The Mysterious Fluid

by Paul Vibert

  Thus, that poor color mummy, which has given us joy for so many years in the somber paintings of Ribot or the studies of Goya, is bound to disappear in a short time, if well-informed individuals can be believed.

  Something is already being done—but obviously not enough—and we ought to investigate the practical means of fighting such a catastrophe.

  For my part, I feel strongly that I am not at all in the mood to accept the fait accompli, for, at the end of the day, let’s not lose sight of the fact that great artists, who will no longer have the color mummy to hand—or, rather, on their palette—will not be able to produce paintings as dark and dramatic as those representing negroes fighting in the dark in the depths of a cave.

  Then, in sum, as everyone in the world is descended from Father Adam and Mother Eve, according to the popular formula—which means that everyone is related to everyone else, more closely than we imagine, to every individual, all the way back to the word’s beginning—it is quite certain that we can recognize in the celebrated color mummy, the ground-up bones, the crushed hair, the pulverized teeth and the muscles, reduced to dust, of our ancestors.

  That thought makes a little shiver run along the spine—a petite mort, as the divine Marquis put it—and it’s not funny to think that it will be necessary to renounce that macabre joy forever, especially if one is an aesthete.

  That is why I have sought to discover whether there is any way to remedy a state of affairs as lamentable as it is disastrous—and, if I’m not mistaken, after long sleepless nights and no less laborious meditation, I think I’ve finally found the sole solution capable of simultaneously preserving the interests of the very specialized industry of mummy-color manufacturers, the needs of painters and the quasi-superstitious and fetishistic aspect of the passionately interesting question.

  As I didn’t want to overlook anything by neglect, I began by carrying out a long and scrupulous investigation among the interested—and, in consequence, competent—parties. First I interviewed the mummy-color manufacturers in Egypt itself.

  We disembarked on the bank of the Nile; I hired a crocodile as my stenographer, and everyone replied to me, tearfully: “We’re doomed, Monsieur; the stock of mummies will soon be exhausted; it real is a disappearing industry, which it will be necessary to add to your volume on dying industries. But it’s the fault of the English.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Certainly. If, before the widespread industrial usage of mummy-color, those mercantile profaners the English had not sold our sacred mummies at a knock-down price to make fertilizer—fertilizer, you understand, filthy manure—we wouldn’t be in this mess. We’d still have a stock of mummies capable of feeding us for more than fifty years.”

  “But it seems to me that in the matter of profanation, you yourselves…”

  “Oh, Monsieur, how can you say that? Our mummies, transformed into color, destined to be immortalized on the canvases of painters, in masterpieces immortal in themselves, fulfilling a quasi-divine role and the highest and most noble of missions!”

  That’s obvious.

  Then I consulted all the artists of Europe and the Sandwich Islands—which cost me a long and perilous voyage—and they replied: “What do you want to do about it? We can’t invent mummies; we’ll have recourse, with our ordinary manufacturers, to artificial mummy-color, thanks to the judicious employment of by-products of coal.”

  Well, that makes me indignant, and ought not to be the case—I say that loudly, in the name of the superior interests of art. I’ve found two solutions, or temporary and the other absolute, and those are the two solutions that I’m going to expose respectfully to the eyes and the intellect of eminent artists, members of the Institut, who do me the honor of reading me hebdomadally, if you’ll pardon the neologism.74

  So, the transitory and temporary solution, the modest palliative, consists of replacing the exhausted Egyptian mummies by those of the necropolises of South America: Incas, the Indians of Peru, Yucatan, etc.

  They are by no means as good quality—as resinous and bituminous—as those of Egypt; they are thinner, if I might put it thus, and paler, which will bring about a minor revolution in the somber aspect of our artists, but, according to my calculations, there will be enough or seven years, eleven months, thirteen days and nine minutes, which is surely not to be disdained.

  After that, we arrive at the serious and definitive means, and I’m counting on those years to prepare public opinion for the resurrection of this useful industry—I’m talking about the art of mummifying one’s nearest and dearest, when they have kicked the bucket. It’s much more chic than amusing oneself by losing everything in that Satanic cremation.

  We’ll begin by mummifying the poor devils who die in hospitals and similar institutions, and as they will have the right, while alive, to sell their mummified carcasses to industrial mummy-manufacturers, that will provide a means, as simple as it is ingenious, of leaving a little money to their widows and orphans.

  Insurance companies will even be able to take charge, very honestly, of various contracts, operations and plans of that sort.

  It must not be forgotten that mummies, like Bordeaux wines, gain considerably in aging, so one will be able to stipulate that the price will not be touched by the children until they come of age, and, as a result, they will acquire a more considerable sum.

  I’m sketching all this rapidly, but it’s obvious that there could be a whole series of interesting consequences for the poor therein.

  The proof that I believe in the efficacy of my system is that I declare here and now that I am ready to sell my own carcass, and that of my concierge, to a responsible mummy-manufacturer, if I can get a good price.

  Finally, according one’s convictions, one could sell one’s mummy to be used in religious paintings or freethinkers’ paintings; some might reserve it for landscapes, others for generic paintings.

