Aminadab 0803213131 (33 page)

times without ever receiving an intelligible response; but these things were too old, and he was too tired; so he said: "What was the way?" "You turned your back on it," the young man answered in his quiet and somewhat fatuous manner. "Your ambition was to reach the heights, to pass from one floor to another, to advance inch by inch, as though, simply by walking on, you would necessarily come out on the roof and stand in the midst of nature's beauty once again. A puerile ambition that quite simply has killed you. What deprivations did you not force on yourself! What weariness in this pestilential atmosphere! And these stories that were as deceptive as they were depressing, these contacts with men already eaten away by vice! Anyone would have succumbed in your place. Yet the true way was already laid out; it was a gentle slope requiring neither effort nor consultation. In addition, it took you toward a region where you would have led a life that would have been worth the trouble. There, truly, you were at home." "And where was it?" asked Thomas, his eyes half closed. "In the underground floors," said the young man in an unctuous voice. "I cannot speak to you about it as long as I would need to, and it is not with words that one can explain the inextricable beauty of the basements and the cellars. You must judge it for yourself. You are a man from the coun try, and you would see immediately what a feeling for life one has in these places carved out of the earth; there one breathes a warm intense odor that inspires disgust for the more enclosed rooms. The layout is very curi ous: despite the maze of hallways that intersect, bifurcate, and turn back on themselves in complex, dizzying circuits, it is not possible to wander astray, and you see perfectly clearly where you are at every moment. Enor mous signs, employing a system of arrows and dashes, show every thirty feet which route to follow in the section where you think you are lost; go to the right, and you descend ever farther beneath the foundations; go to the left, and you approach the basement and the entrance. That is the only rule that remains; as for the rest, you are perfectly free." "Free?" Thomas repeated. "Yes, free," said the young man. "You cannot imagine how shocking is the contrast with the life of the house. They constitute two modes of living so opposed that, while one can be compared to life, the other is hardly more desirable than death. Down there, the tenants cease to depend on the rules whose power, already weakened at the approach of the great door18S

way, is completely suspended when one passes through it. This great door, contrary to its name, is only a barrier made of a few pieces of wood and a little latticework. But against it, the forces of custom are shattered, and the imaginations of the tenants depict it as an immense carriage entrance flanked on every side by towers and drawbridges and guarded by a man whom they call Aminadab. In reality, access to it is very easy, and a sudden downward slope is the only thing that indicates to those who pass through that they are now under the earth." "Did you say 'under the earth'?" asked Thomas, trying to raise himself up to hear better. "How curious." "That's exactly right," said the young man, looking around with an air of triumph. "Have you never thought of the advantages there would be in living underground? They are many. First of all, you are no longer subject to the alternations of night and day, which are the cause of endless diffi culties and the principle source of all our anguish and worries. Thanks to an installation that costs very little, you can, as you wish, remain continu ally in an agreeable light or -and this is preferable - in a gentle darkness that leaves you absolutely free in your actions. I hasten to add that there are many absurd prejudices concerning the darkness underground. It is completely false that the darkness there is total or in any way distressing. With a little adjustment, one succeeds very well in distinguishing a sort of clarity that radiates through the shadows and that is deliciously attrac tive to the eyes. Some claim that this clarity is the inner truth of objects and that it is dangerous to contemplate it too long. Do not believe it, for it goes without saying that once one has decided to set oneself up in these regions, it is not in order to find the atrocious furniture or the jumble of objects and implements that make up one of the torments of life in the house. On the contrary, it is yet another advantage not to have within reach these uncanny objects that are supposedly so useful but concerning which it is at bottom impossible to know what they are, what they're used for, what they're supposed to mean. The earth -this is a well-known fact is a medium for nourishment, in which each body finds its subsistence, in which breath too is a sort of food, and which offers extraordinary pos sibilities of growth and duration. As soon as you enter into these under ground spaces, you are stunned by the impression it makes, which is like the end of a bad dream. Until then, you have always hoped to escape from the worries and the responsibilities of existence, but you lacked courage, 186

