So I Am Glad
Page 26
“I don’t, I can’t remember. You’re sure?”
“This is the road. Where is the building? It’s not here. Where is any of it? Not here. Paouff! It’s gone.”
“Oh, God. Oh, God, thank you. Thank you, God. Come here.”
“I’m very hot and moist.”
“Come here.”
“I’m here.”
We crossed over to the shady side of the road and wondered if there might be a shop nearby. The sun was so bright and we were so thirsty, if we could just buy a bottle of water we would be fine.
“Maybe we could go back to the station, they might have something.”
“No.”
“Or there could be somewhere closer, I suppose.”
“No.”
When I breathed out I was looking at parked cars and garages, a few shrubs. When I breathed in I had followed his eyes up.
Narrow green treetops. Burning blue sky.
“No.” He was already stepping across a planted border, stumbling. A simple kerbstone tripped him and he dropped, his arms fending away a threat I could not see. When he tried to stand I was there to hold him, to feel him gripping desperately at my arms.
“What is it? You don’t have to go there. Nothing can make you. What’s the matter? Please tell me what’s the matter.” His breath was light and fast, nauseous, his weight shifting wildly.
I watched his struggle for words he was losing. “Afin que . . . je . . . dear God, I’m afraid. I am in the garden.”
“No.”
“I see it . . . I see now and you, but I see the garden planted here. You’re not strong, you’re leaving.”
“Feel me.”
When I touched his hands they were cold.
“I don’t feel. Hold me hard.” His head shied up as I pressed against him. “Lead me.”
“Then come away.”
“Lead me there.”
“I can’t!”
He started forwards, dragging me with him. “Please.”
“I can’t; you’ll die.”
“I am dead. Please, please. Sweet Jesus, I have such a hurt.”
I did go with him then, guiding him on a way he could no longer understand. His feet struck the ground flat, anticipating another height, while I kept my arm round his waist and did not look at him because I was frightened. I did not want to know what he was becoming. I did not want my last memory to be a death mask.
And I did not wish to die with him, to go with him. I could not, I tried, but I could not want that and so he frightened me.
The trees were waiting for us over a small empty street. We crossed on to an open stretch of brick, bending and aching with sun.
Savinien slowed a little, tugged back, and without thinking I turned to his face; it was pale and emptying. He had to lift his hand and keep it pressed under his jaw to support it while he spoke. His breath was over-sweet.
“Thank. You.”
“Please don’t.”
“This is right. God. Is always right. In the end. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye. Love.”
“Yes, yes.”
He brushed my cheek with cold, hard lips and I turned away.
When he pushed me I didn’t understand immediately what was happening. I fell to one side, jarring my neck, rolled and saw.
I saw him rock on his heels, stagger and then tumble softly forwards. Like parting water, the bricks took him in and there was no more.
And I think I heard a sound like a little breath pushed out, but I may be quite wrong.
I stood up.
Between two blocks of flats, the high trees shivered in a tiny breeze. Flats, trees, a shabby public pissoir, a fat grey church and a scatter of clothes on brick paving. His clothes, warm now, full of the smell of him alive. I folded them, wrapped them around his shoes and followed the signs back down to the railway station. It seemed most comfortable to hold my bundle tight to my stomach and chest as I walked. I crossed the concrete piazza in front of the complicated and ugly civic building which Sannois has chosen to name the Centre Cyrano de Bergerac.
They still remember him there, where he died. I liked them for that.
“HE HAD TO GO ahead without me.”
“This is usual.”
“No, he had to go ahead without me.”
The hotelier didn’t understand and, after a while, I felt I didn’t need to make him.
In the next few days I became used to incomprehension, even my English stuttered. But I never got lost. I found I could follow the routes I had taken with my dear friend, my love. I only very slightly expected that he might come back and would need to know where to meet me.
Until the morning came for me to leave Paris, I believed I was as sad as I could bear to be. I relied on a touch of calm I could return to and then the train doors shut and movement began and I broke.
I travelled home with two bags, one of them not mine.
“JESUS loves the medium,
Loves them for their tedium,
Loves the boring and the sad,
Including me so I am glad.
Yes, Jesus loves me,
Oh yes, Jesus loves me,
Yes, Jesus loves me,
And that is all I know.”
Arthur was very good—sound, reliable Arthur. He sang and battered round the house and was living and cheerful. I knew I was not alone in missing Savinien. A door shifting upstairs, a creak in the boards and we would all have to pause before we could fully remember that we were no longer expecting anyone else.
