The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 9, 1926, Page 12

~~ { i Hy Hf THE BE WHILE I return in the darkness, steady at my wheel and hurling through the night— and the sides of the road sweep past me with their phosphorescent trees and white telegraph wires—I think-of the ball at the palace of Ghest. Luxury, gold, gold. It was a golden fete, and all the women were dressed in golden ¢os- tumes. In that gigantic hall the light shattered itself against this splendor, a brasier of gems and warmly painted faces, diadems, aigrettes and wings of gold, and bodies like ingots of gold .in groups and rows and masses, all whirl- jing..: A.concentric swarm of golden bees mak- ng smerry and buzzing in a transparency. of jhalos‘and glittering arabesques around a great ‘conflagration of gold. ath on ged ' In the night the black automobile. splashed. with white reflections, shoots toward the ,.wind,,, ing slopes, and misses the edge by a_hair..,A curve in the road hanging over the gulf rushes upon me, with an oak tree whose bark is like elephant hide, lit up by the headlights. I take the curve at high speed, ten inches from death, eyes and hand steady. On this curved track, suddenly and dizzily illuminated, two of my wheels must be turning on air. Then the vio- lent spinning rights itself and the car is thrown squarely upon the tarred and rubbery. miles of the cliff road. Every one of those hundreds of great ladies ——countesses, miladies, and millionairesses, with golden throats; who people the immense ballrom of the Baron de Ghest’s villa and the drawing-rooms opening like chapels on the nave of a church, was exquisite to behold, smil- ing, half-inviting, each one carnally designed in the mode (which is the only thing that car- ries the idea of perfection, down here on the Rivftra.) But the exquisite image of Carla rises before me as though reflected in the windshield, while the headlights throw upon the shadowy square ‘a sheet of white. In this sharp lid of light that } closes in, my_yision, the sweet face of Carla is formed, delicate and timid. She was not atthe | ball tonight. I think of her. He said to me, the Baron de Ghest, that king of gold, pointing at me with a sovereign finger: “The air-raid on China, tremendous affair. You!” t This nabob, this Buddha of the Golden Fete, has the air of a sportsman, clean-shaven, with his rather wasted and Anglo-Saxon face. You can’t often catch sight of him; his contempor- aries only glimpse him ‘in drawing rooms and fashionable restaurants, or at smart country clubs, or coming out of important conferences. Carried away with joy I think over what he said to me, just as the roaring of high speed subsides into low at the bottom of the paved slope. The raid on China—that meant. pub- licity, glory, money, and Carla! a Iam happy: My claxon screams out and I take the side of the road to let another car pass. I scrape the night with growing speed. All the lines of thé landscape converge in my eyes, and solid planes seem to meet at my wrists. The accelerator makes the wind stronger. Right and left the white walls of houses fly by like paper. The town. I see from the dizzy summit, in the dark sky where the moon is lost like a poor scrib-wom-" an, the houses, beginning with their roofs. AFTER the formalities of the garage, on foot | *™* awa uncaged, I reach my doorstep. My | hand.puts the key in the keyhole. I see my hand, and my:card nailed on the door—Hubert ' Allen, Aviator. I light up, and look at myself in the mirror: I have a full face, and broad shoulders. I laugh; I am glad to be alive. That fairy ball still | dances to its fiery music, But I shall go trium- phantly to China. I don’t envy that luxurious millionaire; my twenty-five years of youth de- molish his forty years of age. I am young and ' perfectly balanced. All my training of fitness _and energy, to keep my mind and muscle strong, results in this splendid vital machine _ that is myself. The. glory of my life.is in my body. Clean-cut pure.egoism, that sparkles; and an ideal in the form of a plan... - ‘ The last time that I saw Carla, day bef yesterday evening, she was wrapped in that fluffy pearl grey fur that the breath caresses. Her body was almost lost in the silky mass, her Before I begin the descerit ' YOND—By Henri Barbusse ah ee v ‘rim of that gilded whirlpool. body which I do not know. We shall be married before the trip to China if I win the Zenith Cup. Il. AT dawn. The factories massed beside the flying field, in the industrial district. Tomorrow is the day of the Zenith Cup. This black and white plain, full of smoking chimneys and covered with cinders, with its low city workshops, what a contrast with the splendor of that Coast of Joy, perfumed with the sun, or lighted at night as bright as day! The four factories which make the four cor- ners of the flying field. belong.to the Baron de Ghest, or at least, to corporations: which. he controls. Automobile. and airplane parts are made there, and‘experiments on all sorts of in- dustrial patents ‘are carried on. I seé files’ of Workingmen on their way to work before sir _ Disgorged, by the railroad station, they come sie ta Yrailroad, embankment. They are outlined. against.the sea; Each one carries a lunchbox, some-of them-carry their tools. It is a gloomy procession.