(from Buried Alive)
I’m short of breath, tears pour from my eyes, my mouth tastes sour. I’m dizzy, my heartbeat is laboured, I’m exhausted, beaten, my body is loosened up. I have fallen without volition on the bed. My arms are punctured from injections. My bed smells of sweat and fever. I look at the clock on the small table beside the bed. It’s Sunday, ten o’clock. I look at the ceiling of the room, from the middle of which hangs a light bulb. I look around the room. The wallpaper has a pink and red flower design. At intervals two blackbirds sit opposite each other on a branch. One of them has opened his beak as if he is talking to the other. This picture infuriates me, I don’t know why, but whichever direction I turn, it’s before my eyes. The table is covered with bottles, wicks, and boxes of medicine. The smell of burnt alcohol, the smell of a sickroom, has pervaded the air. I want to get up and open the window, but an overwhelming laziness has nailed me to the bed. I want to smoke a cigarette, but I have no desire for it. It hasn’t been ten minutes since I shaved my beard, which had grown long. I came and fell in bed. When I looked in the mirror I saw that I’d become very wasted and thin. I walked with difficulty. The room is a mess. I’m alone.
A thousand kinds of astonishing thoughts whirl and circle in my brain. I see all of them. But to write the smallest feeling or the least passing idea I must describe my whole life, and that isn’t possible. These reflections, these feelings, are the result of my whole life, the result of my way of life, of my inherited thoughts, of what I’ve seen, heard, read, felt, or pondered over. All these things have made up my irrational and ridiculous existence.
I twist in the bed. I jumble my memories together. Distressed and mad reflections press my brain. My head hurts, throbs. My temples are hot. I twist and turn. I pull the quilt over my eyes. I think – I’m tired. It would be good if I could open my head and take out all the soft, grey, twisted mass of my brain and throw it all away, throw it to a dog.
Nobody can understand. Nobody will believe. To somebody who fails at everything they say, “Go and lay your head down and die.” But when even death doesn’t want you, when even death turns its back on you, death which won’t come and which doesn’t want to come!…”
Everyone is afraid of death but I’m afraid of my persistent life. How frightening it is when death doesn’t want one and rejects one! Only one thing consoles me. It was two weeks ago, I read in the paper that in Austria a person tried thirteen times to kill himself in different ways and each time he almost succeeded: he hanged himself and the rope broke, he threw himself in the river and they pulled him out, and so on… Finally, for the last time, when the house was empty he slashed his wrists with a kitchen knife, and this thirteenth time
he died!
This gives me consolation!
No, no one decides to commit suicide. Suicide is with some people. It is in their very nature, they can’t escape it. It is fate which rules, but at the same time it is I who have created my own fate. Now I can no longer escape it, but I cannot escape from myself.
Anyhow, what can be done? Fate is stronger than I am. What fancies I get! As I was lying in bed I wished to be a child. The same old nursemaid who used to tell me stories, pausing to swallow, would be sitting here at my head. I would be lying just like this, tired out in bed, and she would elaborately tell me stories and my eyes would slowly close. Now that I think about it, some of the events of my childhood come easily to mind. It is as if it were yesterday. I see that I’m not very far from my childhood. Now I see the whole of my dark, base, and useless life. Was I happy then? No, what a big mistake! Everyone supposes children are lucky. No, how well I remember. I was even more sensitive then. Then I was a phoney and a sly fellow. On the surface I may have laughed or played, but inside, the least biting remark or the smallest unpleasant, worthless occurrence, would occupy my mind for long hours, and I would eat my heart out. By no means should a character like mine survive. The truth is with those who say that heaven and hell are inside a person. Some are born lucky and some unlucky.
