Frigyes Karinthy: A novella about the electric death

Frigyes Karinthy: A novella about the electric death

Frigyes Karinthy

At the beginning of February, 19…, I was ordered by telegram to Melbourne, as head of the bacteriological institute of the Philadelphia college, to collect the data and report on the new and terrible epidemic which had appeared in that city, and of which hitherto only indirect and unreliable news had been leaked. The description of the new disease, or rather new way of dying, for there has not been a single cured case, sounded utterly incredible.

I distinctly recall that on the way I was reminded several times of Edmund Dale, an old schoolmate of mine, of whom the latest information I had was that he had transferred from theology, now as an ordained minister, to Melbourne. It flashed through my mind in the form of a fleeting wish that it would be nice if we could meet, at least I wouldn’t be so alone.

In Melbourne, in the excitement of the first days, I forgot all about it. From the hotel I drove straight to the university, to Professor X, to whom I had written a letter of recommendation. It was from him that I learned the horrifying details. The new illness had appeared about a month and a half ago, quite unexpectedly. The first victim – a tradesman – had no idea what it was: he had collapsed in the street, an otherwise healthy man, had not been dissected very conscientiously, and was diagnosed with heart failure. It was only on the fourth or fifth sudden death that it became clear that there were no separate individual causes: they found a common, hitherto unknown lesion in the heart and brain, the like of which science had hitherto known – most surprisingly – only from the corpses of people electrocuted by high voltage. Incidentally, the distortion of the face, the spasmodic contraction of the fingers, were typical of the picture – I learned from Professor X that the disease and epidemic were already popularly known in the city as “electric death” or “death by electrocution”. No one had any idea where it came from; all that was certain was that this time it was not an infectious agent, a bacterium – neither the sick nor the corpse had endangered the healthy, even indirectly, through the so-called germ host, and the microscope could only detect physical lesions in the tissues. In various parts of the city, the victims have suddenly become ill, collapsed, convulsed, and died, more than three hundred so far: two hundred of them in the last few days.

I am not a writer, and so I am only giving a dry, reportorial account of what I saw and heard: I have not tried to give a picture of the quiet, ice-cold anxiety of the growing terror that could be seen on the faces and anxious looks of the people by anyone who knew the cause of this panic, in the streets, in the squares, in the whole of the busy city: – for otherwise the city was living its life. In short, I had already had the opportunity, in the first week, to see the corpse of a man who had died a horrible death, and, in pain, a horrible death itself.

I was in a hurry to my lodgings to get some preparations, and I must confess that I was still secretly trying to prove that the cause of electric death was indeed a pathogen, a germ, like other epidemics – with some internal gloating and scientific arrogance, as a sort of laboratory man, I believed that the perception of the medical circles here, to be a naive fantasy unworthy of a real scientist, and I had already a few pages of my treatise for the Bacteriological Weekly ready, which will make these gentlemen’s ego hurt a little.

It was at the station, or even on the tram I had already got off. I had taken a few steps when frightened, muffled cries, behind me, stopped me. A man was lying just in front of the tram steps, apparently getting off when the attack caught up with him. Epileptic convulsions were jerking this man, his fat bourgeois face writhing in terrible agony. There was an immediate stampede, some of them bent over him – I was sure I heard the word ‘death by electricity’ from the first.

I turned and rushed over, and ran straight into Edmund Dale, who was hurrying, almost running, towards the sidewalk.

I knew him.

– Dale! – I called to him.

He recoiled, glaring at me. His face was very pale, and, apart from that, for I believe it must have been caused by the scene just witnessed, strikingly thin and haggard.

– “I was going to call on you,” I said quickly, “and I thought I visit you. You know what, let’s have lunch together. What’s going on here?

He shrugged nervously, still didn’t answer, but when I was about to move toward the crowd, he took my arm.

– ‘Come on, let me go,’ he said, annoyed and hoarse, ‘what would you see in him?

I wanted to explain that as a doctor I was interested, but he grabbed my arm convulsively and dragged me towards the sidewalk. And all the while he was saying these things in a quick, muffled voice:

– Some stupid philistine, I don’t know. He straddled me just as I was about to get off. He pushed me a little, maybe. He’s lying there now.

– You were on this tram, too?

– Yes, I did. Sorry, I didn’t see you.

– Neither did I.

For a few minutes we walked side by side without speaking. I don’t know why I was embarrassed: I had a strange, cold feeling.

– ‘I should have looked,’ I said at last. ‘Apparently, this epidemic… what they call here ‘electric death’… you know, that is why I’m here in Melbourne.

He stopped, turned to me and looked deep into my eyes. I opened my mouth, but no words came out of my throat. A strange horror seized me, and I felt a twitching tingle at the end of my fingers: my hair seemed to have been stung by something. And yet his look was deep and sad and painful and intimate.

– ‘You won’t look, will you,’ he said, smiling gently, sadly, and he kept looking, ‘you won’t look because I ask you to, and because you will not argue with me.

I could not answer, frightened wonder trembled in every nerve.

He went on for a while with his head bowed, and then began to speak in a tired, monotonous voice, as if he were talking to himself.

– It doesn’t matter now anyway… today or tomorrow… I won’t stay here anyway… and if I don’t see you… I might tell someone else… a stranger…

He stopped.

