The Mysterious Fluid

by Paul Vibert

  “Which cannot help but be rather interesting, and if the trials to which Monsieur James Judge’s catapult have, it appears, already been submitted have really given the results that have been advertised, one wonders why John Bull has not already expedited a few dozen of these new engines to South Africa, where the need for something ‘marvelous’ is beginning to make itself felt.

  “Ten years ago an American answering, if my memory serves me right, to the name of Hicks had already given birth—on paper, at least—to an analogous project. Our own Turpin, for his part, dreamed of a rotating artillery, silent and centrifugal, which he has been unable to perfect, although he has not yet definitively abandoned it. Finally, we have Monsieur Zalinski’s pneumatic cannon, a kind of giant pea-shooter that sends enormous parcels of dynamite two or three thousand meters without shock or detonation.”154

  In fact, the worthy Turpin has talked to me about his projects of that sort, and I don’t believe that he has abandoned it at all—on the contrary.

  Now let us pass on to the second invention, similarly American. I mean the ‘flash-bombs’155 that are destined to complement the first very advantageously.

  Here is the scant information that the journals specializing in the subject have given:

  “The American navy, finding the electric searchlights employed by ships for nocturnal reconnaissance to be inadequate, have tried to supplement them with the employment of so-called flash-bombs. They are filled with a gas which catches fire when the bomb explodes and produces a very bright light, which illuminates a vast area. In recent experiments, cannons of ten to fifteen centimeters have been used to launch these flash-bombs, and the results have been excellent.”

  The American program thus appears clearly: to kill their adversaries without noise while inundating them with light so that they are dazzled. I will say that it is simple and in good taste, like everything that comes to us from the United States.

  But that’s not all, fortunately, and now that the way is open, one may hope that inventors will work wonders. Thus, one thing following another, there is already talk of improvements and new applications capable of astonishing the world.

  With an easily-understandable humanitarian objective, whose lofty ambition will be obvious to everyone, an American dentist has proposed to load flash-bombs with nitrous oxide as well, in order that enemies can be illuminated, stupefied, put to sleep and killed painlessly. There, truly, is generosity.

  A celebrated Portuguese engineer also proposes equipping flash-bombs with an exhilarating gas—because, he says, still with a superior humanitarian objective and to respond to the idea of Christian charity, he wants to make his enemies die laughing on the battlefield.

  Finally, the last news I have is that one of the acolytes of Max Régis; in a truly nationalistic and patriotic spirit, has invented bombs full of itching powder. It’s evident that, in combination with Drumont’s hair-shirts, they could work marvels.

  At any rate, all the scientist are working hard to render what impossible by virtue of the very power of its means of destruction, and that’s why I believe that it will disappear one day, in spite of the ferocious passions of kings and emperors.

  The Disappearance of a River

  Everyone is asking where the Meuse has gone.

  Fishy coal-heavers.

  Terrible anguish in the kingdom of Belgium.

  The fatherland of Cléo de Mérode156 is literally in tears. It has suddenly lost its superb shared river. I say shared because it runs through both France and Belgium.

  Thus, one fine day—which is a manner of speaking, because it was actually dull—the Meuse disappeared entirely in the vicinity of Liège, with all its inhabitants, or very nearly, known in the Belgian language as poissons.

  Initially a trifle shocked by the news, the riverside burgomasters promised an honest recompense, and then a regal one, to anyone who could bring back, or at least provide news, of the vagabond river.

  Bad jokers—who are found in all countries, even in Leopold’s fatherland, you know—affirm that the Meuse, weary of lying in since the beginning of the world, had wanted, not to get out of, but to vanish from its bed. But the anxiety increased with every passing day; the anguish in Liège was horrible, and, as people were even beginning to talk about it here, from Asnières-les-Bains to Montrouge, I hastened to leap on a train in order to go to Liège to consult my friend, the celebrated Nautilus, the man most familiar with the secrets of the Meuse, given that the rascal has been living with it on the most intimate terms for many years.

