THE LUTE AND THE SCARS

by Adam Thirlwell

  22

  Now he was seated in a second-class compartment of an express train, thinking about what Mr. Gottlieb, the “premium fortune-teller,” had told him. The man’s statement reverberated unceasingly in his ears, formulated in passable German: “Paris is your last chance . . . Yes, yes. The last . . .” Was he superstitious? No more and no less so than other people. If he had been told this earlier, two or three years ago, he would not have paid any attention to it.

  23

  Capturing on paper, in haste, and with no explicit, patent goal, these miscreant humans, this freak show, the man without a country was aware of the fact that literature was playing a secondary role here, even as he also tried hard to pretend to himself that his interest was a purely professional one, and involved human phenomena; it will probably, he thought to himself, turn out to be more of an exorcism of some type, part of that phobia that prevented him from entering an elevator, of that dread of the unknown that literature can only make use of as an exorcism. Because, ultimately, if he should need such a figure, it would rise up from his memory, even before he pored over his notebooks and jottings, and what he was doing now was thus serving as a kind of amulet to ward off the evil eye, or malevolent destiny. For he needed health, and he needed life, a healthy and normal life, since his unfinished work still lay before him—everything else was subordinated to that thought. Everything else.

  24

  The stateless one left his hotel at five. In front of the doors to the building he stopped for a moment and looked first up at the sky and then at his watch. “The marquise went out at precisely five o’clock,” he noted to himself.

  25

  The blow came so fast, so unexpectedly, that our apatride couldn’t have felt anything save the penetrating pain on the crown of his head; and all at once daybreak lit up all around him, as if a thunderclap had struck in the vicinity; lightning flashed in his mind, illuminating with its fearsome and powerful tongue of fire his whole life, and immediately thereafter darkness must have descended. His limbs separated from his body, as if an invisible force had ripped them from his torso. (We can, by means of analogy, have a presentiment of this horrific sensation of a higher power pulling the limbs from our body: once upon a time you were rocking on a chair and the chair suddenly flipped over, and you found yourself lying with the crown of your head on the concrete floor while for a moment your hands and your feet seemed to be separated from your body, ripped out of their joints, and you lay for several seconds without moving on the ground, incapable of screaming because robbed of your voice.) This rapid flash of light, like the flame of a torch before a hard gust of wind extinguishes it once and for all, this illumination prior to complete obscurity—this is as far as we are capable of following the experiences of the man without a country. Further than this (as Mme Yourcenar would say), we cannot go. No such experience has ever been vouchsafed us. And we will never be able to experience such things.

  26

  You, dear sirs, would like for me to show you the house in which I was born? But my mother gave birth in the hospital at Fiume, and that building has been destroyed. And you won’t manage to put up a memorial plaque on my house, because it has probably been torn down, too. Alternately, you’d have to hang three or four plaques with my name on them: in various cities and various countries, but in this I could not be of assistance to you either, because I don’t know in which house I grew up; I no longer recall where I lived during my childhood; I barely even know anymore what language I spoke. What I do remember are images: swaying palms and oleander somewhere by the sea, the Danube flowing along, dark green, next to pastureland, and a counting rhyme: eeny, meeny, miny, moe . . .

  JURIJ GOLEC

  I had just returned to Paris after the Easter holidays. I live in the 10th arrondissement and I do not suffer from homesickness. On sunny days, I am woken up by the birds, like in Voždovac. Through the open door on my balcony I hear the Serbs shouting and cursing at each other; in the early light of dawn, as they are letting their engines warm up, accordion notes come tumbling out of their tape players. For a moment I don’t remember where I am.