I look at the red pencil stub with which I am making these notes in bed. It was with the same pencil that I wrote out the meeting place and the note to the girl whom I had just got to know. We went to the pictures together two or three times. The last time it was a talking film rather that a silent one. As part of the programme, a well-known Chicago singer sang ‘Where is My Sylvia?’ I enjoyed it so much that I closed my eyes to listen. I can still hear his powerful and captivating voice. The theatre rang with the sound. It seemed to me that he should never die. I couldn’t believe that some day this voice might become silent. His mournful tone made me sad, even while I was enjoying it. Music played high and low. The quivering and wailing which came from the strings of the violin made it seem as if the bow were being drawn across my veins. The entire fabric of my body was impregnated with the music; it made me tremble and carried me down the path of imagination. In the darkness I fondled her breasts. Her eyes grew heavy. I felt strange. I remember it was a sad and poignant state which can’t be expressed. I kissed her moist, fresh lips. She was blushing. We hugged each other. I didn’t follow the film. I was playing with her hands, and she was pressing herself against me. Now it’s as if it was a dream. Nine days have passed since we last parted. We had arranged that the next day I would bring her to my room. Her house was near the Montparnasse cemetery. That day I went to get her. I got off the metro at the corner. A cold wind was blowing and the weather was cloudy and overcast. I didn’t know what happened, but I changed my mind. Not that she wasn’t attractive, or that I didn’t like her, but some power held me back. No, I didn’t want to see her any more. I wanted to cut all ties with life. Without thinking I went into the cemetery. At the entrance the watchman had wrapped himself in a dark blue cape. An immense silence ruled there. I strolled slowly, staring at the gravestones, the crosses above them, the artificial flowers and grass next to or on top of the graves. I read the names of some of the dead. I regretted not being in their place. I thought to myself how fortunate all these people were!… I was envious of the dead whose bodies had disintegrated under the ground. Such a strong feeling of jealousy had never arisen in me before. It seemed to me that death is happiness and a blessing which one is not given lightly. I don’t know exactly how much time passed. I stared, stunned. I had entirely forgotten the girl. I didn’t feel the cold. It was as if the dead were closer to me than the living. I understood them better. I turned back. No, I didn’t want to see that girl any more. I wanted to put everything aside. I wanted to give up and die. What ridiculous thoughts come to me! Maybe I’m babbling.
For several days I had been telling my fortune with cards. I don’t know how it happened that I had come to believe in superstition, but I took my fortune-telling seriously. In other words I had nothing else to do; I couldn’t do anything else. I wanted to gamble with my future. I made a wish to do away with myself. My wish would come true, the cards told me. One day I realized that I had been telling my fortune with cards for three and a half hours without stopping. First I shuffled, then I arranged one card face up on the table and five other cards face down in a row, then on the second card, which was face down, I put one card down, and so on. I had learnt this game in childhood and I was passing my time with it.
A week or so ago I was sitting in a café. Two people in front of me were playing backgammon. One of them, red-faced, bald-headed, a cigarette sticking out from under his hanging moustache, was listening with a dim-witted expression. The other said, “I’ve never won at gambling. I lose nine times out of ten.” I stared at them dully. What did I want to say? I don’t know. Anyway, I went out in the streets, walking mechanically. Several times it occurred to me to close my eyes and walk in front of a car, let its wheels pass over me, but it was a hard way to die. Even then, how could I be sure? Perhaps I might remain alive. This is the thought that drives me crazy. Thinking like this, I passed intersections and crowded places. In the middle of this hustle and bustle, this ringing of car horses’ hooves, these wagons and automobile horns, this noise and commotion, I was alone. In the midst of millions of people it was as if I was sitting in a broken boat lost in the middle of the ocean. I felt as if I had been driven out in disgrace from the society of men. I saw that I wasn’t made for life. I was reasoning with myself, walking monotonously. I would stop and look at the paintings in store windows. I would stare for a while. I regretted not having become a painter. It was the only job that I liked and that pleased me. I thought to myself that only in painting could I find a small consolation for myself. A postman was passing me and from behind a pair of glasses he was looking at the address on a letter. What did it make me think of? I don’t know. Perhaps I remembered the postmen of Iran, the mailman who came to our house.
