“Good morning, Jennifer.”
I can see in Martin’s face that the tide has turned. We won’t talk about nothing today, we are going to speak to each other and it will take some time.
“You’re looking very serious. Are you all right?”
He shrugs with one of his wrists, something I now find myself doing. “I am not unhealthy, but I would appreciate—I must hesitate to ask you again for help because you have helped me so much. You have all of my excuses already and I have nothing left to give. My thanks are inadequate and again I am asking you for something.”
“I can only say no.”
“You can say no.”
“That’s right, I do it all the time. What do you want?”
“Listen to me.”
“That’s not hard.”
“It may be.”
“Tell me who you are, then. Really.”
“Savinien de Cyrano, which is the truth. I promise you. I swear on everything I no longer have that my name is my only possession. I am neither mad nor mistaken, I am only impossible. Men who tell lies will always say impossible things, but all men who say impossible things need not be liars. I would maintain this rule remains unaltered when we consider being impossible.”
“All right, whatever. I’ll suspend my disbelief.”
“Oh, that’s good. You have a fine way with phrases. That’s very pretty. Original?”
“Yes, I just made it up on the spur of the moment. The suspension of disbelief. Nice one.”
I know he knows I’m lying.
“Truly?”
He knows I know he knows I’m lying.
“Mm hm.”
I know he knows I know he knows I am. Lying is good like this, it becomes a truth that only the parties included can understand and nothing to do with deception.
“You have not said yes or no.”
“I know. Tell me what you want to tell me, I’m listening now.”
“A small favour first.”
“What’s the favour?”
“Very small, smallness itself, in fact. You must say yes and then I tell you what it is.”
“That isn’t usually the way I operate.”
“But for me, you will make an exception.”
“You are an exception, never mind making one. All right.”
“Hm?”
“Yes.”
“Eh! That’s wonderful. Could you please, then, say my name. Not this Martin, this is not me. Say my name. Only the first one. Sa-vi-nien. It’s like if you eat something and it tastes good and then better, best at the very end, Sa-vi-nien. You look at me in my eyes and say that. Please.”
Which was oddly difficult to do, perhaps because in meeting his eyes, I understand he isn’t looking at me. He is staring at something nobody had seen in lifetimes, trying to reach back. Nevertheless, he has asked me to say his name and so I try.
“Savinien.”
He sucks an instant or two of air in through his teeth and makes something like a smile. He nods, looks up and then over to one side, tugging the grey hairs at his temples, smoothing them back with his thumbs.
“Was that all right?”
“Oh yes, that was all very right. That was a point. You know points?”
“Possibly not.”
“Well, it is a very complicated word, but also very simple.” He’s getting ready to speak now, properly—he is about to expound. I find that I know the signs, that I am actually looking forward to sitting back and seeing him run his brains all the way through whatever idea he’s decided to tear apart. He leans back against the table, crossing his legs at the ankles, angling his head. Then he pauses, winks. “I could tell you about points, if you would like to listen.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You’re a good listener.”
“I just have trouble thinking of things to say.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“I don’t care. Tell me what you’re going to tell me.”
He leans forward, flickers his tongue between his lips. “I am slightly like free theatre, a private performance.”
“Thank you for saying I don’t have to pay.”
“Very well.” Inhaling, his head moving with it, making it a good breath, hungry and slow. “The point. When a point has been made you will feel it like nothing else and any explanation is no longer to the point—it is beside the point. Which is a beginning of getting an impression of the true point.”
“Mm hm.”
He walks away. “Weak start, it gets better.” Turns. “The point is that single moment when you truly touch another person. You reach to them with a word, a thought, a gesture, an attack from the third position that flicks to the fourth and slips through, hits its mark. And within the point which is a very brief thing (not enough time for your heart to beat) two human beings are one. The speaker and the listener, the writer and the reader, the man who bleeds and the man who makes him, they are the same thing. We are the same thing. You, when you say my name—there— that’s a point.”
“I don’t think I would like that.”
“You wouldn’t like what?”
I can feel the beginnings of a nervous cough, but I swallow it down. “Points, they sound uncomfortable.”
“They are alive. Don’t you like to be alive? Ah no, I forgot, you are mostly oblivious.” His hands flutter their fingers together and he peers. “Alive, this isn’t attractive, just in some corner of Jennifer. Touched by life.”
“Well . . . No, not really. If I have to be here, then I have to be here, you know? I don’t think I have to be touched as well. Tell me about this Cyrano.” If anything was a point, that was one. Almost unhealthily changeable, he swung steeply towards a padding, soft intensity.
“This Cyrano is me. You know another?”
“Then if he is you, tell me about you.”
And now he sits down with his arms folded and looks at the ceiling. From his expression you might think that his voice is appearing without his consent. He is listening, waiting for his words to see what they say. “I was born in Paris and I was the second son which meant I didn’t get my father’s name. Abel, my brother, he had that pleasure. Along with having the good fortune, of course, that I wasn’t called Cain. Our house was in the Marais, near the rue de la Verrerie. Very thin, high streets, like paths in a very dirty forest. In the courtyard, we had our own, narrow column of sun that would slowly pinch itself out into night and torches. Our own sun, looking down at us like an eye at a telescope.
