Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

  But in the year just ended the Association had secured a brilliant victory over the sceptics. The Earth’s inexhaustible magnetic power had set into motions all factories, agricultural machinery, railroads and ships. It had lighted all the streets and homes and heated all residences. It had made unnecessary the further use of coal, the deposits of which had long been exhausted. It had wiped the ugly smokestacks which poisoned the air from the face of the Earth. It had rescued the flowers, grass, and trees—the Earth’s true treasure—from impending death and obliteration. Lastly, it had made fantastic achievements possible in agriculture, multiplying the average yield of the soil by four fold.

  One of the North Station engineers, chosen as chairman for the occasion, stood up and raised his glass. Everyone immediately fell silent. He began:

  “Comrades! By your leave I shall now make contact with our cherished colleagues at the South Station. We have just now received their signal.”

  The huge hall was of enormous length. It was a magnificent structure of glass, marble, and steel, adorned with exotic flowers and luxuriant trees, more like a beautiful botanical garden than a public hall. Outside, the polar night prevailed, but thanks to the action of special condensers, bright sunlight flooded the green plants, the tables, the faces of a thousand participants, the slender columns supporting the ceiling, and beautiful paintings and statues decorating every available space. Three walls of the hall were transparent, but the fourth, to the rear of the chairman, consisted of a white rectangular screen of an unusually delicate, brilliant, and fine glass.

  With the consent of the gathering the chairman touched his finger to the small control knob on his table. Immediately, a blinding inner light filled the screen and then promptly faded, replaced by a view of another lofty and beautiful glass palace stretching off into the distance, and just as at this pole, robust, handsome people with happy faces appeared, dressed in light, glittering clothing. Some, although separated by thirteen thousand miles recognized one another, exchanged smiles and raised their glasses in greeting. Due to the general excitement and laughter, they were as yet unable to hear the voices of their distant friends.

  Again the chairman rose to his feet and began his speech. His friends and colleagues at both ends of the world immediately fell silent. He said:

  “My dear sisters and brothers! And you, delightful women, present recipients of my passion! And you, my sisters, former loves to whom my heart overflows with gratitude! Give me your attention! Glory to the only god on Earth—Man. Let us praise all the delights of His body and render up solemn and exalted homage to His immortal mind!

  “I look upon you—proud, brave, coequal, happy—and an ardent love fires my soul! There are no restraints on our minds and nothing bars the fulfillment of our desires. We know not subservience, arbitrary power, envy, hostility, violence, and deception. Every day thousands of the Earth’s secrets open to us and with endless joy we sense the infiniteness and omnipotence of knowledge. Even death itself holds no fear, for we depart from life not disfigured by old age, with neither terror in our eyes, nor curses on our lips, but beautiful, godlike and smiling, for we do not cling convulsively to the wretched vestiges of life, but serenely close our eyes like tired wayfarers. Our work is our delight. And our love, liberated from the shackles of servitude and triviality, is like the love of flowers, free and beautiful. Our only master is human genius!

  “My friends! Am I perhaps declaiming long-known platitudes? I find myself unable to do otherwise. This morning I read a remarkable and frightening book, unable to put it down. That book is A History of the Twentieth Century Revolution.

  “At times I wondered whether it was some sort of a fairy tale I was reading. The life of our forefathers, separated from us by nine centuries, struck me as so improbable, so monstrous, and so absurd.

  “Vicious, dirty, disease ridden, misshapen, cowardly—they were like loathsome creatures locked up in a cramped cage. One would steal a piece of bread from another, carry it off to a dark corner and lie on it, so that a third would not catch sight of it. They would deprive each other of living quarters, wood, water, land and air. Hordes of gluttons and libertines, escorted by bigots, cheats, thieves, and tyrants, would set one mob of drunken slaves against a second mob of quavering idiots and live parasitically on the festering abscesses of social corruption. The Earth, so vast and lovely, was for the people as small and confining as a dungeon and as oppressive as a crypt.

