In any case, I could only be the instrument because the work could never be mine. I have already tried to establish myself in my own right without success; my hand has never stopped trembling to this day. Had I insisted a little more, I should have lost my health for good. Since then, after that abortive experience, I have tried to reason as follows: I have already received a great deal and they have made me every possible concession. And the agents, far better than me, have also worked only for what they did not know. And with the same meagre instructions and, like me, they were modest civil servants or otherwise. I have already received a great deal. Sometimes overcome with emotion at being so privileged yet without showing any gratitude! My heart beating with emotion, yet without understanding anything! My heart beating confidently, yet leaving me baffled.
But what about the egg? This is precisely one of their little ruses. As I was talking about the egg, I forgot about the egg. ‘Keep on talking, keep on talking,’ they told me. And the egg remains completely protected by all those words. ‘Keep on talking’ is one of their guiding rules. I feel so weary.
Out of devotion to the egg I forgot about it. Forgetfulness born out of necessity. Forgetfulness born out of self-interest. For the egg is an evasion. Confronted by my possessive veneration, the egg could withdraw never to return and I should die of sorrow. But suppose the egg were to be forgotten and I were to make the sacrifice of getting on with my life and forgetting about it. Suppose the egg proved to be impossible. Then perhaps — free, delicate, without any message whatsoever for me — the egg would move through space once more and come up to the window I have always left open. And perhaps with the first light of day the egg might descend into our apartment and move serenely into the kitchen. As I illuminate it with my pallor.
FIVE STORIES ON A SINGLE THEME
This story could be called The Statues. Another possible title would be Murder. Or even How to get rid of Cockroaches. So I shall tell at least three stories and all of them true, because none of the three will contradict ihe others. Although they constitute one story, they could become a thousand and one, were I to be granted a thousand and one nights.
The first story, How to get rid of Cockroaches, begins like this: I was complaining about the cockroaches. A woman heard me complain. She gave me a remedy for killing them off. I was to mix together equal quantities of sugar, flour and plaster of Paris. The flour and sugar would attract the cockroaches, the plaster of Paris would dry up their insides. I followed her advice. The cockroaches died almost immediately.
The next story is really the first, and is called Murder. It begins like this: I was complaining about the cockroaches. A woman heard me complain. The remedy is prepared. And then murder ensues. The truth is that I had only complained in abstract terms about the cockroaches for they were not even mine: they came from the ground floor and climbed into our apartment through the pipes in the building. It was only when I prepared the mixture that they became mine, too. On our behalf, therefore, I began to measure and weigh the ingredients with somewhat greater concentration. I was gripped by a vague sense of rancour, by a sense of outrage. During the day the cockroaches were invisible and no one would have believed in the hidden evil that was invading our tranquil household. But if the cockroaches, like some dark secret, slept by day, there I was preparing their nightly poison. Meticulous and eager, I prepared the elixir of prolonged death. A nervous fear and my own guilty secret guided me. Now I chillingly desired only one thing: to kill every cockroach in existence. Cockroaches crawl up the pipes while weary humans dream. And now the mixture was ready, white as white could be. As if I were dealing with cockroaches as wily as myself, I cautiously spread the powder which seemed to have become part of my nature. Lying there in bed in the silence of night, I could imagine those cockroaches climbing up one by one into the kitchen where darkness slumbered, a solitary towel watching from the clothes-line. I awoke hours later, startled at having overslept. Dawn had broken. On a nearby hill a cockerel crowed.
This third story I am now about to tell is entitled The Statues. It opens with my complaint about the cockroaches. Then the same woman turns up. And so it goes on until I wake up at first light feeling drowsy and make my way to the kitchen. The pantry floor looks even more drowsy with its tiled perspective. And in the shadows of dawn, there is a purplish hue which distances everything. Looking down, I see blobs of white and shadows at my feet: a multitude of rigid statues scattered everywhere. Cockroaches which had petrified from the core outwards. Some are lying upside down. Others arrested in the midst of some movement which they will never complete. In the mouths of some of the cockroaches there are still traces of white powder. I am the first person to see dawn breaking over Pompeii. I know what this night has been. I am aware of the orgy enacted in the dark. The plaster of Paris must have hardened gradually in many of them as in some vital process, and the cockroaches, with increasingly painful movements, must have eagerly intensified the night’s frenzied pleasures as they tried to escape from their insides. Until they finally turned to stone with innocent terror and an expression, but such an expression, of sorrowful reproach. Others, suddenly assailed by their own core, unaware that their insides were turning to stone, suddenly crystallized like the truncated phrase: I love… Invoking the name of love in vain, the cockroaches sang on a summer’s night. While that cockroach over there, the one with its brown antennae powdered white, must have realized much too late that it had become mummified simply because it had not known how to use things with the spontaneous grace of the in vain: ‘Alas, I looked too closely inside myself! Alas, I looked too closely inside…’ From my impassive height as a human being, I witness a world’s destruction. Dawn breaks. Here and there, the stiff antennae of dead cockroaches quiver in the breeze. The cockerel from the previous story begins to crow.
The fourth story marks a new era in the house. The story begins in the usual fashion: I was complaining about the cockroaches. It continues up to the moment when I discover those statues made of plaster of Paris. Dead, of course. I glance at the pipes where this very night another swarm will appear, advancing slowly upwards in Indian file. Should I administer the lethal sugar night after night? Like someone who can no longer sleep without satisfying this craving for the nightly ritual. And should I spend my sleepless nights on the terrace? Eager to discover those statues my humid nights have erected? I trembled with perverse satisfaction at the vision of my dual existence as a sorceress. I also trembled at the sight of that hardening plaster of Paris, the depravity of existence which would shatter my inner form.
The cruel moment of choosing between two paths which I thought would divide, convinced that any choice would mean sacrificing either myself or my soul. I made my choice. And today I secretly wear the badge of virtue on my heart. ‘This apartment has been disinfected.’
The fifth story is called Leibnitz and the Transcendence of Love in Polynesia. It begins as follows: I was complaining about the cockroaches.