“Why,” I asked Pythie, “does discipline not forbid these satisfactions? The unfortunate women might chance to become pregnant in the course of the campaign, and that would diminish the strength.”
“Pregnant! But all these people are sterile. As soon as the groups designate a member of either sex to be incorporated, the new recruit is directed to the hospital in Mars. There, the fomenter of social disharmony is anesthetized by the surgeons. An ablation of the ovaries is carried out or the atrophy of the testicles provoked, according to the sex. Thus, atavism cannot perpetuate its tendency to destruction in future time. They are condemned to definitive sterility. We protect the race against the shame of destruction.”
“Are those operations not dangerous? Are there no patients who remain in the hands of the doctors?”
“Very few,” Théa replied. “Our surgery is very expert in that regard, because, as soon as the cities were established, Jérôme the Founder obliged our gynecologists to perfect that kind of intervention. Whoever sins by hated or covetousness can no longer reproduce.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “What are you doing to liberty, to personality? You’re creating a race of numbers devoid of character, devoid of passion.”
“Pure minds.”
“What if intelligence is precisely the result of conflicts between the passions and altruism, between the instincts and pity, or the spectacle of those conflicts...”
“Who can tell?” said Pythie. “It was certainly necessary to attempt the experiment...
“In any case, if the personality of each individual is effaced, won’t the character of the race acquire the most admirable unity? The goal of an effort like ours is precisely to substitute the person of the race for the person of the individual. That will run into the characters of other nations, contemplate the struggles of other nations, and its collective intelligence will augment as a whole by virtue of the spectacle of those general conflicts, in the wake of those conflicts, as individual initiative diminishes.
“We shall be the only body of seven, ten or thirty million similar souls, and that body will grow in force, as the force of an electric battery increases as a result of the parity and number of its elements.”
“So be it. But in that case, that race having to struggle against the simple appetites of other races, which are the extension of property and the desire to vanquish, will soon find itself, by the necessity of having to fight with equal weapons, returned to the purely warrior condition—which is to say, brutal, pure egotism; which is to say, to the quality contrary to the one you claim to be attaining…ah!”
Pythie welcomed by objection with a smile.
“We won’t have to fight with equal weapons, since ours are superior...”
At that moment, a clap of thunder split the air. Then formidable detonations sent back echo after echo over the expanse.
“The aerial ships are commencing the torpedo drop,” said Théa.
From then on it was impossible to hear one another. The sky was falling on the earth, smashing it, crushing it. Everyone who was asleep woke up. The horses whinnied and panicked. It was necessary to run to them in order to calm them down. The vibratory waves struck the temples and bones of the skull dolorously. The soldiers put on their helmets, furnished with little cushions, which the chin-straps stuck to the ears.
Almost immediately the order came to resume the march. The tents were dismantled, the mantles rolled up and slung over shoulders, gaiters buckled, dolmans refastened, ranks formed; and in the interval between explosions we heard, against the thickets, the bite of scythes and large sickles pushed forward by columns of slender locomotives, in order to complete the work of burning and flattening the tracks.
The army moved off toward the night of the great woods...
LETTER VIII
Mercure, Palais de Coupoles Astronomiques.
The most recent cities of the Dictatorship are, like this one, planted in the middle of forests. Lively waters whisper around the buildings. Swans swim on the shade. Pink ibises meditate standing on one foot. The electric trams bear graceful sculpted figureheads on the prow, projecting like those of antique ships, which hold the headlight in their hands. Automobiles with the form of attenuated hippogriffs run on the roads covered by vaults of verdure furnished by the foliage of tropical trees; the half-closed wings enclose the hood while the monster’s swollen neck and bulging breast terminate the anterior trunk. Crowning the hippogriff’s head, six ornaments are electric bulbs; and when night falls, those beautiful beasts of dark lacquered wood are seen gliding vertiginously, crowned with light.
