The Day Watch Read Online Free PDF Page A

was beginning to get a bit nervous. The conversation seemed like a joke, but he could sense that something wasn’t right.
    “It’s also because they might put you in jail,” I said. “And that’s all.”
    “No,” he said firmly.
    “Yes,” I said with a smile. “That’s exactly the reason. You’re a normal, healthy man, with all the right reactions.
    But there’s a law, so you prefer not to attack girls, but court them first.”
    “Witch…” the driver muttered with a crooked smile. He stepped hard on the gas.
    “Witch,” I confirmed. “Because I tell the truth and don’t play the hypocrite. After all, everyone wants to be free to live his or her life. To do what they want. Not everything works out-everyone has their own desires-but everyone has the same aspirations. And it’s the clash of these that gives rise to freedom! A harmonious society in which everybody wants to have everything, although they have to come to terms with other people’s desires.”
    “But what about morality?”
    “What morality?”
    “Universal human morality.”
    “What’s that?”
    There’s nothing better than forcing someone into a dead end and making him formulate his question properly.
    People don’t usually think about the meaning of the words they say. It seems to them that words convey truth.
    That when someone hears the word “red” he will think of a ripe raspberry and not a pool of blood. That the word
    “love” will evoke Shakespeare’s sonnets and not the erotic films of Playboy. And they find themselves baffled
     
    when the word they’ve spoken doesn’t evoke the right response.
    “There are basic principles,” said the driver. “Dogmas. Taboos. Those… what do they caff them…
    commandments.”
    “Well?” I said encouragingly.
    “Thou shalt not steal.”
    I laughed, and the driver smiled too.
    “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.” His smile was really broad now.
    “And do you manage it?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “And you even manage not to ‘covet’? You control your instincts that well?”
    “Witch!” the driver said with relish. “All right, I repent, I repent…”
    “Don’t repent!” I interrupted. “It’s quite normal. It’s freedom! Stealing… and coveting.”
    “Thou shalt not kill!” the driver declared. “Eh? What do you say to that? A universal commandment!”
    “You might as well say ‘don’t boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” Do you watch TV and read the newspapers?” I asked.
    “Sometimes. But I don’t enjoy it.”
    “Then why do you call ‘Thou shalt not kill’ a commandment? Thou shalt not kill… It was in the news this morning-down South they’ve taken another three people hostage and they’re demanding a ransom. They’ve already cut a finger off each one of them to show their demands are serious. And one of the hostages, by the way, is a three-year-old girl. They cut her finger off too.”
    The driver’s fingers tightened their grip on the wheel and turned pale.
    “Bastards…” he hissed. “Monsters. I heard that all right. But they’re scum, they’re inhuman-they have to be to do something like that. I’d strangle them all with my bare hands…”
    I kept quiet. The driver’s aura was blazing bright scarlet. I didn’t want him to crash; he was almost out of control.
    My thrust had been too accurate-he had a little daughter of his own…
    “String them up on the telegraph poles!” he continued, still raging. “Burn them with napalm!”
    I kept quiet and waited until the driver had gradually calmed down. Then I asked:
    “Then what about those universal moral commandments? If they gave you a machine gun now, you’d press the trigger without even hesitating.”
    “There aren’t any commandments that apply to monsters!” the driver snarled. His calm, cultured manner had disappeared without a trace now! There were streams of energy pouring out of him in all directions… and I soaked it up, quickly replenishing the