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‘You know you’re choosing solitude,’ my therapist said, more as a statement than a question, in a special session, a consultation I requested when she was no longer my therapist. I’d requested that session so she could assess my psychological state before I took the decisive step of moving out of what had once been my home. Her assessment was positive, as was that statement, more statement than question – though really it was a warning.
‘Yes,’ I answered, firmly and decisively. I knew the affair with Chl couldn’t last, because perhaps I myself couldn’t last. But I was prepared to take on my final solitude, which is what I’m going through now, though I never imagined it would be like this, filled with such ambiguity.
I felt as if that kind old woman was somehow giving me her blessing, and that she was somehow satisfied with the session, which was the true end of our therapy. My libido had managed to emerge and take notice of ‘an external object’ (my words, because she rarely used psychoanalytical language).
I think that when love, true love, springs up between a man and a woman, it transforms them both, giving them certain magical qualities. Perhaps they don’t realise. Love comes to guide them, to lead them, and they both find themselves able to do things that would normally seem impossible. They live in a reality with more dimensions.
I’m going to end up sounding almost blasphemous, but again, once again, on reaching this point, I can only return to the same thing: in erotic love, in loving sex, in the tension of desire, in the projection of the energies of the man and the woman onto the creation of a new life, there, in that tension and those intimate circumstances, is where whatever they each have within them of God, which is usually hidden, makes its presence felt. Only God can give life, and this and nothing else is the purpose of sex.
It felt like I was dying, but I was telling the truth. I’d been recommending she go to therapy from very early on, and she waited two or three years before taking my advice. Now she was reaching the stage of detaching herself from me, and above all, I imagine, of the more important detachment from her father. My darling Chl is growing, or at least she’s doing what she can. She’ll lose a lot … and I’ll lose more; but I think what she’ll gain will be infinitely more valuable. Recovering her libido, for example. And being able to make that list of lovers she spoke of in my dream.
At this dramatic moment, as we both sat red-eyed and tearful, we were holding hands. I felt the warmth of her hand just like in the old days, and I saw that her face was recovering the glorious colours of her usual good health, and her beauty was beginning to shine once more. I realised that the causes of the anxiety which had been torturing her for days were connected to that process of growth.
When I woke up today, I carried on thinking. It occurred to me that I should do something; since there’s no sign of anything new, or any change or interesting surprise, I should take matters into my own hands and create a suitable topic for the ending. Then I decided that wasn’t really allowed. I can’t go out into the street dressed as a monkey to generate an interesting and unusual anecdote with which to finish the book; I can’t start structuring my life around the diary and the need to finish it. I also thought about how the ideal ending would be something like this:
‘I’m tired of this situation, I’m tired of this grey life, I’m tired of the pain caused by this strange relationship with Chl, the knowledge that I’ve lost her even though she’s right there, the sexual tension every time we meet, which doesn’t lead to anything except this absurd addiction to the computer; I’m tired of myself, of my inability to live, of my failure. I didn’t manage to finish the grant project; it was a bad idea, it can’t be done, I didn’t realise that time can’t go backwards, or that I’ve become someone else. The writerly role is stuck to my skin but I’m not a writer any more, and I never wanted to be one. I don’t want to write, I’ve said everything I wanted to say, and writing has stopped being fun and giving me an identity. It’s not true what my friend Verani says in some essays, particularly in his work on Empty Words: that my desperation arises from not being able to write. I can write; look, I’m writing now and I’m doing it well. I can write whatever I like; no one disturbs me, no one interrupts me, I have all the equipment and all the comfort I need; I just don’t want to, I don’t feel like it. And I’m tired of playing this role. I’m tired of everything. Life is no more than a stupid, unnecessary, painful burden. I don’t want to suffer any more, or carry on with this miserable life of routines and addictions. As soon as I close these quotation marks, then, I’m going to shoot myself in the head.’
