THE LUTE AND THE SCARS

by Adam Thirlwell

  The telephone rang, and he chatted with someone else in German, quietly. Either German or Yiddish. Then he returned to his seat opposite me. “A month before she got sick, we went for a stroll on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. It was a clear day, like this one. At one point she stopped and took my hand. ‘I would like to live a hundred years,’ she said. ‘With you.’ And we kissed. On the lips.”

  Jurij Golec drank a swallow. “A splendid bottom line for an old Jewish couple,” he concluded. “After thirty-three years of shared life.”

  “It would be a good idea for you to go away somewhere,” I said. “What’s the status of the will anyway?”

  “There is the possibility that she left me nothing. I don’t care. I only want the paperwork to be done with. But none of that is important now. I’m done for. I helped a few people. Slept with ten women. Maybe it was a hundred. I wrote this and that, might as well have been writing with my finger in water. I have no strength left, and no curiosity.”

  “I understand how you feel. I leaned out over the edge of this abyss recently too. People don’t know what advice to give, and God, if you don’t mind my saying, doesn’t know His way around in such matters. At that time I started searching for books that would give me strength to keep on living. And I arrived at the tragic conclusion that all the books I had devoured over the decades were of no use to me in that decisive hour. I’ll omit the holy books and the sages of old; I wasn’t receptive to them, because I lacked the basic prerequisite of a belief in God, which you yourself have. I read the widest variety of authors and works: Gnostics and gnostic commentaries, Surviving and Other Essays by Bruno Bettelheim, Linden’s Autogenic Training, Les destins du plaisir by a certain Aulagnier, Goethe’s Elective Affinities, La nuit, le jour by Braunschweig, Herbert Rosenfeld’s Psychotic States, the novels of Philip Roth, and even Hjalmar Bergman’s Marionettspel, because I myself resemble a puppet whose strings are controlled by fate. The only thing I got from all this reading was the realization that books provide no answers to burning questions. That we are directed by our genes, the devil, or God, and that our will plays no role at critical moments, that we are simply knocked this way and that by our various passions. As when someone is swimming hard and the shore not only recedes but actually seems to gape wide, as the current—for you are swimming upstream—carries you in the opposite direction. But, fortunately, passions, like misfortunes, are transient; like all plants and animals too . . .”

  I sensed that my words were coming across as hollow and bookish; it’s not easy to respond to a person whose question is “Why should I be alive?” I was acting with the best of intentions: drawing on my own experiences, I wanted to make clear to him the beneficial effects of time, and to sketch the future out for him, his future: sitting somewhere on the Mediterranean coast, warming his bones in the spring sun, drinking cappuccino and patting the young waitresses on their rear ends.

  “When all is said and done, you have to live, because this is the only life there is.”

  He waved his hand dismissively.

  “Don’t forget that I believe in God,” he said. “And He’ll forgive me.”

  This trying conversation was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. Jurij Golec introduced his guests to me by name and added: “My protegées.”

  He indicated to them that we were old friends and I was a writer.

  “He wrote the foreword to my last book,” I said, in order to conceal my embarrassment.

  They were two pretty young women, with luxurious hair, pronounced cheekbones, and slightly tilted Tatar-like eyes.

  “Oh, Jura, why didn’t you tell us?” Nataša said.

  “You see?” Dola continued. (She owed her name to Dolores Ibarruri.) “You at least have other people to live for! What vile things you’ve been saying! What do you mean, a pistol? Boh s tobój!” She then turned to me: “If Jurij wrote a foreword to your book, then it must be good.”

  I promised to send them copies of my books; the one with the foreword by Jurij Golec and, of course, the one about the camps. (They were the daughters of a Soviet general who had perished in the purges.)

  “Cheers!” Nataša said after pouring everyone a drink.

  “To your health,” Jurij Golec responded absentmindedly.

  “There are,” Dola said, “so many beautiful things in this life. Friendship, for example. And, you see, we all need you. If you didn’t exist, where would we two have taken refuge when we got to Paris? You can’t even imagine what all Jura has done for us. His apartment is a veritable embassy for refugees from all over the East. For Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Estonians. For everyone. How long have you known Jura?”

