Mr Palomar Read online

  “Perhaps now,” Mr Palomar thinks, “another man is walking around that country with a mismated pair of slippers.” And he sees a slender shadow moving over the desert with a limp, a slipper falling off his foot at every step, or else, too tight, imprisoning a twisted foot. “Perhaps he, too, at this moment is thinking of me, hoping to run into me and make the trade. The relationship binding us is more concrete and clear than many of the relationships established between human beings. And yet we will never meet.” He decides to go on wearing these odd slippers out of solidarity towards his unknown companion in misfortune, to keep alive this complementary relationship that is so rare, this mirroring of limping steps from one continent to another.

  He lingers over this image, but he knows it does not correspond to the truth. An avalanche of slippers, sewn on an assembly-line, comes periodically to top up the old merchant’s pile in a bazaar. At the bottom of the pile there will always remain two odd slippers, but until the old merchant exhausts his supply (and perhaps he will never exhaust it, and after his death the shop with all its merchandise will pass to his heirs and to the heirs of his heirs), it will suffice to search in the pile and one slipper will always be found to match another slipper. A mistake can occur only with an absent-minded customer like himself, but centuries can go by before the consequences of this mistake affect another visitor to that ancient bazaar. Every process of disintegration in the order of the world is irreversible; the effects, however, are hidden and delayed by the dust-cloud of the great numbers, which contains virtually limitless possibilities of new symmetries, combinations, pairings.

  But what if his mistake had simply erased an earlier mistake? What if his absent-mindedness had been the bearer not of disorder but of order? “Perhaps the merchant knew what he was doing,” Mr Palomar thinks. “In giving me that mismated slipper, he was righting a disparity that had been hidden for centuries in that pile of slippers, handed down from generation to generation in that bazaar.”

  The unknown companion was limping perhaps in another period, the symmetry of their steps responded not only from one continent to another but over a distance of centuries. This does not make Mr Palomar feel less solidarity with him. He goes on shuffling awkwardly, to afford relief to his shadow.

  PALOMAR IN SOCIETY

  * * *

  On biting the tongue

  In a time and in a country where everyone goes out of his way to announce opinions or hand down judgements, Mr Palomar has made a habit of biting his tongue three times before asserting anything. After the bite, if he is still convinced of what he was going to say, he says it. If not, he keeps his mouth shut. In fact, he spends whole weeks, months in silence.

  Good opportunities for keeping quiet are never in short supply, but there are also rare occasions when Mr Palomar regrets not having said something he could have said at the right moment. He realizes that events have confirmed what he was thinking and if he had expressed his thoughts at the time, he would have had a positive influence, however slight, on what then ensued. In these cases his spirit is torn between self-satisfaction for having seen things properly and a sense of guilt because of his excessive reserve. Both feelings are so strong that he is tempted to put them into words; but after having bitten his tongue three times, or rather six, he is convinced he has no cause either for pride or for remorse.

  Having had the correct view is nothing meritorious: statistically, it is almost inevitable that among the many cockeyed, confused or banal ideas that come into his mind, there should also be some perspicacious ideas, even ideas of genius; and as they occurred to him, they can surely have occurred also to somebody else.

  Opinion on his having refrained from expressing his idea is more open to debate. In times of general silence, conforming to the silence of the majority is certainly culpable. In times when everybody says too much, the important thing is not merely to say what is right, which in any event would be lost in the flood of words, but to say it on the basis of premisses, suggesting also consequences, so that what is said acquires the maximum value. But then, if the value of a single affirmation lies in the continuity and coherence of the discourse in which it is uttered, the only possible choice is between speaking continuously or never speaking at all. In the first case Mr Palomar would reveal that his thinking does not proceed in a straight line but zigzags its way through vacillations, denials, corrections, in whose midst the rightness of that affirmation of his would be lost. As for the other alternative, it implies an art of keeping silent even more difficult than the art of speaking.

  In fact, silence can also be considered a kind of speech, since it is a rejection of the use to which others put words; but the meaning of this silent speech lies in its interruptions, in what is, from time to time, actually said, giving a meaning to what is unsaid.

  Or rather: a silence can serve to dismiss certain words or else to hold them in reserve for use on a better occasion. Just as a word spoken now can save a hundred words tomorrow or else can necessitate the saying of another thousand. “Every time I bite my tongue,” Mr Palomar concludes mentally, “I must think not only of what I am about to say or not say, but also of everything that, whether I say it or do not say it, will be said or not said by me or by others.” Having formulated this thought, he bites his tongue and remains silent.

  On becoming angry with the young

  In a time when young people’s impatience with the old and old people’s impatience with the young has reached its peak, when the old do nothing but store up arguments with which to tell the young finally what they deserve, and when the young are waiting only for these occasions in order to show the old that they understand nothing, Mr Palomar is unable to utter a word. If he sometimes tries to speak up, he realizes that all are too intent on the theses they are defending to pay any attention to what he is trying to clarify to himself.