and you could not renounce the desire to continue. Down there, hardly have you descended into those long tunnels that pass through hundreds of feet of earth, when you feel as if you have woken up. First, you are free. The room you thought you would never leave has disappeared; you are at home wherever you happen to be, and you no longer live in fear of violat ing instructions that are unknown to you. Next, you soon understand that the earth aspires to a profound union with you, that, far from reducing your efforts to nothing through the action of a law that is unsuitable to you, it works slowly, with a delicate art, to shape itself to your form, and at the same time it tries to draw your breath to itself and adjust it to its rhythm. What you feel is so gentle and pleasant that you think it is a dream; but you are not dreaming; nothing is more real. On the contrary, you begin to rise up and to seek out new underground spaces that you have never seen and where you come to a stop, holding yourself upright, with your arms spread, against the wall of earth. Then you look across the layers that form enormous heaps of dust, and you are surprised to notice that your vision has been altered, for your gaze - and this phenomenon appears odd and even humiliating when one speaks of it at these heights, but down there it seems much easier to explain -your gaze makes you think of fine crys tal plants that have rapidly grown from the moldy earth on which your eyes have opened. This is no miracle, despite what simple-minded people may believe. But it is a manifestation to which some importance can be attached. These arborescent shapes, although - need it be said? - they in no way resemble real bushes or trees, are a sign of the elevated form of union that exists between you and the milieu in which your life is fash ioned. Just as the night makes one's eyes sparkle in order to draw truly nocturnal images from them, so does the earth bring them to fruition in the only forms it is allowed to propagate and in which it places all its love. Some like to use a comparison to explain this phenomenon: they say that this earth with which you are surrounded is pure night and that plants and umbels are born from your eyes so that nature might take greater pleasure in the act that passes through every part of it, just as it sometimes happens that a man who has studied the law sees judgments and sentences leaping from the eyes of the woman most dear to him. But that doesn't matter. The fact is that you feel a great satisfaction. It seems to you that such a change announces the return of a totally bygone era, which you no longer even remember, so far has it receded into some fabulous distance. Your hope

is that these light vegetable forms will live and prosper, these forms that are still so fragile that most often they wither and fall apart. But you are patient; from your breath you extract your food and your sleep - a small part of the reserves allotted to you - and this is a sacrifice you make with all your heart, in order to nourish this seed that holds on by a mere thread but within which you feel the strength of stubborn memories. Naturally, for someone from here who lives in a feverish haste, the wait would seem exaggeratedly long; but that is not the case with you; from time to time you make exciting discoveries, and these are enough to occupy your time. For example, you notice that your fingernail is split down the middle and that through this small breach something that had disappeared from your memory has reawakened and is returning to life. Of course, it is still too small for you to be sure that you are not mistaken, but the hope it gives you is no less great, and you endlessly examine the minute specks of dust that scatter when the least little breath falls on them. During this time, your eyes too have undergone a transformation, and far from being hindered by the obstructed view and the triple branches proliferating through the earth, they become larger and deeper, and their roots extend down the back of the neck to the top of the shoulders. You begin to be somewhat fright ened by this unexpected development, then you feel that your strength has magnified tenfold and that soon the hole in which you think you are con tained will not be able to hold you. For your fingernails are now open; at the ends of your fingers, you see tiny flowers, almost imperceptible but already well formed, which look like the buds of a heliotrope. Where have they come from? How could the seed have persevered enough to sprout under the nail? It is only a small mystery, but you are passionately ab sorbed in it, and you come to believe that during your great journey, you carried a grain of pollen under your fingernail; this is probably only a fan ciful idea that you yourself do not accept, for you know very well that your entire past life has perished; nevertheless, you cannot help staring at these little leaves gently rising and swaying. Their growth is much more rapid than you expected; it even becomes quite bothersome, and since the roots are very fragile and have not gone any farther than the tips of the fingers how could they have? -you are obliged to keep constant watch over these delicate shoots. At times, everything appears to be dead; it seems that you have judged your own strength too hastily, and the earth itself hardens as if ancient suspicions were being revived. But these are only moments of dis188