– “I’ve always loved you, Marius,” she said, trembling, “at least I know I have, I think… But I beg you to go away, to run away from this city…

– “I have always loved you too,” was all I could say. It was a strange conversation on the street. He looked at me again.

– Are you sure about that?

My mouth twitched and stammered something. A fog descended on my brain. Faintness surrounded me, I didn’t know if we’d been standing here frozen for hours or if only minutes had passed. With a terrible effort, as if talking in my sleep, I groaned out in abject terror:

– No… no… don’t say it…

But it was too late.

-I am the ‘electric death’, said Edmund Dale.

– Marius, I always thought of myself that I loved my fellow man, I believed in myself and in my goodness when I became a priest and came to Australia. When that terrible thing happened there on the island – when I understood a few days afterwards that it was true, that I now had that power, like a chameleon when it changes color, or an electric ray when it strikes a small fish from afar: then I thanked God that he had given me that power and not someone else who would abuse it. How do I know who I am, and what are we all, who think ourselves as good and loving, because we abhor blood, and do not like to see suffering. There, on the island, when the fear of death first drew out of me my terrible talent, when my assailant and murderer fell and lay groaning, without my touching him – there I could still delude myself that what happened was in self-defense, and that no evil intent in my heart was matched by the terrible power of my brain.

But when the merchant who had passed me in the street fell down and died after a hundred paces – and I recognized the same twitching and convulsion in his distorted face with hair standing on end: then I examined myself, and my heart stopped beating – I remembered that when he passed me I had envied him his fine coat, and had wished to have one myself. My will, which I thought was governed by discretion and deliberation in the dark recesses of my brain, of which I was ignorant, where the instinct is born in us, never to be changed, works hidden and free and unrestrained, my unconscious had condemned the unhappy man to death because he had a coat more beautiful than mine – and my cursed talent executed the sentence.

Interpose not, excuse not, speak not – have you not often dreamed of the death of your acquaintances, your relatives, your mother, and your brothers? You wake up in a cold sweat, and pity them, and think you are glad it was only a dream – but in your dream the liberated will was at work in you, in your dream you wished them dead, you killed them: and if you look back on your day which preceded this dream, you find that that day they offended you with something; whom you killed, looked at you crookedly, spoke harshly, or you heard him talked harshly to you.

Oh, I know from terrible experience that for the slightest hurt we wish death on everyone – death, sometimes without hurt, because the predator dwells within us, destroying more than it can consume. Listen well, Marius. I have so far killed three hundred men, whom, but for this hideous discovery, I would never have known that I had wished dead. A great many of them are indifferent, unknown passers-by – I have met them for a moment, perhaps I did not like their faces, or they did not look at me kindly. But there were many good friends among them, and many whom I thought I loved as much as myself. Remember the man today who fell down in front of the tram? He tried to steal a half my moment; he got off before me. I killed him because he stood in my way for a split second.

I looked around, dazed. It is a mystery to me how we ended up in this room. Edmund Dale was standing by the cupboard, his hands folded behind his back, looking ahead of him.

– And I killed the girl I loved and could have died for, because she looked at an English officer in the street.

Slowly I sank to the ground: my hands rummaged in my pockets, unconscious. As if in a dream, I unloaded everything I had on me.

– Edmund Dale… – I stammered, with a cold sweat on my forehead – here… here is everything… do you want my watch? My money?…

He pursed his lips, shrugged. He started rummaging absentmindedly through the things, took a few sheets of paper, looked inside.

– ‘Aha,’ he said, and tossed it aside, ‘a little treatise… against our doctors… which, if published, would do a bit of damage to their reputation… possibly ruin them… Of course, if you dared to openly slam your colleagues, it would be better… but then, the law.

He laughed mischievously:

– I won’t hurt you, but only because I despise you and have no business with you. You are just as miserable as I am. In the Middle Ages, there was less killing, because a noble knight could kill a reckless man in open combat who touched his cloak as he was leaving. Today we have many laws to crush the beast in us – more power, and more byways…

For minutes he walked with hands behind his back, head bowed. It occurred to me later that during this time, crouched on the ground, I had watched him with the movements of a tomcat thrown into a wolf’s cage, head down and neck bent. He stopped in front of me.

– ‘Fear not, Marius, go in peace. And you can write that ‘death by electricity’ has ceased in Melbourne – you can write and destroy your colleagues, with a few snappy words, in your own way. I have no business among you. Thank God I’ve realized that my power does hurt animals, only humans. The human race will perish from the earth because its instinct is rotten and degenerate in its sick soul – it will devour itself, in its terrible greed and hatred. Child of the vilest race on earth, I, conscious of my sin, will throw away with hatred the name and tradition of my filthy family, to return to the pure and noble beasts – who will tear each other to pieces in open warfare, and among whom, if he who kills, at least had risked his own life, to fulfil his destiny, which called him to sin and death and destruction – to live among the gentle flowers and the silent trees and the deaf waters…

Two weeks later, I returned to America with the report that the mysterious illness, as it had come on, had passed without a trace. My thesis was published and caused a sensation. I have not thought of Edmund Dale since, and I have not spoken of him to anyone; if I thought of him, I have dismissed him as a foolish feverishness. A few days ago, though, I had news of him being found torn to pieces in the woods: some beast of a rare name, seen only in zoos, lying beside it, apparently killed in a struggle, both of them – the pastor’s head between the beast’s terrible jaws, his mangled fingers on the beast’s neck, barely separable.