by Unknown
come your worst enemies, and the cause would be compromised. In any event, you are ruined. Supposing you have had enough energy to bear the troubles that resulted from your complaint, and admitting - as incredible as this would be - that you have not given in to the requests of your neigh bors who, seeing that you are waging a battle against the house, burden you with all their disputes, you still have no chance of surviving the in vestigation to which your complaint would normally lead. What happens then? What kind of operation is involved? To my knowledge, no one has ever arrived at the moment of undergoing this ordeal. Those who have overcome the other obstacles, however calm and sturdy they may be, have fallen apart in the anguish of waiting, in the meticulous preparations for this day, in all the various inconveniences that accompany the preliminary work. From the day you learn - most often by chance -that these gentle men have decided to come for themselves to make an inspection, you never leave your room; you do not sit down; you stand in the middle of the space with the door wide open, despite the drafts and the cold, so that you can hear them approaching from a distance. Moreover, it is customary not to wear shoes and to go almost entirely without clothes. Obviously these precautions are exaggerated, but they correspond to the idea we have of the members of the staff, according to which they again provide first-rate service when they are in the presence of the very sick. Is this one of those mad dreams originating in the gossip that never ceases to run through the house - or is it the truth? Everyone gives in to such thoughts, and those whom care has not devoured are carried off by sickness and fatigue." "So that's how it is with the domestics," said Thomas after a moment. "So these are the abuses one finds here. I am truly at an advantage, it seems, in having no fixed residence, despite the difficulties you have pointed out, if this situation spares me too frequent relations with such menials as these. I could not stay far enough away from them. Thank God I have so far eluded their advances, but now not a word, not a single request for service; you won't see me running around after them." "You're wrong," said the young man, with sudden violence. "You are utterly mistaken. What do you have to complain about? You have had numerous contacts with the staff; I know very well - for I know every thing concerning you. You have exchanged words with several of them; you have received advice from them; they have guided you. Invaluable acts of kindness, unheard-of favors. And you want to start fleeing from them, 74
to break with them? It's insane. You'll be lost forever with such mad ideas in your head." "Really?" said Thomas. "I find it difficult to understand what you're saying." "Pardon me," said the young man. "I lost control of myself. But indeed you gave me good reasons for losing my head. When I heard you scorn and, so to speak, trample underfoot something that in the life of a man is a unique chance, and that represents in any case the extraordinary privi lege of your situation, it was impossible for me to maintain my composure. What a tragic error! What ignorance! But now I will try to remain calm until the end. But you must answer this question honestly: How many times have you spoken with a domestic?" "How would I know?" said Thomas. "I am probably very ignorant, as you said, and you can expect anything from the ignorant. Therefore I find no embarrassment in saying that I have not always been aware of my relations with the staff." "That is as it should be," replied the young man, wiping his face with his hand. "What was I thinking? Such are the illusions bred by rash and reckless hopes. Listen to me," he began again. "Despite what I may have revealed to you, 'You assert that you know nothing of our relations with the domestics, of the misfortunes to which they condemn us, of the griev ances we raise from the bottom of our hearts, and that, whatever I might teach you, you still know nothing about any of it. Experience will be your only teacher. Besides, how could I speak to you about it? The essential thing is precisely that there is nothing to say about it, nothing happens, there is nothing. I have told you that the staff is invisible most of the time. What a foolish thing to say; I gave in to a prideful temptation and am now ashamed of it. The staff invisible? Invisible most of the time? We never see them, ever, not even from a distance; we do not even know what the word see could mean when it comes to them, nor if there is a word to ex press their absence, nor even if the thought of this absence is not a supreme and pitiful resource to make us hope for their coming. The state of negli gence in which they keep us is, from a certain point ofview, unimaginable. We could therefore complain about how indifferent they are to our inter ests, since many of us have seen our health ruined or have paid with our lives for mistakes made by the service. Yet we would be prepared to forgive everything if from time to time they gave us some satisfaction, and what 75
satisfaction! One day, a tenant found his pitcher filled with hot water. Well naturally there was nothing more urgent for him than to run to his neigh bors and tell them the news. The whole house heard about it. For a few hours we were in a fever of excitement, sketching out projects, demanding explanations, dreaming about this domestic who had disregarded years, centuries of negligence and had suddenly remembered his duty. No trace of jealousy clouded our joy. It seemed that each one of us had received a drop of that tepid water, and its warmth passed through us all. Need less to say, it ended badly. It was an error, a misunderstanding. A friend of the tenant had wanted to surprise him, and although he was horrified at the consequences of his gesture, he resigned himself to confessing that he was the cause of it all. But what hours those were, what days! He was the only one among us who did not join in our delirium, and the more our happiness grew, the more somber he became. Despite the blindness that prevented us from seeing that there