Kaddish for an Unborn Child (5 page)

world
in its turn may present a rational aspect to you. And that is entirely understandable, even entirely commendable, even if your method is neither “scientific” nor “objective,” as you would like to believe, it is not; it is sheer lyricism and moralizing insofar as it seeks to restore a rational, or in other words endurable, world order, and those who have been banished from the world subsequently edge their way back into the
world
again through these back and front doors—anyone, that is, who is inclined to do so and who believes that the
world
will henceforth be a place fit for people, but then that is quite another matter, I most probably must have said, the only problem is that this is how legends are born, we can learn from these “objective” lyrical works, these scientific horror stories, say, that the great man had an outstanding tactical sense—right?—as if an outstanding tactical sense were not precisely the means by which every paranoid and manic madman misleads and befuddles those around him and his doctors, and then that social conditions were such-and-such, while international politics were such-and-such, and then some, once philosophy, music and other forms of artistic hocus-pocus had corrupted people's capacity to think, but above all that, when it comes down to it, the great man, let's not mince words, was a
great man
, he had about him something of the disarming, the fascinating, in short: something of the
demonic
, that's it, a demonic streak that was quite simply irresistible, especially if we have no will to resist, seeing that we just happen to be hunting for a demon; a demon is just what we've been needing for a long, long time for our squalid affairs, to gratify our squalid desires, the sort of demon, of course, who can be persuaded to believe that
he
is the demon who will take all our own demoniacality on his shoulders, an Antichrist bearing the Iron Cross, and will not insolently slip through our fingers to string himself up before time, as Stavrogin did. Yes, you see and label them as common criminal lunatics, yet from the moment one lays his hands on the orb and scepter you immediately start to deify him, reviling him even as you deify him, listing the objective circumstances, reciting what,
objectively
, he was right about, but what,
subjectively
, he was not right about, what
objectively
can be understood, and what
subjectively
cannot, what sorts of hanky-panky were going on in the background, what sorts of interests played a part, and never running short of explanations just so that you can salvage your souls and whatever else is salvageable, just so that you can view commonplace robbery, murder and trafficking in souls in which we all, all of us sitting here, somehow play or have played a part, one way or another, in the grand opera-house limelight of world events, I most probably must have said, yes, just so that you may fish partial truths out of the great shipwreck in which
everything whole has been smashed
, yes, just so as not to see before you, behind you, underneath you and at every turn the yawning chasm, the nothingness, the void, or in other words, our true situation, what it is you are serving and the prevailing nature of the prevailing régime, a dominating power which is neither necessary nor unnecessary but simply a matter of decisions, decisions that are made or not made in individual lives, neither satanic nor unfathomably and spellbindingly intricate, nor something that majestically sweeps us up with it, no, it is just vulgar, mean, murderous, stupid, hypocritical, and even at the moments of its greatest achievements at best merely well organized, I most probably must have said; yes, first and foremost,
frivolous
, because ever since the machines of murder have been uncovered here, there and in so many other places, ever since then it has been the end, the end for a good while, of any seriousness that might be taken seriously, at least in respect of the notion of domination, any sort of domination. And just stop once and for all, I most probably said, this “There is no explanation for Auschwitz,” that Auschwitz was a product of irrational, incomprehensible forces, because there is always a rational explanation for evil, it may be that Satan himself, just like Iago, is irrational, but his creatures are very much rational beings, their every action may be deduced, in the same way as a mathematical formula may be deduced, from some interest, greed for profit, indolence, lust for power and sex, cowardice, the need to gratify some urge or other or, if nothing else, then, in the final analysis, from some form of madness, paranoia, manic depression, pyromania, sadism, erotomania, masochism, demiurgic or other form of megalomania, necrophilia and what do I know which of the multitude of perversions, perhaps all of them at once, whereas, I most probably must have said, now pay attention, what is truly irrational and genuinely inexplicable is not evil but, on the contrary, good. That is precisely why I have long since had no interest in leaders, chancellors and other titled usurpers, however much you may be able to recount about their inner worlds; no, instead of the lives of dictators, for a long time now I have been interested solely in the lives of saints, because they are what I find interesting and incomprehensible, they are what I am unable to find merely rational explanations for; and even in this respect Auschwitz, however sick a joke this may sound, Auschwitz proved a fruitful enterprise, so however much it may bore you, I will tell you a story, and then you explain it to me, if you can. As I'm sitting in front of a roomful of old hands, I shall be brief, and if I say no more than
