the fool and the coward as well as the hero and the saint, is love. Born of an instant, it lives eternally. If energy is imperishable, how much more so is love! Like energy, which is still a complete enigma, love is always there, always on tap. Man has never created an ounce of energy, nor did he create love. Love and energy have always been, always will be. Perhaps in essence they are one and the same. Why not? Perhaps this mysterious energy which is identified with the life of the universe, which is God in action, as someone has said, perhaps this secret, all-invasive force is but the manifestation of love. What is even more awesome to consider is that, if there be nothing in our universe which is not informed with this unseizable force, then what of love? What happens when love (seemingly) disappears? For the one is no more indestructible than the other. We know that even the deadest particle of matter is capable of yielding explosive energy. And if a corpse has life, as we know it does, so has the spirit which once made it animate. If Lazarus was raised from the dead, if Jesus rose from his tomb, then whole universes which now cease to exist may be revived, and doubtless will be revived, when the time is ripe. When love, in other words, conquers over wisdom.
How then, if such things be possible, are we to speak, or even to think, of losing love? Succeed though we may for a while in closing the door, love will find the way. Though we become as cold and hard as minerals, we cannot remain forever indifferent and inert. Nothing truly dies. Death is always feigned. Death is simply the closing of a door.
But the Universe has no doors. Certainly none which cannot be opened or penetrated by the power of love. This the fool at heart knows, expressing his wisdom quixotically. And what else can the Knight Errant be, who seeks assault in order to overcome, if not a herald of love? And he who is constantly exposing himself to insult and injury, what is he running away from if not the invasion of love?
In the literature of utter desolation there is always and only one symbol (which may be expressed mathematically as well as spiritually) about which everything turns: minus love. For life can be lived, and usually is lived, on the minus side rather than the plus. Men may strive forever, and hopelessly, once they have elected to rule love out. That “high unfathomable ache of emptiness into which all creation might be poured and still it would be emptiness,” this aching for God, as it has been called, what is it if not a description of the soul’s loveless state?
Into something bordering on this condition of being I had now entered fully equipped with rack and wheel. Events piled up of their own accord, but alarmingly so. There was something insane about the momentum with which I now slid downward and backward. What had taken ages to build up was demolished in the twinkling of an eye. Everything crumbled to the touch.
To a thought-machine it makes little difference whether a problem is expressed in minus or plus terms. When a human being takes to the toboggan it is virtually the same. Or almost. The machine knows no regret, no remorse, no guilt. It shows signs of disturbance only when it has not been properly fed. But a human being endowed with the dread mind-machine is given no quarter. Never, no matter how unbearable the situation, may he throw in the sponge. As long as there is a flicker of life left he will offer himself as victim to whatever demon chooses to possess him. And if there be nothing, no one, to harass, betray, degrade or undermine him, he will harass, betray, degrade or undermine himself.
To live in the vacuum of the mind is to live “this side of Paradise,” but so thoroughly, so completely, that even the rigor of death seems like a St. Vitus’ Dance. However somber, dreary and stale everyday life may be, never does it approach the aching quality of this endless void through which one drifts and slithers in full, waking consciousness. In the sober reality of everyday there is the sun as well as the moon, the blossom as well as the dead leaf, sleep as well as wakefulness, dream as well as nightmare. But in the vacuum of the mind there is only a dead horse running with motionless feet, a ghost clasping an unfathomable nothingness.
And so, like a dead horse whose master never tires of flogging him, I kept galloping to the farthest corners of the universe and nowhere finding peace, comfort or rest. Strange phantoms I encountered in these headlong flights! Monstrous were the resemblances we presented, yet never the slightest rapport. The thin membrane of skin which separated us served as a magnetic coat of armor through which the mightiest current was powerless to operate.
If there is one supreme difference between the living and the dead it is that the dead have ceased to wonder. But, like the cows in the field, the dead have endless time to ruminate. Standing knee-deep in clover, they continue to ruminate even when the moon goes down. For the dead there are universes upon universes to explore. Universes of nothing but matter. Matter devoid of substance. Matter through which the mindmachine ploughs as if it were soft snow.
I recall the night I died to wonder. Kronski had come and given me some innocent white pills to swallow. I swallowed them and, when he had gone, I opened wide the windows, threw off the covers, and lay stark naked. Outside the snow was whirling furiously. The icy wind whistled about the four corners of the room as if in a ventilating machine.
Peaceful as a bedbug I slept. Shortly after dawn I opened my eyes, amazed to discover that I was not in the great beyond. Yet I could hardly say that I was still among the living. What had died I know not. I know only this, that everything which serves to make what is called “one’s life” had faded away. All that was left me was the machine . . . the mind-machine. Like the soldier who finally gets what he’s been praying for, I was dispatched to the rear. “Aux autres de faire la guerre!”
Unfortunatelv no particular destination had been pinned to my carcass. Back, back, I moved, often with the speed of a cannon ball.
Familiar though everything appeared to be, there was never a point of entry. When I spoke my voice sounded like a tape played backward. My whole being was out of focus.
ET HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE IUVABIT
I was sufficiently clairvoyant at the time to inscribe this unforgettable line from the Aeneid on the toilet box which was suspended above Stasia’s cot.
Perhaps I have already described the place. No matter. A thousand descriptions could never render the reality of this atmosphere in which we lived and moved. For here, like the prisoner of Chillon, like the divine Marquis, like the mad Strindberg, I lived out my madness. A dead moon which had ceased struggling to present its true face.
It was usually dark, that is what I remember most. The chill dark of the grave. Taking possession during a snowfall, I had the impression that the whole world outside our door would remain forever carpeted with a soft white felt. The sounds which penetrated to my addled brain were always muffled by the everlasting blanket of snow. It was a Siberia of the mind I inhabited, no doubt about it. For companions I had wolves and jackals, their piteous howling interrupted only by the tinkling of sleigh bells or the rumble of a milk truck destined for the land of motherless babes.
Toward the wee hours of the morning I could usually count on the two of them appearing arm in arm, fresh as daisies, their cheeks glistening with frost and the excitement of an eventful day. Between whiles a bill collector would appear, rap loud and long, then melt into the snow. Or the madman, Osiecki, who always tapped softly at the windowpane. And always the snow kept falling, sometimes in huge wet flakes, like melting stars, or in whirling gusts choked with stinging hypodermic needles.
While waiting I tightened my belt. I had the patience not of a saint nor even of a tortoise, but rather the cold, calculating patience of a criminal.
Kill time! Kill thought! Kill the pangs of hunger! One long, continuous killing. . . . Sublime!
If, peering through the faded curtain, I recognized the silhouette of a friend I might open the door, more to get a breath of fresh air than to admit a kindred soul.
The