It was last night. I pressed my eyes together, but I couldn’t fall asleep. Disjointed thoughts, exciting images appeared before my eyes. They weren’t dreams because I hadn’t yet fallen asleep. They were nightmares. I was neither asleep nor awake, but I saw them. My body was enervated, beaten, sick and heavy. My head hurt. These frightening nightmares kept passing before my eyes. Sweat dripped from my body. I saw a package of paper opening in the air. It dropped sheet by sheet. A group of soldiers passed, their faces invisible. The dark, terrifying night was filled with frightening and angry figures. When I wanted to close my eyes and give myself up to death, these startling images would appear. A volcanic circle whirling about itself, a corpse floating on a river, eyes looking at me from every direction. Now I remember well the crazy, angry figures swarming towards me. An old man with a bloody face had been tied to a column. He was looking at me, laughing; his teeth glittered. A bat was hitting my face with its cold wings. I was walking on a tightrope. Below it was a whirlpool. I was slipping. I wanted to scream. A hand was laid on my shoulder. An icy hand was pressing my throat. It seemed that my heart would stop. The groans, the sinister groans which came from the night’s darkness, the faces cleaned of shadows – these things appeared and disappeared of their own accord. What could I do in the face of them? They were at once very near and very far. I wasn’t dreaming them because I hadn’t yet fallen asleep.
* * *
I don’t know if I have fooled everyone or if I have been fooled, but there is one thought which is driving me crazy. I can’t stop myself from laughing. Sometimes I choke with laughter. So far nobody has understood what’s wrong with me. They’ve all been fooled! It’s been a week that I’ve been pretending to be sick, or else I’ve caught a strange ailment. Willy-nilly I picked up a cigarette and lit it. Why do I smoke? I don’t know myself. I hold the cigarette between two fingers of my left hand. I lift it to my lips. I blow the smoke into the air. This is also an ailment!
Now when I think about it my body trembles. It’s no joke – for a week I tortured myself in various ways. I wanted to become ill. The weather had been cold for several days. First I went and turned the cold water on myself. I left the bathroom windows open. Now when I think of it, I get the creeps. I was gasping, my back and chest hurt, I told myself that now everything was over. The next day my chest would hurt badly, and I would be confined to bed. I would make it worse and then put an end to myself. The next morning when I woke up I didn’t find the smallest sign of a cold. Again I took off my clothes. When it got dark I locked the door, turned off the light, opened the window and sat in the stinging cold. A sharp wind was blowing. I trembled violently. I could hear my teeth chattering. I looked outside. The people who were coming and going, their black shadows, the cars which were passing, all appeared small from the sixth floor of the building. I had surrendered my naked body to the cold, and I was writhing. At this point it occurred to me that I was crazy. I laughed at myself. I laughed at life. I knew that in this big playhouse of the world everybody plays in a certain way until his death arrives. I had taken up this role because I thought I would be carried off the stage sooner. My lips were dry. The cold burned my body. I warmed myself until I dripped with sweat, then all at once I stripped. All night I lay on the bed and trembled. I didn’t sleep at all. I got a mild cold, but as soon as I took a nap the illness completely went away. I saw this didn’t help either. For three days I didn’t eat anything, and every night I stripped and sat in front of the window. I would make myself tired. One night until morning I ran on an empty stomach through the streets of Paris. I got tired and went and sat on the cold damp steps in a narrow alley. It was past midnight. A drunken worker reeled by. In the vague mysterious gaslight I saw a man and a woman passing and talking together. Then I got up and started to walk. Homeless wretches were sleeping on the street benches.
Finally I took to bed from weakness, but I wasn’t sick. My friends came to see me. I made myself tremble in front of them, and I acted sick so well that they were sorry for me. They thought I would die the next day. I said my heartbeat was laboured. When they left the room I mocked them. I said to myself that there seemed to be only one thing in the world I could do well. I should have become an actor!…
How did I pull off the same trick on the doctors that I did on my friends? Everyone believed that I was truly sick. Whatever they asked, I said, “My heartbeat is laboured”, because sudden death can only be attributed to a heart attack; otherwise, a simple chest pain could hardly be fatal.
This was a miracle. When I think of it, a strange feeling comes over me. I had been torturing myself for seven days. If, at the insistence of my friends, I had a cup of tea, I’d get better. It was frightening. The illness would completely go away. How badly I wanted to eat the bread alongside the tea, but I didn’t do it. Every night I would say to myself that finally I had become bedridden. Tomorrow I wouldn’t be able to get up. I went and brought the capsules that I had filled with opium. I put them in the drawer of the small table beside my bed so that when the illness had really thrown me and I couldn’t move, I could bring them out and swallow them. Unfortunately the illness wouldn’t come and didn’t want to come. Once when I was obliged to eat a piece of bread with tea in front of one of my friends, I felt that I was well, all well. I became scared of myself, my own endurance frightened me. It’s terrifying. It’s unbelievable. I am in my right mind as I write this. I’m not speaking nonsense. I remember well.
