Pictor's Metamorphoses (20 page)

Report from Normalia

(A Fragment from the Year 1948)

M
Y DEAR
, most devoted, and highly esteemed Friend, because in your goodness you encourage me to do so, I will resume our correspondence—which has always seemed on my part more like a monologue than a dialogue, and which has been broken off during these years of terrible misfortune—and once again I will report to you about my life and the general state of affairs here in Normalia. Admittedly, you may well be better informed than I about our state and its establishments, hemmed in as I am by my own subjectivity; I feel very much at home here, even if something peculiar, contradictory, or alienating in our community and our way of life now and then makes me feel surprised or shocked, derided or deceived, or even led about by the nose. Well now, that's how it is here, and probably it is and was like this everywhere and at all other times on earth; and, as I've already said, I am comfortable here and have neither the intention nor the need to criticize or complain of conditions here. On the contrary, in our far-reaching Institution, the quality of life is good; and the riddles posed by our life in Normalia perhaps are not so very different from those in your own Nordblock, or whatever name your country may go by nowadays. We are, for example, preoccupied with and unsettled by the question of who now holds the position of Director——but for the moment, let me remain silent on this all-important matter. There is another question about which we are but meagerly informed: how, since the downfall of the last Tyrannis, did we arrive at the present Dictatorship of the Classes, as we ourselves officially designate it? But you are probably far more interested in another question, or rather a complex of questions, in that very question which touches on the legends of the early history of our Institution—or more properly, our wide-ranging and densely populated community. As you know, we of Normalia live here as voluntary, autonomous, self-governing inmates of a network of provinces which belongs to the West–Eastern Federal Dictatorial Conglomerate of States. However, the cradle of our country and community was a small landscaped park, scarcely encompassing one square mile of ground in the north of Aquitaine; and at the time of the last political and martial upheavals, this park with its dozen or so buildings was nothing other than a medium-sized, very well run Insane Asylum. The official historians explain our asylum's transformation into an autonomous state and country as follows: since the beginning of the Glorious Epoch, there has been an enormous rise in anxiety and other mass psychoses, in consequence of which the famed Asylum was beset by a huge influx of patients; thus, out of the settlement arose a village, a complex of villages, finally a complex of districts and cities, and soon our country as we now know it had come into being. Along with it there sprang up a system of institutions, corresponding to the needs of the richly varied categories of patients, institutions for the seriously and less-seriously disturbed, for addicts, for neurotics, for the merely nervous, etc., etc.; and while, then as now, the various asylums for the seriously ill were under the direction of doctors who followed the principles of the psychiatric practice of their day, all around these homes sprang up a little world of settlements and communal residences, in which there was neither doctor nor psychiatric practice, and which—owing to their rather pleasant living conditions—experienced a huge influx of people seeking peace and quiet, people from all parts of the Western world. And so it happened, so we believe and so the legend tells us, that not long after the stabilization of the W.–E. Conglomerate of States, our community came into existence, founded on the principle of a dictatorship of the classes, an Institute comprising thirty million reasonable and rational inmates, one into which every reasonable and rational man, provided he has passed certain tests and fulfilled certain requirements, has the right to enter. Thus it is in opposition to the original designation of our Asylum that our Institute-which-has-been-expanded-into-a-State unites the healthy and the normal; the remaining and far greater part of the Conglomerate, whose member states have been blown together by the east and the west winds, is populated and ruled by the more or less sick and disturbed. So says the legend, and basically we are satisfied with it and believe in it, just as every living creature must and does believe in its own existence. Only in more recent times, hand in hand with other irritating theories and notions, another troublesome notion has crept into our heads: An age-old characteristic symptom of the insane is the delight they take in appearing and posing as normal, healthy people; and so the notion has arisen among us that we are by no means reasonable and rational, rather that we are of unsound mind, our state is no state at all; in fact, we are quite simply inmates of an enormous asylum full of madmen. As I've already said, this is the single question which only a few of us from time to time seriously contemplate; but of course this pertains to the more refined and gifted among us, and the question of whether it is we or the others who are the madmen constitutes the principal subject matter of the philosophies and speculations of our men of genius. We others, we who are older and more detached, usually hold ourselves more to the general rules of the game and either believe purely and simply in the legend as handed down, hence in our sanity and the voluntary nature of our sojourn in Normalia, or else we are of the opinion that it would be pointless to distress ourselves with questions that cannot be answered, and it matters little to determine whether one is crazy or normal, whether one is the monkey in the cage or the gawking member of the Zoological Gardens who stares in through the bars from outside; rather, it is more proper and fitting to see Existence as well as Metaphysics as a game, one far from problem-free, but genuinely meaningful and charming, and to be glad of the many good and beautiful things we can experience while playing it. Nonetheless, as concerns the person and functions of our Herr Director, I must admit that even I have entertained all sorts of doubts and perhaps impudently have tried my own hand at penetrating the veil of mystery which surrounds him. But of that I shall not, for the time being, say another word; so much still remains to be clarified and settled before one can even venture to tackle this most delicate problem with the crude means of language and logic. Let us, venerable Patron, confine ourselves to the near and apparently clear, and let us, as far as possible, try to contain our speculations within proper bounds.

