Krakatit/Chapter 48
CHAPTER XLVIII
Daimonstarted the engine and jumped into the car. “We shall be there in a moment.” The car dropped down from the Hill of Temptation into a broad valley, flew through a silent night, flashed past a number of country houses and drew up in front of a long wooden house surrounded by alders; it looked like an old mill. Daimon sprang out of the car and led Prokop to the foot of some wooden steps, but here their path was barred by a man with his collar turned up. “The password?” he asked. “One Piece,” said Daimon and removed his goggles. The man stepped back and Daimon hurried on. They came into a large, low room, which looked like a schoolroom; two rows of seats, a platform, a desk and a blackboard. The only difference was that the place was full of smoke and noise. The benches were crammed with people who were wearing their hats. They were all quarrelling with one another; some red-haired lout was shouting something from the platform, while at the desk there stood a dry, pedantic old man, desperately ringing a bell.
Daimon went straight up to the platform and mounted it. “Comrades,” he cried, and his voice was as inhuman as that of a seagull. “I have brought some one to you. Comrade Krakatit.” There was a dead silence and Prokop felt himself seized and mercilessly examined by fifty pairs of eyes. As if in a dream, he stepped on to the platform and looked round the smoky room not knowing what to do. “Krakatit. Krakatit,” there resounded below and the noise grew into a shout: “Krakatit! Krakatit! Krakatit!” In front of Prokop there was standing a beautiful tousled girl who gave him her hand: “Good luck, comrade!” a brief, hot pressure, eyes with a burning glance which promised everything, and immediately afterwards a dozen other hands: rough, firm and dried up by the heat, moist and cold, spiritualized. Prokop found himself surrounded by a chain of hands which seized his own. “Krakatit! Krakatit!”
The pedantic old man rang his bell like a madman. When this failed to achieve anything he rushed up to Prokop and shook his hand; it was dry and leathery, as if made of parchment, and behind his cobbler’s glasses there shone an enormous joy. The crowd roared with enthusiasm and then grew quiet. “Comrades,” said the old man, “you have greeted Comrade Krakatit with spontaneous delight . . . with spontaneous and living delight, delight which I should also like to express in my capacity of president. We also have to greet President Daimon . . . and to thank him. I invite Comrade Krakatit to take his seat . . . as a guest . . . in the president’s chair. I invite the delegates to declare whether the meeting is to be presided over by me . . . or by President Daimon.”
“Daimon!”
“Mazaud!”
“Daimon!”
“Mazaud! Mazaud!”
“To the devil with your formalities. Mazaud,” cried Daimon. “You are presiding and that’s enough.”
“The meeting continues,” cried the old man. “Delegate Peters has the floor.”
The red-headed man again began to address the meeting. It appeared that he was making an attack on the English Labour Party, but nobody took any notice of him. All eyes were resting on Prokop. There in the corner were the large, dreamy eyes of a consumptive; the bulging, blue ones of some old, bearded gentleman; the round and glittering glasses of a professor; sharp little eyes peering out of great clots of grey hair; careful, hostile, sunken, childish, saintly and base eyes. Prokop’s glance wandered about the tightly packed benches. Suddenly he looked away sharply as if he had burnt himself; he had encountered the glance of the tousled girl, a glance which could have only one meaning. He looked instead at an extraordinarily bald head beneath which hung a narrow coat; it was impossible to tell whether the creature was twenty or fifty years old, but before he had decided the point the whole head was furrowed by a broad, enthusiastic and respectful smile. One look tormented him the whole time; he looked for it among the others but could not find it.
Delegate Peters stutteringly finished his speech and sank down on to a bench, very red in the face. All eyes were fixed on Prokop in tense and compelling expectation. Mazaud muttered a few formal words and bent down to Daimon. There was a breathless silence, and then Prokop rose to his feet, not knowing what he was going to do. “Comrade Krakatit has the floor,” announced Mazaud, rubbing his dry hands.
Prokop looked round him with dazzled eyes: What ought he to do? Speak? Why? Who were these people? He caught sight of the gentle eyes of the consumptive, the severe and scrutinizing gleam of spectacles, blinking eyes, curious and strange eyes, the bright, melting glance of the beautiful girl who in her absorption had opened her hot, sinful lips. In the front bench the bald and furrowed little man hung upon his words with attentive eyes. Prokop gave him a smile.
