The World Goes On

by László Krasznahorkai

  UNIVERSAL THESEUS

  Now, at last: for Samuel Beckett

  1:150

  THE FIRST LECTURE

  I

  I do not know who you are, gentlemen.

  I couldn’t quite make out the name of your organization.

  And frankly, I must confess I am not entirely clear about what kind of lecture you expect me to give here.

  After all, you must be aware that I am not a lecturer.

  I have given much thought to the matter, I racked my brains trying to find out what this was all about, just as I am trying right now, in front of you, but it’s best if I admit that I haven’t succeeded: I just don’t know what you expect of me, and I have a lingering bad feeling that perhaps you yourselves aren’t quite clear about it.

  It had also occurred to me that possibly you are mistaking me for someone else. You had intended to invite a certain person, but he wasn’t available, and only because of that did you select me, because I am the one who most reminds you of that person.

  You are not saying anything.

  Fine, it’s all the same to me.

  Mr. President, gentlemen—I shall speak about melancholy.

  And I will begin by going way back.

  II

  During one of the later decades of the twentieth century, deep in the deepest hellhole of that decade, on a bitter freezing night in late November, a ghostly tractor-trailer advanced on the main street toward the market square of a small town in the lowlands of southeast Hungary. At a glance it appeared to be about thirty meters long, and its height . . . its height, compared to its length and width, seemed to be far too great, and these gigantic dimensions naturally went with an enormous weight, all of it resting on two sets of eight double wheels. The sides were made of blue corrugated tin upon which an unskilled hand had daubed enigmatic figures in yellow paint, and although this entire ramshackle contraption should have been comparable to a freight train car, it did not resemble or recall any such thing in the least, not just because of its gargantuan dimensions and weight and wheels, nor because those crudely daubed figures and their alarming undecipherability instantly removed from this vehicle any resemblance to a train car, but chiefly because it had no doors, nothing that might suggest a door, as if the original plan had been to commission a subterranean workshop to build such and such a transport vehicle made out of blue corrugated tin with two sets of eight twin wheels but without any doors, there was no need for any doors, not even in the rear, that’s right, no doors, not a single one, thank you, because if you undertake to do this, gentlemen, it will be your masterpiece as tinsmiths, that’s what the commission must have sounded like, this will be your makeshift masterpiece, that must have been the sum of the sketchy instructions given to the subterranean workmen, you are building this conveyance not just for anyone to open and close, it will suffice if I, who ordered the work, open and close it when I want to, and if I do so then it will be from the inside, with a single gesture, by me.

  It must have been somewhat like that, because at a glance, your first impression was most definitely that any amount of speculation about underground workshops, mysterious tinsmiths, and a customer whose identity was a complete enigma would be fully justified, since in addition to all that, one had to think of the inconceivable slowness of dragging it with a rickety tractor-trailer straining against the icy wind and the excruciatingly prolonged nocturnal journey this extraordinary contraption must have completed before it braked to a halt at the marketplace.

  Not wishing to abuse your patience I won’t go into further detail; suffice it to say it was an altogether ghostly apparition that, having fought its way against the wind, and, arriving at the square, ground to a stop with a wheeze, nor do I need to say that its ghostly air was first and foremost due to what lay hidden within, the cargo for whose transit it had been intended and built, and this ghostly air was also due to those who had accompanied the terrifying passenger in the vehicle, clattering along with it all the way from the East and over the Carpathian Mountains, meaning the crew, and finally it was also due to the significant and ominous entourage—roughly three hundred hulking forms drawn from the villages and farms of the region by this nightmarish vehicle as sleepwalkers are drawn by the Moon, and who, having arrived on pre-dawn trains, and guided by posters, had already trudged down the main street of the small town, to stand there at daybreak, all three hundred of them, apparently mesmerized.

  The local townfolk had of course been informed not only by the posters but also the rumors that had arrived well ahead of this troupe, so that when in the morning they saw for themselves the strange freight on the market square all they said was, ah, then it was true after all and not just hearsay, so it wasn’t mere baseless gossip, yes indeed here was the entire traveling circus with the whale and its whole retinue in fact indisputably arrived.

