The Fever by Wallace Shawn.
Title: The Fever.
Author: Wallace Shawn.
Genre: Literature, fiction, plays, philosophical fiction, totalitarian regimes, travel.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1990.
Summary: The nameless narrator of this blistering monologue lies ill and alone in a dreary hotel room in a poverty-stricken, beautiful but tormented country. A political execution is about to take place beneath his window. Far from the glib comforts of his own life, he struggles with memories and his own conscience, which are challenged by the misery and poverty he sees. With compassion, eloquence, and ruthless self-scrutiny, the playwright explores the efficacy of having good intentions toward the dispossessed without action, and agonizes over his own, as well as all of our, responsibility for the downtrodden.
My rating: 8.5/10.
My review:
♥ I'm traveling-and I wake up suddenly in the silence before dawn in a strange hotel room, in a poor country where my language isn't spoken, and I'm shaking and shivering.- Why? There's something-something is happening-far away, in a different country. Yes, I remember. It's the execution. The newspaper article said this would be the hour, this was the date.
♥ Don't you think-when you're traveling in a strange country-that the smells are sharp and upsetting? And when you wake up in the middle of the night-unexpectedly-when you wake up at an odd hour-when you're traveling somewhere and you wake up in a strange place-don't you feel frightened?
♥ There's a small war going on in this poor country where my language isn't spoken.
♥ -Then I'm sitting, shivering, on the bathroom floor, this cold square of tile on a hot night in a hot country, and I can't stand up to go back to bed-I can't stand up-so I sit there quietly, shaking as if I were sitting in the snow. And in the corner of the bathroom-brown against the tile-there's an insect, big, like a water bug-it's flat, heavy-very tough legs, they look like metal-and it's waiting, squatting, deciding which way to move.- And in a second it's crossed behind the sink, and it's slipping itself into a hole too small for it to fit in, but it fits-in-it fits-it's gone. And I see myself. I see myself. A moment of insight.
It's the birthday party in the fancy restaurant. Yes-there's the table with its sweet and pretty decorations, the fanciful centerpiece, pink and green, and there are all the women in bright red lipstick and the men in beautiful shirts, and all the gifts-outrageous, unexpected, and funny gifts-and there are the waiters serving the salmon and pouring the wine, and there I am. I'm talking quietly with that small, pale woman in the red-and-blue dress about the love affair with the older man, that film that disturbed her, the actress, the psychiatrist, the criminals, the walks at night through the woods in the country, the insatiable appetite for violent sex, the suffering of the people who live in desperation in the crowded shelter across the street from the fancy restaurant. And as I talked with that woman in the red-and-blue dress, I thought I was a person who was thinking about a party, who had so many complicated feelings about it, who liked some aspects of the party, but not others, who liked some of the people, but not all of them, who liked the pink-and-green centerpiece, but didn't really like that red-and-blue dress. But no. No. I see it so clearly. I see myself with my little fork- I wasn't a person who was thinking about a party. I was a person who was at a party, who sat at the table, drank the wine, and ate the fish.
We didn't talk about the fish, we didn't talk about the restaurant, we talked about the lakes in the mountains in the north of Thailand and the crowded shelter across the street. But where were we? Where were we? Not by the lakes, not in the shelter- We were there, just there, at that table, in that restaurant.- Well, maybe for certain people-maybe for certain people who lived at the beginning of the twentieth century-what was hidden and unconscious was the inner life. Maybe the only thing those people could see was the outward circumstance, where they were, what they did, and they had no idea at all of what was inside them. But something's been hidden from me, too. Something-a part of myself-has been hidden from me, and I think it's the part that's there on the surface, what anyone in the world could see about me if they saw me out the window of a passing train.
