The gun weighs exactly what it has always weighed. He is the one who is probably lighter. He hefts it again. Nothing must, nothing can surprise him now; except death, he thinks, when it bursts inside his head, astride its rocket of metal… howling its orders to black angels, screaming who knows what, something unintelligible and unshakeable that will be lost in the night of ages, in the plain night. He grimaces, sets the gun down on his knees and looks around him. There is no one. Thomas tries to calm himself.
Few people are likely to come by here; the place sits at the foot of a monastery, high on the shoulder of the mountain. Thomas did not want to take any chances and has dragged a few branches across the path. He found this spot three months ago. He had thought of bringing an axe and felling a small tree to block the way, but thought better of it. Doing too much is pointless.
It is almost winter, the day is beautiful, already cold. He settles the headphones over his ears but does not start the music. He waits. Don’t hesitate too long, follow your plan, you have very little time. He is not really listening to the orders of his thought. If everything is pointless, then it is equally pointless to hurry. All things being equal, he has only to let himself go.
The headphones filter out the sounds of life outside: muffled horns, muzzled sirens. And that great river that is the blood… The shell closes over. Starting the music now amounts to setting his death in motion.
“I’ve walked the whole garden, Hugo,” he used to say to his friend, “I’ve been all the way round it and there’s nothing left here for me to do.” He gives his head a small shake, watches the horizon where the suburbs pour away. He has only to close his eyes to find, intact, his urgency to act.
Yes, that’s it, he closes his eyes a moment. He makes out, by the shadows they cast on his eyelids, the trees leaning to the left, then to the right, at the whim of the wind. He sees northern lights against his eyelids. The ground seems to give way. Is dying as dizzying as this? He opens his eyes.
Come now.
He tries again to look ahead of him, at the horizon. The sensation is strange. He feels himself already floating, almost dead at last, attached to his skin by one last thin thread of consciousness, pitching and waltzing like a strand of weed in the opaque river of the Unknown. He wants death to happen like this. Click, no thought, bang, fffffffff, a wave rising, fffffffff, a wave falling.
You’re making it up. You’re sitting on a mountain and you’re cold. And you’re taking far too long about it. You’re doing everything you can not to listen to yourself.
He tries to deny it, forces himself to a better control, straightens up, turns up the collar of his coat. He waits and does not know why. Let him close his eyes and the vertigo starts again. Let him open them and the distractions come flying or the truths come thundering like so many death squads. The moment is almost magical. Electric. Yes, electric. How he would have liked his life to be made that way. Electric and magical. Miraculous? He tries in vain to silence all these words. He would like it to be simple, as simple as his reasoning.
Why do you want to die, anyway? Do you still know? —Of course I know.
Is he afraid? He doesn’t want to think about it just yet. The cool air does him good. He has spent too much time shut up at home and had forgotten how good the wind could be. The place offers him none of the comfort he would have wished for. The stone he is sitting on is cold and the sun no longer has the strength to temper the first horsemen of the storm. He rocks. A little forward, a little back, a little in the middle, like a tree. He corrects himself. Not like a tree, he has no roots, no longer has any, he is a tree someone forgot to plant back in the ground, roots spread out across the soil, powerless to counterbalance the lurching of the wind.
So fragile, then? You’re leaving because you’re fragile? —I’m leaving, and that’s that.
The monastery at his back offers him very poor shelter. Thomas turns to study the building. It is a construction from another age, onto which more modern wings have been added like bad grafts. The whole thing suggests a high school, a prison and a shopping mall all at once. The stone it is made of has already absorbed the solitude of its inhabitants and gives off nothing anymore.
Do the monks suspect what is being plotted at the foot of their monastery? Thomas holds the gun too close to himself for anyone to guess his intentions. If they watch him, they will think instead that he is out looking for sex. It’s a jungle, this mountain; it belongs to the hungry, desires meet here and murky trades are concluded here. No wonder the monastery was built on it. Wolves with wolves. He imagines the monks, suffocating in their compulsory intimacy, tittering with interest at the serpents prowling around the walls, their round eyes, their brave hands on their sinning sex… Brother Bursar, Brother Watcher, Brother Fondle, Brother Sodomite… Brother of the End of the World, Brother Inseminator… Thomas grips the gun closer to him. Stop it, for God’s sake, you don’t have time to dawdle over this nonsense. His pulse quickens. He can feel it drumming against his headphones, still silent.
He shakes his head. You’re afraid, he tells himself, you’re not concentrating. He lowers his eyes. The gun is not loaded. It belonged to his father’s father. The old man gave it to him for his eighteenth birthday. No party, no cake, no one else in the kitchen. He had gone to fetch it from under his bed, wrapped in its grey flannel, and had set it on the table between the two of them. Here. Nothing more. Then he had spread out newspaper, taken out the oil, the rod, the little squares of cotton, and had shown him. How to open it. How to oil it. How not to over-oil it.
He hadn’t given it to his son. He died the following winter. Nobody ever knew it existed. No paper claims it, no office has ever counted it. It belongs to nothing. The bullets came from him too. The same small box, never opened.
Thirty-two years. Once a year, on the kitchen table, on sheets of newspaper. The oil, the rod, the squares of cotton he cut himself with scissors. It was his way of remembering the man who had seemed to him the kindest in the family.
