by Unknown
gained it? The words were as foreign to me as if they had been cast out at random by a formless mouth. I heard nothing; I saw nothing; the words echoed in me with a painful sonority and put me in touch with a truth I tried to push away. And yet it is this story that has remained for me the only real explanation of this great drama. Later, I collected other calmer accounts, and I have been able to connect some of the facts. What is this version worth? Does it have more value than the inexpressible confession of that unfortunate man of the night? How could I ever know? Who will ever distinguish the light among these shadows? What had happened was in a sense the result of a very simple confusion. When they left our room, blinded by their own temerity, struggling in vain against the terrors we had reawakened in them, prisoners, perhaps, of the law that inspired their derangement, the troop of rebels rushed toward the stairway leading to the first floor, as if in that instant they had crossed the line of demarca tion beyond which they had no right to go. It seemed already to these men that they were in the forbidden zone, surrounded by threats and driven by fear into the very place they dreaded most. A strange illusion, a profound mirage. The entire house was forbidden to them. They could not [accept] that what they had before them were ideal barriers that they had to break down but that they could not overcome.l With each step they committed the fault of violating the rules, although they were still completely free, and this fault seemed to them so weighty and so terrible that they felt they were lost and required the greatest excesses to redeem themselves from the feeling of their crimes. With an ax they broke down the first closed door they came to. They hacked at the stairway, attempting through an instinctive prudence to cut themselves off from the path they believed it was scandalous to follow. But they pressed ever onward. They arrived on the first floor without recognizing it, and in their fury, they believed they had reached the accursed spaces. Their madness knew no bounds. They wanted to annihilate everything, disperse everything, kill everything, and kill themselves too, so that as the house collapsed, they and their faults would be buried in the rubble. Such murderous rage, such destruction memory alone cannot contain its traces. Coming across the unfortunate tenants who were panic stricken from this avalanche, they saw in them
1.
This sentence is ungrammatical as it stands in the original and requires a verb here;
accordingly, a word has been added as a likely possibility. -Tr.
l
the strangers whose vengeance would soon strike out against them; they let loose the blows that would forestall this condemnation; they knocked against the walls and attacked the floorboards. Everything ended in a sin ister collapse. But there were a few who must have climbed even higher. They actually reached the upper floors. What did they see, what did they do? The only thing they have ever said, again and again, is that it was the same. Naturally, the same. How could these forbidden places have been any different for them compared to the places they had just left, since even the latter were already forbidden to them? Beginning already with the first floor, what they saw, with their eyes and their minds, was the tearing apart of appearances that had made life possible up to then. They perceived what we did not see, because we had remained faithful to the rule. Hardly had they set out on the old familiar ways when they found themselves already, and in fact, in this separate world where they had no right to be, having reached in a single step the heights from which they could now only fall. This is what is expressed in their terror and their madness. In the unreason that struck them, they behaved like reasonable beings whose eyes, now opened onto nameless things, commanded them to perform unnamable acts that they could not carry out and that they replaced with acts that were merely desperate. Their loss itself was the only thing that could con sole them for what they were losing. How it was that all these thoughts arose in our minds, how it was that in our overwhelming distress we pulled together the scraps of truth made audible to us only in the language of the dead, that is what would be incomprehensible if the curse that befell us had not conveyed us little by little into the heart of evil. For the true curse began only after the disaster itself. I am not speaking of the physical pain, which we managed to ease, nor of the material upheaval, which later on, thanks to the trained teams that remained with us, we were able to re pair, more or less. But one day, while we were dragging around like sick people, we saw all the rebels -all those whose wounds had not hastened their end - rise up together all at once. Even the ones we believed to be struck dead regained their strength and joined their companions. It was a mysterious sight. Would they attempt new acts of madness? Had disorder brought them together once again? No, no. Silently, with a quiet discipline, they formed a sort of troop, the ordered and yet derisory counterpart to the little army they had been at the time of the rebellion. They set out for the basement. The worm-eaten stairway that used to lead there still 90
