But then she begins her pacing again, the desperate, ridiculous pacing of the sentinel, which falls back into the same tracks, again and again. She paces and paces, and sometimes her distracted mask appears, round and full, crossed out by the bars.
She moves the way clocks move. And on her face, as on a clock dial which someone shines a light onto at night, a strange, briefly shown hour stands: a terrifying hour, in which someone dies.
A MEETING
Any road outside the town. (Sole condition: that there is no chance of meeting someone on it.) The dog all at once appears, like a sudden thought. He acts doggishly, on purpose, seems to be completely occupied with his own small affairs; but as inconspicuously as he can, he directs precisely aimed, remarkably sure glances at the stranger, who continues on his way. Not one of these glances is lost. The dog is now in front of the man, now beside him, absorbed in this secret observation, which grows more and more intense. Suddenly, catching up with the stranger:
I knew it! I knew it!
He gives hurried signs of joy, by which he tries to finally stop the man. The man makes a quick, friendly, calming and at the same time dismissing gesture, and with a half step to the left passes the dog easily.
The dog, in joyous expectation:
It’s still going to happen.
He groans from the overabundance of his emotions. Finally he flings himself again in front of the more rapidly striding man: Now it’s coming, he thinks, and holds up his face, urgently, to show that he understands. Now it’s coming.
What? says the stranger, hesitating for a moment.
The excitement in the dog’s eyes changes into embarrassment, doubt, alarm. If the man doesn’t know what should come, how can it come? —Both of them have to know; only then will it come.
The man again takes his half step to the left, quite mechanically this time; he looks distracted. The dog keeps in front of him and tries—now almost without any attempt at caution—to see into the stranger’s eyes. At one moment he believes he has met them, but their glances don’t adhere to each other.
Is it possible that this small problem … thinks the dog.
It’s not a small problem, says the stranger suddenly, alert and impatient.
The dog is startled: How (he controls himself with difficulty)… But I feel that we … My instinct … my …
Don’t say it, interrupts the stranger, almost angrily. They are standing opposite each other. This time their glances interpenetrate, the man’s sliding into the dog’s like a knife into its sheath.
The dog is the first to give way; he looks down, jumps to the side, and with an upward glance that comes sideways from the right he confesses:
I’d like to do something for you. I’d do anything for you. Anything.
The man has already started walking again. He acts as if he hasn’t understood. He walks apparently without noticing the dog, but he tries to look toward him now and then. He sees him running around, clumsy and bewildered, getting ahead, staying behind. All of a sudden the dog is a couple of steps ahead, turned toward the approaching man, stretched forward from his raised hindquarters as if he were about to scratch the ground. With enormous self-control he makes a couple of childishly frisky pounces, pretending that his front paws hold something alive. And then without a word he picks up the stone, which has to play this role, in his mouth.
Now I am innocuous and can’t say anything more; this is expressed in the nod he makes as he looks back. There is something almost intimate in this nod, a kind of agreement, which, however, must on no account be taken too seriously. The whole thing is just a silly game, and that’s how the business with the stone should be understood.
But now that the dog has the stone in his mouth, the man can’t help speaking:
Let’s be reasonable, he says as he walks on, without bending down toward the dog.
That’s really all we can do. What would be the use of getting to know each other? We mustn’t let certain memories arise. I felt the same way as you did for a few moments, and I almost asked you who you are. You would have said “Me,” since there are no names between us. But, you see, that wouldn’t have helped. It would only have confused us even more. For I can confess to you now that for a few moments I was truly unsettled. Now I’m calmer. If I could only convince you how very much the same our situation is. In my nature there are, if possible, even more obstacles to another meeting. You have no idea how difficult things are for us.
When the stranger spoke in this way, the dog realized that it was useless to go on with the pretense of a superficial game. In a way he was glad, but at the same time he seemed filled with a growing fear that he might want to interrupt.
He succeeds in doing this only when the stranger, astonished and alarmed, sees the animal opposite him in a posture that he at first thinks is hostile. The next moment, though, he realizes that the dog, far from showing hatred or hostility, is uneasy, troubled; in the timid brightness of his glance and in the tilt of his head this is clearly expressed, and it occurs again in the way he is now carrying the stone, which lies between the spasmodically retracted lips in all its hardness and heaviness.
