The Eternal Adam and other stories (41 page)

The last of the fragments contained, intact, the end of the manuscript:

... all old.
Captain Morris is dead. Dr Bathurst is sixty-five; Dr Moreno sixty; myself,
sixty-eight. We shall all soon have done with life. First, however, we mean to
finish the task we resolved on, and, so far as is in our power, we shall come
to the aid of future generations in the struggle that awaits them.

But will they see
the day. these future generations?

I should be
tempted to say yes, if I considered only how my fellows are multiplying: the
children are swarming, and, for the rest, in this healthy climate, in this
country where wild animals are unknown, life is long. Our colony has tripled in
size.

On the other hand
I am tempted to say no, if I consider the deep intellectual decadence of my
companions in distress.

Yet our little
group of survivors was in a favourable position to share in human knowledge: it
included one exceptionally energetic man – Captain Morris, who died today – two
men more cultivated than is usual – my son and myself – and two real savants –
Dr Bathurst and Dr Moreno. With such components we ought to have been able to
accomplish something. We have done nothing. Right from the outset the
maintenance of our material life has always been, and is still, our sole care.
As at first we spend all our time looking for food, and in the evening we fall
exhausted into a heavy sleep.

It is, alas! only
too certain that mankind, of which we are the only representatives, is in a
state of rapid retrogression and is tending to revert to the animal. Among the
sailors of the
Virginia,
men originally uncultivated, the brutal
characteristics have become more marked; my son and I, we have forgotten what
we knew; Dr Bathurst and Dr Moreno have put their brains on the shelf. One
might say that our cerebral life is abolished.

How lucky it is
that, so many years ago, we made a survey of this continent! Today we shouldn’t
have the courage... And besides, Captain Morris, who led the expedition, is dead
– and dead also, or rather decayed, is the
Virginia
which carried us.

At the beginning
of our stay a few of us decided to build some houses. They were never finished
and now they are falling in ruins. We sleep, as before, on the ground, whatever
the season.

For a long time
not a vestige has been left of the garments which covered us. For several years
we contrived to replace them by seaweeds woven together in a style that was at
first ingenious but soon became coarser. At last we got tired of making the
effort, which the mild climate renders needless: we go naked, like those whom
we used to call savages.

Eating, eating,
that is our perpetual aim. our sole preoccupation.

Yet there still
remains some remnants of our former ideas, our former feelings. My son Jean,
now a grown man and a grandfather, has not lost all his affection, and my
ex-chauffeur, Modeste Simonat, keeps a vague memory that I used to be his
master.

But for them, for
us, these faint traces of the men we once were – for in very sooth we are no
longer men – will vanish for ever. The people of the future, who were born
here, have never known any other existence. Mankind will be reduced to these
adults – even as I write I have them before my very eyes – who do not know how
to write or to count, who hardly know how to speak; and to these sharp-toothed
youngsters who seem to be nothing but an insatiable stomach. And after them
there will be other adults and other children, and then still more adults and
still more children, ever nearer to the animal, ever further away from their
thinking ancestors.

I can almost see
them, these future men. forgetting all articulate language, their intelligence
extinct, their bodies covered with coarse fur, wandering about this sad
wilderness...

Well, we want to
try to avoid this. We want to do everything in our power to ensure that the
achievements of the men among whom we once were shall not be completely lost.

Dr Moreno, Dr
Bathurst and I, we are going to revive our stupefied minds, we are going to
make ourselves recall what we once knew. We are going to share the task, and on
this paper and with this ink which came from the
Virginia
we are going
to set out all that we remember of the various branches of science, so that,
later men, if they still exist, and if, after a more or less long period of
savagery, they feel a revival of their thirst for light, will find a summary of
what their predecessors have done. May they then bless the memory of those who
strove, at all costs, to shorten the sorrowful road to be trodden by the
brothers whom they will never see!

It is now nearly
fifteen years since the above lines were written. Dr Bathurst and Dr Moreno are
no more. Of all those who landed here, I, one of the oldest, I am almost the
only one left. But death will soon take me in my turn. I can feel it rising
from my frozen feet to my heart, which is about to stop.

Our work is done.
I have entrusted the manuscripts which contain this summary of human knowledge
into an iron chest landed from the
Virginia,
and which I have buried
deeply in the earth. At its side I am going to bury these few pages rolled up
in an aluminium container.

Will anyone ever
find this material committed to the earth? Will anyone ever so much as look for
it?...

That is for fate to decide.
A
Dieu vat!...

As Zartog Sofr translated this strange
document, a sort of terror seized upon his soul.

What! So the Andart’-Iten-Schu people were
descended from these men who, after having wandered for long months across the
desert of the ocean, had at last been washed up on this point on the shore
where Basidra now stood? So these wretched creatures had formed part of a
glorious race of men, compared with which modern man could scarcely babble! Yet
for the knowledge and even the memory of these peoples to be destroyed, what
was needed? Less than nothing; an imperceptible shudder had run through the
earth’s crust.

What an irreparable misfortune that the
manuscripts the document spoke of had been destroyed, along with the iron chest
that contained them! But great though that misfortune was, it was impossible to
cherish the slightest hope: while digging the foundations the workmen had
turned up the earth in every direction. There could be no doubt that the iron
had been corroded away by time, which the aluminium container had triumphantly
resisted.

For the rest, it needed no more than this
for Sofr’s optimism to be irretrievably overthrown. Although the manuscript
gave no technical details, it was full of general indications and showed quite
unmistakably that mankind had at one time advanced further in the quest for
truth than it had done since. Everything was there in this narrative, the
notions that Sofr had cherished, and others that he had not dared to imagine – even
to the explanation of the name of Hedom, over which so many vain quarrels had
broken out!... Hedom, it was a corrupt form of Edem – itself a corrupt form of
Adam – the said Adam being perhaps nothing more than the corrupt form of some
other word more ancient still.

