Aminadab 0803213131 (22 page)

But these two, seeing his hesitation and thinking it was a sign of discour agement, held on to his arm as though to counterbalance Dom; and the four of them walked with long, hurried strides to the door. A guardian was waiting for them. It was the man who had called to him on the balcony. He had broken his pitcher; its shards were scattered on the floor where the flame was gently burning. "You must separate," he said in his authoritarian voice. "Is it really necessary?" asked Thomas. "I have to take these two away," said the guardian, without answering directly. "Then I'll keep you company," said Thomas, and all of them left together. They very quickly reached their destination. The guardian was ex tremely familiar with the way there. It was still the same hallways and vesti buIes, only larger and brighter; one might have thought that the house was searching for freedom and carelessness in these paths leading nowhere, even though they were also part of a rigorous plan. They stopped in front of a giant stairway whose steps slowly rose and widened on the way up, such that at the very top they seemed to blend into the enormous landing of the first floor. "You may go 'no farther," said the guardian firmly, although now in a more conciliating tone. "Your safe-conduct as a tenant is no longer valid beyond this point." "What safe-conduct?" asked Thomas. "I am in possession of no such document." "It would indeed be surprising if you had such a thing," said the guard ian. "It is mentioned in the file that bears your name, and this file cannot be removed from the archive." "I was not aware of this," said Thomas. "But in any event the authori zation does not concern me. For it is not as a tenant that I wish to go to the first floor, it is in the capacity of a witness that I am obliged to accom pany you." The guardian reflected and said: "You recognize your role as a witness?" "Can I do otherwise?" asked Thomas. The guardian sidestepped the question, and putting out the lamp, he said: "Follow me, then." At the top of the stairway there were three doors. Thomas chose the most modest of the three, but at the call of the guardian, he entered the 11 7

large door in the middle with him. It was the infirmary. The room was enormous; since there were not many sick people, it seemed empty at first. The beds, covered with white sheets and set up in a long row one after the other, did not appear to be made for sleep. The guardian pushed Thomas and his companions into a tiny room, which must have been used as a waiting room, made up of two thin walls and closed by a curtain. "You are responsible," he said, "for these men. As long as they have not received another place to stay, you cannot leave the room." Thomas thought it useless to respond; his intention was not to obey orders but to follow his own path. He was therefore quite vexed when the employees, throwing themselves at his feet, begged his pardon and be seeched him not to abandon them. "If you do," they said, "we will never be free again. We'll be locked in the infirmary or, even worse, in the room of a very sick man. We will never return to life." "What fantasies you have," said Thomas, trying to pull himself out of their grip. "No such misfortune threatens you, and if you really were ex posed to such misery, I would have no way of protecting you from it. I have no support in the house." "No support?" they cried. "We can see that you don't want to help us; the others have no doubt told you all sorts of things and taught you to de spise us. And yet we hoped that you would not give up your freedom of judgment so easily." Then they suddenly changed the subject and began to ask him with great passion about his country, his memories of it, his adventures on the road. Thomas was very surprised by these questions. This was the first time any one had spoken to him about the place he came from, and already he saw it as so distantly lost in the past that he no longer had the strength to direct his mind to it. He pushed away the two men who were still hanging onto him and kept silent. They remained there motionless until the old man, getting back up, said to him: "But you are our witness. If you are free in relation to us, you are not free in relation to the wrong we are accused of. You cannot abandon us. Otherwise, you would have to stand as guarantor for us and take care of our affairs at every instant." Thomas was not about to get caught up in more explanations; he saw how trapped he was by the difficulties that had been revealed to him, and this weakened his resolution without helping him to see the goal any more 118