- Already their heads are bowed—in the dawn! These files of working men give the plain the aspect of a battle-field, and make desolate the sea which one sees behind them. The joy of work is not here. They have no joy, they have no aim, no ideal. They are strangers to their tasks. ,.They have not even faces. And yet, together, they make everything real. Even more than the contrast between things is the contrast here between people; between thse, and the rich in the sun! Thegg is not in the whole world black and white more sharply contrasted. Poor people! I leap to the wheel. The door slams, and in the twinkling of an eye I devour with delight the fresh morning air. Ii. ARK, yawning, is busy in his laboratory.. Is he busy, with, his experiments? No; but Busy, ith. Wis, oxperimentsy, he is always e was still at the ‘edulde' BE Pouifolids” HE WHE MiWhya BuBy. He thinks about the world of fashion. This engin- eer is a man of the world. I think it is the most evolved type of the species; if you. carried him back to the mediaeval scene, he would seem unreal and made up out of literature! A clever technician—he experiments with new inventions—he puts aside all his science as soon as he can, fascinated by the gestures of smart society. .It is a fever in him... He is up in all the incalculable details:of.the chron- icle of luxury and money—and:Ghest knows that the Riviera is alive with all sorts of world- ly culture!. He struggles desperately on. the He..is a living document, always legible and:a great talker— and often strangled and wild-eyed with the embarrassment of choosing! . Upon seeing me, he first of all gets rid of a bit of professional information: s “You know, they’e invented an asphyxiating gas which will annihilate whole populations like a flash, And as for new explosives—you ought to see them, old:man!” ; lam ready for anything. I laugh. ’ | “You know,” adds Mark, “they dug up an awful scandal about the decision on the affair of the pier. . . You know, in this town which ydisn’t even a county town, there are five hun- dred automobiles. which cost, more than two hundred thousand francs. ... . Yesterday at the Casino six gamblers had-beside-them stacks of banknotes as big as dictionaries; how many- millions! ; that is going around. Thi8 ‘and that.’ ; and the other. : . . . They’re richer than you'd believe.” “All the better for them.” , “Say; do you think it will last?. . You know, at the Winters’ masquerade last Thurs- ‘day, there was a black masquer, slim as a spider. He cried, ‘You're mistaken,’ to the Baroness Shammai when'she ‘said she had black hair.’ He inspected the Lawrence pic- ture Lady Winter is so proud of and said with the air of an expert: ‘It’s so good that it could not. be worse!’ Mr. Bonneard, that. half of an old senator, declared to a group, ‘Respect is vanishing,’ and the black masquer cried: ‘Re- spect for whom? for you?’ and of course every- body roared with laughter. Qld General Bour- gienne was holding forth and said: ‘That will of her other world, and what use to refute this You ‘know that. i, rsdn eens caricature of the Baron. de Ghest. . . b - No, no ‘oné has’ an‘ “i n Me ee Sty, ides ionately mingled all the memories of myc bring us bad luck.’ The other one told hi ' ‘Touch your sword, general.’ Say, do you know that there are big stakes up on you for the Zenith Cup?” ea! | He knows a lot, that fellow. But he is as in-| satiable as an astronomer before dazzling sta-| 2? tistics. | em “I want to know.” | qa “To know what?” Dr “Everything. What one never knows. Peo-|*% ple—you guess a little—but they are locked | a and bolted.” lee “Go,on—there aren't, so, many, complica- | a tions.” gay Le “Yes! It’s stupid: « only knew!” = votebe His. chatter lifted. veils ‘from that brilliant society which is not without its charm: But | prefer my own mentality to his. haven’t:h Mmania‘for absorbing the unknown, -.And af: all people aren’t so opaque as all that; one ca! see through them. Puppets, the Baron de Ghest at the head of the list—but it’s all the same to me. I simply take. what I need of them and ‘try to treat myself right. “Goodby, Mark, keep, busy, search, old man!’ “THIS way, sir,” said the trained eto me. | we She recognized me and smiled, © I ‘fol-| th lowed her down the calm and stifled corridors. | a From the windows you could see factories, rail- | °t road embankments, the wrong side of the} ‘4 country. : Tomorrow is to be the competition for the Zenith Cup. Today I have done a thousand errands, putting things in order and seeing peo- | jit ple. I have still the pious duty which I never | bo neglect before any important attempt; a super-| we stition? Perhaps. Idon’t care. I go to see my | in Aunt Elvira who brought me up, and who for | ‘i¢ ten years has been in this insane asylum, Her} ™ insanity is quite geritle, and she can be visited like a sick child. : of I found that she:had-aged terribly» 120° “T have: thought sd ‘anich sinew dsgaay lyon | i yesterday,” she' told’ nie!” Yestefday! It was | $4 three weeks ago. But the poor woman’s only | ® days are when she sees me. Her voice is strangely tremulous. She holds her thin hands out in front of her. “Take care, Hubert, take care, my child!” | m: She shrinks before me. Her grey hair falls} sp like a ragged veil around her face whose delic- | of acy, mental illness has not destroyed. She is | 4° rigid and her righthand catches at her sterile | ‘° bosom. ee eal Her voice is moving, she looks at ine with he: too limpid eyes. I hate never seen her so much | j¢ the image of anguish and terror. cre I have an unsurmountable physical repu nance for anything abnormal and unbalance and I am on the point of runningyaway like 2/4 little boy. But her pathetic voice holds me ‘and |‘ keeps-me there, IRI an 2 at ylssioet “Tomorrow is thé Yate to°déath. We shall all, all of us run that'race. Not only you, poor child—all of us. » Nothing can be done! How terrible he is, the man of steel and gold, He will stifle us all, all, all the poor people with us. lgiiik Monster! nets Moo ss eo She mixes scraps of the apocalypse with this vision of a. race to death which she leans for- ward so attentively to see that the forgets my presence. : ; I cannot help sympathizing with a distress so deep. I do not answer. because I know, very well that she can not hear, me from the depths : | ow: stupid. ip. cs. If one} ap “et ap insanity in which it seems that she scrawls feel a tenderness invade me in which are } hood. Those two thin hands have so often and so gently saved my life! She put her bony fingers to her eyes; her petrified heart is shaken. She makes tremen- dous efforts to weep, but for ten years her eyes | oo have been dry. She is nothing but a lifeless | ce; thing that wants to revive. : Outside, I shake myself. I am sensitive to ing horrors to.the point of having gooseflesh and | thi I haven’t any taste for mystery and fantasy. | °l¢ I climb into my car and rush deliciously | down the long road like a meteor. : a (To be continued next week in the New Satur-| th day Magazine Supplement of the Daily Worker) om —the issue of Saturday, January 16.) , T