by Levi, Mario
Monsieur Jacques’ visits to the shop would go on, although there was one change: he would no longer have a say in the management of the company. Olga and Uncle Gregor’s presence there would, as representatives of history and the custodians of secrets, perpetuate an old and unrelinquished memory. There were certain figures in it that still clung to him and breathed raggedly. He needed this feeling for his own sake, to have faith in those deceptions and be ignorant of his delusion. The words “We can still keep body and soul together” reflected a deep-seated affection, a sense of togetherness. There were recollections that could never be consigned to oblivion; they were to remain perennially indestructible. A few days after he had uttered these words, Uncle Kirkor was to pass away silently in his home. I believe I had a fresh view then of the elements that guided one’s life. I wondered where exactly the boundaries of absurdity started. In the wake of which resentments and disappointments and who was involved in them at the time. There was no need to assume the identity of the person who had been most grieved by this death—it was Monsieur Jacques. This meant the burial of a togetherness that had lasted for over half a century in a sepulcher where no one would have access to it. Now there was another plausible reason to stay away from the shop. He had stepped onto a path in which he hoped to have a better insight into himself, to know and rediscover himself. In the history of the stiff resistance he had mounted one might encounter the traces of old legends. These legends could be found in books in languages of the ancient past. To resist resolutely, strenuously, was one of the ways of surviving on in other people’s bodies despite their reluctance to accept this. All of us had tried and interpreted this legacy. But the path he had chosen was the way of loneliness despite the existence of his women; loneliness or a path of return to the source of a track one had lost. On this path he felt he was getting nearer to himself and consequently to his God. This sort of sentiment had become rekindled in the return of many people whom I knew, whom we knew. But the impression that this attitude of Monsieur Jacques’ had left on me was overwhelming. I was to superimpose another meaning to this walk of his. His efforts might have subsumed a steady and silent journey that headed for Jerry or a deep, indestructible groove within him. Not for nothing had he said when he got up on certain mornings from his bed: “I saw Jerry in my dream last night. He fared well. I must go to light a candle today at the synagogue.” This ritual was aimed at wishing him a long life. The history of it was recorded in various languages, in different climates, and in the world of sentiment in which it prospered. The oil that burned also established links with other lives. The children of that sea would quite probably never forget this feeling. Monsieur Jacques’ progress toward his origin was not limited to these steps, absorbed as he was in books on religion. To speak to other people about the contents of these books aroused a childish enthusiasm in him. The words had endless associations. Yes, the words had endless associations. Was there simply any other way to postpone death or ignore it?
Heading for another summer
There were times when certain wrangles, bitter wrangles, anticipated with bated breath, opened new doors of possibility despite the injuries caused. Those steps taken by Monsieur Jacques were taken, to my mind, toward a solitude likely to generate a rebirth in him. One attained the voice of one’s depths by not losing sight of the great distance involved. When I consider the incidents of those days in light of such a point of view, I can say that Berti was getting closer to a new persona. Berti, whom I’d observed during those moments that followed that big wrangle and who seemed to be prepared for all sorts of losses and separations, had said that he had mixed feelings, that he hoped to be able to put them in order though it might take some time, stressing the fact that he did not regret any of his actions despite the injuries that such actions had caused in him. He seemed to feel proud of the individual in revolt within him. He had finally been able to find an outlet to express his feelings of resentment that he had been nourishing along with other resentments that he kept so far confidential. This was a handsome victory, even though a belated one, which comprised defeats as well, but which required belief in a new day, a new street, a new chamber, and a new touch. He was not wrong. Those moments were for him like morning dew despite so many deaths and departures. I must describe him walking, lost in reverie, on his way home from Taksim Square toward Nişantaşı. The attractions of the shop windows and the wan smiles he saw should also be mentioned. The recollections that associated wild fantasies in his mind prompted new steps; those recollections were the food of fantasy and those fantasies were pregnant with new memories.