  “For at least ten years,” I said.

  “We met at a reception, a long time ago,” said Jurij Golec. “When his first book came out in French.”

  Note: This reception had been organized by Mme Ursula Randelis, a patron of South American writers. In addition to those writers, authors from other countries passed through the side door, so to speak. The cocktail party took place on the occasion of a book launch, for a Portuguese, a Spaniard, and me; the books came out in a series devoted primarily to Latin American writers. I knew no one and didn’t dare to eat anything, because I didn’t know how to break open and eat crabs and shellfish; so I sat there the entire evening with a canapé and drank. At three o’clock in the morning a young woman suggested driving me to her place, and I threw up in her bathroom, lying there on the floor, half-dead. Fortunately, people forget things that are earmarked for oblivion. Over the course of the years the memory of that hapless reception had evaporated, and an insuperable obscurity would have descended upon it if Jurij Golec hadn’t brought it up again two or three months ago. He asked me whether Marie La Coste had written anything about my new book. I told him I didn’t know who that was. “Chivalry is an attractive personality trait to have, my dear friend, but you know you slept with her. This is an open secret. At that reception chez Ursula Randelis, you kissed her hand under her husband’s nose. And toward daybreak the two of you ducked out.”

  “I thought she was one of Mme Randelis’s domestics,” I said. “I was actually amazed myself at how large her bathroom was. With pink tiles and a bidet.”

  To steer the conversation to other topics, I stated:

  “I think that you two should persuade him not to go on living in this apartment.”

  “You see, Jura? Everybody agrees that it’s not a good idea for you to live in her apartment,” said Nataša. “We’ve told him that a hundred times.”

  “Just until the formalities are complete,” Jurij Golec said.

  “So, in the meantime let’s get to work,” said Dolores-Dola, and the two women stood up simultaneously. “The sculptures are gone. That’s good. Never mind the ashtrays, Jura; I’ll empty them. What do we do with this?”

  We were standing in the next room, where Noémie’s library was housed. The books were arranged over an entire wall, stretching all the way up to the ceiling.

  “These are valuable books,” Jurij Golec said, taking down a volume of The Jewish Encyclopedia.

  The women ran their eyes over the shelves and each of them pulled out a book at random.

  “These are new books,” Dola said. “Tomorrow we’ll take whatever interests you over to the apartment by car. As for the rest—the used bookstore!”

  Jurij Golec was standing in the middle of the room with a volume of the Encyclopedia still in his hand, not knowing what to do with it.

  “Some of them are autographed,” he remarked.

  “It’s not like she’s got one signed by Victor Hugo,” Nataša said. She was crouched down on the floor, running her fingers over the worn carpet in Noémie’s room as though picking a fabric swatch. “This is a Persian,” she said and pointed to the carpet in front of the dressing table, upon which, as in a poem by Baudelaire, little glass perfume bottles were lined up.

  “Tomorrow we’ll come with the car for all that,” she said. “Vladimir Edmund
ovich, M. Brauman, and the two of us. Do you see, Jura? Everything will be taken care of.”

  “And what’s in there?” Dola asked, indicating the cabinets in the foyer.

  “Her stuff,” Jurij Golec said after laying the encyclopedia down on the radiator and opening one of the cabinet doors. “Toward the end she was buying fur coats. She complained about the cold. She even wore them around the apartment. She claimed that she was feeling the effects of the extreme cold that got into her bones forty years ago in Siberia. Pustjaki,” he added with a dismissive wave. “She was thinking of moving to Africa permanently.”

  “There are some good furs here,” Dola noted. “They should also be sold. This one alone cost at least 20,000 francs.”

  Jurij Golec added: “120,000. She only wore it once. Last year. For Yom Kippur.”

  “For what?”

  “For a holiday.”

  “There are at least thirty pairs of shoes here,” Dola said.

  “In Russia,” said Nataša (who had emigrated only recently and was still making use of anti-communist propaganda), “this could all be sold for hard currency in a Beryozka.”

  “Boh s tobój!” cried Dolores-Dola. “What do you mean, a Beryozka? We should donate this to the Red Cross.”

