But we are irremediably, not to say very superficially, creatures of the surface, and it is always difficult for us to admit that history in reality is being determined beneath our feet. For the past (what is putrefied and petrified) and the future (what engenders and endures) are in effect buried: passing time is subterranean. Our senses do not perceive it. Our spirits do not conceive it. All those antennae only give us information about space, or the current moment, that is, today’s weather conditions. We know, however, that the prosperity of a region depends on the resources belowground, and we also know that any history of horology, from the very first ticktock, is meaningless on the scale of time that produces the following riches: quartz, hydrocarbons, diamonds, every ore. I have done a lot of digging in my time, deep digging, I have thrust myself down into the earth like a tree all the while deploring the fact that I cannot travel in every direction at once, unlike the tree that plunges and pushes its roots ever farther, branching them out rather than having to choose between two diverging roads so as to explore them both. I would also have liked to possess the ability to dig in two places simultaneously without having to split myself in two, without separating my blood, with the blind but perfectly controlled perseverance also typical of moles.
I have often had occasion to see them at work, I know them well, or, let me say in passing, I know the ones who usurp their name — for they are never totally moles, fully moles, absolutely moles, they are missing gloves, mole gloves in order to be one hundred percent moles, entirely moles, worthy of the name “mole” even if, as such, despite their tiny hands that are always clean, they are already almost moles, more mole than any other animal in any case, the shrew for example compared to the mole, the shrew in point of fact is nothing like a mole, the shrew must be redesigned from tail to snout to obtain a mole and that is why, while awaiting the mole with mole fingers, lacking this actual mole, I propose to continue to use the term “mole” for all the pseudomoles, approximate or incomplete, that can give the impression of moleness, they have proved it, and I’ve often had occasion to see them at work, therefore I am very knowledgeable about and I admire and envy their remarkable sense of direction: naturalists are in the habit of slipping a radioactive band onto one of their tiny paws and following their underground movements with a Geiger (Hans, German physicist, born in Neustadt in 1882 and died in Berlin in 1945, for those among you interested in his trajectory) counter. These experiments show that moles navigate very well in their tunnels. They never get lost despite the daily growing complexity of the network; they do not wonder which way to turn at a crossroads and they are so sure of finding their way that they lay in a food supply in several places, on different levels, before bifurcating again, whence this interminable digression that allows me to describe them in their natural surroundings with all the rigor and honesty that one rightly expects from science.
Myopia fuels curiosity. It is this myopia above all that the mole’s curiosity would like to break through. And our curiosity is likewise stimulated by the mysteries to which our confused spirit gives birth. In truth, everything is very simple and somewhat disappointing. Archaeology has confirmed that man in his historical fiction has always been what he is, except for a few details; successive civilizations resemble each other so closely that it would be possible to recount History backward, beginning with today, starting at the end in order to travel back through the ages all the way to the most ancient known remains; and there too we would see a logical progression with effects and causes reversed: the chain of events would seem no less inexorable than the one on which we are dependent. With the same amazement we would measure the path traveled by men from the time of telephone and automobile cities who, little by little having rid themselves of these nuisances, demolished one neighborhood at a time to make room for the peaceful and remote countryside with its farming villages where the rooftops rested on swallows’ nests until some new advances came along, simplifying, simplifying, the walls’ heavy stones that were so difficult to extract from the earth having been cleverly replaced by partitions made of branches or cob, to arrive at long last at the comfort of our modern caves, while the military engineers managed over time to reduce significantly the range of our weapons thanks to a series of technical developments intended to make them less lethaclass="underline" this escapade, sketched broadly here, would have been no more ridiculous than actual history. If our ancestors had prostrated themselves before a single God, we would have shattered that rudimentary idol in order to worship, forehead to the ground, our gods as numerous as the stars. It is movement that matters, evolution regardless of the slope; there is no design, no necessity, nothing justifies History such as we can reconstitute it. Life is stubborn, it wants to endure, but no one can give it a shape or a goal. It remains a principle without consequence, a pure, unusable energy; no matter how much I dig, what’s the point if my pick only strikes the skulls of these old, old ideas?
ALL THE SAME, Professor Glatt had advised me not to let anyone come down and it was not my intention to disobey his orders. The idea of disappearing for a while in order to proceed under the proper conditions with the inventory of the nonindexed objects discovered on the Pales site was rather agreeable to me; as soon as I can escape the gaze of others, I blossom. But I absentmindedly forgot to close the door behind me, and a bunch of busybodies followed me down the steep steps that lead to the cellar where all those objects stored higgledy-piggledy are waiting to be labeled and catalogued. After which they will be distributed to various museums or entrusted to various laboratories for analysis or even exhibited here in the cave; two additional display cases will no doubt be necessary to house the collection. It is always dark in the cellar. The light switch is to your right, if you still believe in this miracle: first there appears a single lightbulb, filled to the neck with a syrupy, cloudy glow that empties slowly into the ceiling lamp’s globe (a fly falls in and drowns, poor thing) so that the darkness withdraws slightly without for all that admitting defeat, without breaking its circle of wolves and dangers; now you can make out more distinctly the many assorted crates lined up against the four walls of hollow cinder block that has been specially treated to prevent leaks with an exterior waterproof coating that is totally ineffective because the inside plaster has rotted and moisture oozes in long yellowish streaks that swell as they branch out over the entire surface to be irrigated, and blisters form, and sometimes a fat, soft scale (think of that creamy petal that falls off the rose before the others) comes loose and silently strikes the floor, a compressed concrete slab reinforced with a welded wire mesh separated from the load-bearing beams and hourdi blocks by a polystyrene insulating panel that rests and weighs on a peripheral foundation of cinder blocks with a supporting partition wall, and continuous footing measuring 50 cm x 40 cm: nothing to worry about here.
Nothing to hope for either. No way out this time, no possibility of escape or evasion, unless I sit here amid the crates, head in hand, to move no more. But how long could I hold out? Hands don’t know what to do with the head that’s entrusted to them. Even the most skillful hands become blind and clumsy, the spriest hands are crippled, and even the meticulous hands that repair watches all day long a duck wouldn’t want for feet; so my hands, enfeebled by my extensive reading in rheumatology, are burdened by this head, if only they could toss it to you — because you’ve followed me until now — but what would you do with it? It would inconvenience you as well and you’d go looking for someone else to pawn it off on, this head that is too full, laden with ideas; its imagination exceeds the capacity of its skull, and it would not be very loyal of you, but hey, it’s not really your problem, it’s up to me to make do with it and to live with it sitting up there, might as well set it to work, or use it to take its mind off of me, or me off its mind. I am, in any case, cornered in this cellar, out of arguments this time, I have no choice. You’ll see how I am going to rise again in Professor Glatt’s esteem.