When
I hear a soprano uttering her vibrant and melodious notes, my eyes
are filled with a hidden flame, flashes of pain shoot across
them, and the burst of alarm-bell and cannonade resound in my
ears. What can be the reason for this deep loathing of everything
related to man? If those harmonies are played on the chords of
an instrument, I listen in delight to the pearly notes wafting
in cadence through the elastic waves of the atmosphere. Sense
conveys to my hearing an impression so sweet as to melt nerves
and thought. The magic poppies of an ineffable drowsiness envelop,
like a veil filtering the light of day, the active power of my
senses and the tenacious strength of my imagination. The story
is told that I was born in the arms of deafness! In the first
years of my childhood, I could not hear what was said to me.
When, with the greatest difficulty, they had taught me to speak,
it was not until after I had read on a sheet of paper what someone
had written that I could in turn communicate the thread of my
ideas. One day, woeful day, I had grown in beauty and innocence.
Everyone admired the intelligence and goodness of the divine
youth. Many a conscience blushed inwardly when it contemplated
those clear features in which his soul was enshrined. No one
approached him without veneration, for they had noticed in his
eyes the look of an angel. But no, I knew only too well that
the happy roses of youth would not flower perpetually, wreathed
in capricious garlands, on his modest and noble brow, which all
mothers used to kiss with frenzied devotion. It was beginning
to seem to me that the universe, with its starry vault of impassable
and tormentingly mysterious globes, was not perhaps the most
imposing thing I had dreamt of. And so, one day, tired of trudging
along the steep path on this earthly journey, trudging along
like a drunkard through the dark catacombs of life, I slowly
raised my splenetic eyes, ringed with bluish circles, towards
the concavity of the firmament and I, who was so young, dared
to penetrate the mysteries of heaven! Not finding what I was
seeking, I lifted my eyes higher, and higher still, until I saw
a throne made of human excrement and gold, on which was sitting
- with idiotic pride, his body draped in a shroud of unwashed
hospital linen - he who calls himself the Creator! He was holding
in his hand the rotten body of a dead man, carrying it in turn
from his eyes to his nose and from his nose to his mouth; and
once it reached his mouth, one can guess what he did with it.
His feet were dipped in a huge pool of boiling blood, on the
surface of which two or three cautious heads would suddenly rise
up like tapeworms in a chamber-pot, and as suddenly submerge
again, swift as an arrow. A kick on the bone of the nose was
the familiar reward for any infringement of regulations occasioned
by the need to breathe a different atmosphere; for, after all,
these men were not fish. Though amphibious at best, they were
swimming underwater in this vile liquid!...until, finding his
hands empty, the Creator with the first two claws of his foot,
would grab another diver by the neck, as with pincers, and lift
him into the air, out of the reddish slime, delicious sauce.
And this one was treated in the same way as his predecessor.
First he ate his head, then his legs and arms, and last of all,
the trunk, until there was nothing left; for he crunched the
bones as well. And so it continues, for
all the hours of eternity. Sometimes, he would shout: "I created
you, so I have the right to do whatever I like to you. You have done
nothing to me, I do not deny it. I am making you suffer for my own
pleasure." And he would continue his savage meal, moving his
lower jaw, which in turn moved his brain-bespattered beard. Oh reader,
does not this last-mentioned detail make your mouth water? Cannot
whoever wishes also eat brains just the same, which taste just as
good and just as fresh, caught less than a quarter of an hour before
in the lake - the brains of a fish? My limbs paralysed, utterly dumb,
I contemplated this sight for some time. Thrice I nearly keeled over,
like a man in the throes of an emotion which is too strong for him;
thrice I managed to keep my feet. No fibre of my body was still; I
was trembling like the lava inside the volcano. Finally, my breast
so constricted that I could not breathe the life-giving air quickly
enough, my lips opened slightly and I uttered a cry…a cry so
piercing…that I heard it! The shackles of my ears were suddenly
broken, my ear-drum cracked at the shock of the sounding mass of
air which I had expelled with such energy, and a strange phenomenon
took place in the organ condemned by nature. I had just heard a
sound! A fifth sense had developed in me! But what pleasure could
I have derived from such a realization? Since then, no human sound
has reached my ears without bringing with it the feeling of grief
which pity for great injustice arouses. Whenever anyone spoke to
me, I remembered what I had seen one day above the visible spheres,
and the translation of my stifled feelings into a violent yell,
the tone of which was identical to that of my fellow-beings! I
could not answer him; for the tortures inflicted on man's weakness
in that hideous red sea passed with their burning wings against
my singed hair. Later, when I knew mankind better, this feeling
of pity was coupled with intense rage against this tiger-like stepmother
whose hardened children know only how to curse and do evil. The
brazen lie! They say that evil is the exception among them! That
was long ago; since then I have not spoken a word to anyone. Oh
you, whoever you may be, when you are beside me, do not let any
sound escape your vocal cords; do not with your larynx strive to
outdo the nightingale; and, for yourself, do not on any account
attempt to make your soul known to me by means of language. Maintain
a religious silence, uninterrupted by the least sound. Cross your
hands humbly on your breast, and lower your eyelids. I have told
you this, and since that vision revealed to me the supreme truth,
too many nightmares have sucked my throat, by day and by night,
for me to have any courage left to renew, even in thought, the
sufferings I underwent in that infernal hour, the memory which
remorselessly pursues me. Oh! When you hear the avalanche of snow
falling from the high mountain; the lioness in the barren desert
lamenting the disappearance of its cubs; the tempest accomplishing
its destined purpose; the condemned man groaning in prison on the
eve of his execution; and the savage octopus telling the waves
of the sea of his victory over swimmers and the shipwrecked, then
you have to acknowledge it: are not these majestic voices finer
than the sniggering of men?
