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PROLOGUE

THE APPEARANCE OF A NEW DISEASE

First, I shall tell you what happened to me on the third of May 2227, in the thirtieth year of my terrestrial existence. Afterwards, I shall tell you who I am and why I am writing these memoirs. Don’t be impatient. Don’t skip a single page—nor a line, nor a word. Everything is connected, in such a way that, after having read me attentively, you will be in possession of a whole host of new and refreshing conceptions, useful for the guidance of life. Afterwards, you can do with them as you wish.

So, on the third of May 2227, which marked the debut in France of the terrible disease, I was going up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées on my own, heading toward the former location of the Arc de Triomphe, which had disappeared in the earthquake of 2150 after being badly damaged by the aerial bombardment of the Franco-German and European-Asian wars of the year 2000. The sky was blue; the air exquisite; life, so far as I was concerned, was good.

As I arrived at the crossroads where avionnettes used to be stationed in the days of non-magnetic aerial transport, I perceived, coming toward me, a tall, handsome old man with a white beard, who was holding a little girl by the hand, flanked by her Chinese governess. The child appeared to be about two or two-and-a-half years old, like a pink porcelain angel under her blonde hair. She was laughing and pulling obliquely ahead of her grandfather’s stride, with a graceful gait.

Suddenly, I heard a dry click, and the old man disappeared completely, as if snatched away by a supernatural force.

“N’a pus,”1 said the girl, spreading her dainty arms wide.

The face of the Chinese woman had become immobile and grave, like that of a conjuror’s assistant witnessing an unknown trick. Numerous passers-by, witnesses to the event, began to tremble, like me, in all their limbs, recognizing, in that adventure, the first coup of the mysterious disease that the press had been reporting for a month, which had first become manifest in Chicago. Half a dozen cases had been cited, followed by three more in Berlin.

“N’a pus, a grand pé a pati, n’a pus,” repeated the child, elated by the annihilation of her grandfather and the accumulation of fear and stupor that had formed around that redoubtable absence.

A policeman arrived as we were getting a grip on our emotions. I gave him my name, number and occupation—Professor of Cellular Energy at the Aristotle Foundation—and was asked to write “Polyplast” myself in his notebook. He was as astonished by my name and the number attached to it as by the unusual phenomenon. Gripped by an abrupt need for mystification that is one of the axiomatic reflexes, I added that the old pedestrian had succumbed to a new disease, the “n’a pus” or Napus, which was beginning to be discussed among scientists.

“Is it catching?” the representative of public order asked me, with an anxious expression.

I assured him that it was not—that the symptom-free disease, which was exceptionally rare, was episodic and not contagious. Then the worthy fellow signaled to a vehicle and had the Chinese woman and the little girl climb into it with him: “a matter of informing the family and the commissariat.”

It was agreed that I would be called as a witness, the case being extraordinary, unusual and, all things considered, bewildering. What was no less bizarre was the difficulty we found, as co-spectators of the event, in going our separate ways and leaving the location of the tragic miracle of sorts. It had created a bond of solidarity between us comparable to a sympathy that did not entail any amity—a necessary of community. Our feet were stuck to the ground.

We exchanged visiting cards, and vague considerations regarding the unknown quantity surrounding us and the future of humankind, henceforth very hazardous. Some thought that the new thunderbolt would remain in a state of rarity, in view of the excellence of our temperate climate; others believed, on the contrary, that it was the beginning of a plague.

The latter, of which I was one, were correct. The worst is virtually certain.

With the general system of waves, the event quickly became known. Half an hour later, the entire world knew of the arrival in France, on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, of the new disease of the total and abrupt disappearance or acute aphanasia popularly known as the Napus. The little girl had thus baptized the annihilation of her grandfather.

And now, before continuing, it’s necessary that I tell you who I am.

I belong to the group of international “witnesses,” the outcome of the international interbreeding of the year 2007, which succeeded the six year war in which thirty million people of all nations were killed. It was then thought that universal peace might be obtained by numerous Franco-German, Franco-English, Franco-Italian, Italo-German etc. marriages, and the forenames of the semi-artificial products that my grandparents thus became were replaced by numbers. We call ourselves “Polyplasts,” which signifies “formed of several” and I am known as 17,177. It’s perfectly ridiculous, but there is nothing I can do about it.

I will add, though, that the multiplicity of my origins has only increased in me the quality and evidence of current Frenchness and stimulated my patriotism. It is the same with all the Polyplasts spread throughout the planet. We are also interested in military inventions, as if the confused sources of our violent blood were continuing their antagonism. Psychological chemistry is as ironic as the majority of human inventions, which rapidly turn against human beings after having served, in an illusory fashion, for their comfort and pleasure.

1. Pus is the past historic of pouvoir [to be able], so the phrase as rendered can be construed, approximately, as “it cannot be” or “impossible,” although it seems more likely that the child is mispronouncing “n’a plus” [is no more] or even “n’a pas” [is not] and is simply indicating absence, in line with her more elaborate comment “a grand pé a pati”—i.e. grand-père a parti [grandpa’s gone].