  The fact is that he would like not so much to affirm a truth of his own as to ask questions, and he realizes that no one wants to abandon the train of his own discourse to answer questions that, coming from another discourse, would necessitate rethinking the same things with other words, perhaps ending up on strange ground, far from safe paths. Or else he would like others to ask him questions; but he, too, would want only certain questions and not others: the ones to which he would answer by saying the things he feels he can say but could say only if someone asked him to say them. In any event, nobody has the slightest idea of asking him anything.

  In this situation Mr Palomar confines himself to brooding privately on the difficulty of speaking to the young.

  He thinks: “The difficulty lies in the fact that between us and them there is an unbridgeable gap. Something has happened between our generation and theirs, a continuity of experience has been broken: we no longer have any common reference points.”

  Then he thinks: “No, the difficulty lies in the fact that every time I am about to reproach or criticize or exhort or advise them, I think that as a young man I also attracted reproaches, criticism, exhortation, advice of the same sort, and I never listened to any of it. Times were different and as a result there were many differences in behavior, language, customs; but my mental processes then were not very different from theirs today. So I have no authority to speak.”

  Mr Palomar vacillates at length between these two views of the question. Then he decides: “There is no contradiction between the two positions. The break between the generations derives from the impossibility of transmitting experience, of saving others from making the mistakes we have already made. The real distance between two generations is created by the elements they have in common, that require the cyclical repetition of the same experiences, as in the behavior of animal species, handed down through biological heredity. The elements of real difference between us and them are, on the contrary, the result of the irreversible changes that every period evolves; these differences are the result of the historical legacy that we have handed on to them, the true legacy for which we are responsible, even if unco
nsciously sometimes. This is why we have nothing to teach: we can exert no influence on what most resembles our own experience; in what bears our own imprint we are unable to recognize ourselves.”

  The model of models

  In Mr Palomar’s life there was a period when his rule was this: first, to construct in his mind a model, the most perfect, logical, geometrical model possible; second, to see if the model is adapted to the practical situations observed in experience; third, to make the corrections necessary for model and reality to coincide. This procedure, developed by physicists and astronomers, who investigate the structure of matter and of the universe, seemed to Palomar the only way to tackle the most entangled human problems, those involving society, first of all, and the best way to govern. He had to be able to bear in mind, on the one hand, the shapeless and senseless reality of human society, which does nothing but generate monstrosities and disasters; and, on the other hand, a model of the perfect social organism, designed with neatly drawn lines, straight or circular or elliptical, parallelograms of forms, diagrams with abscissas and ordinates.

  To construct a model – as Palomar was aware – you have to start with something; that is, you have to have principles, from which, by deduction, you achieve your own line of reasoning. These principles, also known as axioms or postulates, are not something you select; you have them already, because if you did not have them, you could not even begin thinking. So Palomar also had some, but since he was neither a mathematician nor a logician he did not bother to define them. Deduction, in any case, was one of his favorite activities, because he could devote himself to it in silence and alone, without special equipment, at any place and moment, seated in his armchair or strolling. Induction, on the contrary, was something he somewhat distrusted, perhaps because his experiences of it seemed vague and incomplete. The construction of a model, therefore, was for him a miracle of equilibrium between principles (left in shadow) and experience (elusive), but the result should be more substantial than either. In a well-made model, in fact, every detail must be conditioned by the others, so that everything holds together in absolute coherence, as in a mechanism where if one gear jams, everything jams. A model is by definition that in which nothing has to be changed, that which works perfectly; whereas reality, as we see clearly, does not work and constantly falls to pieces; so we must force it, more or less roughly, to assume the form of the model.

  For a long time Mr Palomar made an effort to achieve such impassiveness and detachment that what counted was only the serene harmony of the lines of the pattern: all the lacerations and contortions and compressions that human reality has to undergo to conform to the model were to be considered transitory, irrelevant accidents. But if for a moment he stopped gazing at the harmonious geometrical design drawn in the heaven of ideal models, a human landscape leaped to his eye where monstrosities and disasters had not vanished at all and the lines of the design seemed distorted and twisted.

  A delicate job of adjustment was then required, making gradual corrections in the model, so it would approach a possible reality, and in reality to make it approach the model. In fact, the degree of pliability in human nature is not unlimited, as he first believed; and, at the same time, even the most rigid model can show some unexpected elasticity. In other words, if the model does not succeed in transforming reality, reality must succeed in transforming the model.

  Mr Palomar’s rule had gradually altered: now he needed a great variety of models, perhaps interchangeable, in a combining process, in order to find the one that would best fit a reality that, for its own part, was always made of many different realities, in time and in space.