  I pulled the mail out of the box and started listening to my messages: Anne-Marie is letting me know that a new review of my book is out. (Just for the record: I had already read it.) Then some music, and giggling; I don’t recognize any of the voices. B.P. from London informs me that he has no intention of conversing with phantoms, and I should throw this machine out with the trash. Then, giggling and music again. A certain Patricia Hamburger (“Yes, like the meat”) reminds me, if I understand her correctly, that I flirted with her after a visit to an exhibition in some gallery, and that I kissed her hand. (It’s possible.) After that, there were two or three hang-ups. And B.P. once more: if he gets this machine one more time . . . Then, probably grasping the fact that time is running out: “I have something important to tell you. As for this accursed little machine, throw it in the garbage. I want to speak with you, and it’s quite a serious matter. But, damn it all, I cannot talk to a machine! I’d like to know what moron convinced you to buy this marvel. And why? It’s not like you’re some traveling salesman! I mean, really, what kind of all-important business dealings do you have? And those women of yours can just be patient for a bit . . . Incidentally, it would be better for you to write instead of . . . Did you really . . .” Yes, I know, that’s all fine and good, but the thirty seconds are up and I still have no idea what important matter he wanted to share with me. Luba Jurgenson conveys her apology: the last sentence of her article was cut, and so the text sounds incomplete. And then a frail voice: “This is Jurrri Golec. My wife has died. Burial Thursday at four p.m. The Montparnasse cemetery.” After that: Mme Ursula Randelis. O.V. from Piran. Kristos Arvanitidis, my friend from Thessaloniki. A certain Nadja Moust from Belgium; she would like to take a course in Serbo-Croatian; what are the requirements for registering. B.P. again, this time in medias res: “I just want to say that we’ve known each other for more than thirty years and we have still never had a serious talk. Farewell.” After which the line went dead.

  At least ten days had passed since Jurij Golec had left that message, so I immediately sent him a telegram of sympathy. Then I tried repeatedly, and at different times of the day, to reach him by telephone, but no one answered. I assumed he had left town. Later I found out from Ursula Randelis, a friend of his of many years, that he had moved into Noémie’s apartment. (They had separated over twenty years ago; she lived by the Jardin du Luxembourg and he in the 14th arrondissement.) I called there a number of times, till at last I heard his faltering voice: “You’ve reached 325-26-80. Jurrri Golec and Mrs. Golec, also known as Noémie Dastrrre. Please leave your number.”

  One morning he rang me up: “Jurrri Golec here.”

  “Poor Noémie. Did you get my telegram?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “I thought maybe you’d left town,” I said. “It happened so suddenly.”

  “Never mind. I’m calling on an important matter.”

  “All right. Go on.”

  “You are a sensitive man, David. You’ll understand.” (Pause)

  “I’m listening.”

  “You aren’t like the French.” (Suddenly he switched to Russian.) “Ty poet. That’s not flattery. After all, I said as much in the foreword to your book. You’re the only one who can help me. Money isn’t an issue anymore. It doesn’t matter what it costs. Noémie had plenty of money. I don’t know if you’re aware of that. She was working in ethnographic films and made a pretty penny. And then there were her African sculptures . . . Are you listening to me?”

  “Of course I’m listening to you.”

  “She’d cut me out of the inheritance completely, but then right at the end she changed her will. In the hospital. She was of the opinion that I had atoned for all my sins in relation to her. She left the largest portion to a foundation in Israel that will bear her name.”

  “What kind of foundation?”

  �
��For the study of the folklore of East European Jewry. Which is apparently in the process of dying out. But what she left to me is quite sufficient.”

  “So travel somewhere.”

  “I have to remain here. All the formalities pertaining to the inheritance, the official inventory . . .”

  “At least move out of that apartment. It’s not good for you.”

  “You have to help me.”

  I thought maybe he wanted to borrow money until the issue of the will was settled. Or maybe that he wanted me to help him move. He had a huge library with books in every imaginable language.

  “I’m at your disposal.”

  At that point he burst out: “Kupi mne pistolet.” And as if he were afraid that I hadn’t understood him, he repeated it in French: “Buy me a pistol. I can’t go on like this.”

  “I’m coming to see you immediately. Are you calling from home?”