♥ My feelings! My thoughts! The incredible history of my feelings about my thoughts could fill up a dozen leather-bound books. But the story of my life-my behavior, my actions-that's a slim volume, and I've never read it. Well, I've never wanted to. I've always thought it would be terribly boring. What would be in it? Chapter One: My Childhood. I was born, I cried. Chapter Two: The Rest: I maintained myself. I got up. I went to work, I went home, I went to bed. I went to a restaurant, and I ate fish. Who cares? For God's sake-did I have to travel to a poor country where no books are printed in my own language-did I have to be cast down onto a bathroom floor in a strange hotel-in order to finally be forced to open that dull volume, the story of my life?
♥ My parents loved me. They raised me to think about people, the world, humanity, beauty-not tho think about restaurants and fish. I was born into the mind. Lamplight. The warm living room. My father, in an armchair, reading about China. My mother with the newspaper on a long sofa. Orange juice on a table in a glass pitcher.
..And, dear God, I never doubted life was precious. I've always thought life should be celebrated.
♥ There were photographs on the walls of the bleeding corpses of friends. The blood was bright reed. One was a schoolteacher, killed near her school. And there were black-and-white snapshots of shyly smiling women and men at some time before their deaths, and these were pinned up next to the pictures of their corpses. The faces, radiant with goodness.
..And here, from my spot on the bathroom floor, I can see through the window, gorgeous in the moonlight, the gorgeous mountains of the poor country, soaked with the blood of the innocent, soaked with the blood of those shy faces, battered shy faces.
♥ You see, I like Beethoven. I like to hear the bow of the violin cut into the string. I like to follow the phrase of the violin as it goes on and on, like a deep-rooted orgasm squeezed out into a rope of sound. I like to go out at night in a cosmopolitan city and sit in a dark auditorium watching dancers fly into each other's arms.
Yes, suppose that certain people-certain people whose hearts admittedly are filled with love-are being awakened suddenly at night by groups of armed men. Suppose that they are being dragged into a stinking van with a carpet on the floor and stomped by boots till their lips are swollen like oranges, streaming with blood. Yes, I was alive when those things were done, I lived in the town whose streets ran with the blood of good-hearted victims, I wore the clothes which were pulled from the bodies of the victims when they were raped and killed.
But I love the violin. I love the music, the dancers, everything I touch, everything I see. The city with its lights, the theaters, coffeeshops, newsstands, books. The constant celebration. Life should be celebrated. Life is a gift.
And I can't stand the way people say, "When I was a child, I loved elephants," "When I was a child, I loved balloons." Are they trying to say that if they stopped and looked at a balloon today or at an elephant today, they would not love them? Why wouldn't they love them? I think we still love what we always loved. How could we not?
♥ So then someone-maybe you-would plunge their hand down deep into the box as if they were a diver searching for a pearl, and eventually they would come upon something hard, something tightly wrapped in a different sort of paper, and when that last bit of wrapping was finally undone, there would be the cup or saucer or tiny little vase, just suitable for one little flower. And maybe if you'd seen that cup or saucer or vase just sitting on a shelf in a shop somewhere, you might have thought it was nothing in particular, or maybe if you'd seen it lying in a pile with heaps of others like it in the corner of some dark dusty place that sold odds and ends, you would have thought it was an old piece of junk, but by the time it had been pulled out of all that paper, out of that milk-white box, out of that cardboard carton, it seemed like the most shining, sparkling thing in the world. And how delicate it seemed-how breakable and precious. And you were right, it was.
And my friends and I were the delicate, precious, breakable children, and we always knew it. We knew it because of the way we were wrapped-because of the soft underwear laid out on our beds, soft socks to protect our feet.
♥ We still avoid them-all of my friends. Bad neighborhoods. The people who live in places like that would hurt you, beat you, cut you, kill you. All the ones who would hurt you collect in those neighborhoods, like water in drains. And it's terrible. It's awful. Why should people want to hurt each other? I always say to my friends, We should be glad to be alive. We should celebrate lief. We should understand that life is wonderful.