  In all this period, Palomar did not develop models himself or try to apply those already developed: he confined himself to imagine a right use of the right models to bridge the gap that he saw yawning, ever wider, between reality and principles. In other words, the way in which models could be managed and manipulated was not his responsibility nor was it in his power to intervene. People who concerned themselves with these things were usually quite different from him. They judged the models’ functionality by other criteria: as instruments of power especially, rather than according to principles or to consequences. This attitude was fairly natural, since what the models seek to model is basically always a system of power; but if the efficacy of the system is measured by its invulnerability and capacity to last, the model becomes a kind of fortress whose thick walls conceal what is outside. Palomar, who from powers and counter-powers expects always the worst, was finally convinced that what really counts is what happens despite them: the form that society is assuming slowly, silently, anonymously, in people’s habits, their way of thinking and acting, in their scale of values. If this is how things stand, the model of models Palomar dreams of must serve to achieve transparent models, diaphanous, fine as cobwebs, or perhaps even to dissolve models, or indeed to dissolve itself.

  At this point the only thing Palomar can do was erase from his mind all models and the models of models. When this step is also taken, then he finds himself face to face with reality – hard to master and impossible to homogenize – as he formulates his “yesses” and his “noes”, his “buts”. To do this, it is better for the mind to remain cleared, furnished only by the memory of fragments of experience and of principles understood and not demonstrable. This is not a line of conduct from which he can derive special satisfaction, but it is the only one that proves practicable for him.

  As long as it is a matter of demonstrating the ills of society and the abuses of those who abuse, he has no hesitations (except for the fear that, if they are talked about too much, even the most just propositions can sound repetitive, obvious, tired). He finds it more difficult to say something about the remedies, because first he would like to make sure they do not cause worse ills and abuses, and that if wisely planned by enlightened reformers, they can then be put into practice without harm by their successors: foolish perhaps, perhaps frauds, perhaps frauds and foolish at once.

  He has only to expound these fine thoughts in a systematic form, but a scruple restrains him: what if a model did not result? And so he prefers to keep his convictions in the fluid state, check them instance by instance, and make them the implicit rule of his own everyday behavior, in doing or not doing, in choosing or rejecting, in speaking or in remaining silent.

  THE MEDITATIONS OF PALOMAR

  * * *

  The world looks at the world

  After a series of intellectual misadventures not worth recalling, Mr Palomar has decided that his chief activity will be looking at things from the outside. A bit nearsighted, absent-minded, introverted, he does not seem to belong temperamentally to that human type generally called an observer. And yet it has always happened that certain things – a stone wall, a seashell, a leaf, a teapot – present themselves to him as if asking him for minute and prolonged attention: he starts observing them almost unawares and his gaze begins to run over all the details, and is then unable to detach itself. Mr Palomar has decided that from now on he will redouble his attention: first, by not allowing these summons to escape him as they arrive from things; second, to attribute to the observer’s operation the importance it deserves.

  At this point a first critical moment arrives: sure that from now on the world will reveal an infinite wealth of things for him to look at, Mr Palomar tries staring at everything that comes within eyeshot; he feels no pleasure, and he stops. A second phase follows, in which he is convinced that only some things are to be looked at, others not, and he must go and seek the right ones. To do this, he has to face each time problems of selection, exclusion, hierarchies of preference; he soon realizes he is spoiling everything, as always when he involves his own ego and all the problems he has with his own ego.

  But how can you look at something and set your own ego aside? Whose eyes are doing the looking? As a rule, you think of the ego as one who is peering out of your own eyes as if leaning on a windowsill, looking at the world stretching out before h
im in all its immensity. So then: there is a window that looks out on the world. The world is out there; and in here, what is there? The world still – what else could there be? With a little effort of concentration Palomar manages to shift the world from in front of him and set it on the sill, looking out. The world is also there, and for the occasion has been split into a looking world and a world looked at. And what about him, also known as “I”, namely Mr Palomar? Is he not a piece of the world that is looking at another piece of world? Or else, given that there is world that side of the window and world this side, perhaps the I, the ego, is simply the window through which the world looks at the world. To look at itself the world needs the eyes (and the eyeglasses) of Mr Palomar.

  So from now on Mr Palomar will look at things from outside and not from inside. But this is not enough: he will look at them with a gaze that comes from outside, not inside, himself. He tries to perform the experiment at once: now it is not he who is looking; it is the world of outside that is looking outside. Having established this, he casts his gaze around, expecting a general transfiguration. No such thing. The usual quotidian grayness surrounds him. Everything has to be rethought from the beginning. Having the outside look outside is not enough: the trajectory must start from the looked-at thing, linking it with the thing that looks.