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

father, his dead father, finally realized his former passion and soared like a bird over the square, over the entire city. That is, his feet never left the ground, but it was clear to anyone who wished to believe as much that the man was indeed airborne.

And the marvelous thing about all we beheld is that it took place in total silence and not in words. The square was still trickling with whispers and the acoustic condensation of feeling-vapors, which I cannot convey here because of the lamentable impotence of language. I can only say this: Just as the blind have a highly developed sense of hearing in compensation, so now did these mute essences, nameless and wordless, manifest their most latent expressions, and the people responded immediately with a hitherto unfamiliar instinct to the new stimulus. Rapid mutations in sensory perception took place as well. They were all involved in the new and fascinating effort. “Now do you understand?” asked Bruno quietly. “They are all artists.”

Except for Aunt Retitia and a few others, however, the revolution claimed no casualties. People looked happier and livelier than ever before. Their blood bubbled through their veins like wine, and I could hear it singing. They shone from within. Men and women everywhere listened with wonder and pleasure to their own ning, and nodded in joy and assent. The fact of their existence had suddenly become a palpable reality to them, just as decay and weakness had seemed to be before. Life itself was pungent, a provocative pleasure. Near the mailbox stood Uncle Hieronymus stroking his mustache with his paw. Men and women were seen embracing with a wonderful passion that did not, however, embarrass their neighbors (though I preferred to look elsewhere).

“But, Bruno,” I said in confusion, “here you are, offering us life as the very breath of passionate creation. In such a world would thoughts of murder not be possible?”

The boy raises his flashing black eyes to me. He swims past the folio in the seaweed like a youth strolling through his garden. Small hermitcrabs hasten away to nestle in the thickness of the letters, sea anemones beseech him with Madonna arms.

“And let us suppose,” says Bruno mellifluously, “that such thoughts did arise, due to some misconception or other: obviously they would never be put into practice even in the individual’s mind. He would not be able to understand them, he would not be able to grasp them, Shloma! For him they would be only a vague passing anguish, contrary to the most basic precepts of his life. And not only the thought of murder, my Shloma: any thought bearing the bitter traces of decay and putrefaction, destruction and fear. No one will be able to understand such thoughts, just as in the old world you could never really understand a person coming back to life, or the backward flow of time. Because I am speaking to you about a totally different life, about the coming phase of human evolution … Didn’t we decide to divide the world between us, Shloma, and give it a new name, or maybe you regret that now and prefer the easy way, gazing at Adela’s shiny patent-leather shoes and wishing to return to prison?”

And he raises his eyes imploringly.

I think of various arguments against his futile ideas: for instance, how could law and justice exist in such a world, and how would a developed and systematic science be possible, not to mention politics and international cooperation, armies and police forces, and what about the—

But my thoughts turned gloomy. Why, in fact, it had failed already, it had all been a colossal disappointment, and no force in the world could prevent these things from being used for the vilest ends. And, I asked myself in a rage, were Roosevelt and Churchill the “good”? Against evil we pit our tanks and planes and submarines, and we set up a different evil. I was miserable. I wanted to get out of the sea and go home, to forget that I had ever been here and asked these questions. But I didn’t have the strength to lift a finger. They’ll only disappoint me again. I dipped my forehead in the water. We can’t be doomed to this, can we? Bruno must be wrong. “Tell me please,” I ask him, trying vainly to sound lighthearted and stinging. “On what do you base your belief that these bits of confetti in the air will ever want to communicate and create, and what would prevent them from drifting down to the cobblestones, or just hovering in the air unconsciously? Tell me, Bruno!”

“You didn’t understand at all,” says the child, says the fish sadly, andexplains, slowly and with evident disappointment, what I should have grasped long ago. “They’re human beings all, and therefore creators. They’re doomed to be. They’re compelled to be by virtue of their origins—to create their own life, their love and hatred and freedom and poetry; we are all artists, Shlomo, only some of us have forgotten that, and others prefer to ignore it out of some enigmatic fear and there are those who understand it only on their deathbed, while others—like a certain aunty whose name I won’t mention out of respect for the disintegrating—don’t understand it even then …”

“And we? The poets? The musicians and writers?”

“Ah, Shloma, compared to real art, natural art, literature and music are nothing but ephemeral copy work, a superficial interpretative craft, not to say poor plagiarism, lacking in imagination and talent …”

“If so,” I asked with extreme caution in order to avoid hurting him too much, “what would you say, how could we continue living in our old world, after a certain act we’ve heard about was committed, an act attributed to a man you don’t yet know, or may have forgotten, who shot a Jew to challenge his rival, and said …” “I told you already”—Bruno interrupted me, finning excitedly and unwilling to listen to what I had to say—“I’ve already told