A thousand kinds of astonishing thoughts whirl and circle in my brain. I see all of them. But to write the smallest feeling or the least passing idea I must describe my whole life, and that isn’t possible. These reflections, these feelings, are the result of my whole life, the result of my way of life, of my inherited thoughts, of what I’ve seen, heard, read, felt, or pondered over. All these things have made up my irrational and ridiculous existence.
I twist in the bed. I jumble my memories together. Distressed and mad reflections press my brain. My head hurts, throbs. My temples are hot. I twist and turn. I pull the quilt over my eyes. I think – I’m tired. It would be good if I could open my head and take out all the soft, grey, twisted mass of my brain and throw it all away, throw it to a dog.
Nobody can understand. Nobody will believe. To somebody who fails at everything they say, “Go and lay your head down and die.” But when even death doesn’t want you, when even death turns its back on you, death which won’t come and which doesn’t want to come!…”
Everyone is afraid of death but I’m afraid of my persistent life. How frightening it is when death doesn’t want one and rejects one! Only one thing consoles me. It was two weeks ago, I read in the paper that in Austria a person tried thirteen times to kill himself in different ways and each time he almost succeeded: he hanged himself and the rope broke, he threw himself in the river and they pulled him out, and so on… Finally, for the last time, when the house was empty he slashed his wrists with a kitchen knife, and this thirteenth time
he died!
This gives me consolation!
No, no one decides to commit suicide. Suicide is with some people. It is in their very nature, they can’t escape it. It is fate which rules, but at the same time it is I who have created my own fate. Now I can no longer escape it, but I cannot escape from myself.
Anyhow, what can be done? Fate is stronger than I am. What fancies I get! As I was lying in bed I wished to be a child. The same old nursemaid who used to tell me stories, pausing to swallow, would be sitting here at my head. I would be lying just like this, tired out in bed, and she would elaborately tell me stories and my eyes would slowly close. Now that I think about it, some of the events of my childhood come easily to mind. It is as if it were yesterday. I see that I’m not very far from my childhood. Now I see the whole of my dark, base, and useless life. Was I happy then? No, what a big mistake! Everyone supposes children are lucky. No, how well I remember. I was even more sensitive then. Then I was a phoney and a sly fellow. On the surface I may have laughed or played, but inside, the least biting remark or the smallest unpleasant, worthless occurrence, would occupy my mind for long hours, and I would eat my heart out. By no means should a character like mine survive. The truth is with those who say that heaven and hell are inside a person. Some are born lucky and some unlucky.
I look at the red pencil stub with which I am making these notes in bed. It was with the same pencil that I wrote out the meeting place and the note to the girl whom I had just got to know. We went to the pictures together two or three times. The last time it was a talking film rather that a silent one. As part of the programme, a well-known Chicago singer sang ‘Where is My Sylvia?’ I enjoyed it so much that I closed my eyes to listen. I can still hear his powerful and captivating voice. The theatre rang with the sound. It seemed to me that he should never die. I couldn’t believe that some day this voice might become silent. His mournful tone made me sad, even while I was enjoying it. Music played high and low. The quivering and wailing which came from the strings of the violin made it seem as if the bow were being drawn across my veins. The entire fabric of my body was impregnated with the music; it made me tremble and carried me down the path of imagination. In the darkness I fondled her breasts. Her eyes grew heavy. I felt strange. I remember it was a sad and poignant state which can’t be expressed. I kissed her moist, fresh lips. She was blushing. We hugged each other. I didn’t follow the film. I was playing with her hands, and she was pressing herself against me. Now it’s as if it was a dream. Nine days have passed since we last parted. We had arranged that the next day I would bring her to my room. Her house was near the Montparnasse cemetery. That day I went to get her. I got off the metro at the corner. A cold wind was blowing and the weather was cloudy and overcast. I didn’t know what happened, but I changed my mind. Not that she wasn’t attractive, or that I didn’t like her, but some power held me back. No, I didn’t want to see her any more. I wanted to cut all ties with life. Without thinking I went into the cemetery. At the entrance the watchman had wrapped himself in a dark blue cape. An immense silence ruled there. I strolled slowly, staring at the gravestones, the crosses above them, the artificial flowers and grass next to or on top of the graves. I read the names of some of the dead. I regretted not being in their place. I thought to myself how fortunate all these people were!… I was envious of the dead whose bodies had disintegrated under the ground. Such a strong feeling of jealousy had never arisen in me before. It seemed to me that death is happiness and a blessing which one is not given lightly. I don’t know exactly how much time passed. I stared, stunned. I had entirely forgotten the girl. I didn’t feel the cold. It was as if the dead were closer to me than the living. I understood them better. I turned back. No, I didn’t want to see that girl any more. I wanted to put everything aside. I wanted to give up and die. What ridiculous thoughts come to me! Maybe I’m babbling.
