2084

by Sansal Boualem

  In its infinite knowledge of artifice, the System realized early on that it was hypocrisy that made the perfect believer, not faith; given its oppressive nature, faith trails doubt behind it, or even rebellion and madness. The System also understood that true religion can be nothing other than well-regulated sanctimoniousness, set up as a monopoly and maintained by omnipresent terror. “As detail is the essence of practice” everything has been codified, from birth to death, from sunrise to sunset; the life of the perfect believer is an uninterrupted succession of words and gestures to be repeated, and it leaves no latitude to dream, hesitate, think, or possibly disbelieve—or even believe. Ati found it hard to formulate a conclusion: believing is not believing but deceiving; not believing is believing the opposite idea, thereby deceiving oneself and eventually making one’s idea into a dogma for others. That held true for Unique Thought . . . was it also true in the free world? Ati recoiled at the difficulty, he did not know the free world, he could simply not imagine the connection between dogma and freedom, or which of the two might prove stronger.

  Something in his mind had snapped, and he couldn’t see what. And yet he was fully aware that he did not want to go on being the man he had been in this world, a world that suddenly seemed horribly wicked and base to him; he desired this transformation that had begun in pain and shame, even if it killed him. The man he had been, the faithful believer, was dying, that much he knew, and another life was being born inside him. This new life was exalting, even though he knew it was doomed to violent punishment—he would be crushed and cursed, his family ruined and banished, because—and this was as clear as day—he had no means of escaping from this world, he belonged to it, body and soul, as he had always done and always would until the end of time, when nothing would remain of him, not a speck of dust, not a memory. He could not even deny it in silence, he had nothing to reproach it with—basically, nothing to oppose it with—it was what he was, true to his nature. And who could contest the Gkabul, who could cause it any trouble, and how? Nothing touched it; on the contrary, everything strengthened it. That was the way it was conceived, supreme and sublimely indifferent to the world and to humankind, just as the madness and the colossal ambition of its promoters wished. That was the explanation: he was like God, everything proceeded from him and everything was resolved in him—good and evil, life and death. In fact, nothing exists, not even God; he alone exists.

  The Apparatus was sure to hunt him down and annihilate him—soon, no doubt, and perhaps the machinery had already been on the alert for a long time, or forever, waiting for the right moment to strike, like a cat pretending to sleep when the mouse thinks it has gotten away. He was one cell in an organ, an ant in the anthill: dysfunction in one spot is instantly felt throughout the body collective. The distress tormenting him would surely goad the System to its depths; unusual signals would have been exchanged somewhere, driven by instinct, a vibration of chords or a mental flow among the Vs, automatically triggering some process in the nerve center to localize the source of the disturbance, to verify and analyze it with infinite complexity, which in turn would set in motion other equally complex mechanisms to correct and adjust and if need be destroy, and then reinitialization and oblivion would come to ward off any harmful reminiscences and the ensuing surge of nostalgia that could follow; and all of it, down to the most minute quantum of information, would be encoded and archived in a slow infallible memory, to be chewed on over and over, endlessly, until this rumination disgorged sovereign rules and practical teachings to reinforce the whole system and prevent the future from being anything other than a strict replica of the past.

  In the Book of Abi it is written, in the first title, chapter 2, verse 12:

  “The Revelation is one, unique and universal, it calls for neither addition nor revision, nor does it call for faith, love, or criticism. Only Acceptance and Submission. Yölah is all-powerful, he will punish the arrogant severely.”

  And further, in title 42, chapter 36, verse 351, Yölah is more specific: “He who is arrogant will suffer the thunder of my wrath, he will be mutilated, dismembered, burned, and his ashes will be scattered to the winds, and his kin, ascendants, and offspring, will know a bitter end, and death itself will not protect them from my prosecution.”

  The mind is basically nothing more than a mechanism, a blind, cold machine by virtue of its extraordinary complexity, which mandates that it must apprehend everything, control everything, and increase interference and terror without pause. Between life and the machine there is all the mystery of freedom, which man cannot attain without dying, and which the machine transcends without acceding to consciousness. Ati was not free and never would be, but armed solely with his doubt and fears he felt truer than Abi, greater than the Just Brotherhood and its tentacular Apparatus, and more alive than the inert, swelling mass of believers; he had acquired the consciousness of his condition, and therein lay his freedom, in the perception that we are not free but possess the power to fight to the death to be so. It seemed clear to him that true victory lies in the losing battle that, despite everything, is fought to the end. By virtue of this knowledge, he understood that when death came for him, it would be his own and not that of the Apparatus; it would occur through his own volition, his inner rebellion, it would never be punishment for any deviation from or failure to obey the laws of the System. The Apparatus might destroy him, erase him, it could shake him and reprogram him and make him adore submission to the point of madness, but it could never take from him that which it did not know, had never seen, never possessed, had never given or received, although it was something it hated above all else and sought endlessly to crush: freedom. Ati knew this, the way man knows that death is the end of life—that thing that is elusive in essence is its disavowal and its end, but it is also its justification—the System having no aim other than to prevent freedom from appearing, to enchain men and kill them; though driven by self-interest this was also the only pleasure it could find in its miserable existence. The slave who knows he is a slave will always be freer and greater than his master, even if that master is king of the world.

