Were I a little more naive, I might perhaps boast of having verified through these investigations the hypotheses concerning the world of the blind that I had first conceived as a child, since it was the nightmares and fits of delirium of this early period of my life that brought me the first revelation. Then, as I grew older, I began to become more and more wary of these usurpers and began taking the proper precautionary measures against this species of moral blackmailers who, as is only natural, abound in subways, in view of that condition of theirs that makes them close kin to those cold-blooded, slippery-skinned creatures that inhabit cellars, caverns, basements, unused passageways, drains, blind ditches, sewers, deep underground fissures, abandoned mineshafts silently oozing water; and some of these beings, the most powerful of them, live in vast subterranean grottoes, sometimes hundreds of feet deep, as can be deduced from the ambiguous, reluctant, deliberately sketchy reports of speleologists and treasure hunters, reports that are nonetheless sufficiently clear to those who know the grave threats that hang over the heads of those who attempt to violate the great secret.
Before, when I was younger and less suspicious, even though I was convinced that my theory was correct, I was unwilling to test it or even to allow it to see the light of day, since those sentimental prejudices constituting the demagogy of the emotions prevented me from breaching the defenses erected by the Sect, defenses as impenetrable as they are subtle and invisible, consisting of watchwords learned in schools and newspapers that are respectfully observed by the government and the police, and passed on by charitable institutions, matrons, and schoolmasters. Defenses that prevent one from reaching those dark, mysterious suburban precincts where commonplaces begin to wear thin and one begins to suspect the truth.
Many years were to go by before I could get past these outer defenses. And then, by degrees, impelled by a power as great and as paradoxical as that which in nightmares makes us proceed straight-toward horror, I gradually penetrated the forbidden regions where metaphysical darkness begins to reign, glimpsing here and there, indistinctly at first, like shadowy, fleeting phantoms, and then with greater and more terrifying clarity, an entire world of abominable beings.
I shall now relate how I came by this awesome privilege and how after years of searching and threats to my life I was able to enter the innermost circle where a multitude of monsters move restlessly about, ordinary blind men being merely the least fearsome form that these beings assume.
2
I remember that fourteenth of June very clearly: a rainy, freezing-cold day. I was carefully observing the behavior of a blind man operating on the Palermo subway line: a rather short, stocky, dark-skinned, extremely active, very ill-mannered man; one going through the subway cars with scarcely contained hostility, peddling collar stays, pushing and shoving his way through the dense throngs of passengers packed in the trains like sardines, holding out one hand for tribute that wretched office clerks were offering him with sacred terror; and keeping a tight grip on the symbolic collar stays with the other: for it is impossible for anyone to make a living by actually selling such trifling objects, inasmuch as a person may need one pair of collar stays per year, or at most one pair per month; but no one, not even a madman or a millionaire, is going to buy a dozen a day. So that, as is only logical, and as everyone knows full well, the collar stays are purely symbolical, a sort of emblem of the blind man, a kind of corsair’s letters patent that, along with his famous white cane, distinguishes him from the ordinary run of mortals.
I was therefore observing the course of events, ready to follow this individual wherever he might lead me so as to confirm my theory once and for all. I made countless trips between the Plaza Mayo and Palermo, doing my best to escape his notice in the terminals at each end of the line, fearing I might arouse the suspicion of the sect and be denounced as a pickpocket or some other nonsense of that sort, at a time when my days were incalculably precious to me. Hence, taking certain precautions, I stayed as close as possible to the blind man, and at the end of the last trip at 1:30 A.M., I prepared to follow him to his lair.
The man got off the train at the Plaza Mayo terminal before it made its final run to Palermo, and left the station via the exit leading to the Calle San Martín.
We began to walk down this street toward Cangallo.
At the intersection he turned off in the direction of the port district.
I was obliged to redouble my precautions, since on this lonely winter night there was almost no one out on the streets except the blind man and me. I therefore followed him at a prudent distance, taking into account the acute sense of hearing that such individuals have and the instinct that warns them that their secrets are in danger of being discovered.
