescure, Aurore’s father, and Lendor J. Cheyne, her fiancé, who intends to exploit the success of the Moon Gold Company in Europe, arrive in Paris, the calamitous and ever-more-active expansion of the Lichen has already brought transport to a standstill and stopped machines, paralyzing the life of the capital, which is dependent on electricity...
Days of anguish for me! I sense that Aurore is escaping me, gravitating once again in the orbit of her father and her fiancé. My only hope is that Cheyne seems to be seduced and carried away by the entirely “American” qualities of Luce de Ricourt, a superb redhead, the sister of my Friend Géo de Ricourt. The “great shutdown” has begun in Paris and France; foreign countries have already closed their borders, to avoid contamination by the Xenobiota.
In view of the official prohibition opposed to the astronautical exhibitions on which he had counted as propaganda in favor of Moon Gold, Cheyne and Luce Ricourt plan a provincial lecture tour and Aurore accompanies her father, whom Professor Nathan has appointed as the director of a research laboratory at Eguzon in Creuse, where a scientific study of the Lichen will be carried out.
I wait in Paris for my beloved’s return, not daring to go to her for fear of crossing paths and missing her en route, in the total disorganization of transport. She finally informs me of her arrival; vanquished by love she is ready to sacrifice her fortune for me by breaking her ties of Cheyne. During her journey from Eguzon to Paris, however, the telegraph has been busy; on the platform at the Gare d’Austerlitz I meet Professor Nathan, who had come to tell Aurore that her father is dead. That same morning, scarcely had she left than an explosion destroyed the laboratory in the course of dangerous research on the dissociation of matter.
On hearing that news, Aurore collapses into my arms. Poor thing! She no longer has anyone but me in the entire world...but the last obstacles preventing our marriage have disappeared.
Thus, I brought my fiancée to the welcoming house in which I am presently sitting, the home of my Uncle and Aunt Frémiet, that evening, in order to soothe her dolor with a illusion of familial affection…while outside, the thermometer fell, and the famous frost of 29-30 October became manifest, which resulted in the destruction of the Lichen and the end of the great shut-down.
Then, our marriage and a new life begun with my dear Aurore, a life without incident, I which I thought myself blessed by the gods. And to complete our happiness, wealth, superabundant for our simple tastes: Moon Gold, in full prosperity, paying dividends of 8% to 1,500 privileged shareholders; Aurore’s wages—for she cannot bear idleness and it would be criminal on my part to confiscate an intelligence like hers—as secretary and assistant to Dr. Nathan at the Institute, of which there are still two weeks to come; and, I will add, the returns of my paintings, although I haven’t sold a painting for months, like everyone else...and my old love of art has diminished somewhat.
“Gardens in the Rain” concludes, Daventry sends its “God Save the King” and “Goodnight, Everyone,” to the world. The transmission is over.
Yawning, the wireless fanatic, with his fingers of the buttons of the set, generously asks: “Would you like something else? There’s still, at this hour...let’s see…concert of light music, Vienna…recorded music from Hilversum...”
Le Jour’s special envoy, returned from Berlin, was visibly falling asleep. His mother was probably about to say something unwelcome in declaring that he was tired, but Aurore and I took pity on the valiant boy and got up to take our leave.
“With all that, we’ve scarcely talked about your new situation and your plans, my poor children,” my aunt deplored, and we hugged her one after the other. It would be necessary to come again soon.
“And you know,” the photographer added, “I’m slightly afraid for you, as my relatives…but you have other contacts than me in the scientific world, haven’t you, my niece? You won’t have any difficulty forging a new career outside the Institute...”
Oscar came forward in his turn for a farewell handshake. He straightened up, and his eyes, misted by drowsiness, were suddenly reanimated. “Well, Aunt Rette, I expect you’ll be resuming your former profession of astronaut pilot.”
I saw Aurore freeze, suddenly tense and defensive.
Oscar was astonished. “What’s up? You seem to find my supposition singular. Secret preparations must be being made for interplanetary voyages, in America and elsewhere. We’ve already heard rumors of it, and there’ll be even more after my article. Admit that you’ll be going to the Moon, Mars or elsewhere?”
Aurore pretended to take it as a joke. “All right, I admit it. So what?”
“So, will you take me with you? This time, since we’ve made progress, you won’t be going on your own—you’ll recruit a crew. I’ll insert myself as chief mechanic. Mechanic-cum-reporter. What a launch for me! Promise me, my dear Aunt, that you’ll take me with you.”
“Agreed, Scar,” my wife conceded, gaily, while Père Frémiet and I smiled at the joke, which frightened the mother of the family.
The young phenomenon had, however, taken the response seriously. “Thank you, Rette,” he said, seriously. “I have your word. Put it there!” And he shook her hand vigorously.
She pulled away, a trifle embarrassed.
“Au revoir, see you soon...”
“Good night, my children. Have a safe journey.”
Our car was parked in the Rue Soufflot, fifty paces from the Frémiets’ house While walking by my side, Aurora said, dreamily, as much to herself as to me: “Funny boy! Was that just empty words, inspired by his stories of rockets, or does he suspect something? But how?” As she opened he car door she added: “It’s regrettable, even so, my love, that you mentioned Madame Simodzuki.”
“I’m sorry, my darling, but you didn’t tell me that it was a secret. I sensed, during dinner, that you have something important to tell me. What business proposition has she offered you?”
Having climbed in myself, I closed my own door. Aurore took the wheel, l
ooked me in the eye and replied: “Madame Simodzuki made me a proposition that might lead to a complete change in our existence. My acceptance depends on you.”
Without giving me time to reply, she launched us into the nocturnal traffic of the Boulevard Saint-Michel. It is my invariable rule to keep quiet while my wife is during in Paris.
IV. A Change of Existence...
Social convention does not permit me to say that Professor Nathan’s death was like a gift from the gods for me, but I have the right to rejoice in the fact that my wife had left the Institute.
A change of existence! I had been hoping for that for a fortnight, since the accident in which I had nearly lost Aurore. That had rendered her, not dearer, which would have been impossible, but more precious—and at the same time it revealed the flaw in our existence during the previous two years.
Happy? Yes, I’m happy. We’re happy, as united as one can be—but we lack something. Our existence has fallen into routine, into bourgeois platitude. It’s high time for some kind of liberation to put something else at our disposal—provided that the other thing in question gives us what we have thus far been lacking: a goal, a common ideal.
When Aurore fell to me from the sky two years earlier, it was the prelude to the most marvelous adventure in my life—but it doesn’t follow that, now it’s over, our love has nothing more to do than exist. When one has won a big prize, if one is not an idiot, one has to use in intelligently. I don’t think that all had been said and done for us with the egotistical joy of having combined out fates. It’s necessary for that love, which served to expose our individual worth, also to lift us up higher, in a common enterprise, joyfully pursued because we’re in it together.