existed. They worked their way down it. Fearing that I had guessed their thoughts, I ran after them, took one by the arm, held on to his clothes. What would they do? Where were they going? For the first time I con templated their faces. Sad, impossible looks. There was no need to stare at them for very long to understand what they had in mind. Their faces were unrecognizable. Although their features had remained the same, they already resembled one another and no longer bore any resemblance to us. A sort of beauty ravaged them. Their eyes, which seemed tired from the light of the place, gave off a kind of spark that made me ashamed. Their cheeks took on strange hues that attracted and repelled. They seemed to bathe in life and joy, and yet there was a desperation in their smallest ges tures. I threw myself at their feet and called to the other tenants, and we all begged them to give up their plans. Some of them heard our prayers and broke down in tears. We said nothing more; their pain itself overwhelmed us, for it only proved to us that we could not hold them back. We would have had to encircle them with chains, as we sometimes did later, trying to stop them from setting out again, but everything seemed useless. Their hearts were no longer able to bind them to us. So they left; they left the house. Such a step was unheard-of. What did they hope to find outside, what did they w.ant? Peace? A new life? But no such things could be given them. So then who was driving them far from our dwelling, who was trans forming them so much that it had become unbearable for them to stay? Perhaps an illusion, perhaps remorse? When I asked them to explain their decision, they responded with childish babbling. Some of them said that they could no longer live surrounded by four walls, that they needed open spaces and sunshine. Others spoke for the first time of their families and friends to whom they wanted to bring news. Such ideas were ridiculous. What was this sun, what was this climate they were now going in search of, when already long ago they could bear the memory of it no more? Could they even have relatives and friends anywhere other than in the house? Such madness! And what happened next confirmed this. Seeing that their resolutions were unshakable, we tried to gain time in the hope that they would not remain so. Since they were numerous and the half-rotten stair way threatened to collapse whenever a single person stepped foot on it, we managed to convince them that a new one had to be built. All our hope lay in this return to life in common. We mingled with them; we never ceased by our very presence to press them to abandon their plan. The construc91
tion proceeded slowly. They were as docile as they were disciplined. They worked with a sad eagerness that seemed to come not from their impa tience but rather from the very habits of diligence that we ourselves had imparted to them and that today only served to hasten their exile. These were heavy, oppressive days. Not only were we unhappy because of these companions we were losing, we were also tormented by the thought that this departure, more than any collapse, would be the end of the house and that it would drastically alter our lot. These fears took shape in our minds. We began again to look anxiously at these creatures who were sacrificing us to their misfortune. Our contact with them, already a cause for repug nance, filled us with disgust. Was it because of the judgments the
y had made against us, or because of the bizarre transformation they had under gone, whose effects I was the first to feel? It seemed to us that something evil was being exhaled through their mouths. Their smell was no longer like ours at all, and when they touched us, their hands made us shiver. We had to keep ourselves at a distance. We avoided speaking to them. The words they themselves spoke seemed to us so clamorous and so strangely chosen that they left us numb and sometimes remained completely in comprehensible. It soon became impossible for us to maintain ordinary relations with them. We addressed each other with gestures and signs, and even then we did not always understand them. We came to the point of wanting them to disappear as quickly as possible. Was not their stay here now regarded with disapproval? Of course it was; they were leaving be cause they no longer had the right to stay, and if they did not like the house, that's because it was entirely forbidden to them. The house was pushing them out. The prohibition had slowly come down from the closed spaces in which it originated, and now it was making its way to them, forcing them into a position where no defense was possible because no hope was pos sible. How insane we were to hold them back! Should we not have driven them out instead? We completed the construction in a few hours and pre pared everything for their departure. How long it took us to relieve our selves of their presence! But now, on the verge of finding that freedom they had desired, they felt nothing but the shame, the distress, and the fear that it represented to them. We had to send them down to the basement and barricade our doors. We shouted and screamed, trying to frighten them. We heard them moaning, and these moans excited our hatred all the more. "Go!" we said to them. "Go to the sun you love so much; console your92
selves with your friends who will never be ours. The house is forever closed to you." Since they did not understand what we were saying, our voices, which sounded like the voice of the dwelling, attracted them more than it pushed them away. They came around to the balcony with tears in their eyes; they wandered like shadows around the enclosure they could not enter. It became necessary to use force. One evening, we heard them no more. They must have completed the external stairways that we had not wanted to help them build, since the cold outside air prevented us from going that far. So they left, or rather they were no longer present for us. Some believe that they could not have left the house, that in any event, whatever their faults may have been, they were still tenants and could not have broken the contract. These people claim that they set themselves up in the basement rooms, or perhaps in new basement rooms that they dug deeply into the ground and where they live, outside the house, to be sure, and yet all the closer to its foundations, cut off from the comfort it brought them but not liberated from its commandments and its rules. Others be lieve that they are still weeping at the door in an effort to soften us or, since we are not there, to soften the wall that stops them, they who were not stopped by the wall of the law. Perhaps they are indeed very close to us, invisible and incpable of making themselves