Not to mention, of course, my awkwardness in social life. I have the thickest skin for certain things but then can’t stand the slightest friction. I’ve almost always existed amid the most awful moral and intellectual chaos, but contrived to be annoyed by a late-running train. I was so naïve! And I only just managed to survive clashes of my own making. What I couldn’t tolerate were rifts caused by others — particularly when sparked by sheer thoughtlessness. After all this, I think I probably don’t need to tell you that I’ve never experienced what people call ambition, pride, the pleasure of giving out orders, or what poor, overweight, preposterous poets call the desire to fly. I would be lying if I said that I’ve ever wanted anything enough to want to possess and control it. Nothing has ever appealed sufficiently to dazzle me or make me overlook its less attractive sides.
Please forgive the extremely confessional tone this letter is assuming. However, as we have taken this route, you might as well know that I’ve carried these ideas of mine to an extreme, particularly in matters of love. One might say that I’ve always made myself available for the ladies, but I’ve never demanded anything they couldn’t give. Perhaps you will say I’ve been generous. I couldn’t say. However, it is undeniable that I’ve been most hurt by my right not to suffer friction of any kind. I’ve been generous in the hope that I would be left in peace. I can say, then, that if my combative individualism has been de facto nonexistent, my spirit of self-preservation has been elemental, rough-edged, and brutish. I’ve asked for nothing and dominated nobody, but I have defended myself with every noble and ignoble weapon there is when people have tried to dominate me or force me to take a step in their direction. I grant you this is all very paltry: I only ever wanted to get on with my life. The laws of state increasingly encroach on us and the day may come when we have to fill in a form in order to grow a mustache. I’ve always preferred to have maximum freedom within the constraints of the law, and if I could stretch them, with or without sleight of hand, I’ve never given it a second thought. I’ve always thought unwritten laws were vague, and if I’ve never worked to discredit them, I can’t say they’ve ever excited me. If you want to grasp the ferocious nature of my instinct for self-preservation, you only need remember the expressions on the faces of our millionaires when you ask for five pesetas. They turn green as lizards and secrete the best salamander veneer you’ve ever seen. Transfer this to a broader, more philosophical field — to a stance respecting life — and you have some idea of where I stand. It would probably be interesting to find out the source of my savage intensity on behalf of the right to be passive. I’ve attempted to and have found so many blemishes in individuals and nations that their abundance has prevented me from ever reaching a conclusion.
The day after finishing my degree I entered the world of journalism, and this notorious profession is what finally sank me. In fact, I forgot to tell you that I have always been naturally intuitive and found it relatively easy to understand what people want, before, as they say, the words reach their lips. The advantages brought by intuition are only apparent, for the ease with which they come is the downfall of men and the root of all immorality. Intuitions respect nothing, neither the interests nor potential of the person so endowed, but they are intoxicating and send your head into a spin. Nothing can beat them if you want to weave your way through life on a wing and a prayer. Journalism, with its vapid, albeit necessary, prattle, industrializes your intuitions, schematically catalogues your world and provides the words at any given moment to create the impression that you are in the swim of things. In the long term, this facility is so energy-sapping you find it hard to walk on your own two feet and not deny that everything is insane. This profession that is vital in giving everyone a feeling of freedom is a ruthless machine for flattening people, an obvious example of the implacable cruelty of the laws of nature. I took to it like a fish to water and got soaked. My standoffish temperament made me particularly appreciate the way journalists have of washing their hands: their naturalness. Moreover, the reports they filed sum up life and reality, and then every evening, general disappointment descends over one’s desk. Initially, I found that repellent. Then, I began to be thick-skinned. By the end of the year I saw that everything that happens in this world has the importance a clearly written, simple, lively column can lend it. The cycle had gone full circle; as far as I was concerned, reality had ceased to be a reason to be affable and accommodating. Nothing made any difference, and the profession, in effect, had merely refined my instinctive, antisocial sarcasm.
“I had made positive gains. Several years had gone by. I had learned to pretend, to swim underwater, to not commit myself, to play foul and fair and elegantly. Without ever being forced to make unpleasant concessions, my temperament shed its tedious solitude, and my savoir faire enabled me to enjoy relationships without suffering tyranny or friction. I grasped that one cannot be a perfect egotist without being infinitely tactful and clever. I am ashamed to admit this but I managed to perform imperceptibly and, to my mind, with sophistication, on that farcical terrain. I became so immersed in this play-acting I thought it was a more profound, more natural state than reality itself. I was partly right. The most serious questions incorporate innumerable excessive, improper features. The mistake, however, is to believe that everything is improper. In the end, all I can repeat is that sentence from the first chapter of Tristram Shandy — ‘Pray My Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?’ that I find more enlightening than any sublime canto from the Divine Comedy. In literature, I have only ever been interested in writing that delineates contrasts, and I’ve always found characters with less than two faces to be absurd. I reckoned that idealistic literature could at best interest captains of cavalry, artists, and bank managers. That’s absurd too, I know. Absurd and disgusting. But I had formed such a wretchedly low opinion of myself I refused to believe that the angelical nature of men isn’t combined with arrant ruthlessness. Did I deceive myself? Who can say? In any case I find no reason to think I am any different from anyone else.
I observed the process and was startled to see how my world became distorted and how the grandest things fell apart before my eyes. I believe everyone must experience a similar sequence of sensations and ideas that at some point has helped form a clear self-image. The fact remains, however, that this process is continuous for the very few. When they look themselves in the face, men are frightened, don’t want to know, put their hands up, then turn their backs and try to forget. Nothing is more childish and destructive than the truth. Some unfortunate folk, on the other hand, seem to have been born to be ingenuous. When you are exposed to a surfeit of commonplaces, your mouth tastes sour and your hands shake feverishly at the way life can become so distorted. You are intoxicated by the simultaneous, contradictory paths life offers. You feel the indescribable emotion aroused by continuous dissatisfaction. If you bolt down this path, it seems all sweetness and light at first, you make interesting discoveries at each step and that suggests you are making progress. But the path only leads to the mineral indifference that such immensity provokes. And finally, if you don’t meet a redeeming soul, you shrink back into your shell and feel loathing for the bête humaine and everything moving around you. And if you then use your powers of reason, you can choose a minimalist path through life, one that has the added advantage of providing the epitaph for your future tombstone: ‘He didn’t desire, so as not to suffer; he didn’t love, so as to die.’