* * *
Note 6 – With the quite artificial excuse of a dream narrative, introduced moreover without much stylistic precaution, Ascher here returns to the theme of his hallucinatory double, which he obviously intends to make use of in the subsequent part of his report. He might well find it, for instance, a convenient method of exonerating himself. But what awakens a certain mistrust, on the contrary, with regard to the entire Secret Service Division (and, a fortiori, my own personal suspicion), is that our narrator manages at the same time to conceal, in the childhood memory relating to his mother’s hardly touristic trip to Berlin, precisely what might be a firm basis for the hallucination in question: I mean the identity of the lost relative the two of them are attempting to find. It is difficult to imagine that the scrupulous Ascher is speaking in entire good faith in this so-called defective memoir, miraculously blurring the crucial element of his story. Or else we have here a particularly spectacular case of Oedipo-Freudian forgetting! The mother dragging her little boy on so dangerous an expedition had no cause to conceal from him the reason for it, since the matter concerned him so flagrantly. Lastly, the transformation into “a relative” of someone who was in reality a grown man, living with a very young child, seems to us to reveal a deliberate, indeed long-premeditated mystification.
* * *
Later, in another world, Wall awakens. He kicks off the white feather bed, which is making him too hot. Abruptly sitting up, he wonders what time it might be. The sun has risen, rather low in the sky, of course, since it is winter. The sky is clear, rather bright for the season. Wallon has not closed the double curtains of his window, which overlooks the end of the stagnant canal. He supposes he has slept a long time, a sound, satisfying sleep. He has gone to the bathroom only once (on account of the beer abundantly consumed at dinner). His recurrent dream of the undiscoverable toilets has long since ceased to disturb him; moreover it seems to him that the dream content has gradually become normalized, so to speak, in a virtually rational narrative coherence which robs it of any offensive power.
Wall picks up the map of Berlin left on the night table and unfolds it completely. It is just like the one he had lost (where and when?), and in good condition like that one, with the same accidental crease in one corner; this copy offers, in addition, no more than two very emphatic red crosses made with a ballpoint pen: one marking the dead end of the Feldmesserstrasse, which is scarcely surprising here in this inn, and the other, more disturbing, the intersection of Jäger-strasse and the Gendarmenplatz. These are the two points where the traveler has spent his last two nights. Musing, he goes to the uncurtained window. Just opposite, the childhood memory is still there, firmly fixed in its exact location. Only the light has changed. The low houses, which last evening received the pale yellow light of the setting sun, are now in shadow. The wreck of the phantom sailboat has grown darker, more threatening, bigger too, it seems.…
The first time he was conscious of the image, during that very early buried journey, at the beginning of summer probably, since the episode would have to be placed around vacation time, that looming black wood skeleton must have frightened the overemotional, sickly, impressionable, haunted child clinging to the protective maternal hand. Doubtless his mother had been pulling him a little, for he had been tired by their long excursion, at the same time that she was keeping him from losing his balance on the uneven paving stones that must have seemed hillocks to his frail six-year-old legs. He was already too heavy, though, for her to be able to carry him in her arms for any length of time.
What especially disturbs Wallon in his precise, obvious, almost tangible though defective reminiscences is not so much no longer knowing whom his mother was looking for—a thing which today seems of no importance to him—as the location of this search in Berlin, which in any case remained quite futile: they had not managed to find the person they sought. If my memory serves, his mother was taking him that year (around 1910) to visit an aunt by marriage, a German woman who owned a seaside villa on the island of Rügen; the interruption of the journey there, the futile wandering, the dead-end canal with its cemetery of wrecked and rotting fishing boats, was more likely to be situated in a small seaside town in the neighborhood: Sassnitz, Stralsund, or Greifswald.
Yet on reflection, coming from France by rail, a stop at Berlin was inevitable in order to change trains and, doubtless, stations as well, since the capital, like Paris, then as now, no longer possessed a central station. The trajectory from Brest with those two interruptions in a long train trip represented in those days, no doubt about it, a veritable exploit for a young woman alone, burdened with beach luggage and a child as well.… Despite the distance separating his natal soil from the coast of Pomerania—the cliffs of the Baltic Sea with their huge fallen boulders, their rocky promontories, their creeks lined with pale sand, their pools bordered with slippery seaweed where he had pursued, during that one summer month forty years before, his childhood pastimes, made all the more solitary because the language separated him from the boys and girls tirelessly building castles doomed to tidal engulfment—everything henceforth mingles in the traveler’s mind with the beaches, the granite rocks, and the dangerous waters of Nord-Finistère that permeate his entire childhood.…
As daylight fades, striding across the narrow, still-dry part of the sandy crescent which the receding tide gradually abandons, he follows the successive wreaths of the line of seaweed marking the limit reached by the last high tide. On a bed of still-moist ribbons of kelp, torn loose by the ocean, lay all sorts of debris, the hypothetical origins of which give free rein to the imagination: already-dead starfish, rejected by the fishermen; fragments of crustacean carapaces or skeletons of deep-sea fish; a bilobed tail, fleshy and so large that it must have come from a dolphin or a mermaid; a celluloid doll whose arms had been torn off but who was still smiling; a corked glass flask containing the remains of some sticky liquid, red despite the oncoming darkness; a high-heeled dance slipper still attached to its sole, its vamp covered with metallic blue sequins glistening with an improbable luster.…
Second Day
While he puts away, with his usual care, the contents of his large dispatch case, Boris Wallon, occasionally known as Wall, suddenly remembers a dream he had that night, during which he discovered, among what he had packed for traveling, the tiny jointed porcelain doll he had used (and abused) in his childhood games. The origin of its unexpected oneiric reappearance seems obvious to him: it was that signboard of a Püpchen shop glimpsed yesterday at the doorway of the comfortable villa where Dany von Brücke used to live, or perhaps still lives. But in that case, after the attack he has just escaped, if he is still alive, the man certainly will avoid returning to this legal domicile, long known to his killers. The most elementary prudence now compels him to disappear.