was no reason to rejoice, we were of fended by his distress, which, he told us later, came less from the confusion he had brought upon us than from the impossibility of sharing our convic tion. As proof of the general madness, he even tried to persuade himself that everything had happened as we thought, and for a few moments he almost believed that he had been the instrument of the staff whose designs he had unconsciously realized. Fortunately -but was it so fortunate? -he had a positive sort of nature, admitting only what he saw, and reason won out in the end. How could I describe to you our discouragement when he informed us of our error? We refused to hear what he said and would have preferred to go deaf rather than to allow these terrible words to penetrate our understanding. What was our first thought? We imagined that, in a truly perverse spirit, he wanted to deprive the staff of the praise we were heaping upon them after so many years of complaints and curses, that he was trying to belittle them by denying any generous impulses on their part, that his plan was to force us back into the despair of a life that no ray oflight could reach from above. There were those among us who thought that he should die. What other punishment did he deserve if he were really guilty of such a crime? However, while the most outraged among us demanded a punishment, others began to have doubts. They interrogated the accused. They made him reenact his deed in their presence. We gathered in his friend's room to watch him pour the water he had taken from the base ment. It was a melancholy room, only recently decorated with flowers and
imbued with perfumes, but from which the adorable presence that had in habited it was imperceptibly withdrawing. Alas! We had to acknowledge our illusion. There was nothing but to return to the common room where the others were waiting and where we sat together without saying a word, with lumps in our throats, overwhelmed as much by our too eager hopes as by our disappointment. There were many, it is true, who refused to believe us, and certain doubts continued to shroud this painful affair. The ten ant who had been its protagonist searched everywhere for allies, witnesses, new arguments to advance; we heard him screaming in his room, where he closed himself up day and night in the hopes that another act of kindness would be bestowed upon him. He became unbearable to the other tenants, who were already forgetting the circumstances of the event - happily, for getting comes quickly - and although he had not lost his reason, he had to be placed in the special infirmary. "This story," the young man began again, looking at Thomas, "will seem extravagant to
you. Indeed it was, and for many reasons, but it became even more so in what happened later. It had aroused a profound emotion, and although in itself it was almost ridiculous, particularly because of the misinterpretation it had sparked, it revealed at the very least how far we had been drivenjnto fever and weakness by the state of abandon in which they had left us. Despite the orders given by some of the oldest tenants, whose age and experience we respected, to speak no more of this affair, there were some who continued to brood over it. They could not give up the thought that there was something strange about it and that it corre sponded to designs whose meaning deserved to be examined in depth. They met every day, and whether in the course of solitary reflections or in discussions that often ended in blows, they sought to determine the con ' clusions that could be drawn from such an event. Report after report was written -we write a great deal here - and these reports were collected into books that were preserved and studied in order to absorb their contents. What were the conclusions of all this research? There were a great many, no doubt; that is still one of the defects of the house, I mean our lack of mutual understanding and the diversity of interpretations. But one project was adopted almost unanimously. Since, after all, nothing more than the charitable initiative of a friend was needed to restore our appetite for living and to fill all our hearts with hope, we wondered what would happen if we were inspired by this example and what changes would result in life if 77
some of us offered to supplement the staff and to carry out the services we awaited in vain from the real domestics. So that no one would misjudge the origin of this activity, we decided to make the project public and to announce it to all the tenants. But at the same time we were careful not to give the names of the benevolent servants. It was a satisfaction granted to those who took on a task that was in some ways less than honorable. It was also a means of protecting them against the tyranny of certain ex tremely demanding tenants. Finally, since everyone could sooner or later be called to join the corps of enthusiasts, it was natural that all the tenants were suspected of being domestics since all of us would eventually receive the order to become one. We decided, then, to follow these conventions. The first daywas one of great and awesome solemnity. Several tenants were assembled in one of the most beautiful halls; of course not everyone was there, for certain very old and sickly tenants are never seen in public, and others live apart and appear so infrequently that they have long since been forgotten; the arrangement of the house lends itself to a withdrawn exis tence, so that it is impossible to know even approximately the number of inhabitants and what their names are. We looked at one another feverishly. One would have thought that something unheard of was about to happen. Some were trembling. Had they not lent their approval to a sacrilegious action, to a sort of shameful parody for which they could be punished? We had to comfort them with drinks. Then we read an oath stating that each tenant promised not to attribute to the staff the services from which he benefited and never to reveal the names of those providing them should he ever learn them. We swore. We put out the lights and withdrew back into the night, and it really was night, for what was to become of an undertaking so audacious and so contrary to the habitual ways? The first results were rather positive. With the exception of a few who lost their senses and who had to be reduced to silence, most everyone was on their best behavior, and we witnessed a great effort of solidarity, concord, and mutual aid that established a new atmosphere in the house. Nevertheless, although nearly everyone enjoyed a pleasure and comfort they had never known before, no one was happy. Something was missing. Boredom cast its shadow over people's faces. We did not know why the days remained empty, or why, on rising in the morning, we thought with such melancholy of the long hours we would have to live through before the consolation of sleep. At the same time, we began to observe some strange phenomena, or that seemed