Shouldn't we decorate our lives and our world as if we were having a permanent party? Shouldn't there be bells made of paper hanging from the ceiling, and paper balls, and white and yellow streamers? Shouldn't people dance and hold each other close? Shouldn't we fill the tables with cake and presents?
Yes, but we can't have celebrations in the very same room where groups of people are being tortured, or groups of people are being killed. We have to know, Where are we, and where are the ones who are being tortures and killed? Not in the same room? No-but surely-isn't there any other room we can use?
♥ One day there was an anonymous present sitting on my doorstep-Volume One of Capital by Karl Marx, in a brown paper bag. A joke? Serious? And who had sent it? I never found out. Late that night, naked in bed, I leafed through it. The beginning was impenetrable, I couldn't understand it, but when I came to the part about the lives of the workers-the coal miners, the child laborers-I could feel myself suddenly breathing more slowly. How angry he was. Page after page. Then I turned back to an earlier section, and I came to a phrase that I'd heard before, a strange, upsetting, sort of ugly phrase: this was the section on "commodity fetishism," "the fetishism of commodities." I wanted to understand that weird-sounding phrase, but I could tell that, to understand it, your whole life would probably have to change.
♥ One day I stopped in a public square, and I wrote in my notebook the romantic sentence: "These shy smiles are like a garden for me." I stayed in an eccentric expensive hotel, and the ice cream there seemed to me like a drug-delicious, perfect, light and aromatic. I couldn't get enough of this amazing ice cream. A journalist I met who was staying at the hotel explained to me that it didn't make sense to admire a revolution because of its ice cream, because it could really be considered an imperfection in the revolution that resources would be devoted to making ice cream at all when some people still didn't have enough to eat. His remark was valid, but he missed the point: the ice cream was charming.
I continued my trip, and I decided to go to more poor countries.
♥ She hadn't seen her home for a long time. She loved her parents. She had two small children. Her husband had died in his early twenties. She spoke to me feverishly about a sister who'd been killed, clenching and unclenching her hands. Her sister's head had been mutilated. After her sister's death, she'd left her village and walked into the mountains to find the rebels. She's learned how to go without eating for days. The poise, the dignity, of a wild animal.
♥ Then I went to a sweet little restaurant and had lunch with a woman in a lemon-yellow suit whom I'd known since I was eight. But then I got into a taxi, and as I was riding across the city, that feeling, that sickness, filled me up again. It seemed to start in my stomach and move out through my legs, my chest. And my stomach was beating, it was just like a heart. A cold sweat on my forehead and neck. I wasn't me. When the taxi arrived, the person who got out of it wasn't me. I was nowhere. The person who paid the driver was actually no one.
♥ ..we wandered by mistake into the hotel ballroom. They were prosperous-looking executives, probably retired, dancing with their wives to awful music-men with baggy pants and big thighs and coins in their pockets-and their wives were wearing flowery dresses, with their hair like wigs, and our friend said, "God, how unhappy they are. How painful it is. How sad life is," but I stared at the executives in their dark suits and felt only that numbness, it was even in my mouth, on my tongue, a sort of sour lovelessness, a sort of horrible rotting lovelessness.
And toward the end of dinner our friend finally told us that his father had died. He described the hospital, the doctors, the machines. It was as if he felt no one had ever died before, as if he felt it was quite unfair that his father should have died. Yet no expense had been spared to extend his father's life for as long as possible, to make sure that his death was as comfortable as possible. Hardworking experts surrounded his bed doing all they could to see that he would die without feeling pain. I couldn't help mentioning those others who died every day on the torture table, screaming, carved up with knives, surrounded on their bed of death by other experts who were doing all they could to be sure that the ones they surrounded would die in howling agony-unimaginable agony.
My remarks were out of place. Where was the sympathy I owed my friend? His loss was real. He looked at me, appalled.
