City of Endless Night Part 29

"Thus he recorded the second inspiration: 'And even as I have bred these swine, some for bacon and some for lard, so shall the German Blond Brutes be bred the super-men, some specialized for labour and some for brains.'

"These two ideas are the foundation of the kultur of our Imperial Socialism, the one idea to preserve us and the other to re-create us as the super-race. And both of these ideas we owe to this n.o.ble animal. The swine should be emblazoned with the eagle upon our flag."

As the Historian finished his eulogy, I glanced surrept.i.tiously at the faces of his listeners, and caught a twinkle in Marguerite's eyes; but the faces of the others were as serious as graven images.

Finally the Countess spoke: "Do I understand, then, that you consider the swine the model of the German race?"

"Only of the lower cla.s.ses," said the aged historian, "but not the House of Hohenzollern. We are exalted above the necessities of breeding, for we are divine."

Eyes were now turned upon me, for I was the only one of the company not of Hohenzollern blood. Unrelieved by laughter the situation was painful.

"But," said Count Rudolph, coming to my rescue, "we also seek safety in the fortified piggeries."

"Exactly," said the Historian; "so did our n.o.ble ancestor."

~4~

From the piggeries, we went to the green level where, growing beneath eye-paining lights, was a matted ma.s.s of solid vegetation from which came those rare sprigs of green which garnished our synthetic dishes.

But this was too monotonous to be interesting and we soon went above to the Defence Level where were housed vast military and rebuilding mechanisms and stores. After our guides had shown us briefly about among these paraphernalia, we were conducted to one of the sloping ramps which led through a heavily arched tunnel to the roof above.

Marguerite clung close to my arm, quivering with expectancy and excitement, as we climbed up the sloping pa.s.sage-way and felt on our faces the breath of the crisp air of the May night.

The sky came into vision with startling suddenness as we walked out upon the soft sand blanket of the roof. The night was absolutely clear and my first impression was that every star of the heavens had miraculously waxed in brilliancy. The moon, in the last quarter, hung midway between the zenith and the western horizon. The milky way seemed a floating band of whitish flame. About us, in the form of a wide crescent, for we were near the eastern edge of the city, swung the encircling band of searchlights, but the air was so clear that this stockade of artificial light beams was too pale to dim the points of light in the blue-black vault.

In antic.i.p.ating this visit to the roof I had supposed it would seem commonplace to me, and had discussed it very little with Marguerite, lest I might reveal an undue lack of wonder. But now as I thrilled once more beneath their holy light, the miracle of unnumbered far-flung flaming suns stifled again the vanity of human conceit and I stood with soul unbared and wors.h.i.+pful beneath the vista of incommensurate s.p.a.ce wherein the birth and death of worlds marks the unending roll of time.

And at my side a silent gazing woman stood, contrite and humble and the thrill and quiver of her body filled me with a joy of wordless delight.

A blundering guide began lecturing on astronomy and pointing out with pompous gestures the constellations and planets. But Marguerite led me beyond the sound of his voice. "It is not the time for listening to talk," she said. "I only want to see."

When the astronomer had finished his speech-making, our party moved slowly toward the East, where we could just discern the first faint light of the coming dawn. When we reached the parapet of the eastern edge of the city's roof, the stars had faded and pale pink streaked the eastern sky. The guides brought folding chairs from a nearby tunnel way and most of the party sat down on a hillock of sand, very much as men might seat themselves in the grandstand of a race course. But I was so interested in what the dawn would reveal beneath the changing colours of the sky, that I led Marguerite to the rail of the parapet where we could look down into the yawning depths upon the surface of German soil.

My first vision over the parapet revealed but a mottled grey. But as the light brightened the grey land took form, and I discerned a few scraggly patches of green between the torn ma.s.ses of distorted soil.

The stars had faded now and only the pale moon remained in the bluing sky, while below the land disclosed a sad monotony of ruin and waste, utterly devoid of any constructive work of man.

Marguerite, her gaze fixed on the dawn, was beginning to complain of the light paining her eyes, when one of the guides hurried by with an open satchel swung from his shoulders. "Here are your gla.s.ses," he said; "put them on at once. You must be very careful now, or you will injure your eyes."

We accepted the darkened protecting lenses, but I found I did not need mine until the sun itself had appeared above the horizon.

"Did you see it so in your vision?" questioned Marguerite, as the first beams glistened on the surface of the sanded roof.

"This," I replied, "is a very ordinary sunrise with a perfectly cloudless sky. Some day, perhaps, when the gates of this prison of Berlin are opened, we will be able to see all the sunrises of my visions, and even more wonderful ones."

"Karl," she whispered, "how do you know of all these things? Sometimes I believe you are something more than human, that you of a truth possess the blood of divinity which the House of Hohenzollern claims."

"No," I answered; "not divinity,--just a little larger humanity, and some day very soon I am going to tell you more of the source of my visions."

She looked at me through her darkened gla.s.ses. "I only know," she said, "that you are wonderful, and very different from other men."

Had we been alone on the roof of Berlin, I could not have resisted the temptation to tell her then that stars and sun were familiar friends to me and that the devastated soil that stretched beneath us was but the wasted skeleton of a fairer earth I knew and loved. But we were surrounded by a host of babbling sightseers and so the moment pa.s.sed and I remained to Marguerite a man of mystery and a seer of visions.