In one of those vehicles we have gone along the masonry dyke that sustains and elevates the monstrous telescope three kilometers long and proportionately stout. We have circled the lakes of reagents in which the scientists study the warfare of substances; we have circulated for hours between the glass domes in which, vacuums having been created, odic currents and the moist subtle fluids undulate and float, alive, revealed by diaphanous shimmers and sometimes by brief blue flashes; we have scaled the crystal paths of the magnetic hill from which a spray of glaucous essence darts on certain evenings, toward which innumerable drops of yellow, green and blue light flow through space, and lightning zigzags continually.
This is the region of scientific miracles. As soon as the sun sets, the people light up, because of a phosphorescent preparation that dyes their garments. Then the brightness of pedestrians illuminates the streets in a soft and charming fashion. The shadows fill with brilliant phantoms who talk as they glide two by two or three by three. The hidden organs sing. One perceives a close relationship with the hypothetical beings inhabiting the myriads of planets in suspension in the profundities.
In truth, enthusiasm has conquered me this time. How can I explain the secret of the wellbeing I sensed? Does it relate to the speech of the scientists who explain the composition of worlds with mystical voices? Does it come from the air impregnated with suave effluvia, or the faces embellished by an honest adoration of the Harmony of Forces that all of them name God? Here, no pain is legible in any gaze. One does not encounter anyone who laughs, but one does not encounter anyone who is sad.
“Listen,” Pythie sings to me. “Listen, if your ears are capable of it. Can’t you hear the sound of the invisible life of Ideas around our limbs? Don’t you feel as if the vigor of Great Beings is fortifying you, in this place? Can’t you taste the delightful confidence of knowing minuscule organs of the Planetary Person? I don’t know whether you can perceive, as I can, the sweetness of losing oneself in a form more total than our human individualities. I don’t know whether the sense of being diluted in the immense current of the Gnosis transports you outside your carnal sheath as it transports me. Everything flows out of me that isn’t thought. A magnetism discorporates mentality here. Doesn’t it seem to you easy to conceive what each of these strollers hopes, glimpses and contemplates in the mind? Oh, you talk to me about love, souls in communion, distinct beings reassembled into a single being; you recommend the fusion of our two sentiments into a single passionate ardor…this is what fulfils your desire. All the inhabitants of the city live in the same soul, which strives to know more of the secret of worlds, and the rest is abolished before their desire to seek the veritable God...”
Certainly, the atmosphere of the city is special. One enjoys a calm intoxication in the magnificently colored gardens.
Have you not, my dear friend, on certain days, been subject to the driving force of the crowd in the streets of a capital? Doesn’t the indignation or mockery that animates it before spectacles of brutality or disgrace grip you, in spite of the advice of reason? Mingled with the popular crowd, have you not acclaimed the sovereign who passes by, jeered the quarrelsome drunkard, applauded the heroine of a stupid vaudeville or pursued the thief who has just stolen something from a shop’s display?
At least, if you have not gone as far as action, you needed, at such times, a victory over the inclination, a resistance to t
he appeal of the multitude. The contagion of the example is maddening, when the crowd is numerous. The preoccupation of the incident suppresses the sum of other concerns in the members of the crowd. The entire will of each is concentrated in participation in the general emotion, playing a part therein. Angers, mockeries, furies, hopes of victory and bestial desires unite above the human residues and compose a single omnipotent force whose effluvia intoxicate. Instincts are excited to paroxysm; they flood bodies, and their external mixture creates a collective being of which individuals become the servile limbs.
That anger or joy of the street can give an approximate impression of what I feel in the environment of this city. I have become a docile member of a collective idea of existence. The fury of scientific pursuit is drawing me away with the crowd of people frenetically avid to participate in it. My attention is augmented in a phenomenal manner. Without knowing anything about physics, chemistry, mathematics or cosmography except the rudiments learned at school, I see the evidence of phenomena, laws, formulae, calculations and solutions revealing itself. Between others and myself there is a continuous endosmosis of knowledge. In gazes and smiles, as much as in speech, I read the certainty that it is appropriate to acquire, as I run with the crowd to the hunt for the truth. Nothing can resist that driving force.