Thomas has never fired a single bullet. He never understood why the old man made him that gift.
He didn’t mean anything by it. He gave you an old revolver because he had nothing else to give. You made a religion of it for thirty-two years.
He finally wraps the gun back in its flannel and sets it on the ground. He takes off the headphones. The sounds and the urgencies of the city flood into his thinking. He draws his arms against his chest, wedges his hands under his armpits, rocks again.
He cannot get warm. The weather is colder than he had expected, too. The day hides the storm it holds in store, but it gives itself away by the wind it can barely contain. Why didn’t he bring a blanket? He will have forgotten half of what he meant to bring. You’ll have been taken by surprise. He nods. Looking at the sky when he woke, the message was clear: it was fine out, the weathermen were forecasting the storm of the century for that evening. He had to move fast. This is it, it’s today. He had lain face down, his head buried in the pillows. If you don’t do it today, you’ll have to cross the whole winter, you’ll have to endure your misery. You’ve given everything away. You emptied out your credit cards and asked Hugo to put the money in a safe deposit box. If you die, he pockets it, it’ll help him write. You gave your car to a friend, you said you were leaving for California to do out there what you failed to do here. People believed you and found you brave. At your age. You’re not in the habit of lying; you like being direct, but you soon noticed the wall of incomprehension that went up whenever you tried to confide in someone. You’re leaving incognito, you’ve planned everything. You say you’re leaving happy, you’ve left letters for everyone, you’ll mail them before you climb the mountain. There’s nothing left to say, your life stops here before you get too old, penniless, sick, dependent on doctors greedy for your insides. Before body and mind really start to fail, before you become a burden on a society that doesn’t give a damn whether anyone else exists, before that’s all you have left to mutter to yourself for the next twenty years, the mistakes of the past, the miseries piled up like crumbling dunes at the edge of the ocean, the leaking prostate, the cup running over… No, no, no. Leaving happy, you say. Even so. It’s easy to say, now do it. Believe in it and go all the way through with this adventure. Just standing up already costs you something. You’re almost dead.
He is suddenly very hot. Remembering is a trial.
Go back over your day. You have to be certain of what you’re doing. Mustn’t botch it. Mustn’t act the fool either. So: this morning. Remember. You got up and had your shower. You folded the towel neatly. Was that really necessary? Despite the discomfort of being naked in the chilly morning, you wandered about the living room like that, glancing now and then out the window. Yes, the day is magnificent. The late afternoon will spoil. It’s almost perfect. Too fine, and it suits your plans. It’s now or never, today you put an end to speech. You lit a cigarette and went on pacing. When you were a teenager you used to walk around the family house naked. Your mother let you. You were handsome, muscled, violent too, that strange gleam of a man in search of someone or something. Your mother would flee to her bedroom. You laughed at her; you were proud and yet not reassured. You always calmed down and went to get dressed. You became again the boy the girls fought over. Handsome and dark. Thirsty for sex and for pleasure. Girls, one after another, the other guys jealous, and you, that certainty of knowing yourself eternal. You showed off, displayed your intelligence the way a peacock unfurls its colours. Knowing yourself formidable intoxicated you. You said you loved women, wanted to be patient with them, whether they were generous or shut tight as oysters. You broke hearts because you weren’t trying, at the time, to understand the why of the how, the thousand and one lurchings of the unconscious. You were not always gentle. Come, come, fight, come. Success, money, travel, more women. You paid no attention to failures, you swept past them, because you knew life was long ahead of you. Your head was clear; you observed, you made your diagnoses, you operated. People admired you. People fled from you. Women. Coming alone, more and more. Women growing old. You who never wanted to fasten yourself to any fidelity. Forty. Key positions, an ease in getting people and getting things. Forty-five. And then forty-six, the breathlessness. Forty-seven, the silence. Suddenly no work at all. On the scrapheap, the man who was always right. The desire not to move anymore. Waiting for the first time, and finding yourself disappointed by it. All that for nothing? Forty-eight. Small contracts and scraps of hope. Most of the time you watch television until you come to prefer the commercial breaks, the only things capable of renewing themselves. Mute. The last women. There will be two of them. Rita, caught in the trap of her long years of marriage, who couldn’t bear to make her indifferent husband suffer and so went back to him. Poor Rita, beautiful, with breasts soft as desire, a white and nervous skin, the husband’s hands being so unagricultural, a soil so little worked that it drank up caresses the way desert sand drinks a storm, a soil therefore ready to dry out again very fast, out of habit. You believed in Rita…
He comes out of his reverie for a moment. Rita… He had been too honest with her… had shown her the dark side of his life. He understood now. He was, for her, a more scorching desert and a more merciless sun than the meagre oasis of her marriage.