The silence and the loneliness were as overwhelming as always at night in the Banking District. A far more silent and lonely district at night than any other—by contrast, doubtless, with the violent commotion typical of these same streets during the day: the noise, the indescribable confusion, the frantic hustle and bustle, the immense multitude rushing back and forth during Business Hours. But also, almost certainly, on account of the sacred solitude that reigns in these places when Money is taking its rest, once the last employees and office managers have gone home and an end has come to the exhausting and absurd daily round of activities whereby poor devils who earn five thousand pesos a month handle five million, and whereby veritable multitudes deposit, with infinite precautions, pieces of paper with magic properties which other multitudes withdraw from other little windows with inverse precautions. A completely unreal, phantasmagorical process, for even though they, the believers, regard themselves as realistic and practical persons, they accept these dirty pieces of paper on which, if one looks at them very carefully, one can make out a sort of absurd promise, whereby a gentleman who does not even sign with his own hand pledges, in the name of the State, to give something or other to the believer in exchange for the aforesaid dirty bit of paper. And the curious thing is that this individual believes this promise, since so far as I know no one has ever demanded that this obligation be honored; and more surprising still, in exchange for these dirty bits of paper the person is generally handed another piece of paper that is cleaner but still more absurd, wherein another gentleman promises that in exchange for this paper the believer will be handed a certain quantity of the aforementioned dirty bits of paper: so that the whole thing is a sort of madness raised to the second power. And all this represents Something that no one has ever seen, something said to be deposited Somewhere, in the United States especially, in Steel caverns. And the fact that this entire process is of a religious nature is indicated first and foremost by words such as credits and fiduciary.
As I was saying, then, once such districts have been cleared of the frantic throngs of believers, they become more deserted than any other, since no one lives there at night and no one could live there, because of the absolute silence that reigns and the tremendous solitude of the gigantic lobbies of the temples of finance and the enormous underground caverns where the incredible treasures are kept, as meanwhile the powerful men who control this magic sleep uneasily, stuffed full of pills and drugs and haunted by nightmares of financial disasters. And also for the obvious reason that there is nothing to eat in these districts, nothing that would permit human beings, or even rats or cockroaches, to live there permanently; and finally, on account of the extreme cleanliness that exists in these redoubts of nothingness, where everything is symbolic or at most a mere piece of paper; and even these pieces of paper, which might conceivably provide nourishment for moths and other small insects, are kept in formidable steel safes, invulnerable to all living species.
Amid the total silence, then, that reigns in the Banking District, I followed the blind man down Cangallo toward the port district. His footsteps echoed with a dull, muffled sound, taking on a more and more secret and perverse aura with each passing moment.
We proceeded as far as Leandro Alem in this fashion, and after crossing th
e avenue headed toward the dock area.
I was extremely cautious: from time to time it seemed to me that the blind man could hear my footsteps and even my anxious breathing.
The man was now walking along with a self-assurance that seemed terrifying to me, for I rejected the banal notion that he was not really blind.
But what amazed me and frightened me even more was the fact that he suddenly turned to the left again, heading toward the amusement park. And I say that that frightened me because it was not logical, since if this had been his plan from the beginning, there was no reason for his having headed to the right after crossing the avenue. And since the supposition that the man had mistakenly turned in the wrong direction was totally unthinkable, in view of the self-assurance and the rapidity of his movements, there remained the (terrifying) hypothesis that he had realized that I was following him and was trying to throw me off the track. Or, what was infinitely worse, trying to lure me into a trap.
Nonetheless, the same tendency that causes us to draw closer and closer to the edge of an abyss made me more and more determined to follow the blind man. And so a hypothetical spectator would have seen an individual with a white cane and a pocketful of collar stays making his way along almost at a run (which would have been grotesque had it not been so sinister), silently but frantically pursued by another individual: heading north along Bouchard first, and then once past the amusement park, angling off toward the right, as though heading for the port district.
