When the former went into the bedroom the next morning, having broken down the door, Alice Penthièvre, naked except for her black stockings, was lying on the carpet amid cushions. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, but neither her pulse nor her heart was beating; she was dead. Bergheim did not know that she had fallen down after having danced a frenzied jig—for the comet, with its tail of oxygen, had strangely multiplied the vital force on Earth during its passing.
On their sudden awakening, it was as if all the people and animals alike had been possessed by demons. They had surrendered themselves, with prodigious faculties, to their habits, their desires, their instincts and their passions. In the first moments, everyone had produced the potential, good or evil, that he bore within him; it had increased to the extreme in that abnormal atmosphere.
Soon, life, exhausted by such a chimerical self-manifestation, had ceased entirely. All creatures had died in the cataclysm, from giants to microbes. The subtlest germs of animal life had been annihilated, with the result that putrefaction was impossible for a long time.
Bergheim went out. Although the comet had moved away, the air was still very rich in oxygen, and he felt a great vigor. Strongly overexcited, and content—for he despised the human race—he strolled like a madman through the bizarrely quiet streets.
Walking was difficult, however, because of the cadavers, maintaining the appearance of life, with which the streets were strewn. It was frequently necessary to step over a corpse, as one has to do with the beggars on an Italian dock.
Carriages of every sort gave the impression of having been traveling at high speed when the horses been stopped in their tracks, their lungs burned by an access of vertiginous life. The coachmen were leaning forward, their eyes open, their lips seemingly ready to utter an insult, holding firm to the reins. Passengers had stuck their heads out of the windows; they had doubtless expired while shouting “Faster!”
Their muscles magically tautened, individuals who had been clinging to some sort of support at the supreme moment had retained the attitudes they had adopted in life. Animals were on their feet; in the Senate, Monsieur de G*** was standing like a wax statue, his hand clenching the podium.
The ear was no longer aggravated by the continual noise of city life. A frightful silence weighed upon the Earth.
And that evening, Bergheim, certain that he was alone, rejoiced.
He began roaming idly around Paris. He realized a dream that he had had at the age of twelve, before entering into business: the dream of possessing the ring of Gyges, which would render him invisible and permit him to acquaint himself with intimate human life.
Without the mysterious ring, he could now penetrate the populous houses of workers, bourgeois apartments, the boudoirs of courtesans, the homes of politicians and artists. He went into the most private feminine social milieux. (What is love? An exchange of electricity, a bringing together of opposites.)
In this way, Bernheim discovered many vile acts in the life interrupted in its acuity.
From time to time, Bergheim experienced a desire to talk to someone; then he addressed himself to his parrot, the only other being that was still alive. But he soon wearied of that companion and set the bird free. It continued living in Paris for several months.
The parrot always asked its former master for news whenever it encountered him.
“How are you?”
“Not bad, old chap. And you?”
The parrot was an adequate replacement for the numerous friends that one meets in the street and with whom one politely exchanges vain remarks.
Every day resembled the next. Existence scarcely varied. Bergheim ate lunch and dinner in taverns, where he drank vintage wines. He also invited himself to private houses.
One of his pleasures, after dinner, while smoking his cigar, was to admire the vegetation produced by the passage of the comet and the new warmth of the atmosphere. After some hesitation, he abandoned his English suit.
Nature had become almost what it had been in the antediluvian epochs, before the central fire, breaking through the thin crust that imprisoned it, had abruptly raised up chains of mountains—the Alps, the Cordilleras, the Andes—and new lands in the midst of vast oceans.
In the overheated atmosphere, vegetable life was extraordinary. The Seine flowed beneath a tangle of lianas, an exuberant and capricious verdure. The hills of Sèvres and Meudon, and the windmills of Montmartre, Orgemont and Sannois, were covered by a boom of arborescent ferns, lycopodendrons and giant horsetails.
In Paris, blades of grass lifted paving-stones as they grew and became slender and flexible trees, with infinitely undulating foliage. On the Boulevard des Italiens, around the Opera, the vegetation climbed toward the roofs like a flood of the sap of primitive forests.