Forty-nine, it might have worked with that young opera singer, but there again, a convoluted story, another private horror. Nothing but an exchange of letters between the two of you. She was indifferent at first, then interested by your penetrating writing. She must have had the most beautiful fantasies in the world, but you never got the chance to touch them. By your first meeting she was already elsewhere. You didn’t seem to be the man she was looking for. Was she looking for a man at all? Her search was leading her towards herself, no doubt, a great hole, an immense talent buried at the bottom of an enormous well. Another desert. A singer who will have her success and who will go looking for a dead soul to see herself in. There was of course a gulf too deep between you and that young woman. That’s the worst of it, the gulf, the drifting of your island, the tectonics of time, the plasma of your intelligence. Six months of torment, then six months of peace, because your logic was leading you where you are now, on the mountain, resolved to get off before the train derails. Derails too far. Already the end of your memories…
He shivers. Already the end is showing. He picks up the gun he had set down on the ground, looks at it again, weighs it in his hand. Already the end of this long day. He had finally made himself get dressed, then had gone down to have his breakfast at the restaurant in the building. The waitress, as usual, had smiled at him and brought him his coffee. They had talked about this and that. He had acted as if nothing were the matter and the waitress had noticed nothing. It is almost mechanical with her, speech. It comes with the service. Nor had Thomas tried to confess anything to her, nobody would understand, that much he knew. People are afraid and call you mad when you talk to them about existence. The subject is taboo, like deep suffering. Oh, everyday suffering, the kind you spread on your toast each morning, everyone has got used to that. They put it on television, in plays, in the soap operas that wash whiter than white. But real suffering, the unbearable heaviness of things, that we leave to the depressed and to the psychologists. Or to the Greeks. The sleepwalking of people sickens Thomas, and to see himself becoming like them, to see himself grow old and go out over the slow fire of impotence… no, that, never. Never.
And besides, you’ve said it to Hugo a hundred times, the human race is unconscious, it does not know and does not want to know where it is going. It wallows in its illogic and its contradictions. It is wicked, it devours the small and sucks the blood of the great. The diseases only carry different names. Life is nothing but a mad race towards life. You go round in circles, they go round in circles.
The unforgivable madness of living, the unchanging misery of humanity, the exploitations, the shabby exploited, the unwitting exploiters, the nuclear tests, the waste, the long wound each of us drags behind him, you used to say it all to Hugo, you painted him the portrait of this useless life in which no one can truly help anyone. The misery was there and is there still. If God exists, he is a sadist.
He shivers again. But if you met someone, Thomas, says Hugo’s voice, a memory, if you met someone, would that change your plans? He had denied it. No, it’s not worth it anymore, it’s too complicated. Hugo had added nothing. Even now, the gun in his hands, he drives the idea off as fast as he can. Too painful. Too much of everything, too much disappointment above all. No more than you deserve, says another voice, his own. Thomas nods. You get what you’ve got coming. You were never a soft touch. Where does that come from? He takes one good breath, very slow. He slides a hand into one of the pockets of his coat. Yes, the bullets are there. The vertigo. I don’t understand you, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Hugo’s voice. Damn it, he doesn’t need this. Go away, Hugo, go away. He sets the gun on his thighs and rubs his face. No, no breakdown. Control. Control yourself.
After the restaurant he had gone back up to his apartment. He had walked through it to make sure everything was in order. Since he had given away part of his furniture, the rooms looked bigger. He had given away almost everything and had made a great many people happy, because he never bought anything but the best and hardly ever used it. That ski outfit, for instance, ten years old and worn exactly once, that camera good enough for a professional, that brand-new computer. Given away, given away, given away! He had felt carried along by a new lightness. Not a pang, not a regret. What he had acquired could offer him nothing more. Better to give it away before the vultures of the tax office, the gluttons of inheritance or the civil servants of death seized his belongings to make up their shortfall. That’s it, you’re going up the mountain, today, take a good look around you, in a little while there’ll be the silence, the not-you, immortality, the void.
He had sat down one last time in his armchair. Say it again, you’re not doing it out of despair, you’re doing it to escape the unhappiness that’s coming. You’re leaving happy, you’re leaving happy. No day has ever seemed freer to you than today. You’re brave, nothing is forcing you, you’re doing it on principle, by an act of will, you’re strong, you’ve had enough. Your hands are damp, your feet are cold, your blood is drawing in towards your heart because it fears the worst; it’s frightened for you. Life has a horror of dust and of biblical commandments. Don’t sit too long, time is no longer money, it’s playing against you, against your project. You have to be quick, winter arrives tonight, you don’t like snow. You could blow your brains out in this apartment, but you don’t want that. You loathe mess, you don’t want to be a mess for anyone, you’re leaving clean, you’re leaving. YOU’RE LEAVING!
He had jumped to his feet, knew there was no point in trying to understand any longer. He is leaving, yes, he kept saying it to himself, he is leaving, he is only leaving. It’s logical. Death is something else. “It’s intriguing, you know, Hugo, I’m going on an excursion.” Hugo would not answer that; Thomas could feel him protesting inwardly, but his friend seemed to have neither the strength nor the courage to face the hypothesis. He would content himself, most often, with looking off into the distance, that overwrought way of crossing oceans to observe his own shadow… Hugo could only give out sounds without meaning, or rather a priest’s silence, a confessor’s. Thomas was grateful to him for it. It left him a clear field and so he had been able to live this undertaking decently, almost happily.
Thomas smiles. Had they shaken hands recently? Yes, that’s right, towards the “very end,” Hugo had held him in his arms, moved in spite of himself, obliged not to encourage him and obliged to let him go. “Whatever you do, you send me word.” Thomas had laughed at the absurdity of it, had looked at his friend with new interest. “Do you believe in ghosts?” Hugo had smiled. “I’ve read a lot of science fiction.” Thomas, who had not read the same books, felt himself seized by an unaccustomed desire to love this man and to protect him in the beyond. “I promise.”
