The Absolute, page 22
3
After the director of the penal institution left, Esau contemplated the reasons for his visit. The way he saw it, the director had come to fulfill the expectations of a ritual, one in which the authority appears before the detained in order to bring about an act of contrition. Since in his case he hadn’t shown any hint of accepting the rules of this game, it was to be expected that as a consequence he’d be submitted to reprisals. Esau prepared himself for the torture session by making an exhaustive inventory of the methods to inflict pain. Each individual torment formed a separate chapter: there was no way to compare the rack with the extraction of fingernails, impalement with the bruising of internal organs . . . he had to number each sector of the body and divide it into subsections, take into account the degrees of suffering, differentiate the instruments used in accordance with their specific aims (bleeding, tearing, searing, pressing, flaying, et cetera). Obviously, this anticipation wouldn’t help him to alleviate the pain, but he was consoled by the idea there was nothing new about it.
For the time being, however, nothing happened. The days went by with the morbid weariness of expectations unrealized. Was this blow suspended in the air a perfection of his martyrdom? After a while, Esau grew fed up. In some way he’d become indifferent to his future; to be imprisoned was just like being on the outside, save for the absence of the physical detail of weather. Years before, his father Andrei had described to him the impression of extreme solitude and independence that some Bedouins had made on him, lost as they were in the contemplation of bonfires smoldering in the desert night. “Maybe,” he’d told him, “they don’t need to talk, since they speak endlessly with demons.” Something similar happened to him as he now incessantly repeated in his mind the only event that had taken place since his arrival at the prison: the visit from the institution’s director. Maybe that—he told himself—had been the chance to implement his plan for rebellion. The director had spoken without drawing a breath, preventing him from answering. And why would he have acted like this, if not from a certain prior knowledge of his defeat? Victory, on the other hand, needs no verbal affirmation: its existence justifies itself.
Esau understood that the director of the institution would not repeat his visit.
One day, while leaving the bowl with his food, the guard let a whip fall on the floor of the cell. It was obvious it wasn’t a blunder: Esau was being invited to use the instrument against the guard himself, who had been made a token of sacrifice. Resolved not to obey, Esau began to lash his own body.
As soon as the first drops of blood welled up, the director of the penal institution entered and jerked the whip from his hands.
“What are you doing? Do you call this good behavior?” he asked. “Do you think by putting yourself in my place you make me superfluous? Are you trying to teach me a lesson? If that’s your aim, let me say that you still don’t grasp a thing. My task isn’t to rid myself of your person, but to keep you from harming yourself. Doesn’t your attitude shame you? You, who imagined you were carrying out a universal good when you tried to murder an individual, now assume the role of victim with pathological delight. Wretched impostor! If you had a minimum of personal dignity, you’d at least try to grab the whip from me.”
And having said this, he offered it to Esau, who didn’t make the slightest move except to keep his eyes squeezed shut until he heard the door close.
The next day, the same guard offered to help him escape from the prison. “Flight is an absolute imperative for free spirits,” he told him. Esau wanted to know his motive. The guard said he was guided only by the sentiment of humanity. Also, he knew that followers of his were waiting on the outside. Esau asked if this meant his ideology had expanded, but the guard didn’t know how to answer: he was only a simple guard, one who didn’t follow politics.
They swapped clothes. For a while Esau did turns through the passageways. Architecturally, the prison wasn’t overly elaborate, and was very far from complying with any heavy allegorical ideals of oppression or redemption. He went up and down staircases without knowing where he was headed. After all that time locked away, he tended to search out dark corners and closed spaces. Open areas repelled him. Without noticing it, he’d walked around the prison in a direction away from the exit, and all at once, after climbing a steep staircase, he found himself facing a last door. He opened it, convinced that on the other side new jailers would be waiting. Inside he found evidence of a gloomy sanctuary, with the sadness that haunts every demonstration of authority. It was the office of the institution’s director. A half-written letter lay on the desk. Or maybe the pages before and after had flown out the open window. My grandfather read:
. . . the curious thing about modern life, auditor sir, is that every biography can now without loss be reduced to a pattern. As far as the object of your inquisition goes, I am in conditions to reveal to you that all steps are being carried out in accordance with your felicitous planning; that is, I am slowly turning into the intellectual master of our prisoner. The unquestionable benefits of doing so . . .
