Malina
Page 27
Malina:
“Heaven is black as pitch.”
Me:
That could be used. It sounds as if whoever wrote it were alive. At last a surprise.
Malina:
“Heaven is an almost inconceivably dark black. The stars are very bright, but do not twinkle because there is no atmosphere.”
Me:
Oh! This one’s very precise.
Malina:
“The sun is a dazzling disk pressed into the black velvet of heaven. I was very moved by the infinity of cosmic space, by its inconceivable expanse . . .”
Me:
Who is this mystic?
Malina:
Alexei Leonov, who went into space for ten minutes.
Me:
Not bad. But velvet, I don’t know whether I would have used the word velvet. Is he also a poet on the side?
Malina:
No, he paints in his free time. For a long time he didn’t know whether he wanted to be a painter or an astronaut.
Me:
An understandable difficulty when choosing a profession. But then to talk about space like a romantic journeyman . . .
Malina:
People don’t change very much. As long as something’s inconceivable, inexplicable or pitch black, it moves them, they go walking in the woods or rocketing into space, bringing their own world of secrets into the secrets of the world.
Me:
And that brings us to the world hereafter. We may as well stop letting progress amaze us. Later on Leonov will be given a dacha and he’ll plant roses, and years afterward people will smile at him gently, listening to him tell about Voskhod II one more time. Grandfather Leonov, please tell us what it was like back then, those first ten minutes out there! Once upon a time there was a moon that everyone wanted to fly to, and the moon was far away and inhospitable, but one day Alexei in Luck arrived, and behold . . .
Malina:
It’s rather strange he didn’t notice the Urals, because he was out in space doing somersaults next to the ship.
Me:
It was bound to happen like that. You’re usually doing somersaults whenever there’s something you really want to see or grasp, be it the Urals or the word for them, a thought or the words for those. I’m in the same predicament as our Grandfather Leonov, something is always eluding me, but internally, whenever I explore this infinite space inside me. Nothing much has changed since the good old days when people first started going into space.
Malina:
Infinite?
Me:
Of course. How could this space be anything but infinite?
* * *
I have to lie down for just an hour, which then turns into two, for I can’t bear talking to Malina for very long.
* * *
Malina:
* * *
You really have to clean up your room sometime, all these yellowed pages and scraps of paper completely covered with dust, someday no one will be able to find his way around in them.
Me:
What? What’s that supposed to mean? Nobody needs to find his way around here. I have my reasons for making things messier and messier. But if anyone has a right to see these “scraps” it’s you. But you won’t be able to find your way around, my dear, since years from now you wouldn’t understand what one thing or another means.
Malina:
Let me try, just once.
Me:
Then explain why an old piece of paper has resurfaced, I could even tell where I bought it from the paper’s format — A4 Standard — it was in a shop in the country, near a lake, and there’s talk of you, of a trip to Lower Austria. But I’m not letting you read it, you can only look at the words which are written above it.
Malina:
Deathstyles.
Me:
But on the next note, format A2, written two years later, are the words “Deathstales.” What was I trying to say? I might have made a mistake in writing. How, when and where? But guess what I wrote about you and Atti Altenwyl! You won’t be able to! That time a large logging truck was ahead of you, going slowly uphill along a curve, you noticed how the poorly chained logs started to slide, you saw the whole load beginning to slip out behind, toward your car, and then and then . . . So go ahead and say it!
Malina:
How do you come to imagine that? You must have been crazy.
Me:
I don’t know myself, but I’m not imagining things, because something else happened shortly after that, you had gone swimming in the Wolfgangsee with Martin and Atti, you swam out the farthest, and developed a cramp in your left foot, and then and then . . . Do you know anything more about that?
Malina:
Where did you get that, it’s absolutely impossible for you to know anything about that, you weren’t even there.
Me:
But if I wasn’t there, then you’re admitting that I could have been there, even if I wasn’t. And what about the plug? Why didn’t you want to put it in the socket anymore, that night in your room, why were you sitting in the dark, what had happened to all the switches that you had to sit in the dark so often.
Malina:
I often sat in the dark. Back then you were in the light.
Me:
No, I just thought I was.
Malina:
But it’s the truth. So how is it that you know it?
Me:
It’s impossible for me to know, so how can it be true?
* * *
I can’t say anything more, because Malina takes two pieces of paper, crumples them and throws them in my face. Although a paper ball doesn’t hurt and immediately drops to the floor, I fear its coming. Malina takes me by the shoulders and shakes me, he could also take his fist to my face, but he won’t do that, and in any case he’ll be hearing from me. But then comes a slap that brings me to my senses and once again I know where I am.
* * *
Me:
* * *
(accelerando) I’m not falling asleep on you.
Malina:
Where was it, on the way to Stockerau?
Me:
(crescendo) Stop it, it was someplace on the way to Stockerau, don’t hit me, please don’t hit me, just before Korneuburg, but stop asking me. I was the one who was crushed, not you!
* * *
I sit there with my face burning hotter and hotter and ask Malina to bring me the compact from my handbag. I step on the crumpled papers and shove them away with my foot, but Malina picks them up and carefully smooths them out. Without looking at them he puts them back in the drawer. I have to go to the bathroom after all, we won’t be able to go out with me looking like this, hopefully I won’t get a black eye, there are just a few red splotches on my face, and my heart is set on going to the Three Hussars, since Malina promised and Ivan doesn’t have any time. M
alina thinks it’ll be ok, I should put more of this brownish cream on my face, I dab a little more foundation on my cheeks, he’s right, it’ll be ok, and it will all disappear in the fresh air. Malina promises me asparagus with Hollandaise sauce and schneeball pastries with chocolate sauce. I no longer trust this dinner. As I’m applying mascara for the second time, Malina asks: Why do you know all that?