Thomas says it again out loud, in front of the trees shaken by the coming storm. The sound of his own voice does not manage to bring him out of his reverie.
He had gone to the kitchen table where he had already laid out the last objects useful to his undertaking. The revolver in its flannel, the contents of his wallet, the last personal effects worth passing on to Hugo, and a letter addressed to him. And the old canvas bag he had carried slung across his shoulder for years. “If you’re reading this letter, it’s because I did it…” Not original, but that’s how it is. The parcel would arrive a week later, so Hugo would be able to do nothing. Let them find him later, in the spring, already half taken in by the earth, without papers, unrecognizable, quietly gone.
Quick, now.
He had stopped himself from thinking any further, had locked the apartment door with an expression he had tried to make ordinary, the calm of any other day. He had passed an old woman at the elevator. They had said nothing to each other, since they did not know each other. How long is it now that they haven’t known each other, he had wondered, given that he passed her often enough?
You could strangle her right there, it wouldn’t matter. The Earth would go on its way.
He had silenced the ugly thought. He was the one going off to die, and it was him the Earth would laugh at.
The woman had taken out a handkerchief and blown her nose into it. It had seemed to him to last an eternity. The elevator has always been a little rough on arrival; the woman had swayed and steadied herself against him, begging his pardon at once. He had patted the hand she had laid on his arm.
The doors had opened. Some old people were waiting for her, had said hello and other childish things, plainly glad to have her back. He had moved away from them.
Then, at last, outside. The cold air smelled good. The post office was on his way. It didn’t take long. One last smile for the clerk, whom he knew no better than he knew the old woman. Everyone was smiling back at him.
He had gone for a coffee, a last one, and at the end had looked a long while into the bottom of the cup. Small grains had stayed there, had not given up their flavour. On the way out he had raised his eyes towards the mountain, had not hesitated. The climb had been slow. The bag weighed nothing. He had smiled again at people making the most of the place before the storm came. The cemetery on the right. The cemetery on the left. A million souls. He had walked there often. A million secrets lost forever. Bones, sometimes, come back up because of the churning that the seasons work, the freeze and the thaw. They rise to the surface like the stones in a field that have to be gathered up so the crop can grow.
Past the cemetery the path dipped into the woods. Thomas had gone on, half unconscious, over the rest of the route he had rehearsed several times. He had listened to the trees beginning to panic, their branches chanting natural incantations, the last leaves whirling before him after managing to hold out against the season.
The monastery had appeared ahead. Thomas had gone around it to take the last path leading to his destination. It was a small hollow on the heights of a promontory. It was high enough to think of it as a dangerous cliff, but with no sea at the foot of it.
You could jump and it would be over. The slope is steep enough to break your neck on. But you sit down. And you do nothing. For now.
A branch cracks, a siren wails. Thomas comes out of his reverie. Remembering makes him dizzy. He makes contact again with the evangelist birds, who have felt the storm coming and are pressing themselves against one another, like balcony gossips waiting for the parade to pass. He is shaking. It isn’t going quite the way it was meant to. The scenes he had imagined were nobler. Something like the films on television.
The story is long behind him. Ahead of him is the black hole. He has put himself, of his own accord, on the high edge of the escarpment. The ocean below is death; the waves strike the rocks like black oil. Yes, it could have been nobler, lived otherwise. There could have been happiness, real ordinary happiness. And then no, there is no use thinking about it. He is on the mountain. The city below doesn’t care whether he is dead or alive; the monks above are lost in their prayers. What he is doing is logical. Entirely. It is serene, thinking that way. The wind blows something into his ears. He listens. That’s it, nothing but wind, which doesn’t give a damn about obstacles. The wind does not break, it goes on its way, goes round the globe and starts again, starts again.
He hears voices suddenly. People, higher up. He crouches, irritated. Shit! The voices come closer. He can see them now. A boy holding his girl by the hand. Fourteen? Sixteen? He pushes her gently against the monastery wall and kisses her. She lets him, happily. They hold each other for a long time. They cannot stop tasting each other. He presses his hips against the girl’s. They are too young to make love there, Thomas hopes. The boy slides a hand under her shirt. She pushes him away, angry, but smiling. She runs. The boy takes a moment to deal with the swelling in his trousers, then goes after her. Thomas smiles. They are gone.