  Esteemed Director-General, esteemed audience, they, the locals had found out just about all that could be learned about this troupe from all the stray talk going around—there was no need to reread the words on the posters—that here was the largest whale in the world inside that gigantic circus truck parked in the middle of the market square. They already knew about the frightfully obese Director and the permanently lit cigar smoking between his fingers that he raised from time to time in a cautioning gesture, and they knew about the immovable, impassive Factotum, as gossip had referred to the other member of the two-man staff, the one that looked like a wrestler, and that these two, plus the allegedly largest whale in the world, had already caused plenty of mischief along the way before arriving here.

  So these local citizens knew quite a lot, and if I said they suffered torments of anxiety on account of this, no one would wonder, for, after all, the inhabitants of this town lived in a world where everyone, in a rising tide of hatred caused by their fear of human nature, was convinced that humanity would destroy itself. So that they were aware of a great many things, trivial details as well as essentials—namely, what lay hidden behind that wall of corrugated tin, they agreed that behind it lay a dreadful, enormous whale—but that this whale might be concealing something, that in fact the whale itself might be a substitute for something else, in other words this enormous carcass was simultaneously both messenger and message . . . well . . . the townspeople were entirely unaware of this.

  Now began an excruciating, prolonged wait lasting into the afternoon hours, when the gigantic locked container was at long last opened up for the half-frozen audience. A slow, shuffling procession commenced, headed for the interior of the gigantic container, through an entrance suddenly created when from the inside the Factotum lowered the rear tin wall, and it all ended soon enough, because after circumambulating the interior, the spellbound flock of spectators was already once again assembled outside on the square. Yet none moved from there, not one of them set out on the main street back toward the train station, they remained there waiting, standing around and gawking at the open entrance to the whale, for a single glance had sufficed earlier: as soon as these three hundred drifters had cast a single glance at the whale’s carcass resting on a low wooden platform, they were already on their way out, shuffling along, and then as a matter of course settling in the vicinity, in the vicinity of the whale, without budging an inch.

  Esteemed Mr. President-General Director—pardon me if I use the incorrect form of address—and esteemed audience: in contrast to the local citizens, these three hundred, by way of this cursory inspection, and then their absolute refusal to budge, implied that the whale inside was merely covering up something, and that they had not come for the whale itself, but for what lay behind it.

  There is a book explicitly declaring that from this moment on everything went wrong in the most infernal manner possible in this town, that is to say literally all hell broke loose, and the book intimates that it knows what this hell could be like, it knows what took place subsequently, what in fact this whale had been concealing on
that market square back in the deepest hellhole of the nineteen sixties or seventies.

  If you will pardon my arbitrary, presumptuous use of the first person plural, then allow me to put it this way: unable to find any ultimate meaning we feel crushed enough already to be fed up with a literature that pretends there is such a thing and keeps hinting at some ultimate meaning. We refuse to put up with a literature that is essentially, in its very fiber, so radically mendacious, we are in such dire need of an ultimate meaning that quite simply we can no longer tolerate the lies, we can no longer put up with this literature, and in fact it is not outrage, but boredom and the squalid level of those lies that make us gag; well then, given the above, in fullest possible agreement with you gentlemen, I myself can now announce that to claim there is a book that knows, that promises to reveal and narrate to us and only us all that breaks loose in the wake of one of these gigantic whales, is either an insidious effrontery or the vilest drivel, in a word, lies, of course, for nobody knows what really is unleashed at these times, no one, and no book knows that, because that certain something lies completely covered up by the whale.

  Mr. Chief Counselor, esteemed gentlemen!

  III

  If all of this took place in the late sixties, then I would have been a boy of about ten, and if during the early seventies, about fifteen; in any case I clearly recall I was on my way to school that morning, shuddering briefly, and waving the whole thing off, thinking, what a cheap humbug, a stinking carcass, and fifty forints to boot, no way would I blow that much of my Easter allowance, I kept thinking, as I passed that tin colossus on Kossuth Square, parked right by the sidewalk where I walked on my way to school.

  That was how it began, in the morning, but after school—it must have gotten dark rather early that day—I became more and more intrigued on my way home, until at last I too sneaked back to Kossuth Square, as did so many others, who, with the huge sum of fifty forints in their pocket, had scurried from home, slipping out stealthily to evade parental eyes.

