by Karel Čapek
‘Certainly, sir,’ the Newt replied. ‘Especially by the disaster of the White Mountain and the three hundred years of servitude. I have read a lot about it in this book. No doubt you are very proud of your three hundred years of servitude. That was a great period, sir!’
‘Yes, a hard period,’ I agreed. ‘A period of oppression and grief.’
‘And did you groan?’ our friend inquired with keen interest.
‘We groaned, suffering inexpressibly under the yoke of the savage oppressors.’
“I am delighted to hear it,’ the Newt heaved a sigh of relief. ‘That is exactly what it says in my book. I am happy to find it is true. It is an excellent book, sir, better than Geometry for the Senior Forms of Secondary Schools. I should like one day to stand on that memorable spot where the Czech nobles were executed, and on other glorious spots of cruel injustice.’
‘You should come and see our country,’ I cordially suggested to him.
‘Thank you for your courteous invitation,’ the Newt made a bow.
‘Unfortunately I am not an entirely free agent …’
‘We would buy you,’ I exclaimed. ‘What I am saying is, maybe we could have a nationwide collection to provide the financial means that would enable you …’
‘You are most kind,’ our friend muttered, evidently touched. ‘However, I have heard that the water of the Vltava is not good. The fact is we develop an unpleasant kind of dysentery in river water.’ He paused for a short while and then added: ‘I would also find it difficult to leave my beloved little garden.’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed my wife. ‘I too am a passionate gardener! How grateful I would be to you if you could show us the children of the local Flora!’
‘With the greatest pleasure, dear lady,’ the Newt replied with a polite bow. ‘That is, if you do not mind that my pleasure garden is under the water.’
‘Under the water?’
‘Yes. Twelve metres deep.’
‘And what flowers do you grow there?’
‘Sea anemones,’ replied our friend; ‘several rare varieties of them. Likewise sea stars and sea cucumbers, not to mention the coral bushes. Happy the man who’s grown a rose, just one fair scion for his land, as the poet has it.’
Sadly we had to make our adieux, for our ship was sounding its siren in token of its imminent departure. ‘And what message, Mr … Mr …’ I said, not knowing our friend’s name.
‘My name is Boleslav Jablonsky,’ the Newt shyly informed us. ‘In my opinion it is a beautiful name, sir. I chose it from my book.’
‘And what message, Mr Jablonsky, would you like to send to our nation?’
The Newt thought for a while. ‘Tell your fellow countrymen,’ he finally said with deep emotion, ‘tell them … not to fall back into the age-old Slav discord … but to keep the Battle of Lipany and especially the White Mountain in grateful memory! Goodbye, my compliments,’ he suddenly concluded, trying to control his feelings.
We departed in the boat, deep in thought and full of emotions. Our friend was standing on a cliff, waving his hand to us and seeming to call out something.
‘What’s that he’s calling?’ asked my wife.
‘I can’t be sure,’ I replied, but it sounded like Remember me to Dr Baxa, the Lord Mayor of Prague.’
13 In Germany, in particular, all vivisection was strictly prohibited - though only to Jewish researchers.
14 It appears that certain issues of morality were also involved. Among Mr Povondra’s papers a Proclamation was found in a number of languages, evidently published in newspapers throughout the world and signed by the Duchess of Huddersfield herself. This stated:
The League for the Protection of Newts addresses itself mainly to you, women, to request you, in the interest of decency and good morals, to contribute with the work of your hands to a great programme aimed at providing suitable clothing for the Newts. Most suitable for this purpose is a small skirt 40 cm long, with a waist of 60 cm, preferably with sewn-in elastic. We recommend a pleated skirt, which is both attractive and allows freedom of movement. For tropical areas a short apron with strings would be sufficient, made of simple washable material, possibly from some of your own cast-off clothes. Thus, with your help, those poor Newts who work near humans will not have to expose themselves unclothed, which is bound to offend their sense of propriety and would embarrass any decent person, more especially all women and mothers.
