This was no doubt the word that summarized him the best: empty. Mr. Bernardin was all the more empty for being fat: because he was fat, he had more volume to contain his emptiness. So it is throughout the universe: wild strawberries, lizards, and aphorisms are dense and evoke plenitude, whereas giant gourds, cheese soufflés, and inauguration speeches are puffed up in proportion to their emptiness.
There was nothing reassuring about this thought: the power of emptiness is terrifying. It is governed by implacable laws. For example, emptiness rejects the good: it obstinately blocks its path. At the same time, emptiness asks only to be invaded by evil, as if they had an ancient relationship, as if emptiness and evil enjoyed encountering one another to relate their shared memories.
If there is a memory of water, why wouldn't there be a memory of emptiness? A memory made of xenophobia vis-a-vis the good? ("I don't know you, therefore, I don't love you, and I don't see why that would change") and of relations with evil ("Dear old friend, you've left so many traces of your many stays with me, make yourself at home").
It's true that someone will always say that good and evil don't exist: that is a person who has never had any dealings with real evil. Good is far less convincing than evil, but it's because their chemical structures are different.
Like gold, good is never found in a pure state in nature: it therefore doesn't seem impressive. It has the unfortunate tendency not to act; it prefers, passively to be seen.
Evil, on the other hand, is like a gas: it's not easy to see; but it can be detected by its odor. It's most often stagnant, disbursed in a suffocating sheet; initially this aspect makes it seem inoffensive, but then suddenly you see it at work and you realize the ground it has won, the tasks it has accomplished. And by then it's all over, gas cannot be expelled.
I read in the dictionary: "Properties of gases: expandibility, elasticity,
compressibility, weight." One would swear that this was a description
of evil."