Kaddish for an Unborn Child (8 page)

existence of myself and my surroundings altogether, an existence that, as I have already said, at the time of such experiences or what I might perhaps better call paroxysms, anyway at the time of these paroxysmal experiences, is connected by just a single thread to life, my own and that of my surroundings, and that thread is my reason alone, nothing else. But then, not only is my mind mistake-prone and, to put it mildly, a far from perfect instrument or sensory organ, or whatever I should call it, on top of that it usually functions sluggishly, haltingly, fuzzily, indeed at times hardly at all. It only follows my actions like someone in bed with the flu does
another's
bustling about around him, registering almost everything only after the event, and though one tries to direct this
stranger's
rummaging and activity with the occasional listless word, if the latter pays no attention, or happens not to hear, with a resigned impotence one gives up bothering anymore. Yes, this is the “sense of strangeness,” a state of total estrangement which contains not even a slight hint of the fantastical, the astonishing, or an unbridled imagination but just torments one with the tedium of the routine, the commonplace; yes, an utter homelessness, though it neither knows nor gives cognizance of any home, either abandoned or waiting for me in the way that, for example—and this is a question that I have often posed myself in such states—death would be a home, for example. But then, I have replied to myself on such occasions, I ought to believe in the other world, but the snag is precisely that I cannot believe in this world, least of all when in these states, where I am reduced to addressing such questions to myself and when I hold the existence of another world (to wit, the other world) to be just as much an absurdity as the existence of this world; that is to say, I don't hold it to be at all inconceivable, nor yet conceivable, of course, that another world (to wit, the other world) may exist, only that even if it does exist, then it certainly does not exist for
me
because I am
here
. That is, barely here at that; I am only more or less alive, and that fills me with a sense of some unnameable sin. At such times I often tried (try) to sober up, as it were, but in vain; it seems that it is possible for me to connect with life solely in the form of some sort of logical game, like playing chess or making calculations on a piece of paper and, by inscrutable ways and means, all at once some sort of reality derives from the abstract result—in the way (and this was one of my favorite examples at that time, I even noted it down on a pad, from which I am now writing it down here), so in the way, I wrote, let's say, one holds two wires together, screws them down, inserts the other end into a hole in the wall, presses a button, and the lamp burns; what has happened is an entirely conscious calculation of probabilities, I wrote, the result is the expected one but nonetheless amazing and, in a certain sense, incomprehensible, I wrote. Everything, but everything, is mere deduction, conjecture and probability, no certainty anywhere, no shred of proof anywhere, I wrote. What constitutes my existence? Why am I? What is my essence? For all these questions, I wrote, it's common knowledge that it is hopeless for me to seek not the answer so much as merely reliable signs; and even my body, which sustains me and will eventually kill me, is strange, I wrote. “Maybe if for just one moment in my life, just a single moment, it were given to me to live in step, so to speak, with the detoxifying actions of my kidneys and liver, the peristaltic movements of my stomach and intestines, the inhalatory and exhalatory movements of my lungs, the systole and diastole of my heart, as well as the metabolic exchanges of my brain with the external world, the formation of abstract thoughts in my mind, the pure knowledge that my consciousness has of all these things and of itself, and the involuntary yet merciful presence of my transcendental soul; if, for just a single moment,
I might see, know and possess
myself in this way, when there could be no question of course of either possessor or possession, but
my identity
would simply spring into existence, which can never, ever come into existence; if just one such unrealizable moment were to be realized, maybe that would abolish my “sense of strangeness,” teach me to
know
, and only then would I know what it means to be. But since that is an impossibility, it being common knowledge that we don't know, and can never know, what
causes
the
cause
of our presence, we are not acquainted with the purpose of our presence, nor do we know why we must disappear from here once we have appeared, I wrote. I don't know why, I wrote, instead of living a life that may, perhaps, exist somewhere, I am obliged to live merely that fragment which happens to have been given to me: this gender, this body, this consciousness, this geographical arena, this fate, language, history and subtenancy, I wrote. And now that I am noting down what I noted down then, one of my nights then is suddenly revived within me, a dream of mine or, to be more accurate, a waking state of mine, or perhaps a waking dream or a dreaming wakefulness, I don't know which, but anyway I recall it in extraordinary detail, as if it had occurred only yesterday. I was woken, or plunged into a dream (I don't know which, and it doesn't matter at all), by a quite unusually acute “sense of strangeness” such as I had never felt before. That too was a brilliant night, like my present night, glistening velvety-black and pervaded by a motionless, mute, but imperturbable consciousness, and I suddenly realized it was virtually a complete impossibility that this incisive, passive consciousness should all of a sudden simply cease to be and disappear from the world. Yes, and it was as though this consciousness were in no way
my
consciousness, more a consciousness
of myself
, and thus while I may know about it, I cannot have it at my disposal, as if, like I say, it were an ever-and omnipresent consciousness not belonging exclusively to me, from which I simply cannot free myself and which, quite fruitlessly and to no purpose, torments me personally to death. On the other hand, I sensed with absolute clarity that this passive consciousness was nonetheless actually not an unhappy consciousness, and that even if I, though only as a subject of that consciousness, were to be unhappy at this moment, that was more a consciousness of my own impotence in relation to that consciousness, in relation to that pitiless, eternal, tormenting, but for all that, as I said, by no means unhappy consciousness; thus, on fully awakening, or plunging fully into my dream (as I said, it really doesn't matter which), it was subsequently impossible for me not to draw inferences as to the mystery, or rather impossible not to reflect at least that this consciousness is a
part