  “Maybe some of it, via the Croix Rouge, will make it to Afghanistan,” Jurij Golec said, casting a glance at the clock.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  “Doctor Wildgans,” he said, as if to himself.

  Dr. Wildgans was a tall man of approximately thirty, with curly, luxuriant hair, already decorated with patches of white. There was something wild about him, something “Bedouin-like”—and not simply on account of the unusual color of his eyes, greenish-yellow, and the large shawl that he had tossed over his shoulders. Two weeks ago he had returned from Afghanistan. He had crossed the border with two other doctors and, dressed as a combatant, trekked through trackless mountains. He had observed ambushes from his hiding place; and through binoculars he had watched armored vehicles be abandoned by their crews; he carried out a number of amputations in a tent, under the most primitive conditions, about a hundred kilometers outside of Kabul.

  “You have helped so many people,” Jurij Golec blurted out. “It’s just me you won’t help.”

  “Take two at bedtime,” Dr. Wildgans said and set a little bottle of pills on the table. “These are more effective.”

  After the two women had left, it felt as if a heavy layer of fog had once more settled over the room. The muted hum of the city was audible; music from one of the neighbors’ flats seeped through the walls. Somebody was stubbornly practicing chromatic scales on the saxophone; now and again the notes merged with the howling of ambulance sirens.

  “You can talk freely in his presence,” Jurij Golec said, turning to Dr. Wildgans.

  “You can’t demand it of me. I am a physician.”

  “That’s precisely why. You are a physician, and I require an effective treatment. Cyanide. Or a pistol.”

  “These pills will help you.”

  “All right,” Jurij Golec said. “So you two want me to hurl myself from a fifth-floor window. To end up a cripple. Like miserable Raoul. You know Raoul. Or slice open my jugular. ‘My loved ones and friends shied away, seeing my wounds, and my fellow men are remote.’”

  Suddenly he arose and picked up the ashtray in order to empty it. He left the bathroom door open as if he feared we might conspire against him. I heard him urinate and then flush the toilet.

  “I don’t have it in me to open my veins or hang myself,” he said, as he returned with the now gleaming ashtray. “I can’t imagine myself with my face all swollen and blue, and my tongue stretched out . . . I’ve seen enough scenes like that in my life already. Let me assure you: a hanged man is not a pretty sight, not in the least. Even the fact that I could have one final ejaculation doesn’t much thrill me. If it’s even true that one ejaculates from the gallows. Can I take these with alcohol?”

  He was holding the little bottle in his hand.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Dr. Wildgans.

  The next day I called him again.

  “You’ve reached 325-26-80, Madame Golec, or Noémie Dastre. Be so kind as to leave a message and your telephone number. Good-bye, and thank you.”

  It was Noémie’s voice. It was coming either from heaven or from hell; it doesn’t matter which.

  On Friday I went to Lille to teach my classes. I had about ten students; my classes were on “one of the languages that make up the great family of Slavic languages, along with Russian and Polish . . .” I tried to make use of Mme Yourcenar’s sensational acceptance to the Académie française in order to introduce the students to the Serbian folk poetry that Mme Yourcenar held in high esteem, as her book Oriental Tales demonstrated. The students had not read Yourcenar. So I tried using love poems. In sonnet form. But they didn’t know what a sonnet was. I tried it in alexandrines, like Racine. (No doubt just some bourgeois scam.) So I switched to palatalization and the death of yat. Apparently that held some interest for them. They wrote it all down in their notebooks. Therefore I myself had to bone up during the train ride on palatalization and the death of yat.

  Saturday I called up Ursula Randelis.

  “Noémie’s voice is on the answering machine,” I said. “I felt like I was talking with the Hereafter.”

  “He shocked me with that message, too,” she said.

  “He demanded that I get him a pistol.”

  “He asked me for that too. Don’t worry. You weren’t the only one. He always had a sense of drama. I know him well. I’ve known him for thirty years or so. My God, how time flies. Noémie’s death rattled him. I can understand that. It came so unexpectedly. The doctors themselves weren’t completely certain. She always just had this temperature, and you see? In less than a month. I don’t know how much you know, but they’d lived apart for twenty years. May she rest in peace. But she had a bad temper. And no understanding for him. Why should he only sleep with one woman his entire life? He’s not a rabbi, after all! She couldn’t stand me, either. It was no secret: I had been his lover. Back when I left the convent. Twenty years ago. Twenty-five. Since then we’ve been friends. The best of friends. I don’t understand what in hell this voice on the answering machine means. Sorry, but someone’s at the door.”

