Magnus

by Sylvie Germain

  Terence helps her out by suggesting, ‘Comala?’

  May immediately concurs. ‘Comala! You’re right!’

  Then, turning to Magnus, she says, ‘It sounds like the language you spoke at times in your delirium at the hospital in Veracruz … those words that weren’t German, that no one could identify…’

  Magnus has no recollection of these words he apparently uttered, only the vision of that fateful night in Hamburg has engraved itself on his memory – an explosive image that has cast a new light on his life, but also a blinding image, an obstacle blocking off all his most distant past.

  Scott, who feels left out of this memory game, finds a way of joining in: he gets up and goes and asks the tourists what country they are from. He returns to the table, sits downs, and turns it into a guessing game. None of the guesses his friends make is correct, so he finally tells them the answer: ‘Iceland. Magnus must be a clandestine Icelander!’ he announces, and proud of the word he has just elicited from the Icelanders, he raises his glass to Magnus, addressing him with a deep-toned ‘Skal!’

  But to the surprise of the Gleanerstones and of Scott, Magnus displays no emotion or curiosity in the face of this revelation he regards as fanciful, and he is eager to change the topic of conversation. For the time being he has no desire to look back, to start rummaging through the rubble once more, to wear himself out ferreting around in obscure labyrinths. He is happy where he is and now wants to live only in the present.

  On the subsequent occasions, his ghosts return by less fortuitous routes, evoked by current events: these occur in quick succession, in 1961 with the opening in Jerusalem of the trial of Lieutenant-Colonel Eichmann, which gets extensive world-wide coverage, then with the construction of the wall dividing Berlin in two.

  A report on the trial of the Nazi criminal, written by the philosopher Hannah Arendt for the New Yorker weekly magazine, causes a sensation. She is criticized for her tone, felt to be casual, arrogant, and above all for her analysis and judgment. Magnus reads the indicted report and far from taking exception to it embraces the idea of the ‘banality of evil’. For him, it is no ill-considered concept but rather a finger placed unerringly on a wound so ugly and shameful everyone would rather not see it. Reading Hannah Arendt’s text, he cannot help hearing in the background the voices of those other perpetrators of death and destruction he knew, with whom he came into close contact: the resounding laughter of the humorist Julius Schlack, the perfect elocution of that fine connoisseur of poetry Horst Witzel, and the deep baritone of Clemens Dunkeltal. Voices that would surely have responded, like Eichmann, in a curt monotone devoid of any remorse, ‘Not guilty’ to each charge made against them by a tribunal, had they been captured and brought to trial.

  As for Berlin, he tries to recall the memories he has of the rare visits he made to that city when he was about seven, and he can only recollect a visit to the zoo, where Clemens took him one day. It was so unusual for his so-called father to spend time with him, that day left a deep impression on him, especially as his joy at finding himself alone at last with his ‘master of the night’ was immediately trampled over. At the foot of a huge statue of an iguanadon standing near the entrance to the zoo there was a young woman waiting, with a little boy of about three at her side. This visitor and his father had feigned surprise on seeing each other, as if their meeting was entirely due to chance. And this chance encounter so greatly pleased them they remained together for the rest of the outing. However, it was not the unwelcome presence of this talkative woman that spoilt his childish joy, but that of the youngster, a chubby-cheeked kid named Klaus, for whom the ‘master of the night’ showed a lot more concern and affection than he had ever shown for his own son.

  He can visualize the enormous dinosaur rearing up on its hind legs, its head turned towards the branches of the trees, and beyond the foliage a flag flying from the front of a building, displaying in a vastly larger format the same black cross with bent arms as the one that adorned Dr Dunkeltal’s uniform.

  He sees the odious cherub perched on his father’s shoulders or seated on his lap, and he himself is ignored yet again. He sees the giraffes, bears, elephants and bisons, the trees, rocks and large aviaries. He sees the kangaroos casually lying on their sides, some propped up on their forelegs like red hairy humans resting on their elbows. He sees a black rhinoceros with tiny staring eyes, standing motionless on a rise, apparently only its ears capable of movement, and a lion ceaselessly pacing its jail. He sees sparrows everywhere, inviting themselves with graceful insolence into the enclosures of the captive beasts, and a little mouse that scuttled across a path, instilling panic in some elegant women passing by, including his father’s friend – not at all frightened, incidentally, by the sight of wild beasts. But all these images come back to him in the blur of those tears of resentment and anger that clouded his eyes at the time.

  What he sees very clearly, on the other hand, is a baby hippopotamus whose massive yawn greatly amused the woman and Clemens, and the name of that fat-faced hippopotamus cub with the gaping mouth also comes back to him: Knautschke. He remembers because he combined the name of the brat cosseted by his father with that of the young animal sprawled against the formless belly of its mother: he turned Klaus into Klautschke.

  A few weeks after this visit Berlin was flattened, and nearly all the animals in the zoo were killed in the bombings. Had Klaustchke and his mother suffered the same fate as the caged beasts?