Coming downstairs into the empty dining room for breakfast, Wallon tries to organize his ideas and to determine what he actually knows about this affair in which nothing occurs as planned, so that if possible he can establish his own order of investigation, and even of maneuver. There can no longer be any question of anything but a personal project now, since his mission has come to an end—at least temporarily—with Pierre Garin’s laconic dismissal. Maria, mute and smiling, after giving his wrinkled suit a quick once-over with a hot iron, cheerfully serves the various constituents of a solid German breakfast, which he devours with a ravenous appetite. Neither of the Mahler brothers puts in an appearance today.
Outside, there is the kind of veiled, wintry sunshine which never manages to warm the chilly air, stirred by a light and capricious, echt Berlin breeze. Wall feels in good spirits too, even more than yesterday when he finally managed to cross the American checkpoint. Relieved now of his burdensome dispatch case, he feels carefree and ready for anything. Observing the things around him with the detachment one grants an old film which is missing several reels, he walks along briskly, without paying too much attention to a vague but persistent feeling of empty-headedness,
the kind of torpor unlikely to produce anything very effective.… What does it matter, from now on?
On the other bank of the stagnant canal, a fisherman is holding an invisible line in his right hand, half-extended to detect hypothetical nibbles, and sitting on a wooden kitchen chair brought outside for the occasion from a nearby house and positioned at the very edge of the quay, just above the first step of a stone stairway cut into the embankment and leading down to the water. The murky look of this water, encumbered with all kinds of minor rubbish floating on its surface (corks, orange peels, iridescent patches of oil) or just below it (sheets of writing paper, red-stained linen, etc.), raises some doubt as to whether any fish could survive in it. The fisherman is in shirtsleeves, his trousers rolled above his ankles and his feet in espadrilles, a summer outfit hardly compatible with the season; one might identify him as an extra, poorly served by the costume designer. He wears a big black mustache and seems to be looking around with a grim expression, beneath a soft cap with a visor over his eyes, the kind laborers wear in Greece and in Turkey.
Quite unself-consciously, the so-called fisherman gradually turns to stare after this unlikely bourgeois in a fur-lined jacket promenading past the housefronts on the opposite bank—that is, on the even-numbered side—stopping in the middle of the drawbridge, the rusty mechanism of which no longer permits it to function, contemplating the ground with prolonged attention where a residue of red lead paint has left between the disjointed paving stones certain sanguine traces, as if seeping out of subterranean depths through a triangular hole at the junction of three very smooth metal plates, then spreading in various directions in long sinuous streaks, marked with sudden turns, intersections, bifurcations, and blockages where a careful gaze studying their uncertain progress—discontinuous and labyrinthine as it is—readily identifies among broken rods and rings a Greek cross, a swastika, factory stairs, the crenellations of a fortress … the musing traveler finally straightening up to examine this tall metal structure, blackish and complicated though quite useless now, which once served to raise the mobile pavement and grant barges access to the Landwehrkanal, its two powerful semicircles thrusting into the sky as high as the nearby roofs, each topped by a massive counterweight in the form of a heavy lead disk, its rounded surfaces similar to the more modest shape of the letter scale with its faded gilding inherited from Grandpa Canu when Mama died, now sitting on my worktable. Between me and the letter scale are scattered in apparent disorder the many pages covered with a delicate, much-crossed-out, and virtually illegible script constituting the successive drafts of the present report.
To the left, as to the right, of this huge mahogany desk—with its pompous Napoleonic ornamentation described elsewhere, and ever more encroached upon, on either side, by the sneaky piles of existential paperwork accumulating in layers—I now leave closed all day the shutters of the three windows overlooking the park, to the south, the north, and the west, in order not to have to look at the obscure disaster I’ve lived in the midst of since the hurricane which ravaged Normandy just after Christmas, unforgettably marking the century’s end and the mythic transition to the year 2000. The splendid pattern of the branches, the fountains, and the lawns has given way to a nightmare from which there is no waking, compared with which the historic damages—as they were called at the time—of that tornado of ’87 previously described in my text seem trivial indeed. It will take months and months this time, if not years, merely to clear away the hundreds of giant tree trunks broken up into an inextricable tangle (crushing the young trees so lovingly cared for) and the enormous stumps torn out of the ground, leaving gaping holes, as though dug by the bombs of an incredible blitzkrieg lasting all of half an hour.