Hedom, Edem, Adam – that was the perpetual
symbol of the first man, and it was also an explanation of his appearance on
earth. Then Sofr had been wrong to deny that ancestor, whose reality the
manuscript had proved once and for all, and it was the people who had been
right in giving themselves such an ancestry. But, not only in that but in
everything else, the Andart’-Iten-Schu had invented nothing. They had been
content to repeat what had been said before.

And perhaps, after all, the contemporaries
of the author of the narrative had likewise invented nothing. Perhaps they too
had done nothing but to retrace the road traversed by other races of man who
had preceded them on earth. Did not the document speak of a people whom it
called the Atlanteans? It was these Atlanteans, no doubt, of whom Sofr’s
excavations had disclosed a few impalpable traces below the marine silt. What
knowledge of the truth had that age-old nation attained when the invasion of
the sea had swept them from the earth?

However that might be, none of their work
had remained after the catastrophe, and mankind had again to start at the foot
of the hill in climbing towards the light.

Perhaps it would be the same for the
Andart’-Iten-Schu. Perhaps it would again be the same after them, until the
day...

But would the day ever come when the
insatiable desire of mankind would be satisfied? Would the day ever come when
they, having succeeded in climbing the slope, would be content to rest upon the
summit they had at last conquered?...

Such were the meditations of Zartog Sofr,
as he bent over this venerable manuscript.

This narrative from beyond the tomb enabled
him to imagine the terrible drama which is forever played throughout the
universe, and his heart overflowed with pity. Bleeding from the countless
wounds from which those who had ever lived had suffered before him, bending
beneath the weight of these vain efforts accumulated throughout the infinity of
time, Zartog Sofr’-Ai-Sr gained, slowly and painfully, an intimate conviction
of the eternal recurrence of events.

Recollections of Childhood and Youth

First published as ‘The Story of My Boyhood’ in
The Youth’s
Companion
(Boston), vol. 64, 9 April 1891, p. 221. This was an edited
translation of ‘Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse’, first published from the
manuscript in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana (Fondation Martin Bodmer), Cologny-Genevè,
Switzerland, in
Jules Verne
, ed. Pierre-André Touttain (Paris: L’Herne,
1974), pp. 57-62. In the present version some passages cut by the American
editor have been restored and a few changes made in the translation.

The First Ships of the Mexican Navy

First published as ‘L’Amérique du Nord, études historiques: Les
Premiers Navires de la marine mexicaine’ in
Mus
é
e des families,
tome 18, no. de juillet 1851, pp. 304-12; volume
publication as ‘Un drame au Mexique’ in 1876 with
Michel Stroggoff,
English translation by W. H. G. Kingston and Julius Chambers (London, 1876).
This translation by I. O. Evans.

A Drama in the Air

First published as ‘Un voyage en ballon’ in
Mus
é
e des
families,
tome 18, no. d’ao
û
t 1851, pp. 329-36; published as ‘Un drame
dans les airs’ with
Dr Ox
in 1874. In English with
Dr Ox
(London,
1874), translated by George M. Towle.

Master Zacharius

First published as ‘Maître Zacharius, or L’Horloger qui avait perdu son
âme, tradition genevoise’ in
Mus
é
e des families,
tome 21, no,
d’avril 1854, pp. 193-200, and no. de mai pp. 225-32; published with Dr
Ox
in 1874. In English with
Dr Ox
(London, 1874), translated by George M.
Towle.

The Humbug

First published as ‘Le Humbug’ (written 1868-70,
though dated 1863 by Michel Verne), from a manuscript edited by Michel Verne,
in
Hier et demain
(Paris, 1910); translated by Edward Baxter (1990).
This story was excluded by I O. Evans from the English edition of
Yesterday
and Tomorrow
(London, 1965).

Dr Ox’s Experiment

First published as ‘Une fantaisie du docteur Ox’ in
Mus
é
e des
familles
(Paris), tome 39, no. de mars 1872, pp. 65-74, no. d’avril 1872,
pp. 99-107, no. de mai 1872, pp. 133-41; in volume form 1874. In English with
Dr
Ox
(London, 1874), translated by George M. Towle.

An Ideal City

First published as ‘Amiens en I’an 2000’ in
M
é
moires de
l’Acad
é
mie d’Amiens,
1874-75, 3me series, tome II, pp. 347-78; as a
pamphlet
Une ville id
é
ale
(Amiens: imprimerie de T. Jeunet,
1875). This translation by I. O. Evans inserted into his edition of
Yesterday and Tomorrow
(London, 1965).

Dr Trifulgas

Date of composition unknown. First published as ‘Frritt-Flacc’ in
Le
Magasin illustr
é
d’
é
ducation et de r
é
cr
é
ation
(Paris), tome 44, no. 527, du ler décembre 1886;
Le Figaro illustr
é
(Paris), décembre 1886; published in 1886 with
Un billet de lotterie;
translated as ‘Dr Trifulgas. a Fantastic Tale’ in the
Strand Magazine
(London), vol. 4, July 1892, in an uncredited translation.

Gil Braltar

Date of composition unknown, though it may have been inspired by
Verne’s visit on his yacht to Gibraltar in 1884, which would also explain the
allusion to the Boer republics. First published with
Le Chemin de France
on 27 November 1889. It was excluded from English-language editions of that
novel. This translation by I. O. Evans inserted into his edition of
Yesterday and Tomorrow
(London, 1965).