The Martian Epic by Octave Joncquel & Théo Varlet

Author:Octave Joncquel & Théo Varlet
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2011-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

July 1. The muted demoralization that I have omitted to mention until now, because of its vague and ungraspable character, and because it has not been expressed in words, is making troubling progress. Something serious is going on at Chamonix, if I read Leduc’s concerned attitude correctly. He mutters to himself about the insubordination that is rife down there, especially among the aviators. Since the spring, he avows, one might think that they have been subject to the contagion of the de-civilized atmosphere in which they undertake their exploratory expeditions. Stocks of wine, canned food and biscuits, recovered from the ruins of Lyon, and which their leader ordered to be stored in Chamonix, have been retained by them and consumed in secret orgies in which the inhabitants of the lower station participated. Since then, their appetite for meat has revived and the Jovian Nutriment is no longer sufficient for them. The announcement of an expedition in which they have been instructed to take part has been greeted by general protests, and it required all Leduc’s authority to force them to consent to make the necessary preparations.

At Mont Blanc itself, a singular nervousness is increasing. The population of artists, in particular, is manifesting disturbing symptoms. Nibot and the majority of the painters have abandoned their brushes; the writers openly repeat an opinion that drew a contemptuous exclamation from me shortly after my arrival in Amiens, at a salon in the Rue des Trois-Cailloux: “Why bother, since there’s no longer an audience?” The women, especially have changed; they organize dances on a daily basis, not only in the Bunkers but at Chamonix—and they are careful not to invite Raymonde and me, for they sense our disapproval of these new mores. It has even reached the scientists; the insufficiency of their laboratories and libraries, and the installation’s discomforts, provoke fits of bad temper that degenerate into bitter disputes—and the Abbé Romeux has great difficulty calming these outbreaks and re-establishing an ephemeral harmony.

As for Raymonde and myself, love preserves us from the contagion; we are closer than ever, and we derive our scorn for death and the new calamities with which the future seems replete from the notion that we shall suffer them together. Nevertheless, we too feel a kind of bizarre enervation, and sudden fits of apprehension without any definite cause—a secret anguish that translates into a sharp desire to be somewhere else. It seems to us that we have been stuck in the cold of high altitudes for a year, and that we are reawakening from that lethargy, weary of the monotony of spending our lives shuttling between Mont Blanc and Chamonix, weary of the ever-present faces of our fellow detainees, avid to see other people, avid to rediscover new horizons, even on the devastated Earth.

It seems to us both that occult and evil influences are lurking all around us, in the atmosphere of the Bunkers. We have decided today to join Leduc’s expedition, if he will allow it.

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