of something that encompasses me too within itself, that it is not of my body yet is not completely of my mind either, even though it is mediated by my mind, that it is therefore not exclusively mine, and in truth this consciousness may be the ultimate kernel of my being, which created and evolved this whole thing (my being, that is to say). It was impossible for me not to suppose, therefore, that this consciousness implied a duty, and that even if I were only postulating this duty, its commandments were nevertheless inviolable or, to be more accurate, they could, of course, be violated, but only with the feeling that one has violated the commandment, in other words with a guilty conscience; yet at the same time, and as far as I am concerned, this is the most peculiar part of it, this commandment is not exclusively—how shall I put it?—a moral commandment; no, it also contains an element, requirement, indeed demand, calling directly on one's handcrafting talents, so to say, that the world “must be constructed,” “must be described,” “must be studied,” and at a time of its own choosing one must be able to demonstrate— it doesn't matter why, it doesn't matter to whom: to anybody who will be ashamed on our account and (possibly) for us—that one's religious duty, totally independently of the crippling religions of crippling churches, is therefore
understanding
the world; yes, that when all is said and done, it is in this, in understanding the world and my situation, and in this alone, that I may seek my—and again, how shall I put it in order not to say what I am bound to say?—my salvation; yes, for what else would I seek, if I am already seeking something, were it not my salvation? Then again, I also supposed that all this is merely the sort of thought that one is bound to think; in other words, that a person thinks these sorts of thoughts as a result of his condition, because he is compelled to think these sorts of thoughts as a consequence of his condition, and since a person's condition, at least in certain respects, is a condition that is prescribed and predetermined from the outset, a person is therefore able to think solely predetermined thoughts, or at least ruminate and ponder solely on matters, subjects and problems that are prescribed and predetermined from the outset. For this reason, I supposed, I ought to be thinking thoughts that I don't
have to
think, but I no longer recollect if, after that, I did indeed ponder on such thoughts, apart from pondering at all, of course, which I didn't
have to
do, and becoming a writer and literary translator, which there was all the less reason for me to
have to
become, indeed, which I was only able to become in spite of circumstances, by outwitting and deceiving circumstances, by incessantly hiding away and escaping into the labyrinth of circumstances, out of the path of the bullheaded monster whose galloping feet, only in passing as it were, trampled on me now and then, even so, in spite of the monstrous and devastating circumstances, which did not brook thought in any form except in the form of slave thoughts, which is to say not at all; circumstances which glorified, exalted and celebrated slave labor alone and under which I was able to live, be and exist at all practically only in secret, by denying myself out loud and shielding fearfully and mutely within myself my velvety-black night and hopeless hope, which perhaps first slipped past my lips, many, many, many years later, that evening when—taking note, from time to time, of a woman's gaze that was fixed on me as if seeking to tap a source from within me—I spoke about “Teacher,” that there is a pure concept, untrammeled by any foreign material, whether our body, our soul, our wild beasts, a notion which lives as a uniform image in all our minds, yes, an ideal which (and I did not say this, though I secretly thought it), which perhaps I too will be able to stalk, get closer to and one day even succeed in capturing in writing, a thought that I suppose I don't
have to
think but think independently of myself, as it were, and think even if the thought speaks against me, even if it annihilates me, indeed perhaps truly then, because that is perhaps how I would recognize it, that may perhaps be the measure of the thought . . . Yes, so that was the way I was living at that time. And now that I am relating all this, I do indeed roughly understand and recognize what I need to understand and recognize. As to whether this moment might have differed from other, similar or not even the slightest bit similar moments of mine that initiated a relationship or affair, I can only answer: yes, indeed, it differed radically from them. Just as, at least in a certain sense, I myself also differed radically from myself. For to sum up my subtenant life at that time, my thoughts, my inclinations, my motives, my whole sub-tenanted survival state at that time, I have to conclude that all the signs are that already then everything stood ripe and ready within me for a
change of state
. I am surely not imagining it when I suppose that I started to speculate, mistakenly, and thus untenably and intolerably, about my life. That I should not look on my life merely as a series of arbitrary accidents succeeding the arbitrary accident of my birth, because that was not just an unworthy, mistaken, and thus untenable, indeed intolerable, but above all,
useless
—at least for me, an intolerably and shamefully useless—view of life, which I ought to and wish to see much rather as a series of flashes of recognition in which my pride, at least my pride, can take satisfaction. Consequently, the moment in which it was decided that I would soon be going to bed with a woman, that is,
with her
, who was to became my wife and later my ex-wife, that moment could not have been an accidental moment either. Because it is absolutely clear that everything I have written down here, and which, as I said, stood ripe and ready within me for a
change of state
was now, as it were, summed up in this moment, even though by the nature of things, I myself could not have been aware of it as yet, yes, even though all I can recollect is her face upraised towards me in the dancing lights of the night, soft-grained and at the same time glassily opalescent and glistening, like a 1930s close-up. Who would have believed where and what I would be enticed to by the promising gleam of this face. And if I add that, as it later became clear, everything likewise stood ripe and ready for a
change of state
within her too, my future (or ex-) wife, then I may also submit that our meeting was not only not accidental but manifestly a fated meeting. Yes, not much time passed before we were talking about our shared life, though in reality we wanted a fate, both of us our own fate, since that is always individual, unlike anybody else's, and cannot be shared with anybody else's. Whatever we talked about, therefore, was all just talking beside the point, pretext and equivocation, albeit undoubtedly not
deliberate
talking beside the point, pretext and equivocation, or in other words, not lying. Because how could I have known, as today I know better than all else, that everything I do and which happens to me, that my states and occasional changes in state, altogether my entire life—my godfathers!—serve for me merely as means to recognition in the series of my flashes of recognition—my marriage, for instance, serving as a means towards the recognition that I am unable to live in a married state. And