“Yes,” said Roger, smiling. “A laboratory even better equipped than the one at the Sorbonne.”
The gamin looked my friend straight in the eyes. “No! You’re poking fun at a poor kid!”
“I’m perfectly serious.”
I judged it appropriate to intervene. “But it will be necessary to consult your family, won’t it, young man?”
A shadow of sadness veiled the boy’s gaze. “My family! Well, Monsieur, unless I call the macadam Papa and the railings of the market in the Place Maub Mama, I can’t name them for you, my family.”
“You’re a foundling?” I said, compassionately.
“Yes, since it’s the custom to call children like that ‘lost’.”
He was decidedly interesting, that gamin, with his intelligent expression and his street-urchin repartee.
“By the way, what’s your name?”
“Étienne Tourte, M’sieur…Étienne after the statue of the man in the square where they picked me up—you know, Étienne Dolet, who was put to death, back in the day, to teach him to live.31 Tourte because that’s the name, or the nickname, of the worthy woman who picked me up: Mère Tourte, well-known in the neighborhood—she sold fries at the Maubert market.”
“Good! The good lady serves as your adoptive mother?”
“She served, M’sieur, but not anymore. She died last year—died of grief because her eldest, Gustave, died in the war. A strapping fellow Gustave—he was a roofer; he taught me to run over the roofs. Those were good times—you could breathe the air, not like here in the ovens. The Boches killed him; that changed my life, and to console myself, I took up science.”
With the back of his sleeve, he wiped away a tear that was running down his cheek. Poor kid!
“What about your employer?”
“My boss? He’s one who won’t keep me back. I work in his house during the week.”
Two days later, Étienne Tourte arrived in Fontenay. With an indescribable joy, he traded the white hat and smock of a pastry-maker for the grey smock of a laboratory assistant.
Today, without false shame, he declared himself ready to resume his place among the saucepans.
Roger was delighted with that solution. “That way we won’t waste our time eating out, and we’ll have no need to introduce strangers here. We’ll be able to work in peace.” Then, encouraging Tourte with an amicable tap: “Agreed, my lad; make us truffle sauces and champagne-style kidneys if it amuses you...”
“And desserts, of course!”
“Thumbs up for the desserts. In a few days, you’ll be able to serve us bombes glacées, I can sure you of that.”
The last words vibrated like a threat. The allusion to bombs plunged me into an anguish compounded from amazement and fear. What chemical work did he intend to do in this similar place?”
That same evening, Roger permitted me to glimpse the stupefying path into which his delirious brain was urging him.
III. Nightmarish Discourse
It was a heavy and sultry evening, with rumbles of thunder in the distance.
After dinner, well cooked, in truth, by little Tourte, Roger sent the boy away. When we were alone, with an abrupt gesture, he threw away a half-consumed cigarette and came toward me. A willful movement of his head seemed to drive away a final hesitation.
“Paul,” he said, in a very calm voice, “you’re a courageous man, and also a philosopher, so, you ought not to fear death?”
At that unexpected interpellation, I had a surge of anxiety, but since my friend was offering me the opportunity for a lesson in morality, I quickly recovered my aplomb in order to launch the reply: “Certainly, I don’t fear death; like many others, I risked it for four years, at the front—but on the other hand, I don’t fear life.” Making my thought more specific, I went on: “Life is a duty that makes all the obligations of humanity concrete, and that duty sometimes requires more resolution and sacrifice. Because of that, all life ought to be sacred to us—our own as well as other people’s...”
A fugitive irony traversed my interlocutor’s physiognomy, but he hastened to approve: “I think exactly as you do. Suicide, like individual murder, is a cowardly and stupid act.” He became strangely animated. “There’s something better to do: radically suppress the cause of human miseries by suppressing the world, by stifling at a stroke the existences that trouble and poison the Earth’s surface.”
“Damn! You’re lapsing into integral nihilism, my friend. Fortunately, you’re not yet in a position to load the bomb that will blow this poor terraqueous ball to smithereens.”
