Do Good and Evil Sometimes Sleep?

Where do they live?

For some time now, I have been dreaming of Good and Evil. Often, they rob me of my sleep. Their conversations are loud — sometimes hysterical, sometimes violent; sometimes so strange that it is impossible to tell whether they are arguing or remembering something that happened before humanity was born.

I see them in the middle of the ocean, on the shattered remains of a ship swaying on the water. Then they appear in outer space, inside a spacecraft drifting among cold stars. Beyond the glass, everything seems weightless: time, the body, memory. Sometimes they appear in abandoned villages, riding old, rusted bicycles through streets where no human being remains. Often I see them riding horses. One horse is white, the other black. And always following them, for reasons I do not understand, is a goat. It does not hurry, yet it never falls behind. As if it knew the way better than the two of them.

They ride on without looking back, as if they had set off for an ancient encounter that would never end. Sometimes they draw near to one another with a hidden hostility. They come so close that the line between desire and war disappears. It is no longer clear who conquers and who surrenders. Then they laugh. Or they fall silent. In those moments, it seems to me as though they have touched something one cannot speak of without breaking apart.

The longer they speak, the more it seems to me that their conversation did not begin that night. As if it had remained unfinished since a time when neither night nor day, neither birth nor death existed. Perhaps they were together before the world was divided into opposites. Perhaps the world arose from this division, before Good and Evil were born. They were two forces, fundamentally different from one another. There was no way they could be together. It was impossible. And yet, they were together.

For when the names were given, one was called Good and the other Evil. But what would one be without the other? If Good had nothing against which to measure itself to be called good, would it still be good? And if Evil had nothing left to oppose, would it still be evil? Each carries its own name in the shadow of the other.

Perhaps they are not two sides of the world. Perhaps they are the rift itself through which the world became visible. But where do they live then? On our planet, or are they merely tourists here? In the human soul and the human mind? Or on some other planet whose name we do not know? And truth — where does it live? Outside of them? Or was it born the moment they separated? Perhaps truth belongs neither to Good nor to Evil. Perhaps it lives in that narrow space where both lose the certainty of who they are.

One night, I saw them in a luxurious restaurant. They sat opposite each other under the dimmed light of the chandeliers. The table was set for three people, yet only two sat there. Between them stood crystal glasses filled with red wine. The plates were untouched. They spoke in quiet voices. This time they were not hysterical. That was far more terrifying.

Evil spoke. Good listened. Across the table, they negotiated something resembling an agreement. Good was to remain silent. Truth was to be left to the crowd, defenseless. Justice was to wait. Just a little longer. A little longer still.

Evil spoke calmly, almost gently. Good nodded from time to time. For a moment, they did not look like enemies. They seemed like two beings who knew they had once shared the same secret. Finally, Evil stood up. Good followed. The third seat remained untouched. The chair of truth. And no one had noticed.

Perhaps Evil does not always need to vanquish Good. Sometimes it is enough to reduce it to silence. But the silence did not last. Somewhere beyond that room, something tore. Evil called out to justice with a wild cry, as if wanting to wound the order of the world itself. Good turned toward truth, wrapping it in an innocent gentleness, as if trying to protect it from what was happening.

The voices grew quieter. The cries, the laughter, the weeping fell silent. The sky changed color; it was no longer blue. The earth lost its axis. The stars left their orbits. And for a moment, everything blurred. Not because Good and Evil had become one, but because the boundary between them had grown so thin that neither could tell where one ended and the other began.

Then they moved away from each other. One in one direction. The other in the opposite direction. Never to see each other again. Everything lost its shape. Time was no more. No boundary remained between the dream and what was called reality. The world sank into silence.

Evil can wear the face of Good, speak its language, borrow its light, and carry in its hands the words that humans believed to be salvation. Evil that appears as evil can be recognized. But when it comes dressed as Good, it becomes much harder to see.

Good, too, has its abyss. When it crosses its own boundary and permits no further contradiction, the light can become so intense that it blinds you. Then, it no longer illuminates.

In a world weary of darkness, anything that shines can be mistaken for salvation. That is why truth perhaps always remains a little farther away. It promises neither light nor darkness. It stands somewhere in between, without a clearly defined name. The moment you try to hold it in your hands, it changes its shape.

When the fog cleared again, they were far apart. One on the white horse, the other on the black horse. No one knew whether the goat had been a witness to their separation, or if it was the only creature that knew where they were going.

They did not look back. They did not want to return. Neither tried to stop the other. They continued in opposite directions, as if each had carried away half of a memory that the other could no longer remember.

They parted. In that moment, I woke up. I was drenched in sweat. I don’t know what time it was — somewhere between eight and nine. I got out of bed, went to the window, and looked outside. In the middle of the courtyard, grazing quite peacefully, was the goat I had seen in my dream.