No, there is no more any Ego of mine. … I am in a world to which even the unlimited fields of Infinity cannot reach, for it was everlastingly beyond all limits. I am in a world in which Duration neither flows nor stands still; wherein Solitude is not, though neither are there spirits to commune with; where there is only no solitude, because there is no Me.
Do I suffer? No. I am in a world where I have no being.
I could well die, if I chose: but my body, well-favoured as it is, would fain not part from my bright, though mournful soul. Therefore am I willing to live.
But there is nought for which I can any longer care; I dwell in a world which my soul is never to behold: for when Death comes, my soul’s existence will be over.
Yet not because nothingness is there. To believe that there is nothingness, one must indeed have an intense power of faith. I cannot bring myself to accept the creed of nothingness. For in the world where I am now, neither Being is, nor Non-Being; there is neither the Ego nor the Non-Ego; nor has the soul ever laid her icy hand upon the body: I am in a world wherein there is no soul of mine.
My soul will end its being at the instant of Death, not because that world is a world of nothingness, but because therein is no such thing as indestructibility of substance.
I might, if I chose, die; but death matters nothing to me. To solve the riddle of life, I do not require death. For now I know all. I know that, in that other world, knowledge and ignorance are not incompatible, nor is there in that world any desire to know. And therefore I shall never solve the riddle of life, because I have solved it now.
I know that which no man knows: that to read the riddle, I need not know all things. For there is no Me!
And I am indeed in a world which contradicts our world, but with a contradiction in which negation and assertion are the same.
But in one thing I do believe—the only thing that is.
And that thing is: No!
Such a No as does not contradict Yes, but means what No means, taken together with Yes.
Such a No as Roslawski said to me.
And if I suffer nothing, it is because I belong to a world wherein joy and sorrow are the same.
II
The “Garden of Red Flowers”
Imszanski was patient and persevering, and determined to take no repulse as final. In the end he had the good luck to come at the right time, when Martha was in a favourable mood: whereupon she relented, gave up all her objections, and married him very willingly.
For close on a year after their marriage, I had no sight of them. They were travelling about Europe, and Martha had never been abroad. Every two or three days I would get a postcard from her, which I of course “read between the lines.” Plunged though she was in an atmosphere of intense bliss, she was continually revolving the thought of death in her mind. But that is probably no unfrequent phenomenon in such cases.
She returned, bringing with her a son a few months of age—returned very pale, and like a shadow, yet prettier than she had ever been before.
Having grown much thinner, she seems to be taller now. She wears her dark plaited hair round her tiny head, like a crown. Her age is thirty or thereabouts. Imszanski, though considerably older, seems of that age too.
They have rented a flat in Warsaw, and insisted on my sharing it with them. But I spend the best part of my day in the office, just as in former times.
To me, life brings nothing new; my memories are mostly colourless or grey. Truly, I am disappointed with myself, since I belong to the class of those who “give great promise” all their life.
All the same, though I cannot overcome this, my tristesse de vivre, I daily look upon it with more indifferent serenity.
You at first look straight in front of you. Then, when a certain point has been passed, you begin to look behind you. Now, this point is by no means the instant when happiness passes you by, or you are struck some awful blow, waking you up from a sweet illusion; it is a moment which may, like every other, go by in laughter or in tears: it may even be slept through; and you do not know when it comes, but you know well enough when it has passed.
For me, it has passed: and now I look behind me. Though I should prefer to look nowhere at all. I look back, and I think all that was perhaps not worth such a fuss. … And yet! …
In any case, I have learned some wisdom, and wisdom is eternal. There remains of it enough for me to smile in my solitude. And there remains some pride, too—the pride of knowing that I am what I am.
On returning from a concert, I went with my friend, Wiazewski, to Lipka, to meet the company we usually see there.
I take some interest in the atmosphere, reeking and tainted though it is, of a high-class restaurant, crowded with “gilded youth,” old financiers, beautiful actresses, and demimondaines. The saloon is a large one, lit with wide-branched chandeliers. The air is thick with tobacco-smoke, through which the sparkles of a thousand lights