For several days I had been telling my fortune with cards. I don’t know how it happened that I had come to believe in superstition, but I took my fortune-telling seriously. In other words I had nothing else to do; I couldn’t do anything else. I wanted to gamble with my future. I made a wish to do away with myself. My wish would come true, the cards told me. One day I realized that I had been telling my fortune with cards for three and a half hours without stopping. First I shuffled, then I arranged one card face up on the table and five other cards face down in a row, then on the second card, which was face down, I put one card down, and so on. I had learnt this game in childhood and I was passing my time with it.
A week or so ago I was sitting in a café. Two people in front of me were playing backgammon. One of them, red-faced, bald-headed, a cigarette sticking out from under his hanging moustache, was listening with a dim-witted expression. The other said, “I’ve never won at gambling. I lose nine times out of ten.” I stared at them dully. What did I want to say? I don’t know. Anyway, I went out in the streets, walking mechanically. Several times it occurred to me to close my eyes and walk in front of a car, let its wheels pass over me, but it was a hard way to die. Even then, how could I be sure? Perhaps I might remain alive. This is the thought that drives me crazy. Thinking like this, I passed intersections and crowded places. In the middle of this hustle and bustle, this ringing of car horses’ hooves, these wagons and automobile horns, this noise and commotion, I was alone. In the midst of millions of people it was as if I was sitting in a broken boat lost in the middle of the ocean. I felt as if I had been driven out in disgrace from the society of men. I saw that I wasn’t made for life. I was reasoning with myself, walking monotonously. I would stop and look at the paintings in store windows. I would stare for a while. I regretted not having become a painter. It was the only job that I liked and that pleased me. I thought to myself that only in painting could I find a small consolation for myself. A postman was passing me and from behind a pair of glasses he was looking at the address on a letter. What did it make me think of? I don’t know. Perhaps I remembered the postmen of Iran, the mailman who came to our house.
It was last night. I pressed my eyes together, but I couldn’t fall asleep. Disjointed thoughts, exciting images appeared before my eyes. They weren’t dreams because I hadn’t yet fallen asleep. They were nightmares. I was neither asleep nor awake, but I saw them. My body was enervated, beaten, sick and heavy. My head hurt. These frightening nightmares kept passing before my eyes. Sweat dripped from my body. I saw a package
of paper opening in the air. It dropped sheet by sheet. A group of soldiers passed, their faces invisible. The dark, terrifying night was filled with frightening and angry figures. When I wanted to close my eyes and give myself up to death, these startling images would appear. A volcanic circle whirling about itself, a corpse floating on a river, eyes looking at me from every direction. Now I remember well the crazy, angry figures swarming towards me. An old man with a bloody face had been tied to a column. He was looking at me, laughing; his teeth glittered. A bat was hitting my face with its cold wings. I was walking on a tightrope. Below it was a whirlpool. I was slipping. I wanted to scream. A hand was laid on my shoulder. An icy hand was pressing my throat. It seemed that my heart would stop. The groans, the sinister groans which came from the night’s darkness, the faces cleaned of shadows – these things appeared and disappeared of their own accord. What could I do in the face of them? They were at once very near and very far. I wasn’t dreaming them because I hadn’t yet fallen asleep.