He was like that young man, cocky, but he would still have stopped the girl from running away, just for the pleasure of insisting. Cold, brutal in his words, certainly, but no punishable acts. He scowls. Master of his own existence. On, I live, off, I die. On, I love, off, I love no longer. On… At twenty-four, hadn’t he met the ideal woman? How they loved each other! Only the young can love that way. She was studying medicine. Their couplings ran dry only late in the night, in sheets grown so damp that they fell asleep on a sea of salt. How beautiful she was! How she smiled when he took her! Always gently, humbly. How she laughed when he finally let himself down against her, made shy by the strange softness of her body, so hot inside, drawing back nervously but without a jolt, the organ so soft that his sex stopped there, resolved to enjoy it as long as it could. They would go still, slow dragonflies. His sex became a probe, and out of his own veins he felt the delicate traffic of the many ridges of his lover’s animal lips, the subtle exploration of the senses seeking to master the honeyed enemy. She stopped laughing very quickly, carried off in her turn by the intensity of the contact. She would sigh as if she wanted him to begin to pitch and roll; which he did, following the wave, his hips eating the water, hollowing out the waves. He offered her no resistance, let himself be carried until the urgency to finish carried him off. He feared a little, and for so short a moment, that instant, for fear she might be fertile, but her body hypnotized him. She was a mysterious and troubling woman. Their pleasure was shared, nothing feigned about it, she flooded him with heat and water, she shivered, cried out, wept and laughed, and his companion’s feelings drew him too into tears foreign to his nature, into an unfathomable happiness. Yes, she was what he cherished most in the world!
Was it too good? Was it because it was too marvellous that he left her so brutally? Off. That voice, that devil in your head, offering you the impossible. Leave her, admit it, you’re curious, your mind is as twisted as your past has been, your father soon gone, soon lost in drink, your mother who, unable to provide alone for two children, married again, to what remained for you a vulgar stranger. Say it again, true love is impossible; hell is more certain if it isn’t more serene… you’re going to find out what heartbreak is, real heartbreak. Afterwards there’ll always be time to make it up. Make her suffer a little. You give yourself away too much, you lose control too much. When you see her again she won’t be able to resist you.
She had spoken about marriage. So he had done it. He had left, insulting her, had taken up with another girl and had realized his mistake at once. He had become violent in speech, with the kind of violence that wounds. A year of drifting. On. He had tried to see her again. Proudly at first, leaving her cocky messages. Then, unable to bear her silence any longer, he had knocked at her door. A man had answered. He had wanted to charge at this intruder, at the man who, he understood, had taken his place beside her. The man was stronger than he was and Thomas had found himself in the street, his nose bleeding and his heart broken for good. Off.
Of course he is ashamed now. He owes himself that much at least. He is holy with shame, and it isn’t worth it, no, really, she has made a new life, she is probably happy.
Noises higher up. The teenagers come back running and laughing and press themselves against the monastery wall again. The boy attempts the same intrusion, the girl pushes him away, but this time she slaps him, then wants to apologize. The boy answers with a slap of the same order. That’s it, the walk is over. The girl bursts into tears (predictable), runs off (strategic), the boy goes after her (trapped). Silence comes back. Nothing will change in this humanity, he thinks. We only repeat the gestures others have already made, by mistake. And error, unfortunately, is human. There is no way out of it. Unhappiness hasn’t changed; comfort perhaps, but not unhappiness. Hugo didn’t agree, but then he’s an artist, he can drug himself easily enough on sounds and images, on the noise of the world. Not him. He sees clearly. Beyond individual successes the human race is marking time, has never stopped killing itself, sings terrible songs, weeps at a love story, and goes on with its useless adventure towards death. And to believe in God is to accept the ultimate lie. Hugo makes do with it. Not with God, but with that noise he gives a soul to. He says he doesn’t want to fight where reality is taking him. But he can’t give any workable definition of reality. He, Thomas, knows: toxic waste in abundance, poisoning medicines, a deranged climate, thousands of human beings starving, mutating diseases. The race is riddled with cancer and the metastases are beginning to invade the planet. End of the journey, for him. He can do nothing for anyone and no one can do anything for him.
Well then… what are you waiting for? He listens. The teenagers really are gone. What else is there in his life? Nothing, nothing! Go on, for God’s sake, the storm is coming! Thomas takes hold of the gun. It is cold and light. Cold above all. He puts it down at once. He listens to the trees, he feels the wind and he is hungry. He picks the gun up again, drops it, manages to catch it before it goes down the cliff… Sweat swells on his forehead at once.
Shit!
Careful, you could draw the monks’ eyes… you could lose control…
He is trembling too much, has to put the gun down again. A little more and he would start to vomit. A little more and he would botch it. He breathes deeply. The panic attack came on so suddenly. It comes back in successive waves. A kind of tide. Emotion. Stomach cramps. He grips a branch, he takes his time, sways a little with the tree; he does not want to cry, breaks the branch. Be quick!
He puts the headphones back on, starts the music. Picks up the gun. Feels in his pocket for the bullets. Opens the cylinder. Feeds in, feverishly, the little shells of death. Closes it. All of it in a noise of metal. The nausea again.
Shit!
Speech is stronger: “Your time is running out.”
Thought piles it on: Don’t think about it anymore, it’ll be quite simple, when the bullet goes into the brain it will do it painlessly. You’ll feel nothing, you’ll pass out, whatever it protests, your body is your shepherd, it will protect you from pain, go on, go on. I’m tired.
He cuts the music off abruptly; it has hardly had time to begin. Little by little he takes back control of his body, drives off for the moment the malicious hints of his thought. It isn’t so simple. Is he disappointed? He doesn’t want to judge himself. He still has time. The afternoon isn’t so far gone, after all. If you can’t do it, don’t do it. That’s Hugo’s voice now. He puts the gun down, looks around. Still the silence, in spite of all these city noises. He studies the monastery. No window really looks out onto the place where he is. There is no one. The monks are elsewhere. They live their small rat lives, mumble their prayers the way other people bite their lips.