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clearly; nevertheless, he could not get rid of his obligations as a witness so quickly. "I don't believe you," he said. "If I leave you, I will never have to think of you again, and you will never hear any more of me. On the contrary, it's only by staying with you that I would be constantly reminded of your miserable little affairs, and I have no desire for that." "Don't leave us," they cried out again in unison, imploring him to be mer ciful. The younger one seemed on the point of losing consciousness. The older one pressed against his guardian and embraced his legs, which he seemed to be begging to stay where they were. "Leave me alone," said Thomas in disgust. What abject creatures! How could he get rid of them? "What do you want from me?" he shouted finally. The old man immediately straightened up and said: "There is a great deal that you can do, for your testimony is what will determine the treat ment to which we will be condemned. You have no idea what threat hangs over us. Life in the hospital is hell. For days on end we will remain in a dark room where we will be forced to read endlessly over lines that have been minutely transcribed from some book. After a few hours of this, your eyes begin to water and to swell, and your sight grows blurry. After a day, night falls over everything; your gaze seizes on a few flaming letters that begin to burn through it. This night grows deeper and deeper with each hour, and although your eyes are still open, the darkness covering them is so great that they are not only extinguished, they become aware of their blindness and feel as though struck with a curse. The torture usually lasts a week; when this interval has passed, the patient who has not ceased to stare at the text, which he no longer sees, begins to perceive within him self, with perfect clarity, the words he reads and understands, and he re gains his sight. And so it goes for each one of the senses. The most painful ordeal is the purification of the sense of hearing. The room in which they keep us prisoner is sealed off from all sound. At first you enjoy this silence, this peace. The world has been cast out of the place you now occupy, and the repose there is sweet. You do not even know that you are alone. The first dreadful moment comes from a word that the patient speaks out loud; it is apparently always the same: a name, I know not which one, a name that he pronounces at first indifferently, then with curiosity, and finally with a love full of anguish; but the sense of hearing, already desiccated by the silence, merely takes it as a word lacking all sensibility and warmth. 11 9

It is a strange and cruel discovery. The patient begins a conversation with himself in which he invests all his tenderness, and it is repeated to him with ever greater indifference. He speaks passionately, but what he hears is colder and more foreign to his life than any random word spoken by another man. The more heated passion he puts into his words, the more what he says leaves him frozen. If he calls on what is dearest to him in all the world, he perceives it as separated from him forever. How to explain this terrible anomaly? When he thinks about it, and of course he can only think by speaking, he sees that the words he hears are like those of a dead man; he hears himself as if he were already deprived of consciousness; he is his own echo in a world where he is no more; he undergoes the torture of receiving from somewhere outside his existence the words that have been the soul and the speech of his entire life. This impression is invaded by delirium. The ear becomes enormous and takes the place of the body. Everyone who goes through this believes he has been changed into this hearing in which the most beautiful songs, the most beloved words, and life itself die away in an eternal suicide. Then they open your room; they speak your name. You hear it as it deserves to be heard. After that comes the purification of the hands." "That's enough," said Thomas. "The story you're telling me is probably supposed to soften me up; in this case, you have missed your target, for it has only increased my disgust. But if it is in accordance with the truth, then that's even worse, since only tremendous crimes could have merited such terrible punishments." "That's not true," said the old employee, roughly seizing hold of Thomas. "They are not punishing us, and we have not committed any crime. And you, are you guilty? No, but you will be submitted to a similar treatment if you do not agree to help us." "Absurd threats," said Thomas. "Why would I be exposed to the same punishments as you, when everything between us - our past, our behav ior, our situation - is different?" "Because of the infirmary," said the employee timidly. "The infirmary?" asked Thomas. "Yes," said the employee, "don't you know? Almost the entire first floor has been transformed into a vast infirmary where the very ill are cared for. These patients, because of their weakness and the nature of their malady, are particularly afraid of contagion, to such a point that whenever the 120

proper precautions are not taken for approaching them, they contract all sorts of new diseases. They are therefore obliged at first to sequester any one who must enter these spaces. This is called the disinfection stage." Thomas reflected; the employee's remark was a very unpleasant sur prise. "I will not be entering the rooms of the sick," he answered finally. "How could you do otherwise?" said the employee. "Have you not come here as a witness?" "No doubt," said Thomas. "Well," said the employee, "then you will be forced to enter their rooms, at least ours, since you are the one who will be in charge of watching over us." "But you're not sick," said Thomas. "We will be," said the employee, with a groan. "I already feel ill at ease in this room. As for you, I am already beginning not to recognize you. You are almost another man, taller, stronger, the very image of your compan ion. You look at me with eyes that seem never to have looked at me before, and you have such an impeccable appearance. Oh!" he cried suddenly, "I have been oddly mistaken. You are not who I thought you were; you're the executioner." He crept into a corner of the room, staring at Thomas with fearful eyes. "What am I going to do with these two drunks?" he asked himself. Could he leave them there? Would he be allowed to leave the room, and if he did, would he not have to cross through the large sick room? He spoke to the young employee who was sprawled out on the ground in a nearly inani mate state. "Put a stop to this childishness," he said. "Don't try to mislead me with your lies. You seem to be less steeped in vice - can you not speak to me honestly instead of trying to make me complicit in your crimes?" The young man - at this moment he seemed a mere boy- raised his imploring eyes to Thomas, but he could not speak. The old man shouted from his corner: " Be careful, Simon. Don't trust anything he says to you. He came with us only to be our torturer, and he's in a hurry to begin his task." Then he threw himself on the young man asking him to repeat what Thomas had said. The young man tried in vain to move his lips, but all he could do was grab the throat of his companion and give it a feeble squeeze. "You," said the old employee, turning to Thomas. "Here's the fine result of your efforts. He can't talk anymore. Won't you please have mercy on 121