I lost sight of him at that moment, since, as was only natural, I was following him at a distance of about half a block.
In desperation I quickened my pace, fearing that I would lose track of him at the very moment (or so I thought at the time) that a good part of the secret was about to be revealed to me.
I arrived at the corner almost at a run and made an abrupt turn to the right, as the blind man had done.
What a shock! He was standing there against the wall, tense and nervous, obviously lying in wait for me. I could not help bumping into him, whereupon he grabbed me by the arm with superhuman strength, and I felt his breath on my face. The light was very dim and I could scarcely make out the expression on his face, but his entire bearing, his panting breath, his arm gripping mine like a pair of pincers, his voice, everything about him was evidence of his bitter resentment and indignation.
“You’ve been following me!” he exclaimed in a low voice, although it seemed as though he were shouting.
Suddenly sick to my stomach from the feel of his breath on my face and the smell of his moist skin, and frightened almost out of my wits, I murmured a few mad monosyllables and stammered out a desperate denial: “You are mistaken, sir.” I was close to fainting from nausea and repulsion.
How could he have realized that I was following him? At what moment? In what way? It was impossible to believe that he had been able to do so thanks to mere normal, human means. But how then? Accomplices perhaps? The invisible collaborators that the Sect has astutely placed everywhere, more or less, and in positions and posts where no one would suspect their secret mission: nursemaids, teachers in secondary schools, respectable matrons, librarians, streetcar conductors? Heaven only knows. But those early morning hours of that day brought confirmation of one of my intuitions about the Sect.
All this crossed my mind in a dizzying flash as I fought to free myself from the man’s clutches.
I fled the scene the moment I managed to escape his grasp and for a long time afterward I did not dare go on with my research. Not only out of fear, though the terror I felt was so great that it was intolerable, but also out of deliberate calculation, since I imagined that that nocturnal episode could well have given rise to the strictest and most dangerous sort of surveillance of me. I would now be obliged to wait months, and perhaps years; I would be forced to throw them off the track; I would have to lull them into believing that my one motive for following the blind man had been to rob him.
Another event that took place more than three years later put me on precisely the right track once again, and I was finally able to enter the redoubt of the blind.
3
There is a fundamental difference between men who have lost their sight through illness or accident and those blind from birth. It is to this difference that I owe having at last been able to penetrate their redoubts, though I have not entered the most secret dens from which unknown grand pontiffs rule the Sect, and therefore the World. In this sort of suburb, it was only with the greatest of difficulty that I contrived to garner information, the usual vague reports, furnished only with the greatest reluctance, of these monsters and the means they employ to dominate the entire universe. I did manage to discover in this way that this hegemony is achieved and maintained (apart from the trivial exploitation of the sort of vulgar sentimentality that is the common practice everywhere) through anonymous letters, intrigues, the spreading of contagious diseases, control of dreams and nightmares, somnambulism, and dealing in drugs. One need only call to mind the marijuana and cocaine operation that came to light in secondary schools in the United States, where from the age of eleven or twelve boys and girls were corrupted, so as to reduce them to a state of unconditional and absolute servitude. Naturally the investigation ended where it ought in reality to have begun: at the inviolable threshold. As for domination through dreams, nightmares, and black magic, it is doubtless not even worth demonstrating that the Sect has in its service for this purpose a whole army of seers and local witches, quacks, faith healers, fortune tellers, and spiritualists: many of them, the majority, are mere frauds; but others have genuine powers, and curiously, they are in the habit of concealing these powers beneath a certain apparent charlatanism, the better to hold the world around them in thrall.
If, as they say, God rules heaven, the Sect has dominion over the earth and the flesh. I do not know if, in the final reckoning, this organization must one day account for its actions to what might be called the Luminous Authority; but meanwhile, it is evident that the universe is in its absolute power, that of life and death, which it exercises through pestilence or revolution, sickness or torture, deceit or false compassion, mystification or anonymity, little instructresses or inquisitors.
