by Karel Čapek
Then the orchestrion played a song of thanksgiving. It sounded like a chorus of survivors of a shipwreck, with the rough voices of the sailors mingling with the prayers of children. Over the unleashed tempest there bent a rainbow of melody (in B minor) and the heavens opened in the happy radiance of pizzicati on the violins. The castaways on Binder’s merry-go-round stood there silent with their heads bare. The women’s lips moved softly in silent prayer, and the children, forgetting the horrors they had passed through, plucked up courage to stroke the hard muzzle of the deer and the supple neck of the swan. The white horses patiently allowed the little limbs to clamber into the saddles; sometimes one of them neighed or pawed knowingly with his hoof. The earth was turning more slowly now, and Jan Binder, a tall figure in his sleeveless striped jersey, began in his unpractised style to make a speech.
“Well, good people, here we have landed out of the whirl and confusion of the world. Here we have peace amid the storm. Here we are with God, as safe as in our beds. It is a sign that we should flee from the tumult of the world and find refuge in the arms of God. Amen.” Thus and in like manner spoke Jan Binder, and the people on the merry-go-round listened as if they were in church.
At last the earth stopped spinning, the orchestrion played a soft and reverent voluntary, and the people jumped down from the merry-go-round. Jan Binder told them that there was no charge, and dismissed them, converted and uplifted. And when towards four o’clock the mothers and children and the old pensioners were taking their afternoon walk between Zlichov and Smichov, the orchestrion again began to play, and the earth once more went flying round, and again Jan Binder brought everybody safe on to the deck of the merry-go-round and calmed them with a suitable address. At six o’clock people came from their day’s work, sweethearts emerged at eight, and at ten the pleasure-seekers left the public-houses and picture-palaces; all of them in turn were overcome by the dizzy whirling of the earth, brought to safety in the embrace of the merry-go-round, and strengthened for their future life by the apt exhortations of Jan Binder.
After a week of this hallowed work, Binder’s merry-go-round forsook Zlichov and went roaming along the bank of the Vltava up to Chuchle and Zbraslav, and so reached Stechovice. It had been working in Stechovice for four days with tremendous power, when an incident of a somewhat mysterious character took place.
Jan Binder had just finished his sermon and dismissed his new disciples with a blessing. At that moment there approached out of the darkness a black and silent body of people. At their head walked a tall, bearded man, who went straight up to Binder.
“Now then,” he said, trying to master his excitement, “pack up at once, or—”
Binder’s adherents heard this and returned to their teacher. Conscious of having his people at the back of him, Binder declared firmly, “Not till it rains.”
“Control yourself, sir,” said another excited man. “It’s Mr. Kuzenda speaking to you.”
“Leave him to me, Mr. Hudec,” cried the bearded man. “I’ll soon settle with him myself. I’m telling you for the second time; clear out with that thing or, in the name of the Lord, I’ll smash it up for you.”
“And as for you,” said Jan Binder, “get out of here or, in the name of the Lord, I’ll knock the teeth out of your head.”
“God Almighty!” shouted Brych, the stoker, forcing his way through the crowd to the front. “Just let him try!”
“Brother,” said Kuzenda soothingly, “let us first try to settle it quietly. Binder, you are carrying on foul witchcraft here, and we’ll not put up with it so close to the sacred shrine of our dredge.”
“Your dredge is a fraud!” said Binder decisively.
“What did you say?” cried Kuzenda, cut to the quick.
“Your dredge is a fraud!”
What happened next it is hard to disentangle into any logical sequence. It seems that the first blow was struck by the baker from Kuzenda’s camp, but Binder landed him a blow on the head with his fist. The gamekeeper struck Binder on the chest with his gunstock, but directly afterwards he lost his gun, and some Stechovice youth from Binder’s camp used it to knock out Brych’s front teeth and smash Mr. Hudec’s hat in. Kuzenda’s postman tried to throttle a youth on Binder’s side. Binder leaped forward to help the boy, but a girl from Stechovice flung herself on him from behind, and bit him in the arm just where he had had the Bohemian lion tattooed. One of Binder’s party drew a knife, and Kuzenda’s followers seemed to be falling back, but a smaller group of them dashed on to the merry-go-round and broke off the deer’s antlers and the elegantly arching neck of one of the swans. The merry-go-round gave a deep groan and heeled over, its roof falling right upon the struggling mob. Kuzenda was struck by a pole and knocked unconscious. It all happened in darkness and silence. When people came rushing up, Binder had a broken collar-bone, Kuzenda lay there unconscious, Brych was spitting out teeth and blood, and the girl from Stechovice was sobbing hysterically. The rest had fled.
CHAPTER XII
DOCTOR BLAHOUS
THAT youthful savant Doctor Blahous, Ph.D., only fifty-five years of age, and now Lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University of Prague, rubbed his hands as he sat down before his quarto sheets of paper. With a few swift strokes he set down his title—“Religious Phenomena of Recent Times”—and began his article with the words: “The controversy over the definition of the idea of ‘religion’ has lasted ever since the days of Cicero”; then he gave himself up to his thoughts.