“I could not say I was so delighted to be there, I never liked the city or its variety of summer perfumes, the continual stare of its streets. But I was very young then, you know, and not entirely aware. I did not, for instance, know how close I was there to the heretics and witches. The more things change, eh? Every crime on earth was being either considered or committed in the Court of Miracles (a terrible place and really terribly close to my house); assassins, thieves, beggars, necromancers, treasonists, they were all there, no doubt with a few evil spirits thrown in. A demon or two. Naturally, my mind must have been coloured by their thinking when I was so young and so soft and so near to them, their doubts and their dark prayers. Meanwhile the appropriate authorities are using Les Halles (again, hard by my birthplace) to make spiked pork of anyone they choose. Malefactors are elongated and truncated and bled and scourged and diced for the enlightenment of the curious mob. The air I breathe until I am fully three years old and driven off to the countryside like a tedious wife so that my father can be further from people and closer to his dogs is thick with the ash and smoke of grilled sorcerers. I inhaled so much blasphemy and heresy and original thought that naturally their atoms and mine became combined, as is wood with fire. I was alchemised.
“It is no great surprise then, that I grew to be a man with, uh, dangerous enthusiasms. I found it difficult to live my life well, it seemed not to be entirely my best fit. I seemed to grow away from my life’s proper shape. And now I think, it was so
ungenerously provided. If I had been permitted only another five or ten years, I might truly have become accustomed to the world and achieved something. I might also say, I could have lived with more care and perhaps gratitude, but I did feel then that care would not make me a name for myself. Being careful had no point.”
He seems to pause for thought and then lose himself.
I guessed—wrongly—that he might require some comment from me. “Maybe you didn’t do so badly.”
“Badly. I must have been a catastrophe—he made me come back.”
“I know the name Cyrano de Bergerac. If you’re saying that’s you.”
“That’s me.”
“Then I’ve heard your name.”
He can move very quickly for a man of his build and he rises and holds my shoulders too fast. I flinch.
“Why?”
Jumping back, apologetic hands.
“I’m sorry. But why have you heard me, of me?”
“It’s a play. You’re a character in a play.”
“Do I look like a play?”
“You don’t look like Cyrano de Bergerac. He’s always—”
And then I look at Martin, just as he turns his head. It all depended what you meant by “like Cyrano de Bergerac,” it all depended how you thought he would be and it all depended how long you looked.
“He always has a—”
“What, please?”
“He’s always an actor. The way he is, is different every time. I mean, I don’t know. I was just thinking and the name was familiar and that’s why. Maybe they stole it, it’s a nice name, maybe they just lifted it for a play. Maybe you read it somewhere and forgot about it when you forgot about everything else.”
“No!”
This time he doesn’t apologise, even though I flinch. “Don’t even suggest . . . You really cannot have been listening if you can believe that I am not . . . Do you think I would choose to be so out of place? After a lifetime of finding my world as hospitable as the moon I would elect to be this different again?” He goes back to his chair, something hesitant now in his walk. “Jennifer. Please. Please don’t make me be no one. You know me, you know who I am.”
“But this de Bergerac, he’s French.” I keep talking, even though I see from his eyes that he is looking at me for sympathy and silence. I can’t quite find either of them.
“But of course.”
“You’re saying you were born in Paris.”
“Yes.”
“Your parents were French.”
“Yes, this is obvious. Everyone was French, we were always French in my family. Now we are all French and all dead, dear Lord, even my bad little nephew Pierre, all dead.” His voice is breaking up, he shouldn’t push it any more, he will hear it and break up, too. “I have no doubt that we should all be buried in France if I weren’t up and walking and breaking with tradition again. I am French.”
“Then why aren’t you speaking French?”
“I am.”
I have a reaction ready for this. “Well, look, I think I’ll make us some tea. Are you all right?” He isn’t. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Just say if you’re not, but I’ll make some tea for now. Say if you’re not all right, it won’t worry me.” Pat his shoulder. “I’ll be over here, filling the kettle and then we’ll see what’s what.”
Playing for time, you see, playing for time. I am inadequate, but also practical.
AT AROUND THIS time my hands started shaking. Not just occasionally nervous jiggles, but an unmistakable, all-the-time tremor, rubbing the air. I didn’t fully notice this because I had my mind elsewhere. I now believe I was being disturbed by the facts prevailing in my life and my body was doing the best it could to tell me. Some people come out in rashes or fainting fits. I shook.
“Atoms. The sole explanation. Atoms.” Martin, or Savinien, stirred his tea solemnly. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone to like tea as much as he did, he was almost reverent with it.
“Oh I see, of course. Atoms.” Something about his matter-offactness was almost irritating.