I have frequently mentioned the joyous creative energy which humanity must ceaselessly expend in order to restore the ruined world by means of new constructions. And so I am returning to that manuscript after a whole year of movie writing interspersed with all too many journeys, only a few days after the destruction of a notable part of my life, finding myself back in Berlin after another cataclysm, under another name, assigned a false occupation and carrying several false passports and performing an enigmatic mission always on the verge of collapsing, nevertheless continuing to struggle in the midst of doublings, ineffable apparitions, recurrent images in reiterating mirrors.
It is, at this moment, with a livelier gait that Wall continues on his way toward the end of our Feldmesserstrasse with its double quay, turning then quite noticeably in the direction of number 2, where the hypothetical doll shop for children and adults is located. The 1900-style ironwork gate is ajar, but the traveler dares not push it any farther open; he prefers to indicate his presence by pulling on a little chain hanging on the left side of the gate, thereby ringing a little bell, though its vigorous and repeated utilization does not produce any perceptible sound nor any human manifestation.
Then Wall looks up at the façade of the attractive villa, where the central window of the second floor is wide open. In the open recess appears a female person whom the visitor at first takes for a shop-window mannequin, so perfect from a distance does her immobility appear, the hypothesis of her being shown facing the street seeming moreover quite likely, given the commercial nature of the premises as announced on the signboard at the door. But suddenly receiving a brilliant glance of the eyes, which are fixed upon him, while a faint smile parts the lips in their pouting expression, Wall must acknowledge his mistake: despite the cold which she must be enduring in an outrageously flimsy garb, the doll—may God forgive me!—is a young girl of flesh and blood staring at him with ostentatious effrontery. The girl, with her rumpled blond curls, perhaps just getting out of bed, is, it must be said, very mignonne, insofar at least as this French adjective, with its connotations of charm and delicacy, might consort with her youthful beauty, her immodest posture, and her triumphant airs, which, on the contrary, suggest a determined, adventurous, even aggressive character, without the fragility her tender age (some thirteen or fourteen years) would normally suggest.
Since she hasn’t deigned to reply to the vague nod he has just given her, Wall turns his eyes from the disturbing apparition, more or less abashed by this unexpected welcome. Hence it is with an even more emphatic determination that he deliberately pushes open the gate, crosses the narrow garden, and makes for the stoop, mounting the three steps with a firm stride. To the right of the door, against the brick jamb, there is a round bronze bell, its nipple polished by visitors’ fingers, above the traditional plaque engraved with the name “Joëlle Kast.” Wall presses the button decisively.
After a long and silent moment of waiting, the heavy carved wooden door is opened with—apparently—some reluctance, and an old woman dressed in black appears in the doorway. Before Boris Wallon has had time to introduce himself or to formulate the slightest word of excuse, the chaperone informs him in a low, confidential tone of voice that the sale of dolls does not begin until afternoon, though it continues through the evening, which, adding to the precociously erotic scene offered at the window of the upper floor, reinforces in our out-of-bounds special agent the suspicions evoked earlier. He then utters the sentence he has just prepared, in a correct but doubtless somewhat labored German, asking if Herr Dany von Brücke can receive him, although he has no fixed appointment with the man.
The ancient crone with the severe expression then opens the door wider in order to get a better look at this traveling salesman without a suitcase whose general aspect she regards with a sort of incredulous amazement which gradually turns into a distinct expression of terror, as if she were afraid she was dealing with a madman. And she abruptly shuts the door, its thick panel slamming closed with a loud thud. Just above, out of sight, the shrill laughter of the invisible young girl, whose image nonetheless persists, seized by a sudden gaiety for some reason which escapes me, continues without re straint. The high-pitched peals are interrupted only to give way to an appealingly rich voice, uttering in French a mocking exclamatio
n: “Pas de chance pour aujourd’hui!”
The rejected visitor leans backward, tilting his head: the brazen gamine is silhouetted against the sky, leaning forward over the railing, her transparent nightgown more than half-unbuttoned, as if, sleeping late, she had hastily begun taking off her doll’s nightie to slip into something more proper. She shrieks: “Wait! I’ll let you in!” But now her whole body, even less clothed than before (one shoulder and the meager bust are now revealed), appears in the empty space in an improbable, dangerous, desperate manner. Her eyes widen over glaucous depths. Her excessively red mouth opens too wide to utter a scream, which cannot be heard. Her slender torso, her bare arms, her head of blond curls twist and turn in all directions, struggling, writhing in a thousand increasingly excessive gesticulations. It seems as if she’s calling for help, as if some imminent danger is threatening her—leaping flames, the vampire’s sharp teeth, a murderer brandishing a knife—coming inexorably closer up in her bedroom. She is willing to risk everything to escape—actually she’s already falling, an interminable fall, and she’s already lying crushed on the gravel path of the little garden … when all of a sudden she withdraws, sucked back inside by the bedroom itself, and immediately vanishes.
Repetition Page 5