The daily worker., 1926-01-16
If try to talk

Several have fallen forward or backward
their gestures have overbalanced them-but
the mechanical immobilization was so quick,
SO hard and so complete, that almost all, evRn
standing and without outside support, are bA
anced, stiffened like trees or crosses.
Immobilty is most terrible thing. It is a
thing that goes crescendo, that grows, that
drags itself out, that exasperates the beholder
lmmobility drives me mad, and not only now
even statue, even a drawing, caricature
ends by frightening me if | look too long.
My knees melt under me with terror, kneel
on the ground in this abominable desert, my
hands desperate My head is whirIing in a
nausea of fright / know. that cannot any
longer see what see, this rich harvest of death
upon the earth. | cannot grasp the size of
the catastrophe. s'af3 p ea#
groan. All, good god, better the welter of
bodies of the damned (such as l imagined the
next war) than this crowd of carnal phantoms
peacefully copying life with one single never
to-be-fnished gesture. Enought This Will
destroy my reason. / run straight ahead. 4
Then l stop, suddenly thinking of the tefe-
phone. I run to the booth, / ring l ring,
ring again: nothing.
Why doesn't someone answer? what are
they doing, the others?
Suddenly an idea, like blow: Carla.
She wasn't in the grand-stand Am sure?
rush back. By the force of my will alone
bear again the sight of that terrible inumer-
able spectacle. l explore again the ranks of
the spectators. look quickly, quickly l turn
away my eyes; my eyes are like wound in
my head from the sight She is not on that
stage scrawled with gestures, spotted with
white dresses, so horribly empty.
All these people must have been electro
cuted: | remember the zig-zags of lightning
above which my plane staggered. All, ah, it's
simpler than that. II get it! There-one Of
the wOrkshops-the experimental laboratory
is replaced by smoking crater. What do
want with my earthquakes and electrocutions
romantic and ridiculous hypothesis! It's more
crudely simple than that. 1t s the invention;
the military invention has breathed on these
hundreds of people. The explosives and the
gas that Mark was talking about. The acci-
dental firing of some gigantic new explosive
has plowed this crater and has unloosed the
new poison gas, the Internal gas when the
storage tanks were shattered This is the
reason of the intermnable immobiity of this
multitude.
Carla.. she has gone back to the hotel, of
course. | breathe again.
AS for me- must get away from this ac-
cursed place. l run toward the automobiles
l don't want to see anything except what is
just in front of me. | avoid creatures staEd-
ing like card-houses, bodies that have tumk he'd
to the ground, killed and stiffened before tley
had time to fall, and these are in strange fan
tastlc poses like overturned statues after a
riot. Others are crushed and broken in wreck
ed automobiles, or under them or beside them
That's logical: the breath of death and the
driverless machine smashed itself against the
first obstacles But they didn't know; all of
them, even the most mangled, even those torn
open to show the threads and sponges of their
insides, have calm faces that seem to smile and
speak. :.
Near the gate, long row of automobiles
! throw myself in one, tear it from the earth.
/ flee like the wind At the board fence by the
gate, see a group of workingmen. 'Hepr'
/ grind on the brakes Il who never use brakesi1
skid and barely touch one-who falls down.
Their familiar poses deceived me: they too,
wax dummies. jam on the acceIeratok Fhe
Car leaps forward. / hurl myself away Pm
the stony motionlessness of all these siifSter
images
Villas. shall go into them? Yes. no