[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
to do still do in some strange other world? All the better to beg, all the better to fit the mold that the
social slot machine has destined the child for. Everywhere it is the same story, the same mythology. I
know why you have made beggars to haunt madmen. Do they cluster around the feet of poor Judas as
well? And all the others, too?
I wish you joy of them. Judas will laugh at them; Sam Mastervine will kick them to death; Luis Dalquier
will gamble with them and take from. them everything that they have or will earn. Cain Urquhart will try to
convert them. Who do you think will find pity for them? Bedbug? Perhaps.
Is that what you want? Do you want us to scorn the whole human race for beggars? You want us to
cheat them? You want us to turn our backs on the whole human race? It won't work. Not withbeggars.
Whatever makes you think that they have that much consequence? Whatever makes you think that we
have repulsion left in our hearts to spare for your meager hauntings?
Show us glory, God, show us pride and ambition, if you want to win us. Give us the pride and the
power. Don't ask us to find our own. We can't.
Titan Nine
Letter to Canaan
Dear Judas,
I am addressing this letter to you because of the individual-to-individual rule imposed by the prison, but I
hope that you can use your own judgment wisely as to the extent to which you communicate these
contents to your fellow inmates.
I've been out only a matter of days, but I don't really want to talk about being out, and I'm not allowed
to talk about being in, so what am I going to talk about?
My purpose in writing this letter is the same as my purpose in writing all my letters, and the same as your
purpose in writing all yours: I need somebody to talk to. And it's always easier to talk to people when I'm
on my own. You know how much easier it is to cry on a shoulder that isn't there.
I can't tell you where I am, or why, but I can tell you that I don't like it and I'm scared of it. Most of all,
I'm scared of people. I've been away from the sort of people-contacts that these people use for a long
time. I can't go around treating them as if they were homicidal maniacs condemned to life, now can I? But
this isn't like the other time the time I told you about, when they only wanted to reel my brain out onto
miles and miles of magnetic tape, and they didn't expect me to be a person just a specimen. This is
different.
I never got a chance to say good-bye, and this is no time or place this whole letter is to say hello. I
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
don't know what you thought when they just took me out and never brought me back. Perhaps you think
I'm dead. Reassure yourselves, I'm still in the land of the pseudo-living. Or is it reassurance? Am I just
going to condemn you to jealousy? I hope not. I think not. I'm sure not. You're not going to turn to hate
me because I'm in a different cage. Sure, there might be slight cause for envy I can see the sun and I
have space but life here isn't going to be that much different from life there.
I'm afraid I guess that is the real reason why I'm setting pen to paper so quickly, so urgently. Sheer
cowardice. Events are moving fast, after standing still for years. The world is moving me (certainly not I
moving the world), and I'm afraid of opportunity and action and ambition.
But enough of orgiastic self-pity (a lie when did anyone exhaust his supply of self-pity?). What am I
talking about? What can I talk about? I'll just venture to say a few simple things nothing that anyone
could object to and hope they're still in the letter when it gets to you. I'll write on one side of the paper
only so that if they cut bits instead of erasing or inking them, you won't lose what's on the other side.
Harmless comment one. I'm working on a Project. You must know that already. For what other
purpose do they snatch people out of the coffin? Only for guinea-pig purposes in exceptional
circumstances. This is Project with a capitalP, which means that it's serious they haven't hired me out to
a crackpot, as it is rumored may have happened in the past.
As you know, I have spent years wrestling with the burdensome superabundance of my talent I am
probably suited only to Projects and not to projects. Do you know the difference? I suppose not. You
got off the carousel fairly recently compared to poor bastards like Manny and Luis who were in before
me, but even so you didn't get much of a chance to study the ways of the world. Briefly, projects with
small ps are the kind of thing where any guy with a bit of paper can amuse himself more or less
harmlessly. They're in the territory where the language of bits of paper and letters after the name is quite
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]