The Eternal Adam and other stories (30 page)

‘Yes, 4,000 of them!’ the doctor commented.
‘It’s quite a regiment!’

‘Four thousand!’ I exclaimed. ‘Well! And in
this regiment how many show their ignorance of the classic tongues?’

‘But, my dear patient,’ the doctor replied.
‘Do call to mind your own experience. It’s a hundred years, at least, since
Latin and Greek were given up in the lycées! Education is now purely
scientific, commercial, and industrial!’

‘Can it be possible?’

‘Yes, and you know well enough what
happened to that unfortunate pupil who carried off the last prize for Latin
verse? Well, when he appeared on the platform somebody threw a Latin grammar at
his head, and amidst all the excitement the Prefect was so embarrassed he
almost bit him!’

‘And since then, no more Latin verse in the
colleges?’

‘Not even half a hexameter!’

‘And Latin prose was banned at the same
time?’

‘No, two years later, and with good reason!
Do you know how, at the examination, the best of the candidates translated
Immanis pecoris custos!’
^[iii]

‘No. ‘

‘Like this, "guardian of an immense
blockhead". ‘

‘Go along with you!’

‘And
Patiens quia aeternus?’
^[iv]

‘I’ve no idea. ‘

‘He is "patient because he
sneezes"! So the president of the university realised it was high time to
suppress the study of Latin. ‘

My word, I shouted with laughter. Even the
doctor’s expression could not stop me. It was clear that to his mind my madness
was taking on an alarming character. Complete loss of memory on the one hand,
and tempestuous maniacal laughter on the other! Now he’d got something to be
concerned about!

And indeed my laughter might have continued
indefinitely if the beauty of the scene hadn’t diverted my attention.

We were going down the Boulevard Cornuau, now straightened, thanks to
an amiable understanding between the authorities and the trades unions. To the
left rose the St Roch Station. This building, after being so strangely knocked
about during the works of construction, now seemed to justify that line of
Delille’s:

Its indestructible mass has wearied time!

The tram-rails stretched on down the centre
of the boulevard, shadowed by a fourfold line of trees that I’d seen planted.
And now they seemed to have lived two centuries.

In a few seconds we’d arrived at the
Hotoie. What changes had been suffered by this fine walk where in the
fourteenth century the youth of Picardy used to show off. It now displayed
great stretches of lawn in the English fashion, large clumps of shrubs and
flower-beds which disguised the rectangular form of the spaces reserved for the
annual exhibitions. A rearrangement of the trees which yesterday were choking
one another had given them space and air, and now they could rival the gigantic
‘Wellingtonias’ of California.

There was a crowd at the Hotoie. The
programme hadn’t deceived me. Here the Regional Competition of Northern France
displayed a long series of stables, stalls, tents, kiosks of every colour and every
shape. But today the Agricultural and Industrial Fair had closed. Within an
hour the prize-winners – two-footed or four-footed – were to be ‘crowned’.

I didn’t find the competition displeasing.
It appealed to eyes and ears alike. The strident clatter of moving machinery,
the hissing of the steam, the plaintive bleating of the sheep penned in their
stalls, the deafening cackle of the poultry-yard, the speeches of the
authorities whose pompous sentences resounded from the platform, the applause
given to the prize-winners, the soft sound of the kisses which official lips
placed upon their ‘crowned’ heads, the martial orders which echoed under the
tall trees, and finally the vague murmur which rose from the crowd, all this
combined to produce a strange concert whose charm I greatly appreciated.

The doctor pushed me through the turnstile.
The hour was coming when the Ministerial Delegate would make his speech, and I
didn’t want to lose a word of this harangue which, if only it followed the
current of progress, ought to be so new in substance and style.

I therefore hurried into the centre of a
large quadrilateral reserved for the machinery. My doctor bought at a high
price several bottles of a precious liquid which had the quality of
disinfecting the local water. I let myself be tempted by several boxes of a
phosphorescent paste which had so completely destroyed the mice that the cats
had taken their place.

Then I could hear some complicated pianos which harmoniously reproduced
all the strains of an orchestra from the opera. Not far away were some
stone-crushers thunderously crushing stones. The harvesters were reaping the
cornfields like a barber shaving a stubbly chin. Pile-drivers, worked by
compressed air, were striking five-million-pound blows. Centrifugal pumps were
working as though they meant to absorb, with a few strokes of a piston, the
whole of the Selle river, reminding me of Moreau’s lovely verse about the
Voulzie:

A thirsty giant would drink it in a breath!

Then on all sides there were machines of American
origin, carried to the last extremes of progress. One was given a live pig, and
out of it came two hams, one York and one Westphalian! To another was offered a
rabbit, still quivering, and it produced a silk hat! This one absorbed an
ordinary fleece and ejected a complete suit of clothes in the best style! That
one devoured a three-year-old calf and reproduced it in the twofold form of a
smoking
blanquette
of veal and a pair of newly polished shoes! And so on
and so forth.

But I could not stop to contemplate these
wonders of human genius. Now it was my turn to drag the doctor along. I was
intoxicated.

I reached the platform, which was already
sagging under the weight of the important personages.

They had just been judging the fat men – as
is done in America at every competition which takes itself seriously.

After the fat man’s competition came that
of the thin woman, and the prize-winner as she came down from the platform, her
eyes modestly lowered, repeated that watchword of one of our wittiest philosophers.
‘They like the fat woman, but they adore the thin ones!’

Now it was the turn of the babies. There
were several hundred of them among whom those awarded a prize were the
heaviest, the youngest, and the one who could bawl loudest! All were plainly dying
of thirst and were calling for a drink in their own way, which was not at all
pleasant.

