City of Endless Night

M >> Milo Hastings >> City of Endless Night

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For the most part I found these women unattractive and even repellent,
and yet as I walked about the level I occasionally caught fleeting
glimpses of genuine beauty of face and form, and more rarely expressions
of a seeming high order of intelligence.

This revelling multitude of men and girls was uproariously engaged in
the obvious business of enjoying themselves by means of every art known
to appeal to the mind of man--when intelligence is abandoned and moral
restraint thrown to the winds.

I wended my way among the multitude, gay with colour, noisy with chatter
and mingled music, redolent with a hundred varieties of sensuous
perfume. I came upon a dancing floor. Whirling and twisting about the
columns, circling around a gorgeous scented and iridescent fountain,
officers and scientists, chemists and physicians, each clasping in his
arms a laughing girl, danced with abandon to languorous music.

As I watched the dance I overheard two girls commenting upon the
appearance of the dancers. Whirling by in the arms of a be-medalled
officer, was a girl whose frizzled yellow hair fell about a
dun-brown face.

"Did you see that, Fedora, tanned as a roof guard and with that hair!"

"Well, you know," said the other, "it's becoming quite the fashion
again."

"Why don't you try it? Three baths would tan you adorably and you do
have the proper hair."

"Oh, yes, I have the hair, all right, but my skin won't stand it. I
tried it three years ago and I blistered outrageously."

The talk drifted to less informing topics and I moved on and came to
other groups lounging at their ease on rugs and divans as they watched
more skilful girls squirming through some intricate ballet on an
exhibition platform.

Seeing me stand apart, a milk-white girl with hair dyed pink came
tugging at my arm. Her opalescent eyes looked from out her chalky
countenance; but they were not hard eyes, indeed they seemed the eyes of
innocence. As I shook my head and rebuffed her cordial advance I felt,
not that I was refusing the proffered love of a painted woman, but
rather that I was meanly declining a child's invitation to join her
play. In haste I edged away and wandered on past endless gaming tables
where men in feverish eagerness whirled wheels of chance, while garishly
dressed girls leaned on their shoulders and hung about their necks.

Announced by shouts and shrieking laughter I came upon a noisy jumble of
mechanical amusement devices where men and girls in whirling upholstered
boxes were being pitched and tumbled about.

Beyond the noise of the childish whirligigs I came into a space where
the white ceiling lights were dimmed by crimson globes and picture
screens were in operation. It did not take long for me to grasp the
essential difference between these pictured stories and those I had seen
in the workmen's level. There love of woman was entirely absent from the
screen. Here it was the sole substance of the pictures. But unlike the
love romances of the outer world, there were no engagement rings, no
wedding bells, and never once did the face or form of a child appear.

In seating myself to see the pictures I had carefully chosen a place
where there was only room for myself between a man and one of the
supporting columns. At an interlude the man arose to go. The girl who
had been with him arose also, but he pushed her back upon the bench,
saying that he had other engagements, and did not wish her company. The
moment he was gone the girl moved over and proceeded to crowd
caressingly against my shoulder. She was a huge girl, obviously of the
labour strain. She leaned over me as if I had been a lonely child and
she a lonelier woman. Crowded against the pillar I could not escape and
so tried to appear unconcerned.

"Did you like that story?" I asked, referring to the picture that had
just ended.

"No," she replied, "the girl was too timid. She could never have won a
roof guard captain in that fashion. They are very difficult men, those
roof guard officers."

"And what kind of pictures do you prefer?" I asked.

"Quartettes," she answered promptly. "Two men and two girls when both
girls want the other man, and both men want the girl they have. That
makes a jolly plot. Or else the ones where there are two perfect lovers
and the man is elected to paternity and leaves her. I had a man like
that once and it makes me sad to see such a picture."

"Perhaps," I said, speaking in a timorous voice, "you wanted to go with
him and be the mother of his children?"

She turned her face toward me in the dim light. "He talked like that,"
she said, "and then, I hated him. I knew then that he wanted to go and
leave me. That he hadn't tried to avoid the paternity draft. Yes, he
wanted to sire children. And he knew that he would have to leave me. And
so I hated him for ever loving me."

