Sitting on a stool by a feeble fire in the heart of the Rub’ al Khali Desert, with stars above his head and his meticulously polished black boots buried in the sand, Autrom was stroking the head of the dead kitten inside his top hat while speaking with a muffled rattle rasping from his throat.
“This is where life ends, little cat… I was seven years old when the thought of suicide sprouted in my body like a four-leaf clover. It was also then that I realized the profound trauma a child taking his own life would inflict upon those around him. Some children of that age somehow learn to find their way in the darkness within them. I, too, made certain calculations in the uncharted depths of my own mind. I began the exploration by trying to understand the world to which I was still new, a world I thought consisted solely of people. I had somehow become aware of the wound I would tear open in the souls of my parents: my mother, whom I had known for a few years, who would shed tears for no reason while singing sorrowful songs as she washed the dishes; and my father, who often went away on duty, and who, upon his return, unfailingly played games, made jokes, and brought gifts to spend quality time with his children.
Sitting flush against the blazing radiator by the window in the six-square-meter squalid room of the psychiatric hospital in Poitiers, I stubbed out the short Samsun cigarette I was smoking on my heel. I must confess that I felt not a shred of pain at the end of this act of mine, which horrified the other patients I had just met, momentarily snapping them out of the effects of the Diazem, Akineton, Norodol, and countless other drugs they had taken. Thanks to the thick layer of callus on my heel, not only did I feel nothing, but the layer of dead skin also kept me from being injured. The surprising benefit of the cheap shoes I had worn up to that age… Flawless calluses that allowed me to put on unnecessary spectacles and caused the most lethargic eyes to widen like an Izmir boyoz…
The easiest way to spare good people from pain was to act like a cheap shoe and inflict upon them small but persistently aggravating wounds. That way, their souls would wear down, grow calloused, and the fire of your absence would not burn them. The truth is, living was the path that would cause the most pain to the person choosing suicide, but the least distress to those around him. When the appointed hour came, there would be no one by the funeral bier other than a few conscientious believers burning with a sense of duty, emerging from the noon or afternoon prayers, and they too would soon be lost in the hustle and bustle of daily life.
Divining the distinction between good and evil is not all that difficult. The things you must do and the things you must not do; the things you desire to do and the things you force yourself to do. The user manual of life is written in such a way that even an imbecile could easily manage it. The real difficulty lies in disobeying that manual; resisting what comes from within, doing what you do not want instead of what you do. Striking a match to the manual under every optional circumstance…
Like every explorer, even though I, too, was searching for a habitable planet in my own space, an untrodden land in my ocean, I would make calculations toward a randomly chosen direction without knowing what I would find, and I would embark on actions in the exact opposite direction of the result. So that the people randomly entering and leaving my life would be bruised, so their skins would thicken and become fireproof, I whipped myself every day like a fanatical monk with perverse, demonic ambitions against my own desires; I paid the penance for my actions with consequences I could foresee, and I never held back from stubbornly defying my own nature to the death. Instead of reading a book I loved, I studied a subject that didn’t interest me in the slightest; instead of watching a play I was immensely curious about, I listened to the gossip of syphilitic prostitutes for days on end and over and over again, which bored me to tears; I preferred unimaginably atrocious street buskers to good musicians, I slept with women I did not love, I woke up next to women I did not love, I chose to live in derelict houses, I worked in jobs I hated, and I was growing old, keeping my eyes tightly shut to all the lovable aspects of life and constructing my personality out of the things I despised. I have reached this moment by avoiding taking pleasure, avoiding life giving me joy, avoiding empathizing with humans or animals, avoiding using medicines that would do me good and soothe my pains; whereas you, little cat, chose not to set out on the journey in the very beginning. Now I will tear off all the calluses of my soul for you, and I will turn your pain into pepper and press it into my most open wounds. The sinless deserve for all life to end after they are gone.”
Autrom stood up from his stool the moment the frost struck and the fire died out; he took the dead kitten out of his tall top hat and placed it on the sand, fell to his knees, put the kitten into the hole he had dug with his hands, and covered it up.
Yazan: Chaotica
Çeviri: Umberto
ANARCHISTALES 