‘Lord,’ I exclaimed, ‘there won’t be enough
wet-nurses for... ‘

The sound of a steam-whistle interrupted
me.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s the suckling-machine starting to
work,’ explained the doctor. ‘It’s equivalent to 500 Norman wet-nurses! You
well understand, my dear patient, that since celibacy was abolished, they had
to invent suckling by steam!’

The 300 babies had vanished. Their
deafening cries were followed by a religious silence.

The Ministerial Delegate was about to close
the competition with a speech.

He advanced to the edge of the platform. He
began to speak.

My stupefaction which so far had kept on
growing, now went beyond the limits of the impossible.

Yes, everything had changed in this world.
Everything had followed the line of progress! Ideas, customs, industry,
commerce, agriculture, all had been transformed!

Only the opening words of the Delegate’s
speech remained what they had always been – what they will always be at the
opening of any official harangue!

‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘It is always with
renewed pleasure that I find myself once more... ‘

Thereupon I made a brusque movement. I
fancied that my eyes were opening in darkness... I stretched out my hands... I
unconsciously upset my table and my lamp... The noise woke me up...

All that was nothing but a dream!

Some well-informed scientists declare that
dreams, even those which seem to last throughout a long night, only last, in
reality, a few seconds.

It may seem like that to you, ladies and
gentlemen, this ideal walk, which, maybe under too fantastic a form, I’ve just
made in a dream through Amiens... in the year 2000!

Swish! It is the wind, let loose.

Swash! It is the rain, falling in torrents.

This shrieking squall bends down the trees
of the Volsinian coast, and hurries on, flinging itself against the sides of
the mountains of Crimma. Along the whole length of the littoral are high rocks,
gnawed by the billows of the vast Sea of Megalocrida.

Swish! swash!

Down by the harbour nestles the little town
of Luktrop; perhaps a hundred houses, with green palings, which defend them
indifferently from the wild wind; four or five hilly streets – ravines rather
than streets – paved with pebbles and strewn with ashes thrown from the active
cones in the background. The volcano is not far distant: it is called the
Vauglor. During the day it sends forth sulphurous vapours; at night, from time
to time, great outpourings of flame. Like a lighthouse carrying 150 kertzes,
the Vauglor indicates the port of Luktrop to the coasters, felzans, verliches,
and balanzes, whose keels furrow the waters of Megalocrida.

On the other side of the town are ruins
dating from the Crimmarian era. Then a suburb. Arab in appearance, much like a
casbah, with white walls, domed roofs, and sun-scorched terraces, which are all
nothing but accumulations of square stones thrown together at random. Veritable
dice are these, whose numbers will never be effaced by the rust of Time.

Among others we notice the Six-Four, a name
given to a curious erection, having six openings on one side and four on the
other.

A belfry overlooks the town, the square
belfry of Saint Philfilena, with bells hung in the thickness of the walls,
which sometimes a hurricane will set in motion. That is a bad sign; the people
tremble when they hear it.

Such is Luktrop. Then come the scattered
habitations in the country, set amid heath and broom, as in Brittany. But this
is not Brittanny. Is it in France? I do not know. Is it in Europe? I cannot
tell. At all events, do not look for Luktrop on any map.

Rat-tat! A discreet knock is struck upon
the narrow door of Six-Four, at the left corner of the Rue Messaglière. This is
one of the most
comfortable
houses in Luktrop – if such a word is known
there – one of the richest, if gaining some millions of fretzers, by hook or by
crook, constitutes riches.

The rat-tat is answered by a savage bark,
in which is much of lupine howl, as if a wolf should bark. Then a window is opened
above the door of Six-Four, and an ill-tempered voice says, ‘Deuce take people
who come bothering here!’

A young girl, shivering in the rain wrapped
in a thin cloak, asks if Dr Trifulgas is at home.

‘He is, or he is not, according to
circumstances. ‘

‘I want him to come to my father, who is
dying. ‘

‘Where is he dying?’

‘At Val Karnion, four kertzes from here. ‘

‘And his name?’

‘Vort Kartif. ‘

‘Vort Kartif, the herring-salter?’

‘Yes; and if Dr Trifulgas—’

‘Dr Trifulgas is not at home. ‘

And the window is closed with a slam, while the swishes of the wind and
the swashes of the rain mingle in a deafening uproar.

A hard man, this Dr Trifulgas, with little
compassion, and attending no one unless paid cash in advance. His old Hurzof, a
mongrel of bulldog and spaniel, would have had more feeling than he. The house
called Six-Four admitted no poor, and opened only to the rich. Further, it had
a regular tariff: so much for a typhoid fever, so much for a fit, so much for a
pericarditis, and for other complaints which doctors invent by the dozen. Now,
Vort Kartif, the herring-salter, was a poor man, and of low degree. Why should
Dr Trifulgas have taken any trouble, and on such a night?

‘Is it nothing that I should have had to
get up?’ he murmured, as he went back to bed; ‘that alone is worth ten
fretzers.‘

Hardly twenty minutes had passed, when the
iron hammer was again struck on the door of Six-Four.

Much against his inclination the doctor
left his bed, and leaned out of his window.

‘Who is there?’ he cried.

‘I am the wife of Vort Kartif.‘

‘The herring-salter of Val Karnion?’

‘Yes; and, if you refuse to come, he will
die.‘

‘All right; you will be a widow.‘

‘Here are twenty fretzers.‘

‘Twenty fretzers for going to Val Karnion,
four kertzes from here! Thank you! Be off with you!’