I should like to see Berti now after all these years in the same street that comprised his dwelling in that small area of Istanbul where quite another thralldom was concealed. I might hide myself in a corner, and thus disguised, watch him trying to recall the people related to him while he ambled: his parents, Juliet, Nora, Rosy, Gordon, Mr. Dyson, Mr. Page, Jerry, Ginette, and Marcellina who would be projected through his bearing. It would be a spring day, a spring day which would inspire in one the desire to take a ferry boat to the islands . . . just like in the days of yore. He would be wearing pants of gabardine, a beige tweed jacket, mauve Italian patent leather shoes to match his pants, a cream shirt, and sage green hand knit necktie. I can visualize him at present as somewhat lackadaisical but well disposed. He was fed by dreams; certain sentiments were enhanced to be felt more concretely; loves were but delusions, which served him to convey his deficiencies to another human being. It may be that the essential problem lay in his wish to perceive illusory images as realities. Then, an image of Marcellina brushing her teeth in the morning would surge before him. Some people left suddenly without informing anybody of their departures in order to get lost somewhere. Some people preferred different places and dates to suit such ends. Whose step was the best and the most appropriate, which step of his had remained in whom? There was no need to know the answer to this! Because, when you awoke one morning you suddenly realized that those realities and truths had lost their former energies. Truths were nullified by other truths or lies. What remained were certain probabilities and the residue of our failure to live. Probabilities and solitudes were but the expression of our fate. Berti would perhaps be asking himself if he would not have preferred to live in a flat overlooking the Bosporus with another woman in a new relationship and if he would dare venture into such a new experience. A muffled voice would give birth once more to new contours. Personally I would prefer to remain hidden in my quiet corner, remote from other people’s eyes. I knew how the play was staged. I knew the answer to the question. In spite of all this, I would prefer muteness. Berti would never know what I knew. This was the only way for me to keep it secret in the present story.
The savor of that coffee
“This is my hangout. I pop in mostly in the evening . . . to have a cup of coffee, to browse papers and to spend some time thinking . . . although it is a bit off the beaten track,” Ginette said. She looked weary. A sentence had suddenly emerged in my mind, a sentence in which I wanted to place my implicit trust. It would be the opening sentence of our story. Words were liable to undergo changes just like emotions and expectations. The words of other people might get nearer to you after certain deaths. You might appropriate those words; you might prefer to abide in those words in order to declare that you had deserved what you had gone through and suffered justifiably for your losses, for what you had experienced and for experiences you could not bring yourself to enjoy. “Never mind! There is a price to pay for the struggle we put up with to be able to catch those moments. We have to be fully conscious of this price. In nearly every story the important thing is to discover the right place and to know how to abide in that place and in the right individual . . . ” I said. She smiled. She sensed that we had been covering distances in a story whose path we had taken and now couldn’t stray from even if we wanted to. “But who on earth is he that has created a truth or showed it as though it is ali
ve? Where do we happen to be in actual fact? To which lie are we enslaved; which is that lie that we have never been able to discover? In whose garb do we happen to be; who usurps from us our true emotions and in whose skin are we melting away and eventually dying?” she asked. To remember at the least expected moment the remains of our solitudes, of what we have left behind while entering them, and the things that we had to forego to get rid of them seemed to be preordained. We had to generate time by evasions and apprehensions. We had spent efforts in order to tell others about that time within us. Because of this we have been late in keeping up with those we have loved and because we have failed to find the right answers to these questions. There were nights that seemed to us interminable, as if there would never be a fresh dawn. I have been entertaining this feeling for quite a long time now; it has haunted me in a good many of my stories, in different guises. We had asked ourselves for whose sake and for the love of what expression in us had we tried to revitalize those words. From whom had we hidden ourselves behind those words and remained hidden in the early hours of the morning? She had held me by my hand; her look betrayed the compassion of an elder sister; a love still fresh, preserved, defying the years that had gone by. Were we in a position to describe to each other the time we had spent elsewhere for other people’s sake? She had been a person who resolutely tackled her problems and made the best of her time. She should be garbed in the identity of such a hero in my story. I felt I should refresh my confidence in men. I had felt the need to trust a human being, to be the recipient of a new viable image to be formed through new expectations. Was I letting myself be deceived once again since I preferred to be duped by appearances instead of taking up the challenge to face realities? I don’t think I’ll be inclined