by Неизвестный
Yes, he turned his hands to poetry.
It developed that those poetry remnants of mine, the little notebooks, thin little pages, were still in his possession. Neither thrown out nor sold. He had lied to me there by the poplar.
I did not find out all at once. At first he contrived to keep them hidden from me. But gradually I became aware of them. Scraps of paper began to flit about the house, edges sticking out of his trouser pockets, his bedclothes. He introduced a new habit. Whenever I send him on an errand he takes out a piece of paper and writes down the nature of the errand in his slow, elaborate, childish script full of spelling mistakes.
“Oblivion o’ercomes me,” he suddenly informed me one day.
My walking stick had split and I had asked him to take it for repair. At once he extracted a little notebook, one of those old notebooks I used to cherish, used to carry in my pocket in order to scribble the first draft of a poem, a line, the scrap of an idea.
I felt my throat contract, sweat break out. My hand reached for the notebook as of itself. He surrendered it instantly. I leafed through with a feeble hand. White pages, the ragged remains of many others torn out. Then a single, disjointed line in my hurried scrawl: “Oblivion o’ercomes me,” And then more empty pages, their edges crumpled.
Peace returned to me. He wished to leave the little notebook in my hands but I insisted that he take it back.
He went off.
Up in his room I rifled through his desk but found nothing. Then I took my mind off the whole thing. In the evening I found a yellowed piece of paper on my bureau and written on it in my indecipherable script:
This azure sky’s the match of man.
And the words “azure sky” crossed out with a faint line.
I sweep up to his room and there he sits, huddled in a corner, waiting for me in dull anticipation. I fold the paper in front of his eyes, place it on his desk and leave the room. The following evening, after supper, I once again find two forgotten lines on my bureau.
Futile again before thee.
This long slow winter.
And this one I had already torn up.
And the day after, a slanting line in tortuous script:
My lunacy in my pale seed.
And harsh, violent erasures around the words.
And a small vase beside the torn-out page with a red carnation from the garden in it.
Here now, I must tell about the flowers.
For the house became filled with flowers. Old, forgotten vases came down from shelves and storeroom and were filled with flowers. He would gather buttercups on his way, pick crowfoot between the houses, steal into parks for carnations and pilfer roses from private gardens. The house filled with a hot, heavy scent. Yellow stamens scattered over tables, crumbled on carpets.
Sheets of paper are always lying on my bureau; sharpened pencils across.
In this way, with the obstinacy of his feeble mind he tried to tempt me back to writing poems.
At first I was amused. I would pick up the little pages, read, and tear them up; would smell the flowers. With the sharpened pencils I would draw dotted lines and sign my name a thousand times in the little notebooks.
But soon this mania of his became overwhelming—
Those pages uprooted from my notebooks would pursue me all over the house. I never knew there had been so much I had wanted to write. He places them between the pages of books I read, in my briefcase, beneath my bedside lamp, beside the morning paper, between the cup and saucer, near the toothpaste. I draw my wallet and a scrap of paper flutters down.
I read and tear up and throw out.
As yet I make no protest. I am intrigued, curious to read what went through my mind in those far-off days. And there is bound to be an end to these little pages. For this much I know: there was an end to them.
Late at night, when I have long been buried under my bedclothes, I hear his bare feet paddling through the house. Planting pages filled with my personal untidy scrawl. Twisted, entangled letters, scattered words thickly underscored.
We maintain our wonted silence. And day after day he collects the torn-up scraps from ashtrays and wastepaper basket.
Except that the flow of notes is ebbing. One morning I find a page on my desk with a line written in his handwriting striving to imitate mine. Next morning it is his hand again, stumbling awkwardly over the clean page.
And the flowers filling every room—
And the sky filling with clouds—
My patience gave out. I rebelled. I burst into his room and found him sitting and copying the selfsame line. I swept up the remains of all the little notebooks and tore them up before his eyes. I plucked the flowers out of all the vases, piled them up on the doorstep and ordered him to take them away.
I told him: “These games are over.”
He took the flowers, went to bury them in the nearby field and did not return. He stayed away three days. On the second I ransacked the town in a silent search. (The house filled with dust in the meantime. Dishes piled up in the sink.)
In the afternoon of the third day he came back, suntanned, an outdoor smell in his clothes.
I suppressed my anger, sat him down in front of me.
Where had he been? What done? Why had he run away?
He had slept in the nearby field, not far from home. Whenever I went out he would return and hide in his room. Once I had come in unexpectedly, but had not caught him. Why had he run away? He could not explain. He had thought I wished him out of the way. That I wished to write poetry in lonely seclusion. For that was what they had said at school about poets, about their loneliness… .
Those accursed teachers—
Or could it be some heavy, some new piece of cunning.
I must decide his fate. He is beginning to waver on the border.
I armed myself with patience, talked to him at length. Well, now what do you want? I said. For I’ve done with writing. I have written my fill. Then what do you want?
He covered his eyes with his palms. Blurted out some hot, stuttering words again. It was hard to follow him. At last I gathered from his confused jumble of words that he believed me unhappy.