The sun fully risen now, we were led to a protruding observation platform that permitted us to view the wall of the city below. It was merely one vast grey wall without interruption or opening in the monotonous surface.

Amid the more troubled chaos of the ground immediately below we could see fragments of concrete blown from the parapet of the roof. The wall beneath us, we were told, was only of sufficient thickness to withstand fire of the aircraft guns. The havoc that might be wrought, should the defence mines ever be forced back and permit the walls of Berlin to come within range of larger field pieces, was easily imagined. But so long as the Ray defence held, the ma.s.sive fort of Berlin was quite impervious to attacks of the world forces of land and air and the stalemate of war might continue for other centuries.

With the coming of daylight we had heard the rumbling of trucks as the roof repairing force emerged to their task. Now that our party had become tired of gazing through their goggles at the sun, our guides led us in the direction where this work was in progress. On the way we pa.s.sed a single unfilled crater, a deep pit in the flinty quartz sand that spread a protecting blanket over the solid structure of the roof.

These craters in the sand proved quite harmless except for the labour involved in their refilling. Further on we came to another, now half-filled from a spouting pipe with ground quartz blown from some remote subterranean mine, so to keep up the wastage from wind and bombing.

Again we approached the edge of the city and this time found more of interest, for here an addition to the city was under construction. It was but a single prism, not a hundred metres across, which when completed would add but another block to the city's area. Already the outer pillars reached the full height and supported the temporary roof that offered at least a partial protection to the work in progress beneath. Though I watched but a few minutes I was awed with the evident rapidity of the building. Dimly I could see the forms below being swung into place with a clock-like regularity and from numerous spouts great streams of concrete poured like flowing lava.

It is at these building sections that the bombs were aimed and here alone that any effectual damage could be done, but the target was a small one for a plane flying above the reach of the German guns. The officer who guided our group explained this to us: these bombing raids were conducted only at times of particular cloud formations, when the veil of mist hung thick and low in an even stratum above which the air was clear. When such formation threatened, the roof of Berlin was cleared and the expected bombs fell and spent their fury blowing up the sand. It had been a futile warfare, for the means of defence were equal to the means of offence.

Our visit to the roof of Berlin was cut short as the sun rose higher, because the women, though they had donned gloves and veils, were fearful of sunburn. So we were led back to the covered ramp into the endless night of the city.

"Have we seen it all?" sighed Marguerite, as she removed her veil and gla.s.ses and gazed back blinkingly into the last light of day.

"Hardly," I said; "we have not seen a cloud, nor a drop of rain nor a flake of snow, nor a flash of lightning, nor heard a peal of thunder."

Again she looked at me with wors.h.i.+pful adoration. "I forget," she whispered; "and can you vision those things also?"

But I only smiled and did not answer, for I saw Admiral von Kufner glaring at me. I had monopolized Marguerite's company for the entire occasion, and I was well aware that his only reason for arranging this, to him a meaningless excursion, had been in the hopes of being with her.

~5~

But Admiral von Kufner, contending fairly for that share of Marguerite's time which she deigned to grant him, seemed to bear me no malice; and, as the months slipped by, I was gratified to find him becoming more cordial toward me. We frequently met at the informal gatherings in the salon of the Countess Luise. More rarely Dr. Zimmern came there also, for by virtue of his office he was permitted the social rights of the Royal Level. I surmised, however, that this privilege, in his case, had not included the right to marry on the level, for though the head of the Eugenic Staff, he had, so far as I could learn, neither wife nor children.

But Dr. Zimmern did not seem to relish royal society, for when he chanced to be caught with me among the members of the Royal House the flow of his brilliant conversations was checked like a spring in a drought, and he usually took his departure as soon as it was seemly.

On one of these occasions Admiral von Kufner came in as Zimmern sat chatting over cups and incense with Marguerite and me, and the Countess and her son. The doctor dropped quietly out of the conversation, and for a time the youthful Count Ulrich entertained us with a technical elaboration of the importance of the love pa.s.sion as the dominant appeal of the picture. Then the Countess broke in with a spirited exposition of the relation of soul harmony to ardent pa.s.sion.

Admiral von Kufner listened with ill-disguised impatience. "But all this erotic pa.s.sion," he interrupted, "will soon again be swept away by the revival of the greater race pa.s.sion for world rule."

"My dear Admiral," said the Countess Luise, "your ideas of race pa.s.sion are quite proper for the cla.s.ses who must be denied the free play of the love element in their psychic life, but your notion of introducing these ideas into the life of the Royal Level is wholly antiquated."

"It is you who are antiquated," returned the Admiral, "for now the day is at hand when we shall again taste of danger. His Majesty has--"

"Of course His Majesty has told us that the day is at hand," interrupted the Countess. "Has not His Majesty always preserved this allegorical fable? It is part of the formal kultur."

"But His Majesty now speaks the truth," replied the Admiral gravely, "and I say to you who are so absorbed with the light pa.s.sions of art and love that we shall not only taste of danger but will fight again in the sea and air and on the ground in the outer world. We shall conquer and rule the world."

"And do you think, Admiral," inquired Marguerite, "that the German people will then be free in the outer world?"

"They will be free to rule the outer world," replied the Admiral.

"But I mean," said Marguerite calmly, "to ask if they will be free again to love and marry and rear their own children."

At this nave question the others exchanged significant glances.

"My dear child," said the Countess, blus.h.i.+ng with embarra.s.sment, "your defective training makes it extremely difficult for you to understand these things."