Suddenly the man understands, and he can’t hold back a passing smile.
You’re right, dear fellow, it should remain unexpressed between us, this word that has given rise to so many misunderstandings.
And the dog puts the stone down, carefully, like something breakable, to the side of the road, so as not to delay the stranger any longer.
And in fact the man walks on and, absorbed as he is, doesn’t notice till later that the dog is accompanying him, unobtrusively, devotedly, without an opinion of his own, the way a dog follows his master. This almost hurts him.
No, he says, no; not like this. Not after this experience. We should both forget what we went through today. Daily life blunts everything, and your nature has a tendency to subordinate itself to mine. In the end a responsibility would arise, which I can’t accept. You wouldn’t notice how completely you had come to trust me; you would overvalue me and expect from me what I can’t perform. You would watch me and approve of everything, even of what is unworthy. If I want to give you a joy: will I find one? And if one day you are sad and complain to me—will I be able to help you? —And you shouldn’t think that I am the one who lets you die. Go away, I beg of you: go away.
And the man almost broke into a run, and it looked as if he were trying to escape from something. Only gradually did his steps slow down, until finally he was walking more slowly than before.
He thought, slowly: What else would have been spoken between us today. And how in the end we would have shaken hands—.
An indescribable longing stirs inside him. He stops and turns backward. But the stretch of road bends right behind him into the twilight which has in the meantime fallen, and there is no one to be seen.
THE FISHMONGERS STALL
(Naples)
On a slightly inclined marble tabletop, they lie in groups, some on the damp stone, with a bit of blackish moss stuck under them, others in flat splint-baskets that have grown dark from the moisture. Silver-scaled, among them one that is bent upward like a sword arm in an escutcheon, so that the silver is stretched and shimmers. Silver-scaled, they lie across one another, as if of antique silver, with a blackish patina, and on top, one which, mouth forward, seems to be returning, terrified, out of the pile in back of it. Once you have noticed its mouth, you see, here and here, one more, another one, quickly turned toward you, lamenting. (What you want to call “lamenting” probably comes about because here the place from which voice emanates, at once means muteness: an image of the poet.) And now, as a result of a thought perhaps, you look for the eyes. All these flat, laterally placed eyes, covered as if with watch crystals, toward which, as long as they looked, floating images drifted. They weren’t any different then, they were just as gazelessly indifferent: for water doesn’t permit active looking. Just as shallow and depthless, empty, turned inside out like carriage lant
erns during the day. But carried along by the resistance and movement of that denser world, they lightly and surely cast sketch upon sketch, signal and turn, inward into a consciousness unknown to us. Silently and surely they swam along, before the smooth decision, without betraying it; silently and surely they stood, for days on end, against the current, underneath its rush, darkened by fleeting shadows. But now they have been peeled out from the long strands of their looking, laid out flat, and it is impossible for anything to enter them. The pupil as if covered with black cloth, the surrounding circle laid on like the thinnest of gold foil. With a shock, as if you had bitten onto something hard, you notice the impenetrability of these eyes—, and suddenly you have the impression that you are standing in front of nothing but stone and metal, as you look across the table. Everything bent looks hard, and the pile of steel-glistening, awl-shaped fish lies there cold and heavy like a pile of tools with which others, that look like stones, have been polished. For there beside them they lie: round smooth agates, streaked with brown, pale, and golden veins, strips of reddish-white marble, jade pieces rounded and carefully polished, partly worked topazes, rock crystals with tips of amethyst, opals of jellyfish. And a very thin sheet of water is still spread over them all and separates them from this light, in which they are alien, closed, containers, which someone has tried in vain to pry open.
