Peter Billig
THE HUB OF THE UNIVERSE
A Saul Vogel Mystery
“Should I give you this red herring not even knowing whether you really exist?” Master protested.
It was late evening. We had had supper, but we stayed at the table in order to gratify his gastronomic endeavors. His refusal to share was dictated by the sad reality that out of a dozen of the tasty fish only one was left. Moreover, today of all days, he had taken stock of all his philosophical achievements and was therefore in indecently high spirits – which always makes him poke fun at me.
“You don’t know if I exist? I’ve been your assistant from time immemorial!”
“It’s not so obvious,” he replied. “The only unquestionable thing is that it is I, Saul Vogel, who exist. How can I know whether you and everybody and everything else are not figments of my own imagination? That you are not phantoms, delusions, allurements – entities fictitious, abstract, false and mendacious? How can I be sure that while talking to you I am not addressing my own specters – hallucinations and phantasms dwelling not outside but solely and exclusively within myself? Can you prove your existence?”
“Cogito ergo sum!” I said proudly.
“Yes, yes,” Master was positively mirthful. “The old mantra by Helvetius, which does not prove anything but the existence of thought – my thought, that is. Helvetius himself is also a fabrication of my own mind.”
“It was not Helvetius, but Cartesius, a.k.a. Descartes.” It was my turn to be mirthful. “And why should I be an invention of your imagination and not the other way round? What, pray, makes you more significant than me? Don’t we both urinate, defecate, ruminate and copulate?”
“You?” he giggled contemptuously. “There is no such thing as a ‘thou’, a ‘he’, a ‘she’, an ‘it’, a ‘we’, a ‘ye’ or a ‘they’! There is only an ‘I’: there exists just ME, Saul Vogel, ME/I, the first and only person singular!”
“In that case,” I chuckled contemptuously, “the only option left is to punch your smug face: you will acknowledge that also EYE do exist!”
“Not in the least!” he retorted. “I shall only acknowledge the existence of my own pain. What are your feelings, your thoughts, your sufferings, moans and perplexities as you yourselves are but empty deceptions and mirages inside my brain, products of my uncontrolled and involuntary fantasy: phantasmagorias! Fata Morganas! I don’t sense with your skins when you burn yourselves nor with your stomachs when you starve nor with your heads when you think. And that’s why you’ll never be able to prove that you are a being material and independent, as whatever you do, whatever you say, in whatever manner you behave, I would still have to put you down as yet another intellectual manifestation of myself.”
“No way!” I retorted. “That’s exactly why you should recognize us as materially in existence: since one cannot feel with the matter of a stranger, you would have – should you be the only one in existence – the closest of contacts with your own illusions: they would be an integral part of you!”
“On the contrary,” he was adamant. “Do I feel the pain of the personages appearing and disappearing in one’s dreams? Never, unless I have a stomachache!”
“Not so long ago you took a tumble down the stairs and broke your leg,” I was adamant. “You could at least concede that the stairs were real.”
“No way!” he was being stubborn. “That is also a fruit of my fruitful brains. The only thing I know about the leg and the stairs has reached me through the so-called ‘senses’, which is exactly the same way as you and other fictions of your brand show themselves. But it has been stated: you are ghosts, ergo neither my leg nor those stairs exist!”
“You are not trying to tell me,” I was being stubborn, “that neither you exist? You are not going to be so brazen as to assert that also your bodily encasement is a creation of your intellect?! That you are an intellect alone: a mind liberated from the shackles of the body!”
“I am!” Master bellowed. “I’m the Hub of the Universe: the Omphalos! the Logos! the Universal Being! the Ouroboros! the Mother and the Father of Totality! I’m the Absolute! I’m the Pure Self! I’m Demiurges and Gaia! I’m the Mind Liberated! I’m the Place To Stand On! I’m Alpha and Omega!”
“Liar!” I bellowed in turn. “I am Noûs, the Axis of Everything, the Center of the World and the Mother of All! I am the Deity and the Cosmos! I am the Essence and the Quintessence! I am the Beginning, the Middle and the End! I am the Ball and the Goal and the Game! I am Uranus, Cronos and Zeus! I am Aleph and Beit! Gimel and Dalet! And you, Master, are Zayin!”
“Shut up your face!” Master thundered[1]. “How dare you?!”
“How come?” I laughed into his face. “Have you descended from your pedestal to talk to me – your own delirium tremens? You – the Apeiron? You – the Arche? You – the Spiritus Movens?!
There was a moment of silence while Vogel’s face became purple and from purple – dark blue. I must have overdone it, so I hurried to smooth it out and said amicably:
“Why don’t you exert your will and try whether you can, by its power, destroy the phantasms and the banshees of your mind, such as me? This way you could stake your claim empirically!”
He nodded, closed his eyes, and his face began slowly to display the signs of utmost concentration.
The clock on the mantelpiece began to chime midnight.
When I regained consciousness, my head was resting upon Master’s knees who was trying to pour some whisky between my clenched jaws. As the Scottish ambrosia was exactly what I needed at the moment, I made it easy for him – and bliss began to spread all over my Being.
“Get up, you cheat!” Master roared discovering the fraud.
I got up and looked at the clock: ten minutes past midnight.
“Whassa matta, Bwana?” I asked seeing his sorry face. “Why are you so sullen? Haven’t you nearly taken my measly life? Haven’t you established that you are what you claimed to be?”
“Yes, I have,” he replied dismally, “only that when my will was cutting your illusory body and fictitious soul like a hot knife cuts through cold butter, suddenly, it began to cut in vacuum.”
“I don’t get it, Master.”
“Is it so hard to figure out? I was the Mind Liberated only for one day – steering the world at will and whim – and exactly at twelve o’clock the honor was transferred – by some mysterious design – to someone else! I had some very deep and disturbing – ominous! – dreams last night, but as soon as I woke up it was to pee, to shit, to have breakfast and so on – the daily treadmill! First in the evening, after I had made the list of my accomplishments, the realization of my power got through – in a childish manner: playing games with you! Just imagine, what I could have brought about if I were fully cognizant of the situation from the moment I woke up. In these eighteen hours I could have changed the course of the world, repaired the hothouse effect, replenished the jungles and the seas, removed wrongdoers, redressed conflicts, stopped misuse of children, women, men…”
“No use crying over spilt milk, Master!” I cut him short. “Judging by results, the only really terrific Mind Liberated was the one of January 17, 1966, when the woman of my dreams allowed me to make love…”
“Don’t you understand?!” he cut me short. “The transfer of the Power means that from midnight also I – ME, SAUL VOGEL! – became – again! – a manifestation of some stranger’s – an asshole’s! – mind!”
“Well, Master, judging by you, me and the state of the world the Minds Liberated chosen nowadays are not that bad.” Actually, I was grateful to the new Mind for upholding me. “During the World Wars: these were really assholes! And perhaps the power will return to you one day and you will recognize it at once, wake up, perform – and planet Earth will become Paradise! No more Ahmadinejads, Mugabes or Bashirs!” I tried to comfort him, but he shook his head, got up and shuffled dejectedly upstairs to his bedroom.
Copyright © Peter Billig 2007.
[1] Zayin, the name of a Hebrew letter, is also the Hebrew name for “dick”, “prick”, “cock”, “pecker” or whatever you prefer calling the useful organ.
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