to answer this question. I know by now that to try to protect someone means to protect yourself. Ginette was for me a heroine I could not relinquish. I had met her at that hangout for the sake of that story that had been obsessing me. She had said that there she heard her inner voice much better and was disposed to lend an ear to it more attentively. These moments, or in other words, this walk toward her depths had a meaning hidden in an unattainable fissure of her being. I had to mention somewhere in my story that the raison d’être of that hangout was to find other cafés and snugs. That day I believe Ginette had a wry countenance. I distinctly remember the sorrow and joy that seemed to be shared on her face. I wonder if this expression could be defined by words in order to be properly described. Could one interpret it as being in the right place at the right time? This had reminded me of the story of those people whom we had met in other lands at different moments. I had recalled the history of my failure to listen and to make other people listen. I had grown mute, saying to myself I could at least smile. I had smiled accordingly. We had been severed by other lives that had thwarted our reunion and by a break during which people had led different lives that they shared with others. We were aware of the fact that we were different. We were also aware that we had to preserve that which carried us to other people so that we could faithfully play it safe. It looked as though the things that had transformed this encounter into a mutual attraction consisted of certain trivia taken from the past; petty details, vestiges of the past that were fossilized; petty details dealt with and unnoticed by outsiders. It was certainly not possible for me to hazard a guess about Ginette’s frame of mind at the time. However, I entertained the belief that what we had left at different places for different people was closely related to the history of our moments, of the moments inside us in that brief space of time. I had ordered strudel, which I had already tasted in several cafés in other cities, but the reason why I had asked for it had been to see it as more tangibly under the effect of that little legend I had in mind. In the meantime, in that café in whose nooks and crannies histories were concealed, which awoke in me once again a history comprised of other people’s words, I had ventured to set out on the discovery of certain trifles, of my own trivia, which would be transformed one day into a story. Most of the tables were not taken. It appeared that in the off-peak hours the café was not crowded. At a little distance from me there sat an elderly gentleman absorbed in the study of his newspaper who appeared to be seeking a meaning for the war of days gone by; while two women in their forties, oblivious of their surroundings, were engaged in an animated conversation. The luster of the candelabras seemed to conceal an infinite number of recollections of an infinite number of people in which laughter was mixed with grief. “I think I feel better now despite the belated returns and the belated meetings,” I said. She had understood what I had meant. “I knew that you’d love this place,” she had remarked with an attractive look and smiled. “I think my comment was flat, dull, and trite. Many a story starts with those words, don’t they? Sorry to intrude . . . But I couldn’t help it. I’m impulsive; forgive my insistence. This is not the first time, I know. Now, you’re addled, I’m sure, and hardly know where to place me and to place what I’ve just told you,” she added afterward. “Never mind! Nobody is perfect! I’ve learned to take people for what they’re worth. Don’t worry! I’m no longer interested in trying to change people and have them fit my standards,” I replied. We had mutually smiled. The sphere of our smiles also embraced our past and the people we had left behind. “This is indeed a miracle!” I avowed to myself; it was a miracle which was to reinforce the belief I entertained in the power of fate, or in meaningful coincidences at least! Our experiences and the distances that had separated us reminded me of that spell. We had within ourselves other steps that carried us to one another. My words had quite probably awakened in her certain old visions, blurred by now. There were tears in her eyes; her voice was trembling; she seemed to convey to me an affection that seemed to have remained almost intact all this time. “Oh, you were so young . . . It was quite a surprise for me to see your name and picture in the paper. It was incredible! ‘Is this that gentle, angelic boy?’ I said to myself. I had to take a closer look at your photograph. It was you! Yourself! You had changed a lot, but it was you all the same. You’ve become a writer, have you?” she asked. “This isn’t generally acknowledged, mind you! You know what, when I think of that long story I’m supposed to write, nay to live, I feel downcast that I have not even begun to live it yet. And I feel suspicious whether I’m doing the correct thing or just fooling around. On the other hand, I’m well aware of the fact that there’s neither truth nor falsehood per se. Regardless of the identity of the people we become, now and then we long to hear the sounds of the steps we take toward ourselves. To indulge in fantasy is one thing, to be able to perceive reality and to know how to live or to resign oneself to it is quite another. ‘We just live’ are everyday words that you can hear in ordinary films and songs . . . ” She had made as though she had not listened to or heard my remarks. We had arrived at a critical moment which was supposed to have been anticipated