Read The Complete Stories for Free Online

Everything in him naturally reached the maximum, not by objectification, but in a state of capacity, of exalted strength, from which no one benefited and of which everyone, besides him, was ignorant. And this state was his summit. It resembled something that might precede a climax and he burned to reach it, feeling that the more he suffered, the more alive he was, more punished, nearly satisfied. It was the pain of creation, yet without the creation.
    Because when everything melted away, only in his memory was there any trace.
    He never let himself rest for long, despite the sterility of this struggle and no matter how exhausting it was. Soon he would once again be revolving around himself, sniffing out his nascent desires, concentrating them until they were brought to a breaking point. Whenever he managed it, he’d vibrate with hatred, beauty or love, and felt nearly compensated.
    Anything was an excuse to set him off. A bird flying by, reminding him of unknown lands, breathed life into his old dream of flight. From thought to thought, unconsciously driven toward the same end, he’d reach the notion of his cowardice, revealed not only in this constant desire to flee, not to align himself with things so as not to fight for them, as in his incapacity to achieve anything, since he himself had conceived it, pitilessly dashing the humiliating good sense that kept him from flight. This duet with himself was the reflex of his essence, he discovered, and that was why it would go on all his life . . . That was why it became easy to sketch out the distant, gasping, faltering future, until the implacable end—death. That alone and he would attain the goal toward which his inclination guided him: suffering.
    It seems mad. However, Daniel also had his reasons. Suffering, for him, the contemplative, was the only way to live intensely . . . And in the end it was for this alone that Daniel burned: to live. Only his means were strange.
    He surrendered so much to the feeling he created and therefore it grew so strong that he’d eventually forget its induced and nurtured origin. He’d forget that he himself had forged it, would imbibe it, and lived from it as if from something real.
    Sometimes the crisis, with nowhere to vent, became so painfully dense that, submerged in it, exhausting it, he finally longed to free himself. He would then create, so as to save himself, an opposing desire that would destroy the first. Because at those times he feared madness, felt he was ill, far from all humans, far from that ideal man who would be a serene, animalized being, with an easy and comfortable intelligence. Far from that man he could never become, whom he couldn’t help but scorn, with that haughtiness gained by those who suffer. Far from that man he envied, nonetheless. When his suffering overflowed, he sought help from that kind of man who, in contrast to his own misery, seemed beautiful and perfect to him, full of a simplicity that for him, Daniel, would be heroic.
    Tired of being tortured, he’d seek him out, imitate him, with a sudden thirst for peace. It was always that opposing force that he introduced in himself whenever he reached the painful extreme of his crisis. He granted himself some balance like a truce, but one that boredom soon invaded. Until, from the morbid desire to suffer anew, he would solidify this boredom, transforming it into anguish.
    He lived in this cycle. Perhaps he’d permitted me to get closer during one of those times when he needed that “opposing force.” I, perhaps I’ve already mentioned this, was the picture of health, with my restrained gestures and upright posture. And, I now know, the reason he sought to crush and humiliate me so was because he envied me. He wanted to wake me up, because he wanted me to suffer too, like a leper secretly hoping to transmit his leprosy to the healthy.
    However, unsuspecting as I was, for me his very torture blurred things. Even his selfishness, even his spitefulness