It seems that this initiative did not meet with the hoped-for response. There is no record of the Newts ever having chosen to wear little skirts or aprons; probably these would have been a hindrance for them under water or else they would not stay up. Once the Newts were segregated from humans by wooden fences any cause for embarrassment or awkwardness on either side naturally disappeared.
As for our reference to the need to protect the Newts against various kinds of molestation, what we had in mind were, above all, dogs. These were never reconciled to the Newts and pursued them furiously even in the water, regardless of the fact that their salivary glands became infected whenever they bit a fugitive Newt. Occasionally the Newts would resist, and more than one valuable dog was killed with a hoe or a pickaxe. All in all there developed a permanent and downright deadly enmity between dogs and Newts which did not diminish in the least and, if anything, was intensified and consolidated by the construction of partitions between them. Which is what usually happens, and not only with dogs.
Incidentally, those tarred fences, extending in some places over hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of shoreline, were utilised for educational purposes: along their entire length they were painted in huge letters with slogans suitable for Newts. For instance:
YOUR WORK IS YOUR ACHIEVEMENT. DON’T WASTE A SECOND! THE DAY HAS ONLY 86,400 SECONDS! AN INDIVIDUAL’S WORTH IS THE VALUE OF HIS WORK. YOU CAN BUILD ONE METRE OF DAM IN 57 MINUTES! HE WHO WORKS SERVES THE COMMUNITY. HE WHO DOES NOT WORK, NEITHER SHALL HE EAT!
And so on. If we bear in mind that these close-boarded fences all over the world totalled over three hundred thousand kilometres of seashore, we can get an idea of the amount of exhortatory and generally useful slogans that could be placed on them.
15 Cf. the first Newt suit, heard in Durban and much commented on in the international press (see Mr Povondra’s cuttings). The Harbour authority in A. had employed a Newt work gang. In due course, the Newts multiplied to such an extent that there was no room for them in the port; a few tadpole colonies therefore settled on the nearby coast. The landowner B., to whose property that stretch of coast belonged, demanded that the port authority remove its salamanders from his private beach, because that was his own bathing place. The port authority took the view that the matter did not concern it; as soon as the Newts settled on the plaintiffs land they had become his private property. While this lawsuit was dragging on in the usual manner the Newts (partly from inborn instinct and partly from work zeal inculcated into them by training) began to build dams and harbour basins off Mr B.’s beaches without appropriate orders or permission. Mr B. thereupon sued the authority for causing damage to his property. The lower Court dismissed the case on the grounds that Mr B. ‘s property had not been damaged by the dams but actually improved. The higher Court, however, found in favour of the plaintiff on the grounds that no one was obliged to tolerate a neighbour’s farm animals on his land, and that the port authority in A. was responsible for all the damage caused by the Newts, in the same way as a farmer had to make good the damage caused to a neighbour by his cattle. The defendant objected that it could not be held responsible for the salamanders because they could not be locked up under the sea. Thereupon the judge declared that in his opinion the damage caused by the Newts should be viewed in a similar manner to damage caused by hens, which were likewise impossible to lock up because they could fly. Attorney for the port authority asked in what way his client could transfer the Newts, or induce them to leave Mr B. ‘s beach of their own volition. The judge replied that this was not the business of the Court.
Attorney then asked how His Honour would react if the defendant port authority had the undesirable Newts shot. To this the judge replied that as a British gentleman he would regard this as a highly improper proceeding and moreover as a violation of Mr B.’s shooting rights. The defendant was therefore obliged, on the one hand, to remove the Newts from the plaintiff’s private property and, on the other, to make good the damage caused there by the dams and coastal structures; this was to be done by restoring that stretch of coastline to its original condition. Attorney for the defendant thereupon asked whether salamanders might be used for that demolition work. The judge gave it as his opinion that they could not be so used unless the plaintiff agreed; but the plaintiff’s wife found the Newts revolting and was unable to swim from the salamander-infested beach. The plaintiff pointed out that without Newts it was impossible to remove the dams built below the surface. Whereupon the judge ruled that the Court neither wished nor was competent to discuss technical details; Courts existed to protect property rights and not to adjudicate what was and what was not feasible.
