CHAPTER XXXIII
The witch's room was dark now. There was no sound but the creak of her stubby pen. Sometimes she watched the page, sometimes she looked at me, or at the ceiling, her hand going without a stop.
"I am a witch," she said, presently, "but I can't bear to admit that yesterday is dead. Do you suppose that it is alive somewhere?... Perhaps there isn't any past. How can there have been anything that isn't? I am a witch but this ceaseless change terrifies me. One day I climb down at the Porte St. Martin from the mail coach. There are three other passengers. The fields spread away from the city wall. Next moment I am standing at the Gare de l'Est, and it is not a coach that draws up before me, but the coach suddenly multiplied.... Here are fifty coaches, end to end, and fifty side doors open, and a multitude steps down. It is as if all in a second the coach had stretched in two directions at once. And the green fields? Brawling streets.
"You know, when you are living forever, you often sit quite still all year long and then under your eyes the city expands, fields giving up to suburbs, quiet to noise, the stars to electric light! You see the motors going just a little faster every day, every hour. I don't like it," said the Witch.
In the street taxicabs made a horrid clangor.
"Once only the king and his brother had a carriage," the witch said. "Now everybody has one. The people saw the king in his carriage and thought he was happy. But he was not. For him there was no happy mystery in a carriage, and the wheels bumping over cobbles gave him a headache. The people, however, rode in their dream carriages, which were perfect.
"Now a Ford is for taking you somewhere, n'est ce pas? But if you travel because you hate yourself, there is no place to go. Pas? Bon! You always go along with you."
The witch helped herself to more cake. "I had a vision of the Sacrifice of the Fords. You have heard of the Grand Canyon? At the edge of it is a prophet on a temporary wooden platform, exhorting a vast multitude to repent. It is hot. There are clouds of dust and gasoline smoke from a million Fords.
"'Oh, ye Americans, ye have seen Florida and California and Maine and the Great Lakes. But is not Pasadena made in the image of Miami, and Port Arthur the twin of Kalamazoo? Ye have sold your souls for a ride and having ridden—where are you now? What do ye seek, O my brethren....'
"Somebody called out: 'Home, for we are lonely.'
"'Aye, ye are seeking your own souls.'
"The seventy-five-piece orchestra at the Evangelical Jazz Babies, forced a geyser of exultant melody high into the air. It echoed against the crimson-and-yellow cliffs of the Canyon. 'Hallaluya ... Praise God.' Shouting ran through the multitude. Faintly from miles away, came a wave of singing. 'Repent ye! Turn back while yet there is time!' One hundred radio loud-speakers distributed the orator's voice to the million. 'Glory.... Glory....'
"A thin man in overalls ran to the platform. 'I give my Ford to God!' he cried, and while they watched, he shoved it over the cliff into the Grand Canyon. It fell four hundred feet. 'And I.... And I.... To God the Father,' said one. 'To the Unknown God,' said another. 'To the heroic Human Spirit!' said a newspaper reporter, who had only a motorcycle.
"For days the sacrifice continued—the rumble of automobiles tumbling to destruction was steady as the voice of a waterfall. Orators, stripped to the waist, waved their thin arms. Flags moved in a breeze. Uniformed boys cried sandwiches and ginger ale. A million people wept for joy. The Evangelical Jazz Babies played on. An occasional sound of firing came from down at the bottom of the Canyon where sentries repelled an attacking mob of dealers in spare parts and junk.
"You think that couldn't happen?" cried the witch. "That's exactly the sort of thing that could—in America."
The witch began to weep again. "Have some tea," she said, speaking with difficulty. It was pitch dark now. Her fingernails glowed like phosphorus.
"But it could be so different. Anything can happen. Some men learn that in the brief years of human life. When you are living forever it is what you know best.... I had another dream of the future. At midnight the glare of electricity in Coney Island gives way in one wink to darkness. A spotlight is trained on a steel catapault in an open space. All around the multitude in tiers on tiers of seats. A man in a silk hat winds a lever; yawning. Here and there in the audience the sound of snores. An atmosphere of boredom, oppressive as summer heat, though the evening is cool. A slim youth in shirt sleeves, his collar open poetically, stands beside the machine. He begins to read in a low, nervous voice some words written on a bit of paper.
"'Louder! Louder!' from the crowd.
"'... new generation! Life is empty. Life is unreal. Life is....'
"Groans from the crowd. 'Old stuff! Hurry up! Take him away!'
"The youth, trembling, folds up his paper. 'You will not permit me even to finish?'
"'We've heard it all before!'
"'You deny me my one moment of importance.'
"'Who cares?' bawls the crowd.
"He clambers into a metal cup on the raised end of the machine; the silk-hatted man, still yawning, winds tighter the spring, the cup approaches the earth slowly. It leaps into the air. The crowd watches listlessly as the pale youth, streaming sparks from rockets attached to his feet, goes high and higher, far out over the sea, until the bomb explodes and he is distributed to the winds.
"After him another, with a shorter statement. It is standardized suicide for the obscure, you see. 'I am bored,' says one; and the crowd answers, 'So are we!' 'I go to God,' says another. The crowd lifts a harsh laugh into the empty dark. A fat man, who thumbs his nose, and is silent, except for one audible yawn.... 'Oh, hum!' is cheered, and goes to his aerial death with a conceited smile...."
"Have some more cake," said the witch.
"You've eaten it all!" I replied.
She smiled politely in the pale radiance of her phosphorescent nails.