The Opal, and Other Stories Page 12

  The adept staggers to his feet, and in his confusion has seized a sacrificial knife, plunging it into his chest. His acolytes manage to stay his hand, but the damage is done: the deep wound gapes open and life trickles away -they cannot close it up again.

  The brilliance of the electric lights has once again taken possession of the circular compass of the Observatory: the spiders, the shadows and the corruption have vanished.

  But the flask remains in shattered pieces, there are obvious scorch marks on the floor, and the Master still lies bleeding to death on a mat. They have sought in vain for the knife. Beneath the telescope, limbs contorted, lies the body of Mohini, chest down. His face, twisted upwards, grins grotesquely at the roof reflecting all the horror of death.

  The disciples gather round the spot where the Master rests. He gently brushes aside their pleas to stay quiet: ‘Let me speak, and do not grieve. No-one can save me now, and my soul longs to complete that which was impossible while it was trapped in my corporeal state.

  Did you not see how the breath of corruption has touched this building? Another instant, and it would have become substance, as a fog solidifies into hoar-frost, and the whole Observatory and everything in it would have turned to mould and dust.

  Those burns there on the floor were caused by the denizens of the abyss, swollen with hate, desperately trying to reach my soul. And just as these marks you can see are burned into the wood and stone, their other actions would have become visible and permanent if you had not intervened so bravely.

  For everything on earth that is, as the fools would have it, ‘permanent’, was once no more than mere shadow -a ghost, visible or invisible, and is now still nothing more than a solidified ghost.

  For that reason, everything, be it beautiful or ugly, sublime, good or evil, serene though with death in its heart or alternatively, sad though harbouring secret happiness – all these things have something spectral about them.

  It may be only a few who have the gift of detecting the ghostly quality of the world: it is there nevertheless, eternal and unchanging.

  Now, it is a basic doctrine of our brotherhood that we should try to scale the precipitous cliffs of life in order to reach that pinnacle where the Great Magician stands with all his mirrors, conjuring up the whole world below out of deceptive reflections.

  See, I have wrestled to achieve ultimate wisdom; I have sought out some human existence or other, to kill it in order to examine its soul. I wished to sacrifice some truly useless individual, so I went about among the people, men and women, thinking that such a one would be simple to find.

  With the joyous expectation of certainty I visited lawyers, doctors, soldiers – I nearly found one in the ranks of schoolteachers – so very nearly!

  But it was always only nearly – there was always some little mark, some tiny secret sign on them, which forced me to loosen my grip.

  Then came a moment when at last I found what I was looking for. But it was not an individual: it was a whole group.

  It was like uncovering an army of woodlice, sheltering underneath an old pot in the cellar.

  Clergywives!

  The very thing!

  I spied on a whole gaggle of clergywives, watching them as they busied themselves at their ‘good works’, holding meetings in support of‘education for the benighted classes’ or knitting horrible warm stockings and protes-tant cotton gloves to aid the modesty of poor little piccaninnies, who might otherwise enjoy their God-given nakedness. And then just think how they pester us with their exhortations to save bottle-tops, old corks, paper, bent nails and that sort of rubbish – waste not, want not!

  And then when I saw that they were about to hatch out new schemes for yet more missionary societies, and to water down the mysteries of the scriptures with the scourings of their ‘moral’ sewage, the cup of my fury ran over at last.

  One of them, a real flax-blonde ‘German’ thing – in fact a genuine outgrowth of the rural Slavonic underbrush -was all ready for the chop when I realised that she was - ‘great with child’ - and Moses’ old law obliged me to desist.

  I caught another one – ten more – a hundred – and every one of them was in the same interesting condition!

  So then I put myself on the alert day and night, always ready to pounce, and at last I managed to lay my hands on one just at the right moment as she was coming out of the maternity ward.

  A real silky Saxon pussy that was, with great big blue goose-eyes.

  I kept her locked up for another nine months, to be on the safe side, just in case there was anything more to come in the way of parthenogenesis or perhaps budding, such as you get with deep-sea molluscs for instance.