by both of us. In full consciousness of the fact that I was reluctant to lose and that I was doing the impossible, I had tried to catch a glimpse of that elder sister’s affection in her which I had been longing for. I would be better able to define this feeling in time. All that I could determine and experience during that moment was the considerable change brought on by the years in her features which I had been keeping in certain compartments of my mind to which I was deeply attached. I do not know whether my recollections had contributed to this impression or if the recollections that I wanted to bring back had. What did I care whether I recalled them or not in my desperation or in my unpreparedness! Just like emotions, words eventually found their place after certain losses, true losses. Just because of this bare fact, these moments were among those that I wanted to carry over to another time. The fact that, in that particular phase of our conversation, she said: “I was personally involved in that talk; naturally you missed me, you were supposed not to catch sight of me. Notwithstanding this fact, the person who had taken cover was not me, but you. I’d felt this. You had retreated just like you used to do in your youth, and had withd
rawn into yourself. Your countenance betrayed your defenselessness . . . ” referring to those moments. Everybody played his or her own part to the extent their respective histrionic skills allowed; they had to, anyway. Yet I had felt confused in hearing these words. This meant in a sense that I had been caught naked, unawares. It hadn’t occurred to me to think that I could live the story in this way as well. There was no such chapter; such a chapter couldn’t have been boldly devised during the days when I had a firmer belief in beginnings. The woman that a coincidence had brought to me, after the various touches of the years gone by, was a woman with a better power of intuition and foresight than any woman I had ever met. My so-called nakedness might have redeemed me from oblivion in a lost paradise and the wetness of the night’s failures. My confidence in beginnings had remained that night. I was asking myself the reason for my affectionate feelings for a woman whom I had not seen for years, and whom, to be frank, I did not know too well. The answer to this question must be concealed somewhere far beyond the need I had felt for that night. I’m aware that for some years now I had been preparing for the narration of a story. One of the heroes of that story had advanced toward the days I was living in through a dent of words and images which found their places and meanings gradually. In the course of my heading for myself, I had imagined, I think, I was sharing an old complicity, and was desirous to appear before people with my lies, fantasies, and past experiences; desirous of being able to see those people and live through their writing. We owed our days to the women from whom we’d first drawn the breath of life, the women who’d raised us in that place. They gave birth to us in those dawns for the sake of the history of all deceptions. As for the details . . . “To be frank, it hadn’t occurred to me to commence my story in this way. I felt myself compelled to narrate your story starting from the day when you had come to Monsieur Jacques’ shop as a little girl from the background of the visions transmitted to me of your parents. In other words, I had been seeking ways to live and work through other people’s voices. In order to explain the contributions of those voices to this work and to my work, I had to find different expressions, namely my own words. The work contained me; in other words, I should be able to understand better to what extent which part of me I had alienated from you. For whom was that work written? I feel sort of stranded by these questions. However, the places that move me away from you and from myself, whether I like it or not (you may call them what you like), would never have occurred to me as I began to write these first lines of the story, had I been sitting with you at a table in this café listening to your remarks about me. You had become the individual of another place and another time. Having penned this long story, at least a considerable portion of it, I would run into you during one of my strolls on a street in Tel Aviv. We would have difficulty in recognizing each other. Then, you would take me to your home and tell me about your past experiences; the fact that you were married to two men; that with your first husband you had a long marriage but an unhappy life and that you had had two sons from him; that you had got a divorce once your sons had grown; that you continued to live by yourself for a while; that in the meantime you tried to get to know yourself better; that you had ended up by marrying your second husband who was an uninhibited madcap devoted to theater and that you had shared with him a belated happiness; a belated but all the more valuable happiness. Then, you would be teaching French at some school; your profession would seem attractive to you. And then . . . ” It was as though I had come to an end. I was silent. She was smiling. It was a winning smile but one that seemed to conceal a sadness. It was as if her story had been a fairy tale, written by somebody else in a distant corner of the earth, for another time. I was resolved to write all these experiences of mine, one day, along with my lies and presumptions. In my cautious passage were also figures that I might have hidden in various nooks and crannies, as my efforts also aimed at showing myself off to my heroes and heroines whom I desired to see