  Europe does not have a monopoly on crime and violence. There are plenty of both in the United States, they proliferate throughout the world. President Kennedy is assassinated, the war drags on in Vietnam, riots break out in the black neighbourhoods of most of the country’s big cities, Martin Luther King in turn is shot dead by a fanatic. At the same time counter-currents build up, against a background of tumultuous music carrying forward a determined passion to live differently, to emerge from the ghettos, the quagmire of wars, the stifling oppression of a circumscribed and petty day-to-day existence. May throws herself into all these currents. Wherever things are stirring and a prospect of change is to be detected, wherever the pulse of the age quickens, she is there. ‘I have a dream,’ Martin Luther King repeated psalmodically a few years before he was killed. May picks up this interrupted dream and runs with it.

  She has always tried to defy gravity and allow dreams to enter reality. This gained her at the age of fifteen the enduring resentment of her mother, Nora. Her parents had not been on good terms with each other for years, and her father, Lajos, had a relationship with another woman, Judith Evans, who was a friend of the family. Everyone knew but they all pretended not to know, for the sake of appearances. One day her father fell ill. Nora felt more satisfaction than anxiety at this sudden illness: her husband would be unable to see his mistress as long as he was confined to his bed. When his illness worsened, it would have been preferable for Lajos to go into hospital, but Nora opposed this, arguing he was better off at home with his family, and she demonstrated great devotion in looking after her ‘poor husband’. A genuine but fierce devotion, for though she was very zealous in caring for him, she was even more zealous in keeping him isolated. Even their daughter was only rarely allowed to go into the bedroom where her father was resting, and was not to be tired.

  Her father was not resting, he was dying a slow death. And in his long agony he asked to see Judith. He begged. Nora gently wiped his face, gave him a drink, stroked his hand, merely repeating in a voice full of solicitude, ‘Don’t talk, Lajos, lie quietly, I’m taking care of you, everything’s fine …’ And when, towards the end, he breathed in a whisper Judith’s name, wanting to shout it, she responded ingenuously, ‘I’m here, my darling.’

  Judith Evans had called round twice, with the excuse of making a friendly visit to get news of the invalid. Nora received her with implacable politeness, imposing on her the torture of being served tea, when every gesture, every look, were considered and calculated, and a conversation whose every phrase co
nsisted of sickeningly bland stupid clichés punctuated with acerbic silences. Unaware of the seriousness of his condition, during her first visit Judith had hoped to see Lajos, that he would come down from his room. Sensing this desire in the woman she hated and finally held in her power, Nora dashed this expectation with a few words: ‘It’s impossible, he’s asleep and doesn’t want to be disturbed by anybody.’ The second time, Judith dared to express her desire. ‘I’d like to see him …’ Nora slowly drank a sip of tea, daintily set down her cup. Judith’s thudding, racing heartbeat could be heard in the silence of the drawing room. And with a sorrowful gracious smile the lady of the house delivered her blow: ‘It’s too late now. He doesn’t recognize anyone. Thank you for your visit.’ And she rose, adding with unfailing graciousness, ‘I’ll see you to the door.’ Judith rose in turn, ghastly pale, her lips trembling. It was then that May, who witnessed this scene, intervened. ‘Come,’ she said, taking Judith Evans by the hand. And before her mother had time to react, she had rushed Judith out of the room, locking the door behind her, led her upstairs, and taken into her father’s bedroom the woman he loved.

  ‘I have a dream.’ Dreams are meant to become part of reality, forcing their way in with violence if necessary. They are meant to re-infuse it with energy, light, freshness, when it gets mired in mediocrity, ugliness and stupidity. The heartbeats of a woman stricken with the panic of love had released in May the will for total independence, as well as unfailing reserves of pluck.

  Sequence

  One day the South will recognize its real heroes … They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: ‘My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.’

  Martin Luther King

  Letter from Birmingham Jail, 16 April 1963

  You cannot understand

  you who have not listened

  to the heartbeat

  of a man about to die.

  Charlotte Delbo, ‘Useless Knowledge’

  Fragment 15

  It is not just History with a capital H that repeats itself, so does family history. In both cases the repetition is spiced with nuances, with slight variations, tempering the effect of a rehash.

  The illness that twenty-five years earlier had carried off her father in less than a month strikes May down at the same age and progresses just as swiftly. Within a few days it drains her of strength, confines her to bed, and constricts her breathing, reducing her to complete helplessness. Magnus never leaves her bedside, Terence though nearby keeps out of the way. But when May senses the countdown to her death is no longer to be measured in days but hours, she asks Magnus to leave the room and to call Terence.

  She tells Terence to close the door, then to come and lie in the bed beside her. It is in his arms, close to his body, a body she has never stripped naked, never embraced or caressed, that she wants to die. Only the tenderness and silence of the body of a man impervious to desire for her, that of her fraternal spouse, her sibling soul, can help her to resign herself, to pass on without fear or anger through death into the unknown. Close to the body of her lover this would be beyond her, she would feel too much rebellion and pain. And she wants to be capable of accepting the inevitable, to meet it in single combat. She wants to succeed in doing honour to her death.

