sharing with the sought-for object the quality of’hiddenness’ you bring it closer to you.
How can I answer you whether God exists when the matter under discussion is perhaps sweet
peas or a soccer linesman’s flag? You are looking in the wrong place and in the wrong way, cher
monsieur, that is all the answer I can give you. And if it seems to you that from this answer you can draw
the least conclusion about the uselessness or necessity of God, it is just because you are looking in the
wrong place and in the wrong way. Wasn’t it you, though, that promised not to follow logical patterns of
thought?»
«Now I too am going to trap you, Falter. Let’s see how you’ll man age to avoid a direct
statement. One cannot, then, seek the title of the world in the hieroglyphics of deism?»
«Pardon me,» replied Falter, «by means of ornate language and grammatical trickery
Moustache-Bleue is merely disguising the ex pected non as an expected out. At the moment all I do is
deny. I deny the expediency of the search for Truth in the realm of common theol ogy, and, to save your
mind empty labor, I hasten to add that the ep ithet I have used is a dead end: do not turn into it. I shall
have to terminate the discussion for lack of an interlocutor if you exclaim ‘Aha, then there is another,
«uncommon,» truth!’—for this would mean that you have hidden yourself so well as to have lost
yourself.»
«All right. I shall believe you. Let us grant that theology muddies the issue. Is that right, Falter?»
«This is the house that Jack built,» said Falter.
«All right, we dismiss this false trail as well. Even though you could probably explain to me why it
is false (for there is something queer and elusive here, something that irritates you), and then your
reluctance to reply would be clear to me.»
«I could,» said Falter, «but it would be equivalent to revealing the gist of the matter, that is,
exactly what you are not going to get out of me.»
«You repeat yourself, Falter. Don’t tell me you will be just as eva sive if, for instance, I ask you:
can one expect an afterlife?»
«Does it interest you very much?»
«Just as much as it does you, Falter. Whatever you may know about death, we are both mortal.»
«In the first place,» said Falter, «I call your attention to the follow ing curious catch: any man is
mortal; you are a man; therefore, it is also possible that you are not mortal. Why? Because a specified
man (you or I) for that very reason ceases to be any man. Yet both of us are indeed mortal, but I am
mortal in a different way than you.»
«Don’t spite my poor logic, but give me a plain answer: is there even a glimmer of one’s identity
beyond the grave, or does it all end in ideal darkness?»
«Bon,» said Falter, as is the habit of Russian emigres in France. «You want to know whether
Gospodin Sineusov will forever reside within the snugness of Gospodin Sineusov, otherwise Moustache-
Bleue, or whether everything will abruptly vanish. There are two ideas here, aren’t there? Round-the-
clock lighting and the black inane. Actually, despite the difference in metaphysical color, they greatly
resemble each other. And they move in parallel. They even move at considerable speed. Long live the
totalizator! Hey, hey, look through your turf glasses, they’re racing each other, and you would very much
like to know which will arrive first at the post of truth, but in asking me to give you a yes or no for either
one or the other, you want me to catch one of them at full speed by the neck—and those devils have
awfully slippery necks—but even if I were to grab one of them for you, I would merely interrupt the
competition, or the winner would be the other, the one I did not snatch, an utterly meaningless result
inasmuch as no rivalry would any longer exist. If you ask, however, which of the two runs faster, I shall
retort with another question: what runs faster, strong desire or strong fear?»
«Same pace, I suppose.»