Upstairs in my room I had Savinien’s bag. There was nothing— is nothing—I could do but keep it. It took perhaps a month before I could open it and before I found what he had written in Paris.
One of Liz’s friends made me a translation. I won’t bore you with all of it, but I do still quite often read this which is not the last entry, but towards the end.
I have seen the great sky over my city shed itself of rain and lighten to rose and young blue. All quietly, calmly, it forms and closes above like the one vast shore of an inverted sea. Now, as we lose the sun, our cover parts and fades. Were I to walk out I would tremble under the colour of my death, the infernal blue of an infinite ascent.
Jennifer, believe me, I would rest here with you this day and never go forward. So that you will know, even if I am gone and you cannot see me, even if I have been returned to the dark and the frozen existence and forgetfulness of death I will keep you with me. If I stay in God’s shadow for ever and never touch his light, I will keep your light with me. No torment will harm me, no demon will come near because I will have the extent of Hell’s eternity to need you with all the force of my soul.
You were my Paradise on earth and that was enough, I hope for no more Heaven. Love me and live without me, for the sake of the man who loved you best.
Savinien de Cyrano, écuyer, sieur de Bergerac.
You’ll have read, I suppose, the opening of this book, about all of that calmness I no longer have. Sometimes the best beginning is a lie. But I hope you’ll accept my apology for it now.
What do I have instead of the calm? A voice. I remember everything of one man’s voice, not a part of it fades.
Arthur came to me today and asked me how this was going. I told him it was almost over.
“Really? What’ll you do?”
“What, afterwards?”
“Mn hm. It’ll be odd, not having you disappear at all hours.”
“I suppose I’ll get a life. I don’t know.”
“Will you miss it, do you think? Or be glad it’s over?”
“Both.”
“Well, if you need any company, I might be about later on.”
I can see Arthur now, through my bedroom window. He’s hopping alongside his bicycle, then over and away. So now there’s no one here but me and you and this.
I will miss this and I will miss Savinien and I will be glad.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The preparation of this novel was greatly assisted by
the generous efforts of M. Philippe Guillemin of the Ambassade de France (Londres), the staff of the Bibliothèque Nationale Française and the Bibliothèque Municipale Sannois, staff at the Centre Cyrano de Bergerac in Sannois, M. and Mme. Foucher Bernard, Catherine Le Roy and Patricia Le Roy.
I must also thank my friends of the American Church in Paris for their support during the course of this book. Thanks to Joe and Karl for much help and temporary metropolitan accommodation. Thanks for their advice and encouragement are due to Barbara, Brindsley, Bob, Chris, Craig, Deidre, Genevieve, Julia, Molly, Prentis, Ros, Sharon, Terry, Tony, Yasmeen and many others of Redcliffe Gardens and its environs. Thanks also to Catriona, Denise, Jim, Jim, Joe, John, Margaret, Mike, Pat, Scott, Scotty, Steven and Stewart for their patience in Glasgow.
Readers with an interest in the life and writings of Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac might wish to consult the complete works of Cyrano de Bergerac as edited by Jacques Prévot (Belin, 1977). Maurice Laugaa’s edition of Voyage dans la lune (Flammarion, 1970) includes an excellent introduction, and Madame Denise Paulard’s booklet Cyrano de Bergerac from the Association Cyrano de Bergerac and the Mairie de Sannois will also prove informative. Above all, Henri le Bret’s introduction to the 1657 edited version of L’Autre monde still provides the definitive portrait of a remarkable author, an extraordinary man and a treasured friend.
I happily acknowledge this volume’s debt to de Bergerac’s work and to the formidable spirit which inspired it. I hope my book causes no offence to the reputation of the former or the memory of the latter.
A . L . KENNEDY
So I Am Glad
A. L. Kennedy is the author of three novels, two short story collections, and one work of nonfiction, On Bullfighting. She has received six awards for her writing, including the Somerset Maugham Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and the Encore Award. She lives in Glasgow.
ALSO BY A. L. KENNEDY
Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains
Looking for the Possible Dance
Now That You’re Back
Original Bliss
On Bullfighting
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, OCTOBER 2001
Copyright © 1995 by A. L. Kennedy
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain in 1995 by Jonathan Cape, London, and subsequently published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2000.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Kennedy, A. L.
So I am glad / A. L. Kennedy.
p. cm.
1. Cyrano de Bergerac, 1619–1655—Fiction.
I. Title
PR6061.E5952 S6 2000
823’.914—dc21
99-18515
CIP
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42783-0
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