Public Enemies_ Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World - Bernard-Henri Levy [120]
I consulted legal specialists, notaries, attorneys, capable not only of examining alongside myself the letter and spirit of the law but also of helping me to make an exhaustive inventory of accidents, unforeseen and possible events, and to deflect them.
I appointed—without their always being aware of it—chief inspectors instructed to monitor the executors to my will when the time came and also to monitor one another.
Like a computer specialist who tries to protect himself from hackers by increasing the number of barriers, firewalls, sophisticated and encrypted access codes, and stepped-up security and alerts, I made a device with double, triple, indeed quadruple backup, which goes so far as to anticipate the death of one, the descent into madness of another, the posthumously revealed stupidity or hatred of the third; and in case these misfortunes and others should occur all at the same time, a last-defense lock that in principle will make the system inviolable and inevitably bring about the self-destruction of my capsule of words.
I don’t know if I have succeeded. Those who survive me will find out.
I’ve told you this story to show once more that I’m a real neurotic when it comes to secrecy.
I opened and now close this other parenthesis to let you know that I’ve always believed that this secrecy was as indispensable to me as the air I breathe.
And I’m going to tell you something rather awful, but when we’ve come this far, why not? When I was in the thick of Operation Corpet, at the height of my imaginary duel with this charming friend who, through no fault on his part, had become the real incarnation of the devil in my nocturnal and other dreams, in which I heard him, frozen in his stonelike immobility, repeating, “Whatever measures you take … whatever measures you take,” I saw myself like those tyrants immured in their silence, of whom it is said that a milligram of truth, freedom, or transparency would be enough to kill them, or even those poor American Indians dying like flies from being infected with a pinch not of truth but of unknown microbes.
Now, something extraordinary has happened.
I’ve spoken to you about my father, my mother, my body.
I’ve told you some of the reasons why I write, why I’m an activist, why I’m committed, why I keep traveling from one of the world’s most rotten wars to the next, why I lay myself open.
In order to tell you this, I’ve given up my advantageous pose of the friend to humanity, the good man, disinterested and pure.
Not only am I still here, not only has the sky not fallen in on top of me but as a matter of fact I feel rather well.
That may not last.
The opposition, mine I mean, may turn things to their advantage, swarm into the gap I’ve opened up and see these confessions as confirming their worst suspicions.
They’re bound to harp on in this way: “Didn’t we tell you … no sincerity … waited till he was nearly sixty to discover that a writer’s foremost virtue is to be authentic … au-then-tic … but it’s too late … far too late … statue of salt … early grave … hot air … will he ever be quiet …”
But that’s too bad for them, isn’t it?
They’re free, if they wish, to mix up the freedom of a writer who as far as he can fights his unequal struggle with the angel or the beast, and this murky “authenticity” that in their mouths means nothing but the absence of style and talent.
I’m emerging from this dialogue serene, happy with the same sort of relief, I imagine, that the criminal feels after his confession.
My impression is that instead of endangering myself, I’ve been liberated and that I’m ready to reengage with that adventure of the novel that I tasted twenty years ago and which since then, as you understood, I’ve been afraid to return to.
I can hardly believe it myself, but that’s how it is.
It’s the best effect our correspondence could have had on me.
There are also all the subjects we didn’t speak of, which