Esau tore up the page and threw the pieces into the air. Then he retraced his steps. No one stopped him. After a while, the gate for the exit came into view. He passed the checkpoints and went out into the street. For a few meters he walked in expectation of shouts and voices calling halt, then giving the order to shoot. The outer wall of the prison cast its shadow over a town square. He lost himself in the crowd. His appearance didn’t draw anyone’s attention. In a public bathroom he shaved, washed his body and exchanged clothes with someone else. He found a little money in his new trouser pockets. He sat for a while in a café to see a bit of life. The alcohol went to his head; he wandered without destination. Battlements, terraces, faces, smells, animals. Confinement had accustomed him to extolling the virtues of scarcity; now the proliferation of impressions made him feel the loss of meaning. The world had become a marketplace. And where were those acolytes, those companions in the cause that the guard had mentioned? He went into a small restaurant and was served a dish made with crude ingredients he didn’t recognize. Barbarism began with the palate. Where was he? For a moment he thought he’d got lost in time, that he was living in a version of Egypt in which the Mamluks had defeated Napoleon’s army, and where he was his own father, taken prisoner. He fell asleep leaning over his plate. When he woke up, it was growing dark. A dying red sun baked the whitewashed walls. Esau climbed uphill for a while. Since he didn’t know where to go, he felt nostalgia for the certainties about the immediate that the prison had provided him. It was obvious they had let him escape so he’d grasp the convenience of internment. At the end of a nearly perpendicular street (weeds growing between the bricks in the walls; a black dog urinating without raising its leg, like a lady), he heard a “psst.” A veiled woman, resting her elbows on the sill of an oval-shaped window, was gesturing toward him. “So this is the East,” he thought, crestfallen. What change could be produced from the most backward part of the globe? The woman called out to him again. “Ara, ara. Mit, mit.” Or something like that. Esau came in through the door at street level, which opened onto an inner garden, a tiny pointillist reproduction of the gardens in fairy tales, complete with ridiculous glass chimes and hollow reeds hanging from trees: wind music. “Sut, sut.” A soft hand led him to the bedrooms of the house; other hands undressed him; a woman kissed him; he was naked; his body was burning. Esau couldn’t recall any experience like this one. Wrapped in the words of an unfamiliar language, he felt racked by tenderness. Before falling asleep, lulled by this voice, he heard himself say that he loved her.
When he woke up, he found himself in the prison again. It didn’t surprise him. At every moment throughout his day of apparent freedom, he’d noticed a series of movements being carried out around him, a choreography of secret guardians who took turns to monitor his steps. His flight had thus been a premeditated act devised by the enemy. Perhaps it was a cruel joke meant to destroy his mood, or a test to check the security conditions of the prison, or maybe they’d tried to use him as a lure, to find out whether he’d make contact with the network of his political organization. In any case, what drew his attention was the number of resources used by power to anticipate his actions, as if these were not terribly limited at present. Such disproportion was evidence that his own group had overestimated its revolutionary potential . . . and a further proof that he had to rise to the level of the confrontation. He couldn’t be less intelligent than the enemy! In this sense, if—as he took for granted—the prison authorities had made it easy for him to leave with the intention of using him to detect and capture other political militants, then his task wasn’t to “demonstrate his innocence” and offer a “truth” linked to the present, but to produce a mirage of this existence—which might well be genuine in the future—so that a good part of his oppressors’ energies would aim to combat him in the wrong time and place. The question was how to create the illusion of a solid political party, a phantom organization—how could he produce a simulacrum? Was it possible to construct a reality that, although lacking a material base, still possessed enough corporeality to make his jailers rush toward it in the attempt to dominate it, and through the very dynamic of political infiltration, which acts through dissimulation and masks, end up providing it an existence of its own? This was the essential problem!5 Applying himself to resolving it was his challenge for the moment. He was in an ideal position. In prison he had nothing to lose, and he was no longer dominated by the terror of being pursued, captured and locked up in jail, which had tortured him during periods of freedom.
* * *
5 “The dynamic of political transformation does not respond to the laws of dialectic but to the impulse (ouroboros in shape, atavistic and by nature suicidal) of the scorpion. A spy or agent of the State who embarks on a sting operation in the ranks of a revolutionary party must by necessity make an effort to exhibit—make visible—his ‘revolutionary credentials’ in order to dissipate any suspicion regarding his true condition. For this reason, in revolutionary activity, it often happens that undercover operatives are the very ones who carry out the tasks necessary for change, and even come to sacrifice themselves for them. An agent provocateur must make himself worthy in the eyes of the ‘legitimate members of the party,’ going further than anyone else. For example, they might kill a minister in incredible circumstances, demonstrating an extreme courage and an unbending faith in the cause. It is therefore possible that, given the right conditions, the social revolution ends up being the work of a branch of the intelligence forces that carries out its task of infiltrating the revolutionary group with a thoroughly consistent logic” (Andrei Deliuskin, Instrumental Anatomy of Political Praxis).
4
No sooner had Esau begun to reflect on these questions than he received a visit from the director of the penal institution, wearing a doctor’s coat and sporting a panama hat. He gestured for him to get out of bed:
“I was hard at work drawing up requests for communiqués, replies to solicitudes, petitions of transfer and orders of execution, when a question occurred to me that I judge to be quite timely, one that I thought you might be the suitable person to answer. Naturally, this isn’t the appropriate milieu for conversation: the walls are listening.”
Once Esau had stood up, the director of the penal institution bent down and fastened a kind of silver anklet ending in a chain to his left ankle, wrapping the end around his own wrist.
“Don’t feel like a dog, man, because during a walk it’s never clear who leads who.”
They left the cell without a word, and set out walking through the desert. My grandfather had lost the habit of exercise, and every so often he tried to stop and catch his breath, but the director yanked on the chain, forcing him to go on. When Esau fell on his face, he dragged him along for a stretch. Instead of mocking his physical inferiority, he encouraged him with tender words, and warned him about the risks of falling asleep in the sun. He even allowed himself an obscene joke:
“Millions of years ago this was a sea, and so every grain of sand is the dust of a clam. But why do you feel the need to sink your nose into it right now? Do you really miss the scent of a woman that much?”
