Piercing

CONTENTS

THE AXE

PIERCING

ANNA AND THE LETTER C

Copyright Information

THE AXE

For Chitra

You know what I was thinking about on my way here? I was thinking about cows. We stun them, we throw them into piles and set them on fire. They call it destruction. We are destroying cows because we’re afraid they’ll give us their disease. I didn’t react when they announced that hundreds of thousands would have to be destroyed. Cows in perfect health. Public health is no laughing matter. And we can reproduce as many cows as we need. I didn’t blink when several times a day on television they showed mountains of half-charred cows lying belly-up, hooves in the air. I found it normal. I could have ­easily accepted that all cows be destroyed. Why not? Since we’re capable of doing it. Since scientists the world over agree that the mass destruction of cows is part of the solution. My heart wouldn’t have skipped a beat and I could have easily ­followed on television the disappearance of every cow on earth. Except for one. For reproduction purposes. Of course. This furious destruction simply would have ensured the best interests of mankind, through the systematic elimination of cows so that only one remained alive. All the carefully scrutinized orifices of this cow would have guaranteed total ­reliability. This cow would have given birth to a new race of cows. Perfectly edible cows. Ultimately, human cows, capable of satisfying us without destroying us, their benefactors, their reproducers, their protectors. Yes, I would have been prepared to accept this hysterical but beneficial destruction because my heart didn’t skip a beat, its rhythmic routine wasn’t remotely perturbed by those images of the charred cadavers of cows. With a smile on my lips, my mind at peace, I would have ­consented to this mass murder, although the word murder is meaningless when we are only dealing with cows. Really, we can’t talk about genocide when we want to save mankind by systematically destroying cows. Cow genocide, you hear that, it makes no sense, it sounds wrong. So, it’s clear, this isn’t a massacre, it’s a precaution, a hygienic procedure, a technical feat, a stroke of human genius, proof that science is efficient. Theories might be false more often than they’re true, but ­techniques deserve to be ranked in the pantheon of truth ­because the only truth that matters is that of efficiency. I’m sure you agree. If it works, it must be true. Why engage in endless debates that divide men on the subject of supposedly universal hypotheses if a gadget works without fail, if the gadget always proves to be reliable when used correctly? Let’s dispose of cumbersome theories, the useless by-products of incompetence, and concentrate on improving the gadget that never ceases to amaze us with its reliability, its prodigious ­improvability, its capacity to become more efficient, more powerful, more practical, more portable, more adaptable, more profitable, more indispensable. Yes, let’s stop theorizing and simply replace the old model with the new.

I was thinking of cows on my way to your place. Specifically, I was thinking that this calculated destruction, applauded by the terrified masses and their pack of scientific watchdogs, this unthinkable massacre disguised as a brilliant precaution, triggered absolutely no compassion in me. I am prepared for more, for worse, that’s what I was thinking. I am prepared to learn, for my own good, my security, the welfare of my ­immune system, I am prepared to learn when I turn on the TV that they will be destroying not only cows, but also sheep, dogs, pigeons and all insects. Indifference is limitless. That’s what I kept saying to myself as I ran down the streets on my way here. I let this immense indifference run wild in the tight cage of my heart. You see, I work in the terrifying field of ­education and I realize that the humanity in me has been slowly eroded, leaving in its place new, improved muscles and selective reflexes that don’t twitch at the announcement that cows, dogs, pigeons and sheep will be massacred. And tonight, on my way to see you, my thoughts crumpled like a ball of paper. I was thinking about the cows. And I don’t have to tell you, it wasn’t out of sentimentality that I was thinking about those scorched cows, stacked in piles. I was thinking about the international collaboration, the worldwide collaboration, yes, worldwide, the worldwide collaboration required to pull off this rescue operation. I felt a rush of pride at the ­efficiency of human communication in the field of organized destruction. The truth is, when I fled my apartment tonight, as if my ­children’s hair were on fire, I had no idea where I was headed. I hurried down the streets, my fists clenched in my pockets. I walked through entire neighbourhoods. There’s hardly anyone in the street at this hour. Some cars, but very few people. And when I did pass someone, I lowered my eyes and I envied them because I could tell at a glance that they knew where they were headed. They were oriented, organized, and they believed in the unbridled efficiency of the gadgets they buy and sell every minute of their lives to make sure that their ­existence has meaning and to prevent their lives from fading totally into the present. Their belief was even greater at this lost hour of the night when solitude, fear and the unknown can turn a person’s life into another banal little drama ­discovered at dawn, mere debris scattered by the speed of day. I kept walking, never stopping to catch my breath, losing ­myself in the city until I no longer recognized this place I’ve known since I was a child.

I was thinking it was all over, that I’d never be able to work again. That I’d never again find the courage to stand up in front of the students, clustered in their smell and their trendy clothes, their garish hair colours, their casual cool and their voracious needs. I kept walking and thinking that the only young thing about young people like you is your skin and your teeth. In fact, you are monstrous ancestors filled with poison and bloodthirsty ideas. The world belongs to you. The world and the billions of gadgets produced by the world’s assembly lines belong to you. These billions of gadgets are manufactured for you, for your young appetites. And people who are no longer young simply have to make an effort to believe that they are. They have to discard their ideas, their determination, their convictions so they can fit in with you, be taken for one of you. But that never lasts long. You spot us and push us back into the shadows, we’re trampled by your vengeance, your ­insouciance, your condescension.

Running down the city streets tonight, I was thinking that teaching literature to young people is a pathetic task, the ­greatest illusion imaginable. You know that literature is dead, that art is meaningless, that man no longer needs it, that only totally human cows are authorized to give milk. That’s what I was thinking in my absolute frenzy, dodging cars as I crossed the boulevards. I was thinking that and I knew it was false. My brain was producing these misleading ideas to steer me away from more dangerous avenues, to prevent me from ­realizing that I had become more dangerous than the strangers who strike blindly when night plunges faces into ­astonishment and horror, more dangerous than those young people I so desperately wanted to despise and hold responsible for the decadence of the world because the smell of their lives is dizzying, because the look in their eyes rarely pardons, because their bodies adjust more easily to the brutal but essential rhythms of irrepressible thought unencumbered by the weight, the repetition, the tics, the macabre grains of sand we accumulate in our brains when we declare ourselves mature, responsible, enlightened individuals and we begin to fear that we resemble our parents, the accumulated grains of sand that clog our thinking until it becomes opaque, constipated, vile excrement that reveals its pestilence and rage the minute we open our mouths. Believe me, what was on my mind as I fled my apartment bore no resemblance to a clear vision of reality, but I persisted in formulating this kind of sentence in my head, sentences that sound true, accurate, sentences that allow us to believe that the person who formulated them ­possesses sufficient knowledge of himself and the world to act appropriately, the kind of sentence that inspires assent in the normal interlocutor. At least, I was convinced of this when I started to run faster and faster through the city as that ­business filled my mind. That business about giant truckloads of carcasses, carcasses, yes, but why not cadavers, yes, hundreds of cadavers dumped helter-skelter in trenches so they could be burned and the blackened remains easily buried. That