“The key point here is weakness,” said the Rat. “Everything begins from there. Can you understand what I’m getting at?”
“People are weak.”
“As a general rule,” said the Rat, snapping his fingers a couple of times. “But line up all the generalities you like and you still won’t get anywhere. What I’m talking about now is a very individual thing. Weakness is something that rots in the body. Like gangrene. I’ve felt that ever since I was a teenager. That’s why I was always on edge. There’s this something inside you that’s rotting away and you feel it all along. Can you understand what that’s like?”
I sat silent, wrapped up in the blanket.
“Probably not,” the Rat continued. “There isn’t that side to you. But, well, anyway, that’s weakness. It’s the same as a hereditary disease, weakness. No matter how much you understand it, there’s nothing you can do to cure yourself. It’s not going to go away with a clap of the hand. It just keeps getting worse and worse.”
“Weakness toward what?”
“Everything. Moral weakness, weakness of consciousness, then there’s the weakness of existence itself.”
I laughed. This time the laugh came off. “You start talking like that and there’s not a human alive who isn’t weak.”
“Enough generalities. Like I said before. Of course, it goes without saying that everybody has his weaknesses. But real weakness is as rare as real strength. You don’t know the weakness that is ceaselessly dragging you under into darkness. You don’t know that such a thing actually exists in the world. Your generalities don’t cover everything, you know.”
I could say nothing.
“That’s why I left town. I didn’t want others to see me sinking any lower. Traveling around alone in unknown territory, at least I wouldn’t cause problems for anyone. And ultimately …,” the Rat trailed off for a bit.
“Ultimately, because of this weakness, I couldn’t escape the specter of the sheep. There was nothing I myself could do about it. Probably even if you had shown up at the time, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. Even if I’d made up my mind to go down from the mountain, it would have been the same. I probably still would have come back up in the end. That’s what weakness is.”
“What did the sheep want of you?”
“Everything. The whole lock, stock, and barrel. My body, my memory, my weakness, my contradictions … That’s the sort of stuff the sheep really goes for. The bastard’s got all sorts of feelers. It sticks them down your ears and nose like straws and sucks you dry. Gives me the creeps even now.”
“And for what in return?”
“Things far too good for the likes of me. Not that the sheep got around to showing me anything in real form. All I ever saw was one tiny slice of the pie. And …”
The Rat trailed off again.
“And it was enough to draw me in. More than I’d care to confess. It’s not something I can explain in words. It’s like, well, like a blast furnace that smelts down everything it touches. A thing of such beauty, it drives you out of your mind. But it’s hair-raising evil. Give your body over to it and everything goes. Consciousness, values, emotions, pain, everything. Gone. What it comes closest to is a dynamo manifesting the vital force at the root of all life in one solitary point of the universe.”
