The Author Talks to Himself
‘You’re going to leave it there like that?’ the author’s inner voice piped up at this point.
‘What do you mean?’ the writer asked a little uncertainly.
‘You’re letting Mr Povondra die like this?’
‘Well,’ the author defended himself; I don’t like doing it but … After all, Mr Povondra has reached a ripe old age; let’s say he’s quite a bit over seventy …’
‘And you’re leaving him in this mental agony? You won’t even tell him, granddad, things aren’t quite as bad really; the world isn’t going to perish from the Newts; mankind will be saved, and you’ll live to see it? Can’t you please do something for him?’
‘All right, I’ll send the doctor to him,’ suggested the author. ‘The old gentleman’s probably got a nervous fever; at his age, of course, this can easily lead to pneumonia but maybe, God willing, he’ll pull through; perhaps he’ll live to dandle little Mary on his knee and question her on what she learned at school … The joys of old age, why yes; let the old gentleman have the joys of old age!’
‘Some joys,’ the inner voice jeered. ‘He’ll clasp that child to him in his old arms, frightened that she too might one day have to flee from the rushing waters which will inexorably drown the whole world; he’ll knit his bushy eyebrows in terror and whisper: I did all that, Mary dear, I did all that… Listen, do you really want to let all mankind perish?’
The author frowned. ‘Don’t ask me what I want. Do you suppose / am making the continents crumble into dust, do you suppose / wanted this kind of ending? It is simply the logic of events; how can I interfere with it? I did what I could; I warned people in good time; that X, that was partly me. I preached: don’t give the Newts weapons or high explosives, stop that hideous trade in salamanders, and so on - you know what happened. Everybody always had a thousand perfectly sound economic and political arguments why this wasn’t possible. I’m not a politician nor an economist; how could I convince them? So what’s to be done? The world will probably disintegrate and become inundated - but at least it will do so for universally accepted political and economic reasons, at least it will do so with the aid of science, engineering and public opinion, with the application of all human ingenuity! No cosmic catastrophe - just national, power-political, economic and other reasons. What can you do against that?’
The inner voice was silent for a while. ‘And aren’t you sorry for mankind?’
‘Hold it, not so fast! No one’s saying the whole of mankind has to perish. The Newts only need more coasts on which to live and lay their eggs. Let’s say that instead of compact continents they’ll shape the dry land into long spaghetti, so they’ll have the maximum coastlines. Let’s say that some people will survive on those strips of dry land, all right? And that they’ll make metals and other manufactures for the salamanders. After all, the Newts can’t work with fire themselves, see?’
‘So men will serve the Newts.’
‘That’s right, if you want to call it that. They’ll simply work in their factories as they are doing now. They’ll just have different masters. When all’s said and done, it mightn’t be all that different …’
‘And you’re not sorry for mankind?’
‘For God’s sake leave me alone! What can I do? It’s what people wanted; they all wanted to have Newts, commerce wanted them, and industry and engineering, the statesman wanted them and the military gentlemen did. Even young Povondra said so: we are all responsible for it. Of course, I am sorry for mankind! But I was most sorry for it when I watched it rushing headlong to its own ruin. It’s enough to make you want to scream, looking back at it now. Scream and raise your hands as a man might when he sees a train running on to the wrong track. Too late to stop it. The Newts will go on multiplying, they’ll go on reducing the old continents piece by piece … Don’t you remember how Wolf Meynert proved that man must make room for the Newts, and only the salamanders will establish a happy, uniform and homogeneous world …’
‘For Christ’s sake, Wolf Meynert! Wolf Meynert’s an intellectual. Have you ever known anything too horrible, too murderous or too nonsensical for an intellectual not to want to seize on it for the purpose of regenerating the world? Leave it at that. Do you know what little Mary is doing at this moment?’
‘Little Mary? I suppose she’s playing in VySehrad. You must be quiet, she’s been told, granddad’s sleeping. She doesn’t know what to do and is terribly bored …’
‘So what’s she doing?’
‘I’ve no idea. Probably trying to touch the tip of her nose with the tip of her tongue.’
‘There you are. And you’d let something like a new Flood overcome her?’
‘Stop it now! D’you think I can work miracles? What must be will be. Let everything take its inexorable course! There’s some kind of consolation even in this: that whatever is happening follows its own inevitability and its own law.’
‘Wouldn’t it be possible to stop the Newts somehow?’
