His parents had gone to bed,
the dog was sleeping. The only sound
was the hum of the refrigerator …
ME Stop taking the piss, Eugene. This matters.
What do we care about the bloody fridge?
Tell us what happened.
Tell us what you were thinking.
Describe how Lensky seemed … I mean, Christ,
I know you’re not a professional writer
but you could at least try!
Eugene sighs.
‘All right.’
EUGENE Lensky died
several times. Let’s start with that.
He died several times that night,
the first time in the garden
after that stupid incident with Olga – the shock.
His childhood died in that moment, and I admit
that I was tough on him.
I wanted him to be stronger,
more mature. I thought it was his fault
that he hadn’t built a fortress around his heart.
And yet I’d told him, plenty of times:
Lensky, life is not a bed of bloody roses,
it’s not gentle or moral, it’s not what you think;
there’s no God or guardian angel
watching over you.
I told him that again and again.
He never blinked.
He’d just laugh and say: Eugene,
you’re such a pessimist – why
is your vision of life so sad? And all the while,
the rest of us were forging shields,
flattening our dreams
on the anvil of reality. But Lensky wasn’t ready,
he wasn’t armed, when the attack began.
So, really, if you think about it, it was his fault,
sort of. I mean, he couldn’t claim
that no one warned him. Well,
that was how I saw it back then anyway.
So yeah, when I saw him
with the light gone from his eyes,
I thought: one day he’ll realise
that his sadness was just sodding
stupid, that getting dumped never killed anybody,
that it was a good learning experience, that night,
and that one day he’d thank me
and say: you were right.
I’m not sure why, but I have the impression
that I’ve always liked to teach people a lesson.
ME Yeah, I’ve noticed that. We’ll talk about it later.
EUGENE I can’t wait.
So he looked at me and said:
‘I’ll see you on the roof.’
The roof was where we went to smoke joints, me and him,
blowing the smoke out
towards the Arche de la Défense;
it was where we used to open up our hearts
to each other. Well, mostly him to me.
But anyway, I hoist myself up through the skylight.
He’s standing at the edge,
arms outstretched,
teasing the void below,
that arsehole.
I panic,
I blurt out
‘Lensky, what the hell are you doing?
Don’t tell me that you’re thinking
of killing yourself for love
or some crap like that!
It’s the biggest cliché in the book
of sensitive poets, you dick.
I gave you credit for a bit
more originality than that.
Don’t make me regret
choosing you as a friend.’
Through gritted teeth, he answers:
‘Come and join me.’
The implication being:
if you’re not too chickenshit.
And I realise that the others have convinced him to fight.
He’s right on the edge, the abyss below;
behind him, the branches of a tree are silhouetted
like the antlers of a stag by the moonlight shining through
a puff of clouds. I approach. The roof is slate, not too slanted,
but slippery. I’m in boat shoes,
he’s in Bensimon trainers.
I’m the one with a better grip.
I say, ‘I reckon you’ve had too much booze.
Do you really want to fight me over Olga?
You know I don’t give a shit about her.’
‘I want a duel.’
A duel. That’s what he actually said: a duel.
And I thought I was the old-fashioned one! A bloody duel.
‘I don’t have a second,’ I joke.
‘Or a sword, for that matter.
Come on Lensky, stop being an arse –
let’s go inside and play Mario Kart.’
I spout stuff like that for five minutes or so. Let’s settle
things man to man on Street Fighter, let’s have a beer,
let’s read
some Byron;
anything to get him safely inside.
It doesn’t work. He doesn’t budge.
He still wants me to join him out on the edge.
ME Are you scared, at that moment?
EUGENE Honestly? No. What I’m thinking
is that the whole thing
is too stupid for words, and yet
in a way I’m attracted to it.
You see, I have the impression
that the universe, at last, is coming round to my
way of thinking,
that it’s proving the truth of my great
philosophical system,
which says that no one loves us,
that anything can destroy us,
that fate is arbitrary and tyrannical.
I was very young back then, I can see that now.
I was so young, and a little fanatical.
Go ahead and take the piss out of me.
I was so young. So dumb.
ME And so alone.
EUGENE Maybe.