* * *
I don’t know if I have fooled everyone or if I have been fooled, but there is one thought which is driving me crazy. I can’t stop myself from laughing. Sometimes I choke with laughter. So far nobody has understood what’s wrong with me. They’ve all been fooled! It’s been a week that I’ve been pretending to be sick, or else I’ve caught a strange ailment. Willy-nilly I picked up a cigarette and lit it. Why do I smoke? I don’t know myself. I hold the cigarette between two fingers of my left hand. I lift it to my lips. I blow the smoke into the air. This is also an ailment!
Now when I think about it my body trembles. It’s no joke – for a week I tortured myself in various ways. I wanted to become ill. The weather had been cold for several days. First I went and turned the cold water on myself. I left the bathroom windows open. Now when I think of it, I get the creeps. I was gasping, my back and chest hurt, I told myself that now everything was over. The next day my chest would hurt badly, and I would be confined to bed. I would make it worse and then put an end to myself. The next morning when I woke up I didn’t find the smallest sign of a cold. Again I took off my clothes. When it got dark I locked the door, turned off the light, opened the window and sat in the stinging cold. A sharp wind was blowing. I trembled violently. I could hear my teeth chattering. I looked outside. The people who were coming and going, their black shadows, the cars which were passing, all appeared small from the sixth floor of the building. I had surrendered my naked body to the cold, and I was writhing. At this point it occurred to me that I was crazy. I laughed at myself. I laughed at life. I knew that in this big playhouse of the world everybody plays in a certain way until his death arrives. I had taken up this role because I thought I would be carried off the stage sooner. My lips were dry. The cold burned my body. I warmed myself until I dripped with sweat, then all at once I stripped. All night I lay on the bed and trembled. I didn’t sleep at all. I got a mild cold, but as soon as I took a nap the illness completely went away. I saw this didn’t help either. For three days I didn’t eat anything, and every night I stripped and sat in front of the window. I would make myself tired. One night until morning I ran on an empty stomach through the streets of Paris. I got tired and went and sat on the cold damp steps in a narrow alley. It was past midnight. A drunken worker reeled by. In the vague mysterious gaslight I saw a man and a woman passing and talking together. Then I got up and started to walk. Homeless wretches were sleeping on the street benches.
Finally I took to bed from weakness, but I wasn’t sick. My friends came to see me. I made myself tremble in front of them, and I acted sick so well that they were sorry for me. They thought I would die the next day. I said my heartbeat was laboured. When they left the room I mocked them. I said to myself that there seemed to be only one thing in the world I could do well. I should have become an actor!…
How did I pull off the same trick on the doctors that I did on my friends? Everyone believed that I was truly sick. Whatever they asked, I said, “My heartbeat is laboured”, because sudden death can only be attributed to a heart attack; otherwise, a simple chest pain could hardly be fatal.
This was a miracle. When I think of it, a strange feeling comes over me. I had been torturing myself for seven days. If, at the insistence of my friends, I had a cup of tea, I’d get better. It was frightening. The illness would completely go away. How badly I wanted to eat the bread alongside the tea, but I didn’t do it. Every night I would say to myself that finally I had become bedridden. Tomorrow I wouldn’t be able to get up. I went and brought the capsules that I had filled with opium. I put them in the drawer of the small table beside my bed so that when the illness had really thrown me and I couldn’t move, I could bring them out and swallow them. Unfortunately the illness wouldn’t come and didn’t want to come. Once when I was obliged to eat a piece of bread with tea in front of one of my friends, I felt that I was well, all well. I became scared of myself, my own endurance frightened me. It’s terrifying. It’s unbelievable. I am in my right mind as I write this. I’m not speaking nonsense. I remember well.