“I’ll send this article to the Prague Times,” he said to himself, “and just you wait, my revered colleagues, and see what a stir it will make! It’s lucky for me that this religious epidemic has broken out just now! It will make it a very topical little article. The papers will say, ‘That youthful savant, Dr. Blahous, has just published a penetrating study,’ etc. Then I’ll be given the Assistant Professorship, and old Regner will burst with fury.”
Whereupon the youthful savant rubbed his wrinkled hands until the bones cracked blithely, and again began to write. When towards evening his landlady came to inquire what he would like for supper, he was already on the sixtieth page, among the Fathers of the Church. At eleven o’clock (and page 115) he had arrived at his own definition of the idea of religion, which differed from his predecessor’s by precisely one word. After this he dealt succinctly with the methods of the exact science of religion (with a few shrewd hits at his opponents), and so brought to an end the brief introduction to his little article.
Shortly after midnight our lecturer wrote the following passage: “It happens that quite recently various phenomena of a religious and occult character have occurred which deserve the attention of the exact science of religion. Although its main purpose is undoubtedly to study the religious customs of nations long since extinct, nevertheless even the living present can afford the modern [Dr. Blahous underlined the word] student numerous data which mutatis mutandis throw a certain light on cults long vanished, which can only be the subject of conjecture.”
Then, with the aid of newspaper reports and evidence given verbally, he gave a description of Kuzendism, in which he found traces of fetish-worship and even totemism (the dredge being made a sort of Totem God of Stechovice). In the case of the Binderians, he worked out their relationship to the Dancing Dervishes and ancient orgiastic cults. He touched upon the phenomena witnessed at the opening of the Power Station, and deftly showed their connection with the fire-worship of the Parsees. In Machat’s religious community he discovered the characteristics of the fakirs and ascetics. He cited various examples of clairvoyance and miraculous healing, which he compared very aptly to the magic practised by the old negro tribes of Central Africa. He went on to deal with mental contagion and mass-suggestion, introducing historical references to the Flagellants, the Crusades, Millenarianism and “running amok” among the Malays. He threw light upon the recent religious movement from two psychological points of view, ascribing it to pathological cases in degenerate hysterical subjects,
and to a collective psychical epidemic among the superstitious and mentally inferior masses. In both cases he demonstrated the atavistic occurrence of primitive forms of worship, the tendency to animistic pantheism and shamanism, a religious communism reminiscent of the Anabaptists, and a general surrender of reasoning power in favour of the grossest impulses of superstition, witchcraft, occultism, mysticism, and necromancy.
“It is not for us to decide,” Dr. Blahous went on writing, “to what extent this is due to quackery and imposture on the part of individuals bent on exploiting human credulity; a scientific inquiry would doubtless show that the alleged ‘miracles’ of the thaumaturgists of to-day are only old and well-known devices of trickery and suggestion. In this connection we would recommend the new ‘religious communities,’ sects, and circles now daily springing into existence to the attention of our police authorities and psychoanalysts. The exact science of religion confines itself to establishing the fact that all these religious phenomena are at bottom nothing but examples of barbaric atavism, and a hotch-potch of the most rudimentary forms of worship still subconsciously active in the human imagination. It has only needed a few fanatics, charlatans, and notorious swindlers to revive among the peoples of Europe, under the veneer of civilization, these prehistoric elements of religious belief.”
Dr. Blahous got up from his desk. He had just finished the three hundredth and forty-sixth page of his little article, but still he did not feel weary. “I must think out an effective finish,” he said to himself; “some reflections on progress and science, on the suspicious benevolence of the Government towards religious heterodoxy, and on the necessity of presenting a fighting front to reaction, and so forth.”
The youthful savant, borne on the wings of his enthusiasm, went to the window and leaned out into the quiet night. It was half-past four in the morning. Dr. Blahous looked out on the dark street, shivering a little with the cold of the night. Everywhere was the stillness of death, not a glimmer of light showed in any human habitation. The Lecturer raised his eyes to the sky. It was already paling a little, but it still shone in its infinite sublimity, sown with stars. “How long it is since I looked at the sky!” came suddenly into the scholar’s mind. “Good heavens, it is more than thirty years!”
And then he felt a delicious coolness about his brow, as though someone had taken his head in cool and spotless hands. “I’m so lonely,” the old man sighed, “so terribly lonely all the time! Yes, stroke my hair a little. Alas, it is thirty long years since anyone’s hand was laid upon my brow!”
Dr. Blahous stood there in the window, stiff and shaking. “There is something here all about me,” he suddenly perceived with a sweet and overwhelming emotion. “Dear God, I am not alone after all! Someone’s arm is around me, someone is beside me; oh, if he would only stay!”
If his landlady had entered the room a little later, she would have seen him standing in the window with both arms raised on high, his head flung back, and an expression of the utmost rapture on his face. But then he shuddered, opened his eyes, and as if in a dream went back to his desk.