ACROBATS
In front of the Luxembourg Gardens, near the Panthéon, Père Rollin and his troupe have spread themselves out again. The same carpet is lying there, the same coats, thick winter overcoats, taken off and piled on top of a chair, leaving just enough room for the little boy, the old man’s grandson, to come and sit down now and then during breaks. He still needs to, he is still just a beginner, and those headlong leaps out of high somersaults down onto the ground make his feet ache. He has a large face that can contain a great many tears, but sometimes they stand in his widened eyes almost out to the edge. Then he has to carry his head cautiously, like a too-full cup. It’s not that he is sad, not at all; he wouldn’t even notice it if he were; it is simply the pain that is crying, and he has to let it cry. In time it gets easier and finally it goes away. Father has long since forgotten what it was like, and Grandfather—oh it has been sixty years since he forgot, otherwise he wouldn’t be so famous. But look, Père Rollin, who is so famous at all the fairs, doesn’t “work” anymore. He doesn’t lift the huge weights anymore, and though he was once the most eloquent of all, he says nothing now. He has been transferred to beating the drum. Touchingly patient, he stands with his too-far-gone athlete’s face, its features now sagging into one another, as if a weight had been hung on each of them and had stretched it out. Dressed simply, a sky-blue knitted tie around his colossal neck, he has retired at the peak of his glory, in this coat, into this modest position upon which, so to speak, no glitter ever falls. But anyone among these young people who has ever seen him, knows that in those sleeves the famous muscles lie hidden whose slightest touch used to bring the weights leaping up into the air. The young people have clear memories of such a masterful performance, and they whisper a few words to their neighbors, show them where to look, and then the old man feels their eyes on him, and stands pensive, undefined, and respectful. That strength is still there, young people, he says to himself; it’s not as available as it used to be, that’s all; it has descended into the roots; it’s still there somewhere, all of it. And it is really far too great for just beating a drum. He lays into it, and beats it much too often. Then his son-in-law has to whistle over to him and make a warning sign just when he is in the middle of one of his tirades. The old man stops, frightened; he tries to excuse himself with his heavy shoulders, and stands ceremoniously on his other leg. But already he has to be whistled at again. “Diable. Père! Père Rollin!” He has already hit the drum again and is hardly aware that he has done it. He could go on drumming forever, they mustn’t think he will get tired. But there, his daughter is speaking to him; quick-witted and strong, and with more brains than any of the others. She is the one who holds everything together, it’s a joy to see her in action. The son-in-law works well, no one can deny that, and he likes his work, it’s a part of him. But she has it in her blood; you can see that. This is something she was born to. She’s ready now: “Musique!” she shouts. And the old man drums away like fourteen drummers. “Père Rollin, hey, Père Rollin,” calls one of the spectators, and steps right up, recognizing him. But the old man only incidentally nods in response; it is a point of honor, his drumming, and he takes it seriously.
AN EXPERIENCE
It could have been little more than a year ago that, in the castle garden which sloped down quite steeply to the sea, something strange happened to him. Walking back and forth with a book, as was his custom, he had happened to recline into the more or less shoulder-high fork of a shrublike tree, and in this position he immediately felt himself so pleasurably supported and so deeply soothed that he remained as he was, without reading, completely absorbed into Nature, in a nearly unconscious contemplation. Little by little his attention awakened to a feeling he had never known before: it was as if almost unnoticeable pulsations were passing into him from the inside of the tree; he explained this to himself quite easily by supposing that an otherwise invisible wind, perhaps blowing down the slope close to the ground, was making itself felt in the wood, though he had to acknowledge that the trunk seemed too thick to be moved so forcibly by such a mild breeze. What concerned him, however, was not to pass any kind of judgment; rather, he was more and more surprised, indeed astonished, by the effect of this pulsation which kept ceaselessly passing over into him; it seemed to him that he had never been filled by more delicate movements; his body was being treated, so to speak, like a soul, and made capable of absorbing a degree of influence which, in the usual distinctness of physical conditions, wouldn’t really have been sensed at all. Nor could he correctly determine, during the first few moments, which of his senses it was through which he was receiving so delicate and extended a communication; moreover, the condition it had created in him was so perfect and continuous, different from all others, but so impossible to describe by the intensification of anything experienced before, that for all its exquisiteness