“That’s it, that’s it…I love you,” Pythie said to me this morning. “You’ve just clarified the rationale of the rhythms that regulate the formation of substance in the imponderable ether, and my mind espouses yours, adores it in admiration... O dear lover, dear lover, who makes the force of your intelligence manifest; you’ve understood the emotions of the world, the motives of its genesis, and creation is palpitating on your eloquent lips. Take my body, and, for good measure, my, hands, my breasts and my mouth, and the rest of me.…”
We had a divine embrace...
Théa has not accompanied us to the city of Mercure. She has gone back to Jupiter, to which her office summoned her. We are walking alone, Pythie and I, through the miracles of the scientific city.
Pythie is full of charm. Light and magnificent, in her blue costume, above her light brown gaiters, she goes forth. The mat gold of her visage radiates around her profound and ironic eyes; but her smile has gained ineffable indulgences.
The palaces smile with their colored ceramics at the end of arbors united in the air by roofs of lianas and wild vines. Clad in blue, people walk with the allure of a grave happiness. There are paths of scarlet sand; fountains of violet, crimson, orange and mauve water; grouped statues of noble individuals gazing at the stars with passionate eyes, or whose gesture in marveling before the minerals hatched in the transparency of a retort. An exceedingly fine metallic mesh encloses in the sylvan perspectives the running of red deer, fallow deer and roe deer. The beautiful animals wander between the trees. Pheasants peck the ground. Peacocks spread their tails, perched on the edges of fountains. After the dark verdure of the thickets, pink flamingoes are bathing their filigree feet in a pool constellated by enormous flowers.
The strangest place in the city is a hollow like a gigantic Byzantium Hippodrome. In that valley, negroes and Malays live in solitary fashion, each in the shelter of an arcade closed by grilles. Many artificial cascades impregnate the streets serves in facades with freshness. Bushes and blinds propagate shade.
Those prisons form a kind of triangular avenue, the base of which is a stage of a vast theater. The right-hand line on the angle is inhabited by women, the left-hand line by young men. Odorous flowers ornament he hair of both. Their bodies emit a heavy perfume. One sees them incessantly in the hands of masseurs. Voluptuous music visibly enervates the languor of their eyes. Within the reach of their arms, tables are laden with fruits, beverages, certain succulent and spiced preserves and singular sauces drowning ruddy purées.
In melodious voices, phonographs recite certain Malay rhapsodies that seem to interest the reptilian allures of domestic jaguars, cats and panthers brushing the rose-bushes. Those animals stretch, creep and then yawn. They rub along the bars or mewl at the sky, which sparkles, ringed on the circular crest of the valley by the quivering of the forest.
There are times when the theater is populated by Javanese dancers. Their copper tiaras shine above black tresses. Their erotic hands agitate and cleave the air left the fins of fish cleaving the water. Often, a horde of howling negresses imitates the obscenities of amour. It is the habitual representation of the theaters of this land, but with something more bestial, with savage music, alternately frenetic and lugubriously slow.
It makes the jaguars wail. They pursue one another. They mewl. The tomcats also become nervous and fight. Claws are bloodied. Their anger coughs. Lying on their backs, showing their white bellies and there rows of pink nipple, female panthers appeal to the males, which, in order to surge forth, cut through the bushes, where the petals of mature flowers fall like snow. Then, frantically, the animals bite one another and couple. A warm odor of wild beasts corrupts the air.
Bands of somber silk unfurling along masts swell up softly in the breath of artificial winds.
One perceives the solitaries stirring behind their silvered grilles. Eyes and teeth illuminate the brown physiognomies beaten by the thick fringes of eyelashes.
