Selected Cronicas

ONE OF THE CHOSEN

Even as a boy he was someone who insisted on choosing. Among the thousand things which he might have been, he exercised the right to choose. Putting on his spectacles, he would set to work, trying to see whatever he could and probing with sweaty hands the things he could not see. He was trying to choose and indirectly chose himself. Little by little, he forged his own personality. He went on and on selecting the essentials. In relative freedom, if one discounted the furtive determinism which quietly operated without giving itself a name. Discounting this furtive determinism, he was free to choose himself. He separated the so-called wheat from the chaff and ate only the best. Sometimes he ate the worst: and that was his most difficult choice. He separated perils from the great peril, and found to his dismay that what he was left with was the great peril itself. To his horror, he found himself determining the weight of things. He pushed aside the lesser truths which he ended up ignoring. The truths he craved were the most difficult to bear.

But after ignoring the lesser truths, he began to resemble other beings, as if enshrouded in mystery. His ignorance transformed him into a mysterious being. He had also become a mixture of what others thought of him and what he really was: a wise ignoramus; an ingenuous sage; oblivious, yet well aware of other things; an honest rogue; an unconscious thinker; a man full of nostalgia for the things he once knew, and full of regret for the things he had irretrievably lost after making a definite choice; a courageous human being because it was now too late and he had already chosen. Paradoxically, this gave him the discreet and wholesome contentment of the peasant who only has to cope with simple things. This gave him that unintentional austerity which all essential labour confers. When it came to choosing and adjusting, there was no fixed time for starting or finishing: it was the task of a lifetime.

Paradoxically, all this gradually gave him that deep happiness which one must shout and communicate to others. This presented no problem because he liked communicating with others. This was not something he had chosen or cultivated: it was truly a gift. He enjoyed the deep happiness of others, and his innate gift helped him to discover the happiness of others. The same gift also allowed him to discover the solitude of others. It also helped him to treat life as a game by transforming it into colours and forms. An inborn instinct taught him that gestures, without causing offence or scandal, could convey the liking he felt for others. Without so much as feeling that he was using this gift, he revealed himself; he gave to others without realizing that he was giving; he loved without knowing that this was what was known as love. The gift was like the shirt this contented man did not possess. Because he felt so poor and had nothing to give, he gave himself. He gave himself in silence, and gave what he had made of himself, just as one summons others to come and take a look.

Little by little he came to be surrounded by misunderstanding: the others looked at him as if he were a statue, as if he were a photograph. They failed to understand that in order to forge his personality, he had undergone a painful process of stripping away rather than embellishment. Because of a misunderstanding, he found himself being feted. Because of a misunderstanding, he found himself being loved. But to feel oneself being loved was like recognizing oneself in the love received. And this man was loved as if he were someone else: one of the chosen. He shed the tears of the unmoving statue which weeps at night in the public square. The darkness in the square had never been so intense. Until daylight returned and that person was reborn. The earth’s rhythm was so generous that dawn broke. But when night returned, darkness fell once more. The square was once more engulfed in solitude. Those who had chosen, slept in fear. Afraid because they thought they would have to dwell in the solitude of the square. They did not know that this solitary square was his place of work. That he, too, felt lonely. He had organized his entire life in order to function outside the square. It is true that once he felt prepared, anointed with oils and perfumes, he realized there was not enough time left to exist like the others: he was different, however reluctantly. Something had gone wrong for, when he saw himself in the photograph the others had taken, he was alarmed and embarrassed by what he saw there. They had turned him, no more, no less, into one of the chosen. They had robbed him of his freedom. How could he rectify their mistake? In order to make their task easy and save time, they had photographed him in only one pose. And now they no longer referred to him but simply to the photograph. All they had to do was open a drawer and take out his photograph. Besides, anyone could acquire a copy. It did not cost much.

When they told him: I love you, he felt uncomfortable and could not even express his gratitude. And me? What about me? Why only my photograph? But he did not protest because he knew that the others were not acting out of malice. Sometimes in his loneliness he tried in vain to imitate the photograph. This only served to make the false image in the photograph seem all the more authentic. At times he became quite confused: he found himself unable to copy the photograph and had even forgotten what he looked like in reality. So, like the laughing clown, he often wept beneath his painted mask of court jester.

Then he secretly tried to destroy the photograph. He did or said such contradictory things to the photograph that the corners turned up with rage as it lay there in the drawer. He hoped to become more real than his image. But what happened? It turned out that all he did was to touch up the image in the photograph.

And so it went on until all his hopes were dashed and he died of loneliness. But he finally escaped from that statue in the square after considerable effort. He had a number of falls before learning to walk by himself. And, as the saying goes, earth had never seemed more fair. He recognized that this was the land for which he had prepared himself. So he had not been mistaken, after all, and the map locating the treasure had given the right directions. As he walked, he touched everything in sight, and smiled. Even though alone, he was smiling. He had learned to smile on his own.