“A contagious discovery, Herr Urs. When Ulrich and I went to your room, we felt ourselves surrounded by something infectious that we could neither touch nor name.”
“Freedom, young sir, simply courageous human freedom. The freedom of the committed and dedicated rebel, which someday will infect the entire world.” My little man moved his fingers rapidly, delicately, as if he were playing a piano. “Full liberty induces sickness in us, of course, for we have always believed that we are healthy only when our liberty is limited.”
“You weren’t free, none of you, goddamn you!” Jakob shouts at Boston Boy or maybe at the manikin on my knee or maybe at myself, I am not sure which. “You were slaves! You were Germans, Germans! Phantoms hunting across the wasteland armed with the asinine jawbones of a sheep Volk!”
“Ach,” the little man smiles sadly, “why are your friends always so raucous? Things are not quite so simple as he seems to think. I suggest that you avoid most firmly the road that he has chosen. One must keep in mind, after all, that there are certain risks which if we dare to hazard them lead to reward far greater than any wealth. I left my works hanging in the room where I died, my only gift to the world, the sum and meaning of all my days, yet without the slightest expectation that they would be greeted by applause. The idea of triumphant success was altogether foreign to me. Do you believe that I wanted to evangelize the world, tempt it, bribe it, convert it? Oh, no, no, never, my young friend. I never offered youth a change of soul, nor did I suggest to the cities of the desert that they abandon their obeisant servility. I believe, quite the contrary, that everything that survives feasts eventually, when the opportune moment comes, upon the fruits of its tenacity. My triumph was not, is not in the noisy world but far from it, alien and isolated. My freedom is precisely my isolation and my victory is to hold myself apart, identifying with no one and with nothing except, perhaps, nothingness itself. I am, so to speak, young sir, a dark star that wanders along through the darkness of space casting invisible light upon those who are far away and bathed in the stolid sun, contaminating them, infecting them, as you so aptly put it. If I should allow myself to be touched by other lives, to mix and fuse into their mass, I would instantly cease to be who I am. I can tempt only because no one can recognize me. I die the moment I am discovered moving through this emotional chaos with which men comfort themselves for their misery and console themselves for my apartness. For I have done what none of them has ever dared to do. And no one knows, nor will I tell, whether my punishment may not be my reward.”
White Rabbit slowly advances in her glistening brocade robes, her hair mussed and her eyes vacant. As she passes Jakob, he stops and holds her. “No, Jeanne. Don’t go near him.”
My little man stretches out his beautiful hands. “She need not come near me. I laugh at distance, my friend.” I make his small fingers caress the satin of his dressing gown. “Ah,” he says softly to White Rabbit. “So we meet again.”
“Jeanne. Jeanne.” Jakob seems shaken by confusion. He searches for words while the little man on my knee polishes his tiny fingernails on the quilted silk lapels of his dressing gown. “Jeanne,” Jakob says finally, “don’t be afraid of your visions. Love your menstruation and your seizures, Jeanne, your orgasms give you life and health. I swear that, Jeanne. And they give life and health to me, too. Don’t feel ashamed. Don’t be afraid. Don’t run away to that false world of words that can be mastered so easily. What is hard, Jeanne, is to master the real, damned, unfortunate world of horrible shame and silence and defeat et cetera.”
White Rabbit advances and touches the blue pagoda and dragons of Herr Urs von Schnepelbrücke’s red dressing gown. She lets her fingers touch, and she stands motionless. Jakob does not dare move either. But he speaks to her, softly, earnestly: “Don’t believe their lies, Jeanne. No poet is a prophet of torture. No philosophy proclaims the justice of murder. They speak of evil, Jeanne, so that we may see it before us and accept it as part of life so that we will corrupt ourselves with it, Jeanne, and in our isolation from each other it may overcome us. Jeanne, don’t let yourself be defeated, my love. Neither your body nor your thought will be evil if you let yourself love, if you touch and let yourself be touched. He’s afraid, Jeanne. Always remember that he is afraid. He doesn’t want life to come near him. He wants to save himself alone. Alone and through the evidences of death that offer him his illusion of being…”
“My dear young sir!” Herr Urs says politely. “Everything is permitted, after all.” Jeanne steps back from him with an expression of loathing and falls upon the floor twisted, strangled, vomiting out the testicles of goats and devils transformed into hairy worms. Jakob covers her vomit with one hand. “Yes,” he replies to the little man on my knee, “all life is permitted. But not death. Not death!” Jeanne laughs and groans and her heart beats wildly and she trembles from head to foot. With a certain difficulty, my little man crosses his legs.
“Heresie, Treeson, Wytchcrafte, Belial, True Libertee, Namon, Bludthyrstee, Homicide,” cries White Rabbit, the tormented nun. She clutches her sumptuous robes and asks us to throw her into the river. She writhes on the floor murmuring “Fyre, Sulfure, Darkness, and a most Abominable Stink.” Jakob holds her in his arms and makes himself part of her convulsion. He puts his lips to her clenched teeth and whispers, “No, Jeanne, not you and I. Your suffering will be a chance for greatness. You and I shall struggle against ourselves, Jeanne. We’ll try and fail and try again and fail again, and go on to the end of all the ancient contradictions in order to live and repeal them, ridding ourselves of our old skin and exchanging it for the fresh new skin of the new contradictions, those that will await us then. We shall struggle alone, without hurting others, neither faces nor crosses, neither heads nor tails, neither eagles nor suns.”
“I fear that won’t suffice, young man. No, it will never be enough. You will be forgiven much too easily. What I suggest is that you do what can never be forgiven. Only so do you make it worthwhile to humiliate yourself seeking redemption.”
“A man doesn’t need victims merely to abandon solitude,” Jakob whispers in White Rabbit’s ear. She murmurs the simple words of childhood: “Mother? Father? Papa? Juanita? Vacation? Vacation?” She points her finger at the little man on my knee. At seated blond Boston Boy. Now, her fist closing, at the window. By the movement of her body she begs the window to come nearer and offer her, though she has lost the strength to speak, an opportunity to flee. Jakob caresses her gently. “Don’t give up, Jeanne. He says that his power is in his isolation, but he must have victims to escape solitude. Believe in me, Jeanne. Believe what I tell you. We shall oppose his collective violence with our individual violence. We shall make history with our lives so that he cannot make history with our deaths.”