«That’s just it. For look what happens in the case of the poor little human mind. Either it has no
way to express what awaits you—I mean, us—after death, and then total unconsciousness is excluded,
for that is quite accessible to our imagination—every one of us has experienced the total darkness of
dreamless sleep; or, on the contrary, death can be imagined, and then one’s reason naturally adopts not
the notion of eternal life, an unknown entity, incongruent with anything terrestrial, but precisely that
which seems more probable—the familiar darkness of stupor. Indeed, how can a man who trusts in his
reason admit, for in-stance, that someone who is dead drunk and dies while sound asleep from a chance
external cause—thus losing by chance what he no longer really possessed—again acquires the ability to
reason and feel thanks to the mere extension, consolidation, and perfection of his unfortunate
condition? Hence, if you were to ask me only one thing: do I know, in human terms, what lies beyond
death—that is, if you at-tempted to avert the absurdity in which must peter out the competition
between two opposite, but basically similar concepts—a negative reply on my part would logically make
you conclude that your life cannot end in nothingness, while from an affirmative you would draw the
opposite conclusion. In either case, as you see, you would remain in exactly the same situation as
before, since a dry ‘no’ would prove to you that I know no more than you about the given subject, while
a moist ‘yes’ would suggest that you accept the existence of an international heaven which your reason
cannot fail to doubt.»
«You are simply evading a straightforward answer, but allow me to observe nevertheless that on
the subject of death you do not give me the answer ‘cold.’ «
«There you go again,» sighed Falter. «Didn’t I just explain to you that any deduction whatsoever
conforms to the curvature of thought? It is correct, as long as you remain in the sphere of earthly
dimensions, but when you attempt to go beyond, your error grows in proportion to the distance you
cover. And that’s not all: your mind will construe any answer of mine exclusively from a utilitarian
viewpoint, for you are unable to conceive death otherwise than in the image of your own gravestone,
and this in turn would distort to such an extent the sense of my answer as to turn it into a lie, ipso facto.
So let us observe de corum even when dealing with the transcendental. I cannot express myself more
clearly—and you ought to be grateful for any evasiveness. You have an inkling, I gather, that there is a
little hitch in the very formulation of the question, a hitch, incidentally, that is more terrible than the
fear itself of death. It’s particularly strong in you, isn’t it?» «Yes, Falter. The terror I feel at the thought of
my future uncon sciousness is equal only to the revulsion caused in me by a mental foreview of my
decomposing body.»
«Well put. Probably other symptoms of this sublunary malady are present as well? A dull pang in
the heart, suddenly, in the middle of the night, like the flash of a wild creature among domestic
emotions and pet thoughts: ‘Someday I also must die.’ It happens to you, doesn’t it? Hatred for the
world, which will very cheerfully carry on without you. A basic sensation that all things in the world are
trifles and phantas-mata compared to your mortal agony, and therefore to your life, for, you say to
yourself, life itself is the agony before death. Yes, oh yes, I can imagine perfectly well that sickness from
which you all suffer to a lesser or greater degree, and I can say one thing: I fail to understand how
people can live under such conditions.»
«There, Falter, we seem to be getting somewhere. Apparently, then, if I admitted that, in
moments of happiness, of rapture, when my soul is laid bare, I suddenly feel that there is no extinction
beyond the grave; that in an adjacent locked room, from under whose door comes a frosty draft, there
is being prepared a peacock-eyed radiance, a pyramid of delights akin to the Christmas tree of my
childhood; that everything—life, patria, April, the sound of a spring or that of a dear voice—is but a
muddled preface, and that the main text still lies ahead—if I can feel that way, Falter, is it not possible to
live, to live— tell me it’s possible, and I’ll not ask you anything more.»
«In that case,» said Falter, shaking again in soundless mirth, «I un-derstand you even less. Skip
the preface, and it’s in the bag!» «Un bon mouvernent, Falter—tell me your secret.» «What are you
trying to do, catch me off guard? You’re crafty, I see. No, that is out of the question. In the first days—
yes, in the first days I thought it might be possible to share my secret. A grown man, unless he is a bull
like me, would not stand it—all right; but I wondered if one could not bring up a new generation of the
initiated, that is, turn my attention to children. As you see, I did not immediately overcome the infection
of local dialects. In practice, however, what would happen? In the first place, one can hardly imagine
pledging kiddies to a vow of priestly silence lest any of them with one dreamy word commit
manslaughter. In the second place, as soon as the child grows up, the information once imparted to him,
accepted on faith, and al-lowed to sleep in a remote corner of his consciousness may give a start and
awake, with tragic consequences. Even if my secret does not always destroy a mature member of the
species, it is unthinkable that it should spare a youth. For who is not
