9
I have so often feared for my life, and for the lives of those around me. Philosophy is Satan’s playground. I can’t explain why certain texts cause the golden down on my childlike arms to rise. The slightest mention of impending nightfall feels like the overture to a massacre. At times, when I am lost in those worlds, it seems to me that I can hear the clamor of criminal hordes as they advance, their mouths thirsty for the blood of the people. I can see them, stalking me through the interstices between paragraphs. Warrior games in the swamplands.
That night, the rain slashed against the window of my pied-à-terre, and the water in Yorick’s fishbowl trembled as if in a hurricane. Montaigne Michelle figured out how to knock the fishbowl to the floor; Yorick, lord of fake seaweed, survived. The telephone rang; whoever it was hung up. The most sinister intuitions stalked me. Nature has an absolutely gothic effect on me. Frequently the sound of a twig snapping takes on terrifying overtones, and what meteorologists refer to as winds are in fact eidos for which there is no human name. Now the doorknob trembled as if something vicious were trying to force its way in. I clung to my thick black trilingual edition of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Dressed in double-thick winter pajamas, I put on my writing cap (a habit I’ve had since I first read Little Women—remember Jo?) and locked my only window. The storm sizzled outside, my thoughts now ominously italicized. Montaigne Michelle pricked up her ears and looked at me, worried. I raised my index finger to my lips, ordering silence.
It is well known that the experience of terror late at night is essential to a thorough understanding of political philosophy. According to John Aubrey’s Brief Lives, Thomas Hobbes would sing at the top of his lungs each night in bed, because, “he did believe it did his lungs good and conduced much to prolong his life.” This Galileo of political science lived in fear that one night someone would cut his throat; he sang to confirm that his throat was intact and to establish the deafening nature of the World. It would not be unreasonable to venture that Hobbes’s intimate knowledge of fear did wonders for his mature work; his writing is permeated with an extraordinary glut of visual detail through which a sense of terror becomes systemic. Rousseau, too, suffered episodes of both classical and baroque paranoia. (As Augustus said hoarsely during one particularly emotional lecture throughout which he stared into my eyes: The Is demand for mental unity can turn suddenly into the sensation of being surrounded by enemies.) How to protect man from himself?
A cockroach scuttled along the edge of the room. (When little Montaigne first arrived, Yorick and I were sharing our lair with an uncontrollable population. Yorick’s fishbowl home kept him out of danger, but on several occasions he’d had the opportunity to observe that cockroaches, even half-dead ones, have excellent swimming technique.) I gave the order for Montaigne Michelle to set her ambush . . . Now! She purred toothily. The individual in question (a Blatella germanica) came forward a meter or so; Montaigne put it down with a single swipe of her paw. Flat on its back, its abdomen contracted in pain, the cockroach bent its antennae toward us. I believe that it sensed the formidable presence of its motionless adversary—perhaps, too, that of the impromptu Thucydides who sat nearby taking notes. Finally it managed to get back on its feet. And here is where this domestic tableau takes on transcendental dimensions: it was at this moment that, overawed by such brutality, irresistibly attracted to a power far superior to her own, the scene’s victim advanced voluntarily toward the Predator, and bowed down to her, in a sign of Reverence.
I stayed there beside the fish bowl, wholly absorbed. How to explain the fascinating virtue of she who perpetrates her own devouring? Is there some voluptuous connection between Reverence, the Sovereign, and Death? I immediately began chewing on my pencil, my interior voice obsessively mimicking the insect’s thoughtways, the dictamen rationis of that sesquipedalian voluptuary:
“As star witness to these violent acts, of my own free Will and in full Possession of my Chitinous Exoskeleton, I bow down before the Overwhelming Display of the One who crossed both Time and Space to show me her Strength. Spawned in the time of the Hordes, I hereby yield my life to the Admonitory Visage of she who has come to possess me. I find her Irresistible. I believe wholly in a Beloved Kingdom which—were I anything more than a small Dying Insect—I would gladly exalt to all the world: the Kingdom that is the Engine of all desires, even those that existed before rage, or cowardice, or War, or Language.”
