Do you fancy another glass? A good clean wine, this, leaves you fresh and clear in the morning, no headache. I know it well. Waiter, another bottle, please!
This place is so cold, so full of smoke. But that is when I feel happiest here. There are only the all-nighters left now. The lonely and the wise, the hopeless and the despairing, those to whom nothing much matters as long as they can be somewhere where the lamps are lit and there are strangers sitting close by, where they can stay lonely until they have to go home. It’s hard going home at a certain age, after certain experiences. The best thing is to be in a place like this, among strangers, alone, with no ties. Gardens and friendship, said Epicurus: there is no other way. I think he was right. But one doesn’t need too much garden, either — a few potted plants on a café terrace. And friends: one or two are enough.
Waiter! Ice, please. Drink up.
Where was I?
Ah, yes, that time. Waiting time.
The only thing of which I was aware was that people had started watching me. First my wife. Then people in the factory. Then people at the club, in the world at large. My wife was seeing little of me by that time: occasionally at dinner and less in the evening. We hadn’t had guests for a long time. At first I was nervous about turning down invitations, but then it became a habit, and I couldn’t bear to have guests over. It seemed so painful, so unreal … being home, keeping house, you know what I mean. Everything was lovely and orderly, just as it should be: the rooms, the treasured paintings, the ornaments, the servant and the chambermaid, the porcelain, the silver, the fine food, the fine drink … it was just that I didn’t feel I was the master of my own household. I didn’t even feel at home. I couldn’t believe, not for one moment, that this was my real home, a home where I could receive visitors. It was like being in a play, my wife and I constantly proving something to our guests, that this was a real home, a proper place. But it wasn’t! Why? There’s no arguing with facts. On the other hand, there’s no point explaining them, either, not when they are as simple and as undeniable.
We were being left to ourselves. The world has keen ears. All it needs is a few signs, a few gestures, and the delicate spy network of envy, curiosity, and malice soon begins to suspect something. It’s enough to turn down a few invitations or not return an invitation early enough, an invitation you once had accepted, and the whole social fabric is abuzz with coded communications to indicate that someone is about to desert the ruling hierarchy, aware that such-and-such a family or couple is “having problems.” This “having problems” affects the disintegrating family as it might an invalid quarantined on account of his infection; it’s as if the local doctor had pinned a notice in red letters on the front door of the house. The affected family is treated with a little more delicacy, with a touch of mockery and reserve. What people are hoping for is scandal, of course. There’s nothing they long for more keenly when it comes to others than the prospect of complete collapse. They are positively in fever for it, a fever that is a form of plague. You step into a café or a restaurant alone and they are whispering: “Have you heard? They’re having problems. They’re getting divorced. The man seduced his wife’s best friend.” This is what they are hoping for. And should you go somewhere with your wife, they still have their eyes on you, as they huddle together, muttering in a knowing way: “They still go around together, but it doesn’t mean anything. They’re just keeping up appearances.” And slowly you realize that they’re right, even if they don’t know the truth, even if every part of the evidence is based on ignorance and lies. In matters of importance, of human interest, society possesses a mysteriously reliable awareness. Lázár once told me, half-jokingly, that there’s nothing as true as calumny. Generally, people have no secrets from each other. They pick each other’s secrets up on a kind of shortwave, he said, a shortwave that penetrates the deepest recesses of our hearts, and their words and actions are merely consequences of this. I believe he was right. That was precisely how we lived. A gentle disintegration followed. It was as if I had been preparing myself for emigration, you understand. You go around thinking that your workplace, your family, suspect nothing, but the truth is that everyone knows you have already been to the embassy to apply for a visa and a ticket. Your family carries on talking to you as patiently and as warily as they would with a madman or a criminal, as someone worthy of pity, but the fact is that the police and the ambulance have already been put on alert, that these are the conditions under which you must live.
One can’t help knowing this and becoming suspicious. One acts with circumspection, weighing every word. There is nothing more difficult than deconstructing a situation that has taken time to construct. It is as complex as trying to demolish a cathedral. One can be sorry for so many things … but of course there is no greater sin against one’s partners and oneself than allowing one’s emotions free range in a crisis.
It takes a long time to understand your rights in life: to understand to what degree your life is your own, to what degree you have given that life over to feeling and memory. You see how hopelessly I am a prisoner of my own class? For me the whole thing was like a complex legal matter entailing a separation. It was a quiet act of rebellion against my family and my worldly situation. And indeed it was a legal matter, not only concerning the divorce and the alimony. There are other laws people are bound to. At such times you spend whole nights asking yourself: What have I received? What have I given? What do I owe? And it’s not just at night you ask yourself such questions, but in broad daylight, in crowds, out in the street. Terrible questions. It took me years until I understood that beneath all one’s obligations, there existed a right, a right according to an unwritten law not made by man, but by the Creator, which was the right to die alone. Do you see?
It is an important and substantial right. Everything else is a form of debt. You owe a debt to your family and to society, from which you have received considerable benefits; you owe something to your feelings, to your memories. But there comes the point when your soul overflows with the desire for solitude, when all you want is, quietly, with a proper human dignity, to prepare yourself for the end, for the last human task of alclass="underline" for death. When you get to that point you must be careful not to cheat, because if you do, you lose your right to act. As long as you are acting out of selfishness, out of a desire for comfort or a sense of grievance; as long as desiring solitude is a form of vanity, you are still in hock to the world and to all those who represent the world for you. But there comes a day when the soul completely fills with desire for solitude, when you want nothing but to cast from your soul everything superfluous, false, or secondary. When a man sets out on a long, dangerous journey, he is very careful what he packs. He examines every item from every possible point of view. He measures and judges the worth of everything, and only then does he find a place for it in his modest pack. Only when he is sure he is certain to need it. Chinese hermits, who leave their families when they reach roughly sixty, take leave of them like this. All they take is one small pack. They leave the house at dawn, silently, with a smile. It is not a change that they want; no, they are heading for the mountains to find solitude and death. It’s the last human journey. That is what you have a right to. The pack you take with you for such a journey must be light — something you can carry with one hand. It will contain nothing unnecessary, not a single item of vanity. It is a very powerful desire at a certain age. Once you hear the lapping sound of loneliness you immediately recognize it as something familiar. It is as if you had been born by the sea, then spent the rest of your life in noisy cities; but one night you hear it again in your dreams: the sea. And you want to live alone, to live without a purpose, to render up everything to those who have a right to it, and then to leave; to wash your soul clear and wait.