This was the end of the suit from a legal point of view; it is not reported how the port authority in A. extricated itself from its tricky position. However, the case had shown that it would after all be necessary to regulate the Newt question by means of new legal instruments.
16 Some took Newt equality so literally that they demanded that salamanders should be able to hold any public office in water or on land (J. Courtaud); or that fully armed submarine Newt regiments should be set up, under their own deep-sea commanders (General, retd, Desfours); or indeed that mixed marriages should be allowed between humans and Newts (Maitre Louis Pierrot, a lawyer). Zoologists, of course, pointed out that such marriages were not even possible, but Maitre Pierrot declared that what was at stake was not a natural possibility or impossibility but a legal principle, and that he himself was willing to take for his wife a female Newt to demonstrate that the reform of matrimonial law he advocated should not just remain on paper. (Maitre Pierrot subsequendy became an attorney much in demand for divorce cases.)
(This may be the place to report that,, especially in the American press, reports cropped up from time to time of girls who claimed to have been raped by Newts while bathing. In consequence, there occurred increasingly irequent instances in the United States of Newts being caught and lynched, mostly by burning at the stake. In vain did scientists protest against this popular custom by pointing out that on anatomical grounds such an offence on the part of salamanders was physically impossible; but a lot of girls swore that they had been molested by Newts, and this settled the matter for any right-minded American. Later the popular burning of Newts was restricted by being licenced only on Saturdays and only under the supervision of the Fire Department. At that time the Movement against Newt Lynching came into being, led by the Negro Rev. Robert J. Washington; this soon gained about a hundred thousand members, though almost exclusively from among the Negro population. The American press began to claim that this movement was political and subversive; in consequence raids were made on black residential areas and a lot of Negroes were burnt to death while they were praying in their churches for their brothers, the Newts. Hostility to the Negroes reached its peak when, following upon setting fire to the Negro church at Gordonville, Louisiana, the whole town went up in flames. But this belongs only marginally to the history of the Newts.)
Among the civil facilities and advantages actually granted to the Newts we might list at least a few: every salamander was registered in the Newt Records at his place of employment; he had to possess an official residence permit; he had to pay capitation tax, actually paid for him by his employer and docked from his food (since Newts did not draw their wages in cash); likewise he had to pay rent in respect of the coast he inhabited, public dues, charges for the construction of the wooden fence, school fees and other public imposts. We simply have to admit quite frankly that in all these respects the Newts were treated like other citizens - which is equal rights of a sort.
17 Cf. the Holy Father’s Encyclical Mirabilia Dei opera.
18 The literature on this subject is so voluminous that a mere bibliography would take up two massive volumes.
19 Cf. a markedly pornographic brochure among Mr Povondra’s papers. This was an alleged copy of the police records in B--. The details of that ‘private printing for the purpose of scholarly research’ cannot be quoted in a decent book. We shall give here just a few details:
The temple of the salamander cult on--street, at number--, contains at its centre a large pool faced with dark-red marble. The water in the pool is perfumed with fragrant essences, heated, and illuminated from below by ever-changing coloured lights; the rest of the temple is in darkness. To the chanting of Newt Litanies there descend into the marble pool the totally unclothed male and female Salamander believers, the men from one side, the women from the other, all of them members of society; we might mention here only Baroness M., the film star S., Ambassador D. and many other well-known figures. Suddenly a shaft of blue light illuminates a huge marble block towering from the water; on it rests, breathing heavily, a big, old, black Newt, known as Mister Salamander. After a moment’s silence Mister begins to speak: he calls on the believers to abandon themselves fully and wholeheartedly to the ritual of the Newt Dance that is about to begin, and to pay homage to the Great Salamander. He thereupon rises and starts rocking and twisting the upper part of his body. Upon this the male believers, immersed to their necks in the water, likewise begin to sway and twist furiously, faster and faster, allegedly in order to produce the Sexual Milieu; the female Salamanders meanwhile utter a sharp ts-ts-ts and croaking squeals. After this the underwater lights go out one by one, and a general orgy is unleashed.