  Terence lies by her side, gently folds her in his arms. With their faces touching, their eyes are so close their lashes brush against each other’s and their gaze is indivisible. They cannot see anything, all they perceive is a quivering glimmer like a little pool of sunshine at the heart of a bush. This amuses them. May has not enough strength to laugh any more, she smiles. And their smiles also mingle, and their breath. They do not speak, having nothing more to say to each other, or too much to say, at this moment it is all one. And they feel content, curled up together like that, out of time, free of desire, in the starkness of love. Their closeness has never been so intense, immense, and luminous. They are in a state of absolute trust, total self-surrender to the other, total forgetfulness of self in wonderment. Never have they felt so much a presence to each other, a presence in the world – but only on the outer edge, no longer in the thick of it.

  Terence sees the little pool of light that quivered as the tips of his eyelashes grow dim, he hears the breath that whispered in unison with his own fall silent. Yet he does not move, he simply holds May’s face in his hands and remains there for a long time, a long time in the now infinite silence of love.

  May has done honour to her death.

  Magnus is waiting outside the bedroom, not expecting to be let back in. A great emptiness opens up inside him as the hours pass. His mind is blank, he feels nothing but a wave of peculiar coldness travelling through his body. He is neither patient nor impatient, he is simply there, like a tightrope walker pausing in the middle of his tightrope stretched above a desert. He has to remain very still to retain his equilibrium.

  At last Terence emerges from the bedroom. He does not say a word, his face conveys nothing in particular. He slowly approaches Magnus and takes his face in his hands, just as he held May’s face. Magnus closes his eyes, he lets May tell him of her death through this physical contact, and say goodbye to him with the lightest of touches. He feels in the palms of her messenger the warmth that has left her. He recognizes in this touch the texture of May’s skin. Terence’s hands are imbued with May’s breath and smile. He then places the messenger’s hands over his ears, and he hears the sound of his lover’s heart beating the way he used to hear it beat after making love, when he would fall asleep with his head resting on her breast or on her belly.

  May is cremated and her ashes scattered in the wind, according to her wishes. For this ceremony of sowing the open sky with her remains, Terence hires a hot-air balloon to carry Magnus, Scott and a few of the couple’s close friends. They all wear clothes of every shade of purple and green, May’s favourite colours. Terence opens a bottle of barackpalinka, the Hungarian apricot brandy that was her favourite drink, and pours everyone a small glassful. They all drain their glasses to her memory as her ashes escape from the urn and disperse in empty space. A fleeting silver-grey cloud floats in the air that soon regains its transparency.

  So this is what it comes down to: a life, a body once so intensely active, bubbling with words, laughter and cries, animated with countless projects, insatiable desires, reduced to a handful of pale ashes that dissolve in the wind.

  May has chosen the wind and empty space for a tomb, and this empty space opens up around Magnus. The present is swallowed up in the abyss of a blue-white sky of a tranquillity to make you weep. Standing there in the slowly drifting gondola, Magnus has the impression of being an ungainly bird caught in the breeze, not knowing where it comes from or more importantly where it is going. She who opened up his horizons and set him back on the path leading towards the future is gone, and suddenly he feels a great coldness, a burning – the sensations are confused. A chill blaze ignites in his heart’s core, pours into his limbs, flows through his spinal column, and silently explodes in his head, just as on that summer night in Hamburg, when the hour of Gomorrah struck, when the woman he believes was his mother suddenly let go of his hand to dance with death. He has the same taste of nothingness in his mouth, he feels the formation in his flesh of the same precipitate of amazement and loneliness. He is not widowed but orphaned by the loss of his companion, his lover. Terence is the one who is widowed.

  The chill blaze licks at his brain, and his thoughts become a yawning chasm. Appalled by his own question he wonders, ‘Did May love me? And did I love her? Have I ever really loved anyone? Or was it all nothing but illusion?’ He does not know, knows nothing any more, doubts everything, doubts himself. In the end he feels not so much orphaned by the loss of May as bereft of the new identity he had forged through being
with her. Yes, just as when the hour of Gomorrah struck, he is going to have to start again from zero. But a zero charged with very intense memories this time, not gutted by oblivion.

  Sequence

  A star looks down at me,

  And says: ‘Here I and you

  Stand, each in our degree:

  What do you mean to do, –

  Mean to do?’

  I say: ‘For all I know,

  Wait, and let Time go by,

  Till my change come.’ – ‘Just so,’

  The star says: ‘So mean I: –

  So mean I.’

  Thomas Hardy, ‘Waiting Both’

  Fragment 16

  What May has never done during her lifetime, never tried to do, quite the contrary – come between Terence and the person he was in love with – she provokes by her death. Shortly after the scattering of the ashes ceremony Scott leaves Terence. All desire for his lover has suddenly slumped, turned to impotence. Terence’s body seems untouchable, unapproachable even, as if May by dying in his arms had left something of her death on his skin and ingrained in the depths of his eyes the reflection of her face reeling into darkness, into silence. The smell of his body has changed, says Scott, the texture of his skin, and above all his gaze. He has an aura of intense, overpowering fustiness. The intolerable fustiness of death, which is so insidiously contagious.