  In those moments of her captivity when I was not directly watching her she wrote a great thick book: Fond Thoughts for our German Daughters on the Occasion of their Reception into Adulthood. But I managed to intercept it in time and incinerate it in the oxy-hydrogen compressor.

  I had at last succeeded in separating soul from body, and secured it in the flask, but my suspicions were aroused one day when I noticed an odd smell of goat’s milk, and before I was able to readjust the Hertz Oscillator which had obviously stopped working for a few moments, the catastrophe had occurred and my anima pastoris had irrevocably escaped.

  I had immediate resort to the most powerful means of luring it back: I hung a pair of pink flannel knickers (Llama Brand) out on the window-sill, alongside an ivory backscratcher and a volume of poetry bound in cyanide-blue and embellished on the cover with golden knobs, but it was all in vain!

  I had recourse to the laws of occult telenergy – again it was to no avail! A distilled soul is hardly likely to allow itself to get caught! And now it’s floating freely about in space, teaching the innocent souls of other planets the infernal secrets of female handicrafts: I found today that it had even managed to crochet a new ring round Saturn.

  That really was the last straw. I thought things through, and cudgelled my brain for a solution until I came up with two possibilities: either to use deliberate provocation, as in the case of Scylla, or to act in an opposite sense, like Charybdis.

  You are familiar with that brilliant statement by the great Johannes Müller: ‘When the retina of the eye is stimulated by light, pressure, heat, electricity or any other irritation, the corresponding sensations are not specifically those of light, pressure, heat, electricity etc., but merely sensations of sight; and when the skin is illuminated, pressed, bombarded with sound or electrified, only feeling and its concomitants are generated.’ This irrefutable law holds here too – for if you apply a stimulus to the clergywife’s essential nucleus, no matter by what means, it will start crocheting; if however it is left undisturbed’ - and here the Master’s tones grew faint and hollow - ‘it merely reproduces.’

  And with these words he sank back, lifeless.

  Axel Wijkander clasped his hands together, deeply moved. ‘Let us pray, brothers. He has passed on, on to the tranquil realm. May his soul rest in peace and joy for ever!’

  Automobile

  ‘I don’t supppose you remember me, Professor! Zimt is the name, Tarquin Zimt. I was a Maths and Physics student with you a few years ago.’

  The Professor fiddled uncertainly with the visiting card, and in his embarrassment assumed an expression of recognition.

  ‘And since my route was going to take me straight through Greifswald, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity of paying you a visit.’

  Some time went by in painful silence. ‘Erm ... didn’t want to miss ...’ The Professor, with a look of disapproval, allowed his eye to survey the figure of his leather-clad visitor. ‘You must be a whaler?’ he asked with gentle mockery, tapping the young man on his sleeve.

  ‘No, no, I’m an automobilist; I am myself the proprietor of the famous marque: Zi ...’ ‘An actor, then,’ interrupted the Professor impatiently. But why did you study Maths and Physics? Changed direction, eh, my young friend? Changed direction! Well, well!’ ‘But not at all, Pro
fessor, by no means. Quite the contrary – just the opposite, as it were. I am a constructor of automobiles – motors – petrol motors – an engineer!’ ‘Ah, I understand: you assemble those fantasy images for the cinematograph. But you can hardly call that being an engineer.’ ‘No, no, I build automobiles – or horseless carriages, if you prefer. Our annual sales are already ...’ ‘My dear Mr. Zimt, I can accept neither of these names, neither automobile nor horseless carriage, for to suppose that such a machine can move of itself – that must surely be the meaning of ‘auto-mobile’ - is out of the question. For the same reason, the expression ‘horseless carriage’ is equally meaningless’.

  ‘What do you mean, cannot move of itself? In ten year’s time, perhaps, we shall have no other means of transport. Factories are springing up everywhere, and just because there don’t happen to be any automobiles in Greifswald, it doesn’t...’