“How do you know? Have you ever thought about the end of the world?”
Roger looked me straight in the eyes. That fiery gaze reignited all my anxieties. To avoid a more serious excitation, I was obliged to follow him in his lucubrations.
“The end of the world?” I said. “Certainly, I’ve read all the scientific anticipations, all the fantastic presumptions, all the legends related to the question. Periodically, besides, amateur astronomers an hundred-sou astrologers take the trouble to announce the abrupt termination of our celestial voyage. This very day, if you search hard enough, you’ll find, somewhere in the sky, the comet that’s due to pulverize us. Since the year 1000 of sinister memory, prophets of that stripe have never shut up shop, but as the Earth isn’t doing too badly...”
“Let’s leave the jokes there, please, and remain in the domain of pure science. The Earth won’t die from the impact of a comet; celestial mechanics are too well-regulated for that. The Earth will perish from cold.”
“Yes,” I risked, to temper the violence of Roger’s words. “I estimate, like you, that when the Sun is extinguished...”
“The Sun!” My friend shrugged his shoulders in order to emphasize the scorn he accorded o my hypothesis. “The Sun! But my poor Paul, although it’s true that in the first ages of the Earth, the Sun stored enormous quantities of heat inside our globe, at the present moment, it only contributes in trivial proportions to the maintenance of normal temperature. Look, it’s as if you tried to heat the Place de la Concorde with a lighted candle. Oh, don’t smile; it’s not a laughing matter. Merely allow me to help you grasp the true—the only—reason that guarantees the terrestrial crust against the mortal cold of space.”
“I’m listening like a docile pupil, happy to be instructed.”
“Well, it’s the 320 kilometers of atmosphere that constitute a gaseous mattress around us, impermeable to the cold outside. And do you know the indispensable agent of that impermeability?”
“Tell me.”
“Water vapor.” And, in a tone of complaint: “What! You didn’t know, then, that water vapor regulates all terrestrial life? Suppress the water vapor, and you suppress life, because you permit the cold of space to penetrate all the way to the solid surface. Now, the cold of space reaches 270 degrees below zero...”
“Brrr! You’re giving me cold chills in my back.”
Without paying any heed to the interruption, Roger continued: “But to extinguish life on Earth completely, there’s no need to envisage that extreme temperature. A great scientist, Charles Martins, has demonstrated that a decline of only six degrees in the mean temperature of France would bring the Alpine glaciers all the way to Paris.32
“I’ve calculated myself that a decline of forty-three degrees in the normal temperature of the globe would lead to the solidification of the oceans and transform the continents into vast deserts of ice.”
“Fortunately, they’re entirely theoretical calculations.”
“No, it’s been observed; it’s a fact of our geological history. Millions of years ago, when the overheated surface was covered with gigantic flora, when fantastic animals, the bones of which we’ve discovered, pullulated on land and under water, when an intense life was established everywhere, the ice abruptly surged forth, stifling all creatures, animals and plants, and doubtless also the humans of those times—for there’s no proof that, amid that exasperation of vital forces, hu
man, civilizations and empires didn’t exist in those distant ages.
“The result of it was an anesthesia of seeds, a destruction of species, a kind of end of the world, so abrupt and unexpected that science hasn’t yet been able to offer a plausible explanation of the mystery.” In a lower voice, Roger added: “Today, I believe that I’ve solved it, the mystery...”
He uttered a sigh, marking a pause. Then, with an ever-increasing tone of hatred, he went on: “After centuries, millennia of death, the resurrection came! There were other lives, other plants, other beasts and other humans. Was that life any better than the one swallowed up by the shroud of ice? It doesn’t appear so, at least if I can judge by the odious spectacle of our present world.”
