This man and this woman, who were extremely taciturn and had a mute, impassive expression, began — perhaps driven by that urge even experienced by people who look as if they are half-dead — began trying to live with greater intensity. In search of what? That destiny which precedes us? And to which we are fatally driven? But what destiny?
This attempt to live with greater intensity led them to weigh up what was or was not important. They did this in their own way: with a lack of know-how and experience and modesty. They were feeling their way about. Now that they had discovered this vice much too late in life, they tried independently to distinguish between the essential and the non-essential, not that they would ever have used the word essential, nor did they try to understand what was happening to them because such things had no meaning in their social milieu. It was as if they wanted to discover what was essential in order to live their lives accordingly. But nothing came of the vague, almost self-conscious effort they were making: the very plot of life forever escaped them. And it was only by summing up the day’s events that they could get any feeling of having lived, of somehow having lived despite themselves. But by then it was already night and they were putting on their slippers.
None of this really created a situation for the couple. That is to say, something that each of them might recount to themselves as they turned their backs on each other in bed, their eyes momentarily open and almost startled before they finally fell asleep. People so badly need to be able to tell themselves their own story. But they had nothing to tell. With a sigh of false comfort, they closed their eyes and fell into a troubled sleep. And when they weighed up their lives, they could not even include this attempt to live with greater intensity, or discount it as when dealing with one’s income tax. A weighing-up which they gradually began to engage in more and more frequently, without even the technical equipment of a terminology to match their thoughts. If this represented a situation, it was not exactly a situation with which one could ostensibly live.
But it did not simply happen like this. They were able to keep calm because ‘not to lead’, ‘not to invent’, ‘not to err’, was for them really much more than just a habit, it was a question of honour to which they were tacitly pledged. It would never have occurred to them to break that pledge. And offend God. Offend society? What society? Which God did they serve?
Their proud conviction stemmed from a noble awareness that they were two individual human beings amongst thousands like themselves. ‘To be an equal’ was the role they had been given, the task with which they had been entrusted. Both of them had been singled out for their respect for obedience and they solemnly responded with civic gratitude to the confidence that their equals had placed in them. They belonged to a caste. The role they fulfilled with pride and decorum was that of anonymous persons, of children of God, of members of a community.
Yet, perhaps because of the relentless passage of time, all this had started to become dull, dull, dull. Sometimes claustrophobic. (The man as well as the woman had already reached the critical age.) They would open the windows and comment that it was extremely hot. Without exactly living a life of boredom, it was as if no one ever sent them any news. Besides, boredom was part of this obedience to a life of honest sentiments.
THE OBEDIENT (II)
But since all of this was beyond their understanding, and they found so many things above their heads which, even if expressed in words, they would have failed to understand, all this began to look like irremediable life. A life to which they submitted in silence and with that somewhat wounded expression which is common amongst men of good will. It resembled that irremediable life for which God destined us. Or did He? Doubts began to creep in.
Life irremediable, but not concrete. In fact, it was an unattainable life of dreams. Sometimes, when they were speaking about someone who was eccentric, they would say, with the condescension one class shows towards another: ‘Ah, he takes life seriously, he leads the life of a poet.’ One could say, judging from the few words I heard the couple say, that they both led, leaving aside any extravagance, the life of a second-rate poet: a life which consisted only of dreams.
No, no, that is not true. It was not a life of dreams, for that would never have enriched them. But one of unreality. Although there were moments when suddenly, for one reason or another, they would plunge into reality. And then they had the impression of touching depths no one could hope to transcend.
As, for example, when the husband came back earlier than usual to find his wife was not at home. The husband felt as if a chain had been broken. Feeling put out, he sat down to read the newspaper in a silence so hushed that even a corpse at his side would have broken the spell. He sat there, pretending in all honesty to be completely wrapped up in his newspaper, his senses on the alert. This was the moment when he touched the bottom with startled feet. He could not remain for long like this without the risk of drowning, for touching the bottom was the same as having water above one’s head. These were the more concrete thoughts in his subconscious. Which caused him, levelheaded and sensible as he was, to extricate himself at once. He extricated himself at once, yet somehow reluctantly, for his wife’s absence held out such a promise of forbidden pleasure that he experienced what might be called disobedience. He extricated himself reluctantly but without discussion, conforming to what was expected of him. Who expected it of him? He could not be sure. He was no deserter, capable of betraying the trust of others. But if this were reality, there was no way he could live with it.
As for his wife, she touched on reality rather more frequently, for she had more leisure and fewer worries to contend with, such as colleagues at work, overcrowded buses, and all those administrative chores. She would sit down to do some mending, and little by little would find herself confronting reality. The mere act of sitting down to do some mending was intolerable while it lasted. The sudden way the dot falls neatly on the i, that sensation of being so much a part of existence, and everything being so clearly itself, was unbearable. But when the feeling passed, it was as if the wife had drunk from some possible future. Little by little, this woman’s future started to become something which she brought into the present, something contemplative and secret.
It was surprising how the two of them remained indifferent, for example, to politics, to the change of government, to developments in general, although, like everyone else, they too discussed these things from time to time. Truly, they were so reserved these two that, were anyone to tell them so to their face, they would have been surprised and flattered. It would never have occurred to them to think of themselves as being reserved. Perhaps they would have understood if someone had said to them: ‘You two are the very symbol of military and patriotic reserve.’ Some acquaintances said of them after the event: they were decent people. And there was nothing more to be said, for they were decent people.
There was nothing more to be said. They lacked the burden of any grave error, which is often precisely what one needs to open a safety exit. They had once taken something very seriously. They were obedient.
Not simply out of craven submission, but as in a sonnet. It was obedience out of their love for symmetry. For them, symmetry was the only possible art.
Strange that each of them should have reached the same conclusion that, alone, the one could live longer than the other. It would be a long road of rehabilitation and of useless effort, because from different angles many had reached the same conclusion.