  ‘You’re a fantasist, young man: the ground is slipping away from under your feet. Have you taken up Spiritualism? It really is the most regrettable sign of the times to have to be continually putting up with the spectre of the perpetuum mobile raising its ugly head. As if the laws of Physics just didn’t exist. Pitiful, it really is pitiful!

  And to think that you, so recently my own student, could disown the clear and rational method of our science in favour of chasing after the stuffy, febrile fantasies of crude and thoughtless empiricism! Oh yes, city life these days may well have a debilitating effect on the intellectual capacity of our Youth, but it’s still a mighty step to the mad idea – the absurd superstition – that you could actively propel a carriage using petrol engines; or so at least you want me to believe!’ And the Professor polished furiously at his spectacles. Tarquin Zimt was at a complete loss.

  ‘But for Heaven’s sake, Professor! You’re surely not trying to deny the existence of the motor-car? When there are already so many thousands actually on the road? When every month heralds a new make? Why, I have myself driven all the way here from Florence in my own automobile – a 50 h.p. ‘Zimt’, a vehicle I designed and constructed myself. Take a look out of the window, please, and you will see it outside your door. For Heaven’s sake, I mean, for Heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Omnia mea mecum porto’ as the Latin will have it, my young friend. I see no sufficient reason to look out of the window: why should I, after all, since my comprehensive mathematical understanding resides in me. Why should I place any reliance on the insecure ground of sense-perceptions?

  Doesn’t that simple formula which every young school-boy knows -you can surely easily remember it too, from your own university days- tell me more – more than my own senses ever can? The formula:

  and so on! You see?’

  ‘But that’s all beside the point,’ replied the engineer with some irritation, ‘because I have myself driven in my own automobile from Florence to Greifswald, right up to your front door!’

  ’And even if the formula I’ve just quoted,’ went on the professor unperturbed, ‘probably isn’t the most appropriate to apply to the so-called cylindrical pump, in as much as the increase in surface pressure proportionate to the reduction in the arc-radius of the bearing case does not produce an increase in the value of and in so far as it is appropriate at all, reduces fuel consumption by a reduction in friction of cp0
  ‘But for Heaven’s sake, Professor...’

  ‘Pardon me! - all possible suggestion of any imaginable success in that direction in the most obvious and self-evident way. How can – let me put it in layman’s terms, for example with respect to the mechanical limitations -how can the explosions of petrol vapour mixture in rapid succession in the cylinders a, b, c, d, thus causing a constantly rising and increasingly significant heat curve, with a consequent expansion and resulting pressure on the cylinder walls, until the metal of the piston seizes immovably in the cylinder, - how can this effect be obviated, except by the continuous and substantial application of a constant supply of quantities of fresh water, sufficient for effective cooling? And with respect to the inverse effect of weight on the power generation capacity of the motor, this again makes the result of the experiment crystal clear in a negative sense. Furthermore ...’

  ‘I have driven from Florence to Greifswald’ interjected the other with dogged persistence.

  ‘Furthermore, if on the basis of the formula:

  we consider that through vibration and other oscillations detrimental to steady motion in consequence of their own particular generation of inertial forces, resulting in the undesirable creation of movement in some parts of the machine, even if these are elastic, continual changes of shape are bound to occur, so that ‘Even so, I have driven from Florence to Greifswald.’ changes of shape are bound to occur, so that ‘But – I – really – have – dri-ven from Florence to Greifs-waldl’

  The Professor glanced reprovingly at the speaker over the top of his spectacles.

  There would be nothing to stop me, on the basis of convincing mathematical formulae, from giving expression to my dubiety about your statement quite directly; but I will prefer, in the manner of the Ancient Greeks, to eschew any insult and instead merely emphasise, as Parmenides did before me, that it ill behoves the wise to ascribe any power of conviction to his own senses, let alone to those of a stranger.’

  Tarquin Zimt reflected for a moment, and then reached into a pocket and pulled out some photographs, which he handed to the Professor in silence.