Livry stood up; he strode back and forth, making broad gestures, and continued to emit his anathemas: “Today, what do we see, in spite of the apparent and illusory progress of civilization? Everywhere, the onslaught of base instincts and evil passions. Everywhere, lies, hypocrisy and fraud. Yesterday’s atrocious war is only one incidence of that universal degradation. Half of humankind seems to me to be hell-bent on despoiling, torturing and destroying the other half. And if we look at the material signs, don’t we find symptoms of decadence and decrepitude in all races and all classes? What is more abominable than the world of today?”
Roger stopped in front of me, his arms folded. His face was crimson with anger, his gaze fiery. He burst forth: “Paul, believe me, it’s time, high time, to plunge the world that is coming apart and suffering—oh yes, suffering!—back into oblivion.”
Poor Roger. At that moment, he was causing me a frightful pain, and a profound pity. Beneath the crazy words of an unhappy man, I sensed the distress of a grief-stricken soul, an exceedingly sharp dolor. I was, however, convinced of the impracticality of his hallucinatory threats; I was far more fearful of other, more direct, acts of violence against the Berjac household.
“I understand. You’re meditating a book, a scientific work serving as the frame for a philosophical idea: a dream of the end of the world by cold, such as has happened in prehistory, such as occurred millions of years ago…”
Strident, demonic laugher cut off the thread of my speech.
In a harsh, metallic, arrogant voice-a voice whose tone made me shiver, Roger roared: “No, you don’t understand! It’s not a matter of a dream, but a reality; not contemplative philosophy, but imminent facts.”
He made a violent effort to get a grip on himself.
“Excuse my nerves, Paul—but I want to finish where I should have begun. In this very place, I possess the substance that renders me master of lowering, as I wish, the temperature of the globe.”
The chemist took me into the next room, where he had put the cases brought from Fontenay. He pointed to them with an emphatic gesture.
“This is the means by which we’ll conduct the world to its final end!”
I don’t flinch. He has just opened one of the cases. It contains the phials of blue glass that I’ve already seen, contained in their felt sheaths. The chemist takes one out, removes the stopper, and pours a few drops into a saucer.
Without emotion, I gaze at the syrupy blue-tinted liquid that my comrade caresses—I can’t think of a better word—and trickles between his fingers.
Obligingly, he explains:
“In the first box is my provision of the Omega acid. In the other, lined with platinum sheets, my radium is at the center of an asbestos mattress—for radium is a terribly inconvenient metal; it eats through everything, including glass.”
Now he brandishes the ebonite case inclosing the strange substance discovered by the admirable Curie household.
“It’s a big as a penholder! One wouldn’t suspect that the contents are worth twelve millions!”
“Twelve millions!” I repeat, stunned.
“Yes, ten grams of radium…I have as much in my laboratory at Fontenay…and that’s just a beginning. I’ve made a contract with the largest manufacturers of chemical products for them to procure me, within a year, the forty grams I’ll need.”
What point is there in protesting loudly? In his dementia, the poor fellow is multiplying, at the demand of his crazy imagination, the few particles of radium that he possesses.
He replaces the tube of radium and closes the two boxes carefully.
“Tomorrow, I’m expecting to receive at the railway station the glass tanks destined to contain the Omega acid, as well as the meteorological instruments that will enable me to observe the results. In four days, everything will be ready. While awaiting the definitive action, this first experiment will give an idea of the means at my disposal...”
It was heart-rending.
But once again, his grating laughter bursts forth in the silence.
“If the astronomer Thiérard-Leroy were able to suspect it, I think he’d have judged it futile to marry his daughter Hélène last April twenty-fourth to Capitaine Berjac of the three-oh-sixth artillery, eh!”
Those words make me shiver. Roger knows the names, he remembers the date. He’s dominated by the obsession of that accursed marriage.
Doubtless spurred on by that reminiscence, the madman cedes to the cruel emprise of his distress. He becomes delirious.
“Oh, the blind lovers, they can’t see Death. It’s descending from on high, all white, as white as a bride... It’s snow…it’s ice... I’m summoning it, I’m attracting it, I’m guiding it…it extends its white shroud over them, over us, over the entire earth...”
“Roger, I beg you...”
