Dream Factories and Radio Pictures by Howard Waldrop Read Free Book Online Page B

the second conviction of the traitor-spy Dreyfus, she sends a signal to all his rat-like kind that France will no longer tolerate impurities in its body-politic, its armies, its commerce. She has served notice that the Future is written in the French language; Europe, indeed the world, shall one day speak only one tongue, Française.
    “The verdict of Guilty! —even with its softening of ‘With extenuating circumstances’—will end this Affair, once and for all, the only way—short of public execution by the most excruciating means, which, unfortunately the law no longer allows—ah! but True Frenchmen are working to change that!—that it could be ended; with the slow passing of this Jew-traitor to rot in the jungle of Devil’s Island—a man who should never have been allowed to don the uniform of this country in the first place.
    “Let there be no more talk of injustice! Injustice has already been served by the spectacle of a thoroughly guilty man being given two trials; by a man not worth a sous causing great agitation—surely the work of enemies of the state.
    “Let every True Frenchman hold this day sacred until the end of time. Let him turn his eyes eastward at our one Great Enemy, against that day when we shall rise up and gain just vengeance—let him not forget also to look around him, let him not rest until every Christ-murdering Jew, every German-inspired Protestant is driven from the boundaries of this country, or gotten rid of in an equally advantageous way—their property confiscated, their businesses closed, their ‘rights’—usurped rights!—nullified.
    “If this decision wakens Frenchmen to that threat, then Dreyfus will have, in all his evil machinations, his total acquiescence to our enemy’s plans, done one good deed: He will have given us the reason not to rest until every one of his kind is gone from the face of the earth; that in the future the only place Hebrew will be spoken is in Hell.”
    —Robert Norpois
    XV. Truth Rises from the Well
    E MILE ZOLA STARED AT THE WHITE SHEET of paper with the British watermark.
    He dipped his pen in the bottle of Pelikan ink in the well and began to write.
    As he wrote, the words became scratchier, more hurried. All his feelings of frustration boiled over in his head and out onto the fine paper. The complete cowardice and stultification of the Army, the anti-Semitism of the rich and the poor, the Church; the utter stupidity of the government, the treason of the writers who refused to come to the aid of an innocent man.
    It was done sooner than he thought; six pages of his contempt and utter revulsion with the people of the country he loved more than life itself.
    He put on his coat and hat and hailed a pedal cabriolet, ordering it to the offices of L’Aurore . The streets were more empty than usual, the cafés full. The news of the second trial verdict had driven good people to drink. He was sure there were raucous celebrations in every Church, every fort, and the basement drill-halls of every right-wing organization in the city and the country. This was an artist’s quarter—there was no loud talk, no call to action. There would be slow and deliberate drunkenness and oblivion for all against the atrocious verdict.
    Zola sat back against the cushion, listening to the clicking pedals of the driver. He wondered if all this would end with the nation, half on one side of some field, half on the other, charging each other in final bloodbath.
    He paid the driver, who swerved silently around and headed back the other way. Zola stepped into the Aurora’s office, where Clemenceau waited for him behind his desk. Emile handed him the manuscript.
    Clemenceau read the first sentence, wrote, “Page One, 360 point RED TYPE headline—‘J’ACCUSE,’ ” called “Copy boy!”, said to the boy, “I shall be back for a proof in three hours,” put on his coat, and arm in arm he and Zola went off to the Théâtre Robert-Houdin for the first showing of Star