  In truth. I tell you this: it would be simultaneously charming, lucrative and practical, and it really is the only solution to the imminent disappearance of ancient mummies from the land of the Pharaohs.

  Author’s note: I am told that missionaries are now in the process of mummifying more than two million Chinese cadavers. Always practical, those people!

  II. A lucrative trade. American embalmers.

  A new industry open to feminine activity.

  The joy of families.

  We know that there is, at the present time, a large number of embalmers and entrepreneurial funeral directors in the United States, because, being more liberal than us, the Yankees have not wanted to reserve the exclusive monopoly of that fine trade to Catholic councils of manufacturers, and the industry in question is absolutely free on the other side of the Atlantic—even for the Portuguese, who usually prefer more cheerful occupations.

  At the end of the day, though, all tastes are innate, and on that subject, I find in the trade journals of the funeral business the following curious information:

  “A friendly practitioner, Madame Myrtle Hamon, certified by the Embalming College of Massachusetts, announces to the public of Ottawa, by means of the newspapers, that she will take responsibility for funerals and the embalming of bodies at reasonable prices.

  “Another embalmeress,75 who has undertaken specialist studies in Paris, Berlin and New York, established herself a few years ago in the last-named city, and it is well-known that her enterprise is now worth several million dollars.”

  There, in fact, is a whole vast and charming horizon open to our young women, once qualified as physicians, pharmacists or herbalists, cannot find a clientele sufficient for them to earn their living. Not to mention that with the ingenuity of the French character, it will be easy for them to perfect and extend a profession, probably exercised with a certain dullness and manifest lack of grace by American demoiselles.

  For a start, our young embalmeresses will be able to meditate in the crypts of the Tour de Saint-Michel, Bordeaux and in the famous underground Campo Santos
located in caverns in Italy, which have skillfully conserved for centuries, visibly fresh, all the Maccabees. It’s necessary to run a duster over them from time to time, because of the inevitable accumulation of dust, and sometime to add a little make-up, to put a soupcon of rice-powder on their cheeks, but that’s all.

  By that means that they will extract from Mother Nature, in the name of practical science, her secrets of indefinite conservation, unknown even to Madame Vachon. It’s even probable that these discoveries will not be without a certain spice. What do you think, my geological chemist friends?

  Eventually, they will be able to extend their precious industry to all fauna and embalm domestic animals—the lap-dogs that society ladies adore so jealously.

  I know that there are taxidermists, even female ones, but us the word is coarse, brutal and discourteous, as Mademoiselle Clairon or Mademoiselle Mars76—I don’t know which, exactly—observed, by comparison with the lovely and graceful vocable embalmeresses…

  Embalmeresses! The mere evocation of the word makes me salivate, and involuntarily, it seems that I am breathing is the sweetest and most paradisal odors.

  Then again, in addition to all the cherished domestic animals, what a vast field will open up to embalmeresses from the moment that Egyptian customs are finally re-established here, after three thousand years of yearning, and one can fortunately keep one’s dear departed at home, under glass, in one’s drawing-room, and even move them from room to room, like a simple Chouberski,77 in order to have them permanently before one’s eyes.

  Oh, simply thinking of that touching idea makes my eyes moist with tears, and I can distinctly hear my pen sobbing like a big turkey.

  Yes, this will provide very sweet consolations for us in the future; I don’t want to draw out here, to preserve the sensitivity of our readers, the list of all those who will have recourse to embalmeresses and their artifices, as conservative as they are magical.

  I don’t want to talk about the weeping mother who would love to keep her dear little child, dead in infancy, under the globe of her old family clock. I don’t want to talk about the gentle bride who will want to conserve her beloved in this way, in order to have the frequent pleasure of dyeing, grooming and perfuming his beautiful silky beard. No, for I feel emotion overwhelming me—but at least it will be permissible to pay a just homage of admiration, an equitable tribute or gratitude, to the son-in-law who weeps like a calf every morning on kissing the cheeks of his old stuffed—sorry, embalmed—mother-in-law, and putting her in a place of honor in his drawing-room before going to his study…

  No matter that she might be getting slightly fat, and overly desiccated, thanks to the embedderess—no, the embalmeress; that model son-in-law will easily imagine, that he has, like the ancients, conserved in his home his household gods!

  These are scenes so touching that my impotent pen refuses to describe and retrace them, I shall not persist.

  If, however, I had the good fortune to possess a son, I would want to give him in holy matrimony to a young and poetic embalmeress. It seems to me that she would embalm our entire existence, the entire interior of our home—and how very genteel I would then be, and how affectionate toward her! There would, admittedly, be a slightly sly sentiment of thrift on my part in that, for after my death. I’m sure that she would take personal responsibility for embalming her dear late father-in-law.

  A wonderful trade, eh?—and so nice and easy!

  THE MYSTERIOUS FLUID

  Proving that the Planet Mars Is Inhabited

  Curious demonstrations.

  The same origin of language as on Earth.

  What conclusion can be drawn?