again. I was wondering to what extent I would be getting rid of such showers of emotion. Who would be waiting for me in those showers and to what purpose? In the perplexed state in which I happened to be, I could not speak of the evil things to which such questions might lead me. My words had brought us to the threshold of a new silence which could be filled up with other fantasies. It looked as though neither of us was expected to take a step forward. That step, as a necessary consequence of my narration, would be taken by her. “I must say you are wrong in many respects. I don’t know in which part of your story you could insert this, or how you can manage it, but my reality is somewhat different from your account of it. For instance, had you been to Israel sometime before the date you mentioned, we might have accidentally run into each other in a street; however, this encounter would likely be not in Tel Aviv but in Haifa. As a matter of fact, I spent some time there on a scholarship; I was doing some research. I’m still there; it’s been a year and a half. I did marry, not twice, once only. And I’ve not been divorced. My husband is a dabbler in art, all right; however, he’s not a theater fan; he is a violinist; he plays in the Haifa Philharmonic and often goes on world tours. He is of Polish extraction and has a past quite similar to mine. As a matter of fact, what had brought us together was this similarity. Both of us had experienced losses in our youth which had hampered our growth. I have two children; you were correct; however, one is a boy and the other is a girl. Well . . . We’ll talk this over later . . . ” she added. It looked as though the clues of a story I could not possibly fantasize of were concealed in her words. Maybe there were things that were desired to be expressed but which found no outlet; things that were withheld right at the moment of their expression; things that were regurgitated; things preferred to be kept in the shadows of the past. We had had this experience before in different climates and in different sentences. This was just one of the emotions that had brought us to the riverbank of the individuals to whom we were inextricably bonded; we could not obliterate their images from our memories. I tried to change the subject; I started talking about the image and the legend of Vienna, where we happened to be, which might be the point of departure to a new and spontaneous story. I happened to be a tourist interested in the buildings and rooms seen on a sightseeing tour. It would be the story of being in pursuit of hopes fed by trivia and wry joys, wonderful in that they were not yet shared. Somewhere there was an image of an adventure, of a little legend. This city which I was resolved to know the ins and outs of by following the tracks of some old photographs, some airs and words which set off the salient characteristics of it, this city which I was resolved to penetrate, might perhaps lead me to experience certain indefinable things not imagined so far which would light the way to the unforeseen labyrinths of a new story. Fantasies and cities . . . I felt compelled to gain access to the meaning of this togetherness, of this lingering hope. A voice was calling us from afar . . . I could describe those visions. The streets I wasn’t familiar with had led me once more to one of the squares of the city. I was at the spot where the city met with strangers. The cathedral rose before me in all its splendor. I distinctly remember it. A long and old text which I had tried to enrich with lies, each different from the other, a text which I had been trying to enliven had once consumed me with its light when I had been under the effect of such a vision. The words did not belong to me; the visions and the hopes they contained belonged to other people. All the words I tried to find in those visions for other rooms and shelters belonged to other people. Under the circumstances, I was to enter with that old countenance of mine, with that face of a tourist I was being estranged from. I was standing mute. Those voices I could hear had remained outside the text I had been imagining; once more I had been compelled to converse with people far removed from me. That was the light I wanted to leave in another city, to believe that I had left it in another city. Thus I would not be in a position to touch those colors in the pictures of years gone by. What had changed? What differed after those numerous steps in numerous foreign temples? An
emotion wasting away within me was smothering me. Right at this moment, I saw that woman when I was having this experience, the woman who was dragging me toward another faint hope. Before her were strewn hundreds of candles lit for hidden wishes which could be renewed ever after just because they were hidden. Silence reigned there for years on end. Tens of thousands of voices were heard in that silence, in that tunnel of silence, intoned in different places for different worlds. She had also lit a wish candle. On her face there flickered the light of other candles. This was for me one of those little rituals that was performed with all their prerequisites, duly observed despite any deficiencies. It was one of those elaborate rituals frequently practiced throughout the years with patience for the postponement of death. Whose voice was it? To whom was it addressed, for whose life? I was asking my fantasies once more whether I could trust them to show me the way to those stories. Where was I to be heading as an outsider, toward the individual I had lost or had failed to experience? Which different individual would I be trying to become, oblivious