City (18 page)

Years later, after everything was over and there was nothing to be done about it, Shatzy and Prof. Mondrian Kilroy met by chance in a train station. It was a long time since they had seen each other. They went to have a drink and talked about the university, and about what Shatzy was doing, and about the fact that the professor had stopped teaching. It was clear that he would have liked to be able to talk about Gould, and what had happened to him, but it was too difficult. At a certain point they were silent, and only then did Prof. Mondrian Kilroy say

“It's funny, but what I think about that boy is that he is the only honest person I've met, in all my life. He was an
honest
boy. Do you believe me?”

Shatzy nodded her head yes, and thought that maybe that was the heart of the matter, and that everything fell into place if only one made the effort to remember that Gould, above all else, was an
honest
genius.

Then, at the end, the professor stood up and, before he left, embraced Shatzy, a little awkwardly, but hard.

“Don't pay any attention if I cry, I'm not sad, I'm not sad for Gould.”

“I know.”

“It's that I often cry. That's all.”

“Don't worry, Professor, I like people who cry.”

“That's good.”

“Seriously. I've always liked them.”

They never saw each other again, after that.

Anyway, Thesis No. 3 (Men express ideas that are not theirs) was followed, with a certain logic, by Thesis No. 4. Which went like this:

Ideas, once they have been expressed and therefore subjected to public pressure, become artificial objects lacking a true relationship with their origin. Men refine them so ingeniously that they become lethal. In time men discover that they can be used as weapons. They don't think about it for a moment. And they fire.

“Grand,” said Shatzy.

“Rather long, but it came to me long, I still have to work on it,” Prof. Mondrian Kilroy declared.

“I think it could even go just like this:
Ideas: they were
apparitions, now they are weapons.
”

“Perhaps a little compressed, don't you think?”

“You mean?”

“You see, it's a tragedy, a real tragedy. One must beware of summarizing it in a few words.”

“A tragedy?”

The professor chewed his pizza and nodded. He really was convinced that it was a tragedy. He had even thought of giving the
Essay
a subtitle, and the subtitle would have been:
Analysis of a necessary tragedy.
Then he decided that subtitles are repulsive, like white socks or gray loafers. Only the Japanese wear gray loafers. It was possible, however, that they had eye trouble, and were absolutely convinced that their loafers were brown. In that case it would be imperative to warn them of their mistake.