  For some time, the scientific world has known about the famous canals of Mars, so regular and so curious in their almost-geometrical forms in the astral province that has been named Libya, which the well-known hemisphere of the planet presents to us in Observatories.

  We know that it also possesses an atmosphere, and that there is probably good weather on the surface when it is a little less confused and ruddy. Astronomers, always a little scatterbrained—hence the verb referring to the aiming of their telescopes78—would love to see the canals as immense signals that the inhabitants are sending to those of the Earth, and, in the reddish vapor, the revelation of immense fires, lit in order to speak to us by means of conventional signs, somewhat akin to the Saint-Jean fires79 on the summits of high mountains, reviewed and corrected by a Martial (or Martial?) Chappe.

  So long as we do not possess sufficiently powerful telescopes, we are obliged to leave the matter there and remain in the vague domain of conjecture. However, from the day when one can see the moon at sixty kilometers and other worlds in the same proportions, astronomers will take heart and the project of establishing communication with the inhabitants of Mars taken up and seriously studied by a group of Russian scientists.

  They would begin by undertaking an attentive study of the planet, and, on days when there is good weather on the surface, acquiring the conviction that the Martians are definitely signaling to us by means of large fires that form designs between two canals.

  That was an important point to establish.80 Mars was inhabited, and even inhabited by highly civilized people who, in possession of very powerful telescopes, could probably see what was happening on Earth as if they were standing at a window looking out into their garden.

  Armed with that conviction, the Russian astronomers, with admirable devotion, began by gathering the necessary funds, with the aid of a vast national subscription, and as soon as they had the indispensable sums, left to establish themselves in the middle of the Gobi, or Shamo, desert in northern Tibet and China, in the very heart of Asia. There are plateaux there 3300 kilometers long and 7000 broad, where the air is very cold and pure. That is all they would need to enter into direct communication, if possible with the inhabitants of Mars.

  Once installed in double-walled wooden barracks, in order not to suffer from the cold, and with all their instruments in place, the Russian astronomers, ever admirable for courage and determination, had six thousand ones of kerosene sent from Baku, which naturally required a delay of several months.

  But they had their plan, fully matured, and during that time they had bands of cheaply-hired Mongol nomads dig trenches several kilometers long in the earth where the frozen ground was hard but watertight—whereas, in the sand, the liquid would have seeped away, and it would have been necessary to render it impermeable with some sort of solid coating. It was a gigantic task, but after seventeen months, everything was finished and the ten thousand tons of kerosene were awaiting deployment.

  It was no longer necessary to wait for a day when a serene atmosphere was visible on the surface of Mars to attempt to enter into communication therewith—but would the individuals out there take note of their appeal? A cruel enigma.

  As you will already have guessed, our Russian scientists had traced a word with the aid of the trenches, over an extent of more than a hundred kilometers.

  Thus, on a lovely clear night, cold and starry, at a given signal, the Mongols immediately filled al the trenches with kerosene, and, at another signal, set fire to it.

  The moment was solemn. One could have heard the emotion-stirred heartbeats of the twenty-three astronomers gathered there from a kilometer away.

  As every eventuality had been anticipated, three of them rose up into the air to an altitude of six hundred meters in a tethered balloon.

  The effect was marvelous, and in large printed letters a hundred kilometers long, an immense, bright, luminous word—HELLO—conveyed the first greeting from the inhabitants of the Earth to those of Mars. It was probably the first attempt of this sort, at least in our own solar system, since the world became a world.81

  A magnanimous spectacle, calculated to fill such men with emotion. The fire, cleverly maintained in the trenches by the Mongols under the direction of the astronomers—who multiplied their efforts during the night, racing hither and yon on their
bicycles and also giving orders by telephone—lasted until morning, until the dawn; and in order to make it even more visible, filings were thrown into the flaming liquid that gave it all the colors of the rainbow in succession, according to the compound thrown or the by-products of the coal mixed with the kerosene.

  The effect was striking, grandiose, superhuman—universal in the most sublime sense of the word—and far outshone the spectacle of the electrical luminous advertisements in the Place de l’Opéra and the great boulevards.

  Finally, daylight arrived and the colossal hello that the genius of humankind might perhaps have hurled through space, on the invisible wings of the mysterious fluid named electricity, to another world was gradually extinguished.

  Then a problem arose. Unless the Martians already had something ready, they would be slow to respond, if they had read and understood us. The delay, of perhaps six months, would be long, cruel and anxious for our scientists.

  On the other hand, perhaps, by means of powerful and improved methods, the Martians would be able to reply more rapidly…

  II. Further demonstrations.

  The same origin of language as on Earth.

  Certain proofs.

  Needless to say, in spite of the phlegmatic temperament typical of Russian scientists, the little company waited with feverish impatience during the months that followed, their eyes always aimed, during the cruelly cold and harsh nights of Pamir, on Libya, the famous astral province of the grand canals of Mars.

  They devoted themselves assiduously to all sorts of sports, reading and work, and completed astronomical calculations that represented a decade’s work, but the waiting was no less painful.

  The big question was whether the inhabitants of Mars—for them, there was no doubt that Mars was inhabited—had read and understood the word launched across space in luminous form.