  “But then, among these submissive beasts of burden, among these cowardly, cringing slaves, proud, no longer patient individuals, heroes with ardent souls, raised their heads high. How could they have been born in that corrupt and timorous century—this is completely beyond all understanding! They stood in the squares and crossroads and shouted ‘Hail Freedom!’ In that horrible and bloody time when not even one private home was a safe refuge, when coercion, torture and murder were royally rewarded, these men, in their divine madness, cried out: ‘Down with tyrants!’

  “With their righteous impassioned blood they stained the flagstones. They went mad in prisons. They died on the gallows and fell before firing squads. Voluntarily they renounced all the pleasures of life save one—dying for the future freedom of mankind.

  “My friends! Do you not see that bridge of corpses which unites our glowing present with the fearful and dark past? Do you not sense the river of blood that bore all mankind to the resplendent sea of universal happiness?

  “Oh you, the nameless, the mute sufferers, may your memory live forever! When you were dying, your farseeing eyes, fixed on future centuries, smiled. You perceived us, liberated, strong, triumphant, and in that great moment of death you sent us your blessing.

  “My friends! Let each of us silently, without a single word, alone in our hearts, drink to the memory of those distant martyrs. Let each of us feel upon himself their peaceful and beneficent gaze.”

  All drank in silence. Suddenly a woman of extraordinary beauty sitting next to the orator pressed her head to his chest and silently began to weep. And when she was asked the reason for her tears, she answered in a barely audible voice:

  “In spite of everything … how would I have loved to have lived in those days … with them … with them …”

  (1906)

  Translated by Leland Fetzer

  Liquid Sunshine

  I, Henry Dibble, turn to the truthful exposition of certain important and extraordinary events in my life with the greatest concern and absolutely understandable hesitation. Much of what I find essential to put to paper will, without doubt, arouse astonishment, doubt, and even disbelief in the future reader of my account. For this I have long been prepared, and I find such an attitude to my memoirs completely plausible and logical. I must myself admit that even to me those years spent in part in travel and in part on the six-thousand-foot summit of the volcano Cayambe in the South American Republic of Ecuador often seem not to have been actual events in my life, but only a strange and fantastic dream or the ravings of a transient cataclysmic madness.

  But the absence of four fingers on my left hand, recurring headaches, and the eye ailment which goes by the common name of night blindness, these incontrovertible phenomena compel me to believe that I was in fact a witness to the most astonishing events in world history. And, finally, it is not madness, not a dream, not a delusion, that punctually three times a year from the firm E. Nideston and Son, 451 Regent Street, I receive 400 pounds sterling. This allowance was generously left to me by my teacher and patron, one of the greatest men in all of human history, who perished in the terrible wreck of the Mexican schooner Gonzalez.

  I completed studies in the Mathematical Department with special studies in Physics and Chemistry at the Royal University in the year … That too, is yet another persistent reminder of my adventures. In addition to the fact that a pulley or a chain took the fingers of my left hand at the time of the catastrophe, in addition to the damage to my optic nerves, etc., as I fell into the sea I received, not knowing when nor h
ow, a sharp blow on the right upper quarter of my skull. That blow left hardly any external sign but it is strangely reflected in my mind, specifically in my powers of recall. I can remember well words, faces, localities, sounds, and the sequence of events, but I have forgotten forever all numbers and personal names, addresses, telephone numbers, and historical dates; the years, months, and days which marked my personal life have disappeared without a trace, scientific formulae, although I am able to deal with them without difficulty in logical fashion, have fled, and both the names of those I have known and know now have disappeared, and this circumstance is very painful to me. Unfortunately, I did not then maintain a diary, but two or three notebooks which have survived, and a few old letters aid me to a certain degree to orient myself.