him? He is still so young, and weak; I, who am old and sturdy, have many more reasons to be pitied. What would become of me if you scrupulously fulfilled your function?" "I am not the executioner," said Thomas. "I have not been officially as signed to give you a thrashing; but if you persist in your shameful behav ior, I will need no one else's order to inflict on you an exemplary punish ment. Why," he added, "do you think I'm the executioner?" "We see it in your eyes," said the old employee, raising himself up with a cringe. "Your way of looking is like that of a person who has been given a mandate. You don't look at us; you look at what you have to do to us. You don't see our fault; you keep your eyes focused on your action. All executioners are like that. Some of them are deaf and mute. What would they have to say or to hear since the truth is in their battering hands and their lashing whip. You, you're a natural born executioner, the kind that says: 'It's still not too late,' even when your knife has cut the throat of the culprit." "We also see it in your hands," said the young employee, who had been drawn out of his stupor by the words of his companion, as if they had ex plained what was ailing him. "There was no need for you to touch me for me to know that they strike hard and handle the rod with severity. But when you strike me, think only of my fault." "That's quite enough," said Thomas. "I don't know how you might have guessed that I could hurt you badly with my stick, but now you're certainly going to find out." He picked up a piece of wood that was lying on the table and struck the young employee several times; even before the blows reached him, he fainted. "Do you see this rod?" said Thomas to the old employee, who was already screaming. "I only wanted to show you what I would use to correct you if you continue to lie to me. Now answer my questions. Where did the guardian go?" "We only have one guardian -you," said the employee. "Watch the stick!" said Thomas. "There is another guardian, the one who brought us here and who must now be walking back and forth in front of some door." The old man shook his head and said: "He's one of your countless sub ordinates. It's only natural that you don't know them all. As for myself, I was your servant, and you ignored me until today. It's unfortunate that you remember them only when it's time for a punishment." 122

"And don't forget it," said Thomas. "What did the guardian go to do?" "He went to carry out your orders," said the old man. "And what were my orders?" asked Thomas. "To prepare the room where you're going to punish us." "I could just as well punish you right here," said Thomas. "So that is not what I ordered him to do. Think of a better answer." "You're a hard one," said the old man. "You sent him to get the message." "That message again," said Thomas. "Why are you bringing it up too? You know then that someone was supposed to bring me a message? Per haps you saw it? Perhaps you're the one who forgot to pass it on to me? That's no doubt why you're going to be punished." "You're wrong," said the old man in a whining tone. "We did everything we could. I led you through the room as far as possible, and I even sent an emissary to you in the night to ask you not to take too long. Have I done wrong?" Thomas looked at his stick, then at the employee, and said: "Wasn't it wrong to keep the message from me?" The old man took a step back. "But," he said, "no one but you has men tioned it to me. No one has given me the slightest assignment to carry out for you. Who could know the affairs that concern you? The person you should be interrogating is yourself." Thomas did not answer. He had hoped for something else. So this was all the help he was going to get: an old employee, just today driven out of his post, had, in the dark hours of the night in which he was trying to ex onerate himself, reflected on something he had said and had dispatched a messenger who had not even carried out his mission. The messenger's failure could be explained by the insignificance of the message; they had called him with too weak a voice, one that had nothing to say and whose promises were empty. Thomas stared in anger at the old man, as though this man had stripped all value from the message by the simple fact of having gotten his base servant's thoughts mixed up with it. "Now," he said, "things have become serious. I will not tolerate your equivocations any longer. What is the crime for which you are being prose cuted, both of you?" "You have no right to interrogate us," said the employee. "If you are really the executioner, you are the one who will show us our crime in your punishment, and we will find out then what your reproach is. What good 123