I
On the day he turned eleven, young Urodonal Carrier abruptly became aware of the existence of God. Indeed, Providence suddenly revealed his status as thinker and, if one considers that up to that point he had proven to be completely stupid in all things, it is difficult to believe that the Lord was not somehow responsible for so prompt a transformation.
The cynical citizens of La-Houspignole-sur-Côtés, in typical fashion, will undoubtedly disagree with me about this, preferring to believe that it was because of the knock on the head young Urodonal sustained the previous day when he fell over, together with the nine swift kicks up the backside generously dished out on the morning of his birthday by his good uncle, whom he had caught keeping an eye on the maid to make sure she was changing her underwear every three weeks as his father had asked. But this village is full of atheists, who are maintained in a state of sin by the irresponsible ramblings of an old-school teacher, and the priest gets drunk every Saturday, which gives less weight to his holy word. However, if one is not used to it, one doesn’t become a thinker without being tempted to attribute it to the intervention of a higher Power, and the best thing to do in this type of circumstance is to thank God.
It all happened very simply. The priest, who happened to be sober for a change during the retreat which preceded communion, tested Urodonal:
178 If I Say If
Nobody knew the answer because in the country making love is no longer considered a sin. But Urodonal raised his hand.
“Do you know?” the priest asked.
“Yes sir,” Urodonal said. “There was a mistake in Genesis.”
The priest felt the wing of the Holy Spirit pass over him and he closed his collar against the draught. He sent the kids on their way and sat down to think. Three months later, still thinking, he left the village to become a hermit.
“There’s a lot to what he said,” he mused. II
From that day, Urodonal’s reputation as a thinker became firmly established throughout the whole of La-Houspignole. People would hang on his every word. It must be said that the Holy Spirit hardly ever revealed itself again.
One day in a physics class, during a lesson on electric currents, the teacher asked him, “What does it mean when the needle of a galvanometer moves?”
“That there’s current…” Urodonal answered.
But that was nothing. He continued: “That there’s current, or that the galvanometer’s broken. You’ll more than likely find a mouse inside.”
So at the age of fourteen, young Urodonal was awarded a scholarship, and for the rest of his school days never had another original thought. But everyone knew what he was capable of.
At the end of his schooling, he reaffirmed his reputation in a blaze of glory during a philosophy lecture.
“I’m going to read to you some words from Epictetus,” the teacher said. And so he read:
If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things.
“And vice versa…” Urodonal said quietly. The teacher bowed before him.
If I Say If
Urodonal stood up and left the room, leaving the door ajar. In a friendly voice, the teacher called him back.
“Urodonal, remember, a door must be either open or closed…”
“A door must be either open or closed, or taken off its hinges if the lock needs to be repaired in a hurry,” said Urodonal.
Then Urodonal walked away and took the train to Paris in a bid to conquer the capital.
III
Urodonal’s first impression of Paris was that Montmartre metro station smelled like a country toilet. However, he kept this observation to himself because he didn’t think Parisians would be interested in hearing it. Then he tried to find some work.
He thought long and hard before deciding on a career he wanted to pursue. Since he had been part of the town band in La-Houspignole, where he played the role of second extendable bugle, he was leaning towards something in the field of music.
However, he felt he needed to justify his decision and in typically brilliant fashion quickly found a reason.
“Music,” he said to himself, “soothes the savage beast. Now, strict behavioural guidelines are indispensable for any respectable man, so it would be wrong to become a musician. But on the other hand, the inhabitants of this Babylon have no morals whatsoever, and consequently music presents no danger to them.”
As you can see, Urodonal’s capacity for critical analysis had been developed to such an extent through his studies that some found it disturbing. But we are not talking here about just any ordinary man; his body was strong enough to cope with his exceptional brain.
Music provided Urodonal with plenty of free time, so he decided to try his hand at literature.
Several unsuccessful attempts, far from dampening his genius, only served to inspire the following epigram:
180 If I Say If
“An author’s success,” he confided to his friends, “depends on the extent of his ability to look, on paper, like an idiot.”
In his love life, Urodonal was just as prodigious.
“To say that you don’t love me any more,” he declared to his jealous girlfriend, Marinouille, “is like saying that I no longer think that you love me. But how can you be sure?”
Thereupon, Marinouille remained silent.
However, the great expanse of Urodonal’s brain would not allow him to be satisfied with the mediocre existence he was leading with Marinouille and his bugle.
“Live dangerously,” he would sometimes say, with a fiery look in his untamed eye.
And then one day, Marinouille found him dead in bed. He had only just recently become involved in a reprehensible relationship with a young prison escapee of dubious morals who had been serving a three-month sentence for the murder of twelve people.
Yet there was nothing perverse about Urodonal. The explanation for his sad demise was to be found in a collection of unpublished reflections, which contained only one, on the first page. Urodonal had written:
“What could be more dangerous than to get yourself killed?” And how true it is.