♥ I thought about Christmas, the streets, the shops. Was that why people brought children into the world-so that they too, could one day roam through the streets, buying, devouring, always "the best"-the best food, the best clothes, the best everything-so that they, too, could demand "the best"? Were there not enough people in the world already who demanded the best, who insisted on the best? No, we must bring in more, and then we must gather together more treasures from all over the world, more of the best, for all these new children of ours to have, because our children should have the best, it would be our shame, our disgrace, to give them less than the best. We will stop at nothing to give them the best.
♥ Do you know!-there are nights in the city where I grew up, the city I love most of all, when it's too cold for rain, but the sky can't snow yet, although you feel it would like to, and so instead it seems that at a certain moment every car and face and pane of glass is suddenly covered by a delicious wetness, like the wetness you see on a frozen cherry, and on nights like that, when you walk through the streets of the nice parts of town, you see all the men, in overcoats that hang straight down to the ground, staring harshly with open-mouthed desire at the fox-headed women whose lipstick ripples, whose earrings ripple, as they step through the uneven light and darkness of the sidewalk. And that is the sort of thing that the Communists will never understand.
♥ Look-here's a question I'd like to ask you-Have you ever had any friends who were poor? See, I think that's an idea a lot of people have: "Why shouldn't I have some friends who are poor?"
..I always picture that they invite you to come over to their home for dinner, and-I don't know what it is-it's something about the light bulbs, the flooring that's coming up just a tiny little bit from the floor, and you walk in and you say to yourself, It's fine, this is fine, it's all just fine, but you know it isn't-and there's a sort of sticky smell coming from somewhere, from a hallway, a room, and the television, and the walls are painted with this kind of shiny pink, and there are children who are sick and sneezing and coughing. And there are some hard chairs, and you end up sitting on the floor, and you're squirming around on the floor, and you're trying to find some support for your back. And they give you some good, and the meat is greasy, and the piece of meat seems to get bigger and bigger as it sits on your plate. And everyone's being incredibly nice. And somebody changes the baby's diaper. And then a week later they call and invite you again, and you don't know what to say, so you go once again, and then once again maybe a few months later, and/ then-I don't know-maybe you move to another part of town, maybe you move out of town altogether, maybe they move out of town-but the next time you go is a year later, and then there never is a time after that.
♥ No-now stop that. Every person is a person, every person believes certain things.
..But the question-the question is-Would it really matter if it were Fred who believed that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others? What if Fred were to wake up one morning and think he believed that, forgetting that that was actually the belief of his friend Bob?
Fred believes certain things-you can say that. But what does it mean? Does it mean something? I don't remember. . . -
And my beliefs? Yes, yes-I have beliefs, yes-I believe in humanity, sympathy for others-I oppose cruelty and violence-
What? You applaud cruelty and violence?
No-I said I oppose cruelty and violence-Jesus Christ-oppose, oppose-
But I can still remember what I like-can't I?-if not what I believe. I know what I like. I like warmth, coziness, pleasure, love-mail, presents-nice plates-those paintings by Matisse... Yes, I'm an aesthete. I like beauty.
Yes-poor countries are beautiful. Poor people are beautiful. It's a wonderful feeling to have money in a country where most people are poor, to ride in a taxi through horrible slums.
Yes-a beggar can be beautiful. A beggar can have beautiful lips, beautiful eyes. You're far from home. To you, her simple shawl seems elegant, direct, the right way to dress. You see her approaching from a great distance. She's old, thin, and yes, she looks sick, very sick, near death. But her face is beautiful-seductive, luminous. You like her-you're drawn to her. Yes, you think-there's money in your purse-you'll give her some of it.
And a voice says-Why not all of it? Why not give her all that you have?
Be careful, that's a question that could poison your life. Your love of beauty could actually kill you.
If you hear that question, it means you're sick. You're mentally sick. You've had a breakdown.
