See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

shoulder, wearing an attentive expression on his ironic face, as they explained from experience that to know Despair (“Despair!” they shouted in his ear, clutching their hearts as he never needed to do because he remembered where it was) and “write with authenticity, like a genuine writer,” you had to commit a little suicide or at least go insane, and in daily life as well, Pan Schulz, you have to come out of your isolation and feel “the pulse of humanity,” the “sorrows of life,” so don’t be such a hermit. Bruno tried his best to be convinced, he really and truly tried to achieve the commonplace despair they prattled about; he struggled to reach it out of the darkness into which he had sunk, if only to escape the eel-like fear that coiled damply around him whenever he looked at what he had written, or wondered what the future held in store. But my Bruno was too honest for the suicide-insanity routine, and he could not dissolve his loneliness in the crowd because he knew the crowd offered no haven from imminent danger. He would have to keep to himself, sit in his chair, abandoning himself to his razor-keen awareness and the two big searchlights—longing and despair—converging in his head, and to bear the mark of Cain on endless wanderings; and he also knew that nowhere except his simple room, at his simple desk, writing in a schoolboy’s notebook, would he be able to feel his body tensing on the rack of an inquisition unequaled in cruelty and pleasure, till his flesh and bones were stretched so flat that every ounce of flesh was infinitely diluted in the dimension of distance and dream, and only then, as a single fluttering membrane, would he be able to feel the beating of the big drum at the foundations, the feverish, despairing embrace of savage tongues and putrefying grammars, with no one left to understand them, and helter-skelter Bruno’s pen sketches the impressions this secret world has left upon his parchment body, pasting them onto the palpable and visible, and Bruno’s stories, his longings and laments for a banished Eden, are wrenched out of him into a frozen secondhand world of exact science, classified language, and tame clock time; see how he droops at his desk, biting his lip, his chin pointed, writing with the same upsurge of violence, frenzy, and obliviousness he knew inside you throughout the daring voyage. See him use his pen to parry the savage apparitionswhich have not yet fully materialized, evoking ages of genius for one brief moment, taking care never to perforate the thin membrane with his pen, to keep it all from bursting through, and dissolving away, yes dissolving: because the world is not yet ready for the life that flickers beyond Bruno: here life is congealed in human bodies, like molten lava. And only at the end of his journey did he define and dissect and compose his lost story, The Messiah, capering wildly inside you, and now that we’ve reached this particular point purely by chance, I had better shut up and let you talk about the story, and give me a hint or two, no more …

No, I won’t. But I will tell you about Guruk’s torag.

Guruk? Who’s Guruk? I don’t want to hear about Guruk! I want to hear about the Age of Genius! I want to hear about The Messiah! Now! Right now!

Okay! Be silent!

And after a pause:

My, you’re obtuse. You’ve just told me things that are terrible and true. How do you understand him the way you do? I hate you for being able to guess like that. I know how you do it, too: you look at yourself and say the opposite. You—

Enough!

No! I want to speak, because you’re merciless, too. You have to say everything, don’t you! You have to know everything! You hurt me to death. You’re so mean and so right about everything! I’ll tell you something: While he was inside me I licked him and learned that he was falling to pieces. Many strange creatures, Neuman, nasty little creatures swam inside him like fish in a sinking ship …

But did he succeed? Did he succeed in the end?

For the life of me I can’t understand why of all the people who love Bruno I had to meet up with you?! Now lie still! You want to hear about succeeding? I’ll tell you about succeeding. Lie down! Stop wriggling! The way you swim, dearest, I bet you can’t dance worth a damn, am I right?

You really enjoy putting me down, don’t you?

I was just angry. The things you said …

He wasn’t right for you.

By all the easterlies! You bastard—

He was only right for himself. Don’t be angry. It hurts me as much as it hurts you. Maybe for different reasons, but it hurts just the same.Now, please tell me about him. Tell me anything you want. just tell me.

Shut up, will you. Shut up and let me think in peace. Guruk’s torag, I was saying …

[ 6 ]

… SOMEWHERE NEAR THE SHETLAND ISLANDS the shoal became disquieted.

Bruno was slow in sensing this, because he always found it hard to tune himself to the ning in his sleep (the ning had never been easy for him, Neuman, notwithstanding what you wrote, because he had spent his entire life away from me deliberately “ignoring” nings, for your information), but just then he flipped over, plunged down, and swallowed much water, and woke up, sputtering and screaming something ter-ri-ble, splashing with his hands and—Sorry.

I said I was sorry, okay? Look, I’m sorry, Neuman. I got a little carried away and forgot you were here. It won’t happen again. I promise. Yes, you can spit it back, dearest, I know … it’s very salty … and cold too, isn’t it?

Where were we? Oh yes, in the North Sea. And it was night, with a shattered moon in the water, and Bruno was looking for the lateral lines belonging