The Book of Disquiet (55 page)

And I ask the conscious vestige that I still conserve, in this confused series of intervals between non-existent things, what good it did me to fill so many pages with phrases I believed in as my own, with emotions I felt as if I had thought them up, with flags and army banners that
finally amount to no more than pieces of paper stuck together with spit by the daughter of the beggar who sits under the eaves.

I ask what remains of me why I bothered with these useless pages, dedicated to rubbish and dispersion, lost even before existing among Destiny’s ripped up papers.

I ask but I proceed. I write down the question, wrap it up in new phrases, unravel it with new emotions. And tomorrow I’ll go back to my stupid book, jotting down the daily impressions of my cold lack of conviction.

Let them keep coming. Once the dominoes are all played and the game is won or lost, the pieces are turned over and the finished game is black.

What Hells and Purgatories and Heavens I have inside me! But who sees me do anything that disagrees with life – me, so calm and peaceful?

I don’t write in Portuguese. I write my own self.

Everything has become unbearable except for life. The office, my home, the streets – and even their contrary, if that were my lot – overwhelm and oppress me. Only their ensemble brings me relief. Yes, anything that comes from the whole ensemble is enough to console me: a ray of sunlight that eternally enters the dead office, a vendor’s cry that flits up to the window of my room, the existence of people, the fact that there are climates and changes in weather, the world’s astonishing objectivity…

The ray of sun suddenly entered the office for me, who suddenly saw it… It was actually an extremely sharp, almost colourless blade of light that sliced the dark wooden floor, quickening the old nails
over which it passed, along with the furrows between the boards, black lines on non-white.

For several minutes I studied the almost imperceptible effect of the sun penetrating into the still office… Pastimes of prisons! Only the incarcerated watch the sun move this way, like someone observing a file of ants.

It is said that tedium is a disease of the idle, or that it attacks only those who have nothing to do. But this ailment of the soul is in fact more subtle: it attacks people who are predisposed to it, and those who work or who pretend they work (which in this case comes down to the same thing) are less apt to be spared than the truly idle.

Nothing is worse than the contrast between the natural splendour of the inner life, with its natural Indias and its unexplored lands, and the squalor (even when it’s not really squalid) of life’s daily routine. And tedium is more oppressive when there’s not the excuse of idleness. The tedium of those who strive hard is the worst of all.

Tedium is not the disease of being bored because there’s nothing to do, but the more serious disease of feeling that there’s nothing worth doing. This means that the more there is to do, the more tedium one will feel.

How often, when I look up from the ledger where I enter amounts, my head is devoid of the whole world! I’d be better off remaining idle, doing nothing and having nothing to do, because that tedium, though real enough, I could at least enjoy. In my present tedium there is no rest, no nobility, and no well-being against which to feel unwell: there’s a vast effacement of every act I do, rather than a potential weariness from acts I’ll never do.

The tedium of Khayyám isn’t the tedium of those who, because they don’t know how to do anything, naturally don’t know what to do. This tedium belongs to those who were born dead and who understandably turn to morphine or cocaine. The tedium of the Persian sage is more noble and profound. It’s the tedium of one who clearly considered and saw that everything was obscure, of one who took stock of all the religions and philosophies and said, like Solomon: ‘I saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit.’ Or in the words of another king, the emperor Septimus Severus, when he said farewell to power and the world: ‘Omnia fui, nihil expedit.’ ‘I’ve been everything; nothing’s worth the trouble.’

Life, according to Tarde,* is the search for the impossible by way of the useless, which is what Omar Khayyám would have said, if he had said it.

That’s why the Persian insists on the use of wine. ‘Drink! Drink!’ sums up his practical philosophy. It’s not the kind of drinking inspired by happiness, which drinks to become even happier, more itself. Nor is it the drinking inspired by despair, which drinks to forget, to be less itself. Happiness adds vigour and love to the wine, and in Khayyám we find no note of energy, no words of love. The wispy, gracile figure of Sáki appears only occasionally in the
Rubáiyát
, and she is merely ‘the girl who serves the wine’. The poet appreciates her elegant shape as he appreciated the shape of the amphora containing the wine.