Sometimes, Bergheim, who now swung from branch to branch like an ape, perceived a large green bird with a hooked beak. It was the parrot, which was slowly being modified. It had only retained one of the choruses it had previously known, and sang it often:
Coco, Coco,
Scratch me...11
It was the sole lyrical evidence of the vanished civilization.
Was another organic life about to be born? Would enormous and superior beasts soon appear: the gigantic dinotherium, the prodigious iguanodon, and pterodactyls with horrible wings in the sky? Sometimes, Bergheim was afraid, thinking that he had suddenly perceived terrible eyes amid the tangled foliage of the virgin Parisian forest, with pupils a foot in diameter, seeking the light.
Was humankind about to accomplish a retrograde evolution and be annihilated, like the trilobites of the Silurian period, when the seas were hot and pale sunlight scarcely pierced the thick atmosphere? Was humankind about to come to an end, like the saurians of the Lias,12 like the mastodons and megatheria of the Tertiary Epoch?
Gaston Bergheim,13 of Stephenson & Co., Stellar Publicity, was transformed into a quadrumane.
Suddenly, as he tumbled pitifully in front of the Café Riche from the top of a fern, he perceived, through the glass of his compartment in the express train, the pale light of dawn.
Alice Penthièvre, exquisitely modern, in this year’s blouse, with a Tyrolean hat on her exceedingly blonde hair, the color of maize, said to her lord an master, with a smile: “Did you sleep well, you naughty monkey?”
THE HUMAN ARROW
Part One:
THE CAPTURE OF AN AMERICAN HEIRESS
I. Dreamer and Banker
The discussion continued between the two men sitting face to face, bitter, rapid, jerky and emotional by turns. One of them, the banker Nasenberg, well-built and broad-shouldered, with graying hair, the appearance of a cunning fighter and small, intelligent grey eyes astride the prominent nose of a Silesian Jew, was sitting at his desk like a commandant defending a fortress. The other, the engineer Henri Rozal, tall and lithe, but with an energetic and doleful face, seemed to be the assailant. By contrast with Rozal’s warm, sincere voice, Nasenberg’s speech had weak and persuasive intonations or suddenly became harsh, as dry as the release of a guillotine.
“My dear chap, I can’t. I’ve suffered heavy losses recently. I didn’t have any luck in August and September 1913, and I need to repair the damage. This isn’t the time to ask me for money.”
“From you, that’s not an answer. A temporary hitch, if that’s what it is, doesn’t affect your credit. Let me draw on your establishment for ninety days and I’m saved.”
“Undoubtedly—but if you fail, who will pay?”
“Me!”
“My poor friend, you’ll be no further forward in three months than you are today.”
Henri Rozal stood up, his face lit up. “In three months, I will have made the results of my invention known to the world, and my patents will be worth millions!”
“Child!”
“I swear to you, Monsieur Nasenberg, that I have never been more certain of success. Don’t consider me, I beg you, as a poor devil haunted by chimeras. I will be the first to real
ize the crossing of the Atlantic, from Paris to New York, in an airplane. Another few weeks of experiments and improvements...”
“And another few thousand francs, eh? I know. This has been going on for five years! Well, no, my lad, no! I have a great deal of sympathy for you, and I’ve proved it…but the shop is shut. For you, I don’t have another sou.”
“Then it will all be lost. The results I’ve obtained will be useless. Others will complete the work I’ve begun, and you’ll regret not having brought off the coup yourself, Nasenberg.”
For a moment, the banker looked at the engineer. With the piercing gaze of his shrewd little eyes he scrutinized the entirety of Rozal’s person. He studied the masculine face and clean-cut profile of the seeker, the dreamer who was, to be sure, a man of action, with a broad forehead, a slightly pale complexion and a determined chin.
Rozal sensed the examination of which he was the object, and, knowing the person on whom he was dependent, maintained a proud and slightly disdainful attitude. Nothing about him was suggestive of the timid petitioner, frightened in advance by the idea of a refusal. He was not, any longer, a simplistic inventor soliciting millions from all the capitalists he met, who would be content, in the end, with a few hundred francs to sketch out his hobby-horse. No, he was a strong man who knew his strength, and when he made a claim on his sleeping partner’s strong-box, he was not begging.