What was this strength that had appeared in me? I saw that none of my plans had worked. I really had to become ill. Yes, the fatal poison is there in my bag, a swift poison. I remembered the rainy day that I bought it with lies and pretexts and a thousand difficulties, pretending to be a photographer. I gave a false name and address. Potassium cyanide, which I had read about in a medical book and whose signs I knew: convulsion, difficulty in breathing, agony when taken on an empty stomach. Twenty grams of it kills immediately or within two minutes. So that it wouldn’t spoil in the air I had wrapped it in a chocolate wrapper, covered this with a layer of wax, and put it in a crystal bottle with a stopper. It was a hundred grams, and I kept it with me like a precious jewel. But fortunately I found something better than that – smuggled opium, and that in Paris! The opium which I had been after for such a long time, I found by accident. I had read that dying by taking opium is better and more wholesome than doing so by cyanide. Now I wanted to make myself really sick and then take the opium.
I unwrapped the potassium cyanide. I shaved off about two grams from the egg shaped ball and put it in an empty capsule: I sealed it with glue and swallowed it. Half an hour passed. I felt nothing. The surface of the capsule, which had touched the poison, tasted salty. I took out the cyanide again. This time I shaved off about five grams and swallowed the capsule. I went and lay down on the bed. I lay down as if I would never get up again!
This thought could drive anyone mad. No, I didn’t feel anything. The killer poison didn’t work on me! I’m still alive, and the poison is lying there in my bag. In the bed my breath comes with difficulty, but that’s not the result of the drug. I have become invincible, invincible like those in legends. It’s unbelievable, but I must go. It’s futile. I feel rejected, useless, good for nothing. I should end things as soon as possible and go. This time it’s not a joke. The more I think the more I see that nothing holds me to life, nothing and no one…
I remember it was the day before yesterday. I was pacing my room like a madman, going from one side to the other. The clothes hanging from the wall, the sink, the mirror in the cupboard, the picture on the wall, the bed, the table in the middle of the room, the books scattered on it, the chairs, the shoes placed under the cupboard, the suitcases in a corner of the room, passed continually before my eyes. But I wasn’t seeing them, or else I wasn’t concentrating. What was I thinking of? I don’t know – I was pacing around to no purpose. Suddenly I came to myself. I had seen this frenzied pacing somewhere else and it had attracted my attention. I didn’t know where, then I remembered. It was in the Berlin zoo that I had seen wild animals for the first time. Those that were awake in their cages walked in this same way, just like this. I too had become like those animals. Perhaps I even thought as they did. Inside I felt that I was like them. This mechanical walking around in a circle. When I bumped into the wall I naturally felt that it was a barrier, and turned around. Those animals do the same thing…
I don’t know what I’m writing. The clock goes tick-tock right in my ear. I want to pick it up and throw it out of the window. This frightening sound that beats the passing of time into my head with a hammer!
For a week I had been making myself ready for death. I destroyed all the papers and things I had written. I threw away my dirty clothes so that when my things were being investigated nothing dirty would be found. I put on the new underwear I had bought, so that when they pulled me out of bed and the doctor came to examine me I would look presentable. I picked up a bottle of eau de cologne and sprinkled in the bed so it would smell good. But since none of my actions was like those of other people, I wasn’t sure this time either. I was afraid of my die-hard self. It was as if this distinction and superiority aren’t given to one easily. I knew that nobody dies for free…
I took out the pictures of my relatives and looked at them. Each one of them appeared before me reflecting my own observations of them. I liked them and I didn’t like them. I wanted to see them and I didn’t want to. No, those memories were too bright before my eyes. I tore up the pictures; I was not attached to anything. I judged myself and saw I had not been a kind person. I had been created hard, rough, and weary. Maybe I wasn’t always like this, but life and the passage of time have made me so. I have no fear of death. On the contrary, an illness, a special madness had appeared in me so that I was drawn by the magnetism of death. This isn’t recent, either. I remembered a story from five or six years ago. In Tehran one early morning I went to Shah Abad Avenue to buy opium from a druggist. I put three tomans in front of him and said, “Two rials of opium.”