‘It wouldn’t. There are too many of them. Room’s got to be made for them.’
‘Couldn’t they be made to die out somehow? Maybe by some new disease or through degeneration …’
‘Too facile, old chap. Why should Nature put right what man has messed up? There you are, even you don’t believe any longer that men will help themselves. In the end you’d like to rely on mankind being saved by someone or something! Let me ask you this; do you know who even now, with one-fifth of Europe inundated, is supplying the Newts with high explosives and torpedoes and drills? Do you know who is feverishly working in laboratories night and day to discover even more efficient machines and substances to blow up the world? Do you know who is lending money to the Newts, who is financing this End of the World, this whole new Flood?’
‘I do. Every factory in the world. Every bank. Every country.’
‘So there you are. If it was merely a case of Newts against people something might perhaps be done; but people against people - that’s something you cannot stop.’
‘Hold on - people against people! That gives me an idea. Perhaps in the end we might get Newts against Newts.’
‘Newts against Newts? How do you mean?’
‘For instance … once the salamanders have become too numerous they might squabble amongst themselves for some little piece of coast, for some bay or something; next they’ll be fighting together for bigger and better coasts; and in the end they’ll have to fight for world coasts - don’t you think? Newts against Newts! How’s that? Wouldn’t that be the logic of history?’
‘Oh no, that won’t do. Surely Newts can’t fight Newts. That would go against nature. Surely the Newts are one genus.’
‘So are men one genus, old chap. And, as you’ve seen, it doesn’t stop them. One genus, and look at all the things they’re fighting over! No longer over somewhere to live, but for power, for prestige, for influence, for glory, for markets and heaven knows what else! So why shouldn’t salamanders fight amongst themselves, for instance for prestige?’
‘But why should they do so? What would they get out of it?’
‘Nothing, except possibly that one lot would temporarily have more coasts and more power than another lot. And after a while it would be reversed.’
‘And why should one lot have more power than another? Surely they are all equal, they are all Newts; they all have the same skeleton, they are equally ugly and equally mediocre. So why should they kill each other off? In the name of what would they be fighting each other?’
‘Just leave them alone; something’s bound to crop up. How’s this: one lot’s living on the western coast and another on the eastern: they could fight each other under the banner of West against East. Here you have the European salamanders and down there the African; it would be unnatural if sooner or later the ones didn’t want to be something more than the others! So they’ll want to prove it to them in the name of civilisation, or expansion, or I don’t know what: some ideological
or political reasons will always be able to be found to make the Newts of one coast slit the throats of the Newts of another. The salamanders have the same civilisation as us, old chap; they won’t be short of power-political, economic, legal, cultural or other arguments.’
‘And they’ve got weapons. Don’t forget that they’re superbly armed.’
‘Oh yes, they’ve got heaps of arms. So there you are. Just think: aren’t they bound to learn from man how history is made?’
‘Wait a minute, wait a minute!’ (The author has leapt to his feet and has begun to pace his study.) ‘You’re right: it would be unnatural for them not to learn from man! I’m beginning to see it. You need only look at the map of the world … damn, where is that map of the world?’
‘I can see it.’
‘Right then. Here’s your Atlantic with the Mediterranean and the North Sea. Over here we’ve got Europe and over there is America… So here is the cradle of culture and modern civilisation. Somewhere here the ancient Atlantis lies drowned …’
‘And now the Newts are drowning a new Atlantis for us.’
‘That’s just it. And here you have the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The ancient, mysterious Orient, old chap. The cradle of mankind, it is said. Somewhere here, east of Africa, the mythical Lemuria lies beneath the waves. Here is Sumatra, and a little to the west of it …’
‘… the tiny island of Tana Masa. The cradle of the Newts.’
‘That’s it. And there King Salamander reigns, the spiritual head of the salamanders. Here Captain van Toch’s tapa-boys are still found, the original semi-savage Pacific Newts. In short, their Orient, see? That whole area is now called Lemuria, whereas that other region, the civilised, Europeanised and Americanised, modern and technologically advanced region is Adantis. There the dictator is the Chief Salamander, a great conqueror, engineer and soldier, the Genghis Khan of the Newts, the destroyer of continents. A terrific personality, old chap.’
(‘Listen, is he really a Newt?’)
(‘No. The Chief Salamander is a human. His real name is Andreas Schultze and during the World War he was a sergeant-major somewhere.’)