Later he added:
“What happened to your alleged spirit of rebellion? We’re completely alone. I don’t understand why you haven’t tried to take me by surprise. With luck, you could strangle me. Nor would it be a bad idea to try and kick me in the balls. What do you say? If you hit the target, you’d be free. Don’t you realize? Free, free as the wind, free as a bird that’s escaped its cage. You don’t want to fight me hand to hand?”
Gripped by a strange sensation of detachment, Esau understood that all these jests cloaked the intention of ending his life here in the open air.
“I’m going to plant myself right here,” he said.
“That’s what I call a vision of the future,” taunted the director: “To morph into a tree, in this desert of all places! Come on, let’s go. On the other side of the dune we’ll stop for refreshment.” He shook the chain.
A white silk tent. Table, chairs, sofa beds, large pillows. And food and drink in plenty.
“Water, wine, beer, kirsch royal?” said the director. “No? Would you prefer something solid? A finely sliced salami? A sliver of cold blood sausage? Should I make you a little prosciutto-and-cheese sandwich? Not that either? A canapé? Why do you shake your head that way? Fleas? Very well. I wanted to ask you this question: At what point does an idealist turn into a man of ideas—that is, a businessman? That is, how much is what you know, and refuse to confess, worth? Knowledge and organization: these are the pillars that prop up my trade in the administration of captives. A business similar in every way to the one that you manage, which supplies ideological meaning and the production of revolutionary acts. If it weren’t the case that mine is thriving and yours is bankrupt, I might say that we’re birds of a feather. Have you accounted for that? You should settle for the possibility of being truly useful to someone. I tell you with hand over heart, entrepreneur to entrepreneur: you have nothing more to lose, nothing else to give in exchange for what I’m requesting. It’s the moment to negotiate.”
Esau didn’t answer. The director sighed:
“You think you possess something valuable, something that can remain untouched by my knowledge, only because you keep it in reserve. It’s one of the best strategies I know, excluding that of pretending to be a mystic or idiot. Naturally, you’ll already have noted that given my command over the universe of concentration—in all senses!—I’m in a position to achieve great things. Imagine yourself, for a second, free and associated with me. What we could do! My dear friend: I propose that we use for our own benefit your ability to capture the attention of the masses . . . and charge for it. You have beliefs, I have interests: the perfect team. Have you accounted for that? Have you accounted for it or not?”
“But what do you want? You’re my jailer . . . !” protested Esau.
“Ah, but I’m no materialist. I’d be happy just taking control of your intelligence. I propose that we enter the world of spectacle together, hand in hand. I can use my influences at the level of the central administration and succeed in getting your file lost. I’ve achieved more difficult things. Once this is done, and since appointments to State organizations are generally resolved by means of such dubious machinations, I’ll be in the perfect conditions to have you named, for instance, Director of the National Opera. What do you think of that, eh? Nor will I reveal to you the benefits that a post of such responsibility would produce on a psyche like yours, molded by the deliriums of the aesthetic of violence! The job would make you a practical man. Immediately. I’ll bet on it. Think it over, the position is at your fingertips.”
“Where do I sign?” asked Esau, reaching out his shackled arm.
The director smiled, as if he hadn’t noticed the irony:
“I knew you wouldn’t be such a fool . . . Now imagine yourself holding the post. I won’t describe to you the office, the court of sycophants, the women who will fall at your feet, the suits cut to measure, because I know that you’re a high-minded sort. Let’s get to the responsibilities. As Director of the National Opera, three matters will personally concern you: artistic programming, institutional funding and individual profits. The first matter depends completely upon your judgment, as applied to the second. What do I mean? The National Opera maintains itself through subsidies, charity evenings, endowments from the Central Administration and revenues from the ticket office itself. To guarantee a high flow of capital from these sources, it’s necessary to think on a grand scale and present completely inflated budgets. I want evidence of waste: sumptuous works, foreign casts, orchestras of the highest level, dazzling stage designs, regisseurs of international prestige, expensive whores, dancers, singers, et alia. So let’s not delay: think of a program that pulls out all the stops. You’re at complete liberty to choose the works performed. You can write them yourself and say what you feel like in them: you can be explicit, whimsical, obscene. Even revolutionary. Not a problem. The sublime work of art or the eyesore that you produce will liquefy the effect of the message within the question of form. People go to the opera to ‘see,’ not to ‘understand.’ When it comes right down to it, the content is irrelevant, because the only thing that a message stages is the fact there’s someone who acts and another who watches, someone who speaks and another who listens, someone who explains and another who agrees; and both roles, from their respective positions, believe that they run the show. What does this illustrate? That whether or not representation exists, power is a binary structure that always remains unalterable. It’s not on one side or another, but the result of a relationship between two parts. Obviously, you don’t agree with me, and believe the opposite. But that’s your challenge, isn’t it? To demonstrate that we are the ones mistaken.”