heard. But how could they be close to us? Wherever they are, even if it is right where you are, they are infinitely far away, and we have no more of a right to think of them than we have the means to see or speak to them. Some of them, it is said, have set up in the street, and by making signs they try to draw us into the curse under which they live. An infernal dream. Such thoughts lead to damnation." There was another knock on the small door. "Is it the domestics again?" asked Thomas. "Yes," said the young man, "but this time it's to call us back to our work. Damned domestics! " "So there is still a staff here?" asked Thomas. "Naturally," said the young man. "How could a house do without a staff? Do you hear me!" he shouted at the servant. "Could I really do without your services?" The servant, who had fallen asleep with his head on the back of the chair, woke with a start; he certainly had not heard, and thinking that someone had called him to order, he hastily wiped the table. "No," said the young man, gravely answering his own question, "we could not do without it; so we have a large number of domestics." 93
"Always invisible, of course," said Thomas. "Invisible?" replied the young man, with a look of sadness. "Invisible? You may be a newcomer, but you have nonetheless had the opportunity to make a few observations. So you will know what I am talking about. Well, do you know of a building where one encounters the staff more often than here? At every step there's a servant, behind every door a maid. If some one begins to speak up to ask for something, the domestic is already there. I would even say that it's unbearable. They are everywhere; you never see anyone else; they are the only ones you ever speak to; 'Discreet service,' it says in the brochure. What a joke! The service is utterly oppressive." "So everything has changed," said Thomas, "since the incident you just recounted to me." The young man looked at him wearily. "Everything has changed, if you wish," he said. "But in my opinion noth ing has really changed. How could there be a real change here? The rules do not permit it; the house is untouchable. It's the young tenants who see only appearances and who believe that the world has been turned upside down as soon as the furniture's been rearranged. The older tenants know that in the end everything is as it was before." "So what you told me has no real importance," observed Thomas. "That's for you to judge," said the young man. "It's a question of inter pretation. Allow me to remark, however, that practically nothing that hap pens here is without importance; all the more reason, then, for the events I have related to you to be given their proper value." "I don't see," said Thomas, "how they are important for me." "And to tell the truth," said the young man, "I don't see why they would interest you. The house does not need the interest of those who inhabit it. It receives them when they come; it forgets them when they go." "So it is possible to leave the building," said Thomas. "It's not a prison," said the young man disdainfully. "You are free; you are entirely free, and your freedom, I'm afraid, will only be too great." "I can see," said Thomas, as he stood up, "that there are many things I do not know. Let me therefore take advantage of my ignorance; it will leave me even more free." "Stay," said the young man, who stood up in his turn. "In the name of all I have said to you, I demand that you stay." Thomas gave him a questioning look. 94
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"We have not yet begun our work," added the young man, "and this work concerns you." Thomas sat back down. The room was loud. At every table a tenant was leaning over speaking to his friends in a low voice, but the echo made the words resound so much that they fell back onto everyone else with an oppressive force. The acoustics of the room were such that certain words stood out while others were muffled, which gave the impression that the same conversation was being repeated at every table and that everything they were saying was being said at the same time by the entire room. "What is this work?" said Thomas. The young man looked at Joseph, who had been listening attentively, as though he were hearing of these events for the first time. Thomas wondered if the conversation were not meant for Joseph, who after all was much more capable than he was of understanding its true meaning. "I hesitate to respond to your question," said the young man. "My friend is so sensitive, and the subject is so deeply serious, that he may not be able to bear my words. Therefore I will be brief. But first promise me that you will never forget where you are. What I have taught you is not without im portance, whatever your opinion of it may be, and in a certain sense it is impossible to live here without having these facts engraved in one's mem ory or without the possibility of repeating them at each moment, even if their true meaning escapes you. But on the other hand it would be foolish to believe that I have told you the whole truth. In the ocean of our life, you have seen only one drop of water; it is only a miniscule slice of the events that occur incessantly; I would have to pass my entire existence with you to retrace the main lines, and then, as I have said, we quickly forget; how could we hold on to the memory of everything that happens to us? That would be insane." He fell silent, as if he had suddenly plunged into that dangerous im mensity in which he risked being lost, but he soon returned to himself. At that moment someone called to Thomas from anothe
r table. He rec ognized two people from the grand hall; although their faces were rather unpleasant, he greeted them and leaned toward them to hear better what they were shouting to him. He had the impression that they were out of place in the cafe. He was struck by the poor quality of their clothing, and their attitude was far from what would have been proper. These two men carried themselves like peasants; they were robust and overbearing; and
