The Absolute at Large

On New Year’s Day, 1943, G. H. Bondy, head of the great Metallo-Electrical Company, was sitting as usual reading his paper. He skipped the news from the theatre of war rather disrespectfully, avoided the Cabinet crisis, then crowded on sail (for the People’s Journal, which had grown long ago to five times its ancient size, now afforded enough canvas for an ocean voyage) for the Finance and Commerce section. Here he cruised about for quite a while, then furled his sails, and abandoned himself to his thoughts.

“The Coal Crisis!” he said to himself. “Mines getting worked out; the Ostrava basin suspending work for years. Heavens above, it’s a sheer disaster! We’ll have to import Upper Silesian coal. Just work out what that will add to the cost of our manufactures, and then talk about competition. We’re in a pretty fix. And if Germany raises her tariff, we may as well shut up shop. And the Industrial Banks going down, too! What a wretched state of affairs! What a hopeless, stupid, stifling state of affairs! Oh, damn the crisis!”

Here G. H. Bondy, Chairman of the Board of Directors, came to a pause. Something was fidgeting him and would not let him rest. He traced it back to the last page of his discarded newspaper. It was the syllable tion, only part of a word, for the fold of the paper came just in front of the t. It was this very incompleteness which had so curiously impressed itself upon him.

“Well, hang it, it’s probably iron production,” Bondy pondered vaguely, “or prevention, or, maybe, restitution⁠ ⁠… And the Azote shares have gone down, too. The stagnation’s simply shocking.

Bondy went down the cellar steps, quite glad to be away from that madman for a while (quite mad, no doubt whatever about it) and rather worried as to the quickest means of getting out of the place altogether. Why, just look, the cellar had a huge thick reinforced door just like an armour-plated safe in a bank. And now let’s have a light. The switch was just by the door. And there in the middle of the arched concrete cellar, clean as a monastery cell, lay a gigantic copper cylinder resting on cement supports. It was closed on all sides except at the top, where there was a grating bedecked with seals. Inside the machine all was darkness and silence. With a smooth and regular motion the cylinder thrust forth a piston which slowly rotated a heavy flywheel. That was all. Only the ventilator in the cellar window kept up a ceaseless rattle.

Perhaps it was the draught from the ventilator or something⁠—but Mr. Bondy felt a peculiar breeze upon his brow, and an eerie sensation as though his hair were standing on end; and then it seemed as if he were being borne through boundless space; and then as though he were floating in the air without any sensation of his own weight. G. H. Bondy fell on his knees, lost in a bewildering, shining ecstasy. He felt as if he must shout and sing, he seemed to hear about him the rustle of unceasing and innumerable wings. And suddenly someone seized him violently by the hand and dragged him from the cellar. It was Marek, wearing over his head a mask or a helmet like a diver’s, and he hauled Bondy up the stairs.

Up in the room he pulled off his metal head-covering and wiped away the sweat that soaked his brow.

Everyone turned towards the opening leading from the deck to the engine-room. From the opening there emerged a bearded face, wearing the forced, embarrassed smile of one who is being shoved from behind and is trying to pretend that nothing is happening. Mr. Kuzenda was visible now from the waist up, carrying in both hands a large tin tray on which stood cups and tins of preserves; he smiled uncertainly as he rose higher and higher. His feet could soon be seen on a level with the deck, and still Mr. Kuzenda and his cups went on rising in the air. About eighteen inches above the opening he stopped and began groping with his feet. There he hung unsupported in the air, apparently doing his utmost to get his feet to the ground.

Mr. Hudec was like a man in a dream. “What is the matter, Mr. Kuzenda?” he exclaimed, almost in terror.

“Nothing, nothing,” Kuzenda replied evasively, still trying to draw himself down from the air with his feet; and Mr. Hudec was reminded of a picture of the Ascension that in his childhood had hung above his little cot, and how Our Lord and the Apostles in precisely the same manner were hanging in the air and paddling with their feet, but showing less amazement on their faces.

Suddenly Mr. Kuzenda moved forward and floated, floated over the deck through the evening air as though a gentle breeze might carry him away; now and again he raised his feet as if he wanted to step out firmly or something, and he was visibly concerned for his cups.