“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.
XLIX
There was a moment of tense silence.
“And is that all?” said a mocking voice from the middle of the hall.
“That’s all,” said Prokop, disgusted.
“It is not all,” Daimon stood up. “Comrade Krakatit assumed that the delegates would be good enough to understand—”
“Oho!” there
