If it is at all possible to speak thus of a child of less than ten, I wanted that lightning or some other form of dire retribution; I summoned it, challenged it, and grew to despise the world, the place of my existence, because it had demonstrated the futility of all action and thought, evil included. Thus I never tormented animals, or hurt even the grass underfoot; on the other hand, I lashed out at stones, the sand, I abused furniture, subjected water to torture, and mentally smashed the stars to pieces, to punish them for their indifference to me, and as I did so my fury became more and more helpless, for my understanding increased, of how ridiculous were the things I did.
Somewhat later on, with self-knowledge, I came to the realization that my condition was a kind of keen unhappiness that was utterly useless to me, because it could serve no purpose. I said before that my rancor was unbiased: I bestowed it first upon myself. The shape of my arms, of my legs, the features of my face, seen in the mirror, galled me in a way in which usually only the features of others cause us anger or impatience. When I grew a bit older, I saw that it was impossible to live like this; I determined, through a progression of decisions, exactly what I ought to be, and from then on strove — true, with variable results — to adhere to that established plan.
An autobiography that begins by listing cowardice, malice, and pride as the foundations of one’s psyche entails, from the deterministic point of view, a logical error. If one says that everything in us is predetermined, then predetermined also must have been my resistance to my inner meanness, and the difference between me and other, better people is then reduced to nothing but a variation in the localized source of the behavior. What those better people did voluntarily, at little cost, for they but followed their own natural inclination, I practiced in opposition to mine — hence, as it were, artificially. Yet since it was I who dictated conduct to myself, I was, in the overall balance — in this formulation — nevertheless predestined to be as good as gold. Like Demosthenes with the pebbles in his stammering mouth, I put iron deep in my soul, to straighten it.
But it is precisely in this equalizing that determinism reveals its absurdity. A phonograph record of angelic singing is not an iota better morally than one that reproduces, when played, a scream of murder. According to determinism, he who desired and was able to be better was no more or less fated beforehand than he who desired but was unable, or than he who did not even attempt to desire. This is a false image, for the sound of battle played on a record is not an actual battle. Knowing what it cost me, I can say that my struggle to be good was no semblance. Determinism simply deals with something altogether different; the forces that operate according to the calculus of physics have nothing whatever to do with the matter — just as a crime is not made innocent by its translation into the language of amplitudes of atomic probabilities.
About one thing Yowitt is definitely right: I always sought difficulty. Opportunities for me to give free rein to my natural malice I usually forwent, as too easy. It may sound strange, or even nonsensical, but I did not suppress my inclination to evil with my eyes fixed on the Good as a higher value; rather, I suppressed it for the precise reason that I felt so powerfully its presence in me. What counted for me was the calculus of resistance, which had nothing in common with the arithmetic of morality. Therefore I really cannot say what would have become of me had the principal trait of my nature been the inclination to do only good. As usual, reasoning that attempts to picture ourselves in a form other than what is given breaks the rules of logic and must quickly founder.
Once only did I not eschew evil; that memory is connected with the protracted and horrible death of my mother. I loved her, yet at the same time I followed with an unusually keen and avid attention the process of her destruction in the illness. I was nine then. She, the personification of tranquillity, of strength, of a composure almost sovereign, lay in a lingering agony, an agony prolonged by the doctors. I, at her side in the darkened bedroom filled with the stink of medicine, still kept a grip on myself; but when I left her, as soon as I had shut the door behind me and found myself alone, I stuck out my tongue joyfully in the direction of her bed, and, that being insufficient, ran to my room and breathlessly jumped up and down in front of the mirror, fists clenched, making faces and giggling with delight. With delight? I understood perfectly that my mother was dying; since that morning I had fallen into despair, and the despair was as real as my stifled giggling. I remember how the giggling frightened me, yet at the same time it took me beyond everything I had known, and in that transgression there was a dazzling revelation.
That night, lying alone, I tried to comprehend what had taken place; unable to do this, I worked up a befitting pity for myself and my mother, and tears flowed until I fell asleep. I considered these tears to be an expiation; but then, later, the whole thing repeated itself, when I overheard the doctors conveying worse and worse news to my father. I dared not go up to my room; deliberately I sought the company of others. Thus the first person I ever shrank from was myself.
After my mother’s death I gave myself up to a child’s despair that was untroubled by any qualms. The fascination ended with her last breath. With her died my anxiety. This incident is so confusing that I can only offer a hypothesis. I had witnessed the fall of the Absolute — it had been shown to be an illusion — and witnessed a shameful, obscene struggle, because in it Perfection had come apart like the most miserable rag. This was the trampling of life’s Order, and although people above me supplied the repertoire of that Order with special evasions even for so dismal an occasion, these additions failed to fit what had happened. One cannot, with dignity, with grace, howl in pain — any more than one can in ecstasy. In the messiness of loss I sensed a truth. Perhaps I saw, in that which disrupted, the stronger side, and so sided with that side, because it had the upper hand.
My hidden laughter had no connection with the actual suffering of my mother. I only feared that suffering; it was the unavoidable concomitant of the expiring that I could understand, and I would have delivered her from the pain had I been able. I desired neither her suffering nor her death. At a real murderer I would have thrown myself with tears and pleas, like any child, but since there was none, I could only absorb the cruel treachery of the blow. Her body, bloated, turned into a monstrous, mocking caricature of itself, and it writhed in that mockery. I had only one choice: either to be destroyed with her or to jeer at her. As a coward, then, I chose the laughter of betrayal.
I cannot say whether it really was this way. The first paroxysm of giggling seized me at the sight of the destruction; perhaps the experience would have skipped me had my mother met her end in a fashion more aesthetic, like quietly falling asleep, a form that is much favored by people. It was not like that, however, and, forced to believe my own eyes, I proved defenseless. In earlier times a chorus of hired mourners, brought in quickly, would have drowned out the groans of my mother. But the decline of tradition has reduced magical measures to the level of hairdressing, because the undertaker — and I overheard this — suggested to my father the various facial expressions into which her frozen grimace could be reworked. My father left the room then, and for a brief moment I felt a tremor of solidarity, because I understood him. Later I thought of that mortal agony many times.
The idea of my laughter as a betrayal seems incomplete. Betrayal is the result of conscious decision, but what causes us to be drawn to destruction? What black hope, in destruction, beckons man? Its utter inutility rules out any rational explanation. This hunger has been suppressed in vain by numerous civilizations. It is as irrevocably a part of us as two-leggedness. To him who seeks a reason but cannot abide any hypothesis of a design, whether in the form of Providence or of the Diabolical, there remains only the rationalist’s substitute for demonology — statistics. Thus it is from a darkened room filled with the smell of corruption that the trail leads to my mathematical anthropogenesis. With the formulae of stochastics I strove to undo the evil spell. But this, too, is only conjecture, therefore a self-defensive reflex of the mind.