He digs in the other pocket of his coat. The pills are there. In case of need. He calms down, reassures himself. The Valium is his last resort. But it’s pointless, he is going to manage. He took a few of them over the past months, when the pain got too strong. They had calmed him, certainly, without ever managing to turn him from his project. Deep down he was even proud that a drug so powerful could not shake him. The anchor of his ship has reached depths that no artificial substance, invented by scientists of the surface, can reach. And yet, where the anchor rests is still only the lip of an even more dizzying abyss. Death. No emotion in those depths, black blind eyes, alive to nothing but their own appetite. He has come looking for death, here in these woods.
I’m only getting off the train before I can no longer manage it alone.
He lets out a breath of relief. Let yourself be carried. Pick up the gun. It is loaded now, he tells himself, as though he needed convincing. He stays focused on his pulse. Looks around again. The nervousness is heavier than he would have believed. But he knows he can do this.
Step number one. Listen to the music.
The Sinking of the Titanic. The air is sweet. Hugo had made him discover the work a few years earlier.
At the moment of the shipwreck, several witnesses confirm it, the little orchestra of the Titanic took its place on deck and began to play an Episcopal hymn, Autumn. Thomas closes his eyes. The music floods his thoughts once more. It sounds like water rising calmly inside a cave. This is it. He says it to himself again. This is it. He listens, the gun in his hands, to the electronic strings trying to harmonize with the alpha waves of his brain. That is how he imagines it, at least. Perhaps it is the other way round? Could it be his brain that cannot understand what is happening to it and that clings to the long horizontal notes of the music like so many buoys of hope? It doesn’t matter. He must calm himself at all costs. He is arriving at the end of the voyage and, unlike the passengers of the Titanic, he has chosen his moment for no longer being here.
He opens his eyes because he is thinking too much. He is tired of thinking. He has been thinking now for fifty years. Too many, too many, too many words. The beats of his heart come heavier. The gun is in his hands. It serves as an antenna for picking up Death. Once more he studies its various parts. There is something screaming, not someone. It’s all right, it’s only the fear. The music swells in his head. His eyes blur, fill and then dry. He feels sick. He tries to imagine himself as one of those musicians on the ship. It is difficult. He has always been more of a fighter than that. The thought makes him smile. Right to the end, eh, Thomas? Right to the end, pig-headed to the last. Even now, when he is imitating the musicians, going down freely towards death as calmly as possible.
He looks up at the sky. There are only birds, and they are going, those ones, bowing and scraping with the clouds. They won’t see you and they don’t want to be your witnesses. You are alone, you always have been, and now you will be forever. The wind will play with your dead hair. The future will dress you in winter.
It is beginning to get cold. Great clouds hush the sun abruptly, announce with strokes of shadow the coming of the storm. How long has he been sitting here? He tells himself again that he should have brought a blanket. He didn’t think of everything. It annoys him. He should have thought of everything, even if it makes no difference. He isn’t really listening to the music anymore. Yes he is. The children’s voices again, mixing into his sight. That’s it, his hearing is mixing with his sight. Strange phenomenon. The fault of the headphones, so close, hurling the sounds like divine commands. Amen, say the voices. The trees raise their arms to the sky, are going to fall asleep, are falling asleep already. The mountain is deserted and yet full of strange sounds, come from the Titanic, risen out of the music, cut through by the memory of the last six months, of those twenty-six long strong weeks.
The music is putting him to sleep. He is tired. The sun comes back out, covers half the city abruptly with a limping whiteness. The revolver is loaded, Thomas. The bullets are waiting. It’s easy. You put the barrel against your temple and you press. If it can’t be electric, it can be mechanical. The revolver won’t hesitate.
Sick, sick, sick at heart. He needs to cry. He is alone, he can cry. It isn’t the trees that will react, it isn’t the planet that will be moved. You might even think he was smiling. The mouth holds back who knows what word, the eyes refuse who knows what light and the tears cannot get out. He has given everything away, yes, everything, but his tears he has kept jealously and so deep that they have reached the unfathomable Gulf before him. His tears belong to It already. To follow them and he would have drowned in there indecently, cutting the ties clean through, blowing his brains out in a McDonald’s, dragging along with him poor people who have nothing to contribute to the well-being of the universe. No, no, better to leave the tears where they are, lost forever between the hydrogen of necessity and the oxygen of life. Two atoms of necessity, only one for life. So there will always be a loss, an abandonment, a sacrifice. There will always be more necessity than the mere life of a single individual. He looks at his watch. Enough poetry.
He puts the revolver suddenly against his temple.
Aaaah!
The cry came out in spite of him. The music is so loud now. No, it’s his breathing. The wind seems to be shoving the trees. No, it’s him, shaking. Two atoms of solitude for one atom of pleasure. He presses the barrel too hard into his head. There, he is crying.
Where do they come from, these tears? Is this death? Is he dead? He opens his eyes. He had closed them without noticing. No, the clouds are still running and have ended by shutting the sky entirely. The storm. It is cold.
He cries out again. A snowflake, a heavy shard of frozen water, bursts on his nose. He looks at the sky.
Christ!