You know, Gould, it's taken years to resign myself to the evidence. I didn't want to believe it. On paper the relationship with the truth is so beautiful—unique, inimitable—and the magic of ideas, magnificent apparitions of the confused infinite in your mind . . . How is it possible that men choose to renounce all that, to deny it, and agree to mess around with insignificant, artificial little ideas—little marvels of intellectual engineering, for goodness' sake—but in the end trinkets, pathetic trinkets, masterpieces of rhetoric and logical acrobatics, but trinkets, in the end, gadgets, and all this just because of an uncontrollable taste for
fighting
? I couldn't believe it, I thought there must be something behind it, something that had escaped me, and yet, in the end, I had to admit that it was all very simple, and inevitable, and even comprehensible, if only you could overcome your repugnance and look at the matter from close up, very close up, even if it disgusts you, try to see it from close up. Take a person who lives on ideas, a professional, say, a scholar, a scholar of something, OK? He must have begun out of passion, surely he began because he had talent, he was one of those who have apparitions of the infinite, let's imagine that he had had such apparitions as a young man, and was awestruck by them. He must have tried to write them down, first maybe he talked with someone, then one day he must have thought he would be able to write them, and he started out, with the best intentions, and he wrote, though he knew that he would succeed in conveying only the tiniest portion of the infinity in his head, but believing that he would have time later to deepen the discussion, to explain himself better, to set it all down properly. He writes, and people read. People he doesn't even know search him out to learn more, others invite him to conferences where they can attack him, he defends himself, expounds, corrects, attacks in turn, begins to recognize a small band that is on his side and an alliance of enemies that wants to destroy him: he begins to
exist,
Gould. He doesn't have time to realize this but he is inspired, he likes the struggle, he discovers what it means to enter a classroom under the adoring gaze of the students, he sees respect in the eyes of ordinary people, he is surprised at his desire to attract the hatred of some famous person, and in the end seeks it out, gains it, maybe three lines in a footnote in a book on something else, but they are three lines that drip with rancor, he is smart enough to quote them in an interview with some journal in the field, and a few weeks later, in a newspaper, he finds himself labeled as the adversary of the famous professor, there is even a photograph, in the paper, a picture of him,
he sees a picture of himself in a newspaper,
and many others see it, too, it's a gradual thing but with every passing day he and his artificial idea become a single entity that makes its way in the world, the idea is like the carburetor, and he is the engine, they make their way together, and it's something, Gould, that he never imagined, you must understand this clearly, he didn't expect all this to happen, he didn't even want it, in truth, but now it has happened, and he
exists
in his artificial idea, an idea that gets farther and farther away from the original apparition of the infinite, having been serviced a thousand times to stand up to attacks, an artificial idea, solid and permanent, already tested, without which the scholar would immediately cease to exist and would be swallowed up again in the swamp of ordinary existence. Put like that, it doesn't even seem too serious—to be swallowed up again in the swamp of ordinary existence—and for years I couldn't grasp the gravity of it, but the secret is to get even closer, an even closer look, I know it's revolting, but you've got to follow me there, Gould, hold your nose and come look, this scholar, this scholar had a father, look at him even closer, a harsh father, stupidly harsh, who for years was intent on crushing his son, making him feel the weight of his constant and blatant inadequacy, and he does this up until the day he sees his son's name in a newspaper, printed in a newspaper, it doesn't matter why, the fact is that his friends start saying Congratulations, I saw your son in the paper, it's revolting, right?, but he is impressed, and the son finds what he never had the power to find, that is, a belated revenge, and this is tremendous, to be able to look your father in the eye, there is no price for revenge like this, what does it mean to fool around with your ideas a little, forgetful of any connection with their origin, when you are finally able to be the son of your father, the properly authorized and approved son? No price is too high to pay for the respect of your father, believe me, nor, if you think about it, for the freedom that our scholar finds in money, his first real money, which a professorship at a second-rate university begins to put in his pockets, removing him from the daily grind of poverty and guiding him along the inclined plane of small luxuries that at last—finally, in the end—leads to the longed-for house on the hill, with study and library: a mere nothing, in theory, but tremendous, actually, when, in an article by yet another journalist, it shows up as the scholar's private refuge, where he finds a haven from the scintillating life that besieges him, a life more imaginary than not, but, as displayed against the reality of his shelter, it is true, and therefore impressed in the mind of the public, which from that moment will have a regard for the scholar that he can no longer do without, because it is a regard that, by abstaining from any sort of verification, gives, a priori, respect and eminence and impunity. You can do without it when you don't know it. But afterwards? When you have seen it in the eyes of your neighbor on the beach, and of the man who sells you a car, and of the publisher you would never even have dreamed of knowing, and of the television actress and—once, in the mountains—of the Cabinet secretary, in person? Nauseating, right? Rather, it means we're close to the heart of things. No pity, Gould. It's not the moment to give in. You can get even closer. The wife. The wife of the scholar, the girl next door since the age of twelve, he's always loved her, married her almost automatically, as a legitimate defense against the neglect of destiny, a faded, sympathetic wife without passion, a good wife, the wife now of a successful professor and his deadly artificial idea, a wife happy to the core, look at her carefully. When she wakes up. When she gets out of the bath. Look at her. The bathrobe, everything. Look at her. And then look at him, the scholar, a man on the short side, with a sad smile, flaking dandruff, not that there's anything wrong, but flaking dandruff, beautiful hands, yes, pale slender hands that unfailingly cup his chin in the photographs, beautiful hands, the rest pitiful, you must make an effort, Gould, and try to see him
naked,
a man like that, it's important to see him naked, believe me, white and soft, with flabby muscles and, in the middle of his groin, nothing to be proud of, what
chances,
in the daily struggle, can a male animal like that have for mating?, very few and very modest, no way around it, and that would be the case, in fact, if not for the artificial idea, which has transformed an animal headed for the slaughter into a fighter, and even, in the long run, the pack leader, who carries a leather briefcase and adds an artistic fake limp, and who now, if you look carefully, walks down the steps of the university and is accosted by a student, a girl, who shyly introduces herself and, talking, bumps along with him to the street and then down the slippery slope of a friendship that gets more and more intimate, it's disgusting just to think about, but so useful to contemplate, thoroughly, however revolting it may be, so useful to study, to grasp in all its details, down to the final triumph in her apartment, a rented room with a big bed and a Peruvian bedspread, he gets there, with his briefcase and his dandruff, on the excuse of correcting a bibliography, and through hours of laborious disguised courtship strips away the girl's resistance with the forceps and scalpel of his artificial idea, and, thanks to a little column that for some weeks he's had in a weekly, he finds the courage, and in a certain sense the right, to lay a hand, one of his beautiful hands, on this girl's skin, skin that no destiny would ever have allotted him but which his artificial idea now offers up, together with the unbuttoned blouse, the tongue illogically parting his thin gray lips, the feminine breath panting in his ear, and the dazzling glimpse of a tanned, beautiful young hand tight around his sex. Incredible. You think there's a price, for all this? There isn't, Gould. You think that that man would ever be able to give all this up on the mere formality of being honest, of respecting the infinity of his ideas, of going back to ask what is true and what isn't? Do you think it will ever occur to that man to wonder, even in secret, even in absolute, impenetrable solitude, if his artificial idea still has anything to do with the truth, with its origins? No. (Thesis No. 5: “Men use ideas as weapons, and in doing so they detach themselves from the ideas forever.”) He is by now too far away from the point where he started, and it has been too long since he inhabited his ideas, in honesty, simplicity and peace. You can't reconstruct that sort of honesty once your betrayal of it has given you an existence, an entire existence, you who would not have been able to exist, would have gone on for years until you dropped dead. You don't give back an entire life, after stealing it from destiny, just because one day you look at yourself in the mirror and are disgusted. Our professor will die dishonest, but at least he will die having lived.