You should have seen him—
This feeble-brained boy, boy on the border, his spectacles slipping slowly down his nose. Big. Nearly eighteen.
Late afternoon, an autumn sun roving leisurely about the rooms. Music is coming from the house next door. Someone is practicing scales on a violin. The same exercise, many times over, and out of tune. Only in one key the melody goes off every time into some sort of melancholy whine.
Suddenly I am certain of my death. I can conceive how the grass will go on rustling in this garden.
I looked at him and saw him as he is. An unfinished piece of sculpture.
Smiling I whispered: “See, I am tired. Perhaps you could write for me.”
He was dumbfounded. He took off his spectacles, wiped them on his shirt, put them back.
“I can’t,” he in a whisper too.
Such despair. Of course he can’t. I must cut loose. Ties, tangles. Long years of mortification. One could cry. They left me alone with him. And again that dissonant whine.
“You’ll help me,” he whispers at me now, as though we were comrades.
“I will not help you.”
A great weariness came over me. I stood up, took my hat and went out, walked twice around the scales player’s house and went into town.
In the evening I came back and found him gone. I was obliged to prepare my own supper again and when I was slicing bread the knife slipped. It has been many years since I bled so.
I believed he had run off again, but he returned late at night, my room dark already. He began to prowl about the house, measure it with his steps, back and forth, much as I used to in former days when words would start to struggle up in me.
I fell asleep to the sound of his tread.
Next day he emptied out his room. All his schoolbooks, encyclopedias received as pres
ents, copybooks, everything went out. The sheets of paper and sharpened pencils he transferred to his own desk.
The sky turned dim with autumn.
I began to play with the idea of retirement. Something in the romantic fashion. To give up work, sell the house, collect the money and escape, far away. Settle in some remote, decaying port. From there to an attic in a big city. In short, plans, follies. I went to travel agencies and was deluged with colorful pamphlets. I affixed a notice to the fence: For Sale.
A light rain fell.
One Friday I went to Jerusalem to see my daughters and spend the Sabbath there.
I received a great welcome. They even lighted candles in my honor and filled the house with flowers. My grandchildren played with the walking stick. I realized I had been neglecting everybody. At dinner they placed me at the head of the table.
I talked all evening about him, obsessively. I did not change the subject, refused to drop it. I demanded a solution for him, insisted he be found some occupation. I announced my plans for going abroad, wandering about the world for a bit. Someone must take charge of him. He can be made use of, too. He may serve someone else. As long as he is taken off my hands. I want my release, at last. He is approaching manhood.
I did not say a word about the poems.
For once the husbands gave me their full attention. The girls were puzzled. What has passed between you two? We rose from the table and went to armchairs for coffee. The grandchildren came to say good night in their pajamas. Gesturing with their little hands they recited two verses by a poetess who had recently died. Thereupon they put their lips to my face, licked me and went to bed. I went on talking about him. Impossible to divert me. They were all tired by now, their heads nodding as they listened. From time to time they exchanged glances, as though it were I who had gone mad.
Then they suddenly left me. Promising nothing, leading me gently to bed. They kissed me and went away.
Only then did I discover that a storm had been rising outside all evening. A young tree beat against the window with its many boughs. Thumping on the glass, prodding around the frame. All night it tried to force an entry, come into my bed. When I woke up in the morning all was calm. A sky of sun and clouds. The young tree stood still, facing the sun. Nothing but a few torn leaves, bright green leaves that trembled on my windowsill.
I went home in the afternoon. My sons-in-law had promised to find him employment. My daughters talked about a semi-closed institution.
Winter erupted from the soil. Puddles were forming between pavements and road. My reflection rippled and broke into a thousand fragments.
He was not at home. His room was locked. I went out into the yard and peered through the window. The window stood wide open and the room appeared tidy beyond it. The sheets of paper glimmered white on his desk. Something was written on them, surely. I went back into the house and tried to force the door but it would not yield. Back in the yard again I rolled a stone to the wall beneath his window and tried to climb on top of it but failed. My legs began to tremble. I am no longer young. Suddenly I thought: what is he to me? I went in, changed my tie, and went out in search of friends in cafés.
Saturday night. The streets loud. We are crowded in a corner of the café, old, embittered artists, burnt-out volcanoes wrapped in coats. Wheezing smoke, crumbling in our withered hands the world sprung up since Saturday last. Vapors rise from the ground and shroud the large glass front of the café. I sprawl inert on my chair, puffing at the cigarette butt, dancing my stick on the stone floor between my feet. I know. This town is built on sand, dumb and impervious. Under the flimsy layer of houses and pavements—a smothered desert of sand.
Suddenly a crowd of unkempt, hairy bohemians swarm by. A crowd of young fools. We scowl, squint at them. And there is my boy trailing after them, a few paces behind the crowd, his cheeks flushed.
They fling themselves on the chairs of a next-door café. Most of them are drunk. My boy stays on their fringes, huddled on a chair. Some sort of blustering conversation goes on. I do not take my eyes off him. Someone rises, takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and begins reading a poem. No one is listening to him except my boy. The reader stops in the middle, moves from one to the other, finally hovers intently over the clipped head of my sort. A few of them laugh. Someone leans over the boy, pats his cheek… .
