‘Close the file.’
With all the closing of files we did we eventually built a wall and when we started shooting the people who wanted to climb over the wall as if they were rabbits Lilstein said to Lilstein quick let’s do something which will enable us to dispense with the wall, let’s be better spies, let’s be better plotters, let’s work smarter, it’ll be better, come off it, I knew, I acted, I never said anything, first prize for silence, in Moscow one day Markov said to me:
‘Mustn’t drink too much.’
He already had a diseased liver, he told me people die because they chatter like magpies, a few glasses of vodka and they feel the need to express themselves, in them there is nothing but silence and sobriety, usually they keep quiet, they vote for the most nonsensical proposals in silence, and the same evening in front of thirty people, at the tenth glass, they shout today we did something really bloody stupid, they want to save their souls, bear witness at the tops of their voices, with the courage of vodka, they know that a team will come looking for them at five in the morning and will ask them to be more specific about the witness they’d borne, sober this time, a lot less amusing, when I say sober I mean them, because the men asking the questions can go on drinking, I personally never tried to bear witness, because I don’t drink.
He was all right, Markov, he looked after me, I looked after my young French friend, that’s what History is.
With Hegel and his flame, and the bear.
In historical reason, the idea of reason modifies the idea of History and vice versa, Ortega y Gasset is logical, he simultaneously demolishes a concept of reason, a concept of History and a policy, his own policy is how to keep the masses quiet, how to connect with the political, some statements which are designed to disqualify the real, so as to leave place only for market forces, go back to Marx, even if he’s no longer fashionable, the link with exploitation, apparently exploitation has disappeared, take someone like me who is paid for half-time in a bookshop but actually works two-thirds of a week, could you say this was exploitation? You’re getting off the point, irrelevant, an honest conscience which leads you off the point, the owner is always telling me that he wants me to share the results, that means he wants me to work for a commission, he knows I’m not keen, what he wants is for me to work as if I was on a commission but for a fixed wage, I’m going to have to keep an eye on those two old guys, a reasonable animal or a rational animal, I’d also like to work in the idea that man is an animal who cooks, I’m sure Kant stole stuff from Samuel Johnson.
My Bukharinian poet and his bear, he told it well, the hunter washing his mouth out, going back into the forest, in a furious rage, finds the bear, bang! bear on the ground, kick in the ribs, bear doesn’t move, the hunter stays with his victim, second lap of honour around the bear, hunter decides to go back and get the villagers, goes home singing, on the way a tap on the shoulder from behind, it’s the bear, on its hind legs, fifty centimetres, broad grin, the teeth, the right paw, palm as big as a hunter’s head, great big claws, the bear slowly lowers its left paw, shows what he’s got between his legs, smiles, says to the hunter:
‘Jollywobbles please, or I’ll eat you up!’
The hunter does what he’s told, the bear lets him go, the hunter goes back to the village puking every hundred metres, house, reloads his gun, comes back out again, returns at a run, bang! bear falls down, kick in the ribs, bear doesn’t move, glorious forest, third lap of honour.
‘Cut it short! Bloody poet!’
In the hut some of the men were starting to get restless, but they let the poet carry on, he was really very thin, fairly tall, beard, all you could make out were his green eyes and his teeth, very odd, he still had all his teeth and they were white, again he talked of claws, of traces of blood on the claws, the bear slowly lowers its left paw, points to what it has between its legs, jollywobbles please or I’ll eat you up, the hunter who goes home, throws up every hundred metres, locks himself up in his house, goes out again, charges back.
He finds the bear, fourth shot, kick, fourth lap of honour, all alone again, decides to go get people from village, tap on shoulder, the bear, big smile, paw rising, the claws, the blood, the bear crosses his arms and asks the hunter:
‘Is killing bears the real reason why you come into the forest?’
The bear and the flame, to have loved the flame so intensely that we ourselves become what feeds it, it was a French poet who said that, a great poet, you have a small chance of surviving it if you don’t drink, if you don’t play around with words, if you don’t try to bear witness to save your soul.
In Magadan I saw men die yelling at the tops of their voices to save the flame, shouting ‘long live Stalin!’ and ‘long live the Party!’ a volley of rifle fire and down they went like rags.
Not forgetting the one who made everybody laugh, back to the wall, facing the firing squad, he yelled ‘long live the Tsar!’ crazy laughter, we close our eyes, clamp eyeballs, lips, jaws, we titter, we’re spotted, we’re in prison clothes, an officer shouts at us:
‘Think that’s funny, do we, my little woodchips?’
Comic or tragic we couldn’t say, some of the others were crying, the officer said:
‘You’re right to think that’s funny, my little woodchips, or maybe it’s the tchaïfir that’s making you laugh?’
You sensed he wasn’t going to punish us, he smiled, he called us his little woodchips, Stalin’s woodchips, because when you chop wood you always leave woodchips, he added:
‘Humour is no way out.’
Apart from us no one has come into this shop, where’s that young woman got to? She’s disappeared, now there’s only my young Parisian friend and me here, a traitor and me, this is it, they’re going to get me, for the third time in my life they’re going to get me, instead of admiring his beige coat you should have made a run for it the moment you saw him so firmly settled in this awful bookshop, they’ll get you for the third time and there won’t be a fourth, too old, it’s like when you say I’ll never have time to reread the whole of Goethe, never have time to live another kind of life, no one has come into the shop, the girl has vanished, this has got to stop, at least I can make up my mind to put an end to this ridiculous farce.
No, she’s there.
Where did she go? Where can a shop assistant be when you can’t see her? there she is, by the till, she must have bent down, nothing out of the usual.
The officer barked:
‘Fire!’
File on the Trotskyite-tsarist closed, the man was right to yell ‘long live the Tsar!’, they couldn’t take his death away from him, everybody remembered it, some men sentenced to death never said anything, sometimes they had faces like children who couldn’t cry, I didn’t say anything at Magadan either, for a while I still felt protected, and I never understood that things were going pear-shaped until another prisoner, a big-time gangster, gave me an order:
‘Scratch my feet!’
Among the young crowd, it’s only with Gilles that the owner is at all pleasant, that’s because Gilles writes for the papers, usually the owner is never pleasant with young persons, he says they never buy anything, I correct him, they are tomorrow’s customers, when they’ll have money, he replies by the time they’ve got money I’ll be six feet under, for the essay the main thing is to get as fast as I can to the problem part, though actually it’s a double problem, if reason is historical, it’s to the detriment of pure reason, but when reason is pure it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with History, if I dramatise this paradox, I’ll have part one, and into the second I’ll stick Hegel and the ruse of reason, find reason in History all the same, thanks to the ruse of reason, using what as examples?