He presses the trigger lightly. Not enough. He is crying too much now. Another flake, then a third, a fourth, thousands of flakes. Are these his tears? No, it really is the storm? It’s coming, the storm? It looks like a great wave. He would only have to bear down harder, only a little harder. Come on… let yourself be carried by the snow that is arriving, that pesters him, strikes his neck, and gets into his ears and bursts there with an almost blasphemous and religious wetness. Or a laughing one? Amusing itself at his expense? The trees say Amen. No, no, no, it’s the music. The snow is mad, like the planet. The first snow is always a little suicidal… He closes his eyes. Counts to three…
One…
He doesn’t want to count. It happens by itself or it doesn’t happen. He is breathing too hard, his belly twists, his intestines knot. He is in pain. He is old. The snow, with its great paws, invades the place. Thomas watches, his finger still resting on the trigger, the revolver pointing into the inside of his thought. He watches and does not understand what is happening. He closes his eyes, wants to press the trigger, but his fingers refuse. Are they frozen? He brings the gun back down, sets it on his shaking knees, rubs his hands, warms his mutinous fingers. Tries to pick the gun up again. He drops it.
This time he does not cry out, bursts into sobs again. Beaten, no doubt. He does not yet dare admit it to himself. He lunges for the gun, and in doing so comes face to face with a raccoon that happens to be passing and that stops dead, startled in its turn. The moment is unreal.
The two of them look at each other. The raccoon is curious but ready to bolt. Thomas smiles at it automatically. What the hell are you doing here? Who is speaking to whom? The raccoon does not seem to appreciate it, but stays where it is, only a little more nervous. Thomas does not dare move, he does not want to frighten it. It’s comic, he tells himself, perhaps it’s Saint Peter… He sighs, closes his eyes, faints.
Your death isn’t even an answer. Now you’re dreaming. You ought to wake up though, because you’re going to catch cold. You’re not young anymore.
He comes to; he is cold indeed, cannot get up. The snow is soft. Opening his eyes, he sees the raccoon still close by, sniffing at him carefully. Thomas coughs violently. The animal bolts.
Christ!
Swearing does him no good all the same. Did he really faint, and for how long? He gets up with difficulty, dizzy with cold. The snow makes a spongy, torn carpet. He tries automatically to spot the animal. Hopeless. The revolver. He finds it two steps away, under a film of snow. He picks it up.
Then he looks nervously around him, haggard. The ceiling of the sky has sagged and the horizon could just as well be up there, so thoroughly does the snow strain the dimensions and bring them down to a disorienting trick of the eye. Weakly he puts the gun back against his temple, but he loses his balance, stumbles, the ground has turned slippery. Not like that, you botch everything, even your death? You’re the hero of your own life, you decide when and how you want to die. It’s certainly not a storm that will stop you! Or maybe it will. Wait now. Hugo? No, another voice? Him? The Other? The others?
He turns in circles, on himself, looking for the enemy, looking for the reason. The storm stops, as if it were short of ammunition. Nothing is left but a grey wind, strong enough to slash the senses. He looks at the gun, so heavy in his hands. He raises it, points it again at his temple… Another long silence between him and the barrel. For a while he manages to shut everything out. He hears neither the wind nor the city, not even his own fear, and then his voice, mistress of his fate or blinded by endocrine drugs, tries once more to convince him. He listens to what it says.
One little bullet, Thomas, one simple little bullet, it’s easy, it’s mechanically feasible. You have no right to give up. What will people say? What will you do? You weren’t right after all? You’re calm now, there, this is the moment, you see the horizon over there, inside your head? That’s the end, that’s the end of the tunnel. It’s white as the flash of steel off a bullet. So much silence ahead of you to forget in.
Yes, breathe deeply. You’re soaked through, you’re sweating, so you’re a hero, it’s never easy for heroes but they always get there in the end. That’s why there are no heroes in real life, you’ve been thinking about it for so long. One little bullet. Poof… The movement is simple, the barrel is already there. Bang. Death and end of transmission.
He is really shaking now. That’s it, you’re there. The barrel of the gun rubs against his skin, as if it were looking for the exact centre of his life. Thomas has to sit down. He no longer knows. His stomach hurts horribly. Then, concentrating better, he has to admit that he is hungry. If you have the slightest doubt, don’t do it. Hugo is right…
Don’t lose heart. Come on. That’s it, hold your breath, come closer to death. Why do you never have the courage to do things simply?
The question goes straight through his heart and has the effect of setting off his rage. Suddenly beside himself, he brings the barrel back against his temple, his arm snaps out all at once, flies up towards the sky, as though it no longer belonged to him. The arm still pointing at the sky, he starts to cry, sways again, falls backwards, seized with convulsions. His body has won. Thomas had not reckoned on the resistance of the body…
That’s death for you, you see? Spontaneous, one small gesture and a long journey. You still have your bullets.
His thought gives him no quarter. Anxious, he looks around him, wondering whether he has been spotted. Come on, calm down, there’s no one left on the mountain. The flakes begin to fall again. He could tell himself he is hallucinating, so real and so insistent are things. He hears something else now, the noise of the trees swung about by the wind, the snow, defenceless as it is, falling on the ground, the city too, whole.
God, you’re alone. There’s no love here.