  The latter cast no more than a glance at them before saying: ‘Now, do you really think, my young friend, that a few photographic images of automobiles supposedly in movement are going to be able to bring the laws of mechanics into disrepute? I will remind you, just for the sake of the similarity of the circumstances, of the pictures of animistic phenomena produced by Crookes, Lombroso, Ochorowicz and Mendeleev! People know these days precisely how to doctor such photographs by all sorts of artificial means in order to disguise the true facts. What is more, was it not Heraclitus who demonstrated by the laws of logic that at every point in its flight, mathematically speaking, an arrow is actually motionless? Now, you see. More than that, in a figurative sense, your pictures cannot prove, with the best will in the world.’

  At this point a sly thought gleamed in the engineer’s eye, and with hypocritical expression, he replied: ‘You will not, most honoured Professor, surely deny me, your most admiring former student, the request that you should at least look at my automobile, standing as it does outside your house?’

  The professor nodded assent in condescending fashion, and they both made their way into the street.

  A crowd of people had gathered around the vehicle.

  Tarquin Zimt winked at his chauffeur: ‘Ignaz! The professor would like to examine our automobil: show him the machine, please.’

  The mechanic, thinking this was a matter of a sale, launched into a hymn of praise. ‘Our ‘Zimt’ will do a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, and on the whole journey here from Florence we have had not a single breakdown. We use ...’

  ‘Enough of that, my good fellow,’ interposed the professor, with an embarrassed smile.

  The chauffeur lifted the bonnet to reveal the engine and began to point out the various components.

  ‘How now, Professor,’ enquired Tarquin Zimt in a tone of suppressed derision, ‘how do you reconcile the fact that many thousands of such vehicles are being built in the factories of Messrs Daimler, Benz, Durrkopp, Opel, Brasier, Panhard, Fiat and so on, with your assertion that these machines cannot possibly work? Anyway, Ignaz, start the motor!’

  ‘Reconcile? My young friend, I am merely an academic, and however interesting the solution to this question may be to a psychologist, I must confess it is of little moment to me to know why these factories should want to indulge in such an apparently fatuous occupation.’

  The purring of the idling engine interrupted the professor’s flow. The crowd of b
ystanders stepped back a pace.

  Tarquin Zimt grinned. ‘So you still don’t believe that the vehicle will move, Professor? I need only pull this lever, the clutch will engage, and the automobile will speed away at a hundred and fifty kilometres per hour.’

  The academic allowed himself a gentle smile. ‘Oh, you young fanatics! Nothing of the kind can possibly occur. With the force of the explosion – supposing the clutch to be secure – cylinders a, b and d will on the contrary blow up. In all probability cylinder c will be untouched, according to the formula ... now which formula is that? ... the formula ...’

  ‘Let’s go,’ cried Zimt eagerly. ‘Let her go, Ignaz!’

  The chauffeur pulled the lever.

  Bang! There was a loud, threefold explosion, and the engine stopped.

  Uproar!

  Ignaz jumps down. A long period ensues while he examines the engine. Behold! Cylinders one, two and four have blown up. Blown up so comprehensively that not even nitroglycerine inside them could have achieved such a result.

  The professor is staring into the distance with a preoccupied expression, his lips repeating the phrase, ‘wait a moment... according to the formula ... the formula ...’

  Zimt grabs him by the arm and shakes him, almost crying with rage. ‘It’s impossible, unbelievable: nothing like it has ever occurred since the invention of the automobile! It’s absolutely crazy, it’s beyond reason! I shall wire at once for some spare cylinders. This won’t do. You must convince yourself with your own eyes – you absolutely must!’

  The professor pulls himself free with a gesture of irritation.

  ‘Young man, this is going too far – you forget yourself. Do you honestly think I have any more time to waste on watching your childish experiments for a second time? Haven’t you been convinced yet? Just thank your lucky stars that it didn’t turn out any worse; machines are not things to be played about with. You see?’