The Opal, and Other Stories Page 20

  What luck, that the new prospecting right had already passed into law. How prudently and discreetly the American had provided for everything. The owners of the land under which such wealth was suddenly to be found presided pompously in the cafes, full of praise for their inventive neighbour, whom they had earlier traduced so vilely and unjustifiably.

  ‘Shame upon such slanderers!’

  Every evening they attended long meetings, and sat in conclave with the legal advisor to the Select Committee, discussing what to do next.

  ‘Quite simple! - Do everything Mr. Mackintosh does,’ was his advice. ‘Submit new building plans, as many as you like, as required by law, then demolish, demolish, demolish, so that you can get at the land as quickly as possible. There’s no other way. Simply digging about in cellars is useless and anyway illegal, according to §47a, subsection Y, Roman XXIII.’

  And so it came about.

  The suggestion put forward by one foreign engineer, too clever by half, that it would be wise to check whether Mackintosh might not have planted his gold himself at the places where it was found, in order to hoodwink the Commission, was dismissed with a condescending smile.

  Such a hammering and crashing in the streets, rafters falling, workmen shouting, the rumble of rubble-carts, and everywhere that damned wind, blowing the dust about in clouds! It was enough to drive you mad.

  The whole town was suffering from inflamed eyes: the waiting rooms of the ophthalmic clinic were bursting with patients crowding in, and a new pamphlet by Professor Weekly: On the deleterious impact of modem building processes on the human cornea was sold out in just a few days.

  Things were getting worse.

  Traffic was brought to a halt. Crowds besieged the ‘Sun’, all trying to speak to the American, to ask if he didn’t think there was bound to be gold under other buildings besides those mentioned in the plan. Military patrols made their appearance, official proclamations were pasted up on all street corners announcing that it was strictly forbidden to pull down any more houses before ministerial permission had been granted.

  The police appeared conspicuously armed: it had hardly any effect. News of dreadful cases of mental derangement started to circulate. In the suburbs a widow had climbed onto her roof in her nightdress and started to tear down the tiles, shrieking all the while.

  Young mothers staggered along the streets as if drunk; poor abandoned babes lay parched and withered in lonely rooms.

  A haze hung over all the city, dark, as if the demon Gold had spread his batwings over everything.

  At last the great day came. The magnificent edifices of the past had vanished, as if torn out of the ground, and an army of miners had replaced the bricklayers.

  Picks and shovels flashed.

  But of gold - not a trace. It must lie deeper than had been supposed.

  Then: there appeared a huge advertisement in the daily papers:

  GEORGE MACKINTOSH TO HIS DEAR ACQUAINTANCES AND THE TOWN HE HAS GROWN SO FOND OF

  Circumstances oblige me to say farewell to you all for ever. To the city I hereby donate the large captive balloon which you will see flying for the first time this afternoon from Joseph Square, and which may be used freely at any time in remembrance of me. I have found it difficult to make a final visit to everyone, so in lieu I leave in the town a grand visiting card.

  ‘But that’s absurd! To leave a visiting card in the town? Sheer nonsense! What can all that be about? Do you understand it?'

  This was the cry on everyone’s lips.

  ‘It’s odd that the American secretly sold all his property a week ago!’

  It was the photographer Maloch who eventually shed some light on this riddle. He was the first to take a flight in the aforementioned balloon, and to have a bird’s eye view of the urban devastation. His photograph of the scene was displayed in his shop window. The street was full of eager onlookers.

  What did they see?

  The white rubble of the empty building plots shone out clearly from among the dark sea of houses, outlining a jagged flourish:

  G.M.

  The American’s initials!

  For most of the property owners the blow was a shattering one, but it made no odds to the old broker Schlüsselbein. His house had been falling down anyway. He just rubbed his reddened eyes angrily and growled: ‘I always said so - Mackintosh never had a mind for anything serious.’

  Wetherglobin

  I

  Motto:

  Dulce et decorum est pro - patria mori.