“Friends,” he began quietly and as if in a dream, “last night . . . I paid a tremendous price. I lived through . . . and lost . . .” He made an effort to pull himself together. “Sometimes one experiences . . . such pain that . . . that it ceases to be one’s own. You open your eyes and see. The universe is overcast and the earth holds her breath in agony. The world must be redeemed. You would be unable to bear your pain if you only suffered alone. You have all gone through hell, you all”
He looked round the room; everything had become fused into a sort of dully glowing subterranean vegetation. “Where have you got Krakatit?” he asked, suddenly irritated. “What have you done with it?”
The old Mazaud carefully took up the porcelain relic and put it into his hand. It was the very box which he had once left in his laboratory hut near Hybsmonka. He opened the lid and dug with his fingers into the granulated powder, rubbed it, triturated it, smelt it, put a speck of it on his tongue. He recognized its strong, astringent bitterness and tasted it with delight. “That’s good,” he said with relief and pressed the precious object between his palms, as if he were warming on it his numbed hands.
“It is you,” he said under his breath, “I know you; you are an explosive element. Your moment will come and you will liberate everything. That’s good.” He looked about uneasily from under his eyebrows. “What do you want to know? I only understand two things: The stars and chemistry. It’s beautiful . . . the endless stretches of time, the eternal order and steadfastness, the divine architecture of the universe. I tell you . . . there’s nothing more beautiful. But what do I care about the laws of eternity? Your moment will come and you will explode. You will liberate love, pain, thought, I don’t know what. Your greatest triumph will last only for a second. You are not part of the endless order or of the millions of light years. Explode with the most lofty flame. Do you feel yourself shut in? Then burst to pieces the mortar. Make a place for your sole moment. That’s good.”
He himself did not clearly understand what he was saying, but he was carried on by an obscure impulse to express something which immediately evaded him again. “I . . . I’m only a chemist. I know matter and . . . understand it; that’s all. Matter is broken up by air and water, splits, ferments, rots, burns, absorbs acid or disintegrates; but never, you hear, never with all that gives up what it contains. Even if it goes through the whole cycle, even if some fragment of earth becomes incorporated in a plant and then in living flesh and then becomes a cell in the brain of a Newton, dies with him and again disintegrates, it still does not give up its power. But if you compel it . . . by force . . . to split up and liberate its strength, then it explodes in a thousandth of a second, then at last it exercises the force which it contains. And perhaps it was not even asleep; it was only bound, suffocated, struggling in the darkness and waiting for its moment to come. To release everything! That is its right. I, I must release everything. Have I not only to expose myself to corrosion and wait . . . ferment in an unclean way . . . disintegrate and then . . . all at once . . . release the whole man? Best of all . . . best of all in one supreme moment . . . and through everything. . . . For I believe that it is good to release everything. Whether it’s good or bad. Everything in me is interfused; good and bad and the highest. That is the redemption of man. It doesn’t lie in anything which I have done, it’s become a part of me . . . like a stone in a building. And I must fly to pieces . . . by force . . . like an explosive charge. And I won’t ask what it is that I may be bursting. There’s a need in me . . . to liberate the highest.”
He struggled with words, endeavouring to express the inexpressible, lost it with every word, furrowed his brow and examined the faces of his listeners to see if anyone had any idea of what he was trying and failing, to express. He found a glowing sympathy in the clear eyes of the consumptive, and concentrated effort in the entranced blue ones of the shaggy giant at the back. The shrivelled little man drank in his words with the complete devotion of a believer, and the beautiful girl, half lying down, received them with tender shudderings of her body. But the other faces gaped at him unsympathetically, inquiringly, or with increasing indifference. Why exactly was he talking to them?
“I have lived through,” he continued hesitatingly and already somewhat irritated, “I have lived through . . . as much as a man can live through. Why am I telling you this? Because that alone is not enough for me, because . . . so far I am not redeemed; the highest was not in it. That’s . . . buried in a man like energy in matter. You must disturb matter to make it release its force. You must free man, disturb him, split him up for him to flame up to his highest. Ah, that would . . . that would be too much . . . for him not to find that . . . he had reached . . . that. . .”
He began to stammer, became morose, threw down the box containing the Krakatit and sat down.