The narrowness of the angular avenue only maintains a minimal distance between the men and the women. They consider one another, stretching themselves. Gazes declare the mutual covetousness of flesh. Pensive, the young women press against the bars of their arcade and contemplate the lust of the jaguars and cats. Nervous frissons shake their shoulders and their breasts while the spectacle and the music go on. The flowers shine in colors against the blue-tinted hair of the captives. The perfumes of bodies emanate more powerfully. One begins to groan. Other plaints respond. All the faces are plastered against the silver bars; the brown hands clench. Staccato hysterical laughter unites with the frenzies of the orchestra. The men also yawn dolorously and twist their arms in the grilles.
“They’re suffering,” I said to Pythie, the first time.
“Yes,” she replied, “they’re suffering. Those foodstuffs, the fruits, the sauces, the preserves, of which you’ve tasted samples, are powerful aphrodisiacs that stimulate their desire or their instinct to paroxysm. Soon they’ll be leaping on the spot, spurred by the delirium of the flesh that the music and the dances are still exciting. And yet, no one will open the silver grilles between whose bars they’re passing their arms, thighs and dolorous mouths.”
“And why this torture?”
“Aha! You understand! This is the reason. These two hundred barbarians in the flower of strength and youth, thus saturated with desire, are in the state in which their nerves disengage the greatest force of will. They’re projecting their fluids, their soul, their psychic vigor, outside themselves. They’re trying to spring forth from their bodies to join the forms of the opposite sex, just as electricities of different denominations project themselves from the tips of spikes in order to unite in the brief joy of a blue spark. Our scientists estimate that something similar is occurring with regard to these savages. Their voluntary fluids spring from the points of their bodies—hands, legs, mouths—to attempt to join up and fuse.
“If the hypothesis is justifiable, that narrow angular avenue contains a quantity of psychic force, human fluid, that is accumulating invisibly. One can thus infer that a healthy person momentarily bathed in that flow will attract a part of the static force, and, being neutral, will be charged with fluids of contrary denominations. The deneutralization, as it occurs, will occasion a state such that, for a moment, at least, the bather will be able to contain the paroxysm of the psychic force emitted by those two hundred savages.
“Imagine a scientist, penetrated with the importance of a capital problem, who suddenly senses that the solution is imminent. He enters this avenue. He walks, eyes closed, through that accumulation of fluids. Fasting, a bath, and preliminary copulations have prepared him in such a manner as not to be sexually stimulated. His m
ental power will thus be increased by a considerable fluid sum borrowed from the special atmosphere. It will be concentrated more vigorously; it will expend, more forcefully, an effort multiplied a hundredfold. There are a thousand chances to one that our thinker will find the result of his problem in that immersion.
“Look: a glass ceiling in two parts is lowering progressively over the avenue. The fluids are going to be condensed by the pressure of a gas recently created for that purpose. How the air is thickening before the grilles—can you see it turning blue? At the extremities of the hands and legs, minuscule sparks are emerging. That’s how one distinguishes the psychic waves. Currents are acting in layers, in opposite directions. Ah! The cats and the jaguars are beginning to moan. Good, all the hysterical laughter is bursting forth. What a racket!
“Look how the poor brutes are pressing against the bars…and that one, tearing her robe, pushing her flesh into the interstices of the grille…and her rictus, and her hair standing up between the crimson flowers. So many male and female odors emerging from the epidermis in sweat are suffocating. Notice also the safety belts that preserve the captives from any artificial relief. For another hour the desires and deliria will be exasperated in their bodies. Oh, how high that panther leaps! One’s beginning to feel ill at ease. The phosphorescences are dangerous to look at. My torso’s twisting on my hips and my breasts are hurting. Let’s go out for a while. We’ll come back in an hour.”
When we returned, the spectacle was repulsive. Like lianas and ivy wrapped around trees, the bodies of the captives were still knotted around the silver bars. Almost all of them were voiceless from howling. Tongues were twitching in their open white mouths. Several, in pressing against the bars, had left their flesh bruised and bloodied. There were young women who were writhing on the ground, weeping, men who were lying on their bellies, panting. The jaguars, cats and panthers, huddled in corners, among the bushes, no longer moving, were mewling faintly.
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