he couldn’t think of calling it a pleasure. Nevertheless, concerned as he always was to account for precisely the subtlest impressions, he asked himself insistently what was happening to him, and almost immediately found an expression that satisfied him as he said it aloud: he had passed over to the other side of Nature. As happens sometimes in a dream, this phrase now gave him joy, and he considered it almost completely apt. Everywhere and more and more regularly filled with this impulse which kept recurring in strangely interior intervals, his body became indescribably touching to him and of no further use than to be purely and cautiously present in, just as a ghost, already dwelling elsewhere, sadly enters what was tenderly laid aside, in order to belong once again, even if inattentively, to this once so indispensable world. Slowly looking around himself, without otherwise shifting his position, he recognized everything, remembered it, smiled at it with a kind of distant affection, let it be, as if it were something which had once, in circumstances long since vanished, taken part in his life. A bird flew through his gaze, a shadow engrossed him, the very path, the way it continued and was lost, filled him with a contemplative insight, which seemed to him all the more pure in that he knew he was independent of it. Where his usual dwelling place was he couldn’t have conceived, but that he was only returning to all this here, that he was standing in this body as if in the recess of an abandoned window, looking out:—of this he was for a few seconds so thoroughly convinced that the sudden apparition of one of his friends from the house would have shocked him in the most excruciating way; whereas he truly, deep inside himself, was prepared to see Polyxène or Raimondine or some other long-dead inhabitant of the house step forth from the path’s turn. He understood the quiet superabundance of these Things; he was allowed, intimately, to see these ephemeral earthly forms use
d in such an absolute way that their harmony drove out of him everything else he had learned; he was sure that if he were to move in their midst he wouldn’t seem strange to them. A periwinkle that stood near him and whose blue gaze he had already met a number of times, touched him now from a more spiritual distance, but with so inexhaustible a meaning that it seemed as if there were nothing more that could be concealed. Altogether, he was able to observe how all objects yielded themselves to him more distantly and, at the same time, somehow more truly; this might have been due to his own vision, which was no longer directed forward and diluted in empty space; he was looking, as if over his shoulder, backward at Things, and their now completed existence took on a bold, sweet aftertaste, as though everything had been spiced with a trace of the blossom of parting.—Saying to himself from time to time that this couldn’t last, he nevertheless wasn’t afraid that the extraordinary condition would suddenly break off, as if he could only expect from it, as from music, a conclusion that would be in infinite conformity to its own law.
All at once his position began to be uncomfortable, he could feel the trunk, the fatigue of the book in his hand, and he emerged. An obvious wind was blowing now in the leaves, it came from the sea, the bushes up the slope were tossing together.
ON THE YOUNG POET
Still hesitating to distinguish, among cherished experiences, the more important from the lesser, I am limited to quite provisional means when I try to describe the nature of a poet: this immense and childlike nature which arose (we don’t grasp how) not only in definitively great figures long ago, no, but which right here, beside us, converges in this boy perhaps, who lifts his great gaze and doesn’t see us; this nature which seizes young hearts at a time when they are still incapable of the most insignificant life, in order to fill them with abilities and connections that immediately surpass all possible attainments of a whole existence: yes, who would be able to speak calmly of this nature? If it were true that it no longer occurred, that we could see it only from a great distance, completed, in its improbable manifestation: we would gradually move toward comprehending it, we would give it a name and a time, like the other things of antiquity; for what is it but antiquity that bursts out in hearts startled by such forces. Here among us, in this complex modern city, in that honestly busy house, amid the noise of vehicles and factories and while the newspaper sellers are shouting their wares—spacious sheets filled to the edge with events—suddenly, who knows, all this effort, all this fervor, all this energy are outweighed by the appearance of the Titans in the depths of a child. Nothing indicates it but the coldness of a boy’s hand; nothing but an upward glance taken back with terror; nothing but the indifference of this young creature, who doesn’t talk with his brothers and who, as soon as he can, gets up from the dinner table, which exposes him much too long to the judgment of his family. He hardly knows if he still belongs to his mother: so greatly have all the measures of his feeling been displaced since the irruption of the elements into his infinite heart.
Ahead of All Parting Page 19