Dean Aldrich* is an example of how happiness speaks of wine:

If all be true that I do think,

There are five reasons we should drink;

Good wine – a friend – or being dry –

Or lest we should be by and by –

Or any other reason why.

The practical philosophy of Khayyám is essentially a mild form of Epicureanism, with only a slight trace of desire for pleasure. To see
roses and drink wine is enough for him. A gentle breeze, a conversation without point or purpose, a cup of wine, flowers – in this, and in nothing else, the Persian sage places his highest desire. Love agitates and wearies, action dissipates and comes to nothing, no one knows how to know, and to think muddles everything. Better to cease from desire and hope, from the futile pretension of explaining the world, and from the foolish ambition of improving or governing it. Everything is nothing, or, as recorded in The Greek Anthology, ‘All that exists comes from unreason.’ And it was a Greek,* hence a rational soul, who said it.

We are ultimately indifferent to the truth or falseness of all religions, all philosophies, and all the uselessly verifiable hypotheses we call sciences. Nor are we really concerned about the fate of so-called humanity, or about what as a whole it does or doesn’t suffer. Charity, yes, for our ‘neighbour’, as the Gospel says, and not for man, of whom it says nothing. And we all feel this way to a certain extent. How much does a massacre in China really disturb even the most noble of us? It’s more heart-rending, even for the most sensitively imaginative, to see a child in the street get slapped for no apparent reason.

Charity for all, intimacy with none. Thus FitzGerald, in one of his notes, interprets a certain aspect of Khayyám’s ethics.

The Gospel recommends love towards our neighbour; it doesn’t mention love towards man or towards humanity, which no one can help or improve.

Some may wonder if I myself subscribe to the philosophy of Khayyám as restated and interpreted here (with fair accuracy, I believe). I would have to say that I don’t know. On certain days it seems to me the best, and even the only, practical philosophy there is. On other days it strikes me as void, dead and useless, like an empty glass. Because I think, I don’t know myself. And so I don’t know what I really think. If I had faith, I would be different, but I would also be different if I were crazy. I would be different, yes, if I were different.

Besides these lessons from the profane world, there are, of course, the secret teachings of esoteric orders, the mysteries that are freely acknowledged but kept strictly secret, and the veiled mysteries embodied in public rites. There are things hidden, or half hidden, in great universal rites such as the Marian Ritual of the Roman Church, or the Freemasons’ Ceremony of the Spirit.

But who’s to say that the initiate, having entered the inner sanctum of mystery, isn’t merely the eager prey of a new facet of our illusion? What certainty can he have, if a madman is even more certain of his mad ideas? Spencer compared our knowledge to a sphere which, as it expands, touches more and more on all that we don’t know. And I also remember, with respect to secret initiations and what they can offer us, the terrible words of a Grand Wizard: ‘I have seen Isis and touched Isis, but I do not know if she exists.’

Omar had a personality; I, for better or worse, have none. In an hour I’ll have strayed from what I am at this moment; tomorrow I’ll have forgotten what I am today. Those who are who they are, like Omar, live in just one world, the external one. Those who aren’t who they are, like me, live not only in the external world but also in a diversified, ever-changing inner world. Try as we might, we could never have the same philosophy as Omar’s. I harbour in me, like unwanted souls, the very philosophies I criticize. Omar could reject them all, for they were all external to him, but I can’t reject them, because they’re me.

There are inner sufferings so subtle and so diffuse that we can’t tell whether they belong to the body or the soul, whether they’re an anxiety that comes from our feeling that life is futile or an indisposition originating in some organic abyss such as the stomach, liver or brain. How often my normal self-awareness becomes turbid with the stirred dregs of an anguished stagnation! How often it hurts me to exist, with a nausea so indefinite I’m not sure if it’s tedium or a warning that I’m about to vomit! How often…

Today my soul is sad unto my body. All of me hurts: memory, eyes and arms. It’s like a rheumatism in all that I am. My being isn’t touched by the day’s limpid brightness, by the sheer blue sky, by this unabating high tide of diffuse light. I’m not soothed by the soft cool breeze – autumnal but reminiscent of summer – which gives the air personality. Nothing touches me. I’m sad, but not with a definite sadness, nor even with an indefinite sadness. I’m sad down there, on the street littered with packing crates.