:(
Above this is a heading that refers to time (the date, the hour), but time has lost almost all meaning for me. I can say ‘some time ago’, but I’m not at all sure how much time the ‘some’ might cover: weeks, yes, but perhaps even months. Well, whatever it means, some time ago these words appeared in my head: ‘The never-ending small hours’, and I thought they should be the title of this book. It’s a bit of a pretentious title, and far too poetic; but that’s how the words came out, and those words seem very accurate, very true, very fitting and exact. A never-ending series of small hours is what my life is, and what it has been these past years – best not to ask how many.
Saying ‘the small hours’ isn’t the same as saying ‘night’; they look similar in the dark, but something about the small hours makes them ill-suited to life – perhaps the inexorable quality of the solitude of whoever is alone at that time. Especially if they’re awake.
I should make a brief digression here – within the long digression, you might say, of this handwritten exercise I’ve so cautiously embarked upon – to say that I became a writer not because it was my calling, but for complicated socio-politico-econo-psychological reasons. At this moment, for example, rather than writing, I’d like to be devising a computer game, making a film, playing some Bach on an organ in a historic (European) cathedral, or simply depositing my seed in a series of women’s wombs, lined up one after the other as far as the eye can see. My relationship with literature is all I can allow myself; or, indeed, all I’ve been allowed – up to a point – by other people. To put it more plainly and more accurately, writing is cheaper and less dangerous, or more comfortable, for me. I’m lazy and cowardly, and poor to boot; I should therefore resign myself to writing, and even be thankful for it. End of brief digression.
lol
[...] I noticed one night that she was letting me have my way with her just to please me, but she wasn’t enjoying it; that in fact she wanted to think about other things besides my unwelcome sexual advances, but, because of her saintly character, she couldn’t say so. Anyway, I realised this of my own accord a second before what would undoubtedly have been another rape, and I set my jaw and repressed the urge and lay back next to her and took her hand. She smiled, immensely relieved, and nestled her head into my chest. [...]
Anyway, when this girl I barely knew got wind of the situation, she immediately and without hesitation stole a considerable amount of paper from the office where she worked and sent it to me. Admirable sensitivity; an incredible capacity for understanding. (If she’d sent money, my weak flesh would have made me buy food, pay the rent or something like that. Perhaps she couldn’t send money, and was only able to help me with what she had to hand, even though it wasn’t hers. But I’m sure anyone but her would have done anything but that, which was the best possible thing to do. Because those sheets of paper went far beyond just meeting a need: they made me feel that my writing was more important than I am myself, which, independently of the objective value of my writing, is true. Because whether it’s good, average or bad, it transcends me.)
I’d discovered some time ago – long after the business with the dog, and long before woman A – that my depressions corresponded to punishments for certain misdeeds. I’d developed a whole theory about it, and the theory helped me through the crises. I’m not saying it was true; I’m just saying it worked. In simple terms, the theory said that God holds people prisoner within their own selves. You’re still free to come and go and stay alive by whatever means you choose, but you remain a prisoner in the area – so to speak – where you made the mistake. In this case, my mistake had been sexual; as a result, I had to serve my punishment, secretly, depriving myself of the pleasure of sex, and even of women’s affection. I had an intimate, though vague, sense of how long my punishment would last. And after going through enough of these crises, I learnt to accept them. Trying to swim against the current was the worst thing I could do, because not only would I not escape the punishment, but my life would also start to fall apart all over the place. When I accepted things, everything went on as well as could be expected considering my depression (which, thanks to my trick of acceptance, usually turned into a melancholic state that was almost pleasant) (‘Transform Your Depression into Melancholia Through Acceptance and Get Your Life Back!’ my Reader’s Digest article could be called).
c) Because, sneaking a peek at the topics I’ll have to cover almost immediately if I carry on writing, I realise I can’t go on dodging certain ideological positions – positions that would very much annoy some powerful groups: the government, the opposition, the far left, the left, the centre, the right, the far right, and even that anonymous floating mass which appears in keys to surveys as ‘undecided’ or ‘don’t know/no response’. They would probably also annoy the Catholic Church, the Masons, the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, the various occult sects, the Rotary Clubs and the Lions Clubs, and most likely a few social clubs, sports clubs and boules clubs.
lol