Wearing a henna-dyed beard and a skullcap on his head and uttering holy words, he looked at me shrewdly, as if he were a physiognomist or could read my thoughts and said, “We don’t have change.”
I took out a two-rial coin to give him. He said, “No, we don’t sell it at all.” I asked why and he said, “You’re young and ignorant. You might suddenly decide to eat the opium, God forbid.” I didn’t insist.
No, no one decides to commit suicide. Suicide is with some people. It’s in their very nature. Yes, everyone’s fate is written on his forehead; some people are born with suicide. I always mocked life, the world and its peoples all seemed like a game, a humiliation, something empty and meaningless. I wanted to sleep a dreamless sleep and not wake up again. But since people see suicide as a strange thing, I wanted to make myself ill, to become worn out and weak, and when everyone thought I was really sick, to eat the opium, so that people would say, “He fell ill and died.”
* * *
I am writing in bed. It’s three in the afternoon. Two people came to see me. They just left. I’m alone. My head is spinning, my body is comfortable and calm. There’s a cup of milk and tea in my stomach. My body is loose, feeble, and feverish. I remembered a pretty tune I heard once on a record. I want to whistle it but I can’t. I wished I could hear that record again. Right now I neither like life nor dislike it. I am alive but without will or desire; a superior power is holding me. I have been bound in the prison of life with steel chains. If I were dead they would take me to the Paris mosque. I would fall into the hands of those damn Arabs and I would die again. I am sick and tired of them. In any case it wouldn’t make any difference to me. If they threw me into a sewer after I died it would be the same for me, I would rest easy. Only my family would cry and weep. They would bring my picture, praise me, all of the usual rot. All of this seems foolish and futile to me. Probably a few people would praise me, a few would criticize, but finally I would be forgotten. I am basically selfish and without charm.
The more I think about it the more I see that continuing this life is futile. I am a germ in the body of society, a harmful being, a burden on others. Sometimes my madness breaks out again. I want to go away, far away, to a place where I could forget myself, to go very far, for example go to Siberia, in wooden houses, under pine trees, with grey skies, snow, lots of snow, among the Mujiks, go and start my life over again. Or, for example, go to India, under the shining sun, in the dense forests, among strange people; go somewhere where no one knows me, nobody knows my language. I want to feel everything within myself. But I see I wasn’t made for this. No, I’m lazy and good for nothing. I was born by mistake. I’m untouchable, driven from pillar to post. I have closed my eyes to all my plans, to love, to delight. I put everything aside. From now on I may be considered among the dead.
Sometimes I make big plans, I see myself worthy of every job and every thing. I say to myself, “Yes, only people who have washed their hands of life and have been disappointed in everything can accomplish great things.” Then I say to myself, “What’s the use? What purpose would it serve? Madness, everything is madness. No, do away with yourself, and leave your corpse to rot. Get lost, you weren’t made for life. Leave off being philosophical, your existence has no value, you can’t do anything.” But I don’t know why death was coy. Why didn’t it come? Why couldn’t I succeed with my plan and become comfortable? I had tortured myself for a week and this was the return I got! Poison didn’t affect me. It’s unbelievable; I can’t believe it. I didn’t eat, I tried to get pneumonia, I drank vinegar. Every night I thought I had come down with a severe case of tuberculosis, but in the morning when I got up my health was better than the day before. Who can I tell this to? I didn’t even get a fever. But I haven’t dreamt, nor have I taken narcotics. I remember everything well. No, it’s unbelievable.
Now that I’ve written this down I am feeling a little better. It consoles me. It’s as if a heavy burden has been lifted from my shoulders. How good it would be if everything could be written. If I could have made others understand my thoughts I would. No, there are feelings, there are things, which can’t be conveyed to others, which can’t be told, people would mock you. Everybody judges other people on the basis of his own values. Language, like man himself, is imperfect and incapable.