“On the other hand, however, it is impossible to doubt,” he wrote rapidly, heedless of all that he had already written, “that God cannot now reveal Himself otherwise than in primitive forms of worship. With the decay of faith in modern times our connection with the old religious life has been broken. To bring us back to Him, God must begin again from the beginning and do as He did with the savages in olden times: at first He is an idol, a fetish; the idol of a group, a clan or a tribe; He animates all nature and works through a witch-doctor. This evolution of religion is being repeated before our eyes, beginning with its prehistoric forms and working upwards to the loftier types. It is possible that the present religious wave will divide into several streams, each striving for supremacy to the disadvantage of the others. We must expect an era of religious struggles which will surpass the Crusades in their fury and obstinacy and the last World Wars in their scope. In our godless world the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be established without great sacrifices and confusion of doctrine. Nevertheless I say unto you: Give yourself up with your whole beings to the Absolute; believe in God, in whatsoever form He may declare Himself to you. Behold even now He cometh to set up on our earth, and perchance on other planets of our system also, the everlasting Empire of God, the Czardom of the Absolute. Ere it is too late, I say yet again unto you: Humble yourselves before Him!”
This article by Dr. Blahous did actually appear. Not in its entirety, to be sure. The editor published part of his discussion of the new sects and the whole of his conclusion, with a cautious note to the effect that this paper by the youthful savant was certainly characteristic of our times.
Blahous’s article did not cause any stir, for it was overshadowed by other events. Only that youthful savant, Dr. Regner, Lecturer in Philosophy, read it with immense interest and afterwards proclaimed in various places: “Blahous is impossible. Utterly impossible. How on earth can a man have the nerve to pose as an expert on religion when he actually believes in God?”
CHAPTER XIII
THE CHRONICLER’S APOLOGY
AND now permit the chronicler of the Absolute to call your attention to his painful situation. First of all, he is in the act of writing Chapter XIII, well aware that this unlucky number will have a fatal influence on the clarity and completeness of his exposition. There is going to be a mix-up of some kind in this unfortunate chapter, you may be sure. Of course, the author could quite calmly head it Chapter XIV, but the observant reader would feel that he had been cheated out of Chapter XIII, and no one could blame him, since he has paid to have the whole narrative. Besides, if you are afraid of the number thirteen, you have only to skip this chapter. It will certainly not cause you to lose much light on the obscure affair of the Factory for the Absolute.
But the other embarrassments of the chronicler are much more serious. He has described as coherently as he could the origin of the factory and its prosperity. He has called your attention to the occurrences due to certain of the Karburator cylinders in Mr. Machat’s buildings, at the Zivno Industrial Bank, in the textile works at Upice, aboard Kuzenda’s dredge, and on Binder’s merry-go-round. He has described the tragic experience of Blahous, the result of long-range infection, induced by the free and mobile Absolute, which had evidently begun to spread in a serious fashion, although after no definite plan.
But now you must remember that since the beginning of the whole affair countless thousands of Karburators of the most diverse types had been manufactured. Trains, flying-machines, automobiles, and ships driven by this most economical of all motors discharged along their routes whole clouds of the Absolute, just as in other days they used to leave a trail of dust, smoke, and smells. You must remember that thousands of factories all over the world had already scrapped their old boilers and equipped themselves with Karburators; that hundreds of Government departments and offices, hundreds of banks, exchanges, wholesale and export firms, as well as huge restaurants, hotels, military barracks, schools, theatres, tenements, thousands of newspaper offices and clubs, cabarets, and households were being heated by the latest M.E.C. Central-Heating Karburator. You must remember that the Stinnes interests with all their ramifications had amalgamated with the M.E.C., and that the American Ford works had flung themselves into mass-production which hurled thirty thousand finished Karburators out upon the world every day.
Well, bearing all this in mind, just recall what happened with each of those Karburators whose history has been presented to you. Multiply these incidents a hundred thousand times, and you will grasp at once the unhappy position of the present chronicler. How gladly he would journey with you after each new Karburator, see it loaded on the wagon, and offer a bit of hay or bread or a lump of sugar to the heavy draught-horses, with their broad and kingly backs, which drag the new copper cylinders on the rattling lorry to the factory! How gladly he would look on while they set it up, standing with his hands behind his back and giving the ere
ctors his advice, and then wait until it was set in motion! How eagerly then he would peer into people’s faces to note when “it” would begin to affect them, when the Absolute would creep into their being by the nose or ears or any other part, and begin to dissolve the hardness of their nature, overpower their personal tendencies, and cure their moral wounds; to watch the Absolute turn them up with its heavy plough, warm them, master them, and shape them anew; to see it lay open to them a world so marvellous and yet intrinsically so human, of wonders, ecstasy, enlightenment, inspiration and belief! For you must know that the chronicler admits that he is incapable of writing a history. Where the historian uses the press or pounder of his historical learning, documentary lore, abstracts, synthesis, statistics, and other professional devices, to squeeze thousands and hundreds of thousands of little vital personal incidents into a dense and arbitrary conglomerate known as “a historical fact,” “a social phenomenon,” “a mass movement,” “evolution,” “the mind of the race,” or “historical truth” in general, the chronicler sees only the individual cases and even finds them pleasing in themselves.