A strange thrill crept over me at the girl's words. I tried to fathom
her nature, to separate the tangle of reality from the artificial ideas
ingrained by deliberate mis-education. "Did you ever see children? Here,
I mean. Pictures of them, perhaps, on the screen?"

"Never," said the girl, drawing away from me and straightening up till
my head scarce reached her shoulder. "And I never want to. I hate the
thought of them. I wish I never had been one. Why can't
we--forget them?"

I did not answer, and the labour girl, who, for some technical flaw in
her physique had been rejected for motherhood, arose and walked
ponderously away.

After this baffling revelation of the struggle of human souls caught in
the maw of machine-made science, I found the picture screen a dull dead
thing, and I left the hall and wandered for miles, it seemed, past
endless confusion of meaningless revelry. Everywhere was music and
gaming and laughter. Men and girls lounged and danced, or spun the
wheels of fortune or sat at tables drinking from massive steins, a
highly flavoured variety of rather ineffectual synthetic beer. Older
women served and waited on the men and girls, and for every man was at
least one girl and sometimes as many as could crowd about him. And so
they sang, and banged their mugs and sloshed their frothy beverage.

A lonely stranger amidst the jostling throngs, I wandered on through the
carnival of Berlin's Level of Free Women. Despite my longing for human
companionship I found it difficult to join in this strange recrudescent
paganism with any ease or grace.

Girls, alone or in groups, fluttered about me with many a covert or open
invitation to join in their merry-making, but something in my halting
manner and constrained speech seemed to repulse them, for they would
soon turn away as if condemning me as a man without appreciation of the
value of human enjoyment.

My constraint and embarrassment were increased by a certain sense of
guilt, a feeling which no one in this vast throng, either man or woman,
seemed to share. The place had its own standard of ethics, and they were
shocking enough to a man nurtured in a human society founded on the
sanctification of monogamous marriage. But merely to condemn this
recreational life of Germany, by likening it to the licentious freedom
that exists in occasional unrestrained amusement places in the outer
world, would be to give a very incorrect interpretation of Berlin's
Level of Free Women. As we know such places elsewhere in the world there
is always about them some tacit confession of moral delinquency, some
pretence of apology on the part of the participants. The women who so
revel in the outer world consider themselves under a ban of social
disapproval, while the men are either of a type who have no sense of
moral restraint or men who have for the time abandoned it.

But for this life in Berlin no guilt was felt, no apology offered. The
men considered it as quite a normal and proper part of their life, while
the women looked upon it as their whole life, to which they had been
trained and educated and set apart by the Government; they accepted the
role quite as did the scientist, labourer, soldier, or professional
mother. The state had decreed it to be. They did not question its
morality. Hence the life here was licentious and yet unashamed, much, as
I fancy was the life in the groves of Athens or the baths of
ancient Rome.

CHAPTER V

I AM DRAFTED FOR PATERNITY AND MAKE EXTRAORDINARY
PETITION TO THE CHIEF OF THE EUGENIC STAFF

~1~

My research was progressing nicely and I had discovered that in this
field of chemistry also my knowledge of the outer world would give me
tremendous advantages over all competitors. Eagerly I worked at the
laboratory, spending most of my evenings in study. Occasionally I
attended the educational pictures or dined on the Level of Free Women
with my chemical associates and spent an hour or so at dancing or at
cards. My life had settled into routine unbroken by adventure. Then I
received a notice to report for the annual examination at the Physical
Efficiency Laboratory. I went with some misgivings, but the ordeal
proved uneventful. A week later I received a most disturbing
communication, a bulky and official looking packet bearing the imprint
of the Eugenic Office. I nervously slit the envelope and drew forth
a letter:

"You are hereby notified that you have reached a stage of advancement in
your professional work that marks you a man of superior gifts, and,
having been reported as physically perfect you are hereby honoured with
the high privilege and sacred duties of election to paternity. Full
instructions for your conduct in this duty to the State will be found in
the enclosed folder."

