But the number of true prospects was increasing also, and not only among workers and craftsmen. Among the candidates were an Austrian officer, an agricultural engineer, a Siennese pharmacist, scions of the finest families in France were applying…but also pimps offering “women accustomed to men in great quantities”(!). In the first year, while I was still considering an appropriate place to establish the settlement, I received more than four hundred applications, roughly a quarter of which came from married couples or families with children: all told, nearly seven hundred settlers! The Society for the Establishment and Development of the Fraternitas Free Settlement was created in Lyons, followed by the Society for a New Life, which eventually took over all the bookkeeping; the Society for Free Socialism was created in Genoa, and branches of an association called Far From the Capital in Le Havre and Paris.
Where was I to locate my experimental settlement? Experiments such as this were doomed to failure in Europe; the pressure of the surroundings was too great, too present, communication with the outside world too easy and seductive. Canada was a land of hunters, farmland was expensive. In the United States there was no place for a free-thinking group of people: the land belonged in equal parts to Pistol Petes and Puritans, who shared the same fetish: In God we trust. I considered French Polynesia for a time, but the conditions there were too harsh. Then I concentrated on Central and South America, Mexico, Venezuela, and finally Brazil. The climate and agricultural potential were not ideal, but at least they were decent. The Brazilian government was favorable toward immigration and made us a very advantageous offer: exemption from taxes and customs fees for three years, plus an interest-free loan payable over six years, in return for a commitment of at least 5,000 permanent settlers on the territory provided during that time.
I set out for Brazil that same year. I arrived on the site of the future settlement during the rains, but despite the inclement weather I was enchanted. For the first time in years the image of your face in my memory began to dissolve. For the first time in years I felt free once again. Suddenly I was seized by the awareness that a solution was within reach. Had the civilized world ever been closer to extinction than now? European civilization! Paris and its extravagant sophisticates, Vienna and its diligent informers, London and its Salvation Army brass bands, Amsterdam and its pudgy gold dealers, Rome and its papists! Was it not the opportune moment to quit this world burdened with misfortune and misery, caked in oozing ulcers, pallid and exhausted, and show it that the path it has been following thus far is only one of many possible? Or is there only one world possible and will people be forever slaves, no matter what we call them? What does your Encyclopédie have to say to that?
VI
Last night I had a dream about you. I was myself — an old man — you were still young. So beautiful! So foreign!
All our ideas about death are childish. Some believe that man does not die; others, that death is nothing, for if we do not live, death does not exist. But, on the contrary, that answers nothing, if death exists only in life, it means merely that life is mortal, death immortal. Death, in its immortality, is ironic, more ironic than life itself.
Take for instance a mother’s first act after giving birth: quieting the child’s anxiety, lightening the burden for the life she has just brought into the world. A newborn cries through his first weeks and months of life. How come? In anticipation of what awaits him? A clairvoyance, which he will later lose, at the instant we force on him the illusion we ourselves have lost, the illusion of safety, the illusion of eternity? Which he will lose until the moment he reaches maturity and sees through it, definitively and irrevocably?
The parents’ role? To encourage their child to live, to ease his fear, to soothe him, calm him, arrange the home for him along the pattern of intestines, arouse in him the idea that he is still in the safety of the womb, persuade him that the surrounding world is only scenery, a stage set at which we gaze peacefully from our hiding place in the darkness of the audience. Any parent who prematurely reveals to his child that the human theater is played once and for all, that no one will mend the ragged costumes, and that the blood flowing from the boards is real, will be morally condemned by other parents: How could he be so inhuman? The parents’ secrets protect the child — and excuse the parents.
I lay in bed in an unknown room, imbrued with sweat; you were holding my hand and smiling. I felt no desire, just joy and peace. One thing alone clouded my happiness, drops of sweat, flowing into my eyes, which forced me to blink and prevented me from seeing you more clearly. Wanting to rid myself of this veil of tears I shook my head, but succeeded only in sending a sharp pain down my spine. The sound of voices came from the next room, men’s and women’s. They sounded unnatural, quarrelsome and shrill. I realized that we were in a hotel room and the voices were actually coming from the corridor or the lobby. Then you spoke, with a kind smile and tenderness in your eyes, but your voice sounded like the voices of those outside: unnatural, quarrelsome, shrill. You said: Where will we go now?
VII
To justify life! The optimists — those affable, rosy-cheeked, smiling people — believe that everything is in perfect order. All the horrors of the world, all human spite and folly, all that is a natural part of life. How pessimistic! The pessimists on the other hand — those gloomy, petulant, bilious, obstinate individuals — believe that life should be better, that it could be something other than spiteful and foolish. How optimistic!
I am aware of the extent of the commitment which I have taken upon myself: people who in good faith set out across the ocean and whose way back is now closed view me rightfully as the coauthor of their fate. Yes, I should have expressed myself more circumspectly, paid more attention to recruitment and various instructions which were issued under my moral aegis — many of them, as I have bitterly come to realize over the years, in conflict with my deepest-held convictions. Some fools even published some sort of Regulations under my name — as if anarchy could regulate something! Yes, I let myself be carried away by my visions and succumbed to the superficial enthusiasm which dominated after my first proclamations.
However, the short-lasted duration of the settlement is not proof of the project’s unattainability — only people without imagination could think so. If the first experiment fails to produce the expected results, it must be repeated. Galileo spent many an evening observing the chandelier in the Pisa Cathedral; why should it be any different with anarchy? Can people live together without laws? Experience has shown that yes: a group of people, including those with no clear concept of anarchy, lived together for nearly three years — and notwithstanding the aforementioned Regulations, with no preordained rules. As long as voluntary labor held up, there was plenty of food and trust alike. And if people began to suffer from hunger, it was not because it was impossible to assure the influx of provisions, but the fault of the self-appointed managers. If the people did not get bread, it was because no one mended the granary roof, damaged by torrential rains. If the livestock trampled the bean fields, it was because the cattle run was shoddily constructed. And if the settlers were overcome with indifference, it was due to lack of faith; some of them lost trust and infected the others, refusing to fetch water or to go and work in the field. The idiotic principles of parliamentarianism squeezed out anarchy. The settlers adopted an absurd system of referenda, squandering time in assemblies which begot nothing but ridiculous promises and individual ambitions. They then dictated to others their rights and obligations…And then — only then! — the diseases we know so well began to creep into the settlement like a plague: restriction of freedom, spying, envy and jealousy, disrespect for women, theft, and, finally, murder.