  Briefly, I completed my studies and received the title Master of Physics two, three, four, or perhaps even five years before the beginning of the twentieth century. Precisely at that time the husband of my elder sister, Maude, a farmer of Norfolk who periodically had loaned me material support and even more important moral support, took ill and died. He firmly believed that I would continue my scientific career at one of the English universities and that in time I would shine as a luminary to cast a ray of glory on his modest family. He was healthy, sanguine, strong as a bull, could drink, write a verse, and box—a lad in the spirit of good old merry England. He died as the result of a stroke one night after consuming one-fourth of a Berkshire mutton roast, which he seasoned with a strong sauce: a bottle of whiskey and two gallons of Scotch light beer.

  His predictions and expectations were not fulfilled. I did not join the scientific ranks. Even more, I was not fortunate enough to find the position of a teacher or a tutor in a private or public school; rather, I fell into the vicious, implacable, furious, cold, wearisome world of failure. Oh! who, besides the rare spoiled darlings, has not known and felt on his shoulders this stupid, ridiculous, blind blow of fate? But it abused me for too lengthy a time.

  Neither at factories nor at scientific agencies—nowhere could I find a place for myself. Usually I arrived too late: the position was already taken.

  In many cases I became convinced that I had fallen into some dark and suspicious conspiracy. Even more often I was paid nothing for two or three months of labor and thrown onto the street like a kitten. One cannot say that I was excessively indecisive, shy, unenterprising, or, on the other hand, sensitive, vain or refractory. No, it was simply that the circumstances of life were against me.

  But I was above all an Englishman and I held myself as a gentleman and a representative of the greatest nation in the world. The thought of suicide in this terrible period of my life never came to mind. I fought against the injustice of fate with cold, sober persistence and with the unshakable faith that never, never would an Englishman be a slave. And fate, finally, surrendered in the face of my Anglo-Saxon courage.

  I lived then in the most squalid of all the squalid lanes in Bethel Green, in the God-forsaken East End, dwelling behind a chintz curtain in the home of a dock worker, a coal hauler. I paid him four shillings a month for the place, and in addition I helped his wife with the cooking, taught his three oldest children to read and write, and also scrubbed the kitchen and the back stairs. My hosts always cordially invited me to eat with them, but I had decided not to burden their beggar’s budget. I dined, rather, in the dark basement and God knows how many cats’, dogs’, and horses’ lives lay on my black conscience. But my landlord, Mr. John Johnson, requited my natural tact with attentiveness: when there was much work on the East End docks and not enough workmen and the wages reached extraordinary heights, he always managed to find a place for me to load heavy cargoes where with no difficulty I could earn eight or ten shillings in a day. It was unfortunate that this handsome, kind, and religious man became intoxicated every Sunday without fail and when he did so he displayed a great inclination toward fisticuffs.

  In addition to my duties as cook and occasional work on the docks, I essayed numerous other ridiculous, onerous, and peculiar professions. I helped clip poodles and cut the tails from fox terriers, clerked in a sausage store when its owner was absent, catalogued old libraries, counted the earnings at horse races, at times gave lessons in mathematics, psychology, fencing, theology, and even dancing, copied off the most tedious reports and infantile stories, watched coach horses when the drivers were eating ham and drinking beer; once, in uniform, I spread rugs and raked the sand between acts in a circus, worked as a sandwich man, and even fought as boxer, a middleweight, translated from German to English and vice versa, composed tombstone inscriptions, and what else did I not do! To be candid, thanks to my inexhaustible energy and temperate habits I was never in particular need. I had a stomach like a camel, I weighed 150 pounds without my clothes, had good hands, slept well and was cheerful in temperament. I had so adjusted to poverty and to its unavoidable deprivations, that occasionally I could not only send a little money to my younger sister, Esther, who had been abandoned in Dublin with her two children by her Irish husband, an actor, a drunkard, a liar, a tramp, and a rake—but I also followed the sciences and public life closely, read newspapers and scholarly journals, bought used books, and belonged to rental libraries. I even managed to make two minor inventions: a very cheap device which would warn a railroad engineer in fog or snow of a closed switch ahead, and an unusual, long-lasting welding flame which burned hydrogen. I must say that I did not enjoy the income from these inventions—others did. But I remained true to science, like a knight to his lady, and I never abandoned the belief that the time would come when my beloved would summon me to her chamber with her bright smile.