  So Ati would die like that, with a dream of freedom in his heart, it was what he wanted, it was vital, because he knew he could never have anything more, and that living in a system like that was not living at all, it served no purpose, it was a life lived for nothing, for no one, only to die and disintegrate like an inanimate object.

  His heart was beating so fast it hurt. A strange sensation: the more fear overwhelmed him and twisted his guts, the stronger he felt. He felt so courageous. Something was crystallizing deep in his heart, a little seed of true courage, a diamond. He was discovering—without knowing how to express it other than through a paradox—that life deserves for us to die for it, because without life we are dead creatures who have never been anything but dead. Before dying, Ati wanted to live his life, the life he sensed emerging from darkness, even if for only a split second.

  Not that long ago he had been among those who called for the death of anyone who failed to obey the rules of the Just Brotherhood. When it came to gross misconduct, he rallied with the hard-liners who insisted on spectacular executions, for he believed that the people were entitled to these moments of intense communion, where blood flowed and splattered profusely, and purifying terror erupted like a volcano. His faith emerged enhanced, renewed. It was not cruelty that inspired him, nor any base emotion; he simply believed that to Yölah man must offer his best by showing hatred for the enemy and love for one’s kin, by rewarding good and punishing evil, in wisdom as well as madness.

  God is ardent; to live for him is an exaltation.

  But now with each passing moment Ati was increasingly convinced that all of this was mere words, words that could have been etched onto his memory at birth, automatic, delayed-action responses inserted in his genes and constantly perfected with each generation. And suddenly there came to him the revelation of the deep reality of his condit
ioning: it had made him, and everyone around him, into a stubborn machine who was proud of the fact, a believer who was happy to be blind, a zombie congealed in submission and obsequiousness, living for nothing, out of simple obligation, useless duty, a petty creature capable of killing all of mankind with a snap of his fingers. This revelation was an enlightenment, and showed him the insidious self that dominated him from within and against whom he wanted to rebel . . . but then again he did not. The contradiction was flagrant, and indispensable, it was at the very heart of his conditioning! The believer must be constantly maintained at the point where submission and rebellion are enamored of each other: submission is infinitely more delightful when one sees the possibility of setting oneself free, but it is also for this reason that mutiny is out of the question. There is too much at stake—life and the heavens—and nothing to gain; freedom in the wilderness or in the grave is another prison. Were it not for this complicity, submission would be a vague state unable to awaken the consciousness of the believer to his absolute insignificance, let alone to the munificence, omnipotence, and infinite compassion of his sovereign. Submission engenders rebellion and rebellion resolves itself in submission: that is what is needed, this indissoluble pair, in order for one’s self-awareness to exist. That is the path: one can only know good if one knows evil, and vice versa, by virtue of the principle that holds that life does not exist or move other than within and in opposition to hostile forces. A strange, underhand spirit is lodged in everyone; it thinks of life, goodness, peace, truth, brotherhood, and gentle, reassuring perpetuity, and endows them with every virtue, but does not seek them out—and oh how passionately—other than through death, destruction, lying, cunning, domination, perversion, and brutal, unjust aggression. And so the contradiction vanishes into confusion, the struggle between good and evil comes to an end, as they are two modes of a single reality, just as action and reaction are one, and equal, to ensure unity and equilibrium. Suppressing one implies suppressing the other. In Abi’s world good and evil are not in opposition; they merge, since there is no life to recognize them, name them, and construct a duality, they are one and the same reality, that of non-life, or death-in-life. All of belief is there, the question of good and evil from a moral viewpoint is a pointless, subsidiary question, set aside once and for all, good and evil are no more than the pillars of stability, with no meaning of their own. The true holy religion, Acceptance, Gkabul, consists of this and only this: proclaiming that there is no god but Yölah, and that Abi is his Delegate. The rest belongs to the law and its tribunal: they will make man into a submissive, diligent believer, and crowds of tireless cohorts who will do what they are told, with the means placed at their disposal, and all will proclaim, “Yölah is great and Abi is his Delegate!”

  The more men are diminished, the more they see themselves as strong and great. Only at the hour of their death do they realize, dazed, that life owes them nothing because they gave it nothing.

  But what does their opinion matter: they’ve had their blood sucked dry by a system they have both defended and been victim to. Predators and prey, inseparable in absurdity and madness. No one will tell them that in the equation of life, good and evil have been reversed, and that in the end good has been replaced by a lesser evil; life has left them no other way, given the fact that human society can only be governed by evil, an ever greater evil, so that nothing, ever, from without or within, will come to threaten it. And so the evil that opposes evil becomes good, and good is the perfect expedient to support evil and justify it.