What was this strength that had appeared in me? I saw that none of my plans had worked. I really had to become ill. Yes, the fatal poison is there in my bag, a swift poison. I remembered the rainy day that I bought it with lies and pretexts and a thousand difficulties, pretending to be a photographer. I gave a false name and address. Potassium cyanide, which I had read about in a medical book and whose signs I knew: convulsion, difficulty in breathing, agony when taken on an empty stomach. Twenty grams of it kills immediately or within two minutes. So that it wouldn’t spoil in the air I had wrapped it in a chocolate wrapper, covered this with a layer of wax, and put it in a crystal bottle with a stopper. It was a hundred grams, and I kept it with me like a precious jewel. But fortunately I found something better than that – smuggled opium, and that in Paris! The opium which I had been after for such a long time, I found by accident. I had read that dying by taking opium is better and more wholesome than doing so by cyanide. Now I wanted to make myself really sick and then take the opium.
I unwrapped the potassium cyanide. I shaved off about two grams from the egg shaped ball and put it in an empty capsule: I sealed it with glue and swallowed it. Half an hour passed. I felt nothing. The surface of the capsule, which had touched the poison, tasted salty. I took out the cyanide again. This time I shaved off about five grams and swallowed the capsule. I went and lay down on the bed. I lay down as if I would never get up again!
This thought could drive anyone mad. No, I didn’t feel anything. The killer poison didn’t work on me! I’m still alive, and the poison is lying there in my bag. In the bed my breath comes with difficulty, but that’s not the result of the drug. I have become invincible, invincible like those in legends. It’s unbelievable, but I must go. It’s futile. I feel rejected, useless, good for nothing. I should end things as soon as possible and go. This time it’s not a joke. The more I think the more I see that nothing holds me to life, nothing and no one…
I remember it was the day before yesterday. I was pacing my room like a madman, going from one side to the other. The clothes hanging from the wall, the sink, the mirror in the cupboard, the picture on the wall, the bed, the table in the middle of the room, the books scattered on it, the chairs, the shoes placed under the cupboard, the suitcases in a corner of the room, passed continually before my eyes. But I wasn’t seeing them, or else I wasn’t concentrating. What was I thinking of? I don’t know – I was pacing around to no purpose. Suddenly I came to myself. I had seen this frenzied pacing somewhere else and it had attracted my attention. I didn’t know where, then I remembered. It was in the Berlin zoo that I had seen wild animals for the first time. Those that were awake in their cages walked in this same way, just like this. I too had become like those animals. Perhaps I even thought as they did. Inside I felt that I was like them. This mechanical walking around in a circle. When I bumped into the wall I naturally felt that it was a barrier, and turned ar
ound. Those animals do the same thing…
I don’t know what I’m writing. The clock goes tick-tock right in my ear. I want to pick it up and throw it out of the window. This frightening sound that beats the passing of time into my head with a hammer!
For a week I had been making myself ready for death. I destroyed all the papers and things I had written. I threw away my dirty clothes so that when my things were being investigated nothing dirty would be found. I put on the new underwear I had bought, so that when they pulled me out of bed and the doctor came to examine me I would look presentable. I picked up a bottle of eau de cologne and sprinkled in the bed so it would smell good. But since none of my actions was like those of other people, I wasn’t sure this time either. I was afraid of my die-hard self. It was as if this distinction and superiority aren’t given to one easily. I knew that nobody dies for free…
I took out the pictures of my relatives and looked at them. Each one of them appeared before me reflecting my own observations of them. I liked them and I didn’t like them. I wanted to see them and I didn’t want to. No, those memories were too bright before my eyes. I tore up the pictures; I was not attached to anything. I judged myself and saw I had not been a kind person. I had been created hard, rough, and weary. Maybe I wasn’t always like this, but life and the passage of time have made me so. I have no fear of death. On the contrary, an illness, a special madness had appeared in me so that I was drawn by the magnetism of death. This isn’t recent, either. I remembered a story from five or six years ago. In Tehran one early morning I went to Shah Abad Avenue to buy opium from a druggist. I put three tomans in front of him and said, “Two rials of opium.”