Blue Self-Portrait

by Noémi Lefebvre

  Crouched in the semi-darkness of the upper circle, second row, for we couldn’t hope to attain our excellent seats before the interval without sparking a major contra-Wagnerian incident, I was struggling with the handle of my Woolworths plastic bag which I couldn’t get off my wrist, each attempt at disentanglement of Woolworths from my person producing a horrifying storm of plastic-bag rustle, I had to wait for the brass to come in to disengage my wrist millimeter by millimeter, luckily, I considered, it’s not a Mozart divertimento, I was simultaneously attempting to undergo the full Wagnerian impact in the least calculated and most immediate way, tried to allow myself to be intimately moved by the Leitmotif, almost managed it but not quite, occasionally I was pretty sure, trying to feel the full unmitigated Wagnerian effect, there, that’s it, that’s the true-blue Wagnerian effect, but with these words in my head could hear myself thinking them and that in itself created a severe anti-Wagnerian distancing to be thinking about the Wagnerian effect even while undergoing it. I tried to think of myself as a cow, given my musical affinity with cows since the notorious nocturnal bellowing which had even surprised me in my car and somewhat frightened me, I thought the Wagnerian effect on a cow would be Wagner’s effect in its purest condition, that Wagner’s music and the cow’s lowing might have something in common perhaps surprise or alarm and that the cow was therefore the animal most able to understand Tannhäuser, that an audience entirely made up of cattle at the Deutsche Oper, a herd of cattle all recently parted from their calves and gathered in the Deutsche Oper would have made the best possible audience, for no single cow would have been trying to feel Wagner’s effect nor have sated themselves with the famous Wagnerian effect, rather the cattle in general and each individual cow would have undergone the full Wagnerian effect without having a single thought on the subject, whereas the Deutsche Oper’s audience naturally had a much more problematic experience of Tannhäuser, an experience packed full of intelligence no matter how sensitive and stuffed with a wealth of Wagnerian musical references rendering direct sense experience impossible. However absurdly diminutive the claims of human intelligence, it is always to a greater or lesser extent human, I concluded still trying to shed my own humanity. I finally managed to detach my wrist from the Woolworths bag, a first step, now I needed to slough off all human thoughts and replace them with bovine thoughts, the setting is appropriate, I felt, noting the papier-mâché castle, the backcloth of mountains and sky and the choir done up in medieval garb, here we were fairly gone rural and perfectly accessible to a cow, the castle is a castle, the mountains mountains, the sky a sky, medieval times medieval times, a rabbit would have got it so a cow quite as well as a rabbit, this is a set equally suited to rodents as to ruminants, I’ve almost managed bovinely to submit to the Wagnerian effect when my sister who’s a violinist, not only a violinist but a musician, leaned up to my almost-cow ear to complain about the awful flute which was buggering up every one of her entrances, that flautist should be sacked, said my sister, better Tannhäuser without a single flute than that flute in Tannhäuser, it’s unreal a flute so out of tune, she said in my ear with such disgust that the humanity sitting nearby reacted with a show of perfectly intelligible annoyance, the human public was less bothered by that bugger of a flute than by your remark on the flute’s buggering up, I whispered to my sister who shrugged, I’m right, my sister said, and the audience is wrong. I get a huge kick out of my sister’s capacity for fearlessly stating that she’s right when she’s right and also for blamelessly pointing out that the audience is wrong when it’s wrong. This incredible facility my sister has for asserting she’s right and the rest are wrong is what I most like about my sister, truly it’s the very essence of my sister, not once has my sister compromised in her determination to have right on her side even in opposition to the audience, she’s never been a victim of the education for collective happiness which she has nevertheless shared with me yet which never had the effect on her that it has always had on me. From judging once more there in the Deutsche Oper, at the exact moment when I was stupidly about to transform myself into a cow, not that the animal is stupid but the transformation would be, treating the Opera House as a cowshed was all right for the Third Reich, I was just beginning to consider this when my sister’s capacity for never giving in brought me up short without, however, returning me to my initial human state which I couldn’t guarantee was 100 percent stupidity-free but that’s not the issue at hand. Neither kine nor human, I floated in a state between, I was trying not to hear the flute but the flute was all I could hear, was trying to hear Tannhäuser despite the flute but could hear nothing but that flute buggering up, and through the flute-playing not the flute itself but my sister’s revulsion, she alone with right on her side no matter the cost and that all sent me to the depths of despond. Every time my sister’s education looks like a failure, my own education seems to me some horrifying success story and I slide into a state of melancholy.