  “Good and Evil are mine, it has not been given to you to distinguish them, I send them both to you to show the way to truth and happiness. Woe to those who do not heed my call. I am Yölah the almighty,” so it is written in the Book of Abi, title 5, chapter 36, verse 97.

  He would have liked to speak to someone about his trouble. To put his thoughts into words and say them, hear mocking replies, criticism, perhaps encouragement—it all seemed vital to him at this stage, where perdition was already well advanced. More than once he was tempted to strike up a conversation with a patient, a nurse, or a pilgrim, but he caught himself just in time; they’d call him crazy, accuse him of blasphemy. One word and the world collapses. The Vs would come running: evil thoughts were like nectar to them. He knew how people were trained to denounce others; he himself had gone about it with fervor at his work, in his neighborhood, against his most reliable neighbors and friends. He had been highly rated and more than once he’d received praise during the R-Days, the Days of Reward, and been mentioned in The Hero, the renowned and very honorable newsletter of the VLBs, the Volunteer Law-enforcing Believers.

  As the days and months went by, Ati began to feel out of his depth with the most familiar notions; they took on a new resonance. Outside the yoke of society and police machinery that keep belief on the straight and narrow path, everything falls apart: good, evil, true, false no longer have borders, or at least not those they had been known to have—other borders emerge in filigree. Everything is blurred, everything is dangerous and far away. The more one looks for oneself, the more one is lost.

  The isolation of the sanatorium made everything difficult: wretchedness grew by the day, indoctrination was getting lax. There was always something preventing classes from being held, or the beneficial sessions of scansion, or the restful prayers, and even the sacrosanct Thursday Imploration: patients were missing at roll call, an avalanche or a landslide had blocked the road, high waters had washed away a footbridge, lightning had struck a cable, the schoolmaster had fallen into the ravine on his way back from the city, the director had gone to see what had happened or was required in high places, the tutor had lost his voice, the janitor could not find his key-ring, there was hunger, thirst, an epidemic, penury, carnage, a thousand futile, sovereign things. Far from everything, nothing worked, calamity had a free rein. Left to their own devices, idle as stones, surrounded by want, they were all unnecessary, in the way; the patients gathered together, pathetic and ashamed, to watch each other die, to tell of their suffering, to wander from one wall to the next, and at night, in their icy beds, adrift in the dark like a raft on the ocean, they stirred up happy memories to keep warm, always the same ones, for they had taken on an obsessive significance. It was as if they wanted to announce something: they receded, returned, clashed. Sometimes, for a short while, which the patients tried to prolong by watching the film again, adding adventure and color, they might be aware of how far they had come, and that in a way they did exist, someone in the ether wanted to talk to them, to listen, to offer help, a compassionate soul, a long-lost friend, a confidant. So there were things in this life that did belong to them, not in the way of some venal piece of property, but as a truth, a comfort. It was bliss to be able to surrender to trust.

  Bit by bit, an unfamiliar world appeared, where strange words were in use, words no one had ever heard—glimpsed, perhaps, like shadows passing in the commotion of murmurs. One word fascinated Ati; it opened the door onto a world of beauty and inexhaustible love, where man was a god who could work miracles with his thoughts. It was insane, it caused him to tremble; not only did the thing seem possible, it told him that it alone was real.

  One night, he heard himself murmuring beneath his blanket. The sounds emerged of their own will, as if forcing their way through his pinched lips. Gripped by fear, he resisted, then he let go and listened to his words. An electric shock went through him. He gasped for breath, he heard himself repeating that fascinating word, the one he’d never used and did not know, and he stammered each syllable: “Free . . . dom . . . free . . . dom . . . free . . . dom . . . free . . . dom . . . free . . . dom . . . free . . . dom . . . ” Did he shout it at one point? Did the other patients hear him? How could he know? It was a cry inside . . .

  The cavernous groan of the mountain, which had terrified him ever since his arrival at the sanatorium, suddenly vanished. The wind was light, now that it was rid of fear; it smelled of good mountai
n air, sharp and euphoric. A bright melody, rising from the deep gorges to the summits. Ati listened, rapt.

  That night he did not sleep a wink. He was happy. He could have slept and dreamt, happiness had exhausted him, but he preferred to stay awake and let his imagination roam. This happiness would be short-lived, he must make the most of it. He also urged himself to remain calm, to come back down to earth, to do some planning and prepare himself mentally, for soon he would be leaving the hospital and going home, back to where he belonged . . . his country, Abistan, about which he realized he knew so little. He must quickly learn all he could, to give himself a chance at salvation.

  Two more months as heavy as the tomb would go by before the duty nurse came to tell him the doctor had signed his discharge papers. The nurse showed him his medical file. It consisted of two crumpled sheets of paper: the admissions form and the discharge form, to which a nervous hand had added: “Keep under close scrutiny.”