In nervous haste I scanned the printed folder:

"Your first duty will be to visit the boys' school for which passport is
here enclosed. The purpose of this is to awaken the paternal instincts
that you may better appreciate and feel the holy obligation and
privilege conferred upon you. You will also find enclosed cards of
introduction to three women whom the Eugenic Office finds to be fitted
as mothers of your children. That natural selection may have a limited
play you are permitted to select only one woman from each three
assigned. Such selection must be made and reported within thirty days,
after which a second trio will be assigned you. Until such final
selection has been recorded you are expressly forbidden to conduct
yourself toward these women in an amorous manner."

Next followed a set of exacting rules for the proper deportment, in the
carrying out of these duties to which the State had assigned me.

A crushing sense of revulsion, a feeling of loathing and uncleanliness
overwhelmed me as I pushed aside the papers. Coming from a world where
the right of the individual to freedom and privacy in the matrimonial
and paternal relations was recognized as a fundamental right of man, I
found this officious communication, with its detailed instruction,
appalling and revolting.

A man cravenly clings to life and yet there are instincts in his soul
which will cause him to sell life defiantly for a mere conception of a
moral principle. To become by official mandate a father of a numerous
German progeny was a thing to which I could not and would not submit.
Many times that day as I automatically pursued my work, I resolved to go
to some one in authority and give myself up to be sent to the mines as a
prisoner of war, or more likely to be executed as a spy. Cold reason
showed me the futility of neglecting or attempting to avoid an assigned
duty. It was a military civilization and I had already seen enough of
this ordered life of Berlin to know that there was no middle ground of
choice between explicit obedience and open rebellion. Nor need I concern
myself with what punishment might be provided for this particular
disobedience for I saw that rebellion for me would mean an investigation
that would result in complete tearing away of the protecting mask of my
German identity.

But after my first tumultuous feeling subsided I realized that something
more than my own life was at stake. Already possessed of much intimate
knowledge of the life within Berlin I believed that I was in a way to
come into possession of secrets of vast and vital importance to the
world. To gain these secrets, to escape from the walls of Berlin, was a
more than personal ambition; it was an ambition for mankind.

After a day or two of deliberation I therefore decided against any rash
rebellion. Moreover, as nothing compromising was immediately required of
me, I detached and mailed the four coupons provided, having duly filled
in the time at which I should make the preliminary calls.

~2~

On the day and hour appointed I presented the school card to the
elevator operator, who punched it after the manner of his kind, and duly
deposited me on the level of schools for boys of the professional
groups. A lad of about sixteen met me at the elevator and conducted me
to the school designated.

The master greeted me with obsequious gravity, and waved me to the
visitor's seat on a raised platform. "You will be asked to speak," he
said, "and I beg that you will tell the boys of the wonderful chemical
discoveries that won you the honours of election to paternity."

"But," I protested, as I glanced at the boys who were being put through
their morning drill in the gymnasium, "I fear the boys of such age will
not comprehend the nature of my work."

"Certainly not," he replied, "and I would rather you did not try to
simplify it for their undeveloped minds, merely speak learnedly of your
work as if you were addressing a body of your colleagues. The less the
boys understand of it the more they will be impressed with its
importance, and the more ambitious they will be to become great
chemists."

This strange philosophy of education annoyed me, but I did not have time
to argue further for the bell had rung and the boys were filing in with
strict military precision. There were about fifty of them, all in their
twelfth year, and of remarkable uniformity in size and development. The
blanched skin, which marked the adult faces of Berlin, was, in the pasty
countenance of those German boys, a more horrifying spectacle. Yet they
stood erect and, despite their lack of colour, were evidently a well
nourished, well exercised group of youngsters.

As the last boy reached his place the master motioned with his hand and
fifty arms moved in unison in a mechanical salute.

"We have with us this morning," said the master, "a chemist who has won
the honours of paternity with his original thought. He will tell you
about his work which you cannot understand--you should therefore listen
attentively."

After a few more sentences of these paradoxical axioms on education, the
master nodded, and, as I had been instructed, I proceeded to talk of the
chemical lore of poison gases.

"And now," said the master, when I resumed my seat, "we will have a
review lesson. You will first recite in unison the creed of your caste."