He looks at the barrel of his gun, which has filled with snow.
Is it time to stop?
Aaahh…
He thinks quickly, bites his lips. The fatigue tries to soothe him. Sounds try to force a path up to his mouth, but he cannot manage to say anything at all. Yes, far too tired now. Like a tree leaning over, unable to hold on to the Earth, like all those leaves that must, by force of the wind, fall and melt into the humus, he gives up. He sits down on the cold ground. He could faint again, but grips the emptiness around him.
“I surrender.”
He listens to his own voice, judges its sincerity.
There is no doubt. The decision is a fresh wound. He is too cold. When he was young he could have walked naked through the storm. Youth was good, it was good to be alive back then, nothing but pleasure and rage, nothing but the sex bursting out of you, nothing but hearts to be darned, only that, a face full of pimples and yet a devil’s charm. Now his fat body still wants pleasure, he still gets hard the same, but it’s the thought that no longer wants it. Or is it the other way round?
You’re off into your labyrinths again. You’re old, why isn’t it simple?
He is so completely still that he cannot feel his own breathing. Perhaps time has stopped under the weight of the snow. And what if he really were dead? What if he had done it? He clings to this hypothesis, looks at the city; it too is silent. Perhaps this is what it is, the eternal gaze, ecstatic and wide open, of the mad snow that seems as if it will never melt… Aren’t you supposed to float above your body? He looks at his hands and at the gun they are holding so firmly. He feels the metal against his palms; he follows the line of his arm, reaches the shoulders, the neck and the head. All of it is vertical, therefore alive. He is disappointed. He doesn’t know. No, he isn’t disappointed. He has no remorse, no joy either. He is dead all the same. He is dead even so. He keeps correcting himself, trying to find out the truth. But he still hears nothing, except, a little, the journey the blood makes in his veins.
Get on with living, then, it’s winter now. —Wait, he tells himself, I still have my bullets. But he no longer believes it.
He takes one very small breath, as if he did not want to disturb the deep silence in his head. He still does not move; he feels dangerous. Let no one come, because he could kill.
He breathes again, unannounced, behind a gust of wind. This time it is fuller.
The storm lets the cavalry loose again. He manages to breathe very hard, to shout even, to howl, to rage at the trees, to beat them with his fists. He runs out of breath. His eyes burn the snow that dares to come near. He wants to throw the gun down off the cliff, then thinks better of it. This is no longer the hour for decisions. He rages again, his words spitting his anger; he curses everything he looks at, he turns towards the monastery and howls, weeps and howls again, but the storm is far stronger than he is; it howls too, mixes the water and the snow, and makes out of them white bullets that kill the last hours of autumn.
The barrel is full of snow. He blows into it. The old man’s gesture, without thinking. Then he raises the gun and fires. The shot is short. The storm absorbs it without effort.
He stops, beaten, silent, out of breath, but goes on gesticulating blindly and, little by little, can no longer do anything at all. He sits back down and vomits.
Thirty-two years. The gun works. That bullet was for him.
His clothes are soaked. He could catch his death. Die.
Get out of here, quick! You’re going out of your mind!
This time he obeys. He gathers up his things. The storm gives him no chance. It is snowing hard. It will be dark soon. Is he becoming reasonable again? He is only doing what wounded dogs do, going home to die. The thought frightens him: home.
It’s on the other side of the mountain. What is he going to do now? The monks… He could ask for help… He goes back up towards the monastery, to the place where the teenagers were kissing. The building offers good shelter; Thomas could stay there and wait a little. He sits down against it. At once he feels himself flooded with fear and remorse. Already his thought is piling up the failings, the duties, the demands: the empty apartment, the debts, the long walks, the terrible boredom, the emptiness of his existence, all that effort for nothing? All that logic for nothing? He grips the bag where the flannel sleeps. He wants to keep it. No, it isn’t all over. Everything starts again, so everything is possible. He has to go home, but he gives himself a little more time. He could go into that monastery. He doesn’t want to ask for help. By this hour he should have been dead. He presses himself against the wall. Gets his breath back. He is not happy. All the same he feels safe, and works out how long it would take to get home.
HOME!
The fact comes back with full force. There’s nothing left! The parcel has gone, he’ll have to telephone Hugo. He’ll have to… God, he is tired.
Courage…
He nods.
It isn’t so terrible. The storm isn’t so strong after all. You have time to get home. You’ll wait until tomorrow, or the day after. Go and rest, go and sleep and dream. You won’t be hungry if you’re asleep. He agrees. He doesn’t want to pity himself, is slow to get up. He is fine where he is, held still, alive. He rests his head against the nameless stone of the monastery. He tries to listen. In the very place where, earlier, the young ones, driven by their desire, wanted to tear each other apart and make love.
He stands, looks at the path the teenagers made. The road is likely to be long, but he is too tired to think about it. He is hungry. He has to eat. He had kept a little money on him.
Freudian slip?
The walking is hard, but he can no longer feel anything. His body is happy and walks for him. He turns one last time towards the monastery, already far away. Bells are ringing. It sounds like a ship that has arrived at the limits of the world.
Thomas sighs. The orchestra, inside his head, plays an anxious hymn. He starts down again, tries to think of nothing at all. Tomorrow is another mountain.