  “Yes, from Noémie’s apartment. You know where it is. Fourth floor, on the left.”

  He opened the door quickly, as if he had been standing there behind it the whole time. To me he seemed to be looking better than ever. There were no rings around his eyes, he was freshly shaven, and his lean face had a rosy complexion; he resembled a man who had just stepped out of the sauna. He was wearing a new, tailored suit made of lustrous fabric, a light-colored shirt, and a colorful silk tie. It was the first time I’d seen him dressed up like that. The finish on the wood of the furniture gleamed, and the windows were flung open, even though it was cool outside. Porcelain ashtrays gleamed on the table.

  Right away it hit me that the African sculpture collection was missing. On the wall between two windows there was just one single female figurine with large breasts, and on the opposite wall two modern drawings were hanging in narrow black frames.

  “I’ve got some good wine,” Jurij Golec said, going into the kitchen; I heard him uncorking the bottle. Then he returned.

  “I’ll have one little drink with you. Otherwise, I don’t drink.”

  “You must be taking tranquilizers. I did that myself when I was going through my divorce . . .”

  “Alas,” he said with a wave of his hand, “it doesn’t help.”

  “A physician once confided in me that he took his sedatives with whisky.”

  “There’s no point to that anymore,” he stated. “I need a pistol, not pills.”

  “Excuse me, but you must admit that I also have a certain amount of experience in such things.” (When Ana and I separated, I had a major crisis. Jurij Golec at that time comforted me with ambiguous words in the manner of a Talmudic sage: “Aside from getting married, there’s only one other really stupid thing a person can do in his or her life: get divorced. But the greatest stupidity of all is to regret it.”) “At night I put wax balls in my ears,” I said. “And a black blindfold over my eyes. I took sleeping pills and drank. When I woke up, my bed seemed like a grave. I thought that I would never sit down at a typewriter again.”

  “You’ll write much more,” said Jurij Golec. “But in my case . . . You once said that you were on friendly terms with some Yugoslav gangsters in Montparnasse. You could procure a pistol for me with their help. She changed her will in the hospital. She considered my behavior of late . . .”

  At that point the telephone rang. He started conversing with someone in German.

  Why the hell had I told him about my encounters with those “Yugoslav gangsters” in Montparnasse? I wondered. Besides, he’d blown it out of proportion. They were for the most part friends from my high school years, and when I got together with them, they were hardly packing any weapons. Or, at any rate, I never saw any in their possession. They just told me stories. About a guy who’d just come out of Le Select, or about someone they claimed I knew (“the tall fellow with the moustache”), since we had sat at the same table the day before yesterday. This man had gotten stabbed to death the other day at the Place Pigalle. Yet another guy killed two Corsicans with his pistol a few days earlier. Or he had been shot dead himself—I don’t remember anymore. A third got eight years: for smuggling weapons, and robbery, and pimping.

  “One of my friends,” Jurij Golec said when he returned to the table. “Hasn’t left his house for ten years now. He tried to kill himself; the Metro took off both his legs above the knee. He lives on the eighth floor, but he lacks the courage to try it again. He drinks. Takes pills. And waits for death. Is that how you all want it to be for me?”

  “I’ll get a pistol for you,” I said. “A year from now. On May 8, 1983. I have experience with things like this.”

  “In a year?” he said. “I won’t be able to stand it for a month. Not for a week.”

  “In a year, in the event that you still have need of one.”

  “I thought you were different from the French. But you’re just like all the rest. You don’t understand me either. Why should I . . .”

  “Because you survived the camps.” (He had a number tattooed on his forearm.) “That’s why. Someone who’s lived through the camps . . .”

  “Leave the camps out of this,” said Jurij Golec. “Compared to this, the camp was a joy. Even Raoul, that unfortunate creature without legs, survived the camps.”

