which tells of an ugly awakening, the devastating power of sincerity, the End which has not come, and the heralding of a long-awaited advent
I woke up in the cold amid a vile stench. I’d vomited in my sleep and made an absolute mess in the car. Before I’d gone to sleep I’d started the motor and turned on the heating, determined not to go home. The fuel ran out during the night and the motor died. Fortunately, some whisky shimmered yellow at the bottom of the bottle.
The snow kept falling. The streets were still empty. Everything just went on: the story about the End concluded like so many others. My head was heavy and still ringing with last night’s confessions. Never again would the penitents be able to stand in front of each other. They wouldn’t be honest with one another or themselves. Even if they went out drinking together again, nothing would ever be the same. Everything they’d once buried had now risen up out of the deepest dark, the densest forest and the thickest ice to plague them. How many love affairs, friendships and families were destroyed in one moment of nightly candour…How many secrets of the dead were released into the world to rob the living of their peace…How many husbands and wives are sitting at opposite ends of the cold kitchen table this morning and staring into their steaming cups of coffee because they no longer have the strength to look each other in the eyes…How many sons and daughters are staying in their rooms this morning because they don’t dare to face up to their parents…How empty the confessionals in the churches are this morning after the whole planet turned into one big confessional last night…yet in the churches, the truth was spoken in such a way that it remained secret: the priest heard it under oath that he’d keep it confidential, and this prevented it from becoming public and destructive.
The non-occurrence of the catastrophe was a catastrophe which ultimately made the world impossible to live in. The Apocalypse had been a kind of solution, after all. The truth was an incident people had waited for: a comet colliding with the earth, a wave inundating the land, a bomb destroying a tower…One drop of the truth and this world became impossible.
The truth is that I ‘fathered’ him and then deserted him, albeit unwittingly. He ended up in a mental hospital. And even while confined there, he sought my help in vain. He didn’t receive a single word from me, nothing but the address to which he could send letters of confession. He won’t receive absolution for the sins he committed and the confessions he made to the one whose sin he is.
People are born as sin, a product of sin, and their whole life is a struggle against sinfulness. Sin is unavoidable and undeniable, and the only means of correction people have is death. Yet they consider that if they produce more life they’ll help fill the gaping hole in front of them – a hole they don’t know what to do about except to learn to ignore it, if they can’t manage to plug it in some way. That’s why people have children in an ultimate egoistic act, as if it was going to fulfil their life. They cast their children into new emptinesses in an attempt to cover up their own. Then they’re overcome by worry, which they think will redeem them. And so the tragedy goes on without end, and generations are sacrificed in vain because their birth was a blunder which rectified nothing. So many generations, so much reproduction – and not the slightest change. Only the same human drama which has been played from the first day on, a play which remains the same old tragicomedy however much scenery and technology is put on stage, however many actors and supernumeraries are involved.
The power to give life is far more destructive and sinister than the power to take away life. Every living creature has that power, however dirty, ugly and stupid it may be. Every father is a father because he was unable to withstand that power. His child will foot the bill for that paternal potency until the end of its days.
In the end, to top it all off, you’re stricken with remorse. I have nothing to say to my son other than: I’m sorry. But everyone is always sorry. He’s sorry too. Instead of feeling anger because of what they did to us, we end up feeling guilty for what we’ve done because we unfailingly feel that our inherent nature is even more corrupt than the circumstances we were born in.
He sent a letter, and with the letter the snow came. His breath has found a way into all the fortresses I had built around me, and crept in beneath all my locked doors. He has followed me like a bloodhound down all the paths I’ve fled.
What else can I do now but end my flight: to turn around and meet him face to face, like facing a mirror? What can I do now but look down the road and wait, even today, especially today, when all flights have been cancelled and the trains and buses are stranded in snowdrifts?
And an anger rose up inside me like a storm surge, like a black ocean pounding down on my chest. I opened the side window, shook out all the heart pills and threw the jar into the snow. Taking a big swig of whisky, I pressed myself back into the seat and my numb hands gripped the steering wheel. I breathed with difficulty. The pain became unbearable – my chest felt like it’d burst open any second and a stranger would spring out into the world. I shut my eyes: now I just needed to wait. There was a rushing sound that seemed to be coming from afar, coming ever closer. I wasn’t sure if it was the bus Emmanuel was coming with, the final storm which would flatten everything along with the tidal wave which would immerse us all, or my blood seething. Come, I thought. Yes, come.