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in this issue
Oliver Friggieri
The Lie
[...]
"I trust you in everything you've told me, Indri. You're prudent and discreet, I know you well, you're careful and tactful with your words and you always seek the good of others," the priest said, as he shifted his position aimlessly on the tall chair that attracted the admiration of all those who entered the room.
"Believe me, Father, I've known Natan for some time, and we've been close friends for years. He knows me and I know him, at least that's what I think, but now I realise I never knew him well enough," went on Indri. His hands were clutched together, clenched and pressed as if suffering from cold. It was not cold, but in the presence of a person like the priest, he often felt pouring inside him a devout chill, from an unknown source. He had no idea what it wanted of him. His eyes were cast on the floor, his back bent more than normally, and his voice trembled slightly.
"To tell you the truth, somebody did tell me something early this morning, but now I understand better. Someone came to tell me that a crowd of women were going to the police station, kicking up no end of a racket," the priest recalled.
"Then I was right," Indri went on, "more than half the village can bear witness. This is terrible for us; we're not used to having such things. The family's the family, and it's a serious matter, it's sacred. What takes place indoors should stay indoors, and not thrown out in the streets and in the village square, especially when it's not a nice thing."
The priest rose slowly out of his chair and Indri realised that it was time for him to leave. He kissed the priest's hands and left a bit timidly, arranging the cap in his hands to put it on in the street.
Two days later Natan stood again before the priest. "Can you please tell me who has told you all this about me? I used to think slander wasn't so common in these narrow streets of your village."
"It's your village, too," the priest put in abruptly but calmly.
"Oh no! No, sir! It's your village! It's no longer mine! Now that I've grasped the character of this tribe of people who eat other people, I don't want to live among cannibals anymore. They are cannibals. They don't carry their own crosses, but they carry other people's."
"Do you count me one of these cannibals?" asked the priest. His words came out very slowly, deliberately accentuated, in a toned-down voice that sounded sure and yet unsure of the answer.
Natan was disturbed and made no reply.
"Well?" he insisted.
"No... not you."
"Why not?"
"Look here, Father, please tell me all you want to tell and don't give me questions like that. It would be better, don't you think?"
"Sequitur, that's what we say in Latin, sequitur. If the villagers are cannibals, then I am a cannibal as well, for I'm a villager. A real syllogism, isn't it?."
"I expect you to condemn, clearly and loudly, all this slander from the pulpit. And I also expect you to define it in very black terms like, for instance, 'unchristian behaviour' or 'another gospel', and above all 'slander', because that's what you should call it," said Natan.
The priest was not expecting all this. He knew a different Natan, and now he began to come to other conclusions. "Do you think you can tell me what to preach? Or that you have any right to tell me what to call it? All right, let me take your advice and proceed as you instruct me."
"You haven't grasped my meaning at all, Father. That's not what I meant."
"What did you mean, then?"
"What did I mean? That you touch the wound of your village: your parishioners are a people who consume others. Listen less and talk more."
"I shall do precisely that, and right now. So you listen to me," said the priest rather angrily, as he fiddled with the pencil between his fingers. "You listen to me. Your story with your wife took another turn, as I gather. What you did the day before yesterday... well it was an ugly incident, very ugly, and I don't know what to say to you about it. You asked me who told me. You should have realised that the whole village could have come to know about it."
"I'm not responsible for my wife's behaviour."
"Indeed. You're answerable only for what you do."
"And what did I do?"
The priest recounted the story he had heard from Indri, and put it in the context of all that had already been explained or left unexplained.
"Who told you? That's what I asked you," demanded Natan furiously.
"Who told me? That's not important."
"What is important, then? Slander?"
"You call this slander?" asked the priest in surprise. "This is a way to help one's neighbour and the whole community."
"Then you should have told me so from the start! That's the way it is: helping one's neighbour by peeping through the windows of his house, and sniffing the smells your nose could do well without."
"You need help, Natan, and I want to help you. Since I know what happened, you can be sure that I want the best for you, and so does the person who told me."
Natan told him that the tale about his wife being covered in blood was all a lie. "Do you mind if I smoke? Do you smoke?" he asked the priest, as he put the tip between his lips and lit a match.
"No, thank you, I don't smoke."
"You want to help me. That's what you said, didn't you? If you want to help me, you must understand my problem first."
"I think I have."
"What did you understand?"
"I understood that love between you and your wife love cooled off. After that, other things followed."
"Cooled off, you said. Our love has not cooled off. You're mistaken if you think it has. Our love has died, changed into something else. I don't want to call it hatred. And do you know why I don't to? Because I don't want to make my own mistake even worse, to use your own words."