couragement, no different from those that occur in all serious endeavors. One day you notice a curious fact: from time to time, the plants feverishly move about; one would think that the clay was no longer enough to satisfy them and that somewhere far away, in the distance of distances, an event had taken place toward which they are forcefully drawn. You see the trem bling of the miniscule petals, and you too ask yourself if you may not have heard, through the silence of the underground spaces, a message or at least the echo of a message. Perhaps it is only a meaningless noise; perhaps the attempt is worth the trouble; soon you have decided, and taking up your shovel, you courageously set out to open a hole in the earth. This is the beginning of an immense task. You must dig for a very long time and accu mulate mountains of silt on both sides of your path. Fortunately, you have become very strong; far from being threatened by the shock of the work, the plants continue to grow and begin to look like small trees that, it's true, lack all color. They spiral firmly, and with authority, into layer after layer of earth, without letting you choose your direction; you need only wait until they have grown deeply, and since, after all, this takes a long time, it seems to you that it takes months and years for your eyes to pierce this dense night and to light the path you are to follow. But why would you be worried? You are heeding the call, and if the difficulties are great, they are no more insurmountable than the ones encountered in an ordinary exis tence, and they are certainly less petty. So you continue on your way; dirt covers your face completely and almost envelops your entire body; but one of your hands remains free, sinks all its fingers into the thick crust, and furiously scrapes open the passage; although it works unassisted, it gets through more work than a whole team of ditchdiggers; with such help as this, you will not be long in finishing. One day, the earth caves in, and be neath the mound that surrounds you, you perceive a thin sliver of light that hovers around the edge of your vision. This was no doubt bound to happen; the day is not far; although the idea of beginning a new life fright ens you a little, you turn with pride toward the past, now buried for good, and you realize that there is a way out; you have managed to escape the in evitable, the only one among countless thousands, for you recognized that the true path did not lead toward the heights but lay deeply buried under the ground. Now a thin crust separates you from the end of the nightmare, and only one problem remains: what will happen up there? Obviously, you are forced to think about the appearance you have taken on and the habits

you have developed, and you are not unaware that one does not journey for years under the earth with impunity. Would you not do better to re main where you are, joyously waiting for the air and the sun to make your memories grow and to lead you toward your new existence? That is the question now, and you must answer it." Thomas sat up in his bed as if he really did have to answer this ques tion. He looked at the young man and saw that he was questioning him in a most urgent manner that did not allow any escape or even any delay. The strange air of his former companion had struck him already during the course of the conversation. To make his words more lively, he had stood up to mimic the various scenes he recounted. Of course, his gestures were very discreet, and since they often related to events that were difficult to represent, an inattentive person would not always have understood how the anguished force of his movements - the swaying of his body, his way of quickly passing his hand over his face, as though to erase its features, the sly expression with which he moved his fingernails toward his eyes, and many other gestures besides - exhausted the attention of his interlocutor and obliged him to accept everything in this conversation. Thomas was no less disturbed by the efforts his companion made to hide the resem blance between the two of them. The care he took to avoid all of Thomas's habitual attitudes only ended up accentuating this resemblance and in creasing its threatening quality; his immobility itself was a reproach, and it humiliated both of them. Thomas continued to stare at him for a long time; then suddenly think ing of Lucie, he said: "Please excuse me; 1 am not ready to answer your question; 1 must prepare for an important visit, and 1 need to be very calm." The young man went to the curtains and distractedly looked out be tween them; he was probably very frustrated. "I would be happy," Thomas added, trying to soften this disappointment, "to demonstrate my gratitude, for your account greatly interested me. But you will understand that, in my present situation, it would be impossible for me to give any useful consideration to the extraordinary life change you have proposed. 1 am afraid that it is much too late." "I know," said the young man, "I know that." Then he called Lucie in an impertinent voice that Thomas found ex tremely tiresome. The young woman came carrying one of the lamps that had been shining on the steps of the stairway a few moments before; 19 0