Blue Self-Portrait

by Noémi Lefebvre

  We did well to arrive late at the Deutsche Oper, my sister said, it was a pity but not so terrible. It was either catch the beginning or the end, if the beginning we’d have to skip the end, if the beginning was missed it’d be the end, I couldn’t have stuck out that end right after the beginning, too much is too much, you missed the beginning on purpose, my sister guessed. No, I swore to my sister, but confessed immediately after, said yes, my yes comes easily when it’s a confession, and I’m quick to confess with my sister, can’t hide anything from her, it’s our identical educations, she knows me by heart, also knows my not-caring, an effect of the education my sister actually shared yet which effect she was nevertheless determined to reject certainly as soon as she could babble and even, so to speak, before her conception, she knows this trait of mine though she has never called me carefree and doesn’t essentially believe in my not-caring, has her own ideas about disaffection which don’t correspond to my mother-in-law’s, doesn’t give an ounce of credence to this fact of my essential being, anyone other than my sister would have put my late arrival at the Deutsche Oper down to my not-caring, not just my mother-in-law but absolutely anyone else, not just her but all and sundry had all and sundry been brought into it, I who am never late for anything, always early for everything, who can’t stand lateness under any circumstance even when justified here I am late for the Deutsche Oper, not ten minutes late nor half an hour late but late by two hours.

  In the underground my sister says it must be a Freudian error, of course it is, I know the Deutsche Oper stop, I’ve taken this line a hundred times and I know where the Deutsche Oper is but was incapable of finding it, as if locating the Deutsche Oper was not so obviously a piece of cake, the Deutsche Oper station indicating precisely where one goes for the Deutsche Oper and no other opera house, and the Deutsche Oper never having changed location, the Deutsche Oper in front of the station Deutsche Oper never anywhere else, rooted there since forever on Bismarckstrasse which I roamed up and down nearly twenty-five years ago and roamed again fifteen years ago, up and down, with, each time I roamed it, time to locate the building that’s not to be confused with that of the Theater des Westens, two separate buildings for two separate art forms, and often time to find my bearings on Bismarckstrasse thanks to this building, having taken this underground line under Bismarkstrasse a hundred times, having often got off the train at this stop, Deutsche Oper, didn’t recall the start time for Tännhauser, booked tickets, paid for tickets for excellent seats, yet didn’t remember the time, not only didn’t remember but didn’t want to be bothered about when it started, a subconscious act of resistance, not one act in fact but two, lucky you’re still allowed in in the middle of the third act. You don’t owe me a penny, I said to my sister, a bare half of Tannhäuser isn’t Tannhäuser, never mind that barely half was enough for us. Don’t think of paying me back. Half of Tannhäuser and you don’t get the effect at all, I conceded to my sister. I know, my sister replied, that’s why. I didn’t ask that’s why what because my sister and I had the same education, she guesses all my plans even those I don’t know I have, like the one of completely missing out on Wagner’s effect, his Wirkung, I translated simultaneously. I wouldn’t have missed a single second of Ligeti’s String Quartet no. 1 for the world, the fact is that I arrived at the Philharmonic an hour early, the excellent seats I’d reserved at the Philharmonic were occupied from the first movement onwards by my sister and I whereas those, equally excellent, reserved at the Deutsche Oper were only occupied by us after the interval and only so to speak to the minimum, Wagner frightens me, I told my sister, I shrink from the Wirkung, I always put it off. That said I don’t really know Wagner, nor Ligeti really, being busy with the buttressing of my soon-to-be failed marriage I had renounced both former and latter, given up on any relationship with Wagner as with Ligeti, given up as it turned out all extra-marital relationships, whether with the former or the latter or with anyone else, hadn’t the first notion of a potential relationship with Wagner or Ligeti, occupied myself day after day with the fortification of this marriage to the de facto exclusion of music, chamber or otherwise, you keep up the odd extra-marital relationship at the start and then less and less, the first to go are the furthest away then little by little, the nearest and dearest too, now and then you remember the first ones then forget the very existence even of the most recent, to forget is not to recognize, I don’t recognize anything, I was thinking on the steps inside the underground, anything about music whether close-up or far away so recognize nothing of Tannhäuser which I nevertheless claim to know, playing tricks on myself and missing the overture which I don’t recognize but which I used to once. I did know the overture I told my sister, why of course, my sister said, you knew it, Papa always listened to the overture while he was alive, when Papa was alive, do you remember how alive he was in his car, Papa, conducting the overture with his right hand and steering with his left, how could I forget, it’s fresh as day my sister said, and nothing will ever stop us remembering that, Papa and the Tannhäuser overture, first Papa and us and the overture, not Tannhäuser here or there, neither at the Deutsche Oper nor the Staatsoper but as conducted by Papa, way back when, when he was living life to the full, remember, he was living to the full by daybreak already, don’t get your knickers in a twist, my sister said who never lets anyone tweak hers, but I went on getting them twisted, I judge Wagner by his reputation but not Ligeti, Wagner’s Wirkung makes me afraid of Wagner, Ligeti’s doesn’t put me off Ligeti, and yet I booked those tickets for Tannhäuser with the sole aim of undergoing Wagner’s famous Wirkung, indeed I wanted to feel the famous effect generally known as Wirkung, a transformation not an effect, at the Deutsche Oper which isn’t Bayreuth but still more suited to Wagner than Papa’s old banger, to undergo the Wirkung pure, unmediated and without preparation must be possible at the Deutsche Oper, yet I’d only partly experienced it due to lateness. Well played said my sister just as I was thinking it.