Читать книгу The Plumed Serpent. Historical Novel - Life and Love after the Mexico Revolution онлайн

125 страница из 172

‘I rather hate this search-for-God business, and religiosity,’ said Kate.

‘I know!’ he said, with a laugh. ‘I’ve suffered from would-be-cocksure religion myself.’

‘And you can’t REALLY “find God”!’ she said. ‘It’s a sort of sentimentalism, and creeping back into old, hollow shells.’

‘No!’ he said slowly. ‘I can’t FIND GOD, in the old sense. I know it’s a sentimentalism if I pretend to. But I am nauseated with humanity and the human will: even with my own will. I have realized that MY WILL, no matter how intelligent I am, is only another nuisance on the face of the earth, once I start exerting it. And other people’s WILLS are even worse.’

‘Oh! isn’t human life horrible!’ she cried. ‘Every human being exerting his will all the time — over other people, and over himself, and nearly always self-righteous!’

Ramón made a grimace of repulsion.

‘To me,’ he said, ‘that is just the weariness of life! For a time, it can be amusing: exerting your own will, and resisting all the other people’s wills, that they try to put over you. But at a certain point a nausea sets in at the very middle of me: my SOUL is nauseated. My soul is nauseated, and there is nothing but death ahead, unless I find something else.’