Like the woodblocks passed between Marseille cardmakers, inherited, copied, worn down, discarded, some people are kept only for what they leave on the work of others. Their grain runs through every card, yet their name appears on none. The trade continues.
The Goal
Et pourtant, la pâte empoisonnée est toujours prête à lever. Les hommes n'ont pas le droit d'oublier si vite, ils n'ont pas le droit d'oublier. Jamais.
- Jacques Delarue, Histoire de la Gestapo
And yet the poisoned yeast is still ready to rise. Men have not the right to forget so quickly. They have not the right. Never...
- Jacques Delarue (translated by Mervyn Savill)
Pa ipak, otrovano testo mora svakog trenutka da naraste. Ljudi nemaju pravo da tako brzo zaboravljaju, nemaju pravo da zaborave. Nikada.
- Žak Delaru, Istorija Gestapoa (translated by Marija Eker Manolić, adapted by Miloš Stević)
Finding all of this did not make me happy. It left a bitter taste. I am not important. I am not proud of what I discovered. I wish none of it had ever happened.
But all of that was just business - and not even mine. I never sold anything nor had such intentions. I was there for the truth. The real damage is quieter. People who sat at a kitchen table on a Tuesday evening and laid out the cards and felt, for the first time in a long time, that something in their life had a shape they could read. Who carried a card in their wallet for a year because it said something they needed to hear. They are people who were used, and who now have to live with what that means. Some try to forget it. Some make themselves believe it was worth it, so they do not end up feeling like fools. And that is the cruelest part - not the money lost, not the credit stolen, but the silence afterward. The people who were tricked but cannot admit it, because admitting it means admitting they gave years of their lives to someone who never saw them as anything more than a function.
The cards are still being sold. The myths are still on the websites. And somewhere, some people are reading Tarot at cafes "for free", and somebody else is writing about secret codes, and somebody offering a way out - the truth - calling themselves "a historian," yet having those people fall into another trap. And the people who made it all possible are trying to remember why they believed.
The weight of these stories is real. But darkness alone serves no one - so where I can, I will try to bring a little light, and maybe a laugh.
Remember, it is just a game.
- a friend