I am certain: nobody knows his name, nor that of his father.
Some minutes later I sit up, take my stick and go to the beach to look at the dark sea. Then home. I lie on the couch, take the paper and begin turning its pages. I linger over the literary supplement, read a line or two of a poem, a paragraph in a story—and stop. Literature bores me to tears. Abruptly I fall asleep, as I am, in my clothes. Dream I am taken away for an operation. Being anesthetized and operated on, painlessly. Wakened, anesthetized again, the still flesh dissected. At last I understand: it is the light shining in my face.
I wake, rise, shivering with cold, clothes rumpled. A soft rain outside. I go to the kitchen, put a kettle on and wait for the water to boil. Piles of dirty dishes tower over me.
A big dilapidated motorcar, its headlights off, crawls into our little street at a remarkably slow pace. It lurches sleepily along the street. At last it brakes to a creaking stop in front of our house, beside the lamppost. Loud whooping and howling from inside. A long pause. A door opens and someone is discharged, pale, confused. It is my son. His features are petrified, no shadow of a smile. Another door opens. Someone else scrambles out, staggers into the middle of the road, dead-drunk. He goes over to the boy, grasps his hands and pumps them up and down affectionately. Then squeezes his way back into the car.
More yells and screams from the imprisoned human mass. A long pause. Then a jerk and a roar, and the blind battered wreck reverses and like some black turtle inches its way backward out of the street.
My son is standing by the lamppost, at the precise spot where he has been unloaded. For a long time he stands there unmoving, his body slightly bowed. Suddenly he doubles up and vomits. He wipes his mouth with the palm of his hand and strides toward the house. Passes by the kitchen without noticing me, enters his room and shuts the door. A faint cloud of alcohol floats through the hall.
1
Winter. With the first touch of rain these lowlands strive to revert to swamp.
An old half-blind poet, who publishes a steady stream of naïve, pitiful poems and woos young poets, meets me in the street, links his arm through mine and walks me round and round under a gray sky, through wet streets. Finally, he informs me with something like a wink that he has met my son in the company of young artists.
“A fine young man. Does he write?”
Rumors reach me from all sides. Some say they torment him. Others say that on the contrary, those degenerate creatures accept him gladly. It isn’t every day that they get hold of such a tongue-tied moron. Meanwhile he has become one young poet’s minion, and messenger boy to the editor of a literary magazine.
I reproach him with harsh words but he does not listen. Abstract-minded, his eyes flitting over the cloud-hung world, he does not even see me. His face has paled a little over the past few weeks, his blunt features taken on an ascetic, somehow spiritual look. I know: one incautious word on my part, and he will break loose, roam about the streets and disgrace me. Already he has neglected the house completely. He takes his meals outside. The garden is running to seed. And I had imagined that he felt some tenderness toward the plants.
When at home, he shuts himself up in his room and throws himself into writing. We have not seen a single poem yet. But I know beyond question: he writes.
I come up against him in the hall, catch him by the sleeve and ask mockingly:
“Monsieur writes? Yes?”
He wriggles under my hand. My language startles him. He does not understand and looks at me in horror, as though I were beyond hope.
He is capable of staying locked up in his room for hours on end, wonderfully concentrated. Occasionally
he enters the drawing room, goes to the bookcase, takes out a volume of poetry or some other book and stands a long time poring over it. As a rule he never turns over the page even once. Then he puts the book down quietly and goes out. Of late he has been referring frequently to the dictionary, digging into it, turning its leaves incessantly like a blind man. I doubt whether he knows how to use it.
I finally come over and ask him what he wants.
He wants to know how to write the sky.
“The sky?”
“The word ‘sky’…”
“How? What do you mean, how? Just the way it sounds.”
That does not help him much. He stands in front of me, fearfully grave.
“With an ‘e’ after the ‘y’ or without…”he whispers.
“With an ‘e’?” I say thunderstruck. “What on earth for?”
He bites his lips.
“With an ‘e’?” I repeat, my voice shrilling to a yell, “And, anyway, what do you want with the sky?”
This one remains unanswered. The dictionary closes softly between his hands. He returns to his room. A while later he steals back to the bookcase, takes the dictionary and starts hunting through it. I jump up.
“What now?”
“Independence…” he stammers.
“Independence? Well?”
“…ance or…ence?”
Once again this inexplicable fury. The more so as all of a sudden I do not know myself how to spell independence. I pounce upon him, grab the dictionary out of his hands, search feverishly… .
Meanwhile my retirement plans are taking shape. From time to time people come to inspect the house put up for sale. I show them over the rooms, let them intrude into every corner, take them down to the cellar, around the yard, into the garden and back to the balcony. In a low voice I recite its merits, this house that I have lived in for thirty years. Then, coolly, I state the price. Before they depart I take down their name and spell out mine in exchange. They bend over the piece of paper and write my name with complete equanimity. Not the faintest ripple of recognition. Haven’t they ever read poetry in their lives?