The chicken had no desire to sacrifice her life. She who had chosen to be ‘happy’. She who had failed to perceive that if she were to spend her life designing the egg inside herself like an illuminated manuscript, she would be doing all that could be expected of her. She remained true to herself. She who thought her feathers were to cover her precious skin, unaware that those feathers were only intended to lighten her burden while she carried the egg, because the chicken’s deep suffering might put the egg at risk. She who thought satisfaction was a gift rather than a ploy to keep her totally distracted until the egg had been formed. She who did not know that ‘I’ is only one of the words people jot down on paper when answering the telephone, a mere attempt to find some more convenient form. She who thought that I means to possess a selfness. The chickens in greatest danger of harming the egg are those who pursue a relentless I. Their I is so persistent that they cannot pronounce the word egg. But who knows, perhaps this is precisely what the egg needs. Because if they were not so distracted and were to pay closer attention to the great life forming inside them, they might disturb the egg.
I began discussing the chicken, yet for some time now I have said nothing about the chicken. I am still talking about the egg. Only to realize that I do not understand the egg. All I understand is a broken egg: broken in the frying pan. And this is how I indirectly pledge myself to the egg’s existence. My sacrifice is to reduce myself to my inner self. I have concealed my destiny with my joys and sorrows. Like those in the convent who sweep floors and wash linen, serving without the glory of any higher office, my task is to live my joys and sorrows. It is essential that I should possess the modesty of living. In the kitchen I take one more egg and break its shell and form. And from this very moment the egg no longer exists. It is most important that I should be kept occupied and distracted. I am essentially one of those who renege. I belong to the freemasonry of those who, once having seen the egg, reject it as a form of protection. Anxious to avoid destruction, we destroy ourselves. Agents in disguise and assigned to discreet enquiries, we occasionally recognize each other. A certain manner of looking, a certain way of shaking hands, help us to recognize each other, and we call this love. Then there is no further need for disguise. Though one does not speak, one does not hear either; though one may be telling the truth, there is no further need for pretence. Love prospers, especially between a man and woman, when one is allowed to share a little more. Few people desire true love because love shakes our confidence in everything else. And few can bear to lose all their other illusions. There are some who opt for love in the belief that love will enrich their personal lives. On the contrary: love is poverty, in the end. Love is to possess nothing. Love is also the deception of what one believed to be love. And it is not a prize likely to make one conceited. Love is not a prize. It is a state conceded only to those who would otherwise contaminate the egg with their private sorrow. This does not make an honourable exception of love. It is conceded precisely to those unworthy agents who would spoil everything unless they were allowed some vague intuition.
All the agents enjoy many advantages in order to ensure the egg is formed. There is no cause for envy, because even the worst of the conditions imposed on some agents happen to be the ideal conditions for the egg. As for the satisfaction of the agents, they receive that, too, without conceit. They quietly savour any satisfaction. This is the sacrifice we make so that the egg may be formed. We have been endowed with a nature which has a considerable capacity for satisfaction, which helps to make satisfaction less painful. There are instances of agents who commit suicide: they discover that the handful of instructions at their disposal are insufficient and sense a lack of support. There was the case of the agent who publicly revealed his identity because he could not bear not to be understood, just as he found it intolerable not to be respected by others. He died after being run over as he was leaving a restaurant. There was another agent who did not even need to be eliminated: he slowly burned himself up in disgust, a disgust which overwhelmed him when he discovered that the few instructions he had been given explained nothing. Another agent was also eliminated because he thought ‘the truth should be spoken courageously’, and he set about searching for that truth. People say he died in the name of truth, but in fact he simply obscured truth, he was so ingenuous. His seeming courage was mere folly and his desire for loyalty was naïve. He had failed to understand that loyalty is not something pure, that to be loyal is to be disloyal to all the rest. These extreme cases of death are not provoked by cruelty. There is a job to be done which one might term cosmic, and unfortunately individual cases cannot be taken into consideration. For those who succumb and become individuals, there are instructions, there is charity, there is an understanding which does not discriminate between motives — our human life, in short.
THE EGG AND THE CHICKEN (III)
The eggs sizzle in the frying pan and, lost in a dream, I prepare breakfast. Without any sense of reality, I call the children who jump out of bed, draw up their chairs and start eating and the work of the day which has just dawned begins, with shouting and laughter and food, the white and the yolk, happiness amidst squabbles, the day is our salt and we are the salt of the day, life is quite tolerable, life occupies and distracts, life provokes laughter.
It makes me smile in my mystery. The mystery of my being which is simply a means, and not an end, has given me the most dangerous freedom of all. I am not stupid and I use it to my advantage. I even do considerable harm to others. I take advantage of the phoney job they have given me to conceal my identity and turn it into my real occupation. I have even misused the money they pay me on a daily basis to make life easier while the egg is being formed. Having changed the money on the black market, I have misused it and only recently bought shares in a brewery which has made me a rich woman. I still refer to all this as the essential modesty of living. They have also allowed me time so that the egg may form inside me at its leisure but I have frittered away my time in illicit pleasures and sorrows, completely forgetting about the egg. That is my simplicity as a human agent.
Or is this precisely what they wanted to happen so that the egg may be formed? Is this freedom a coercion? For I am now beginning to see that every error on my part has been exploited. My grievance is that in their eyes I count for nothing, I am simply useful. With the money they pay me I have started drinking.
No one knows how you feel inside when you are hired to pretend you are a traitor and you end up believing in your own betrayal. A job which consists of forgetting day after day. Being expected to feign dishonour. My mirror no longer reflects a face which can even be called my own. Either I am an agent or this is truly betrayal. But I sleep the sleep of the just in the knowledge that my futile existence does not impede the march of infinite time. On the contrary: it would appear that I am expected to be utterly futile, that I should even sleep the sleep of the just. They want me occupied and distracted, by whatever means. For with my wandering thoughts and solemn foolishness I might impede what is happening inside me. Strictly speaking, I myself have only served to impede. The notion that my destiny exceeds me suggests that I might be an agent. At least, they might have allowed me to perceive as much, for I am one of those people who do a job badly unless I am allowed some Insight. They made me forget what I had been allowed to perceive, but I still have this vague notion that my destiny exceeds me and that I am the instrument of their work.