"We are youth of the super-race," began the boys in a sing-song and well
timed chorus. "We belong to the chemical group of the intellectual
levels, being born of sires who were great chemists, born of great
chemists for many generations. It is our duty to learn while we are yet
young all that we may ever need to know, to keep our minds free from
forbidden knowledge and to resist the temptation to think on unnecessary
things. So we may be good Germans, loyal to the House of Hohenzollern
and to the worship of the old German God and the divine blood of William
the Great."

The schoolmaster, who had nodded his head in unison with the rhythm of
the recitation, now smiled in satisfaction. "That was very good," he
said. "I did not hear one faltering voice. Now you may recite
individually in your alphabetical order.

"Anton, you may describe the stages in the evolution of the super-man."

Anton, a flaxen-haired youngster, arose, saluted like a wooden soldier,
and intoned the following monologue:

"Man is an animal in the process of evolving into a god. The method of
this evolution is a struggle in which the weak perish and the strong
survive. First in this process of man's evolution came the savage, who
lived with the lions and the apes. In the second stage came the dark
races who built the so-called ancient civilizations, and fought among
themselves to possess private property and women and children. Third
came the barbarian Blond Brutes, who were destined to sire the
super-race, but the day had not yet come, and they mixed with the dark
races and produced the mongrel peoples, which make the fourth. The fifth
stage is the pure bred Blond Brutes, uncontaminated by inferior races,
which are the men, who under God's direction, built the Armoured City of
Berlin in which to breed the Supermen who are to conquer the mongrel
peoples. The sixth, last and culminating stage of the evolution of man
is the Divinity in human form which is our noble House of Hohenzollern,
descended physically from William the Great, and spiritually from the
soul of God Himself, whose statue stands with that of the Mighty William
at the portals of the Emperor's palace."

It had been a noble effort for so young a memory and as the proud master
looked at me expectantly I could do nothing less than nod my
appreciation.

The master now gave Bruno the following cue:

"Name the four kinds of government and explain each."

From the sad-eyed youth of twelve came this flow of wisdom:

"The first form of government is monarchy, in which the people are ruled
by a man who calls himself a king but who has no divine authority so
that the people sometimes failed to respect him and made revolutions and
tried to govern themselves. The second form of government is a republic,
sometimes called a democracy. It is usually co-existent with the lawyer,
the priest, the family and the greed for gold. But in reality this
government is by the rich men, who let the poor men vote and think they
have a share in the government, thus to keep them contented with their
poverty. The third form of government is proletariat socialism in which
the people, having abolished kings and rich men, attempt to govern
themselves; but this they cannot do for the same reason that a man
cannot lift himself by his shoestraps--"

At this point Bruno faltered and his face went chalky white. The teacher
being directly in front of the standing pupil did not see what had
happened, while I, with fleeting memory of my own school days,
suppressed my mirth behind a formal countenance, as the stoic Bruno
resumed his seat.

The master marked zero on the roll and called upon Conrad, next in line,
to finish the recitation.

"The fourth and last form of government," recited Conrad, "is autocratic
socialism, the perfect government that we Germans have evolved from
proletariat socialism which had destroyed the greed for private property
and private family life, so that the people ceased to struggle
individually and were ready to accept the Royal House, divinely
appointed by God to govern them perfectly and prepare them to make war
for the conquest of the world."

The recitations now turned to repetitions of the pedigree and ranking of
the various branches of the Royal House. But it was a mere list of names
like the begats of Genesis and I was not able to profit much by this
opportunity to improve my own neglected education. As the morning wore
on the parrot-like monologues shifted to elementary chemistry.

The master had gone entirely through the alphabet of names and now
called again the apt Anton for a more brilliant demonstration of his
system of teaching. "Since we have with us a chemist who has achieved
powers of original thought, I will permit you, Anton, to demonstrate
that even at the tender age of twelve you are capable of
original thought."

Anton rose gravely and stood at attention. "And what shall I think
about?" he asked.

"About anything you like," responded the liberal minded schoolmaster,
"provided it is limited to your permitted field of psychic activity."

Anton tilted back his head and gazed raptly at a portrait of the Mighty
William. "I think," he said, "that the water molecule is made of two
atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen."