Having reflected, Nasenberg concluded: “No, I can’t, any longer. I can’t.”
“Ah! You no longer have confidence in me?”
“Others would have had less. Listen, Rozal, my boy…let’s look back over our history. Five years ago, having met you at a social occasion, among friends, I was very interested in your ideas about nascent aviation. It was the era in which, following the Wright brothers, the Farmans, the Blériots and the Delagranges were conducting timid trials.14 One had the right, then, to express fantastic opinions about the conquest of the air; the enthusiasm created by the first successes authorized all imaginations. You gave me to understand that the progress of aviation would be rapid, miraculous, but that it would soon stop dead, checked by an essential difficulty: the engine.
“According to you, the problem of wings, of the maintenance of the aerial vessel, of its equilibrium, would be rapidly resolved, by studying the flight of birds and copying nature. It’s a long time since humans applied the benefit of their observations to navigation by sail. You would be able to solve the problem of discovering of a rational mechanism, flexible and durable, that would give your steel bird, flying in total security, a powerful directive force, as infallible as the heart and wings of an eagle.”
Rozal smiled and affirmed: “My theory will be a reality tomorrow. I’m sure of making the turbine rotate that will make presently-uncertain aircraft into terrible engines, conquerors of the elements, of all the winds, of the mysterious and formidable life of the air.”
“That’s understood: your faith remains intact. But, since I’ve lent you my financial assistance, what have you achieved? I know, better than anyone, what your brain is worth—but you lack practical sense. You see too much and too far. Why haven’t you imitated the first constructors?”
Disdainfully, Henri Rozal replied: “That’s not a result. Winning prizes, transforming oneself into a public attraction, exhibiting oneself at ‘shows’ like a fairground performer. What do you take me for?”
Nasenberg shrugged his shoulders. “Your pride helps you and harms you. I’m not talking about aviators hired by managers—but other engineers of great merit have immediately determined to settle upon a policy of practical appearance. I can cite three or four who have sold machines to the army for 800,000 francs within two years.”
“And afterwards?”
“Afterwards, of course, those men have made half a million profit! And it’s not over!”
“It soon will be. How can you not see that—you, a businessman? You can foresee and estimate the duration of vogues that falsify the real value of a business project. The army will manufacture for itself, in its own workshops, fuselages, wings, propellers—in a word, everything that constitutes an aircraft—just as the navy does with its ships. It will only have to buy the wood and canvas. If the State hasn’t started sooner, it’s because it’s waiting for the realization, by private industry, of a definitive type—mine. Then many constructors’ factories will go out of business.”
Once again the banker stared at the engineer. He did not reply immediately. Plucking an account-book from a filing-cabinet within arm’s reach, he consulted it, and made some calculations in pencil on a piece of paper. He frowned.
“Do you know how much money I’ve put at your disposal, in successive advances?”
“Certainly. I’ve borrowed 600,000 francs, which have been absorbed by my research. But the sale of the patents for the turbine-engine will bring in millions.”
“If the turbine ever spins!”
“It will spin! It will!”
The eyes of the two men met. Rozal’s radiated such conviction that Nasenberg, impressed, complained: “It’s crazy, all the same. I believe you’re clever, but you don’t produce anything! Admit that, in my place, anyone else would have sent you packing long ago. While I...”
“Haven’t done that because you’re protecting the money you’ve already invested. Then I can count on you this time? Twenty thousand, after 600,000—what’s that to you? A mere bagatelle!”
The banker stood up in his turn, but to indicate that his response was final. “Six hundred thousand! A trifle! The last 200,000 francs have, indeed, been poured out in installments of 10,000 and 20,000—there’s no reason why that will ever stop.”