At present, after many changes of domicile, I live once again, as I did years ago, in the actual heart of Normalia, in one of the newer buildings on the grounds of the former Insane Asylum, not far from the hedge that separates the famous old park from the large kitchen garden. This place of residence, like all others in our State, has its advantages and disadvantages, its special local traditions, privileges, and obligations; for in a still relatively young federation of states, comprised of diverse districts, each with its individual early history, even the most powerful Constitution and ideology cannot succeed in annihilating the persistent, strong, provincial, individual ways of life. For example, we inmates of old- or Ur-Normalia don't have to trouble ourselves very much about civic duties; that is to say, we have the right but not the obligation to vote; and the most important civic function, the payment of taxes, is taken care of for us by the Institution's managers; we don't need to worry about it. As long as we still have a credit balance, the sums are charged to our accounts; when this credit balance is exhausted, the state sends us—so that once again we can become sources of revenue—to another locality, placing us in any one of a number of different trades—of course, in strict accordance with the principle of voluntary self-determination. At present, to the best of my knowledge, my credit balance will suffice for many another quarterly bill and tax payment, unless once again we find ourselves in one of those extremely serious crises in which the entire population rises up in unanimous revolt and takes its collective fortune to the Offices of the Tax Authorities, forcing the authorities to accept it under threat of possible violence, to the great displeasure of the civil servants—for, under our Constitution, whenever the State becomes Sole Owner of all individual fortunes, all civil servants are dismissed, there being nothing more for them to collect. But these are arrangements with which you, esteemed Friend, presumably are far better acquainted than I, for even as an inhabitant of today's fully perfected conglomerate state, I have become, to some extent, an individualist and a dreamer, an ignorant and noncommitted follower. After such a long interruption of our correspondence, allow me first of all to reestablish our former intimacy and get on with my story, and perhaps I will be able to tell you something interesting; I mean particulars of my own and our communal life which may strike you as new and amusing.

Among these many particulars is one I've already hinted at: the existence of the many regional peculiarities and special laws in our various districts, provinces, and cities; peculiarities conditioned by historical and in part ancient traditions, which, in spite of the voluntary dictatorial union, persist with great tenacity. So, for example, three or four years ago I was exhorted by the authorities to voluntarily and spontaneously effect a change of my place of residence, and to go to the city of Flachsenfingen, about which I had read many interesting things. I had leased and settled down in a garden pavilion, had gone for a few strolls; but no sooner had I sat down on an inviting park bench and started to write down a few lines of poetry than a policeman on a motorcycle came storming toward me at the speed of a gale wind; he asked me what I was doing.

“I'm writing a poem,” I said, “if you've nothing against it.”

“Oh,” he said, a note of correction in his voice, “I would scarcely be worthy of my office if I had nothing against it. Writing poetry, you say? Now, let's see some proof of your qualifications, your permit. How about your guild card?”

Abashed, I confessed that I possessed no such thing, but I allowed myself to add that, to my knowledge, nowhere in the Constitution of Normalia was it written that one was obligated to join or show proof of membership in a guild.

“Are you trying to teach me what I already know?” he cried indignantly. “Forget about Normalia, we are in Flachsenfingen. Are you trying to tell me that you haven't got any papers? That you don't belong to a guild at all?”

That, in fact, was my case exactly, and now I learned that in this city nothing was as absolutely taboo and impossible as practicing any profession whatsoever without belonging to a guild. I had to hand over my paper and pencil and follow the severe man to the Town Hall, where I was brought before the mayor—he was actually quite a congenial man; I had to answer his numerous questions, and after I had grasped what all this was about, I asked whether I was to be assigned to the Poetic or Literary Guild. Now it was he who was somewhat embarrassed, because there was no such guild in his city. After I had been obliged to take an oath not to practice any profession whatsoever until I was assigned to a guild, the town council was convened; following a long-winded and lively debate, it was decided that I seemed best suited for the Tailors Guild, which thus ought to be asked to instate me. A few days went by before the chief officers of the Tailors Guild sought me out and told me that actually they neither could nor wanted to take up the statutes of their guild with me, but their eldest member had just died and thus there was an opening for me, provided that I would be approved by a unanimous vote of the full membership and was willing to guarantee my obedience to the laws of the guild. Of course I gave them my word on it all, as long as it was consistent with my honor as a human being and a poet. And after another meeting, at which I was brought up before the guild for questioning, I was invited on a trial basis to attend one of the solemn ceremonies of the guild; namely, the funeral of the eldest guild brother. So, somewhat faint of heart, I marched in the funeral procession behind the guild's banner, which was said to have been donated during the golden age of Flachsenfingen, under the auspices of Foreign Minister Richter. After the services had taken place and we had lain down our garlands, we went to the Linden to have a light meal with good white wine, of which we drank quite a bit. I took advantage of the gay, relaxed, lighthearted mood that had set in to take one of the worthy men aside and ask him if my prospects for membership appeared to be good.

“Ah,” he said benevolently, “and indeed, why not? So far, you have pleased us quite well; and that we've never before had a poet as a member is basically no obstacle. Frankly speaking, for my own part, it has always been my opinion up until now that a poet is someone who has written his collected works and has been dead for quite some time. Now you, on your part, ought to do something that will ingratiate you and demonstrate your good intentions.”

I explained that from the bottom of my heart I was prepared to do so, and asked him to advise me how I could best introduce myself to the gentlemen.

“Well,” he said, “it doesn't have to cost you the whole world. For example, you could tap on your glass, stand up, and say to them that in sympathy with the guild and its senior member—who now rests in the bosom of God—it would give you pleasure to compose a poem about the deceased and to pay for today's consumption of wine.”

“The idea of paying for the wine,” I said gratefully, “appeals to me a great deal. But how shall I compose a poem about a dead old man whom I did not know, never saw, and about whom I know nothing, except that he was a tailor and had the honor of belonging to your guild?”

“You are a stranger here,” my patron said. “Otherwise, you would know that our senior member was no more a tailor than the guild master or I or any of the other members. You yourself certainly are no tailor and yet you, too, want to become a member of our guild.”