  After a brief pause:

  “My son. He’s learning Spanish. Blood is thicker than water. I won’t hold his hand through it. Just so you don’t do drugs, I tell him. Jurij Golec is like a child. He’s incapable of paying his telephone bill. Lord only knows how many times they’ve cut his phone off. Then Ursula swoops in to set things right. It’s the same with the power, and with the rent. With everything. And do you think Noémie ever lifted a finger? Never. He needs a mother. Or a sister. ‘How are you doing, Jurij?’ I ask him. ‘Everything’s fine,’ he’ll reply. ‘Just fine.’ ‘But I can tell that something’s not right,’ I say. ‘The inability of the human being to adapt to existence,’ he says. ‘That’s all it is.’ And now he has this inheritance on his shoulders. It is a torment for him. How is that going? I have no idea. Apparently the will hasn’t even been read yet. So that’s why he hasn’t budged from the apartment. I told him he should give the key to that little Japanese woman. There’s a Japanese woman living next door. A student. I wonder if he’s slept with her. Of course Noémie couldn’t stand her. At any rate he should get out of that apartment as soon as possible. And stop being so dramatic. What’s with the pistol? Between you and me, it is possible that she left him nothing. Not so much as a cent. She was certainly capable of doing that to him. He’ll have told you about it. So, fine, it’s her money. She earned it herself, and it’s hers to dispose of as she wishes. Jewish folklore or African sculpture—it makes no difference to me. Just let things get settled already. At any event, people should give him some peace and quiet now . . . You were right to tell him that: a year from now everything will be all right. As if I hadn’t been through crises
myself. Show me a normal human being who hasn’t experienced a crisis. When Angel Asturias abandoned me, don’t you think I had a crisis then? Oh, I had one, and how! I drank, I took pills, the works. Excuse me, the doorbell again. It’s a madhouse here. I-am-com-ing! Call me again in the next day or two. I’m snowed under with work. Translating Cortázar right now. Don’t know if it’ll amount to anything. Whenever you want. One minute! I’m coming! You can also call late at night. Till one. Or two. Or even later. I’m coming! Mierda!”

  On Sunday I was invited to Madame d’Orsetti’s. Since her divorce from a Parisian gallery owner, she lived by herself in her large apartment close to the Parc Monceau, and she threw dinner parties for a group of intimate friends. She was wrapped up in astrology, all kinds of collecting, and fashion, which, according to Baudelaire, is included among the arts. She devoured horror novels and put away large quantities of sleeping pills and white wine. She was a good friend of Queneau and Perec, and she knew de Chirico, René Char, and Dado. As her guest, one drank tequila, whisky, vodka, and white wine originating in her own vineyards. She spoke of herself in the third person: “D’Orsetti went jogging at six o’clock in the morning in the Parc Monceau; d’Orsetti has a fever of thirty-eight degrees Celsius; d’Orsetti is going to London tomorrow; d’Orsetti is inviting Armani to dinner.”

  I was surprised to see that she had designated a place at the head of the table for me, since the widow of Prince S., who had been a literary critic and translator, was also invited to this dinner, along with the famous fashion designer Armani. Considering this an instance of her deliberate lack of conventionality (“d’Orsetti hates conventions”), I sat down at the place to which they ushered me; I didn’t want to stand out as someone who paid too much attention to formalities.

  The conversation was about people I didn’t know, or themes that didn’t interest me: fashion, feminism, pederasty, conceptualism, comic strips. But the main topic of the evening was an opera that I hadn’t seen, and more particularly a young vocalist who had debuted in this production. Madame d’Orsetti thought her appearance plebeian, her voice common, and her interviews stupid; on the other hand Armani, who managed to win over a majority of those present, asserted that a new star had been born and would soon be shining on the operatic firmament of Europe: a new Maria Callas.