Ranko Marinkovic - Cyclops

Smiling cheerfully before him is the cunning wisdom of the Greek hair splitter … Come to think of it, a hair, too, can be split to insubstantiality, as any bald man will tell you …

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Did I say something?”

“Look here, I lost my hair working, sweating. Don’t mock a man for looking like this through no fault of his own.”

As if any bald man looked “like this” through any fault of his own? That is what I could have told him, it would have been instructive; but I do not dare — I only think it, in my pocket, too. … The man is furious, which is why he reads my thoughts …

“Of course there are some who appear as they do through every fault of their own. I refer to libertines, lechers, and all the other drunken scum for which there isn’t enough rope out there to hang them with or lead to shoot them. Parasites.”

He couldn’t be meaning I’m a lecher, given that I … But is there any need for me to prove all this when I am so clearly not one of them. Not even with Enka. On the contrary, as a matter of … there’s Viviana … but what’s the point of getting into that? He probably only means to insult me with the groundless allusion …

“Because some of them act the saint supposedly expiring with chastity while blazing inside with sexual agitation. Then these low-lifes tell me I’m this and I’m that, that all I know to do with my wife is make babies. Well, what am I to do with my wife? Have her put on black stockings, tie a black ribbon around her white neck, and then whisper vulgar nothings in her ear? Yes, I would be somebody to those no-goods if I did that, they would see me as one of them. As if I cared to be. One of them in what, I ask you — in abominations?”

The man is sincere enough in his anger. Moreover he makes no effort to conceal the threat in his tone as an advance on his future high salary. Yes, he does expect the Future to reward him for his present privations, for his righteous agitation, even for his faithful thoughts with moral fasting and Lenten fare. He wishes to enter the Paradise of the Future pure as a saint and torment-stricken as a martyr — not so that he can claim any additional privileges or get a better mark at the future moral assessment of his person, but simply to be able to look back and see the past in himself as a scarecrow, a horror, as something never under any circumstances to be wished for again. In this way he is insuring himself against the diabolical longing to retreat, against any silly curiosity drawing him back, singing the sentimental siren call of the past. He knows the Future to be grand and marvelous, but where is it? At which spot is the entrance to that wonderful place strewn with flowers and justice? Not only does he not know — he is angry at the very existence of such a threshold and at the nagging desire to find out how much more he needs to walk to reach the doorway to the Future.

This is why he dislikes those who think about this, and generally those who think at all. He views them with suspicious caution and alert hostility as if they are terrorists plotting an attempt at taking the precious life of his faith in the Future …

The Future? What about you — do you believe in the future?

He could not tell, at first, whether it was his guest asking him or he was still listening to his own insatiable train of thought.

No, the guest was sound asleep. His regular breathing was dividing the night into equal slices of darkness, neatly, justly, like mouthfuls to the hungry.

What can I say, gentlemen of the jury, in reply to your question, as strange as it is vague? (This was the opening sentence of Melkior’s grand defense speech.) As a short-lived individual facing the totality of duration, what idea can I form of that which you call the future? Is the Future merely a tomorrow-or-the-day-after I can purchase for cheap (at a discount) downstairs, from my neighbor, ATMAN the palmist? Or is it something distant, very distant, so distant that not only does it dwarf my lifespan (thus allowing me as an individual to say that it has nothing to do with me) but also renders itself elusive to my very thought, no matter how hard I’m trying to imagine future events from my present? True, my thought itself reaches out for that blank, unfilled time before me … and gives free rein to my ranging imagination. My imagination fills future time … but with what? That is the question, gentlemen. This is a test of man’s consciousness — moreover, his conscience: this is what reveals who belongs to whom. Your imagination reveals who you are; it also determines whose you are.

Imagination has divided men whether they like it or not … But, gentlemen of the jury, do man’s imaginings decide his destiny? If future is the next, as yet unwound reel of life, gentlemen, then I ask: what can my imagination ever do to alter a single frame of the film? It has already been developed and printed. It is already out there, it has as yet only to happen —that is to say, to be run for our experience, for my eyes and ears.

To the pertinent question: But who did the filming? (Shouts from the gallery: that’s right, hear! hear! who did the filming?) I reply: No one! (Excited buzz to the right, among the theologians … and to the left, among the causalists.) (To the theologians:) Yes, you find this difficult to grasp. Nothing without a Demiurge. You consider the chair squeaking beneath you: was it not made by someone? It, too, did not at first exist and only came into being in some “future” or another following a cabinetmaker’s concept. Oh if only the Future were a chair, gentlemen, mankind would be able to lounge in it without a care! If it could be built following a concept — be it an idiot’s — it would at least contain the sense (or nonsense) of an idea, whether it were idiotic, absurd, monstrous, unacceptable. The idiot’s whim could be that there would be only female newborns for the next forty years: mankind would thus be deprived of two generations of males. Can you imagine the consequences from the sexual, and particularly from the military, vantage point? God be praised — you theologians would say — the future is in the hands of Providence which maintains the order of things and events (I note your policelike style as regards “keeping the peace”), and that is why the male-to-female birth ratio is kept in balance, therefore. … Well, go on, finish your priceless thought … therefore mankind is content, even happy in every way, and especially from the military vantage point, right? Hear! Hear! So let’s toast mankind for its secure future whenever we happen to get drunk, which we do with great success, particularly on New Year’s Eve.

(Speaking to the causalists): You, gentlemen, naturally laugh at such drunken contentment. Being drunk is poetic at first, then later on it comes to resemble idiocy. You still respect the ancient ex nihilo nihil fit principle too well to be able to leave the world’s destiny to a very doubtful Providence (of which there is no factual proof), still less to an idiot’s whim. It having been established through long-term human experience that everything evolves according to the law of causality — from cause to effect — the principle is clear as day and strong as a mountain … Until someone “shall doubt in his heart” the mountain will stand and not be cast into the sea. But if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, the mountain will fall down. David brought Goliath down by doubting in his strength. I am reminded of David Hume, a good man. But regardless of his grave doubts regarding Causality (which, like ATMAN the con man, passes itself off as a Principle while in fact being no more than ordinary habit ), I do not propose to offend the deity in question; I would ask only: what if one day we were to push a stone and it didn’t fall but instead rolled back to its place? I mean, what if the effects betray the causes? If snakes hatch from hens’ eggs? If parrot speech gives rise to a new linguistics, rhetoric, logic, even literature? If crocodile laughter evolves into a new kind of humor? And all that out of habit which through sustained practice could become a Principle?