The Invention of Morel Read online

  But all this, which I can now view rationally, means that Faustine is dead, that Faustine lives only in this image, for which I do not exist.

  Then life is intolerable for me. How can I keep on living in the torment of seeming to be with Faustine when she is really so far away? Where can I find her? Away from this island Faustine is lost with the gestures and the dreams of an alien past.

  On one of my first pages I said:

  "I have the uncomfortable sensation that this paper is changing into a will. If I must resign myself to that, I shall try to make statements that can be verified so that no one, knowing that I was accused of duplicity, will doubt that I was condemned unjustly. I shall adopt the motto of Leonardo —Ostinato rigore—as my own,[8] and endeavor to live up to it."

  Although I am doomed to misery, I shall not forget that motto.

  I shall complete my diary by correcting mistakes and by explaining things I did not understand before. That will be my way of bridging the gap between the ideal of accuracy (which guided me from the start) and my original narration.

  The tides: I read the little book by Belidor (Bernard Forest

  de). It begins with a general description of the tides. I must confess that the tides on this island seem to follow the explanation given in the book, and not mine. Of course, I never studied tides (only in school, where no one studied), and I described them in the initial chapters of this diary, as they were just beginning to have some importance for me. When I lived on the hill they were no threat. Although I found them interesting, I did not have the time to observe them in detail (there were other dangers to claim my attention then).

  According to Belidor, there are two spring tides each month, at the time of the full moon and the new moon, and two neap tides during the first and third quarters of the moon.

  Sometimes a meteorological tide occurred a week after a spring tide (caused by strong winds and rainstorms): surely that was what made me think, mistakenly, that the tides of greater magnitude occur once a week.

  Reason for the irregularity of the daily tides: According to Belidor, the tides rise fifty minutes later each day during the first quarter of the moon, and fifty minutes earlier during the last quarter. But that theory is not completely applicable here: I believe that the rising of the tides must vary from fifteen to twenty minutes each day. Of course, I have no measuring device at my disposal. Perhaps scientists will one day study these tides and make their findings available to the world; then I shall understand them better.

  This month there were a number of higher tides; two of them were lunar, and the others, meteorological.

  The appearances and disappearances: The machines project the images. The power from the tides causes the machines to operate.

  After rather lengthy periods of low tides, there was a series of tides that came up to the mill in the lowlands. The machines began to run, and the eternal record started playing again where it had broken off.

  If Morel's speech was on the last night of the week,

  the first appearance must have occurred on the night of the third day.

  Perhaps the absence of images during the long period before they first appeared was due to the change of the tides with the solar periods.

  The two suns and the two moons: Since the week is repeated all through the year, some suns and moons do not coincide (and people complain of the cold when the weather on the island is warm, and swim in fetid water and dance in a thicket or during a storm). And if the whole island were submerged—except for the machines and projectors—the images, the museum, and the island itself would still be visible.

  Perhaps the heat of the past few days has been so intense because the temperature of the day when the scene was photographed is superimposed on the present temperature.[9]

  Trees and other plant life: The vegetation that was recorded by the machine is withered now; the plants that were not recorded—annuals (flowers, grasses) and the new trees—are luxuriant.

  The light switch that did not work, the latches that were impossible to open, the stiff, immovable curtains: What I said before, about the doors, can be applied to the light switch and the latches: When the scene is projected, everything appears exactly as it was during the recording process. And the curtains are stiff for the same reason.

  The person who turns out the light: The person who turns out the light in the room across from Faustine's is Morel. He comes in and stands by the bed for a moment. The reader will recall that I dreamed Faustine did this. It irks me to have confused Morel with Faustine.

  Charlie. Imperfect ghosts: At first I could not find them. Now I believe I have found their records. But I shall not play them. They could easily shatter my equanimity, and might even prove disastrous for my mental outlook.

  The Spaniards I saw in the pantry: They are Morel's servants.

  The underground room, the screen of mirrors: I heard Morel say that they are for visual and acoustical experiments.

  The French poetry that Stoever recited: I jotted it down:

  Ame, te souvient-il, au fond du paradis, De la gare d'Auteuil et des trains de jadis.

  Stoever tells the old lady that it is by Verlaine.

  And now there is nothing in my diary that has not been explained.[10] Almost everything, in fact, does have an explanation. The remaining chapters will hold no surprises.

  I should like to try to account for Morel's behavior.

  Faustine tried to avoid him; then he planned the week, the death of all his friends, so that he could achieve immortality with Faustine. That was his compensation for having renounced all of life's possibilities. He realized that death would not be such a disaster for the others, because in exchange for a life of uncertain length, he would give them immortality with their best friends. And Faustine's life too was at his disposal.

  But my very indignation is what makes me cautious: Perhaps the hell I ascribe to Morel is really my own. I am the

  one who is in love with Faustine, who is capable of murder and suicide,- I am the monster. Morel may not have been referring to Faustine in his speech; he may have been in love with Irene, Dora, or the old woman.

  But I am raving, I am a fool. Of course Morel had no interest in them. He loved the inaccessible Faustine. That is why he killed her, killed himself and all his friends, and invented immortality!

  Faustine's beauty deserves that madness, that tribute, that crime. When I denied that, I was too jealous or too stubborn to admit that I loved her.

  And now I see Morel's act as something sublime.