You see,
thinking about it now,
I can recognise that this duel
was a duel between
our two adolescent philosophies:
Lensky’s idealism, Eugene’s nihilism.
Sure, that’s a bit simplistic, but when I stepped
onto the edge of that roof,
and he grabbed me by the wrist,
what I thought was that we’d both lost:
him because his ridiculous belief
that lifelong happiness was possible
had been kicked in the teeth,
me because I’d always felt
that it was impossible for anyone
to die for the love of someone else.
I didn’t imagine that he would really
prove me wrong.
But when he fell, he did, and in the end,
he was the one who remained faithful to
his system.
ME Hang on, you missed a bit.
How did he fall?
EUGENE I don’t really remember.
ME Eugene …
EUGENE His hands were holding mine
and we shared a sort of dance
out of balance.
We exchanged a few words.
He had a little rant.
ME A rant?
What did he say exactly?
EUGENE Seriously? You expect me
to recall exactly what he said
ten years later? My head
is like a sieve. I don’t even remember
what I said to Tatiana.
Not a word. Nothing at all.
I hardly have a single memory
of that summer. Post-traumatic shock, probably.
Anyway, it’s too late.
I already erased all that stuff from my brain.
Very well, then I will take over, as we can’t put any trust
in Eugene’s account.
Knowing Lensky, he wouldn’t just ha
ve fallen
like that, without a word.
He was a boy who quivered with words.
Before dying,
he’d have given a speech. About himself, about friendship,
about love,
about everything
he lost that night.
So here is my attempt at saying
what Lensky might
have said.
Lensky’s Aria
In a flash in a flash
in a flash it was smashed, the flower of my youth;
it had been golden, like all youth should be,
but the only things that made me free –
Olga, and you, and poetry,
and the sun and the spliffs
up here on the roof –
have been stolen from me.
What will happen tomorrow?
What will I do
when I wake up in bed without my youth,
ten thousand years older, but with no more experience,
no more intelligence
than before,
because boredom isn’t wisdom,
sadness isn’t a life lesson …
I loved you all, you know, even though
you sometimes did bad things,
I loved everyone, yesterday …
yesterday love was all I needed, love was the only thing in
my heart;
my life was so beautiful, but you’ve ripped it apart.
Oh Olga!
Well, if it’s all over, if the last dice have been rolled,
if it has to end like this,
promise me one thing:
promise me you’ll tell her
that I loved her more than anything,
tell her that I had so many plans for us two,
ten million plans, and promises too …
promises to keep and eternities to fill …
oh, ask her
not to forget me like this cruel world will,
ask her to remember all the poems I wrote,
how I loved her, and how she loved me.
Go ahead and laugh, Eugene – I don’t care!
Of the two of us, I’m the only one who really lived
all the blazing possibilities of life; I didn’t build
a shell around my heart, not because I was unaware
of the dangers, but because I dared
to risk it all;
I was alive, before tonight;
and yes, perhaps,
I was fragile, and naïve,
but at least I was free.
And Eugene,
that suit of armour that you wear, one day it will collapse,
and you will die inside,
like I have died.
Olga, it was for you,
it was for you that I went unarmed,
that I laid bare my soul;
it was to have you as my lover
that I delayed the moment
of rearmament, and then in a flash
in a flash in a flash
in a flash it was smashed, the flower of my youth;
it had been golden, like all youth should be,
but the only things that made me free –
Olga, and you, and poetry,
and the sun and the spliffs
up here on the roof –
have been stolen from me.
Was that how it went, more or less?
EUGENE I don’t know. It’s possible, I guess.
But you have to imagine him saying it in his voice.
He’s right. Imagine all of that spoken by Lensky,
in his full, warm tones,
in his voice that had broken, but not all the way.
Imagine a voice like those words: gauche and grandiloquent,
passionate and swift, overly lyrical,
and in the background one of those electronic tunes
that he used to record his slam tracks. Now go away
and reread the text with that voice in your ears.
I’ll wait for you here.
*
All done?
May he rest in peace, then.
He could have done better, given the time,
but he was so young that we’ll never be able to say:
he wrote something truly great;
all we can say is:
he was a writer of great promise.