The exhortations to calm remain stuck in my throat. I’m alone with the poor madman, in that remote house where the storm is rumbling, where the wind is howling, where the ground, beneath the harsh glare of lightning-flashes, seems to be carpeted with frost.
Truly, in that moment of alarming nightmare, I think I see around me the dead earth invoked by the demented vision, the crust of crystallized snows of the glacial epoch.
And Roger, his arms raised toward the havens, continues to vociferate:
“Tremble, beings and things...
“Dust will return to dust...
“I am the Man of the Apocalypse!”
IV. A Seeker of Wings
After that fearful evening, I knew the terrors of a night of fever and insomnia.
The next morning, Roger seemed to me to be fresh and well-disposed. In accordance with orders given the previous day, the auto, which had been put in the garage at the hotel, came to pick us up to take us to the station. In no time at all, we were there.
Numerous packages had arrived, addressed to the chemist. Roger arranged with the dispatch office for them to be transported and then we climbed back into the automobile.
Roger is driving; I am sitting beside him. A beautiful day is in prospect, tempered by an easterly wind.
That regular wind encourages trials in unpowered flight, for on the horizon, in the direction of the Ferme de Bouy,33 two great white birds are furrowing the sky, alternately appearing and disappearing behind clumps of fir-trees,
On the road, we catch up with a strange machine being towed by a tractor.
“Well, well!” says Roger. “That’s a new idea! Oscillating wings...”
In fact, by virtue of the speed of travel, the wings of the alerion34 in tow, stretched over a supple armature, are beating the air regularly like those of an enormous bird.
But the auto of the seekers of wings turns right on to a side road, clearing the road ahead.
Roger was about to activate the accelerator.
“What if we go and watch?” I proposed
He shrugged slightly. “Poor inventor! If he knew, he wouldn’t risk breaking his bones in a crude machine.”
“If he knew what?”
My question must have seemed naïve, because Roger became irritated. “That we’ll soon be dead, of course!” Then, after a gesture, he conceded: “But if it’s agreeable to you to go see at close range the attempts those larvae are making to crawl above ground,
let’s go!”
He turned the steering-wheel. Following the alerion, our vehicle reached the crest overlooking the plain, from which the machines were being launched.
We were soon on the fringe formed by the curiosity-seekers who were limiting the improvised aerodrome.
Two flying-machines were already in the air. Attention was, however, concentrated on the flying machine that had just arrived. In the circle of watchers, the name of the inventor was whispered: Guy Mayrol.
He proceeds with his preparations for take-off. The aides extend the “sandow” that is to project the alerion.35 Guy Mayrol takes his place in the pilot’s seat and utters a brief cry. That is the signal. The elastic cables relax; like an arrow, the alerion departs into space.
Almost immediately, alas, the apparatus stalls, descends in a spiral, and crashes on the hillside.
The crowd runs forward. Roger and I follow.
Fortunately, the fall has been gentle. The pilot stands up, unharmed.
In spite of his chagrined declarations of a short while before, my friend examines the flying machine lying on the grass with interest. Mayrol, a very young man with a sympathetic face, contemplates the injured machine with an expression of dolor and discouragement.
In the meantime, Livry has taken his notebook out of his pocket, and traces a sketch, while casting a glance over the various parts of the apparatus, measuring the inclination of the wings with the gaze, and then jots down equations.
I prefer to see him like that.
Suddenly, he approaches Guy Mayrol, and in a very soft voice, which I have not heard for a long time, he murmurs in his ear: “Will you permit me to give you some advice, Monsieur…?”
Mayrol looks at the unknown man with astonishment, but lets him speak without impatience. God knows how much advice he had heard!
However, the aviator follows the explanation, nods his head, and finally stuffs the piece of paper that Roger has just torn out of his notebook into his pocket.
After that incident, my friend rejoins me. We climb back into the automobile. Roger redirects the vehicle toward Mourmelon-le-Grand.
On the Brink of the World's End Page 23