  My life is not so atrocious. If I abandon my uneasy hopes of going to find Faustine, I can grow accustomed to the idea of spending my life in seraphic contemplation of her.

  That way is open to me: to live, to be the happiest of mortals.

  But my happiness, like everything human, is insecure. My contemplation of Faustine could be interrupted, although I cannot tolerate the thought of it:

  If the machines should break (I do not know how to repair them);

  If some doubt should ruin my paradise (certain conversations between Morel and Faustine, some of their glances, could cause persons of less fortitude than I to lose heart);

  If I should die.

  The real advantage of my situation is that now death becomes the condition and the pawn for my eternal contemplation of Faustine.

  I am saved from the interminable minutes necessary to prepare for my death in a world without Faustine; I am saved from an interminable death without Faustine.

  When I was ready, I turned on the receivers of simultaneous action. Seven days have been recorded. I performed well: a casual observer would not suspect that I am not a part of the original scene. That came about naturally as the result of my painstaking preparation: I devoted two weeks to continuous study and experiment. I rehearsed my every action tirelessly. I studied what Faustine says, her questions and answers; I often insert an appropriate sentence, so she appears to be answering me. I do not always follow her; I know her movem
ents so well that I usually walk ahead. I hope that, generally, we give the impression of being inseparable, of understanding each other so well that we have no need of speaking.

  I am obsessed by the hope of removing Morel's image from the eternal week. I know that it is impossible, and yet as I write these lines I feel the same intense desire, and the same torment. The images' dependence upon each other (especially that of Morel and Faustine) used to annoy me. Now it does not: because I know that, since I have entered that world, Faustine's image cannot be eliminated without mine disappearing too. And—this is the strangest part, the hardest to explain—it makes me happy to know that I depend on Haynes, Dora, Alec, Stoever, Irene, and the others (even on Morel!).

  I arranged the records; the machine will project the new week eternally.

  An oppressive self-consciousness made me appear unnatural during the first few days of the photographing; now I have overcome that, and, if my image has the same thoughts I had when it was taken, as I believe it does, then I shall spend eternity in the joyous contemplation of Faustine.

  I was especially careful to keep my spirit free from worries. I have tried not to question Faustine's actions, to avoid feeling any hatred. I shall have the reward of a peaceful eternity,- and I have the feeling that I am really living the week.

  The night when Faustine, Dora, and Alec go into the room, I managed to control my curiosity. I did not try to find out what they were doing. Now I am a bit irritated that I left that part unsolved. But in eternity I give it no importance.

  I have scarcely felt the progression of my death; it began in the tissues of my left hand; it has advanced greatly and yet it is so gradual, so continuous, that I do not notice it.

  I am losing my sight. My sense of touch has gone; my skin is falling off; my sensations are ambiguous, painful; I try not to think about them.

  When I stood in front of the screen of mirrors, I discovered that I have no beard, I am bald. I have no nails on my fingers or toes, and my flesh is tinged with rose. My strength is diminishing. I have an absurd impression of the pain: it seems to be increasing, but I feel it less.

  My persistent, deplorable preoccupation with Morel's relationship to Faustine keeps me from paying much attention to my own destruction,- that is an unexpected and beneficent result.

  Unfortunately, not all my thoughts are so useful: in my imagination I am plagued by the hope that my illness is pure autosuggestion; that the machines are harmless; that Faustine is alive and that soon I shall find her,- that together we shall laugh at these false signs of impending death; that I shall take her to Venezuela, to another Venezuela. For my own country, with its leaders, its troops with rented uniforms and deadly aim, threatens me with constant persecution on the roads, in the tunnels, in the factories. But I still love you, my Venezuela, and I have saluted you many times since the start of my disintegration: for you are also the days when I worked on the literary magazine—a group of men (and I, a wide-eyed, respectful boy) inspired by the poetry of Orduno— an ardent literary school that met in restaurants or on battered trolleys. My Venezuela, you are a piece of cassava bread as large as a shield and uninfested by insects. You are the flooded plains, with bulls, mares, and jaguars being carried along by the swift current. And you, Elisa, I see you standing there, you and the Chinese laundrymen who helped me, and in each memory you seem more like Faustine: you told them to take me to Colombia and we crossed the high plateau in the bitter cold; the Chinamen covered me with thick velvety leaves so I would not freeze to death; while I look at Faustine, I shall not forget you—and I thought I did not love you! I remember that when the imperious Valentin Gomez read us the declaration of independence on fuly 5 in the elliptical room of the Capitol we (Orduno and the others) showed our defiance by turning to stare at Tito Salas's painting of General Bolivar crossing the Colombian border. But when the band played our national anthem, we could not suppress our patriotic emotion, the emotion I cannot suppress now.

  But my rigid discipline must never cease to combat those ideas, for they jeopardize my ultimate calm.

  I can still see my image moving about with Faustine. I have almost forgotten that it was added later; anyone would surely believe we were in love and completely dependent on each other. Perhaps the weakness of my eyes makes the scenes appear this way. In any case, it is consoling to die while watching such satisfactory results.

  My soul has not yet passed to the image; if it had, I would have died, I (perhaps) would no longer see Faustine, and would be with her in a vision that no one can ever destroy.

  To the person who nails this diary and then invents a machine that can assemble disjoined presences, I make this request: Find Faustine and me, let me enter the heaven of her consciousness. It will he an aet of piety.

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