Further arguments could not vanquish his adversary’s decision. “All the same!” Rozal burst out, abruptly. “Only one thing interests you—money! To make a profit straight away, no matter how, or to make yourself look good in Paris, you put on a show of easy investment for the sake of a red rosette—for you, a Boche, a naturalized Frenchman for only four years, have now been decorated as a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, and I haven’t. But when it requires a long and difficult haul, to bring a project to the point of making an industrial, economic and even humanitarian revolution, you won’t go on. Oh, I understand what you’re saying. If I’d wanted to construct a flying machine using and improving the known formulae; if my ambition had been to win valuable prizes; if, too, I had consented to become a merchant of wood and canvas for the Ministry of War, I would have had your collaboration to the end!”
“In spite of your impolite words, spoken in an irritation that I’m willing to forgive you, I will, indeed, offer you my collaboration to the end, if you carry out that program.”
“Well, no! I have better things to do. I want to fly in a machine of my own provenance, powered by a new force that I have discovered. I can ensure humankind the conquest of an element which has, alas, too often taken its revenge. Enough of falls, crashes and unexpected breakdowns! Consider the frightful balance-sheet, study the tragic list of those who have been punished for having been audacious, but not sufficiently scientific! Why? Because success still depends, almost entirely, on the skill of the aviator. A good acrobat succeeds in exploits with an apparatus that another could not prevent from crashing. Now, I want to give aviation an engine so light and powerful that airplanes will fly through the air like steel bolides, without fear of falling. My apparatus is constructed; the engine will soon be ready. And with my masterpiece finally realized, I shall fly over fields, mountains, valleys, seas and the ocean itself, in spite of all the atmosphere’s contrary winds, turbulence and tempests. I shall maneuver with ease in the most tormented skies, because I shall have in hand a God who, in my supple and docile craft, will make me the master of space.”
“And that God is…?”
“The engine. I told you, combined with the special apparatus I’ve designed, propelled by small helices, with short but very strong wings, curved in a particular fashion. When that bird takes off, it wil
l go from Paris to New York like a steel arrow, retaining for twenty hours its initial impetus and fantastic speed: the human arrow.”
“Yes,” said the banker, mockingly, “but there isn’t, alas, a Paris-New York prize to win. It would need a billionaire to offer a million to the first conqueror of a direct aerial crossing of the Atlantic.”
“First of all,” Henri Rozal replied, “there’s the glory to be won. Then again, do you count as nothing what humankind will gain from that discovery? Just imagine that humans, before definitively conquering the air, will be masters of the Earth—the entire Earth—without any concern for frontiers and races. On the day when, in my powerful and rapid machines, and airborne squadron will have the power to travel from Paris to another capital city—Berlin, for example—in five or six hours, there and back, do you think that I wouldn’t be equal to the greatest benefactors? For people would no longer dare to make war, and universal fraternity between the different peoples would be born of the fear of having the sky fall upon them.”
“And me, the sleeping partner—where do I figure in the dream?”
“You’ll become a billionaire, for the engine created for aviation will dethrone its predecessors everywhere. Our factories will furnish power and life to everyone who works on the surface of the land, and on or beneath the sea, as well as in the atmosphere.”
“Well, I still refuse the 20,000 francs. You’re a dreamer, and you’ll only ever fly in the clouds in your dreams. Forgive me for clipping your wings...I mean, your funds...”
On that skeptical and cheerful declaration, the banker, with a gesture that admitted no reply, signaled the end of the conversation.
Henri Rozal paled slightly and clenched his fists. Slowly and gravely, he said: “Those 20,000 francs are not only necessary to continue the struggle; they’re indispensable, if I stop the enterprise, to pay my debts. They comprise, in part, what I owe my valiant collaborators...” At this point, Rozal’s voice trembled slightly. There was sincere emotion in his voice. “Out there, at Nanterre, in the banks of the Seine, a little colony—almost a family—is working wholeheartedly on the work I direct. They all share my faith, and that’s why I can expect more of them that a measured daily effort. They proved that by accepting, last month, only half their wages—but this month there’s no more. The cash-box is empty, and in ten days, if the situation doesn’t change, I’ll have to submit to the shame of confessing that I’ve abused them.”
The Human Arrow Page 3