Max holds the tankard at an angle, the Bessemer convener being slightly tilted, Max’s forefinger under the tankard, cold air is blown into the bottom of the blast box at high pressure, the air passes up through the molten mass, a dry splashing, a burst of reddish yellow light, a shower of sparks, the blow eliminates the excess carbon, a bluish flame with a dark tip spurts out of the top, clouds of smoke, sprays of molten metal, the flame grows taller, turns white and clippety-clop, the tankard is horizontal, the Bessemer vessel is tipped up, the pig-iron is decarburised in a quarter of an hour, ingots are cast, Bessemer steel is fantastic, just one problem, the yield is inadequate, which is where my little chums Martin and Thomas come in, quantity, the future’s in quantity, no more converters but vertical furnaces, here, take your tankard, don’t cry.
Max stands two half-opened books upright in the middle of the table, large vertical smelters, menu for a roof, paper napkin for the floor, decarburise, dephosphorise, desulphurise, these tall furnaces are masters of the world, steel in huge quantities, Thomas’s fining process involves blowing air through the molten ore, then lime and scrap-iron are added and pig-iron appears in the converter.
Max drops sugar lumps, matches, cigarettes, cigarette-ends between the two books, you wanted a story, well you’ve got one, unabridged, complete with forced air and incineration of all elements, the appearance of red smoke signals the end of the cycle, the cinders are cleaned out, it makes excellent fertiliser for crops, and then ferromanganese is added.
Max adds coins and even his signet ring, glances up at his companions around the table, how’s that for detail? long live Zola! now who’s next? In Martin’s process, it’s even better, there’s no blowing of air, instead a gas flame is used to raise the smelting temperature of the iron in the furnace, better quality of product.
The upshot is that there are two types of steel, Martin’s and Thomas’s, and then the fighting starts, Martin’s steel is better, so he has all sorts of problems, one lawsuit after another for infringement of patents, no substance to the charges, but patents only protect the inventor for twenty years, the cases brought by his competitors slow down production, the ploy is to gain time until Martin’s process has fallen into the public domain and can be used by anybody, meanwhile they fall back on Thomas’s process until Martin’s can be exploited without payment of royalties, of course Thomas steel is poorer in quality, but for rails and low-grade purposes it is adequate. And Pierre-Émile Martin? he doesn’t go under but he doesn’t see the financial returns he might have, he retires, an embittered man.
‘Max, you promised us a poetical yarn, not a saga!’
‘You’ll get it all.’
Two simultaneous charges by battered dragoons, one from the east and one from the west of the clearing at Monfaubert, remnants of a captainless squadron, the dragoons mount a pincer movement, another dreamlike charge but there is fear and something else, the touch, the taste of horror, their blood is up: scream, do what you never did before, spit out and destroy those dove-grey German dreams, those dreams which face the cavalrymen as they charge from all parts of the field, German dreams which have emerged from a labyrinth, gay as a rower’s straw boater, centuries of waking dreams, of red-chalk sketches, of regrets, architect’s plans, pulleys, projects abandoned and resumed, like clockwork muffled by feathers, like floating drapes hanging by threads.
When did it all start? The day after Sarajevo, L’Illustration published a large sketch of the event which filled page three, the Archduke falling as he is shot, and opposite on page two the editorial written three days earlier is entitled: ‘We are such spoiled brats’; one of the survivors of that war will be killed in 1944 in the Seine-et-Marne when his train is strafed by a US Lightning. Meanwhile Sarah Bernhardt has a wooden leg, in 1916 she makes a film, she wears a Greek-style tunic and carries a flag which flaps in the wind, she calls down the wrath of France’s fighting men on the Boches, asking in alexandrines ‘that one day by warriors shall their temples be destroyed, their children maimed and women raped’, she also talks of monsters and the extermination of a whole race.
Hans was standing next to me but that did not stop him staring at the patches of red on Marie-Thérèse’s throat, me, I never blush, I never blushed even when Marie-Thérèse called me ‘dear Lena’.
I can’t blush. All someone like Marie-Thérèse does is let it happen, she never tries to control herself, she lets herself blush and men interpret it as a promise. They must wonder if the rest of her blushes too, they call her type voluptuous. She was a lot less good-looking than me, she had short legs, it was no good her raising the waist on all her dresses, you could still see that she had short legs. One day, outside the Waldhaus, she had to lower the saddle of her bike, she wasn’t at all happy about that, the Frenchman with the jug ears looks sad, or is it just a trick of the mirrors?
Max is now well launched, he talks in a loud voice to shut the others up, to forget, to find life again on the other side of despair, to have the time to watch that woman, and simultaneously he has the unbearable feeling of spreading himself too thin, of being less himself the more he talks, a mixture of everything, good for nothing except heaping cinders on the fire, pipe, beer, some day all you’ll be fit for is talking to your slippers, you’ll screw some girl from the Charente on your kitchen table and then tell her the story of your life, there’ll be no one left.
Max sees the girl from the Charente now, on the table in the brasserie, while he talks to his comrades and watches the woman in the reflecting mirrors, the handsome face of a woman who has better things to do than listen to men talking, she doesn’t smoke, you stand up, turn your back on all these boozy dimwits, and you go off with her, you become a different person, the man you wanted to be fifteen years ago when you walked into the Vieux Paris for a coffee before rushing home to read Aristotle, you look good, she has good breasts, Aristotle in the original and a good time with the woman, back seat of a cab, then throw her out head first, yes but she’s not even looking at you, you haven’t even managed to catch her eye once.
Listen, in 1914 or 1915, which is where our poetical story really begins, the Reich ministry in Berlin has a sense of its bounden duty, it rejects Thomas shells, Thomas steel is all right for shoeing mules but only Martin steel produces shells that pulverise everything they hit.
‘And what shall we do with our stocks of Thomas shells?’ ask the Reich’s steelmakers.
‘Sell it all to the Swiss, Swiss requirements in that department are huge, they buy twenty times as many from us as they produce themselves, where do all the shells go? That’s beside the point, there’s got to be profit, Swiss francs, and when the stocks have all gone make more Thomas shells for Switzerland, and ask top prices, respect the cartel, no need to bother your heads who buys them from Switzerland, in any case if Thomas shells fall on our German pillboxes they’ll be landing on good English concrete which can only be bought for Swiss francs, it comes via Holland and Denmark, along with the copper and copra for our explosives, and if we run short of Martin shells at the front, too bad, we’ll buy your Thomases too, says the Reich ministry to the Reich’s steelmakers, jump to it, and you can drop your prices for us.’
Max glances up, the woman has gone, get up quickly, catch up with her, the cab, but finish the story first, protests from the steelmakers, and Hindenburg orders the Reich ministry to abide by the tariff set by the cartel and ‘give them the price they ask, which is the export price’. I’ve also got a very good story about French army supplies in 1916, but that’ll keep for later. Max starts getting to his feet, shall I retrieve my coat? my hat? They’ll just laugh at me. Max sits down again, he’s just noticed that there’s no one at the beautiful brunette’s table, they’ve all gone, you didn’t see a thing.