A number of the boys shook their heads in disapproval, evidently
recognizing the thought as not being original, but the teacher waited in
respectful silence for the founts of originality to burst forth in
Anton's mind.

"And I think," continued Anton, "that if the water molecule were made of
four atoms of nitrogen and one of oxygen, it would be a great economy,
for after we had bathed in the water we could evaporate it and make air
and breath it, and after we had breathed it we could condense it again
and use it to drink--"

"But that would be unsanitary," piped a voice from the back of the room.

To this interruption Anton, without taking his gaze from the face of
William, replied, "Of course it would if we didn't sterilize it, but I
was coming to that. We would sterilize it each time."

The master now designated two boys to take to the guardhouse of the
school the lad who had spoken without permission. He then produced a red
cardboard cross adorned with the imperial eagle and crossed test-tubes
of the chemists' insignia and I was honoured by being asked to decorate
Anton for his brilliant exploit in original thought.

"Our intellectual work of the day is over," resumed the master, "but in
honour of our guest we will have, a day in advance, our weekly exercises
in emotion. Heinrich, you may recite for us the category of emotions."

"The permitted emotions," said Heinrich, "are: First, anger, which we
should feel when a weak enemy offends us. Second, hate, which is a
higher form of anger, which we should feel when a powerful enemy offends
us. Third, sadness, which we should feel when we suffer. Fourth, mirth,
which we should feel when our enemy suffers. Fifth, courage, which we
feel at all times because we believe in our strength. Sixth, humility,
which we should feel only before our superiors. Seventh, and greatest,
is pride, which we should feel at all times because we are Germans.

"The forbidden emotions are very numerous. The chief ones which we must
guard against are: First, pity, which is a sadness when our enemy
suffers; to feel this is exceedingly wicked. Second, envy, which is a
feeling that some one else is better than we are, which we must not feel
at all because it is destructive of pride. Third, fear, which is a lack
of courage. Fourth, love, which is a confession of weakness, and is
permissible only to women and dogs."

"Very good," said the master, "I will now grant you permission to feel
some of the permitted emotions. We will first conduct a chemical
experiment. I have in this bottle a dangerous explosive and as I
drop in this pellet it may explode and kill us all, but you must
show courage and not fear." He held the pellet above the mouth of
the bottle, but his eyes were on his pupils. As he dropped the
pellet into the bottle, he knocked over with his foot a slab
of concrete, which fell to the floor with a resounding crash. A
few of the boys jumped in their seats, and the master gravely marked
them as deficient in courage.

"You now imagine that you are adult chemists and that the enemy has
produced a new form of gas bomb, a gas against which we have no
protection. They are dropping the gas bombs into our ventilating shafts
and are killing our soldiers in the mines. You hate the enemy--hate
hard--make your faces black with hate and rage. Adolph, you are
expressing mere anger. There, that is better. You never can be a good
German until you learn to hate.

"And now we will have a permitted emotion that you all enjoy; the
privilege to feel mirth is a thing for which you should be grateful.

"An enemy came flying over Berlin--and this is a true story. I can
remember when it happened. The roof guard shot at him and winged his
plane, and he came down in his parachute, which missed the roof of the
city and fell to the earth outside the walls but within the first ring
of the ray defences. He knew that he could not pass beyond this and he
wandered about for many days within range of the glasses of the roof
guards. When he was nearly starved he came near the wall and waved his
white kerchief, which meant he wished to surrender and be taken into
the city."

At this point one of the boys tittered, and the master stopped his story
long enough to mark a credit for this first laugh.

"As the enemy aviator continued to walk about waving his cowardly flag
another enemy plane saw him and let down a line, but the roof guards
shelled and destroyed the plane. Then other planes came and attempted to
pick up the man with lines. In all seven planes were destroyed in
attempting to rescue one man. It was very foolish and very comical. At
last the eighth plane came and succeeded in reaching the man a line
without being winged. The roof batteries shot at the plane in vain--then
the roof gunners became filled with good German hate, and one of them
aimed, not at the plane, but at the man swinging on the unstable wire
line two thousand metres beneath. The shell exploded so near that the
man disappeared as by magic, and the plane flew off with the empty
dangling line."

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