Since then, I look at religion as a trompe l’oeil for the naïve, a screen, a major obstacle to the objective study of human behaviors or any other phenomenon. And the idea of God, a cork to stop up who-knows-what hole. A hole that doesn’t actually exist. Purely imaginary. That shouldn’t frighten anyone.
For the universe is an infinite mass of energy. The void is only apparent as it is constituted by intermediary entities that rely on other unknown regions. New ones. Where man pursues his adventure in an interminable process at once continuous and discontinuous. Where light shines brighter and brighter. Takes us. Tears us away from the monotony of the quotidian. Throws a pure diamond into our hearts. And injects us with the virile audacity that makes this world move along.
A heavy day. Hot. Suffocating. Exhausting. Summer tunes its drums. Suspended by some invisible rigging, the sun, giant monster, casts its voracious tentacles on the rooftops, the streets, the bodies and blinding windows of the cars. Harshly. Ferociously, even. The sun doesn’t grow old. Steadfast eye, it has become a roaming light. The day emerges from the trickle of tears gushing from the blazing eye of this wandering Cyclops. At times, a few stray clouds wipe at the dazzled corners of that eye whose every lash is the clash of a cymbal in the ears of the planet. The striking of a drumstick on the tanned hide of the islands.
Just after noon, the eye gnashes mercilessly. Arms itself with a circle of teeth that bury themselves deep into the bones of all things. Into the very heart of this so-fragile existence. Trees, animals, men cry for mercy. But the burning eye, bursting with vitriol, turns a deaf ear. It holds on to those fine rays that pierce, tear apart. Needlessly penetrating into our guts. Impassible judge, it watches the living as they slowly die. Who, then, could even speak of survival? That would be ridiculous. Who could possibly talk about relief while we find ourselves here at the very bottom of a seething boiler? Such talk could only leave us feeling more crushed, even more broken.
The streets stretch out, veins dried up, thinned out, bloodless. The sun has swallowed everything up. Leaving nothing but powdery earth under the steps of the aimless vagabonds. Throats that have given out from having yawned too much, begged too much, moaned too much. A streak of white dust on the asphalt traces the circle of death.
Blinding mirror that condenses the misfortune and doom of the idle pedestrians. Each face is pressured to pay up its share of sweat.
That afternoon, four young men are seated at the entry to a passage on Macajoux Street. Overwhelmed by the heat and by an overall sluggishness, they speak of everything and nothing.
Abruptly passing from one topic to the next, just to pass the time. Searching … in the void. A quest … into oblivion. A way of managing their boredom. From time to time, taking turns, they wet their lips, the tips of their tongues, their palates, with a little glass of sweetened rum. Filled three quarters of the way, the bottle, in which blond cherries and twigs of cinnamon are soaking, is placed underneath Raynand’s chair. He’s the most chatty, the least thirsty of the bunch. Paulin is there, too; he drinks moderately, but smokes quite a bit.
— It’s a superior compound. Quite a nice little concoction. Been macerating for many days.
— Paulin, you’ve heard the latest international news. Seems like things are going from bad to worse in Southeast Asia. The escalation has crossed a new threshold.
— It’s pretty serious. The Vietcong are about to launch a general offensive.
Passing the bottle around, each of them has a small glass. Raynand removes a packet of Splendids from the pocket of his shirt, takes out a cigarette, raps it quickly against the box of matches with light taps, then lights it and blows out rings of gray smoke.
— Roland is getting married on Saturday …
— Brave guy.
— How’s that?
— He does nothing at all in life. Lifts neither light nor heavy loads. Neither straw nor stone. And he’s getting married. Next Saturday. Not a day later.
— It brings tears to my eyes, just thinking about what he’ll have to go through.
— You may be mistaken. Roland knows exactly what he’s doing.
— Well, then, explain it to us.
— Roland’s marriage — it’s a transaction. A sort of investment. A misery insurance policy. But more than anything else, it’s a dirty trick.
— Really, a dirty trick? You’re not just saying that?
— Not at all. A suicide. Pure rubbish, really.
— Okay, now spill it. If you’ve got the goods, then let’s hear what you have to say. Don’t make us beg you for such small potatoes. We won’t talk. And we’ve all got a pretty good poker face, so we won’t give away anything you tell us.
— The girl is pregnant.
— So? Is that all?
— The kid isn’t Roland’s. The real father took off. He refused to marry her. So the girl’s parents had the great idea to buy her a spouse. A sort of cover. Someone to wash her all clean.
— Now there’s a story! This wouldn’t happen to be something you made up?
— I’m telling you, Roland is a serious stain remover, the kind of detergent you use to get out the nastiest dirt.
— What are they offering him by way of compensation for plunging into such shit?
— The girl leaves for New York soon. Roland has wanted to go to the United States for a long time now. This marriage is the best deal he ever could have hoped for. It’s the surest way for him to obtain a residence visa.
— So then that’s the contract. The price of the soap. And then of course once married, he can be shown the door.
— Even if I were offered millions … there’s no way I’d do it. For me — and I’m not even talking about a case like this one — marriage is a dangerous commitment. Single, I always know where to find my feet. I tell them to go left or right, and they obey me. Tied to someone, I’d never know for sure what my spouse was thinking. Or what she’d do at the moment when I’d count on her the most. When I’d count on her fidelity. Woman is an element of the unknown raised to the nth degree. We can live for three centuries and we’ll never finish finding zeros to add on to that equation raised to the tenth power.
— So what do you have against women?
— Nothing, in principle. A lot, in practice. Enslaved for millennia. A commodity in bourgeois society. She isn’t herself. In some cases an object of disdain. In other cases a degraded fetish. So my grievance is just as much with the society that has made women into a condensed form of all its problems. Married, one would live constantly with that stench in one’s nose. And that causes nausea. And I don’t like vomiting.