  The rumour ran from mouth to mouth, from newspaper to newspaper: Professor Domitian Dredrebaisel, the world-famous bacteriologist, had made a scientific discovery of quite stupendously far-reaching consequence.

  The general opinion was that a reorganisation of the military was expected; oh yes, indeed, perhaps even a complete transformation of the armed services as we knew them. Why else would the Minister of War have been in such a hurry to summon the famous scientist to a meeting? Hm?

  And once it was known that secret stock-market syndicates had been set up to exploit the discovery and to advance Professor Dredrebaisel a large sum of money so that he could undertake an urgent study trip to Borneo (Borneo?!), there was no end of popping eyes and wagging jaws.

  ‘But I ask you, could we bring Borneo to the War Ministry?’ Herr Galizenstein, that respected stockbroker, and relative of the scientist, had replied amid gesticulations, when interviewed on the subject. ‘How could we bring Borneo to the War Ministry?! Where is Borneo, anyway?’

  The following day the newspapers repeated every charming syllable of the words of our far-sighted financier, adding that an American government expert, Mr. G. R. S. Slyfox, m.d., f.r.s., had just had an audience with Professor Dredrebaisel.

  All of which, of course, raised public curiosity to fever pitch.

  Newshawks used to bribe the clerks in the War Ministry to find out details of new inventions that had been submitted; in the course of their activities they would repeatedly unearth material that bore eloquent witness to man’s ceaseless endeavours to perfect the science of warfare. Very innovative in the opinion of experts, was, for example, a proposed submission regarding the operation of the baggage train in both war and manoeuvres that would improve the current success rate of nought percent by five (!) times.

  But the pièce de résistance, all were agreed, was the ingenious Automatic Honour Calibrator invented by Infantry Captain Gustav Braidin-er, an officer who was famous far beyond the borders of our country for his uncommonly idiosyncratic conception of the word of honour. Just imagine, an appliance, a clockwork mechanism that any lieutenant can operate without previous experience or instruction, in brief a power-driven, water-cooled officer’s code of honour which can be aimed in any direction at a touch: it does away with all the lengthy and tedious coaching in the prescribed honourable attitude for each individual situation, replacing it with a hygienic mechanical device.

  Many, many such things came to light, but there was no trace of any invention or discovery by Professor Dredrebaisel.

  So there was nothing for it but to be patient, to let matters ripen like fruit on the trees, and wait for the results of the expedition to Borneo.

  Months passed.

  All the rumours of the great invention had long since nodded off and left the field to new questions, when a European newspaper broke the news that Professor Dredrebaisel, and with him perhaps all his companions, had died a terrible death. All that was known was contained in a brief telegram:

  13th May. Silindong, Pakpak District, Borneo.

  (A cable from our own correspondent.)

  ‘Last night Professor Domitian Dredrebaisel was torn to pieces in his own house by a horde of orang-utans. Many servants and keepers shared his fate. His assistant, Dr. Slyfox, is missing. The Professor’s desk was smashed; the floor was covered with countless scraps of paper from his notes and articles.’

  A brief obituary for a glorious idea.

  II

 
Motto:

  Rear ends covered with brass buttons, fill turkey-cocks with pride. And what makes them even prouder: they think with their backsides.

  A letter written three years later from Borneo by a certain Dr. Ipse to a friend:

  Silindong,

  Borneo,

  lst April 1906.

  My dear old friend,

  Do you remember - years ago in Maader’s ‘Box’ it was - how we promised each other we would write at once if, in the course of our journey through life, we should ever come across anything which was beyond the experience of the common herd, anything which had an air of the extraordinary, the mysterious about it, anything, in short, which did not fit in with the banal merry-go-round of daily life?

  Well, old chap, today I am in the happy position of being able to report something of the kind, something which justifies taking you away from your alchemical tomes or whatever recondite studies you are immersed in at the moment.

