Selected Cronicas

THE EGG AND THE CHICKEN (III)

The eggs sizzle in the frying pan and, lost in a dream, I prepare breakfast. Without any sense of reality, I call the children who jump out of bed, draw up their chairs and start eating and the work of the day which has just dawned begins, with shouting and laughter and food, the white and the yolk, happiness amidst squabbles, the day is our salt and we are the salt of the day, life is quite tolerable, life occupies and distracts, life provokes laughter.

It makes me smile in my mystery. The mystery of my being which is simply a means, and not an end, has given me the most dangerous freedom of all. I am not stupid and I use it to my advantage. I even do considerable harm to others. I take advantage of the phoney job they have given me to conceal my identity and turn it into my real occupation. I have even misused the money they pay me on a daily basis to make life easier while the egg is being formed. Having changed the money on the black market, I have misused it and only recently bought shares in a brewery which has made me a rich woman. I still refer to all this as the essential modesty of living. They have also allowed me time so that the egg may form inside me at its leisure but I have frittered away my time in illicit pleasures and sorrows, completely forgetting about the egg. That is my simplicity as a human agent.

Or is this precisely what they wanted to happen so that the egg may be formed? Is this freedom a coercion? For I am now beginning to see that every error on my part has been exploited. My grievance is that in their eyes I count for nothing, I am simply useful. With the money they pay me I have started drinking.

No one knows how you feel inside when you are hired to pretend you are a traitor and you end up believing in your own betrayal. A job which consists of forgetting day after day. Being expected to feign dishonour. My mirror no longer reflects a face which can even be called my own. Either I am an agent or this is truly betrayal. But I sleep the sleep of the just in the knowledge that my futile existence does not impede the march of infinite time. On the contrary: it would appear that I am expected to be utterly futile, that I should even sleep the sleep of the just. They want me occupied and distracted, by whatever means. For with my wandering thoughts and solemn foolishness I might impede what is happening inside me. Strictly speaking, I myself have only served to impede. The notion that my destiny exceeds me suggests that I might be an agent. At least, they might have allowed me to perceive as much, for I am one of those people who do a job badly unless I am allowed some Insight. They made me forget what I had been allowed to perceive, but I still have this vague notion that my destiny exceeds me and that I am the instrument of their work.

In any case, I could only be the instrument because the work could never be mine. I have already tried to establish myself in my own right without success; my hand has never stopped trembling to this day. Had I insisted a little more, I should have lost my health for good. Since then, after that abortive experience, I have tried to reason as follows: I have already received a great deal and they have made me every possible concession. And the agents, far better than me, have also worked only for what they did not know. And with the same meagre instructions and, like me, they were modest civil servants or otherwise. I have already received a great deal. Sometimes overcome with emotion at being so privileged yet without showing any gratitude! My heart beating with emotion, yet without understanding anything! My heart beating confidently, yet leaving me baffled.

But what about the egg? This is precisely one of their little ruses. As I was talking about the egg, I forgot about the egg. ‘Keep on talking, keep on talking,’ they told me. And the egg remains completely protected by all those words. ‘Keep on talking’ is one of their guiding rules. I feel so weary.

Out of devotion to the egg I forgot about it. Forgetfulness born out of necessity. Forgetfulness born out of self-interest. For the egg is an evasion. Confronted by my possessive veneration, the egg could withdraw never to return and I should die of sorrow. But suppose the egg were to be forgotten and I were to make the sacrifice of getting on with my life and forgetting about it. Suppose the egg proved to be impossible. Then perhaps — free, delicate, without any message whatsoever for me — the egg would move through space once more and come up to the window I have always left open. And perhaps with the first light of day the egg might descend into our apartment and move serenely into the kitchen. As I illuminate it with my pallor.