I am not a theologian and am not qualified to state whether these infernal powers can be explained by way of some sort of contorted Theodicy. In any case, that would be merely a theory or a hope. The rest, what I have seen and suffered, is fact.
But let us go back to differences.
No, let us not: there still remains a great deal to be said on this subject of infernal powers, for some ingenuous soul may believe that it is a question of a simple metaphor, rather than a brute reality. The problem of evil has never ceased to preoccupy me, even since the days when as a child I would post myself alongside an anthill, armed with a hammer, and begin to kill the creatures without rhyme or reason. The survivors were panic-stricken and scattered every which way. I would then pour water down the anthill with a hose; a flood. I could imagine the scene inside, the emergency measures, the hectic running back and forth, the orders and counterorders concerning saving the stored-up food, eggs, the queens, and so on. Finally I would raise havoc with a shovel, opening up great tunnels, searching out the last remaining pockets, and frantically destroying everything: general catastrophe. Then I would begin to ponder the overall meaning of existence, and think of our own floods and earthquakes. And so it was that I gradually evolved a series of hypotheses, for the idea that we might be governed by an omnipotent, omniscient, and good God seemed so contradictory to me that I didn’t believe it could be taken seriously. By the time I had reached the age when I became involved with the band of gangsters and armed holdup men, I had already conceived of the following possibilities:
God does not exist.
God exists and is a bastard.
God exists, but falls asleep from time to time: his nightmares are our existence.
God exists, but has fits of madness: these fits are our existence.
> God is not omnipresent; he cannot be everywhere. At times he is absent: Off in some other world? In other things?
God is a poor bugger confronted with a problem that is too complicated for him. He struggles with matter as an artist struggles with his work. Sometimes, now and again, he manages to be Goya, but in general it is a disaster.
God was vanquished before the beginning of History by the Prince of Darkness. And vanquished, turned into a supposed devil, his prestige suffers twice over, since the creation of this wretched universe is attributed to him.
I did not invent all these possibilities, though at the time I thought I was the first to conceive of them; later, however, I learned that some of them had given rise to many a pertinacious believer’s convictions, above all the hypothesis of the triumphant Demon. For more than a thousand years fearless, clearsighted men were forced to face torture and death for having bared the secret. They were annihilated and dispersed, since presumably the forces that dominate the world are not going to stop at trifles when they are capable of doing what they generally do. And so, poor buggers and geniuses alike, they were tortured, burned by the Inquisition, hanged, skinned alive; entire peoples were decimated and dispersed. From China to Spain, state religions (whether Christian or Mazdaist) ruthlessly suppressed any and every attempt at revelation. And it may be said that they more or less accomplished their objective. For even if certain of the sects could not be annihilated, they became in their turn a new source of falsehood, as happened with the Moslems, for example. Let us take a look at the mechanism: according to the Gnostics, the sensible world was created by a demon named Jehovah. For a long time the Supreme Deity allows him to operate freely in the world, but in the end he sends his Son into it to inhabit the body of Jesus temporarily, in order to free the world of the false teachings of Moses. So then: Mohammed thought, as did some of these Gnostics, that Jesus was a mere human being, that the Son of God had descended in him at baptism but abandoned him during the Passion, otherwise the famous cry: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” would be inexplicable. And when the Romans and the Jews crucify Jesus, they are putting a sort of ghost to death. But the most serious consequence was that in this way (and the same thing happened, in a more or less similar fashion, in the case of other rebel sects) the mystification was not brought to light but, rather, was lent added strength. So it was with those Christian sects who maintained that Jehovah was the Demon and that the new era began with Jesus, and so it was with those Moslems who believed that the Prince of Darkness reigned until Jesus (or until Mohammed), but was then overcome and returned to his hells. As can be seen, this is a twofold mystification: as the great lie grew weaker, these poor devils came along and pumped new strength into it.