  No sign of melancholy about the pianist when he again mentioned the Auditorium audience, briefly mentioned, mentioned fleetingly, briefly because we were in the Café Einstein and it was by way of a rejoinder to me but fleetingly also because it wasn’t in the least important, fleeting as a butterfly he recalled the audience’s reaction, I still haven’t understood their reaction, the pianist said smiling, he’d handled the reaction well, had been booed and hissed, had provoked scandal in the Auditorium not only as the pianist but also as a composer, had bowed to his booing audience, shaken the conductor’s hand and congratulated the players and bowed again, then left the stage in a deluge of boos as if it were applause, I in the audience already sick at the thought of the pianist’s feelings and also identifying with the audience and dying of shame, identifying with the pianist and dying of humiliation, he not dying of anything and leaving the stage as if to applause, not upset but reassured, indifferent neither to the boos nor the hisses but encouraged to continue on his own path. The audience didn’t understand, the pianist decided, they simply didn’t listen, composing a piece with the sole aim of pleasing my audience was not my intention either, would have been impossible, would have meant selling my soul as a composer, would’ve put an end to my life as a composer, not only as a composer but as a pianist too, and not only as a pianist but as a man even, so the pianist on returning to his dressing room and his life’s work as a man, a grand statement for me but the only one that’s worthwhile. Alone in his dressing room he told himself, man to man, I’ve written nothing of which I could be ashamed. This is how one becomes a man alone, he realized, standing before the great mirror opposite the Bösendorfer, looked unsentimentally at this incidental portrait and saw himself alone and handsome on the other side, just as he had always hoped to be. Later he’d discussed, it was evening on his birthday, fleeting as a butterfly, deep in conversation with the evening’s accompaniment, the Auditorium audience’s reaction, he’d never before encountered such a hostile reaction, had been even more shocked by their reaction having had faith, he added, in that audience, would never have expected such mediocrity of that audience, had almost expected something over and above ordinary applause, a firestorm of applause, not that he’d ever depended in any way on weather phenomena to seal his choice to compose but because his music, he knew, was the spirit of resistance, that this spirit of resistance was indeed, in his conception, the spirit which could best figure this city and therefore the people of this city therefore the audience not in general but of this Auditorium in particular he’d imagined as made up of sons and daughters of first-generation Résistants. The daughters and sons wouldn’t only have appreciated his music because it was announced in the program as “music of resistance” but would have sought, and found because they sought, the resistance in the music, in the structure of the piece, in its compositional technique, its instrumentation, in its form and heart. Instead of which he had been booed and hissed by the regular patrons who being sons and daughters of first-wave non-Résistants weren’t as a rule in the least bothered
about resistance in general or by the Résistance in particular and had no education other than education in non-resistance. They’re all yea-sayers, Jasager he translated, a bunch of Jasager. Now the usual accompaniment had gone up to the pianist and taken his hands, incredibly relaxed hands while the rest of the pianist’s body except those two extremities was stiffer than a stiff, had kissed the palm of one then traced from there along the beloved forearm then up to the shoulder beloved likewise, embraced the pianist and taken the pianist like a baby into her arms, had soothed the baby with such right and benevolent words. Beethoven and Wagner and Schoenberg were booed and hissed so many times you can consider this experience a mark of honor, the accompaniment murmured into the composer’s ear then stroked the composer’s hair, the composer’s neck, kissed his neck then kissed the whole of the composer, inserted her leg between the composer’s legs, and finally made love to the composer. Laid out on his back with the accompaniment