♥ I control myself, get a grip on myself. I have to survive. And so I sit on my bunk and cry and read and cry and read. And time passes-so much time-it seems like forever-and then yes, yes, I understand-I see that there's an answer to the question I asked. Yes, it could have been predicted, from knowing these things-where I was born, how I was raised-what an hour of my labor would probably be worth-even though, to me, from the inside, my life always felt like a story that was just unfolding, unpredictable. Yes, I was born, and a field was provided, a piece of land, from which rich fruit could be plucked by eager hands. And I was taught to be very eager. The beggar, the chambermaid-of course-if you knew-their childhood villages-no, they weren't taught to be eager- Here is your land, your piece of land-it was barren, black, uncultivable.
And I see the whole world laid out like a map in four dimensions-all the land, the people, the moments of time-today, yesterday. And at each particular moment I can see that the world has a certain very particular ability to produce the things that people need: there's a certain quantity of land that's ready to be farmed, a certain particular number of workers, a certain stock of machinery, a stock of ideas about how to do things, how to organize all the ones who will work. And each day's capacity seems somehow so small. It's fixed, determinate. Every part of it is fixed. And I can see all the days that have happened already, and on each one of them, a determinate number of people worked, and a determinate portion of all the earth's resources was drawn up and used, and a determinate little pile of goods was produced. So small: across the grid of infinite possibility, this finite capacity, distributed each day.
And of all the things that might have been done, which were the ones that actually happened?
♥ Look, I'm a human being! Yes, of course I want to make a good wage-What do you think a human being is? A human being happens to be an unprotected little wriggling creature, a little raw creature without a shell or a hide or even any fur, just thrown out onto the earth like an eye that's been pulled from its socket, like a shucked oyster that's trying to crawl along the ground. We need to build our own shells-yes, shoes, chairs, walls, floors, and god God's sake, yes, a little solace, a little consolation. Because Jesus Christ-you know, you know, we wanted to be happy, we wanted our lives to be absolutely great. We were looking forward for so long to some wonderful night in some wonderful hotel, some wonderful breakfast set out on a tray-we were looking forward, like panting dogs, slobbering on the rug-how we would delight the ones we loved with our kisses in bed, how we would delight our parents with our great accomplishments, how we would delight our children with toys and surprises. But it was all wrong: it was never really right: the hotel, the breakfast, what happened in bed, our parents, our children-and so yes, we need solace, we need consolation, we need nice food, we need nice things to wear, we need beautiful paintings, movies, plays, drives in the country, bottles of wine. There's never enough solace, enough consolation.
♥ There's still the preface-everything that happened before I was born. The voluptuous field that was given to me-how did I come to be given that one, and not the one that was black and barren? Yes, it happened like that because before I was born, the fields were apportioned, and some of the fields were pieced together.
Not by chance, not by fate. The fields were pieced together one by one, by thieves, by killers. Over years, over centuries, night after night, knives glittering, throats cut, again and again, until the beautiful Christmas morning we woke up, and our proud parents showed us the gorgeous, shining, blood-soaked fields which now were ours. Cultivate, they said, husband everything you pull from the earth, guard, save, then give your own children the next hillside, the next valley. From each advantage, draw up more. Grow, cultivate, preserve, guard. Drive forward till you have everything. The others will always fall back, retreat, give you what you want or sell you what you want for the price you want. They have no choice, because they're sick and weak. They've become "the poor."
And the book runs on, years, centuries, till the moment comes when our parents say the time of apportionment is now over. We have what we need-our position well defended from every side. Now, finally, everything can be frozen, just as it is. The violence can stop. From now on, no more stealing, no more killing. From this moment, an eternal silence, the rule of law.
♥ So we have to wait. And while we're waiting, we have to be careful. Because we know you. We know there are some who are the violent ones, the ones who won't wait. These are the destroyers. Their children are dying, sick-no medicine, no food, nothing on their feet, no place to live, vomiting on the streets. These are the ones who are drunk with rage, with their lust for revenge. We know what they've planned. We've imagined it all a thousand times. We imagine it every single day.