to all probabilities? All these questions were doomed to remain unanswered in the depths of that moment. Those questions meant our abandonment, our irredeemable abandonment, our hopelessness we failed to convey to the people we chose. Those questions were our history, our floral scents we could not share, our night walks, our morning cafés whose bedewed tables could not be touched. What had stopped me at that moment, or made me stand stock-still at that spot where these questions had brought me? It was as though there was an invisible wall before that voice which made its presence felt against my will. I had watched that woman from my lair, in her darkness, in such a mood. I could take a few steps forward, merely a few. Both of us were abiding in our respective solitudes, in our zones of security. She seemed to have in her eyes the traces of an inexhaustible longing despite the long separation. The war had ended years ago. The actors in that war had already buried with their dead what they had failed to live. Yet, she was still waiting for that person. It may have been because of this that she came to light a candle there always at the same hour. A candle . . . only one candle . . . in the hope of meeting him . . . Once this had been realized, progress would be easier. However, it was so far so good. Certain stories waited for a real presence just as is the case with those people and their relationships. After all, I had satisfied my need for an unforgettable detail to establish the permanence of the cathedral within me. The said detail should, at that particular instant, remain preserved for other moments. Otherwise, all the appearances there would gradually disappear in the outlines which I could not fit in anywhere in my life and could not account for properly—a construction in the process of moving away from me. The photograph had been shot, like all true photographs for perpetuity, for eternity and permanence. Although that woman had remained here at the said moment, there was another woman who was hailing me from my past. I had first run into her in the lobby of the small hotel which I considered an integral part of my pilgrimage in this city. She hadn’t noticed me. She appeared as though she preferred to remain oblivious to her surroundings and her furtive glances seemed to avoid all the figures alien to her, making sure they didn’t come into contact with any stranger or hotel guest. I could understand her. Those who closed the borders of a new world had wandered silently through my stories. However, what was important and should be considered from all angles was the reason why I attached such a great importance to the said borders and those beyond them, and the reason why I couldn’t restrain myself from speaking about them. The answer, the true answer was hidden somewhere, I knew. In order that I might understand the reason for this I had to take the risk of making further progress in my journey toward the darkness within me. It was not for nothing they had said that the future was already in the past. The remoteness of that woman to me felt at the same time like her closeness; it was like a stirring that had been awaiting words but failed expression. Before long I came by the knowledge that she happened to be the mother of that man who appeared to have shouldered all the burden of management for the hotel. That man seemed to be one of those heroes who had learned how to endure solitude, who called one to take part in a sad, mysterious, and at the same time, appalling stage play, whose true stories were destined to remain untold, a play that fed upon our fantasies, and what is still more important, upon our fears. He had a gash on his neck. It looked to be a deep wound that had become scarred years ago. Having checked me in in a fastidious and gingerly fashion, he had tended to me my key, saying: “I’m giving you a room that receives plenty of sunlight in the morning; if you think this might disturb you I suggest that you draw the curtains before going to bed.” For which I had thanked him as I was particular about it. “In case you feel like having a cup of coffee, I may send it up to relieve the weariness that your journey may have caused,” he added as I was heading for my room. My reaction to this suggestion had been quite positive. Not ten minutes had lapsed before he had appeared at my door with a tray which had the appearance of having been rescued from an ancient derelict house about to collapse. I had suddenly felt the need to touch, even though for a brief moment, a memory and to approach it. I had placed a couple of books on the table. A couple of books I intended to experience and read again in a different city. Among the said books was The World of Yesterday. As he was placing the tray on the table, the man said: “Welcome to Vienna!” These words must’ve meant something, for, after a short silence, he added: “You are a writer, I see?” I could answer his question with a question. What had revealed my identity, I wondered; what particular clue might have given him this idea? Which characteristic of a man who had been trying to wade about on a path that many people would envy to be treading? My answer would be met with a sad smile . . . for a moment to be relived and narrated some day . . . A person could attain certain truths only through one’s intuitions. “You wouldn’t guess it; I haven’t read a single book for years now,” said the man. “Many a hero that have had an impact on my path thus far have been consigned to oblivion and the new heroes do not recognize me . . . And yet . . . during those nights of apprehension . . . during those days when war had ripped men from