These expressions don’t exactly translate what I feel, for surely nothing can exactly translate what one feels. But I try to convey at least some impression of what I feel, a blend of various views of me and of the street, which is also, since I see it, a part of me in some profound way I can’t fathom.

I’d like to live a different life in far-off lands. I’d like to die as someone else among unfamiliar flags. I’d like to be acclaimed emperor in other eras, better today because they’re not of today, and we see them as hazy, colourful, enigmatic novelties. I’d like to have all that could make what I am ridiculous, and precisely because it would make what I am ridiculous. I’d like, I’d like… But there’s always the sun when the sun is shining and the night when the night falls. There’s always grief when grief troubles us and dreams when dreams lull us. There’s always what there is, and never what there should be, not for being better or worse but for being different. There’s always…

The loaders are clearing the crates off the street. Amid jokes and laughter they place the crates one by one on to wagons. I’m looking down at them from my office window, with sluggish eyes whose eyelids
are sleeping. And something subtle and inscrutable links what I feel to the freight that’s being loaded; some strange sensation makes a crate out of all my tedium, or anxiety, or nausea, which is hoisted on the shoulders of someone who’s loudly joking and then loaded on to a wagon that’s not there. And in the narrow street, the ever serene daylight diagonally shines on where they’re hoisting the crates – not on the crates themselves, which are in the shade, but on the far corner where the delivery boys are occupied in doing nothing, indeterminately.

Something still more portentous, like a black expectation, now hovered in the air, so that even the rain seemed intimidated; a speechless darkness fell over the atmosphere. And suddenly, like a scream, a dreadful day shattered. The light of a cold hell swept through the contents of all things, filling minds and crannies. Everything gaped in awe, and then heaved a sigh of relief, for the strike had passed. The almost human sound* of the sad rain was happy. Hearts automatically pounded hard, and thinking made one dizzy. A vague religion formed in the office. No one was himself, and Senhor Vasques appeared at the door of his office to say he didn’t quite know what. Moreira smiled, the fringes of his face still yellow from the sudden fright, and his smile was no doubt saying that the next bolt of thunder would strike further away. A swift wagon loudly broke in on the usual noises from the street. The telephone shivered uncontrollably. Instead of retreating to his private office, Vasques stepped towards the phone in the common office. There was a respite, a silence, and the rain fell like a nightmare. Vasques forgot about the phone, which had stopped ringing. The office boy fidgeted in the back of the office like a bothersome object.

An enormous joy, full of deliverance and peace of mind, disconcerted us all. We returned to our work a bit light-headed, becoming spontaneously sociable and pleasant with each other. Without being told to, the office boy opened wide the windows. The fragrance of something fresh entered with the damp air into the office. The now gentle
rain fell humbly. The sounds from the street, which were the same as before, were different. We could hear the voices of the wagoners, and they were really people. The clear-ringing bells of the trams a block over participated in our sociability. A lone child’s burst of laughter was like a canary in the limpid atmosphere. The gentle rain tapered off.

It was six o’clock. The office was closing. Through the half-open door of his private office Senhor Vasques said, ‘You can all go now,’ pronouncing the words like a business benediction. I immediately stood up, closed the ledger and put it away. I returned my pen with a deliberate gesture to its place in the inkstand, walked towards Moreira while pronouncing a ‘See you tomorrow’ full of hope, and then shook his hand as if he’d done me a big favour.

Travel? One need only exist to travel. I go from day to day, as from station to station, in the train of my body or my destiny, leaning out over the streets and squares, over people’s faces and gestures, always the same and always different, just like scenery.