I’m invincible. Poison didn’t affect me. I ate opium to no effect. Yes, I’ve become invincible. No other poison will affect me. Finally I realized that all my life was wasted. It was the night before last – I decided that before this mockery started to arouse suspicion, I would end it. I went and took out the capsules of opium from the drawer of the small table. There were three, approximately the size of an ordinary stick of opium all together. I picked them up. It was seven o’clock. I asked for tea from downstairs. They brought it and I drank it down. By eight, no one had come to see me. I closed the door from inside. I went and stood in front of the picture that was on the wall. I looked at it. I don’t know what occurred to me, but in my eyes he was a stranger. I said to myself, “What relationship does this person have with me?” But I know that face. I had seen it a lot. Then I came back. I felt neither frenzy, nor fear, nor happiness. All the things I had done and the things I wanted to do and everything seemed to me to be useless and empty. Life seemed completely ridiculous. I looked around the room. Everything was in its place. I went in front of the cupboard mirror and looked at my flushed face. I half closed my eyes, opened my mouth a little bit and held my head bent like a dead man’s. I said to myself, “Tomorrow morning I’ll look like this. First, no matter how much they knock no one will answer. Till noon they’ll think I’m sleeping. Then they’ll break the lock, enter the room, and see me like this.” All of these thoughts passed like lightning through my mind. I picked up a glass of water. Coolly I told myself it was an aspirin, and swallowed the first capsule. The second and third also I swallowed hastily one after another. I felt a slight trembling inside me. My mouth smelled like opium. My heart beat a little faster. I threw the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. I took a scented wafer from my pocket and sucked it. I looked at myself once more in the mirror. I looked around the room – everything was in its place. I told myself that now everything was over. Tomorrow even Plato couldn’t bring me back to life. I straightened the clothes on the chair by the bed. I pulled the quilt over myself. It had absorbed the smell of eau de cologne. I switched off the light and the room darkened. Part of the wall and the foot of the bed were slightly lit by the weak glow that came from the window. I had nothing else to do. Good or bad, I had brought things to this point. I lay down. I turned. I was fearful that someone might come to see how I was and be insistent. However, I had told everyone that I hadn’t been able to sleep for several nights, so that they would leave me alone. I was very curious at that time, as if an important event had taken place or I was going to go on an exciting trip. I wanted to feel death well. I had concentrated my senses, yet I was listening for sounds outside. As soon as a footstep came, my heart would cave in. I pressed my eyelids together. Ten minutes or so went by. Nothing happened. I had occupied myself with different thoughts till I felt the pills begin to work, but I didn’t regret this decision of mine, nor was I afraid. First I became heavy. I felt tired. This feeling was more in the pit of my stomach, like when food isn’t well digested. Then this feeling travelled to my chest and then to my head. I moved my hands. I became thirsty. My mouth had turned dry. I swallowed with difficulty. My heartbeat slowed. A short time passed. I felt that warm, pleasant air was being given off from my body, more from the extremities like the fingertips, the tip of the nose, and so on… At the same time I knew that I wanted to kill myself. I realized that this news would be unpleasant for some people. Everything seemed amazing. All of this seemed childish, absurd, and laughable to me. I thought to myself that now I was comfortable and I would die easily. What did it matter whether others would be sad or not, would cry or not? I greatly desired that this should happen and I feared lest I should move or think in such a way that I would prevent the opium from working. My only fear was that after all this trouble I might remain alive. I feared that dying might be difficult and that in despair I might cry out or want someone to help me. But I said that no matter how hard it was, opium puts one to sleep and he feels nothing. Sleep – I would sleep and I wouldn’t be able to move from my place or say anything, and the door was locked from inside!…