(‘That explains it!’)
(‘Well, yes. So now you’ve got it.’) All right, then: here’s Atlantis and here is Lemuria. This division has geographical, administrative, cultural reasons …’
‘… and national ones. Don’t forget the national reasons. The Lemurian salamanders speak pidgin English while the Atlantian ones speak Basic English.’
‘Very well. In the course of time the Atlantians work their way through the Suez Canal into the Indian Ocean …’
‘Naturally. The classic road to the East.’
‘Correct. On the other hand, the Lemurian Newts are pushing past the Cape of Good Hope to the west coast of Africa. Because they’re claiming that all Africa belongs to the Lemurians.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Their slogan is Lemuria for the Lemurians, foreigners out, and so on. A gulf of mistrust and ancient enmity opens between Atlantians and Lemurians. Enmity of life and death.’
‘In other words, they become nations.’
‘Right. The Atlantians despise the Lemurians and call them dirty savages. The Lemurians for their part hate the Atlantian Newts and regard them as imperialists, western devils and violators of ancient, pure and original Newtdom. The Chief Salamander demands concessions on the Lemurian coasts, allegedly in the interests of trade and civilisation. The venerable old King Salamander, however reluctantly, has to give in; he is simply less well armed. In Tigris Bay, not far from where Baghdad stood, the balloon goes up: native Lemurians raid an Atlantian concession and kill two Atlantian officers, allegedly for some nationalistic insult. As a result…’
‘… war breaks out. Naturally.’
‘Yes, a world war of Newts against Newts.’
‘In the name of Culture and Justice.’
‘And in the name of Genuine Newtdom. In the name of National Glory and Greatness. The slogan is: it’s them or us. The Lemurians, armed with Malayan krises and Yogi daggers, mercilessly slit the throats of the Atlantian invaders; in return the more advanced Atlantians, with their European education, release poisonous chemicals and cultures of lethal bacteria into the Lemurian seas - and so successfully that all the world oceans are infested. The sea is infected with an artificial culture of gill pest. And that, old chap, is the end. The Newts become extinct.’
‘All of them?’
‘Every one of them. They’ll be an extinct race. All that’s left of them is that ancient Oeningen imprint of Andrias Scheuchzeri.’
‘And what about the humans?’
‘The humans? Oh yes, the humans. Well, they gradually start coming down from the mountains to the shores of what remains of the continents, but the ocean will stink for a long time yet from the decomposition of the Newts. The continents will slowly grow in size again with fluvial deposits, the sea will gradually retreat inch by inch, and everything will be almost as it used to be. A new legend will arise of a Great Flood sent by God upon a sinful humanity. And there will be stories of drowned mythical lands said to have been the cradle of human culture; there will perhaps be legends about some country called England or France or Germany …’
‘And then?’
‘… I don’t know how it goes on.’
Other Books by Karel Čapek Available from Catbird Press
TOWARD THE RADICAL CENTER: A Karel Čapek Reader. Edited by Peter Kussi. Foreword by Arthur Miller. Čapek’s best plays, stories, and columns take us from the social contributions of clumsy people to dramatic meditations on mortality and commitment. This volume includes the first complete English translation of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the play that introduced the literary robot. paper, cloth, 416 pp.
TALES FROM TWO POCKETS. Translated by Norma Comrada. Čapek’s unique approaches to the mysteries of justice and truth are full of twists and turns, the ordinary and the extraordinary, humor and humanism. paper, 365 pp.
APOCRYPHAL TALES. Translated by Norma Comrada. This collection of short stories contains surprising approaches to some of the great events and figures of history, myth, and literature. paper, 192 pp.
THREE NOVELS: Hordubal, Meteor, An Ordinary Life. Translated by M. & R. Weatherall. This trilogy of novels approaches the problem of mutual understanding through various kinds of storytelling. “Čapek’s masterpiece.” —Chicago Tribune paper, 480 pp.
TALKS WITH T. G. MASARYK. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. Never have two such important world figures collaborated in a biography. Masaryk (1850-1937) was the original Philosopher-President who founded Czechoslovakia in 1918, an important inspiration for Vaclav Havel. paper, 256 pp.
To order, call 800-360-2391 or e-mail
[email protected]. Or send the appropriate amount plus $3 for shipping (total) to Catbird Press, 16 Windsor Road, North Haven, CT 06473.
Karel Čapek, War With the Newts
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