The forest smells so raw and wild, as if every living thing-plants, animals, people-were slowly coming back to consciousness in the dormitory of the world, exhaling all their secrets and bad thoughts.
“The wind stirs, too, at this moment, gently, carefully, like the sigh of a sleeping man as he senses the return of the earthly reality into which he was born. The scent of wet leaves, of ferns, of crumbling tree trunks, of rotting pine cones, of the soft carpet of fallen leaves and pine needles slippery from the dew, rises up from the earth to assault you like the smell of two lovers locked in sweat-soaked embrace. A magical moment, which our heathen ancestors used to celebrate deep in the forest, worshipfully, arms out-stretched, facing East: earthbound man in the eternally recurring, spellbound expectation of light, insight, reason. This is the time when the game begins to move, heading for water. Night has still not quite ended, things are still happening in the forest, the nocturnal animals are still hunting, still ready, the wildcat is still on the watch, the bear is tearing the last scraps of flesh off his prey, the rutting stag still recalls the fury of the moonlit night and stands in the clearing where the sexual battle took place, raises his wounded head proudly, and surveys the scene with grave, bloodshot eyes, as if to fix the passion of that duel in his memory forever. In the heart of the forest night lives on, as does everything associated with it: prey, animal passion, the freedom to roam, pure love of life and the struggle for survival. It’s the moment when something happens not just deep among the trees but also in the dark interior of the human heart, for the heart, too, has its night and its wild surges, as strong an instinct for the hunt as a wolf or a stag.
The human night is filled with the crouching forms of dreams, desires, vanities, self-interest, mad love, envy, and the thirst for revenge, as the desert night conceals the puma, the hawk and the jackal. It is the moment when it is neither night nor day in man’s heart, because the wild beasts have slunk out of the hidden corners of our souls, and something rouses itself, transmits itself from mind to hand, something we t hought we had tamed and trained to obedience over the course of years, decades even. In vain, we have lied to ourselves about the significance of this feeling, but it has proved stronger than all our intentions, indissolvable, unrelenting. Every human relationship has a tangible core, and we can think about it, analyze it all we want, it is unchangeable. The truth is that for twenty-four years you have hated me with a burning passion akin to the fire of a great affair-even love.
“You have hated me, and when anyone emotion or passion occupies us entirely, the need for revenge crackles and glimmers among the flames that torment us. Passion has no footing in reason. Passion is indifferent to reciprocal emotion, it needs to express itself to the full, live itself to the very end, no matter if all it receives in return is kind feelings, courtesy, friendship, or mere patience. Every great passion is hopeless, if not it would be no passion at all but some cleverly calculated arrangement, an exchange of lukewarm interests. You have hated me, and that makes for as strong a bond as if you had loved me. Why did you hate me? … I have had plenty of time to think about it.
You have never accepted either money from me or presents, you never allowed our friendship to develop into a real relationship of brothers, and if I had not been so young back then, I would have known that this was a danger signal. Whoever refuses to accept a part wants the whole, wants everything. You hated me as a child, from the very first moment we met at the academy, where the best our Empire had to offer were reared and educated; you hated me, because there was something in me that you lacked. What was it? What talent or quality? … You were always the better student, you were always unintentionally a chef d’oeuvre of diligence, goodness, and talent, for you possessed an instrument, in the true sense of that word, you had a secret-music. You were related to Chopin, you were proud and reserved.
“But deep inside you was a frantic longing to be something or someone other than you are. It is the greatest scourge a man can suffer, and the most painful. Life becomes bearable only when one has come to terms with who one is, both in one’s own eyes and in the eyes of the world. We all of us must come to terms with what and who we are, and recognize that this wisdom is not going to earn us any praise, that life is not going to pin a medal on us for recognizing and enduring our own vanity or egoism or baldness or our pot-belly. No, the secret is that there’s no reward and we have to endure our characters and our natures as best we can, because no amount of experience or insight is going to rectify our deficiencies, our self-regard, or our cupidity. We have to learn that our desires do not find any real echo in the world. We have to accept that the people we love do not love us, or not in the way we hope. We have to accept betrayal and disloyalty, and, hardest of all, that someone is finer than we are in character or intelligence.
“Over the course of my seventy-five years here in the middle of the forest, I have learned this much. But you have not been able to accept it,” he says softly, definitively. Then he stops, and his eyes stare blindly into the half-darkness.
After a pause, as if to excuse his guest, he starts again: “Of course, you didn’t know any of this when you were a child. That was a magical time. With age, memory enlarges every detail and presents it in the sharpest outline. We were children and we were friends: that is a great gift and we should thank fate for it. But then your character took shape and you found it intolerable that something inside you was lacking, something that I had, whether it was in the genes, or came from my upbringing, or maybe the good Lord God … so what was this something?
Was it some talent? Or was it just that people were indifferent to you, or occasionally hostile, whereas they smiled at me and gave me their trust? You despised this trust and these friendships, but at the same time you envied them desperately. You must have sensed-not in so many words, of course, but in some inchoate way-that anyone who is a general favorite is in some fashion a whore.
“There are people who are loved by everyone, who are always being spoiled and forgiven with a smile, and who are indeed too willing to please, a little whorish.
“You see, I’m no longer afraid of words,” he says and smiles, as if to encourage similar candor in his guest.
“Solitude brings knowledge, and then there is nothing to fear anymore.
Those who have, in fact, been singled out as the favorites of the gods really do consider them selves to be the elect, and they present themselves to the world with overweening assurance. But if that is how you saw me, then you were mistaken, and your envy distorted your vision.
I do not wish to defend myself, because what I want is the truth, and whoever does that must start the search inside himself. What you took to be God-given favor in me and around me was nothing more than instinctive trust. I believed the best of the world until the day … well, the day I stood in the room you had abandoned. Maybe it was that very trustingness that made people wish me well, trust me in turn, and offer me their friendship. There was something in me then-I am speaking of the past and of something so far away that I might as well be discussing a stranger or someone long dead-some kind of lightness and lack of preconceptions that disarmed people. There was a period of my life, ten years of my youth, when the world was tolerant of my presence and my needs. A time of grace. Everyone comes rushing toward you as if you are a conqueror to be fęted with wine and wreaths of flowers and girls. And indeed throughout that decade in Vienna, in the academy and then the regiment, I never once lost the certainty that the gods had set a secret invisible ring on my finger that would always bring me luck and protect me from severe disappointments, and that I was surrounded by trust and affection. No one could ask more of life, it is the greatest blessing of all.” He pauses, and his tone darkens.