Yes, I remember well. These thoughts came to me. I heard the monotonous sound of the clock. I heard the footsteps of people who were walking in the guesthouse. It seemed as if my sense of hearing had become sharper. I felt that my body was flying. My mouth had become dry. I had a slight headache. I had almost fallen into a faint. My eyes were half open. My breathing was sometimes fast, sometimes slow. From all the pores of my skin this pleasant heat flowed out of my body. It was as if I too were going out after it. I really wanted its intensity to increase. I had plunged into an unspeakable ecstasy. I thought whatever I wanted to. If I moved I felt that it would be a hindrance to the flowing out of this warmth. The more comfortably I lay the better it was. I pulled my right hand out from under me. I rolled over and lay on my back. It was somewhat unpleasant. I returned to the first position, and the effect of the opium became stronger. I wanted to feel death fully. My feelings had grown strong and magnified. I was amazed that I didn’t fall asleep. It was as if all of my existence was leaving my body happily and wholesomely. My heart beat slowly. I breathed slowly. I think two or three hours passed. At this point someone knocked on the door. I realized it was my neighbour, but I didn’t answer him and I didn’t want to move from my place. I opened my eyes and closed them again. I heard the sound of his door opening. He washed his hands and whistled to himself. I heard everything. I tried to think happy, pleasant thoughts. I was thinking of the past year. The day when I was sitting in the boat and they were playing instruments. The waves of the sea, the rocking of the boat, the pretty girl sitting opposite me: I had plunged into my thoughts. I was running after them, as if I had wings and was soaring through space. I had grown so light and nimble that it can’t be explained. The difference of being under the pleasurable influence of opium is as great as the difference between light seen ordinarily or seen through a chandelier or a crystal prism which separates it into different colours. In this state any simple, empty thoughts which come to people become enchanting and dazzling of themselves. Any passing and empty thought appears entrancing and splendid. If a scene or a vista passes through one’s mind, it becomes limitlessly large, space swells, the passing of time is imperceptible.
At this time I felt very happy. My senses undulated above me. But I felt that I wasn’t asleep. The last feeling that I remember of the pleasure and ecstasy of the opium is that my legs had become cold and senseless, my body motionless. I felt that I was going, drifting far away. But as soon as its influence waned, an infinite sorrow gripped me. I felt that my senses were returning. It was very difficult and unpleasant. I was cold. For more than half an hour I trembled violently. I could hear my teeth chattering. Then came fever, burning fever, and sweat poured from my body. My heart laboured, my breathing had become difficult. The first thought that occurred to me was that all my work was undone, and things hadn’t turned out as they should have. I was surprised at my useless endurance. I realized that a dark power and an unspeakable misfortune were fighting me.
With difficulty I sat up partly in the bed. I pressed the light switch. It became light. I don’t know why my hand went towards the small mirror that was on the bedside table. I saw that my face had swollen and had a sallow colouring. Tears fell from my eyes. My heart struggled hard. I told myself that at least my heart was ruined. I turned off the light and fell back in the bed.
No, my heart wasn’t ruined. Today it’s better. A bad product has no buyers. The doctor came to see me. He listened to my heart, took my pulse, looked at my tongue, took my temperature, the same things that doctors do everywhere, as soon as they see a patient. He gave me a mixture of baking powder and quinine. He didn’t understand at all what my pain was! No one can understand my pain! These medicines are laughable. There in rows on the table are seven or eight kinds of medicine. I was laughing to myself. What a theatre this is.
The clock ticks incessantly by my ear. From outside come the sounds of car and bicycle horns, the clang of trains. I look at the wallpaper, the deep purple leaves and white flowers. At intervals on the branches two blackbirds are seated facing one another. My head is empty, my stomach twisting, my body broken. The newspapers which I have thrown on top of the cabinet lie there in odd positions. When I look it suddenly seems as if everything is strange to me. I even seem a stranger to myself. I wonder why I’m still alive. Why do I breathe? Why do I get hungry? Why do I eat? Why do I walk? Why am I here? Who are these people that I see, and what do they want from me?…
Now I know myself well, just the way I am, no more, no less. I can’t do anything. I have fallen on the bed tired and exhausted. My thoughts revolve, whirl, hour by hour. I have become bored in their hopeless circle. My own existence astonishes me. How bitter and frightening it is when someone feels his own existence! When I look in the mirror I laugh at myself. To me my face seems so unknown and strange and laughable…
This thought has occurred to me many times: I’ve become invulnerable. The invincibility that has been described in legends is my tale. It was a miracle. Now I believe all kinds of superstitions and rubbish. Amazing thoughts pass before my eyes. It was a miracle. Now I know that in his endless cruelty, God or some other snake in the grass created two kinds of beings: the fortunate and the unfortunate. He supports the first group, while making the second group increase their torture and oppression by their own hands. Now I believe that a mean, brutal force, an angel of misfortune, is with some people.
