The Shelter (Survivors Book 1)
Page 3
Group therapy—because it was something like that—is normally quite entertaining and even exciting for people of sane mind. Yes I claim that talking about ourselves and even more hearing ourselves spoken of is the favorite activity of a large number of people including myself. Not only I am not afraid of it but I usually feel great pleasure, which perhaps explains that stern people like Francesca is that wary about it (I do not mean to include the woodman who certainly has other reasons for not wanting to talk about himself). Some people went so far as to falsely suggest that is the only reason for what I wrote books (may their souls rest in peace): it’s not my conception of literature indeed.
Obviously, the situation was anything but normal. And to tell the truth, the notion of normality made no longer sense. In any case, I felt quite detached at this moment of the interview, or the therapy, not really concerned so that I could take all the fun out of it as an impartial observer. This added to the enjoyment of sharing a secret with a higher being like Ariane. My feeling was strange, I admit, and perhaps guilty, in the light of the situation. With what I knew, I should hate him and his fellow creatures, I was well aware of it but I was not able. It is possible that I am a traitor. Or at least that I would seem so to those who would read these lines if our species was to survive and our descendants would be eager to know the darkest chapter of our History. Too bad! However, I should add, to sketch a line of defense for my future and hypothetical trial, that when the enemy defeated you, so entirely and definitively, what good would it be wasting your time to hate him, what good would it do to fight still? The only reasonable option which remains to you are to learn from him—even learn to love him if it is required—or to disappear. This is what Dr. Leone was trying to do in her own way, I thought. The term collaborator had been very accurately chosen by Ariane to call her. That said, if you want to search for culprits, she was surely not as good as me. All proved that she had ignored so far the gravity of the plight, a curious ignorance in fact, almost inexplicable, that she unconsciously revealed by her speaking. And it was even clearer that she was not aware of whom she gave herself to.
To put an end to this topic, I don’t believe at all that we, humans, have deserved what happened to us. I am not a fanatic like Lussius. On the contrary, I consider that our fate is unfair, iniquitous and immoral. Simply, I think that morality and justice have nothing to do with it. Was it fair and moral that Neanderthal man disappeared to make room for his successor, the so-called Homo Sapiens, that is to say us? And didn’t we push him a little to the grave? If we were found ourselves in the other way around, would we have done better than Ariane and his fellow beings? Or just like the same? Or even worse?
I was expecting that Ariane asked me to start and I was not mistaken. He wished that we took turns to read our own text. Personally, as I said, it did not scare me at all. Nowadays—I mean just before the disaster— writers are rarely allowed to address listeners and feel them so captivated. In fact, I almost could dispense with notes. While I believed reading, my eyes were running forward; and going along, I reinvented my own story, for the sake of accuracy or clarification. More than once, I completely stopped reading to rely only on my memory, while watching my audience, especially Francesca, probably because she was right across from me. Anyway, I brought the chandelier closer and began my story.
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