by Daniel Quinn
The guardian was already summoning help, but he didn’t stop at that. After hanging up the phone, he marched over and put me in a choke hold. Luckily for me, it wasn’t in his mind to strangle me but only to immobilize me till help arrived. This gave me plenty of time to study what was in front of my nose, which just happened to be a name and a phone number neatly engraved in the wood of the top beam of the barricade—and it was the name and number I’d crossed the Atlantic to find.
When the cavalry finally arrived, it included one person who understood enough English to be persuaded that I was a harmless lunatic who would now go far away, never to return, leaving my pry bar behind.
Reunion
I almost didn’t recognize Shirin when she came out of Michael’s charming little chalet-in-the-woods twenty-odd kilometers west of Radenau. The scarlet lupus butterfly across her face had faded to almost nothing, signaling a remarkable remission, however temporary.
It was an awkward moment. Neither of us knew quite how to play it or even quite how we wanted to play it. In the end, we made it a comradely hug that we pretended had to be gotten through so we could get down to the important business of bringing each other up to date.
Driving me to the chalet, Michael had already told me most of it. My reconstruction of events at the theater was accurate enough not to need further elaboration here. Thanks to the warning shouts I was able to deliver, Shirin, Michael, Frau Hartmann, and Monika Teitel were halfway across the bomb shelter when the blast occurred. They produced a sensation when they emerged in a cloud of dust in the subbasement of the adjacent government building, but there was enough confusion so that they were able to slip away without being detained at the scene. As told by Michael as we drove to the chalet, Shirin had wanted to return to search for me in the rubble, but the others had managed to talk her out of such folly. As told by Shirin in her version, it was Michael who had wanted to return to search for me in the rubble.
Everyone had agreed it was time to run for cover and lie low for a while. The group was sharply divided by the news of my survival. For some, the fact that I hadn’t died confirmed my guilt. For others (Shirin and Michael, mainly), the fact that I almost died confirmed my innocence. The Teitels, convinced that Shirin should be protected from her own bad judgment, had kept to themselves the fact that I’d called them from the States. Neither Bonnie nor Albrecht had been in the theater at the time of the explosion and neither knew where Shirin was—or even that she was alive.
Neither Shirin nor Michael had ever heard of a sleight-of-hand artist named Giinter.
• • •
That brings this diary up to the present moment.
The household is governed by a strange rule: We don’t talk about what’s next. Michael is single, the only offspring of fairly well-off parents, without dependents; we have no financial worries.
It’s too early to tell if Shirin and I are moving toward anything more than we presently have. Her reserve is profound, as is her need to be independent and unpitied. Time will tell.
I’m in no hurry.
Undated
Back to the burrow
As I mentioned earlier, I entrusted to a friend the tape of my recent conversation with Fr. Lulfre. I just got word from this friend that his apartment was broken into and ransacked two days ago, and the tape cassette is now gone. I’d urged him in the strongest possible terms to make a copy for safe deposit somewhere else, but of course he hadn’t gotten around to it. My fault, for not telling him it was a matter of life and death. My fault, for not checking up on him. My fault, for still being too trusting.
Shirin and I must now leave Michael to his woodsy retreat and go truly underground. He’ll be safe enough when we’re gone, because neither Fr. Lulfre nor Herr Reichmann really understands what this is all about.
Where do you come in?
I end as I began, wondering if there was ever a diarist who wasn’t in fact writing for posterity, who didn’t secretly hope that his or her (oh-so-carefully hidden) words would one day be found and cherished. In any case, if there are such self-effacing paragons, I’m not one of them. From the beginning, I knew I was writing with the possibility of being read by others—by you, in fact.
From the first episode of my adventure—that initial conversation with Fr. Lulfre—I guessed something was afoot that would eventually have to be shared with a wider audience than is found inside my head. To put it bluntly: Though I tried to pretend otherwise, I knew I was making a record here, and I wouldn’t have kept at it so diligently otherwise.
Why am I breaking off at this point? Is it because the teachings of B are now complete and nothing more needs to added? Hardly. The idea is laughable. As a culture, we’ve grown up with the obscuring lenses of the Great Forgetting glued to our eyes. From the beginning, our intellectual growth has been stunted and warped by this angel dust of amnesia. This isn’t something that will be undone by any one author—or by any ten authors. Nor will it be undone by any one teacher or by any ten teachers. If it’s undone, it will be undone by a whole new generation of authors and teachers.
One of which is you.
There’s no one in reach of these words who is incapable (at the very least) of handing them to another and saying, “Here, read this.”
Parents, teach your children. Children, teach your parents. Teachers, teach your pupils. Pupils, teach your teachers.
Vision is the river, and we who have been changed are the flood.
I supposed people will ask you to summarize what it’s all about. I offer you this, knowing how inadequate it is: The world will not be saved by old minds with new programs. If the world is saved, it will be saved by new minds—with no programs.
