Selected Cronicas

LIVING JELLY

This was a dream which made me sad and frightened. It began somewhere in the middle. There was a jelly which was alive. What were the jelly’s feelings? Silence. Alive and silent, the jelly dragged itself with difficulty to the table, wobbling precariously without falling apart. Who touched it? No one had the courage. When I looked at it, I saw my own face mirrored there, slowly merging with the jelly’s existence. Deformed in essence. Deformed without falling apart. I, too, barely alive. Plunged into horror, I wanted to escape the jelly. I went on to the terrace, prepared to throw myself from my top-floor apartment on to the street below. From my terrace I peered into the pitch-black night, and I was terrified at the thought of my approaching end: everything which is too strong by far appears to be nearing its end. But before jumping, I decided to put on some lipstick. It struck me that my lipstick was curiously soft. I then realized that my lipstick, too, was living jelly. And there I stood on the dark terrace, my lips moistened by this living substance.

My legs were already over the edge and I was just about to let go, when suddenly I saw the eyes of darkness. Not eyes in the darkness but the eyes of darkness. The darkness was watching me with two enormous eyes set wide apart. So the darkness, too, was alive. Where could I find death? For I knew that death was living jelly. Everything was alive. Everything is alive, primary and slow; everything is primarily immortal.

With almost insuperable difficulty, I succeeded in rousing myself, as if I were pulling myself by the hair in order to escape from that living quagmire.

I opened my eyes. The room was in darkness, but it was a familiar darkness, not the profound darkness from which I had dragged myself. I felt more peaceful. It had been nothing but a dream. Then I noticed that one of my arms was exposed. With a start, I pulled it under the sheet. No part of me should be exposed, if I still hoped to save myself. Did I want to save myself? I think so: then I switched on my bedside lamp in order to wake up properly. And I saw the room with its firm outlines. I had solidified the living jelly into a wall — I continued to feel I was dreaming — I had solidified the living jelly into a ceiling; I had killed everything that could be killed in my efforts to restore the tranquillity of death around me; fleeing from what was worse than death: pure life, living jelly. I switched off the light. Suddenly a cockerel was crowing. A cockerel in an apartment block? A hoarse cockerel. In that white-washed building, a living cockerel? Outside, a freshly-painted building, and inside that cry? thus spoke the Book. Outside death — accomplished, pure, definitive, and inside the jelly, essentially alive. This was what I learned in the dead hours of night.