  I had the right idea; I was awaiting my visit, and without hesitation, he replied to me incontinently with a little technico-lachrymose discourse that lasted three hours forty-seven minutes. As I had taken a phonograph with me, I shall make haste to transcribe the most salient passage here:

  “Five years ago, some work on the port of Jemmeppe having been required, the harbor wall was raised by placing new coping-stones on top of the old ones. Presently, the last-placed ones are at flotation-level and need to be raised again next year.

  “The port of Tilleur, which was constructed in 1883, will also have to be raised; the materials have been ordered and some have already been delivered.

  Finally, which is more serious, the barrage at Jemmeppe has sunk between thirty or thirty-five centimeters. The result is highly prejudicial to navigation, for the purpose of the barrage is to keep the water at a certain level, so as to maintain it 2.10 meters above the sill of the lock at Chockier. The level can no longer be maintained and this year—which was, parenthetically, rather dry—boats loaded to 1.90 meters, the regulation load, are only able to go through the said lock with the greatest difficulty.

  “Thus, between the eleventh and twelfth of September, the tug Télémaque I, hauling a train of four barges loaded to 1.80 meters, was held up for an entire day at Chockier. It was necessary to spend four hours casting off one of the barges that had stuck on the dill of the lock.

  “On the second day, the twelfth of September, the tug Ernest was stuck there or a day with its train for the same reason. The Alliance I was held up there from four o’clock on the thirteenth until noon the following day.

  “On the twenty-sixth of September, the Ernest, bringing three iron-boats upriver, the Rodolphe, the Polua and the Trois Soeurs from Disery were obliged to spend a day there, and on the eighth of October, the same tug, with another train, had to spend a day and a half there, always for the same causes: low water, boat resting on the sill, which they were unable to get over.

  “On the other hand, on the seventh of September, Monsieur de Lamine’s Croix Rouge, pulled by the Alliance 3, was beached in the cutting for more than two hours.”

  “Enough, enough,” I said. “My brain’s full.”

  But he still went on, and the phonograph recorded with deplorable stubbornness.

  When he had finished, worn out, gesturing like a dying man, Nautilus virtually threw himself at my feet, moaning: “I beg you, my French colleague—Parisian, and therefore magnanimous—will you lend me your reels?”

  “What?”

  “Yes—your phonograph reels.”

  “Of course.”

  He wrapped them carefully in silk paper—the seventeen of them that he had filled with his harangue, and launched himself feverishly through the streets of the city, taking them to the celebrated Liège newspaper, the Express.

  During his absence, his son—a distinguished young man of fourteen springs, plus one summer—arrived red-faced and out of breath. While he was still on the stairway he shouted to me: “There’s news, Monsieur, come and see, quickly!” And he led me to the bed of the Meuse.

  On the way, he explained to me how, with his friends, he had noticed rather large and dangerous cracks in the idle of the river bed, how they had pooled their savings to buy some stout thread more than six hundred meters long, fitted with hooks and stones to take them down, and how, with a thousand precautions, lying prone on planks laid across them, in order not to f
all into the cracks, they had succeeded in catching fish as black as ink, seemingly rolled in charcoal.

  We ran, and when we arrived at the place I was amazed; those fish were an utter revelation to me; they had come from the bottom of a mine, but, as they had not been there long, they were not yet blind but only myopic—as I was able to ascertain by putting my spectacles on their heads and offering them worms, which they could see very well and made every effort to grab.

  It was a flash of enlightenment for me, and when Nautilus arrived I shouted; “I see what’s happened. We’re not dealing with a flight or an escapade on the Meuse’s part but a suicide. It’s thrown itself down a mine-shaft.”

  Nautilus, astounded, could only say: “That’s also my opinion.”