  How will you feel, over there in Europe, if someone from far-away Borneo should dare to use the axe of knowledge to attack your unbounded awe of all things military at its roots?

  I would love to be able to eavesdrop on your thoughts for a while after you have read this letter, to see how soon it was before your patriotism had been washed clean of all pride in the uniform, just as the message written in sugar is washed from a gingerbread soldier that has been left out in the rain.

  Tell me, have you never wondered why it is that educated people of the same profession - yes, even barbers - call each other ‘colleagues’ (which in English means ‘people who read or study together’), whilst the turkey-cocks who form our officer class address each other as

  ‘comrade’ (from camera = room = to sleep or lounge around in the same room)? It always reminds me of a nice chapter heading used by the medieval scholar, van Helmont, ‘Of divers profound Mysteries that do lie in Words and Phrases.’

  But now I must plunge head first into the whirlpool of events.

  First of all, guess whom I met here? None other than Mr. G. R. S. Slyfox, m.d., f.r.s., former assistant to the late, lamented Professor Dredrebaisel. Just imagine! Here in Silindong, in the deepest jungle in Borneo! Mr. Slyfox was the only survivor of that ill-fated expedition. In reality it was he who had directed the experiment from the very beginning, Professor D.D. was only the front man, and immediately after the Professor’s death he left Borneo for Europe to offer the perfected version of his discovery, or rather, invention, to several states, above all to the one we all love and admire so much which had shown such great initial interest.

  I will come to the success of his trip later. For the moment suffice it to say that Mr. Slyfox is back in Silindong, poor as a church mouse and continuing his researches.

  And now, I assume, you are impatient to know what Professor D.’s, or rather, Mr. Slyfox’ invention actually consists of.

  Admit it. You are, aren’t you? Well then:

  In decades of studying the inoculation statistics Mr. Slyfox had observed that, in areas where the smallpox vaccine was no longer taken from humans but from calves, there was a marked increase in the urge to defend the fatherland, even when there was not the slightest necessity.

  In Mr. Slyfox’ inventive mind it was only one step from this observation to his later, epoch-making experiments.

  With the unerring judgment of an American, for whom nothing is sacred, he immediately connected the above-mentioned symptom with the inferior mental capacity of calves, and this provided the basis for a series of experiments.

  His very first tests, using a number of specially selected surgically treated rams (those that are normally called ‘wethers’), produced outstanding results. And if, in addition, the vaccine derived from such wethers (so-called Wetherglobin A) was passed through the bloodstream of one or two sloths, it became so effective that, when injected into youths with a natural low patriotism quotient, it produced a kind of primary patriotic frenzy within a very short time.

  In individuals with a hereditary tendency to patriotism, this state rapidly developed into incurable, galloping patriomania.

  The profound changes that were also brought about in the aesthetic sensibilities of the inoculee can perhaps best be demonstrated by the case of one of our most respected cavalry poets who, after inoculation, opened his volume of poems with the lines:

  O blade at my left side - aah,

  A-gleaming as a I ride - aah.

  etc., etc.

  But to return to Mr. Slyfox: initially, as you will be aware, the government was extremely interested in the invention, which was to be put out under Professor Dredrebaisel’s name, and a syndicate had advanced the costs of the expedition.

  Silindong, in the middle of the most impenetrable jungle of Borneo, is the home of the orang-utan, and as quickly as possible around two hundred such apes were captured and immediately injected with Wetherglobin simplex A.

  Mr. Slyfox maintained that the enrichment with lymphatic secretions, which came from passing the substance through sloths, would be, given the rarity of these animals, much too expensive for its mass use in the armed forces. He hoped that the characteristic of the sloth which produced the strengthening of the vaccine - its surplus stupidity - could be replaced, perhaps even improved, by the great ape’s innate qualities.

  Of course, no one could have foreseen the fateful consequences of locking up so many strong animals together.

