Free Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane Page A

does not end. When will one know the truth—all the truth? As for us, we still believe in the coming of truth. We hope for it.”
    Then that is it, Paul Lacroix thought. The truth which they do not now possess, which they are incapable of conquering, they hope for in the end. It is so in the case of justice, also. All they want and do not have—instead of trying to conquer it, they await it at the end.…
    He did not express this thought. He merely said:
    “As for us, we conquer a little more of truth each day, thanks to science. We do not wait.…”
    I was sure that he would not have understood, thought the knight. They are so fascinated by the returns they get from the implement that they have lost sight of the infinite immensity of the workyard. They do not see that the truth which they discover each day is each day more contracted. A little truth each day—to be sure, that must be, that is necessary. But the Truth? To have
this
, must one renounce
that?
    Like Paul Lacroix, he did not express this thought aloud. He said, instead:
    “I believe that you understand very well what I want to say to you. I do not contest the quality of the truth which science discloses. But it is a partial truth; and insofar as there will be a future, all truth will be partial. Truth takes its place at the end of history. But I see that we are setting out on the deceptive road of metaphysics.”
    “Why do you say ‘deceptive’?”
    “ ‘To every word one can oppose another’—is that not what one of your ancient philosophers has said? Tell me frankly if this is not still your conviction today.”
    “No. And, if you please, let us keep away from metaphysics. I should like to know your world.”
    “You know it already. Our world is that which believes in the end of the world: which at the same time hopes for it and fears it. Just now, I rejoiced greatly when it seemed to me that you were in anguish there in front of the window. See, I was saying to myself, he has a foreboding of the end.…”
    “No, it was not anguish, truly. It did not go so far as that.”
    “Then from the bottom of my heart I wish for you to rediscover the feeling of anguish in the face of the dying sun. I ardently wish that for the West. When the sun dies, no scientific certainty should keep us from weeping for it, no rational evidence should keep us from asking that it be reborn. You are slowly dying under the weight of evidence. I wish you that anguish—like a resurrection.”
    “To what shall we be born?”
    “To a more profound truth. Evidence is a quality of the surface. Your science is the triumph of evidence, a proliferation of the surface. It makes you the masters of the external, but at the same time it exiles you there, more and more.”
    There was a moment of silence. Outside, the vesperal drama had come to an end. The sun had set. Behind it, an imposing mass of bright red cloud had come crumbling down like a monstrous stream of clotted blood. The redsplendor of the air had been progressively softened under the impact of the slow invasion of the evening shade.
    Strange, Lacroix was thinking, this fascination of nothingness for those who have nothing. Their nothingness—they call it the absolute. They turn their backs to the light, but they look at the shadow fixedly. Is it that this man is not conscious of his poverty?
    The knight’s voice broke the silence now, but in a low and meditative tone, as if he were speaking to himself:
    “I should like to say to you, nevertheless—” he hesitated.
    “What do you wish to say, Monsieur?”
    “I should like to tell you that it is myself, ultimately, who have sent my son to your school.”
    “It is your turn to make me very happy,” Paul Lacroix said.
    “I have sent my son to your school, and I have prayed God to save us all, you and us.”
    “He will save us, if He exists.”
    “I have sent my son to the school because the external which you have checked was slowly seeping through us and