Read The Rosy Crucifixion 3 - Nexus for Free Online

curious as to what he thought my role might be.
    It’s hard to know where to begin, he drawled. Supposing … just suppose, I say … that we found a good place to hide away. A place like Costa Rica, for example, or Nicaragua, where life is easy and the climate agreeable. And suppose you found a girl you liked … that isn’t too hard to imagine, is it? Well then … You’ve told me that you like … that you intend … to write one day. I know that I can’t. But I’ve got ideas, plenty of them, I can tell you. I’ve not been a criminal lawyer for nothing. As for you, you haven’t read Dostoievsky and all those other mad Russians for nothing either. Do you begin to get the drift? Look, Dostoievsky is dead, finished with. And that’s where we start. From Dostoievsky. He dealt with the soul; we’ll deal with the mind.
    He was about to pause again. Go on, I said, it sounds interesting.
    Well, he resumed, whether you know it or not, there is no longer anything left in the world that might be called soul. Which partly explains why you find it so hard to get started, as a writer. How can one write about people who have no souls? I can, however. I’ve been living with just such people, working for them, studying them, analyzing them. I don’t mean my clients alone. It’s easy enough to look upon criminals as soulless. But what if I tell you that there are nothing but criminals everywhere, no matter where you look? One doesn’t have to be guilty of a crime to be a criminal. But anyway, here’s what I had in mind … I know you can write. Furthermore, I don’t mind in the least if some one else writes my books. For you to come by the material that I’ve accumulated would take several lifetimes. Why waste more time? Oh yes, there’s something I forgot to mention … it may frighten you off. It’s this … whether the books are ever published or not is all one to me. I want to get them out of my system, nothing more. Ideas are universal: I don’t consider them my property…
    He took a drink of ice water from the jug beside the bed.
    All this probably strikes you as fantastic. Don’t try to come to a decision immediately. Think it over I Look at it from every angle. I wouldn’t want you to accept and then get cold feet in a month or two. But let me call your attention to something. If you continue in the same groove much longer you’ll never have the courage to make the break. You have no excuse for prolonging your present way of life. You’re obeying the law of inertia, nothing more.
    He cleared his throat, as if embarrassed by his own remarks. Then clearly and swiftly he proceeded.
    I’m not the ideal companion for you, agreed. I have every fault imaginable and I’m thoroughly self-centered, as I’ve said many times. But I’m not envious or jealous, or even ambitious, in the usual sense. Aside from working hours—and I don’t intend to run myself into the ground—you’d be alone most of the time, free to do as you please. With me you’d be alone, even if we shared the same room. I don’t care where we live, so long as it’s in a foreign land. From now on it’s the moon for me. I’m divorcing myself from my fellow-man. Nothing could possibly tempt me to participate in the game. Nothing of value, in my eyes at least, can possibly be accomplished at present. I may not accomplish anything either, to be truthful. But at least I’ll have the satisfaction of doing what I believe in … Look, maybe I haven’t expressed too clearly what I mean by this Dostoievsky business. It’s worth going into a little further, if you can bear with me. As I see it, with Dostoievsky’s death the world entered upon a complete new phase of existence. Dostoievsky summed up the modern age much as Dante did the Middle Ages. The modern age—a misnomer, by the way—was just a transition period, a breathing spell, in which man could adjust himself to the death of the soul. Already we’re leading a sort of grotesque lunar