So young, so young; so young that it’s hard to say
who he really was,
and, therefore, exactly what it is that we regret:
perhaps that unblossomed promise,
preserved forever, like a seed in ice,
never to germinate.
Rest in peace, Lensky!
Ashes to ashtray, spliff to smoke,
we will remember the last words
that you ever spoke.
EUGENE They’re not even his words.
ME They could have been.
They’re the sort of thing he might have said.
EUGENE May I continue?
ME I thought you didn’t remember anything
about his death.
EUGENE Just let me speak. I remember …
I remember
that I gave him my hand. I thought I’d be able
to make him change his mind.
I wanted to drag him up the roof, towards the
skylight, towards safety.
But he wouldn’t come with me.
He pushed me first …
ME He pushed you?
EUGENE Yeah.
Although, thinking about it,
he didn’t push me very hard. I swayed.
He caught me. Then pushed me again,
but, honestly
still not very hard. Now, I can see
that his heart wasn’t in it.
He didn’t really want to kill me.
The third time he pushed me,
I tumbled to the right,
down towards the night.
I slid; the slate screeched under my nails:
a sudden memory of my primary school teacher,
Madame Labatte –
it’s funny what you think of in situations
like that.
He was standing at the roof’s edge,
I was on my back.
It wasn’t funny anymore,
and suddenly I felt annoyed by all
this bullshit; I wanted to regain control;
I stood up and I slammed my foot against the roof.
‘Lensky!’
Just one word. ‘Lensky!’
One word, that’s the truth.
But when I banged my shoe down, I broke a tile.
BANG. The noise was loud, and not
unlike a gunshot. BANG.
And just as if I’d really been holding a pistol
in my hand, and just as if this gun had been
aimed at him, Lensky jerked, like he was
startled, and then he fell.
He didn’t even yell.
ME He fell because you cracked a tile?
EUGENE I’m telling you what happened. The slate
smashed – BANG – and he fell off the roof.
It wasn’t just a crack,
it left a massive hole in their attic roof –
I bet it rained in there for weeks.
ME And then?
EUGENE What do you mean, and then?
Can’t you leave me in peace?
And then I saw him disappear over the edge.
And then I called the police,
or the ambulance or whatever.
And then there were sirens and flashing lights
and someone told me he was dead.
We went to the hospital,
sirens screaming through the night
in the ambulance, and then, and then …
well, you know the rest:
his parents, the police, I told them I saw him fall,
but as for all the other stuff,
; well I wasn’t dumb enough to wail:
‘It was him who pushed me, sir! Honestly,
I swear! And then he just got scared …’
Not the world’s best explanation,
even if it was true.
So I lied, and that’s all; now you know
the whole story. Are you happy?
I lied. I should have said
that Lensky died
because he was a fool,
because he messed up his duel,
I should have told them all that,
his parents, everyone:
your son died because he jumped like a hare,
probably because he was scared of me,
because I was too heavy for your roof.
Telling the truth.
It’s always the best policy, right?
ME And are you going to tell Tatiana all that?
EUGENE Sure, she asked me, so why not?
ME You’re so cold!
EUGENE Sorry?
ME I don’t know … you tell me all this,
like it’s just a story …
you manage to remember it all without
getting teary …
EUGENE No!
What the fuck! No, no, no!
I’m not managing anything!
And you’re pissing me off with all your questions!
And he sobs, like a little kid. I have to admit –
I don’t understand.
ME But all those years …
All those years, when you thought
about that night …
EUGENE But I didn’t think about it!
I never thought about it at all until just now,
when you asked me what happened and
you wouldn’t let it go.
I had to forget it, don’t you see?
It was that or go crazy.
You have to make choices in life, and I chose
to obliterate Lensky and Olga and Tatiana,
and the whole horrible story of that summer.
And as time passed,
everything that happened
ended up seeming
unreal to me,
like a story that I heard somewhere.
It didn’t seem like me at all:
too much love, too much hate,
too much emotion …
it was all a bit excessive for someone like me,
and I ended up convincing myself that this story
was just a novel
that I’d read when I was in my teens,
a novel I’d identified with, to the point
where it started invading my dreams …
His eyes are lowered. I’m going to leave him in peace.
He has to tell Tatiana this whole story now,
In Paris With You Page 13