  That smile shone upon me in the most unexpected and commonplace fashion. One foggy autumn morning my landlord, the good Mr. Johnson, went to a neighboring shop for hot water and milk for his children. He returned with a radiant face, the odor of whiskey on his breath, and a newspaper in his hand. He gave me the newspaper, still damp and smelling of ink, and, pointing out an entry marked with a line from the edge of his dirty nail, exclaimed:

  “Look, old man. As easy as I can tell anthracite from coke, I know that these lines are for you, lad.”

  I read, not without interest, the following announcement:

  “The solicitors ‘E. Nideston and Son,’ 451 Regent Street, seek an individual for an equatorial voyage to a location where he must remain for not less than three years engaged in scientific pursuits. Conditions: age, 22 to 30 years, English citizenship, faultless health, discrete, sober and forbearing, must know one, or yet better, two other European languages (French and German), must be a bachelor, and so far as it is possible, free of family and other ties to his native land. Beginning salary: 400 pounds sterling per year. A university education is desirable, and in particular a gentleman knowing theoretical and applied chemistry and physics has an advantage in obtaining the position. Applicants are to call between nine and ten in the morning.” I am able to quote this advertisement with such assurance since it is still preserved among my few papers, although I copied it off in haste and has been subject to the action of sea water.

  “Nature has given you long legs, son, and good lungs,” Johnson said, approvingly pounding my back. “Start up the engine and full steam ahead. No doubt there will be many more young gentlemen there of irreproachable health and honorable character than at Derby. Anne, make him a sandwich with meat and preserves. Perhaps he will have to wait his turn in line for five hours. Well, I wish you luck, my friend. Onward, brave England!”

  I arrived barely in time at Regent Street. Silently I thanked nature for my good legs. As he opened the door the porter with indifferent familiarity said: “Your luck, mister. You got the last chance,” and promptly fixed on the outside doors the fateful announcement: “The advertised opening is now closed to applicants.”

  In the darkened, cramped, and rather dirty reception room—such are almost all the reception rooms belonging to the magicians of the City who deal in millions—were about ten men who had com
e before me. They sat about the walls on dark, time-polished, soiled wooden benches, above which, at the height of a sitting man’s head, the ancient wallpaper displayed a wide, dirty, band. Good God, what a pitiful collection of hungry, ragged men, driven by need, sick and broken, had gathered here, like a parade of monsters! Involuntarily my heart contracted with pity and wounded self esteem. Sallow faces, averted, malicious, envious, suspicious glances from under lowered brows, trembling hands, tatters, the smell of poverty, cheap tobacco, and fumes of alcohol long since drunk. Some of these young gentlemen were not yet seventeen years of age while others were past fifty. One after another, like pale shades, they drifted into the office and returned from there looking like drowned men only lately removed from the water. I felt both sickened and ashamed to admit to myself that I was infinitely healthier and stronger than all of them taken together.

  Finally my turn came. Someone invisible opened the door from the other side and shouted abruptly and disgustedly in an exasperated voice:

  “Number eighteen, and Allah be praised, the last!”

  I entered the office, nearly as neglected as the reception room, different only that it was papered in peeling checked paper; it had two side chairs, a couch, and two easy chairs on which sat two middle-aged gentlemen of apparently the same medium height, but the elder of the two, in a long coot was slim, swarthy, and seemingly stern, while the other, dressed in a new jacket with silken lapels, was fair, plump, blue-eyed and sat at his ease one leg placed upon the other.

  I gave my name and bowed not deeply, but respectfully. Then, seeing that I was not to be offered a seat, I was at the point of taking a place on the couch.

  “Wait,” said the swarthy one, “First remove your coat and vest. There is a doctor here who will examine you.”

  I remembered the clause in the advertisement which referred to irreproachable health, and I silently removed my outer garments. The florid stout man lazily freed himself from his chair and placing his arms around me he pressed his ear to my chest.