Lager
, and winter, and a hospital transport, and cattle wagons, and a single issue of cold food rations, when the journey will last for who knows how many days and the rations are doled out in tenths, and, lying on the wooden contraption that passed for my stretcher, I could not take my dog-eyes off a man, or rather skeleton, who, I have no idea why, was only ever referred to as “Teacher” and who had picked up my ration too, and then the entrainment, and of course, time after time, the roll call doesn't tally, and a yelling and commotion and a kick, then I feel myself being snatched up and dumped in front of the next wagon, and it's a long, long while since I saw either “Teacher” or my ration—that's enough for you to picture the situation precisely. Likewise how I felt: first of all, I had nothing to feed my eternal tormentor, hunger, the irascibly voracious wild beast that had long since become a stranger to me, and now hope, that other wild beast, had begun to rage as well, having hitherto purred faintly, muffled maybe, but insistently, that, all appearances to the contrary, there was still a chance of staying alive. Except that with the ration gone this all at once looked extremely dubious, while on the other hand, and I clarified this cold-bloodedly to myself, my ration would precisely double “Teacher's” chances—so much for my ration, I thought—how shall I put it?—not overjoyed but all the more soberly. Yet what should I see a few minutes later? Calling out and looking frantically all around, “Teacher” was staggering towards me, a single issue of cold rations in his hand, and when he glimpses me on the stretcher he quickly places it on my stomach; I am about to say something, and it seems that astonishment must be written all over my face because he, though already scurrying back—if they don't find him in his place they will simply beat him to death—he says, with clearly recognizable signs of indignation on his little face, already preparing for death, “You didn't imagine for one moment . . .?” So much for the story, and even if it were true that I do not wish to see my life merely as a series of arbitrary accidents succeeding the arbitrary accident of my birth, because that would indeed be a rather unworthy view of life, I have still less wish to see things as though they had all happened in order that I should stay alive, since that would, perhaps, constitute an even more unworthy view of life, although there's no getting round the fact that “Teacher,” for example, did what he did in order that I should stay alive, to look at it purely from my viewpoint, of course, because he himself was plainly guided by something else, plainly it was primarily to preserve his own life that he did what he did, only incidentally to preserve my life too. And the question here, and find me an answer to it if you can, is why he did that. But don't try putting it into words, for you know as well as I do that under certain circumstances, at a certain temperature, metaphorically speaking, words lose their substance, their content, their meaning, they simply deliquesce, so that in this vaporous state deeds alone, naked deeds, show any tendency to solidity, it is deeds alone that we can take in our hands, so to speak, and examine like a mute lump of mineral, like a crystal. And if we take as our starting-point (and clearly there is no other point from which we can start, is there?) that in an extreme situation such as a concentration camp, and giving particular consideration to the total breakdown of body and mind, and the resulting almost pathological atrophy of the faculty of judgment, what generally guides anyone is solely one's own staying alive, and furthermore, if you think about it, that “Teacher” had been offered a twofold chance of staying alive, yet he
rejected
that doubled chance, or to be absolutely precise, an extra chance on offer over and above his own chance, which, in point of fact, represented someone else's chance, this suggests that precisely the—how shall I put it?—very acceptance of that second chance would also have nullified the
sole
chance he still had to live and stay alive; so according to this there
is
something, and I can again only ask that you don't try putting names to it, there
exists
a pure concept, untrammeled by any foreign matter, such as our body, our soul or our wild selves, a notion which lives as a uniform image in all our minds, yes, an idea whose—how shall I put this?—inviolability, safekeeping, or what you will, was for him, “Teacher,” the