  I escaped back to Kossuth Square, and counted off my fifty forints into the palm of the Factotum, and even to be standing there near the Factotum produced a feeling that one had transgressed a certain boundary beyond which lay things perhaps splendid, perhaps ordinary, but in any case dreadful and dangerous. Of course I cannot recall now what I had expected to find back then; when stepping up on the planks I entered the interior of the conveyance, but I must have been certain that the spectacle would be perhaps splendid, perhaps ordinary, but in any case awesome and dangerous, and I must have had my own preconception of its clearly being completely one or the other; however what it actually turned out to be was utterly unexpected, not because the whale was too much like, or differed too much from, my expectations, no, not at all, but because I at once noticed how pathetic it was lying there on that low framework of hefty girders, vaguely looming in the light of a few dim lamps, and likewise, almost immediately, I understood that this mystery, the whale, resisted and would always resist any explanation whatsoever.

  To get around the whale one had to get very close to it, especially near its head, where you had to turn in order to make your way out of there, and this proximity, the proximity of so much containment, nearly wiped me out by the time I reached the head and made the turn for the exit. My heart throbbed feverishly, something compressed my throat, and turning, I believe what I felt was compassion, shock, and shame, but then, after a few steps, already on the other side, I stopped for a moment amidst the general gawking and shuffling to just stare at the whale, trying to take it all in at a single glance, and when I succeeded, I no longer had anything in mind, I no longer wanted to, and anyway I would have been unable to put a name to what I was feeling, was it really compassion? what was it? and I disconnected my mind, my brain stopped functioning, only my emotions began to work in overdrive, the way a sudden wave of stifling heat, a swoon, a bottomless stupor can all at once overwhelm one. Back then of course I had been unable to stammer out a single word about this, not in there, nor outside, and after I tiptoed my way down the planks, I practically had to fight my way through the crowd of immobile people standing around in quilted jackets, boots, and lambskin caps, to make my escape from Kossuth Square. Incapable of uttering a word back then, now I am at last able to say what happened to me at the time and, I believe, to the others there as well, back in sixty- or seventy-something, because today I can unequivocally state that the whale, lying there on that platform of beams and girders in the feeble light, initiated me as it were, and perhaps the others as well, into a state of melancholy; as I stared at the whale and shambled around it in the putrid interior of that contraption, an infinite melancholy seized my soul . . .what shall I compare it to, it was like honey—you know, the kind where a spoonful is enough to kill anyone.

  Some kind of deadly honey, that’s what this melancholy tasted like, but I would very much hope not to mislead any of you with this simile, because using it—this simile—I do not wish to imply that this melancholy is impossible to identify in and of itself, or that this melancholy, outside itself, carries some sort of referential content, some little anecdote, clandestine directions, or road map in a spoonful of honey, no, not at all, this melancholy did not require anything else in order to arise, it simply entered the soul, so that to liken it, as I did before, to the fatal sweetness of honey, to somehow connect it in retrospect with this spoonful of honey, only the fallen man within me can attempt to do this, the one who, beyond the fact of his disgrace, is well aware that everyone else here is likewise perfectly aware of the absurd necessity, and at the same time the unmaskable failure, of introducing a simile only to withdraw it.

  Esteemed Secretary-General, esteemed assembly! like some deadly honey, in the sense qualified a moment ago, was this melancholy that swooped down upon me back then, on seeing the special attraction brought to our small town by the traveling circus that had arrived from the East, from somewhere in the Balkans, and by this I do not mean to claim it was here at this point that my especial sensitivity to melancholy originated, and that I have chosen this affair of the whale merely so that I can solemnly announce, lo and behold, that this by no means ordinary encounter marks the starting point of understanding for me, the understanding that the road toward “fundamental things,” as I used to call them, leads through melancholy, because no, on the contrary, by no means was this the solemn point zero, the fons et origo of understanding for me, for it had already coursed through me in earlier times, this sensitivity must have been with me at birth, or perhaps it was born one afternoon when it grew dark too soon, and dusk found me alone by the window in a small room, or who knows, possibly even earlier when I was still in my crib, left alone one of those afternoons when dusk arrives too early—in the end it makes no difference when I first awoke to it—and I started to savor the deadly sweetness of this honey once I had awakened to it and it began, and from there on at various times and places it swooped down on me, most notably of course back in sixty- or seventy-something on Kossuth Square, behind that blue corrugated tin.