Will you only believe the lies? And for how long? How happy the time when it was enough for two people to love one another or even feel sympathy for one another, for them to be allowed to live together or spend time together. The moon was a mysterious satellite a long way away, like America before Columbus. I curse Miss Lina Zfanseld, who in the winter of 1975 lent her overcoat to Mrs. Rosa Tilda. I happened to read her biography yesterday in the little medical dictionary I carry around with me. Because of that damn overcoat, because of Lina Zfanseld’s liveliness, we have to suffer this separation, this misunderstanding. If apathetic old Mrs. Rosa Tilda hadn’t been so apathetic, if Miss Lina Zfanseld hadn’t been so lively, if the old camel-hair overcoat hadn’t so perfectly transmitted the waves from one organism to another, if that horrid electron microscope hadn’t existed to reveal the order of our molecules, that tool that doctors today use like children used to use kaleidoscopes, then we wouldn’t be in this situation.
You see what kind of intricate intrigues, what tiny details are the drivers of discovery; the coincidences that drive the misfortunes and customs that human beings end up taking on. We’re like a flock of sheep, obeying the most subtle or most evident orders for the good of society. Blindly, so as to avoid being punished, we fulfill our civic duties and when we think about them and decide to evade them, we end up in trouble. Sometimes it makes me laugh to think that if Mrs. Rosa Tilda had not been undergoing medical treatment for her depression, because her depression stopped her from going to work every day, no one would have noticed that it was the coat that transformed her, and the price of camel hair, at the time out of fashion, would not have shot through the roof. But there was one doctor, they say, with the soul of a researcher, who studied the case and won, undeservedly in my opinion, fame and riches.
I should have been born in a different era, as long as you could have been there with me too. Until 1975, the world was bearable. We are the victims of what some call progress. Wars are now waged via floods and drought, via earthquakes, via sudden plague, via rapid changes in temperature; it is rare for a drop of blood to be spilled, but that doesn’t mean we suffer less than our predecessors. How many young men now dream of dying on the field of battle, after gunplay with the enemy across the front line? It’s only natural that they want some individual gratification.
But I can communicate with you via this small metal contraption (like an old television set): I see your mirrored face and hear your voice; you receive my daily messages and the reflection of my image. Savages from back in 1930 (and there are still some of them around) would think that we were living in a magical world, but if I could talk to them I would say: “Don’t fool yourselves, I’m much more unhappy than you were, you who had no television.” Just like those rodents who bury food for their offspring, I am leaving these messages for our descendants. So you’re off on the moon, working in the mines with all the comforts and respect due to your position, and I’m down on Earth keeping an eye on you, hidden so that the authorities don’t find me and give me drugs to forget you…all of this will seem unhappy enough for the people in the future who decipher our messages.
I find it obscene that countries have fallen apart and people are now organized on the basis of the order of their molecules and the waves they emit. I suppose I must just be old-fashioned. When I think of how I was when I was seven years old, I shudder. The prohibitions began after the massacre of the children in that school in Massachusetts, the fire in the Nippon Circus in Tokyo, and the armed robberies in the public gardens of England and Germany. It was not lone individuals who committed these crimes, but some combination of their molecules, and other weird things like that which I barely understand. Full-color photographs of Lina Zfanseld and Rosa Tilda appeared in all the newspapers, got stuck up on walls, proclaiming them the saviors of humanity. Severe measures were taken: the first had to do with travel. People from group A couldn’t travel with those from group B, people from group B couldn’t travel with those from group C, and so on. (How horrid it was for me to see the photograph of my molecules next to my face in the passport!) Families were divided. Homes were destroyed. I’m not making all this up, am I? They founded villages filled with people who were in no way connected to one another. There were several suicides: most of them were people in love, or else pupils and teachers who didn’t want their groups broken up. I heard of a case of some children I knew, eleven years old, and another of two engineering students, because friendships are as passionate as romantic love. But you and I could never agree on that point.
When we decided to falsify our documents, we were happy, why shouldn’t we still be happy if it weren’t that they’ve separated us? Nothing was going to stop us from being happy. You think that it’s all over between us, but you’re wrong. Did you spend all your money on bribes? I’ve heard about it, there’s no need to rub it in.
Do you remember that beautiful summer morning when we went up the stairs in Truth Square? We had our documents in our hands. In the certificate we received from the Ministry of Health, your waves were a perfect match for mine. After going to the prescribed hospitals for our tests, we stopped at the foot of the monument, the statue of large-eyed Truth, sparkling like spun sugar. We sat by the marble plinth, we kissed and ate raspberry ice cream. For a few days, we believed that we weren’t hurting each other, and made plans for the future. The certificate seemed so powerful that we didn’t argue once in five days. My touch didn’t repel you as it usually did, my voice didn’t reverberate in your dreams, didn’t fill you with that strange dread. Your eyes, when you stared at me, didn’t confuse me or make me lose my thoughts, as if I were an automaton. My self didn’t disappear in your arms as it usually did. We lived some kind of miracle. As if we had never tried to lie to the state, as if we were obeying its rules and laws. Who cares that the document was a fraud, and that our waves didn’t match? We were already changing to match the official documents that we so much despised. We were made for each other, we were legally in love, and nothing could come between us.
But there is always someone who tells the truth, and if the truth sets some people free, then it condemns others. It was an enemy of mine who gave us away. They separated us and exiled you. Before you left, they told you that it had been me who had confessed the truth, because I was repentant: I had recognized my mistake and my shame. You believed them. That I have taken myself away from the world to live in this cave doesn’t move you; that I flee mankind to be able to communicate with you: none of this is sufficient proof of my love to you. Our misunderstandings continue. I think that our love was born of a misunderstanding, and I fear that this was what ruined us.
“Love that which helps you. Abandon that which harms you,” is inscribed above the doors of all the hospitals. “Check your wavelength.” I don’t want to hear anything more about waves or organisms.
I remember with horror the tales of crimes of passion told to me by doctors when they were trying to set my mind straight.
I’ve met a scientist (he might be a fraud) who claims that via a simple operation he can insert me into your group. My messages will stop for a few days and maybe my dog will look into the metal mirror while I’m away. Say “Go to your basket” or “Drink some water” or “Poor little pooch” to console him. The operation is all I can think of. I dream of it day and night. It’s not clear how much I will have to suffer, which anaesthetic they will give me, or where the incisions will be made. I am committed to belonging to your wavegroup, and being able to live with you normally. Obviously there is a risk that my personality will change, and it remains to be seen if you will like my new self. I could become a mouse or a paving stone. I shouldn’t think about all the dangers: that would drive me crazy. If this last attempt is a failure, I will pay for it with my life, and that would be the best way to go if it turns out that I have been cheated.
After the operation my plan is to get onto an interplanetary flight and discreetly head to your world. I will learn to walk on air, so people will think that I am an angel or a goddess from Greek mythology, one of the ones you compared me with when you believed in my honesty, my beauty, in my love.