  The night of terror, in the course of which the orangutans smashed their cages, and everthing else, to smithereens and killed Professor D.D. and their Malay keepers, almost cost Mr. Slyfox his life too; it was only by a miracle that he escaped.

  After they had finished destroying the camp, the orangutans held a meeting lasting several days, the purpose of which was at first a complete mystery but later highlighted the effects of Wetherglobin and everything connected with it.

  From his hiding place the American had been able to observe how the apes, after endless palaver, had chosen one of the group as leader - it was the one which, even when they were imprisoned, had struck everybody as being completely gaga - and had then taken some gold (!) paper they had found in a broken box and stuck it on its backside.

  The scene which then gradually unrolled before the American’s eyes was equally calculated to arouse amazement.

  The orang-utans formed up in platoons with sticks and branches, or whatever they could get hold of, over their shoulders, and set off, marching upright in close formation along the jungle paths, with their leader, gold backside gleaming and full of his own importance, a short distance in front. From time to time he would bark out:

  ‘Gwaaah-gwek! Gwaaah-gwek!’

  which would send them all into a kind of black ecstasy.

  An oddly grumpy expression would come over their features, they would jerk their faces to the left and stamp the ground with their heels like maniacs as they marched.

  It must have been an unforgettable sight. ‘For a few moments,’ these were Mr. Slyfox’ own words, ‘I felt I was no longer in the jungle, but somewhere quite different, on some parade ground in Europe.’

  And later, when I saw how an objector was arrested and one of the apes stood on a leather hat-box and gave such a deafening performance that eventually even this stubborn individualist was seized by ‘primary patriotic fervour’, well, the new ideas came simply flooding in.

  These apes, so I reasoned, have nothing to model themselves on, and yet they have come up with the idea of decorating their rear ends with gold to make a warlike impression, and they have hit upon institutions which, in the light of my research I now know must be the result of the effect of substances similar to Wetherglobin clouding the brain, whether injected or produced by the body itself, where their development is encouraged by hereditary bigotry.

  I will deliberately refrain, my dear old friend, from taking Slyfox’ train of thought any farther, if for no other reason than so as not to deny you the subtle pleasure of working it out for yourself.

&
nbsp; And would you not have to agree with me if I were to maintain that the arrogance of the turkey-cocks has nothing to do with true patriotism and everything to do with the desire to impress ‘harlots’ of both sexes, with a kind of capercaillie’s courtship display?

  Or is it really possible that two such as us, whose friendship has weathered into a union of souls, could have different opinions on such a fundamental truth, even for a fraction of a second?

  And even if that were the case, would it not really be sufficient to call to mind the average level of culture of the ‘turkey-cocks’; of course, I am thinking of those of a particular great power.

  But away with such speculation. I was going to tell you what the attitudes of those states was to whom Mr. Slyfox offered Wetherglobin.

  One gave a curt refusal; they wanted to observe the effect in other countries first.

  The other replied, informally through an intermediary as usual, to the effect that, thanks to the traditional loyalty to the royal family, to quotations and patriotic songs learnt off by heart at an early age, as well as to cleverly designed and brightly coloured children’s toys etc., the vast majority of its population was already in a satisfactory condition. A programme of vaccination such as the one proposed, especially since it was no longer guaranteed by the name of the unfortunate Professor Dredrebaisel, seemed, therefore, premature. Added to that, in the opinion of experts it had not been conclusively proved that Wetherglobin would not, like other toxins, after some time lead to the production of antitoxins in the blood which would have the opposite effect.

  They would, however, naturally continue to follow Mr. Slyfox’ experiments with keen interest and remained, etc., etc. So Mr. Slyfox was left high and dry and had no choice but to continue his experiments on all kinds of beasts over here.

  And I’m assisting him.

  Even if, contrary to expectation, success has so far eluded us, we

  are determined to catch a rhinoceros and inject it with Wetherglobin. That is certain - Mr. Slyfox would bet his bottom dollar on it - to convince all the sceptics.