this city . . . ” he continued, but had to cut it short, leaving the words that had failed him to another time. This was the fate of sentences that were to remain without having had the chance of being transmitted to other people, but to be layered elsewhere at other times and to be resuscitated. Certain texts belonged exclusively to us. “I’m perfectly aware of the consequences that people who are deported are exposed to; regardless of the reasons involved. I’ve witnessed the same bitter experience in my country as well,” I said. He had nodded his approval with a smile, before making for the door. Just as he was about to close the door, he said: “By the way, don’t let my mother disturb you. She is a habitual sleeper; as a matter of fact, she is asleep in her room right now. Presently she’ll rise and walk through the corridors before settling in her armchair opposite the reception desk only to doze off again. I couldn’t part with her.” This last sentence had reminded me of an individual I had abandoned somewhere in my story whose trace I had lost. This fact might trigger within me the power of imagination which would lead me to make use of my own sentences. Otherwise, I had no chance of escaping that sleep, that long sleep. I had seen her as I was leaving the premises. She was just like her son had described. She was peacefully asleep in the armchair facing the reception desk. Had she been round the corridors, I wonder; for, I had dozed off for two hours. When I came to, I thought I ought to take up the hotel story where I had left it. Well, the woman was smartly dressed as though she were to attend a formal meeting. She wore a dark blue two-piece suit on whose lapel was a white line. Around her neck was wound a silk scarf with red and black spots; a couple of pearl earrings completed her outfit. Throughout my stay in the hotel she would be wearing the same dress and accessories. A special outfit appeared to have been decided upon for a particular stay. Certain people were attached to their habits of which they could not rid themselves. A like sleep
I had witnessed elsewhere. There had been groundings there, a hope that could not be killed off despite all those preparations and belatedness. I had desired to experience to the bitter end once again a moment which seemed to have been mislaid somewhere within me. I had desired to live a certain moment, a precise moment yet again. To shuttle between different times was far from easy. To live the different moments in the same vision called for the transportation of voices that had to be kept muffled to the ears of others. I was striving to be as silent as possible and to keep away all traces of fear. However, the man said: “Don’t bother, she won’t hear your steps; as a matter of fact, she hears nothing anymore.” So, she did not hear anybody; perhaps having witnessed so many lives and deaths, she did not want to see anybody. She looked as though she had lived more than one time in one place where she would have been reluctant to be even a spectator of the incidents around her. The place where I had put up would hardly be qualified as a hotel. It was a sort of boarding house squeezed into a single flat or an old apartment. Thus, the woman’s wandering through the corridors at particular hours of the day became more meaningful. As a matter of fact, I was to run into her in one of those corridors one afternoon. I felt tired; I was going back to my room; I felt myself in surroundings from which I was estranged and whose borders I could not trace. The strange thing was that I had had the impression that the woman had come out of my room; that she had momentarily been wandering through the objects that made the room inhabitable. This seemed to be an integral part of my resistance against all that had been experienced and lost. This was a ritual; a desire to walk endlessly using one’s own steps in one’s own time. I had felt a shudder run down my spine. She was walking slowly, shuffling. She was hunchbacked. She seemed to have difficulty in carrying the burden of her years on her shoulders. She appeared not to have noticed me. As she ran into me in the corridor, I had to move aside, letting her pass. She cast a glance at me; big blue eyes were offset against her wrinkled face. She had her long white hair in a bun. I wondered if I was to remember her features elsewhere. I felt as though I was being charmed by the photograph of an ancient life far away from the city where I happened to be. We had been the spectators of the days we had actually been living from an indefinite time hard to be shared. This was the only communication I had dared to engage her with. She had thanked me and shuffled through the corridor without casting another look. That was the last exchange of words between us. I had not thought it realistic to expect anything further from this relationship. Once more I had preferred to remain aloof from that boundary. There, I thought I would be closer to my falsehoods. I had preferred not to talk with that woman in the cathedral as the writer or the hero of a possible tale in the hope of safeguarding this boundary. I had to leave them in their own stories for my own sake, for the sake of my own tale. Was this another sort of escape? Perhaps. However, a language I was not familiar with, which I found strange, kept me removed not only from the people of a different time but also from the city which I was trying to discover. I had to live the adventure of being a spectator on my journey. I had had a similar experience when I had caught that special particular moment at the opera house. I still remember the torso of Mahler. The mirror behind