Tales of Madness Read Online Free PDF

angering her, poor Marta. Yet, now that I've become sane, how much better would I do, if I'm unable to utter a couple of words, one after the other, because I'm continually afraid that some absurdity will slip out of my mouth? Enough said; my wife didn't forego the opportunity to repeat her terrible "Again? Again?" which for me is worse that an unexpected cold shower. Then she sent the girl away without even giving her a pittance because, as she said, she had already made her contribution for the day. (And actually, Marta does make some charitable contribution every day. Mind you, she gives a small coin to the first poor soul whom she happens to meet, and once she has given it and has said: "Remember me to the holy souls in purgatory," she has eased her conscience and doesn't want to hear anything else.)
    In the meantime I express the thought: If that girl isn't already a lost soul, she certainly will be one before too long. Yes, but what should it matter to me? Now that I've become sane, I shouldn't be thinking about such things at all. "Think about myself!" — this is my new motto. It took some effort to persuade myself to use that as a guide for every act of this new "life" of mine, let's call it that. But somehow, by not doing anything... Enough said. If, for instance, I now stop under the window of a house where I know there are people crying, I must immediately look for my own bewildered and haggard image in the pane of that window. When it appears, it has the express obligation to shout down to me from up there, as it lowers its head slightly and points a finger at its breast: "And me?"
    Just like that.
    Always: "And me?" on all occasions. For therein lies the basis of true wisdom.
    Instead when I was crazy...
    2. The Foundation of Morality
    When I was crazy, I didn't feel I was inside myself, which is like saying, I wasn't at home within myself. I had, in fact, become a hotel, open to everyone. And if I would but tap my forehead a bit, I would feel that there were always people who had taken up lodgings there: poor souls who needed my help. I had, likewise, many, many other tenants in my heart. Nor can anyone say that my hands and legs were for my own personal use, but rather for the use of the unhappy people within me who sent me here and there to continuously tend to their affairs.
    I could no sooner say "I" to myself than an echo would immediately repeat "I, I, I" for so many others, as if I had a flock of sparrows within me. And this meant that if, let us say, I was hungry and would tell myself that, so, so, many others within me would repeat on their own behalf: "I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry." Naturally I felt I had to provide for them and always regretted not being able to do so for everyone. I viewed myself, in brief, as being part of a mutual aid society with the universe. But since at that time I needed no one, that "mutual" had meaning only for the others.
    The strangest part, however, was that I thought I could justify my madness; actually, to tell the whole truth without shame, I had gone so far as to make an outline of a unique treatise that I intended to write and that was to be entitled The Foundation of Morality.
    Here in my drawer I have my notes for this treatise, and once in a while in the evening (while Marta is taking her usual after-dinner nap in the adjoining room), I take them out and reread them very, very slowly to myself. I do this secretly and, admittedly, with some pleasure and bewilderment, because it's undeniable that I reasoned quite well, when I was crazy.
    I should really laugh about this, but I can't, perhaps for the rather particular reason that the majority of my arguments were aimed at converting that unfortunate woman who was my first wife and of whom I will speak later in order to furnish the most incontestable proof of the blatantly mad acts of those times.
    From these notes I surmise that the treatise The Foundation of Morality no doubt was to consist of dialogs between