I would soon return to the initial triad, the origin of my research: a First Person, born amidst predatory hordes, described as part of a metaphysically powerful scene, the ad intra forms of the inner voice. The story of the primate who undergoes the process of becoming human, who is pursued and captured by beasts; a theory toward an anthropology of voluptuousness and war, describing the maniacal system of Interconnected Persons that sends an irresistible charge through the Circuit of Will . . . My theory began to open out, a series of explosive bundles going supernova. I was present in flashes for a strange summary of the history of the world, a grammatical history, where each I is lost in a jungly void—but then something awakens it from its stupor. The I realizes that on the far bank of Being, groups of Them are playing with their peers. The I goes insane: it wants to cross the river, to go to Them, to touch Them. On the Island of Third Persons, there is a carefully maintained set of telescopes that allows Them to see across the river. “Hey, You, the one with your feet in the water.” The heart of Little I rejoices: life exists, and has meaning. From this moment on he will do anything to maintain his status as a You, to cardinally approach that which fascinates him, to lessen the distance that separates his self from theirs. The I of the transmissions is identical to the “point of view” as defined by Leibniz: ubiquitous and individual, interconnected both forward and backward in time with every event throughout the past and future of the universe—that is, with each and every person who violates, suffers, inflicts. Let grammar be a four-dimensional historical model. The material causality that courses through each existence depends upon a Voice, upon a revelation that fills each gap in the human brain. This revelation takes the form of a Third Person who speaks (acts) like the reverse of a voice preparing itself for a mission: the reverse of the voice of Jesus activating his cronies by speaking directly into their minds; of Angela da Foligno, patron saint of those afflicted by sexual temptation, who received divine guidance in the writing of her Book of Visions and Instructions; of Joan of Arc accepting orders to attack the English; of St. Anselm, hearing in a dream his proof of the existence of God. For he who has never heard stories of gods, heroes or saints is unlikely to want or be able to transform himself into a hero or god. This god, stronger than me, who upon his arrival will prevail over me . . . is it him? The tip of my tongue takes a trip below the clitoris of my palate as my lips open and close ever so gently, him-him-him. I had the sensation that beings bereft of light hung nearby amidst the impalpable shadows; that a man was watching me in precisely the way prey watches a predator. Was this the call?
Is this the call? I asked aloud, dropping my muse, the Blatella, into the fishy maw of Yorick’s bowl, watching as Yorick drifted up toward it.
The transcendental manifestations of my thoughts remained opaque, silent. Fear sifted through the air around me once again, and I shouted, Vade retro, you damned one! To clear my head, I turned the television all the way up, and at last my prayers to Kali were answered: I hit upon a James Bond marathon.
The entire career of this spy, fellow countryman of Thomas Hobbes, serves to show that there is no obstacle born of politics or love that can’t be overcome if you can count on the cooperation of whomever designs the plot. Dr. No—purest balm of Bondian adventure—had barely begun when I started to look through my notes. As of fifty-two minutes and five seconds into From Russia with Love, just as James positioned himself to kiss the Russian spy (whose raffish title was nothing less than Corporal of State Security), I had begun polishing 2.1.2, an extremely important subsection. Exhaustion washed over me, and my gaze drifted up to the immense night. I collapsed, overcome, and had a magnificent dream.
It was the first few minutes of From Russia with Love and the white cat fondled by Number 1, the brain of SPECTRE, grew slowly darker in color—darker and darker, until she was suddenly revealed to be Montaigne Michelle herself. The cat continued to allow Number 1 to caress her, with a somewhat perplexed look on her face, as if asking herself, Why would someone fall intentionally into a trap? Because, responds Number 1, a correct reading of the enemy’s mentality shows that they always treat a trap as a challenge. He caresses the cat again. The cat’s eyes fall half closed; the SPECTRE operative brings his wrinkled mouth to her tiny ear, and whispers: A trap is an offer you can’t refuse. The operative continues speaking to the cat while observing a tank where a triad of fish identical to Yorick are swimming. He says:
–Siamese fighting fish. Brave, but on the whole, stupid. With the exception of the one we have here, who lets the other two fight, waiting until the survivor is so exhausted that he cannot defend himself. And then, like SPECTRE, he attacks.
At this point my memories grow hazy—there was something about the SPECTRE character using the Lektor (a code-breaking machine) as bait. I remember with astonishing clarity that I was obscenely aware I was dreaming—and that, when the roles had been handed out, to my sovereign surprise I’d been assigned to play the very Puella Bondinis in question.
No more doubts, no more sleepless nights, I murmured softly to myself in the half dark. This was the call, the dawn that precedes the voluptuous war. And here is the opaline message that I slid under the door of the Augustan office the next morning. An ode to devotion inspired by superior firepower, a sketch of unambiguously carnivorous appetites, I translate from the Latin (ego velut linguam . . .4) the invitation that is my secret, which I enclosed in a manila envelope along with a candied date:
I
like the language
am in his mouth the plaything of a monster.
Morituri te salutamus, Augustus!
4 . . . coeli.