Abel sat up on the bed. The conversation was beginning to interest him:
“Would you want to embrace them too?”
“I’m not as sentimental as that. How could I love the very people who are responsible for the lack of love between others?”
These words, so laden with meaning, reminded Abel of someone else’s words:
“Pas de liberté pour les ennemis de la liberté.”
“I didn’t understand. It sounds like French, but I didn’t understand…”
“It’s something Saint-Just said, one of the leaders of the French Revolution. It means, more or less, that there should be no freedom for the enemies of freedom. Applying it to our conversation, you could translate it as: we should hate the enemies of love.”
“He was quite right, that Monsieur…”
“Saint-Just.”
“Yes, him. Don’t you agree?”
“About what Saint-Just said or about everything else?”
“Both.”
Abel seemed to retreat into thought. Then he said:
“I agree with Saint-Just, but as for the rest, no, I’ve never met anyone I could love like that. And I’ve met a lot of people. They’re all as bad as each other. I may have found an exception in you, not because of what you’ve just been telling me, but because of what I know about you and your life. I understand that you can feel that kind of love, but I can’t. I’ve taken a lot of knocks in life, I’ve suffered. I certainly wouldn’t do what that other fellow did, and turn the other cheek…”
Silvestre said vehemently:
“Neither would I. I’d cut off the hand of anyone who hit me.”
“If everyone did that, there’d be no two-handed people left in the world. If someone takes a beating, they’re sure to beat up someone else one day, if they haven’t done so already. It’s all a question of opportunity.”
“That way of thinking is called pessimism, and people who think like that are only helping those who want to spread a lack of love among ordinary people.”
“Forgive me, but like I said, what you’re proposing is pure utopianism. Life is a fight to the death, always and everywhere. It’s a case of every man for himself. Love is the cry of the weak, hatred is the weapon of the strong. Hatred for their rivals and competitors, for those contending for the same piece of bread or land or the same oil well. Love is either just a joke or something that gives the strong a chance to make fun of the weakness of the weak. For them, the existence of the weak is useful as a pastime, an escape valve.”
Silvestre appeared not to think much of the comparison. He looked at Abel very seriously, then smiled and asked:
“And are you one of the strong or one of the weak?”
Abel felt he had been caught out:
“Me? That’s hardly a fair question.”
“I’ll help you. If you’re one of the strong, why don’t you do as they do? If you’re one of the weak, why don’t you do as I do?”
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself. Like I said, it’s not a fair question.”
“Well, answer it anyway!”
“I can’t. Perhaps there’s some halfway house. On the one side, the strong, on the other, the weak, and in the middle, me and all the others.”
Silvestre stopped smiling. He looked hard at Abel and said slowly, counting off each statement on his fingers:
“All right, I’ll answer for you. You don’t know what you want, you don’t know where you’re going, and you don’t know what you have.”
“In short, I know nothing.”
“Don’t make a joke of it. What I’m saying is very important. When, some time ago, I said that you needed to—”
“I know, to be useful,” broke in Abel impatiently.
“When I said that, I had no idea you would be leaving us so soon. I also said that I couldn’t give you any advice, and I say the same now. But you’re leaving tomorrow and we might never see each other again. I decided that, even if I can’t advise you, I can at least tell you that a life without love, a life like the one you described just now, isn’t life at all, it’s a dung heap, a sewer.”
Abel stood up impulsively:
“Indeed it is, but what are we going to do about it?”
“Change it!” answered Silvestre, also springing to his feet.
“How? By loving each other?”
Abel’s smile vanished when he saw Silvestre’s grave expression:
“Yes, but loving each other with a lucid, active love, a love that can overcome hatred!”
“But man…”
“Listen, Abel, when you say the word ‘man,’ think ‘men.’ Man, with a capital M, as I sometimes read in the newspapers, is a lie, a lie that serves as a cover for all kinds of villainy. Everyone wants to save Man, but no one wants to know about men.”
Abel gave a resigned shrug. He could see the truth of what Silvestre was saying. He himself had often thought the same, but he lacked Silvestre’s faith. He asked:
“And what can we do? What can you or I do?”
“Live among men and help them.”
“And how do you help them?”
“I mend their shoes, because that’s all I know how to do. You’re young, intelligent, you have a good head on your shoulders. Open your eyes and look, and if you still haven’t understood, then lock yourself in your room and don’t come out, and wait for the world to fall in on you!”
Silvestre was speaking more loudly now. His lips were trembling with barely suppressed emotion. The two men stood looking at each other. There was a flow of understanding between them, a silent exchange of thoughts far more eloquent than words. Abel said:
“That’s a rather subversive idea, isn’t it?”
“Do you think so? I don’t. If it is subversive, then everything else is too, even breathing. I feel and think as naturally and necessarily as I breathe. If men hate each other, then there’s no hope. We will all be the victims of that hate. We will slaughter each other in wars we don’t want and for which we’re not responsible. They’ll put a flag in front of us and fill our ears with words. And why? To plant the seeds for a new war, to create more hatred, to create new flags and new words. Is that why we’re here? To have children and hurl them into the fiery furnace? To build cities and then raze them to the ground? To long for peace and have war instead?”
“And would love solve everything?” asked Abel with a sad, slightly ironic smile.
“I don’t know. It’s the only thing we haven’t tried so far…”
“And will we be in time?”
“Possibly. If those who suffer can be convinced that it’s true, then yes, we might be in time…” He paused, as if assailed by a sudden thought. “But don’t forget, Abel, you must love with a love that is lucid and active! And make sure that the active side never forgets about the lucid side, and that the active side never commits the same kinds of villainous deeds as those who want men to hate each other. Active, but lucid. And above all, lucid!”
Like a spring that breaks under too much tension, Silvestre’s enthusiasm sagged and he said, smiling:
“The cobbler has spoken. If anyone else was listening, they’d say: ‘He speaks far too well for a cobbler. Perhaps he’s a professor in disguise.’”
Abel laughed and asked:
“Are you a professor in disguise?”
“No, I’m just a man who thinks.”
Abel paced the room for a moment, saying nothing. Then he sat down on the trunk where he kept his books and looked at Silvestre, who, somewhat embarrassed, had started rolling himself another cigarette.
“A man who thinks,” murmured Abel.
Silvestre looked up, curious to know what Abel would say next.
“We all think,” Abel said. “But we think wrongly most of the time, or there’s a great gulf between what we think and what we do… or did.”