♥ History, history. The crimes. The oppression. The famines. The disasters. Teach the poor that they must never try to seize power for themselves, because the rule of the poor will always be incompetent, and it will always be cruel. The poor are bloodthirsty. Uneducated. They don't have the skills. For their own sake, it must never happen. And they must understand that the dreamers, the idealists, the ones who say that they love the poor, will all become vicious killers in the end, and the ones who claim they can create something better will always end up by creating something worse. The poor must understand these essential lessons, chapters from history. And if they don't understand them, they must all be taken out and shot. Inattention or lack of comprehension cannot be allowed.
♥ You understand your situation. Without a place to live, without clothes, without money, you would be like them, you would be them, you would be what they are-you would be the homeless, you would be the comfortless. So of course, you know it, you will do anything. There are no limits to what you will do. Without the money, your face would become the face of a rat, your hands would be paws-sharp, nimble, ready to scratch, ready to tear.
♥ But during this period of waiting, waiting, this endless waiting for gradual change, one by one they come knocking at your door and they cry out, they beg you for help. And you say, Get them away from me. I can't stand this constant knocking at the door, these people who come with these ridiculous stories, who claim to be my sister, who claim to be my brother, all day long, day after day. And so all of these people are taken away, and they're made to live in places where they're teased, they're played with, they're lectured, mocked, until a few of them begin to rave irrationally and even laugh, viciously, and then their vicious actions fill absolutely everyone with horror. And then each one of these vicious people is taken by the shoulders and held down, and their head is shaved, and they're strapped into a chair, and they're executed, and the one they're being executed for is you, just as it was always you that all those people were talking about so many years ago when they kept on saying, "For our children's sake, we have to do it, we have to set this town on fire, this barn, this hospital, these forests, these animals, this rice, this honey," just as it's still you, because of how much you love those clean white sheets and the music and the dancers and the telephone calls, from whom all those people with radiant faces are being tortured tonight, are dying tonight.
♥ Certain things cannot be questioned. The coffee has to be there on the shelf, and no thought may enter your mind if it conflicts with the assumption that you-yes, you-are a decent person. So go ahead, think-think freely-think about anything you like. Think about your health, other people, the ones who treat you badly, think about the complicated ways in which you mistreat yourself, think about the children afflicted with incurable diseases who were interviewed in that magazine. Think of all the things which show that you're decent, which show that those who are like you are decent-your friends, your loved ones, and all those people all over the world, in every country, who remind you of yourself-people of good will who have a little money but believe sincerely in a better life for all. Think of all the things you've done that were kind, think of the kindness of all your intentions. And if something that you did turned out badly, think of the good motive behind the action-smile, nod your head, understand, accept. Don't talk to people who don't think you're decent. Don't read books, don't read articles, by writers who don't think you're decent, who don't think those who are like you are decent. Their writing is based on a false assumption. It's skewed, distorted. Your thought must be founded on truth, the truth that you are a decent person.
♥ It's the coolest hour of the twenty-four. I look out the window, and in the cool breeze I remember I once was a child in a beautiful city, surrounded by hope. And I feel such joy-the coolness of the breeze-I wonder if I could put down for a moment my burden of lies, of lying-just put it right down on the floor beside me. I wonder what that would be like. Just for a single moment, while the breeze blows in, just to put it down, because I feel so joyful, crazy, naked, free, I want no restrictions on me at all.
Dear God, every muscle of my body aches with the effort of constant lying. I'm twisted, contorted-lying from the minute I get up each day till the minute I go to bed, and even when I'm asleep I think I'm lying. I can't stop, because the truth is everywhere, it's in plain sight-
Listen to me, my darling. Just let it happen, just let it happen just for this moment, just for tonight, and then tomorrow we'll go back to lying again, as if it never happened. We'll pretend it never happened. We'll forget that it happened.
All right, go ahead. Go ahead. Say it.