the torso was contained in other mirrors and the reflection of the crystal candelabra dragged me once again toward the visions that that inexpressible symphony conjured up in me. This was a moment lost on many a visitor. Referring to the owner of that torso, our guide had made the following comment: “He had been the director of this opera house for many years. He was one of our great composers,” in total disregard of the blank looks of the tourists to whom I had grown accustomed. I wondered whether a single sentence, void of contents, memorized and recited over and over again, could express that time accurately. If so, for whom had that time been waiting; at whom had those voices been aimed so that they might enable them to forget or delay which deaths? When we had gone down to the orchestra pit, what I had been told had generated a simple history of splendors in me. I had realized that I had severed myself from the group. I seemed to have fallen into a labyrinth replete with new pictures, candelabras, and mirrors. A gentle soul had been instrumental in guiding me through this labyrinth toward the exit. He was tall, with opaque eyes and white skin. He had been following me with his eyes; it was as though he had been there to catch me when I felt lost in this maze. His impressive low tone of voice belonged to someone who was afraid to disturb someone. He gave the impression of a fugitive, trying to escape notice, someone who was not wanted anymore at the place where he belonged, as well as of a security officer who knew the ins and outs of the building long forgotten by the other tenants of the house; a security officer condemned to protect the place. Under the circumstances, how was I supposed to describe and understand who it was? That man might have been a musician, a technician in charge of the lighting of the stage, or a designer who had experienced the true moments of the stage I had been dreaming of a while ago, who wanted to break with the place but couldn’t do so. Under the dazzling illumination that lit the stage many different characters and features could figure. Then . . . well . . . then the rest was, I think, a question of experiencing, to the extent our capacities allowed, that brief moment of encounter, as one often comes across in such stories. After all, this was the encounter between a person who would like to express his impressions of the spot he knew so well sotto voce through his glances, a person who imagined he saw an old idol in an ancient building. In this meeting were two heroes trying to find their places in this reunion, two heroes looking for their places to settle into. We had gone through corridors our usher had not guided us through in order to reach the exit. Was this a part of the game? The man had said that at the exit everybody ran into the door he deserved. Every door we saw, we succeeded in seeing a vision of ourselves as a new man, a new man we were prepared to transform into. However, in order to continue the path we had trodden, we had to risk the possibility of getting lost when the time came, and of being faced with the impossibility of return from where we had ended up. For a second, my glances had turned outside looking for an answer; but, no sooner had I turned back, then I found myself all alone, abandoned. The man had vanished into thin air in one of those corridors. There remained one thing for me to do: to take that step forward. At the place where I had popped my head out were objects displayed for tourists; in that land where people returned and could not help returning, where odds and ends were sold which they intended to take back to the people they had left behind. There was no end to the number of small torsos shaped in the same mold. Mahler had the same smile as the one in the mirror . . . It was a fact, everybody had his own door he ran into and ventured to open. Darkness was descending over the city, which was preparing itself for a new night. I suddenly noticed that I was walking in the same streets that Stefan Zweig had walked and from which he could not tear himself. A poem had been killed off by other people. Memories had been ransacked by people who would never be able to have an inkling of this poem. I strived to grasp and live that poem through my own words and for my own sake. To linger in fantasies was easier than risking certain truths less injurious to man. Yet a man could not always dally in fantasies. Well, it was destined that I should experience my second disappointment in this city, in this world I had created for myself and of whose reliability I was in need. At the end of that dialogue, I had the opportunity to have a short discussion with two young girls studying at the Faculty of Letters in the University of Vienna about our legacies and the possible legacies of some writers. One could acquire clues about the personalities of those people from the books they read or the songs they considered their favorites. This was a little test, probation for those who saw each other for the first time. Among those figuring on my list was Stefan Zweig, naturally. I came to realize that a writer who had made us a gift of the world’s past had been mislaid and consigned to oblivion in that ‘eternal yesterday’ by our contemporary, fashionable appreciation. Whom had he wanted to convey through the stories of
so many lives? Had certain figures had to pay the price of their exile for nothing? Mahler and Zweig’s paths converged toward a terminal point, toward a crossroads. We were nearing the end of the twentieth century in Vienna . . . I might go farther, but I had given up. There were many ways of giving birth to solitude.