sole genuine chance
of staying alive, without which his chance of staying alive would have been no chance at all, simply because he did not wish, and what is more, in all likelihood, was
unable
, to live without preserving this concept intact in its pure, untrammeled openness to scrutiny. Yes, and in my opinion
this
is what there is no explanation for, since it is not rational as compared with the tangible rationality of an issue of food rations, which in the extreme situation called a concentration camp might serve to avoid the ultimate end, if it could serve that purpose, if that service did not run up against the resistance of an immaterial concept which sweeps even vital interests to the side, and this, in my opinion, is a most important testimony for fates in that great metabolism of what, in point of fact, constitutes life—much, so much more important than the banalities and rational acts of terror that any leader, chancellor or other titular usurper ever offered or could offer, I most probably said . . . But I am becoming bored with my own stories, though I don't repudiate them and I can't stay silent about them either, because it is my business to tell them, though I don't know why it is my business, or to be more precise, why I feel as if it were my business, when of course I have no business in the whole wide world, since all my business here on earth has come to an end and merely one thing still remains for me, we all know what that is, and that will not be up to me, no, truly not; and now that I study my stories from the rear, so to say, from afar, wistfully, like the smoke curling upwards from my cigarette, I see a woman's gaze fixed on me as if seeking to tap a source from within me, and in the luminance of this gaze I suddenly understand, I understand and almost see how my stories are braided into twisting threads, soft hooks woven from colored threads that I cast around the waist, breasts and throat of my (then still future, but now ex-) wife, but before that my lover, lying in my bed, her silky head resting on my shoulder, ensnare her and bind her to myself, spinning and twisting, two agile, motley circus performers who will later take their bows, deathly pale and empty-handed, before that jeering spectator, failure. But— yes—
we must at least have the will to fail
, as Bernhard's scientist says, because failure, failure alone, is left as the sole fulfillable experience, I say, and thus I too have the will, if I must have a will to anything, and I must, because I live and write, and both are willings, life being more a blind willing, writing more a sighted willing and therefore, of course, a different kind of willing from life, maybe it has the will to see what life has the will for, because it can do nothing else, it recites life back to life, recapitulates life, as if it, writing, were itself life, though it is not, quite fundamentally, incommensurably, indeed incomparably not that, hence if one starts to write, and one starts to write about life, failure is guaranteed. And now, in my bottomless night, rent by lights, sounds and the pains throbbing inside me, I seek answers to the final, big questions, knowing full well all the while that to every final, big question there exists just a single final, big answer: the one that solves all things because it stills all questions and all questioners, and for us, ultimately, this is the sole existing solution, the final goal of our willings, even if ordinarily we take no notice of it and don't in any way have the will for it, for then we would have no will at all, though speaking for myself I don't see what purpose might still be served by quibbling; nevertheless, while I am recapitulating my life here—God help us!—this life here, and I ask myself why I bother, apart from having to work, maniacally, with lunatic diligence and without a break, because associations of mortal seriousness are sustained between my continued sustenance and my work, that's perfectly obvious, all the same, recapitulating my life here, I am probably driven by some surreptitious hope of my surreptitious will, namely, that I might one day become acquainted with this hope, and I shall probably keep on writing, maniacally, with lunatic diligence and without a break, until I have made its acquaintance, because what reason would I have for writing after that? And when later on, as the pair of us roamed the dingy and not so dingy streets, my wife (to-be and ex-) asked what name I would give, all the same, to that particular pure concept, untrammeled by any foreign matter, about which I had spoken earlier, at the gathering, in connection with “Teacher,” who, incidentally, she declared was “a very moving figure” and she hoped she would encounter him again in one of my pieces, she said, a remark to which I turned a blind eye, so to say, as to a physical blemish which should not be allowed to disturb the magic, at least for the moment while the magic still is magic, and without hesitation I rejoined that that concept was, in my opinion, freedom, and freedom primarily because “Teacher” did not do what he