"We're in agreement. Both of us agree that there's been a mistake," said the priest.
"But we don't agree when it happened."
"It happened now, or rather, it's happening right now."
"No, Father, it happened long ago, at the very beginning. I didn't realise it then, but the results are becoming evident now. The results are only a part of the story. Love has died now. And for love to die, what must happen? Alienation... I became alienated, do you know how? Like someone who buys an object and the following day he wants to return it to the shop."
"Don't compare things that cannot be compared."
"I am comparing marriage with shopping, a contract that should be left loose enough to be rejected, for it's only the law that can bind it. Nature, ah nature can release anything without assistance and without any formal declarations or ceremony."
"Don't bring nature into it. Nature looks for unity, it needs a bond."
"Nature! I know nature as much as any other person, because nature is me. I am nature. And I have the highest qualification to talk about it because I am human. I once said yes, and now I'm saying no. In both cases I'm human; I am what I am, without any pressure from one side or the other. Don't you see that nature too may release bonds?" said Natan almost in tears.
"I sympathise with you but I don't agree with you. I pity you because you're abusing nature. You haven't grasped the essence of love. Love must be nurtured.''
"And you haven't grasped intensity of the issue. You want a man to love weakly forever, and I want to love deeply, even if only for a few years. You believe in breadth and I believe in depth."
"There's nothing sublime in what you're saying, Natan. There is only passion, that's all. You'd like to allow the crazed horse inside you to dash and race on as far as he pleases."
"No, Father, there's no horse inside me, or outside for that matter. I am the horse. I am passion. I am nature itself."
After that, the two scowled at one another, till eventually each sought to escape the other's searching look.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked the priest.
"Nothing, as far as I know. You observe the rules that determine every word you tell me, and I see something else."
"You mean... you're seeing someone else?" he asked with a tinge of irony and real shock.
Natan did not answer and left it at that.
"Then the case is more serious than I thought. It's not a quarrel, it's not abuse or physical violence." He paused after that word. "No, but the breaking of the bond itself. What could be worse?"
Natan remained silent and waited for what had to happen. The priest rose to his feet and approached Natan, showing him signs of friendship and speaking more gentle words to him.
"Marriage is love, love is ended, then marriage is ended. Don't you see it? It's a real syllogism, Father, isn't it?"
The priest still sought sympathetic words, and perhaps he could not find them quickly enough. Natan stood there, brooding over Rebekka and waiting for his cigarette to go out so he could crush the butt somewhere.
"Think it over carefully. Take your time and think it over."
"I have thought it over. I thought it over long ago, and I should have thought it over earlier still."
"Don't hurry. Don't. You'll discover on your own how wrong you are."
"I've told you. I have thought it over," said Natan loudly.
"Then since you have thought it over, then listen to what I have to say. Do not disgrace my parish. You said that the village is no longer yours, didn't you? Then don't pollute it. Do not pollute the village. As long as I'm here no one will debase it with loose conduct. The village is full of upright people, united families, and I want no immoral stories like yours here. You're the only one who didn't fit, among the other families, all devoted to their children..."
"I have no children. Like you, Father, I have no children." His voice sounded hoarse.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," apologised the priest, his face becoming flaming red.
"And since I've no children, I'll start all over again like anyone who's lost his way and gone astray. I've grasped your point of view, just as I've understood my own for a long time now. Keep your village to yourself, with everything in it, the slanders, the hidden hatred, and all the outdated traditions. Stay alone in this colony of cannibals. I no longer want to form part of it."
"It doesn't deserve you!"
"I don't deserve it, because I can admit failure, and I know how to admit that I'm sick when the doctor looks grave after examining me. Your people, those you love and believe in, those who came to tell tales about me, adding and subtracting as they liked, those who never fall sick and never catch a disease..."
"They live according to the law, Natan."
"According to the law that's beneath nature. Only in Malta you find people who never commit a mistake. The world recognises its mistakes and suggests remedies for them. But here people believe that everyone who marries must succeed for life. You must have a race of superior people, Father... or else you're not tending the flock well."
"I will pray for you, Natan, so that God will show you the way."
Silence fell again, as if neither of the two wanted to speak further. The priest gave up, and Natan felt he could stand up. The priest had been standing beside him for some time.
"Thank you anyway, Father. You've tried to help me, but you failed. Better luck next time. You see, you too have flunked out; everyone flunks out some time. But not every failure is the same. Mine is somewhat worse, and that's why the solution has disturbed you. I'm going to leave the village, and I'll see to it that not one speck of dust clings to the soles of my shoes. Where I'm going I won't carry the disease that infects your parish."
The priest looked at him disquietingly and waited to hear the front door close.
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