They won’t like the sound of that, especially that last part. If it seems worth pursuing, remember the sticks in the river. Remember the Industrial Revolution, that great river of vision that needed not a single program to make it flow, even to the extent of engulfing the world.
Who is B?
Charles Atterley was B. Shirin has said she’s B. I’ve said I’m B. This is what’s made us targets. I have to change Fr. Lulfre’s mind about this. That’s what I’m doing here. I’ve lost the tape that was my safe-conduct, and I can only replace it with you. Because, believe me, if you’ve read these words, the damage is already done, and Fr. Lulfre will know that.
I’m not putting this very coherently. The fact is, I’m being rushed. Shirin is packed, and Michael is waiting to take us to the airport in Hamburg—and I must leave this manuscript with him. That’s settled. The steps that must be taken with it can’t be taken by someone on the run, someone with no address or phone number.
• • •
To resume: If we’re not here, Michael will be safe, because Fr. Lulfre thinks that Shirin and I are B.
What does it mean for me to say that I’m B? It doesn’t mean I can match the knowledge or the abilities of Charles and Shirin. It means I’ve been changed, fundamentally and permanently. It means I cannot be put back to what I was.
That’s why I’m B: I cannot be put back to what I was.
Shirin just stuck her head into the room to tell me that if we don’t leave in the next three minutes, we’ll miss our plane.
So—in terrible haste …
I’ve written the words, and they’ve found their way to you—I don’t know how, exactly. Michael says he has connections who know how to handle that part of it. I won’t worry about that.
The words have found their way to you even if, having read them, you hate them—even if you hide them from your children’s eyes and consign them to the flames.
They’ve found their way to you, so it’s already too late. Even if, in the meantime, Fr. Lulfre tracks us down and sends his assassins to us, he’ll be too late—because of what you’ve read here.
The contagion has been spread.
You are B.
The Great Forgetting
16 May, Der Bau, Munich
I wonder if you’ve ever consi
dered how strange it is that the educational and character-shaping structures of our culture expose us but a single time in our lives to the ideas of Socrates, Plato, Euclid, Aristotle, Herodotus, Augustine, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Descartes, Rousseau, Newton, Racine, Darwin, Kant, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Freud, Marx, Einstein, and dozens of others of the same rank, but expose us annually, monthly, weekly, and even daily to the ideas of persons like Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, and Buddha. Why is it, do you think, that we need quarterly lectures on charity, while a single lecture on the laws of thermodynamics is presumed to last us a lifetime? Why is the meaning of Christmas judged to be so difficult of comprehension that we must hear a dozen explications of it, not once in a lifetime, but every single year, year after year after year? Perhaps even more to the point, why do the pious (who already know every word of whatever text they find holy) need to have it repeated to them week after week after week, and even day after day after day?
I’ll wager that, if there are physicists listening to me here tonight, you do not keep a copy of Newton’s Principia on your bedside table. I’ll wager that the astronomers among you do not reach on waking for a copy of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, that the geneticists among you do not spend a daily hour in reverential communion with The Double Helix, that the anatomists among you do not make a point of reading a passage a night from De humani corporis fabrica, that the sociologists among you do not carry with you everywhere a treasured copy of Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. But you know very well that hundreds of millions of people thumb daily through holy books that will be read from cover to cover not a dozen times during a lifetime but a dozen dozen.
Have you ever wondered why it is the duty of the clergy of so many sects to read the Divine Office—daily? Why the same affirmations of faith are repeated word for word in so many religious communities around the world—daily? Is it so difficult to remember that Allah is One or that Christ died for our sins that it must be reiterated at least once every day throughout life? Of course we know that these things aren’t in the least difficult to remember. And we know that the pious don’t go to church every Sunday because they’ve forgotten that Jesus loves them but rather because they’ve not forgotten that Jesus loves them. They want to hear it again and again and again and again. In some sense or other, they need to hear it again and again and again and again. They can live without hearing the laws of thermodynamics ten thousand times, but for some reason, they cannot live without hearing the laws of their gods ten thousand times.
Verily I say unto you … again and again and again
A few years ago, when I began speaking to audiences, I had the rather naive idea that it would be sufficient—indeed entirely sufficient—to say each thing exactly once. Only gradually did I understand that saying a thing once is tantamount to saying it not at all. It is indeed sufficient for people to hear the laws of thermodynamics once, and to understand that they’re written down somewhere, should they ever be needed again, but there are other truths, of a different human order, that must be enunciated again and again and again—in the same words and in different words: again and again and again.
As you know, I’ve not spoken at Der Bau before this night. Yet some of you may have heard me speak elsewhere, and you may say to yourselves, “Haven’t I heard him say these things in Salzburg or Dresden or Stuttgart or Prague or Wiesbaden?” The answer to that question is yes. And when Jesus spoke in Galilee, there were those who asked: “Didn’t I hear him say these things in Capernaum or Jerusalem or Judaea or Gennesaret or Caesarea Phillippi?” Of course they heard him say them in all these places. All the public statements attributed to Jesus in the gospels could be delivered in three hours or less, and if he didn’t repeat himself everywhere he went, then he was silent during ninety-nine percent of his public life.