We cannot vouch for this account, but it is certain that in all the chief cities of Europe the police, while fiercely tracking down these Salamander sects, had its hands full suppressing the huge social scandals connected with them. We believe, however, that the Great Salamander cult was exceptionally widespread, though for the most part it was practised with less fairyland splendour and, among the poorer sections of the population, even on dry land.
20 The Catholic prayer mentioned above described them as Dei creatura de gente Molche (God’s creatures of the Newt nation).
21 The manifesto preserved among Mr Povondra’s papers ran as follows:
COMRADE NEWTS!
The capitalist system has found its latest victims. As its tyranny was finally beginning to crumble against the revolutionary elan of the class-conscious proletariat, moth-eaten capitalism roped you, Toilers of the Deep, into its service, enslaving you spiritually by its bourgeois civilisation, subjecting you to its class laws, depriving you of all liberties and doing everything in its power to exploit you brutally and with impunity.
(14 lines cut by censor)
Working Newts! The hour is at hand when you will come to realise the whole burden of the slavery in which you live
(7 lines cut by censor)
and when you will demand your rights as a class and as a nation!
Comrade Newts! The revolutionary proletariat of the whole world extends its hand to you
(11 lines cut by censor)
with all means at your disposal. Set up works councils, elect your spokesmen, establish strike funds! Remember that the politically aware working class will not abandon you in your just struggle and that, hand in hand with you, it will launch the final attack
(9 lines cut by censor)
Oppressed and revolutionary Newts of all lands, unite! The last battle is at hand!
(Signed) MOLOKOV
22 In Mr Povondra’s collection we only found a few such appeals; Mrs Povondra presumably burnt the rest. From the surviving material we quote at least a few headlines:
Newts, cast away your arms! (A pacifist manifesto)
Newts, throw out the Jews! (A German leaflet)
Brother Newts! (An appeal by an anarchist group)
Fellow Newts!
(A public appeal by the Sea Scouts)
Friends, Newts! (A public address by the Centre for Aquatic Associations and Breeders of Marine Fauna)
Newts, Friends! (An appeal by the Society for Moral Regeneration)
Citizen Newts (An appeal by the Civic Reform League in Dieppe)
Fellow Newts, join our ranks! (Benevolent Society of Ancient Mariners)
Colleagues, Newts! (Swimming Club Aegir)
Of particular importance (judging by the fact that Mr Povondra had carefully stuck it on some stiff paper) was probably this manifesto which we quote in full:
23 Preserved in Mr Povondra’s collection we found a journalistic, rather superficial, account of that festive occasion; unfortunately only half of it has survived; the second part has been lost.
Nice, 6 May
The attractive airy building of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies on the Promenade des Anglais is bustling with life today. Two agents de police are keeping the pavement clear for the invited guests who cross the red carpet to enter the pleasantly cool amphitheatre. We notice the smiling Mayor of Nice, the Prefect in his top hat, a general in pale blue uniform, gentlemen with the red button of the Legion d’Honneur, ladies of a certain age (terracotta predominating as this year’s fashionable colour), vice-admirals, journalists, professors and venerable old ladies of all nations, the kind that is always plentiful on the Cote d’Azur. Suddenly a slight incident: amidst all those distinguished visitors a strange little creature tries to slip through shyly and unnoticed; from head to toe it is veiled in a kind of black cape or domino, its eyes peer from behind enormous black spectacles, and it is padding hurriedly and uncertainly towards the crowded vestibule. ‘He, vous,’ cried one of the policemen, ‘qu’est-ce que vous cherchez ici?’ But already the frightened arrival is surrounded by university dignitaries, with cher docteur here and cher docteur there. So that is Dr Charles Mercier, the learned Newt who is giving today’s lecture to the flower of the Cote d’Azur! Let’s quickly slip inside to make sure of a seat in the festively excited auditorium!