strange at least to our idle, disengaged minds. First there was a relaxation of enthusiasm and of discipline. This was, you might say, very normal. En thusiasm gave way to halfheartedness; charity and patience gave way to ill will. From this there resulted some irregularities and anomalies in the ser vice that were reminiscent of the methods of the staff itself and particularly of those methods it practiced, according to the oldest among us, in the old days before they had abandoned their activity. What had happened? It's not difficult to imagine. Certain people believed, in good faith, that the domestics, their pride wounded by the new attitude of the tenants, which was to them a reproach and a blame, had resolved to take up their ser vice again and, at least to a certain degree, to fulfill their obligations. Cer tain odd occurrences were remarked. Some claimed to have seen, through those little windows cut into the walls of some rooms, great strong men lighting ovens in the basement and preparing meals that, it must be said, we never tasted. But, in principle, the lower floors were abandoned and access to them was very difficult. Others affirmed that the sick had re ceived exceptional care and that it was enough to pay them a visit to see on their faces the gleam of a satisfaction that could not have come from any ordinary intervention. Since the sick said nothing, all we could do was at tribute our own fancies to them, but the rumors spread no less for that. On top of that, the precaution we had taken to keep the service anonymous was a source of ambiguity and superstition. Whereas in the beginning it was impossible not to recognize the men who were involved, soon, as a greater and greater number participated in the project, it was no longer possible to know whether in fact some real domestics had not insinuated themselves among their replacements and -whether it was to keep watch over them or to ruin their efforts -were collaborating with them. As this was not at all unlikely, we could not help but believe it. We believed it all the more in that certain volunteers, driven by an ambiguous desire, did all they could to imitate the morals of those for whom they were, in a sense, the representatives and the spokesmen among us. They became, like the others, corrupt, mendacious, and tyrannical. They neglected their service not out of lassitude, which might have been excusable, but willfully, with that special taste for disorder and evil that the domestics seemed to possess to an unusual degree. Some gave proof in this corruption of an ingenious ness and an audaciousness that seemed to make them truly the equals of those they were imitating. Was it their function that had corrupted them, 79
was the influence of the menials having real effects on them, or had the ser vants in fact returned? All of these are possible. In any case, the situation became again what it had been. When we wanted to stop the experiment, which now was causing more and more damage - spreading sickness and confusion everywhere, creating more ruin than it had repaired -we could not reestablish any order. We no longer knew with sufficient accuracy the names of those who, under the pretext of giving assistance, were destroy ing the house; all we had were clues and guesses; those whom we enjoined to abandon their roles feigned surprise and seemed not to understand, and perhaps in truth they did not understand; perhaps they themselves had forgotten everything and, troubled by the image of these domestics whose places they had taken, had confused themselves with them entirely, in an identity we could not destroy and that no longer allowed us to distinguish them from their models. In any event, it was too late. We could only put forth hypotheses concerning the causes of these metamorphoses. It was no longer even possible to examine them all, for the mind grew tired try ing to imagine them, and, as time passed, the real circumstances eluded memory. Our memory was overcome by vertigo whenever we looked to the past -which was yet so close - whenever we tried to relive earlier days, and whenever we compared to the faces of the friends we had known so well the vicious and insidious countenances of the domestics in whom we could hardly recognize them. These transformations were the subject of interminable reflections. At times it seemed that changes occurred with no preparation. We may have cast a friendly glance at someone only a few moments ago; now we were afraid to look at him again for fear that he might have taken on that sinister appearance, that detestable air of maj esty tha
t - so we imagined - served as a mask for the servants when they mixed with the tenants. So we would avoid him. We were seized with fear upon perceiving him even from a great distance, an absurd fear that dis turbed our gazes and our minds. Sometimes this fear was so great that one would no longer have the strength to move away. One would look with in surmountable terror as he approached, a man whom one had loved and on whose face, in an illusion born from fright, there slowly emerged a strange and mad resemblance. Was this a human being? Why did he have two pairs of eyes? Why had his mouth disappeared? For it was yet another of our superstitions to attribute to the domestics a bodily physique different from ours; we believed in particular that they had no mouth, which explained 80