incidentally, is a mother in Reims, as well as obese, alcoholic, and not at all Buddhist — thanks to irony I no longer get my hopes up. For a long time, my slogan has been a phrase from Cervantes which when applied, for example, to the now fat Kikí, leaves one in love with irony: “There is no heavier burden than a slight and fickle woman.”
“You wouldn’t kill yourself, you wouldn’t die, you’d just go far away from Paris, but you wouldn’t kill yourself,” Kikí replied that day in a hypnotic and very persuasive tone. “Oh, really?” I said, somewhat puzzled. And she said: “You won’t croak if you focus properly on the fall with the right karma, understand? You have to brake mentally in the air as you fall. If you do that, you might even land on your feet, you’ll see.” “But I wouldn’t land on my feet on the ground in Paris?” I asked. “You’ll land on your feet, but it won’t be in Paris,” she replied.
I was in love with her. I’d listened so closely to all the instructions she’d given me about how to act under the effects of LSD that I nearly threw myself confidently into space from the top of the Eiffel Tower. But at the last minute something stopped me believing I could mentally slow down my body as I fell. And that something — not just a timely intervention on the part of my natural intelligence — was the discovery that Kikí was monstrous, since she, knowing as she did that acid opens up dangerous breaches in the mind, was openly trying to get me to kill myself. I saw that not only did she not love me at all, but what she said was an attempt to get rid of me, perhaps because she wanted to make off with what little money I had in the garret, or perhaps simply, just as I’d suspected, because she found me odious. Luckily, irony came to my rescue at the last minute and endowed me with a selfish prudence, immunizing me against the murderous and persuasive voice of the terrible Kikí.
“I don’t understand why you think leaving Paris would be advisable,” I told her. “What?” she asked somewhat surprised, as if she hadn’t expected me to still be there, perhaps she thought I was already dead. “Nothing,” I said, “I just want you to know that eternity isn’t that much longer than life.” I spun on my heels and left, walked out of the Blaise and left her, left her forever, which is just a manner of speaking, because actually the callous Kikí had already left me months before. I went down in the elevator of the Eiffel Tower and shortly afterwards, in the street, at the crossroads, I went down a road that went beyond even the reality that had replaced the previous reality; I went, to the rhythm of acid, toward a different reality where time and space didn’t exist: I went, in a manner of speaking, beyond the perpetual snows of Kilimanjaro; I went to the country where things have no name and there are no gods, no men, no world, where in the background there’s only the abyss.
Many hours later, back in the garret, the drug’s effect had almost worn off; I was looking distractedly at the ceiling when suddenly I shuddered in terror, as if at that precise instant I’d returned to normality, to reality. And I realized the seriousness of what had happened.
“Damn,” I said in fright, “it’s not every day someone tries to murder you.”
41
Even though I’d come across a real assassin while writing about a lettered one, I rejected the idea of giving the narrator of my novel the look of the malicious Kikí. Oddly, a few days later, almost by pure chance, at a party at Marguerite’s, I encountered the extremely perturbing look of a girl that seemed to me ideal for my femme fatale, my murderess.
We’ve all fallen prey to uttering hackneyed and schmaltzy phrases, referring to the previous night as “an unforgettable evening.” But, at the end of life, only those who really haven’t experienced unforgettable evenings are ridiculous, as Pessoa would say. I think
“You wouldn’t kill yourself, you wouldn’t die, you’d just go far away from Paris, but you wouldn’t kill yourself,” Kikí replied that day in a hypnotic and very persuasive tone. “Oh, really?” I said, somewhat puzzled. And she said: “You won’t croak if you focus properly on the fall with the right karma, understand? You have to brake mentally in the air as you fall. If you do that, you might even land on your feet, you’ll see.” “But I wouldn’t land on my feet on the ground in Paris?” I asked. “You’ll land on your feet, but it won’t be in Paris,” she replied.
I was in love with her. I’d listened so closely to all the instructions she’d given me about how to act under the effects of LSD that I nearly threw myself confidently into space from the top of the Eiffel Tower. But at the last minute something stopped me believing I could mentally slow down my body as I fell. And that something — not just a timely intervention on the part of my natural intelligence — was the discovery that Kikí was monstrous, since she, knowing as she did that acid opens up dangerous breaches in the mind, was openly trying to get me to kill myself. I saw that not only did she not love me at all, but what she said was an attempt to get rid of me, perhaps because she wanted to make off with what little money I had in the garret, or perhaps simply, just as I’d suspected, because she found me odious. Luckily, irony came to my rescue at the last minute and endowed me with a selfish prudence, immunizing me against the murderous and persuasive voice of the terrible Kikí.
“I don’t understand why you think leaving Paris would be advisable,” I told her. “What?” she asked somewhat surprised, as if she hadn’t expected me to still be there, perhaps she thought I was already dead. “Nothing,” I said, “I just want you to know that eternity isn’t that much longer than life.” I spun on my heels and left, walked out of the Blaise and left her, left her forever, which is just a manner of speaking, because actually the callous Kikí had already left me months before. I went down in the elevator of the Eiffel Tower and shortly afterwards, in the street, at the crossroads, I went down a road that went beyond even the reality that had replaced the previous reality; I went, to the rhythm of acid, toward a different reality where time and space didn’t exist: I went, in a manner of speaking, beyond the perpetual snows of Kilimanjaro; I went to the country where things have no name and there are no gods, no men, no world, where in the background there’s only the abyss.
Many hours later, back in the garret, the drug’s effect had almost worn off; I was looking distractedly at the ceiling when suddenly I shuddered in terror, as if at that precise instant I’d returned to normality, to reality. And I realized the seriousness of what had happened.
“Damn,” I said in fright, “it’s not every day someone tries to murder you.”
41
Even though I’d come across a real assassin while writing about a lettered one, I rejected the idea of giving the narrator of my novel the look of the malicious Kikí. Oddly, a few days later, almost by pure chance, at a party at Marguerite’s, I encountered the extremely perturbing look of a girl that seemed to me ideal for my femme fatale, my murderess.
We’ve all fallen prey to uttering hackneyed and schmaltzy phrases, referring to the previous night as “an unforgettable evening.” But, at the end of life, only those who really haven’t experienced unforgettable evenings are ridiculous, as Pessoa would say. I think
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