His kick felt solid. The can bounced from the back of the box. That was a relief — as if he’d passed stool.
Well, we wouldn’t hear anything, see anything, feel anything, of course, because we — who were we, now? — would have perished. As we went into the ground we’d pass former fellows, previous persons, being flung forth — the Catacombs coughing up their bones. There’d be billions of corpses and no one to count them. No one to photograph weeping mothers for the evening news. No mothers, no news, at last. Human life on automatic pilot. Reruns till every inch of film flames. No more microwaves. The air would soften, ease, grow gentle, when the human frequencies fell silent. A few birds would float above the mess and look for eyes to peck — eyes still fresh and moist from wild surmise and well-meant weeping.
Our concern that the human race might not endure has been succeeded by the fear it will survive.
My concern … it’s my concern … alas … mine. My concern that mankind might not endure has been followed by the fear it will survive. Succeeded — succeeded — has been succeeded.
Professor Joseph Skizzen’s concern that the human race might not endure has been succeeded by his fear that it will survive.
The sentence had begun forming — as if it were going to be significant — during breakfast on a mild May morning many years ago. He could not remember the fruit or how it lay in the bowl of his spoon or how it tasted when it became mush in his mouth. As a music critic — a musicologist — as a philosopher of music — he was used to working with words; they held no special terrors for him; he thought of them simply as tools; they were not instruments like those in an orchestra, because he did not think of his books and essays as performances. His ideas, of course, needed them, but he didn’t dress up his thoughts like toffs or tarts and parade them about on the avenues. He could not remember the bread or roll either or whether they had a plate to themselves. He could not remember the nature of the day.
The sentence had simply passed through his ears and lodged in his head like a random bullet from a drive-by gang. Sorry, meant to shoot the little girl standing with her doll on the front stoop. Meant to shoot Grandma in the porch swing. Meant to shoot the geraniums through their pot. There was another sentence in the barrel. Sorry, meant to shoot you with something harmless, such as: “green oranges are picked when barely yellow and dyed orange to reassure consumers”—certainly not anything disturbing: the fear that the human race, etcet.
“Unripe oranges”? “Scarcely yellow”?
And of course, a word like “dyed” was disturbing, even in a sentence about dissembling, about misleading. Nothing was safe anymore. You could hug caution and try to prevent it from being thrown to vicious winds, but tides would overwhelm its NO SWIMMING signs nevertheless, while earth opened to let the timorous attitude fall, alive and alert as caution is, to the central fire.
During the weeks following its appearance, the sentence had struggled to free itself from the entanglements of a professorial unconscious. Every morning before work, before beginning the routine of the day, the professor was compelled to mess with it. Like a cat kicking a sock stuffed with mintnip. It remained, after every assault — the sentence, the sock — somewhat shapeless. Yet maintained — the sentence, the sock, did — its former attraction. Or perhaps it was like sucking on a sick tooth. Though sucked, the tooth stayed sore. So kicking or licking it was an exercise he did routinely the way others jogged. Its words needed to be whelped because it was a serious sentence — not about companies colorizing fruit, not about academic worries, not about his dim — to him — and dubious past — yet a sentence that had to be made right somehow, properly completed, because it was never right when he read it, though what was wrong was never clear either.
His game of kick the can had come to be a coarser instance of a sock attack. The cans failed to rattle as noisily as they might have if kicked down a concrete street, but it was the best he could do under the present circumstances, and engaged another portion of his anatomy in a way that had to be healthy.
He hadn’t seen the sentence in his mind’s eye as though MENE, MENE had been written on one of thought’s walls; he heard it, yet heard it all at once, as if at a glance, the way he would study himself in his shaving mirror: one bit of face in focus, where the razor aimed, the remainder in the realm of the vague … yet there — though vague — certainly there — a dim presence.
Since he couldn’t be sure whether the sentence was a war wound or a tapeworm, he didn’t know what to do. Maybe rewriting was the wrong tack. Maybe he needed to find a context for it instead. Maybe it had been translated from the Austrian and begged to be returned to the language it came from. “The idea that the people might not persevere” was perhaps a better beginning. Not “the people” just “people.” The idea that we might lose the human race and come in last … the idea that our might was a Maginot, potent so long as unemployed — fearsome only of physique — as showy as a circus — no more serviceable than a costume — was … was unendur … insuff … and if … if fired like a battery of Berthas — our powers and our vainglory might explode in our — the shooter’s — face — as if … if our shell had been sent through the calamitous curve of a bent barrel …
The sentence had slowly appeared, gradually shaped itself, and as it had, so had the compulsion to perfect it overcome him, filled and overflowed him as if he were a tub. Enough, he had cried, yet there the flood came, out of nowhere, rolling down stairs like a rapids.
The thought that mankind might not endure has been replaced by the fear it may survive.
“Supplanted.” How about “supplanted”? The notion that mankind might not endure was after all a happy one, optimistic, hopeful, so it could hardly be described as worrisome or a cause for concern.
But it was not really a happy thought. Skizzen was saddened that one had to hope for humanity’s demise, for the wipeout of every man woman and child. And their goddamn sidewalk shitting dogs. And their insatiable greed. And the misused intelligence — caviar on cake, invention for invention’s sake. And their mountainous indifference. Horrendous cruelty. He was sorrowful. But we had done enough damage. Enough. We had done enough harm. Enough of us. Enough of this. Nevertheless, he was constantly compelled to recast the notion, to reconsider it, to suffer its shortcomings.
Moreover — now — his wrestle with the thought would be followed by a reverie on the catastrophes that could accomplish … could complete the idea, round it off: fire, flood, earthquake, howl of wind. Fog. A foul fog. A fog that knew no lift. Miasma for a million miles. A fog of farts from a billion bodies. Rancidities. Shit streams. Stack smoke. Cigarettes. Autocide. Sour breaths. Cook pots. Sweat glands suddenly unparalyzed. Rubbish rot. Microspill. Odors previously unidentified.
Puzzled by the onset of the sentence, Joseph Skizzen examined his memory and found that his recollection of its birth changed when he changed its wording. It appeared gradually but all at once — whole — like a ship or a plane approaching. Or it arrived in servings like courses at a dinner. When he read a score, he heard the music ahead of what he read. What would be, already was. Yes, he decided. It came into his consciousness like a familiar phrase of music.
There is no single sound for C major either. Mozart’s … what? thirty-something symphony is hardly a single sound. Enter the enemy — the diminished fifth — as in Der Freischütz. “Here it is,” Don Giovanni cries, shaking the hand of the Statue. Mephistopheles, as a woodwind, invokes the furies of fire: “J’ai besoin de vous!” Caspar calls for the Black Huntsman Samiel to appear, Alberich curses the ring. L’homme. The crack in creation. Listen to that: l’homme. Diabolus in musica. The Fall. The Flaw in the fig. L’homme.