...of suffering

‘Why? Why are you telling me this? What are you going to do, now?’
Without the slightest emotion, breathing with perfect regularity between his phrases, Beaumont replied:
‘I don’t know yet. Frankly, I don’t know at all. I just told you, it’s different now, I don’t need anybody any more. Now I’m alone, I’m really alone, quite alone. I’m still in pain, of course, but I don’t know. Perhaps the pain is a bit less, perhaps it’s still the same. But I’ve forgotten it already, almost forgotten it. I have a kind of peace, you know, a sort of little sad, silent calm. In order to really suffer, one has to love somebody. And I don’t know anybody in the world any longer, everything seems to me now to be smooth and indifferent. I’m alone, and at the same time I’m everywhere, already. Yes, everywhere. Wherever there are people, sunshine, people going to and fro. Work and suffering. I’m everything that’s happening on earth, all the horrors and all the pleasures. Everything people are saying and everything they’re wanting. I assure you, everything. Because I’m empty, empty, empty. So that evrything can come into me. You understand. Like a tape-recorder, exactly like that. Or like a telephone. The sounds of human voices are running through me, for miles. You understand? Other people’s voices will pass through me, and I shall be cold and silent, all the time. I shan’t know anything any more. I shan’t say anything any more. A sheet of white, very white paper. I’ll leave you that. You’ll be able to write whatever you like on it. My name, for instance, Beaumont, Beaumont. Or a garden, with pebbles and grass. And me buried in it, under a little marble slab, and wreaths, and imitation orchids. Or perhaps a window, you know, an open window looking on to anything you like, a snowy countryside, a grey street with the dustbin men going by. Sunshine, rain, the mistral, people coming home from the cinema in the evening, and a bus pulling out. You hear?’

[Beaumont Acquainted With His Pain, from Fever, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]