Carnival Symposium
By Spiky. Translated From The French By Caroline Mattei.
The story of a misanthropist or the sense of life, perpetual creation.
“Create is living twice.”
Albert Camus
It was a cloudy late afternoon. Like every night, the orange tinted glows of the blazing sun would hide the beauty of the dark fumes of the coal mines. Technologically, it was for us what the Industrial Revolution was for you. Copper, coal and the intensive production of mystic machines were an important part of this rational and perfect world. Every single thing had its own place and purpose, except him.
He would get out of his underground lair to soak up black fumes of the city and listen to the sound of the tracks and hammers, ardently banging on copper and iron. Sitting there in the darkness, he would count how many times the hanged ones, swayed by the winds, were touching each other, coldly.
And that's as I was walking back to reach the housing number 713705, that I heard a deep and caustic voice, exuding aggressively. Was that really hate ? Or was it his living in the sewers, exposed to streams of acid rains and pollutions of all kinds ? I never got to know that. This voice had been preceded by a slow and painful breathing that I won't forget. A movement of an overwhelming deep disgust which, as I am talking to you, is probably still not over. And that is when an absolutely dreadful picture rose before me : a gargantuan shadow seemed to have taken possession of my heart. It was standing before me. Contrasted by these orange glows, these black fumes, and the croaking ravens. I was paralyzed, along with fear and respect. It was when I looked up that I saw a young embittered man, with long hair, overhanging the place. His gloved hands on his hips and his funny-looking blunderbuss on his back would go unnoticed beside his intriguing top hat, crossed with what appeared to be some sort of Swiss cuckoo.
I heard this voice telling me : « There is something more important in life than living. »
And before I could even answer this insolent statement, my sight became confused, and as I fell unconscious I heard this voice again : « Exist... »
He called himself Seide the Chronophagist, a curious anagram for Idées (French word for Ideas). He lived in an underground lair, down in the sewers. Curiously, I never knew whether it was out of personal conviction, because sewers appeared to him pure next to mankind, or for real need to stay out of this repulsing world, the surface.
I woke up in a delicately decorated and sophisticated room, red velvet curtains of a decadent softness framed mirrors who would skillfully replace windows, but still let the absurdity of human race show into them. If I could breathe easily, it was only because I had agreed to wear the gas mask he had wisely lent me.
A huge, squeaky metal skeleton was also haunting the place, it could easily be heard come and go, at the pace of the metallic grindings of its rusty and boneless structure. He was named Cog, and exhaled suffocating coal fumes. An artificial, mechanical heart glimpsed through his rusty structure, and, even if it was black, it was beating.
Despite his cruelty, arrogance, and his selfishness which seemed boundless, Seide appeared to be a smart and well-read person. I would hear him every night reciting poems and studying philosophy before, in the shade, he raised his fist, in order to curse the inhabitants of the surface. On a curious night, as he was walking back from the maze of tunnels that formed a real labyrinth and prevented me from any deliberate evasion, I saw him taking back a big bag he had trouble dragging around. And, when he put it on the floor, I saw many ill-defined and still stinking metallic parts, collected here and there.
For 21 days, he only opened his mouth to puke or yawn...
Cog was exposing me the reasons why he had been rejected from the surface, despite his good intentions. He polluted too much, but his heart, even if it was black, seemed pure. At night, I heard the sound of hammers banging on rusty metal pieces. I saw the sparks of the cuts of the metal, and the smokes of an abandoned world. All the while I was trying to crack the code of some strange texts hanging on the walls, pinned as if they were artworks, just too insolent to be exposed.
In this isolated shelter
Lives a curious character
Inhabited by a macabre reflection
He is consumed by his time-eating passion
And in this sinister citadel
He hides a news that's terrible
In his basement, he experiments his evil plan
And silently expiates his heavy burden
In front of this unspeakable machine
This is the world's fate that he's drawin'
But isn't it easier than expiating
His insipid suffering ?
And saying that his life is tormented
Is far from being adapted
To qualify his troubled personnality
And this insolent lucidity
But what is more grieving
Than living without crying ?
But what is even worse
Than a passion with no curse ?
For if the burned lands are the most fertile ones
What about the overwhelmed artist, and his silly torments ?