  I returned to Paris. According to the latest news, the Meuse seems to want to return gradually to its bed, but there is still no news of the mines. Have their inhabitants, which are generally called mineurs in the Belgian language,157 as you know, been saved, or have they been devoured by pike? We still don’t know, and the anguishing wait is horrible.

  I’ll telegraph Nautilus again.

  A Philanthropic Employment and Matrimonial Agency

  Love illuminating young blind people.

  A matrimonial employment agency.

  A nice theme for a clock.

  I had just finished breakfast when one of my old friends, who has the good fortune to possess excellent health and an annual income of hundred thousand francs—which isn’t bad—plus an excellent heart—which is worthless from a practical viewpoint—suddenly arrived at my apartment.

  The following dialogue soon took place between us.

  “My dear chap, I want to tell you about a philanthropic idea that I believe to be wonderful—so, without even waiting for your opinion, I’ve already distributed the circulars and set things in motion. You’ll see…”

  “Take this cup of coffee in the meantime, and light this cigar. I’m listening.”

  “Of course. I know what you think—you have a horror of employment agencies, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely. They’re infamous institutions that exploit the poor, and I would like to see them replaced, everywhere and forever—in every city and every trade—by bodies made up of the workers themselves, syndicates that would place their members honestly and gratuitously, including those belonging to a trade without being part of the syndicate. That’s my opinion.”

  “That’s fine—but you also have, if I’m not mistaken a holy horror of matrimonial agencies…”

  “I believe so. There we’re confronted by pure and simple swindling, in all its moral—or, rather immoral—forms, for nine times out of ten the individual doesn’t even exist, or the one to whom you are introduced is only a fake hired by the hour or the job, and the worthy fellow is done out of the money he is naïve enough to allow to be extorted from him by the fallacious promise of a young lady with a stainless reputation and a good dowry. Anyway, in most cases that victim is no more honest than the thief, and every time I read about one of these preposterous stories unfolding before a tribunal, it seems to me that I’m watching a drama performed at the Palais-Royal.”

  “Thank you. Well, listen to me carefully.” And, emphasizing his words carefully, he went on: “I’m founding an employment agency that will also be a matrimonial agency…”

  I didn’t let him finish. Bounding to my feet I said: “You’re mad.”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re making fun of me.”

  “Not at all.”

  “But it’s idiotic and monstrous.”

  “Neither one nor the other, but please, listen to me for five minutes…”

  “What will your poor mother say? What a comedown, what dishonor…”

  “Will you listen to me,” he said, authoritatively. Soon, when we were both calmer, he continued: “My project is quite simple, and if it wasn’t me who had conceived it, invented it, created it, got it going and caressed it lovingly, like a child, I’d permit myself to consider it sublime.

  “You know that once, for some years, we went out together almost every evening…”

  “Let’s not go back to the Deluge, I beg you—you’re reminding me that we’re getting old…”

  “That’s true; still, you can’t have failed to notice—especially you, such a lover of Beauty…”

  “You flatter me.”

  “Will you shut up? …Failed to notice how many perfectly honest, good, well brought-up young ladies there are, meekly playing Cloches de monastère,158 even having a certain dowry and yet coiffing Saint Catherine, because they’re horribly ugly, which isn’t permissible. No one wants to buy such old scrap at any price.”

  “You’re cruel.”

  “I’m quite simply an impartial observer—and these poor creatures are reduced in consequence to pickling themselves in bigotry and ending their lives in the monotonous and sterile company of their cat and their parrot.”

  “The picture is accurate.”

  “Isn’t it? And yet, these young women have treasures of generosity, devotion and love in the depths of their heart. But all that must remain uncultivated, like a field over which the fecund plow has never passed, which has never been watered by the benevolent morning dew.”

  “Oh, shut up, or I’ll start crying. I’m beginning to get maudlin.”

  “Always joking…but follow my argument to the end. Now, while these poor girls are running to seed, while these sad flowers are drying out, there are thousands of blind men in the world who will never know the joys of the family, because they can’t get married, because no mother wants to hand over her daughter to them. And in the meantime, how their hearts also suffer, these poor orphans of nature, cheated, but forbidden to see it, like simple pachyderms.