As he spoke, he became, obviously, emotional. Not that he actually cried. But glistening eyes and a catch in his throat, that sort of thing. He was made that way.

Once Poomerang asked Prof. Mondrian Kilroy why he didn't publish the
Essay on Intellectual Honesty.
He didn't say you could make a nice thick book, with a lot of blank pages, and here and there, inserted at random, the six theses. Prof. Mondrian Kilroy said it was a good idea, but he didn't think he would publish the essay, because deep down he had a suspicion that it was too naive. He found it infantile. He also said, however, that in a certain sense he liked it precisely because it was a hair's breadth away from being naive and infantile but was never that way completely; it hung, so to speak, in the balance, and this made him suspect that it was, in reality, an idea, in the full sense of the term. In the
honest
sense of the term. Then he said that, in truth, he no longer understood a damn thing. And he asked if there was any more pizza.

One thing was certain, that he was now vomiting more and more often, not because of the pizza, but whenever he got too close to various professors and intellectuals. Sometimes all it took was reading an article in the newspaper, or a book blurb. The day of the English scholar, for example, the one who stared fixedly into space, he would have liked to stay and listen, he was interested in hearing him speak and all, but it was completely impossible, in the end he had vomited, and it had been a big mess, so that afterwards he had to go and apologize to the rector and the only thing he could think of saying was to obsessively repeat the phrase “You see what a fine person he is, I'm sure he is a fine person.” He was referring to the English scholar. Rector Bolder looked at him speechless. “You can see that he's a fine person, I'm sure he's a fine person.” And the next day, while they were washing the trailer, he kept on with that nonsense about how the man was a fine person. To Gould it seemed ridiculous.