Over time, I saw other things there... and it had been days since I last saw the surface.
At this very moment, Seide stood at the door and spoke : « There is something worse than not seeing what does exist, that is seeing things that do not exist. »
His silhouette was progressively getting out of the shade, and next to him stood a weird machine, made of rusty metal and collected pieces. A funny sporadic pur was coming from it. A machine that oddly reminded the factories from the industrial area, covered with coppered valves and mystic chimneys. The central trapdoor opened up, and, by all Cogs ! I saw a cloud of smoke even darker than coal getting out of it really promptly, followed by a grinding of the most strident... A metal arm stepped out of it fleetingly, and I finally saw Cog, who, along his rusty structure, remained silent.
I took time to turn back, Seide stared at me and slightly closed his eyes, he made me understand that I had to make a decision, step in this infernal machine of the most questionable conception, or rot forever in this maze, and die. Once I had made my decision, the motor was emitting short but sharp explosions, and we went surveying the stinking maze, that is this trashcan of mankind, this human grave. I especially remember this heavenly wine, soft as the most beautiful springs, that we savored in the bowels of this dreadful and diabolical machine. He was of a transcendent voluptuousness, sweet tasting.
I definitely did not miss the surface anymore, the very few rays of light crossing the thick bars would help me see the reality better. The drafts in the tunnels would wave my hair and hide the stench to which I got accustomed. In the end, beauty is where one wants to see it, and I deeply breathed the fumes of coal. I was happy.
Seide shouted this, in order to cover the noise his infernal creation made : « Everyone needs a plan to start with, otherwise they become a part of someone else's ».
Seide, indeed, had a plan he had held secret for some years. Just as coal in its own way, his plan was solid, dark, and cold.
A little break, just to refill the beast with propane (which it was definitely fond of) and hear its Machiavellian roar. Listen for a moment to Seide's misanthropic complaint. And contemplate Cog, adjusting and tinkering some settings on more or less questionable dials. How can such a machine correctly work ? That's impossible !
Cog turned to me and answered in his sharp and mechanical voice, still trying to cover the machinery of the vehicle : « Not if you can imagine it ! Everything's possible as long as you can imagine it ! »
About 15 days later, sewers had spreaded on the surface (literally, and by the most stinking mean by the way). Did it deserve such a fate ? The sewers were yet a wonderful place next to mankind.
I had found happiness there, and isn't it, deep inside of us, the most important thing ? This truly is in the darkness that we see the light better.
As the whole town was such a mess, I had no more fear, the human race made me puke, and it appeared legitimate to me. I regret having been a part of it. In the city's fog, you could see human shapes slaughter each other, hear surd gunshots followed by a sadistic laughter that carried for miles around.
Strange philosophic skeletons were going out of their crypts to thump the mob with old and heavy books of mystic poetry. Trees appeared to be growing to blinded the sky. The factories' fumes seemed darker and thicker. It was the absolute decline of the humanity that I witnessed with my own eyes, and it made me smile. And despite everything I had lived, this is after having prepared a noose of the most efficient that I wrote this letter, on a pile of ancient books, without being able to really accept or assume everything I had learned to love down here. I can imagine that after, I will proudly stand on these books, then tie the rope around my neck, look up, and let myself die by letting go this abstruse support under my feet.
And that is when, by all my cogs, even though my body let go and drifted, I saw this stabbing shadow, getting out of a thick black smoke, approaching me. In order to break off, at the same time, the rope that was supposed to take life away from me, and this thought, single and accepted by all, that we have of Evil.
Life has interest only if we create something bigger than us. Only the message is important, not the messenger. Down here, style doesn't matter anymore, only sincerity. And as for the stars, it is in the darkness that we see light better. It is in darkness that we see hope and truth better, and while mistakes are sharing of the great majority, very few men act according to their own will and think of themselves. Everyone acts by imitation, example is their first master, and habit, their reason ; they look without seeing, listen without hearing, and follow no other guide than the multitude which comes before them or around them. When everyone walks towards error, it looks like no one is, and the only one to get out of the crowd is the one that sees the insane movement of the others. We said it already, but it is necessary here to repeat it : You want to see the truth ? Turn your back to the crowd.
Evil definitely is a point of view...