Anywhere in the world
Anywhere in the world, East or West, you can walk up to a stranger and say, “Let me show you how to be saved,” and you’ll be understood. You may not be believed or welcomed when you speak these words, but you will surely be understood. The fact that you’ll be understood should astonish you, but it doesn’t, because you’ve been prepared from childhood by a hundred thousand voices—a million voices—to understand these words yourself. You know instantly what it means to be “saved,” and it doesn’t matter in the least whether you believe in the salvation referred to. You know in addition, as a completely distinct matter, that being saved involves some method or other. The method might be a ritual—baptism, extreme unction, the sacrament of penance, the performance of ceremonial works, or anything at all. It might, on the other hand, be an inner action of repentance, love, faith, or meditation. Again in addition, and again as a completely distinct matter, you know that the method of salvation being proposed is universal: It can be used by everyone and works for everyone. Yet again: You know that the method has not been discovered, developed, or tested in any scientific laboratory; either God has revealed it to someone or someone has discovered it in a supranormal state of consciousness. Although initially received by divine means, the method is nonetheless transmittable by normal means, which explains why it’s possible for a perfectly ordinary individual to be offering the method to others.
But all this barely scratches the surface of what is meant when someone says, “Let me show you how to be saved.” A complex and profound worldview is implicit in such a statement. According to this worldview, the human condition is such that everyone is born in an unsaved state and remains unsaved until the requisite ritual or inner action is performed, and all who die in this state either lose their chance for eternal happiness with God or fail to escape the weary cycle of death and rebirth.
Because we’ve been schooled from birth to understand all this, we’re not at all puzzled to hear someone say, “Let me show you how to be saved.” Salvation is as plain and ordinary to us as sunrise or rainfall. But now try to imagine how these words would be received in a culture that had no notion that people were born in an unsaved state, that had no notion that people need to be saved. A statement like this, which seems plain and ordinary to us, would be completely meaningless and incomprehensible to them, in part and in whole. Not a word of it would make sense to them.
Imagine all the work you’d have to do to prepare the people of this culture for your statement. You’d have to persuade them that they (and indeed all humans) are born in a state in which they require salvation. You’d have to explain to them what being unsaved means—and what being saved means. You’d have to persuade them that achieving salvation is vitally important—indeed the most important thing in the world. You’d have to convince them that you have a method that assures success. You’d have to explain where the method came from and why it works. You’d have to assure them that they can master this method, and that it will work as well for them as it does for you.
If you can imagine the difficulty you would encounter in this enterprise, you can imagine the difficulty I encounter every time I address an audience. It’s seldom possible for me simply to open my mouth and say the things that are on my mind. Rather, I must begin by laying the groundwork for ideas that are obvious to me but fundamentally alien to my listeners.
The Great Forgetting
With every audience and every individual, I have to begin by making them see that the cultural self-awareness we inherit from our parents and pass on to our children is squarely and solidly built on a Great Forgetting that occurred in our culture worldwide during the formative millennia of our civilization. What happened during those formative millennia of our civilization? What happened was that Neolithic farming communes turned into villages, villages turned into towns, and towns were gathered into kingdoms. Concomitant with these events were the development of division of labor along craft lines, the establishment of regional and interregional trade systems, and the emergence of commerce as a separate profession. What was being forgotten while all this was going on was the fa
ct that there had been a time when none of it was going on—a time when human life was sustained by hunting and gathering rather than by animal husbandry and agriculture, a time when villages, towns, and kingdoms were undreamed of, a time when no one made a living as a potter or a basket maker or a metalworker, a time when trade was an informal and occasional thing, a time when commerce was unimaginable as a means of livelihood.
We can hardly be surprised that the forgetting took place. On the contrary, it’s hard to imagine how it could have been avoided. It would have been necessary to hold on to the memory of our hunting-gathering past for five thousand years before anyone would have been capable of making a written record of it.
By the time anyone was ready to write the human story, the foundation events of our culture were ancient, ancient developments—but this didn’t make them unimaginable. On the contrary, they were quite easy to imagine, simply by extrapolating backward. It was obvious that the kingdoms and empires of the present were bigger and more populous than those of the past. It was obvious that the artisans of the present were more knowledgeable and skilled than artisans of the past. It was obvious that items available for sale and trade were more numerous in the present than in the past. No great feat of intellect was required to understand that, as one went further and further back in time, the population (and therefore the towns) would become smaller and smaller, crafts more and more primitive, and commerce more and more rudimentary. In fact, it was obvious that, if you went back far enough, you would come to a beginning in which there were no towns, no crafts, and no commerce.