The Conversations (New Directions Paperbook) Read Online Free PDF Page A

out as far as everything about them that was good and gratifying for me. Not only would I lose them in the future — for I would necessarily lose all desire to bring up interesting subjects or share intelligent reflections with a fool of that caliber — but I would retrospectively lose the conversations that we’d held throughout the years and that constituted such a central part of my life. This revelation detracted from the past — its richness became fictitious — and created a gaping hole that would be difficult to fill. How to fill a hole in the past from the present? My conversations themselves were somewhat retrospective. Th e nocturnal reconstructions I put them through — no less important a part of the pleasure they gave me — displaced them in time even while they were occurring; the second time contaminated the first and thereby a circle was drawn. I had been living in that magic circle, protected by its circumference, and its dissolution filled me with dread.
    In order to appreciate the magnitude of my disappointment, I should explain just how important conversations are for me. At this stage of my life, they have become the single most important thing. I have allowed them to occupy this privileged position, and have cultivated them as a raison d’être, almost like my life work. They constitute my only worthwhile occupation, and I have devoted myself to enhancing their value, treasuring them through their reconstruction and miniaturization on my secret nocturnal altar. Hence, if I lose the day, I also lose the night. In fact, my nights even more than my days would be emptied out, for it is always possible to find other distractions during the day; nights are more demanding; their entire sustenance is intelligence and the complicity of intelligence, which becomes complicity with myself through my system of duplication. To lose that would be to lose myself, to remain alone in my aimless insomnia.
    It’s true, he was not my only friend nor my only conversational partner. He was one among many — I did not value him above the others. But it would be a loss that would go beyond the unit he represented. In my relationships with my friends, I have noticed — and I think this must be a universal phenomenon — that each one is regulated by a distinct line of interests, a distinct tone of friendship, even a different language. Friends are not interchangeable, even when the degree of friendship is the same and the level of culture and social standing is equivalent. There are unspoken understandings and agreements and codes that are built up over time and that make each one irreplaceable. But the loss, as I said, would go beyond what was unique. The conversations from which I derive so much pleasure form a system, and the disappearance of that “vein” of topics or shared opinions with this friend would create an imbalance, and this in turn would lead to the collapse of the entire network.
    Nevertheless, beneath these fears, a doubt remained, the same one that had led to my initial surprise: Was this possible? Wasn’t it a bit excessive? The contrast between my educated and civilized friend and the ignorance of a person thus impaired was almost supernatural. Shouldn’t he be above such suspicions? Had he not given me sufficient proof, throughout the years, of his intelligence and perceptiveness? I had lost count of the number of times we had discussed, as equals, philosophers and artists and social and historical phenomena. My trust in his responses never flagged. And I was not under some kind of illusion, of this I could be certain, for I had submitted each conversation to the nocturnal test of memory, and I had scrutinized every last crease. During these reconstructions, I even scrutinized what had not been said. This discovery, if that is what it was, would be like suddenly discovering, after years of a relationship, that a friend had only one arm, or not even, because a one-armed man can hide his handicap