“Mine and those of your country, your tongue and your air, your self. We have mixed. I am now a fraction more than me. This is the only reason for my never noticing a strain, an effort at translation. I have been added to. It’s logical.”
“Ah.”
“You are hearing but not listening to this, hn?”
“You’re bloody right I’m not listening. Atoms. You’re telling me atoms are what let you speak a language you don’t understand. You are telling me you are not only—what was it?—three hundred and seventy-five years old, but also dead and luminous and French, but atoms make all of that fine! Just how stupid am I supposed to be here! Remind me!” I wasn’t angry, I was defending myself. Because I believed him.
No one should believe in impossible things, it causes hope. Oh, that’s a very cynical thing to say and hope is admirable as an idea, or an inspiration. I know that. But hope does no good. As Martin/Savinien talked, I knew that volunteers in blue muddy overalls were digging thousands of bodies out of crumpled Indian buildings and no doubt those bodies had once experienced all kinds of harmless little aspirations, hopes which might have been driving them on in spite of the money they never ever had and their fragile health and the shoddy construction of the homes that would fracture and fall and kill them in just the way that similar shoddy buildings had done just one generation ago. Perhaps the builders had hoped the earthquake would be different this time. No doubt, at one time or another, all those involved had smiled in the teeth of their lives, hoping for the best. Even the men and women, digging in the rubble, they must have been hoping, too. In fact I seem to recall that one of my broadcasts said so.
In just the way that I used to hope. All the years I spent with my parents made me despair, but I still had hope. Certain other times in my life have had much the same effect, creating pain alongside hope. The pain and depression I found unpleasant, but you must understand that what made them unendurable was hope. That tension between my situation and my hopes for the better—not for the best, just for the better—can eventually only do what tension does, it causes splits and tears, a degree of loss. Hope is tyrannical, hope will not settle for anything but change.
And when the hoped-for future finally appears, I would rather not see what it brings because hope has already robbed it, mortgaged it to the bone. Hope ruins the future, fills it with clumsily balanced disappointments, every one ready to fall. Which means that I do not want hope, I want peace. No impossible things, no believing.
But I believed him.
“Why are you angry?” He had one arm folded high across his chest, the wrist wrapping round at the back of his neck and pushing his whole head forwards. He looked at me up and sideways, smiling warily. “You are usually so calm and tranquil . . . although I know that women are more changeable in their natures than men.”
“Balls.”
“Would not be in their nature, if I understand what you mean.”
“It is not in my nature to take the blame for something simply because I am here and female. This is not my fault at all and it’s absolutely fucking not my fault because I’m a woman. This is your fault for being impossible. Your fault for being you.”
“I know.” He turned slightly to the side in his chair and took a mouthful of tea. “I know.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t suppose this is very easy for you. I mean, it must be worse for you than it is for me.”
“Being me?”
“Yes, being you.”
“So I am me?” He glanced at the window and rubbed his finger down along the bridge of his nose. “I beg your pardon?”
“Why beg my pardon, I didn’t say anything.”
“Ah, because I did ask you there if this all might amount to your saying that I was myself. I thought that you might have some answer for that.”
“Yes. All right. You are. What you say.”
“I beg yo
ur pardon again.”
“You heard.”
“Yes. Yes, I did. Thank you.”
So I simply gave up hoping he was someone normal. I think I may have said as much.
“This is a compliment?”
“This is as close as you’ll get.”
I let Martin turn into Savinien in my heart while time lets him be happy now. The whole year is rocking from summer to autumn, back and forth between pale sun and unexpressive rain and soon the trees will turn and the nights push in and little things will die. But he will be happy.
In the car park behind the railway station close to our house two young girls find an injured pigeon. Almost all of its tail is missing—only the feathers are gone, but it cannot fly. For several days, I see it as I walk to get my train. The pigeon is being adopted, men and women from the houses round about are feeding it bread.
Then it isn’t there any more and I don’t know who to ask where it has gone. I like the flats by the station better, though. People who are pointlessly kind to injured things live there.
First and last times for this and that pass by unnoticed and life happens in the world. I tell people all about it through their radios. Except I don’t mention the pigeon or the people who helped it because they are not the kind of thing I am meant to speak about. People, individuals, are to be avoided in case they seem more important than the big lies I have to retell. I am glad this aspect of my work is unable to make me unhappy and when I come home, Martin/Savinien is there, being very good at being happy.
I might say it was even frightening to see how happiness could get a grip of him, how it left him open, undefended against pain. I’ll show you him being happy from later on in a place where it was sunny and, I suppose, considerably more attractive than Glasgow and Merkland Street where the crippled pigeon lived.
Paris. This is a memory I have from Paris, because I did, in the end, have to go there. You’ll hear about why. I am on the Ile Saint-Louis which is a small island shaped like a stumpy rowing boat, moored to another larger island by a single hoop-backed bridge. Unlike a rowing boat, it does not move—the Seine slides tight around it instead, supporting other, more moveable craft until it becomes the sea.
So I Am Glad Page 8