  We were already on the second bottle of cabernet sauvignon. It was then that I noted the wine was going to my head and that I was hungry; all I’d had for breakfast was coffee. I suggested we go out for a bite to eat. Or we could have a proper lunch together. I was sure he hadn’t eaten anything.

  “I’ll take you someplace,” he said. “Let’s go eat, somewhere close by. I have to be back here by five at the latest. A couple of people are coming by. And the clerks from the court could show up at any time. Oh, for the day when all these formalities are complete!”

  We walk through the passage and come out on the boulevard. The air is cool, although from time to time the sun breaks through the clouds. One can feel spring’s incremental victory; the tables have been put out on the sidewalks; the women are sitting facing the sun, with their eyes closed and skirts pulled halfway up their thighs. A black man in shorts swishes past us on roller skates and then zips across the street. I watch as he goes out of sight into the Jardin du Luxembourg; on the gilded tips of the fence around the park the sun is leaving blood-red traces, like on some gaudy painting in the Louvre.

  The restaurant has been recently renovated, and it still smells new. Lamps with red shades and gold tassels hang in the booths. Paper tablecloths cover the plastic tables. In the vases, artificial flowers, and next to them, in a metal rack, the holy trinity of French cuisine: salt-pepper-mustard.

  In one of the alcoves, the restaurant owners are dining, a heavy blonde woman with painted fingernails and a corpulent red-faced man with a little moustache. With large knives they are slicing up bloody steaks. A bottle of red wine, unlabeled, stands on the table before them; the bottle is imprinting the paper tablecloth with red half-circles.

  They greet us with handshakes.

  “Ça va?”

  “Ça va,” says Jurij Golec.

  “How’s Madame?” asks the proprietress.

  “She has died,” says Jurij Golec.

  The owner takes a swallow of wine.

  “But it hasn’t even been a week since Madame was here,” he says.

  “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu. Automobile accident?”

  “Leukemia,” says Jurij Golec. “We’d like something to eat.”

  “Have a seat there,” the owner says, pointing to a table with his knife. “Or there. Gaston! Bring these gentlemen a menu. Yes, such is life. It just seems as if Madame had sat here only yesterday. Right there where you are sitting now. I’m afraid we’re out of menus d’hors. It’s three o’clock. I recommend you get the roast beef. Gaston!”

  “Chicken for me,” Jurij Golec says. “With fries. And a salad. She’s been dead a month already.”

  “And what will your friend be having?”

  “An omelet,” I say. “And a carafe of red wine.”

  “Non
e for me,” Jurij Golec says. “I don’t drink.”

  “Madame always took such good care of herself,” says the proprietress. “Only ate healthy things. Eggs, fish, vegetables. And lots of carrots. Gaston, bring the man a fork.”

  “In the last few years,” says Jurij Golec, leaning in my direction, “she ate only grass. Like a cow.”

  We went back to Noémie’s apartment. On the way Jurij bought himself three cartons of Rothmans—ten days’ supply, at least. He paid for my cigarettes, too.

  “I also smoked Gauloises and Gitanes for years,” he said. “Until I got French citizenship. I smoked that trash so I’d have the same taste in my mouth they have.”

  We had no sooner returned than he started in again:

  “So then what you want is for me to hurl myself under a subway train, like miserable old Raoul. Don’t interrupt me, please. Is that what you all want to become of me? And I, as you can see, am not in any condition to open up my own veins. I am horrified by the sight of blood, like the hero of your novel. Especially now. For a whole month I went to be with her in the hospital every day. I greeted the dawn at her bedside. With no tobacco or alcohol. I don’t intend to go on and on to you about all that. About the blood, the vomit, the excrement, the pus. We were married for thirty-three years. We met in Poland, after we were released from the camps. She was on her way back from a Russian camp, I from a German one . . .”

  “For the last twenty years we didn’t live under the same roof. In that length of time I slept with a lot of women; I assume she took lovers as well. How many? I don’t know. But there was nonetheless something that bound us together. Something elemental. Whatever it is that unites a man and a woman forever.”