Daimon started 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.