He had said it was the same for him: the sea.
I know nothing more of the differences between the child outside and the child inside, between what surrounds him and what keeps him alive, and what separates him from this life again and again, this havoc of life.
Then I return to the frailty of his unformed body, to those temporary differences, the light beatings of his heart that speak his life, advancing every day and every night toward something unknown, something to come, destined for him alone.
And I know nothing more of the difference between the men of Gdansk and the men of God. Between the thousands of children who starved to death in Vilna and the young priest Jerzy Popieluszko.
Nor anything more of the difference between the graves in the East and the poems buried in the earth of the Ukraine and Silesia, between the deathly silence of the Afghan lands and the unfathomable malfeasance of that same God.
I know nothing more. Nothing more. Anywhere. Than the truth of truth and the lie of lies. I can no longer distinguish words from tears. I know only that the child walks forward on the forest path.
That he walks forward. Alone. That he walks some more.
And more. And that the young counselor has stood up and looked into the trees, and that she sees his red sweater. And that beneath her breath she called out a word that the child recognized and that he cried out in turn. A word that cannot be written, that has been spoken only among Jews for six thousand years, or a hundred thousand years, no one knows.
On Gdansk I posed my lips and I kissed that Jewish child and the dead children of the Vilna ghetto. I also kissed them in my mind and in my body.
You say, “What were we talking about in the dark room? What was it?”
I say that, like you, I don’t remember what it was.
It was about the events of that summer, no doubt; about the rain, and hunger.
About injustice.
About death.
About the bad weather, about those hot nights that bled into August days, about the cool shadows of the walls,
about those cruel young girls who lavished desire,
about those endless hotels, now demolished,
about those cool, dark hallways, those now-abandoned rooms where so, so many books and so much love had been made,
about that man from Cabourg who was Jewish like the child, like writing, Jewish like the soul,
about those evenings that went by so slowly, you remember, when they danced before him, those two wicked girls, danced for the man tortured by desire who was on the verge of losing his life and who was weeping there, on the sofa in the grand salon with its view of the sea,
in the mad delight of hoping to die of it someday. One time,
about Mozart and the midnight blue over the arctic lakes,
about the midnight blue daylight over the singing voices in the casinos made of snow and black ice; the heart trembles. The voices, yes, singing arias of Mozart and murdered Jews,
and about the way you had of doing nothing, the way I had of waiting for you to go down to the beach. To see. See your laughing eyes, again and again and more each day,
about your way of waiting on sofas facing outside, toward the scattered continents, the oceans, sorrow, joy,
about that child, over and over. About his eternity.
We spoke about Poland. About a Poland to come, embraced by hope and the idea of God,
about the postcard the child brought back to the young counselor,
and again about the country of Poland, homeland to us all, home of the living dead of Vilna and of the Jewish children,
and also about Rue de Londres, so strangely beautiful, so smooth, purified of every detail, as naked as a gaze.
The child walks. He moves forward. We no longer see him at all.
We remain standing, apart from each other.
We close our eyes. Our closed eyes face the cliffs.
You do the looking for me.
You say that the buses with the first group have pulled out onto the highway. That it’s raining, that it’s still a light, warm summer rain.
You say, “The child has passed the cliffs.” You cry, “Where is he going?”
You say she isn’t turning around. I’ve understood: she’s letting him go his own way. It’s he who is forging the path. She follows the path he traces; she’s letting him go completely his own way, as she would do with fate.
I ask if you hoped never to find them again, neither the trace of their steps nor of their bodies.
You don’t answer.
You say, “The child is still moving forward.”
I say that the child will not die. I swear it. I weep, I cry out, I swear it on life itself.
You say he is disappearing, hiding, and she can no longer see him.
You say that it’s done: he has disappeared, but not to die, never again to die, ever. And you cry out in fear.
I call out that I love you. You don’t hear. From fear and hope, you’re still crying out.
You say that now, even if she wanted to, she couldn’t see him. I say: Nor kill herself.
You say that we could have seen the child again, that he climbed back up the cliff, that he was hidden by the trees, that he didn’t go down toward the buses. That he must have hesitated, then decided. That he had not gone to take the buses. That it was raining.
You say that never again will he climb on those buses, never again in his life, and we weep for joy.
He did as she asked.
You say, She had already explained to him the night before how to head for the cliff that overlooked the parking lot. Openly he skirted the bus parking lot. Some truck drivers had seen the child and blown him kisses without looking at him, his eyes lowered in the direction of the sea. Then fear gripped him again and at first he walked faster; then he smiled at the truck drivers.
And suddenly the light subsided, and time did, too; already, abruptly, twilight invaded the sea and the forest.
The child walked.
He didn’t wait for her. He knew she would come.
He moved forward.
And she had gotten up. She had begun walking far behind him. Then she had begun following him again. She had reached the cliff.
Now and then the girl drew nearer to him. He heard her footsteps and smiled and cried at the same time, tears of mad joy.
In the dark room we remain standing, apart from each other.
We close our eyes. We look at them; we see them. We weep for their happiness.
We cannot share this joy. We don’t want to. We can only weep for it.
You continue to tell me the details of their walk along the cliff.
You say, “He must have reached the other side of the cliff. She is very close behind him.” You say, “They are in a state of horrified happiness.”
You say, “He doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t want to catch up to him yet. She is white as chalk. She is afraid. But she is laughing. She is so young and at the same time like a dead person. She knows this.”
I ask if you hoped ever to find them in the streets of some city, someday, who knows?
You say yes, you hoped for it as you had never hoped for anything else.
You say, “They are leaving us.”
You say that it’s done.
You say, “Now, even if she wanted, she couldn’t remain on that cliff. She would be arrested by nightfall. She has to follow the child.”
For him, for the child, she is singing very low that at the clearwater fountain she had rested and that never ever would she forget him and that never would she leave him. Never never never.
We have gone back inside the Roches Noires hotel.
We went out on the balcony. We didn’t say anything. We wept. We are weeping.
The south suburb camps arrived at the end of the afternoon, when it was still light out. They called the roll for the new children. The same first names came back over and over. The name Samuel came up again.
And again I we
pt.
And then you stopped talking about both the child and the counselor. You spoke about that woman, Theodora Kats. You asked me again why I hadn’t written anything else about her.
You wanted to understand this about me, only this.
I said that I had managed to speak of her only up to the discovery of that hotel in the Swiss Alps. And there, the book had ended.
That Theodora was too much for a book. Too much.
You said, “Too little, perhaps.”
Perhaps Theodora wasn’t a book.
Perhaps it was too much – that whiteness, that patience, that obscure, inexplicable wait, that indifference – it was too much. The writing had shut down with her name. Her name alone was all the writing there was about Theodora Kats. With it, with that name, everything was said.
And the whiteness of the dresses and of her skin.
Perhaps Theodora Kats was something as yet unknown, a new silence of writing; the silence of women, and of the Jews.
Designed by David Bullen Design.
Typeset in Fairfield Light.
Printed at The Stinehour Press in Lunenburg, Vermont.
The paper is 60 lb Cougar Opaque Natural Vellum.
English translation copyright © 2006 Mark Polizzotti
Originally published by P.O.L. Editeur, Paris, France.
Copyright © 1992 P.O.L. Editeur
First Archipelago Books Edition, 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
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permission of the publisher.
eISBN : 978-1-935-74422-1
I. Polizzotti, Mark. II. Title.
PQ2607.U8245Y3613 2006
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Yann Andrea Steiner Page 6