He shouldn’t ask me any more today.
* * *
Me:
* * *
(presto, prestissimo) But I want asparagus with Mousseline sauce and crème caramel. I’m not clairvoyant. I only put up with it. I was the one who almost drowned, not you. I don’t want crème caramel, I want crêpes surprise instead, something with surprise.
* * *
For life may still arise out of such desires, in these minutes, whenever my own life comes up short next to Malina’s.
* * *
Malina:
* * *
What do you mean by life? I think you still want to call somebody or maybe it’s better if three of us go to the Three Hussars. Who would you like to bring along, Alexander or Martin, maybe then you’ll remember what you mean by life.
Me:
If I still do mean anything by life . . . You’re right, someone else ought to come along. I’m going to put on my old black dress, with the new belt.
Malina:
But take your scarf as well, you know which one I mean. Do me this one favor, since you never wear the striped dress. Why don’t you ever wear it?
Me:
I’ll wear it again. Please don’t ask now. I have to bring myself to that. But otherwise the only thing I still like is this life with you, with the scarf you first gave me, with all the objects afterward. Life is reading a page that you have read, or reading over your shoulder, reading with you and not forgetting, because you don’t forget anything. Life is also walking around in this void, which has space for everything. It’s a path to the river Glan and the paths along the Gail, I lie stretched out with my notebooks on the Goria, once again I’m filling them with scribblings: He who has a Why to live for will bear almost any How. As if it had always been like that, I’m living the earliest times with you, always simultaneously with today, passively, without assailing anything or conjuring anything up. I’m just letting myself live more. Everything just has to come up at the same time and make an impression on me.
Malina:
What is life?
Me:
Whatever can’t be lived.
Malina:
What is it?
Me:
(più mosso, forte) Leave me alone.
Malina:
What?
Me:
(molto meno mosso) Whatever you and I could pool together, that’s what life is. Is that enough for you?
Malina:
You and I? Why not just say “we”?
Me:
(tempo giusto) I don’t like “we,” “one,” “both” and so on and so on.
Malina:
For a minute I almost thought that what you liked least of all was “I.”
Me:
(soavemente) Is that a contradiction?
Malina:
It certainly is.
Me:
(andante con grazia) It’s not a contradiction as long as I want you. I don’t want myself, just you, and what do you think about that?
Malina:
That would be your most dangerous adventure. But it’s already begun.
Me:
(tempo) Exactly, it began long ago, that’s what life has been for a long time. (vivace) Do you know what I just noticed about myself? That my skin isn’t like it was before, it’s simply different, although I can’t discover so much as a single new wrinkle. The same ones are always there, the ones I got when I was twenty, they’re only getting deeper, more distinct. Is that a clue, and what does it mean? Generally speaking it’s pretty clear where it’s pointing — namely to the end. But where is this clue taking you and me? Into what wrinkled faces will each of us disappear? It’s not growing old that amazes me, but the idea of one unknown woman succeeding another unknown woman. What will I be like then? I ask myself, like people used to ask in ages past, and with an equally large question mark, what will there be after death — but the question is senseless since it’s impossible to imagine the answer. I can’t reasonably imagine it either, I only know that I am no longer the way I used to be, I don’t know myself a whit better and I haven’t grown closer to myself at all. I’ve just watched one unknown woman slide further and further into another.
Malina:
Don’t forget that today this unknown woman still has something in mind, she still has someone on her mind, maybe she loves, who knows, maybe she hates, maybe she’d like to make one more phone call.
Me:
(senza pedale) That’s none of your business, that’s not part of the same problem.
Malina:
It is very much part of the same problem, since it will accelerate everything.
Me:
You’d probably like that. (piano) Witness one more defeat. (pianissimo) This one.
Malina:
I only said it would accelerate things. You won’t need yourself anymore. I won’t need you anymore either.
Me:
(arioso dolente) Someone already said to me that I just don’t have anyone who needs me.
Malina:
That someone probably meant something different. Don’t forget that I think differently. You’ve forgotten for too long the way I exist alongside you in this time.
Me:
(cantabile) Me, forget! Me, forget you!
Malina:
How well you are able to lie to me with your tone of voice and be slyly telling the truth at the same time!
Me:
(crescendo) Me, forget you!
Malina:
Come on, let’s go. Do you have everything?
Me:
(forte) I never have everything. (rubato) You’re supposed to think of everything. About the keys, locking up, turning off the lights.
Malina:
Tonight we’ll talk about the future for a start. Your room absolutely must be cleaned up. Otherwise nobody will be able to find a way through all that mess.
* * *
Malina is already at the door, but I rush back down the hall, since I have to make one more phone call before leaving, and for this reason we never make it out of the house on time. I have to dial the number, it’s a compulsion, an inspiration, I have only one number in my head, it’s not the number of my passport, not a room number in Paris, not my date of birth, not today’s date, and despite Malina’s impatience I dial 72 68 93, a number not in anyone else’s head, but I can say it aloud, sing it, whistle it, weep it out of me, laugh it in, my fingers are able to find it on the dial in the dark, without any prompting.
* * *
Yes, it’s me
No, only me
No. Really?
Yes, just about to leave
I’ll call you later
Right, very much later
I’ll call you even later!
* * *
Malina:
* * *
So tell me finally how you came across ideas like that. Because I’ve never driven to Stockerau with Atti, and I’ve never gone swimming in the Wolfgangsee at night with Martin and Atti.
Me:
I always see everything very clearly laid out before me, I picture it to myself, that’s what they say isn’t it, for example all these long tree trunks starting to slide off the truck, and I’m sitting with Atti Altenwyl in the car as they start tumbling down on top of us and we can’t back away because cars are backed up behind us one after the other, and I realize that now all those cubic tons of wood are going to come rolling down right on me.