I know someone who showed the lines of his hand to a fortune teller to learn his future; he didn’t do it seriously, he told me, and didn’t believe in it. If he had asked my advice, however, I would have dissuaded him, for it’s a dangerous game. It is easy not to believe in it, so long as nothing has been said. Up to that moment there is nothing to believe in, and perhaps no one does believe. Disbelief is easy at the start, but soon becomes difficult, and fortune tellers are well aware of this. “If you don’t believe”, they say, “what are you afraid of?” This is the trap. For myself I am afraid of believing; for how do I know what he will tell me?
I assume that the fortune teller believed in himself; for if he only treated it as a joke, he would forecast ordinary and predictable events, in ambiguous formulae: “you will have difficulties and suffer some minor defeats, but you will succeed in the end; you have enemies, but they will recognise your worth one day; in the meantime, the constancy of your friends will console you. You will shortly receive a letter, relating to worries that you have at present… etc…” One can go on a long time like this without doing anyone harm.
But if the fortune teller can, in his own eyes, really see into the future, then he is quite capable of announcing terrible misfortunes to you, and you, being strong-minded, laugh. It’s nonetheless true that his words will remain in your memory, that they will return haphazardly in your reveries and dreams, and trouble you, just a little, until the day when events appear to want to adjust themselves to his predictions.
I knew a young girl who was told by a fortune teller, after reading her palm, “you will marry; you will have a child; you will lose it.” A prediction like this is a light weight to carry at first. But time has passed; the girl has married; she has recently had a child; already the prediction is a heavier burden. If the little one becomes ill, the fatal words will ring like bells in the mother’s ears. Perhaps she once made fun of the fortune-teller. He will have his revenge.
All sorts of events occur in this world, including encounters that will shake the firmest judgement. You laugh at a prediction that is sinister and unlikely; you will laugh rather less if this prediction is partly fulfilled; the bravest of men will then wait for what follows; and our fears, as we know, cause as much suffering as the catastrophes themselves. It can also happen that two prophets, unknown to each other, predict the same thing. If this agreement doesn’t trouble you more than your intelligence will allow, I admire you.
For myself, I much prefer not to think about the future and not to look ahead further than in front of my feet. Not only will I not go and show the palm of my hand to a fortune-teller but, more than that, I will not try to read my future in the nature of things; for I don’t believe that our gaze can see so far, however much knowledge we may have. I have noticed that whenever something important happens to anyone, it was both unforeseen and unforeseeable. When one is cured of curiosity, then no doubt it remains to cure oneself of prudence.
14/04/08, Pleiade I, p.33 P. d’un Normand no. 769
English translation copyright © Michel Petheram