The life I live is irredeemably corrupt. It has no justification. I keep thinking that there's this justification that I've written down somewhere, on some little piece of paper, that I can't remember what's on the piece of paper, but that it's sitting in the drawer of some desk in some room in some place I used to live. But in fact I'll never find that little piece of paper, because there isn't one, it doesn't exist.
There's no piece of paper that justifies what the beggar has and what I have. Standing naked beside the beggar-there's no difference between her and me except a difference in luck. I don't actually deserve to have a thousand times more than the beggar has. I don't deserve to have two crusts of bread more.
And then, this too: My friends and I were never well meaning and kind. The sadists were not compassionate scholars, trying to do their best for humanity. The burning of fields, the burning of children, were not misguided attempts to do good. Cowards who sit in lecture halls or the halls of state denouncing the crimes of the revolutionaries are not as admirable as the farmers and nuns who ran so swiftly into the wind, who ran silently into death. The ones I killed were not the worst people in all those places; in fact, they were the best.
Nothing is changing in the life of the poor. There is no change. Gradual change is not happening, it's not going to happen. It was only something we talked about.
My feeling in my heart a sympathy for the poor does not change the life of the poor. My believing fervently in gradual change does not change the life of the poor. Parents who teach their children good values do not change the life of the poor. Artists who create works of art that inspire sympathy and good values do not change the life of the poor. Citizens inspired by artists and parents to adopt good values and feel sympathy for the poor and vote for sincere politicians who believe fervently in gradual change do not change the life of the poor, because sincere politicians who believe fervently in gradual change do not change the life of the poor.
The chambermaids's condition is not temporary. A life sentence has been passed on her: she's to clean for me and to sleep in filth. Not, she's to clean for me today, and I'm to clean for her tomorrow, or I'm to clean for her next year. Not, she's to sleep in filth tonight, and I'm to sleep in filth tomorrow night, or some other night. No. The sentence says that she will serve, and then on the next day she will serve, and then she will, and she will, right up until her death.
But-the strangest thing of all-although the terms of existence of the chambermaid were settled at her birth, the terms of my existence were not settled at mine.
I say, It's not my fault that I was born with a better chance in life than the chambermaid. It's not my fault that I have a little money and she doesn't.
But I don't "have" the money the way I "have" two feet. The money's not a part of me, the fact that I have it isn't a fact about me like my coloring or my race. Through a series of events it came to me, but devoting my life to defending my possession of something that came to me is not an inescapable destiny. Keeping the money is just a choice I'm making, a choice I'm making every day. I could perfectly well put an end to the whole elaborate performance. If people are starving, give them good. If I have more than others, share what I have until I have no more than they do. Live simply. Give up everything. Become poor myself.
I've always loved people who enjoy good meals, people who look forward to watching good performances. Of course I have. Everyone I've ever known is one of those people, I've always been one of those people myself. I've always thought that it's so much nicer to love people who are happy. But the funny thing is that everyone might be. I've struggled hard to get what I have. But my struggle has always been against others. In fact, I've been struggling against the ones who are poor, and from the point of view of the ones who are poor, of course I'm the same as my neighbor Jean. I'm exactly the same, and I'm not on their side.
And that, too, is a choice I'm making. I could change sides. I could decide to fight on the other side. The life of a traitor? Betraying my own people? Walking into danger? Very difficult, but a possible choice. If I could accept hardship, accept discomfort-why not suffering, prison, and even-?-
I blow out the candle and swim across the room toward my beautiful bed. Inside my covers, head on the pillow, I swim toward sleep. Next week, home.
What will be home? My own bed. My night table. And on the table-what? On the table-what?-blood-death-a fragment of bone-a fragment-a piece-of a human brain-a severed hand.-Let everything filthy, everything vile, sit by my bed, where once I had my lamp and clock, books, letters, presents for my birthday, and left over from the presents bright-colored ribbons. Forgive me. Forgive me. I know you forgive me. I'm still falling.