  “Every time I see a wedding in a church and hear the organ playing during the mass a whole poem of love and despair, for whoever is able understand music, I’m not deceived—it’s because it’s being played by an organist who is a bachelor, and blind!”

  “You’re mad.”

  “No, my dear chap; I observe, I understand and, most of all, I sympathize with the dolors of my peers, their hidden despairs…”

  “Brave heart,” I said, sincerely moved.

  “Well, you see, there it is—my work in its entirety, resplendent with philanthropy and tender charity. Do you understand now?”

  “Not at all.”

  “But yes. I’ve founded an employment bureau doubled with a matrimonial agency, as I said. In the employment agency I only enroll ugly demoiselles who desire to marry, as well as blind persons of the stronger sex—and I marry them off. A blind man has no need for his wife to be beautiful, but simply that she be good and devoted, with the result that I succeed in finding reciprocal employment for all the ugly women and all the poor blind men, and making them happy.

  “Exceptionally, when the circumstances present themselves, I also marry young blind women with crippled, deformed or misshapen men who are very happy to find a little indulgence for their infirmity in their wife’s extinct gaze.

  “Well, is my project humanitarian enough, my incredulous friend? Love illuminating young blind people, eh? What a beautiful subject for a clock of the last century!”

  “That’s true, and you’re a generous fellow; not only are you doing great work for the cause of human solidarity, exquisite and full of touching poetry, but you’ve also found the paradoxical means of creating an honest employment agency and a serious matrimonial agency, which puts the lid on it. But it must be expensive.”

  “No, I’m rich and can bear the expenses of a simple reception-room, a servant and a book-keeper.”

  “Found a limited company—I’ll buy a hundred shares; it would be a good…deed.159 Make that a hundred and one.”

  “No, I want to keep all the honor and losses of my idea for myself, jealously. Except, as I like you very much, I promise that you shall be the godfather of the first child of the first couple of an ugly woman and a
blind man that I marry in this fashion, if the families don’t object. That will make you happy…”

  “Agreed.”

  And I shook his hand with unfeigned emotion. What a nice theme for a clock! But my friend had already made that remark, and my amiable female readers, although very emotional and even more touched, will not have forgotten it. I’ll stop there!

  Notes

  1 Two examples of Allais’ work in this vein can be found in the Black Coat Press anthology The Germans on Venus, ISBN 9781934543566.

  2 All of Cros’s proto-sf can be found in the Black Coat Press anthology The Supreme Progress, ISBN 9781935558828. A Black Coat Press sampler of Lautrec’s work, including some proto-sf, is The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait, ISBN 9781612270098.

  3 cf the Black Coat Press translation of Parville’s An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars, ISBN 9781934543450.

  4 Two of Mouton’s stories of this kind are featured in the The Germans on Venus and The Supreme Progress, q.v.

  5 cf the Black Coat Press translation of Pawkowski’s Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension, ISBN 9781934543375.

  6 Thevenot is nowadays remembered primarily as one of Louise Colet’s lovers, and thus gets a passing mention in biographies of Gustave Flaubert.

  7 Black Coat Press has issued three volumes of Robida’s work: The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul, ISBN 9781934543610, The Clock of the Centuries, ISBN 9781934543139, and Chalet in the Sky, ISBN 9781935558873.

  8 Cf “The Historioscope” in News from the Moon, ISBN 9781932983890 and the title story of The Supreme Progress, q.v.

  9 cf their respective stories in The Germans on Venus, q.v. Black Coat Press has issued four volumes of Lermina’s work: Panic in Paris, ISBN 9781934543832, Mysteryville, ISBN 97881935558279, To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers, ISBN 9781935558347, and The Secret of Zippelius, ISBN 9781935558880.