* * *
Finally I’ve been left alone. The doctor left just now. I’ve picked up paper and pencil. I want to write. I don’t know what. Either I have nothing to write or I can’t write because there’s so much. This itself is a misfortune. I don’t know. I can’t cry. Maybe if I could it would soothe me a little bit! I can’t. I look like a lunatic. I saw in the mirror that my hair is a mess. My eyes are open and empty. I think my face shouldn’t have looked like this at all. Many people’s faces don’t go with their thoughts. This really irritates me. All I know is that I hate myself. I eat and hate myself, walk and hate myself, think and hate myself. How obstinate. How frightening! No, this was a supernatural power, a loathsome disease. Now I believe these kind of things. Nothing will affect me any more. I took cyanide and it had no effect on me, I ate opium and I’m still alive! If a dragon bites me, the dragon will die! No, no one would believe it. Had these poisons spoilt? Wasn’t the amount sufficient? Was it more than the normal dose? Had I mistaken the amount when I looked in the medical book? Or does my hand turn the poison into antidote? I don’t know. These thoughts have come to me hundreds of times. There’s nothing new in them. I remember I have heard that when a scorpion is surrounded by a ring of fire it stings itself – isn’t there a ring of fire around me?
Outside my window on the black edge of the tin roof, where rainwater has collected, two sparrows are sitting. One of them puts its beak into the water, then lifts its head. The other one, crouching next to it, is pecking at itself. I just moved. Both of them chirped and flew off together. The weather is cloudy. Sometimes the pale sun appears behind a bit of cloud. The tall buildings opposite are all covered with soot, black and sad under the pressure of this heavy, rainy weather. The distant, suffocated sound of the city can be heard.
There in the drawer of my table are the malicious cards with which I told my fortune, those lying cards which fooled me. The funniest thing is that I still tell my fortune with them!
What can be done? Fate is stronger than I am.
It would be good if, with the experience of life that a person has, he could be born again and start his life anew. But which life? Is it in my hands? What’s the use? A blind and frightening force rules us. There are people whose fate is directed by a sinister star. They break under this burden, and they want to be broken…
I have neither wishes nor grudges left. I have lost whatever in me was human. I let it be lost. In life one must become either an angel, a human being, or an animal. I became none of these. My life was lost forever. I was born selfish, clumsy, and miserable. Now, it is impossible for me to go back and adopt another way. I can’t follow these useless shadows any more, grappling with life, what firm reason and logic do you have? I no longer want to pardon or to be pardoned, to go to the left or to the right. I want to close my eyes to the future and forget the past.
No, I can’t flee from my fate. Aren’t they the truth, these crazy thoughts, these feelings, these passing fancies which come to me? In any case they seem more natural and less artificial than my logical thoughts. I suppose I am free, yet I can’t resist my fate. My reins are in the hands of my fate, fate is what pulls me from one side to another. The meanness, the baseness of life, which can’t be fought against. Stupid life.
Now I am neither living nor sleeping. Nothing pleases me and nothing bothers me. I have become acquainted with death, used to it. It is my only friend. It is the only thing which heartens me. I remember the Montparnasse Cemetery. I don’t envy the dead anymore. I am now counted in their world. I, too, am with them. I am buried alive…
I’m tired. What trash have I written? I say to myself, “Go, lunatic, throw away the paper and the pencil, throw them away. That’s enough rambling. Shut up. Tear it up, lest this rubbish fall into somebody’s hands. How would they judge me? But I wouldn’t be embarrassed, nothing is important to me. I laugh at the world and whatever is in it. However harsh their judgement of me might be, they don’t know that I have already judged myself even harder. They’ll laugh at me; they don’t know that I laugh at them more. I am sick of myself and of everyone who reads this trash.
These notes and a pack of cards were in his drawer. He himself was lying in bed. He had forgotten to breathe.
Paris, Esfand 11, 1308
(3rd March 1928)