moving gently harmoniously tenderly elegantly upon him and without haste, he on his back hands behind his head then hands on the accompaniment’s hips both of them eyes on the ceiling, letting the accompaniment ride and letting himself be overtaken by this emotion without acceleration was no easy hack as the accompaniment understood perfectly doing her amazon turn so lightly as to be barely there, he had these three initials in his head, BWS, no idea why the initials and not the full names, BWS in historical order not alphabetical, he closed his eyes because the accompaniment was probably picturing herself making love to BWS but was only making love to him who was neither B nor W nor S but himself, the concern came to him that if he’d been himself alone unassociated with BWS, alone being booed and hissed, without antecedents neither B nor W nor S nor anyone else, the accompaniment wouldn’t now be on top of him, moving with such terrifying benevolence and understanding. He closed his eyes so as not to disappoint the accompaniment who was making love so well to B, to W and to S at the same time as to him who was only himself and not the other three, couldn’t find the courage to make the accompaniment get down without this hurtful dissonance resolved, absented himself like this, in a muddled pleasure, in order not to contradict any of that sexually embarrassing musical lineage. I went over and over all the possible explanations but I didn’t hit on anything, said the composer the accompaniment now descended and he extended, having a smoke in bed for once, knowing that for once the accompaniment wouldn’t object, would keep quiet about smoking on account of B, of W and of S who were still floating in the bedroom air like figures of immortality. Hit on what? the usual accompaniment asked in her tiny husky after-sex voice. The reason for that reaction from the audience, the composer said again not wanting to specify but repeating it anyway. Their reactionary mindset, the accompaniment replied, turning out the bedside light, abandoning the composer in that negative and unproductive solitude that was no good for him, abandoning him but keeping one arm laid over his chest. He had to wait for the accompaniment to fall asleep before he could gently free himself from this habitual arm, one mustn’t assume a presence because of an arm or a leg left behind, the pianist knows. This is how one becomes a man alone, the pianist realized, not going to sleep. The Blue Self-Portrait hung on the wall, the hum of contemporaries behind the wall. Ahead of the wall the West, behind the East, if one not the other, you had to choose, Deutsche Oper or Staatsoper you had to choose, Café Einstein or Brecht’s house you had to make a call, one side of the Spree or the other, downriver or upriver, now things are better we can choose but actually no we can’t, between Berlin and Berlin there’s no choice, you can generally tell the difference between Berlin and Berlin but not always, it gets harder, really there’s no difference any more.

  I have to go for a pee, said my sister, first-class at piss, a pee in front of the Reichstag and behind the Brandenburg gates, a pee in the Tiergarten, a pee at the Sony Center, a pee in Nikolaiviertel, in front of the Bauhaus Archiv a piss and at the Philharmonic, at the Deutsche Oper, on the Kurfürstenstrasse, on the Unter den Linden avenue pee in front of the Bellevue again and there right away without waiting in the rain on the bank of the Spree just after the little bridge the need takes her so there she goes, but not at the Nationalgalerie no, the only place where my sister has not pissed although I have, it was an hour before the Kaiser Café in the Sony Center, I went to pee in the Nationalgalerie, went into the Nationalgalerie specially for that not to see the exhibition about melancholy. Look it’s the exhibition, I said to my sister in front of the Nationalgalerie, we could go and see it, yes we could, my sister replied who had a melancholy tendency. The exhibition had been at the Grand Palais before sprouting anew at the Nationalgalerie, I had walked past the Grand Palais and thought melancholy, hm, why not go see that but I’d let it go, every day putting it off to the next, walking past the Grand Palais, melancholy tomorrow, thought I must go see the melancholy but had put everything off while swearing I wouldn’t miss it, I put it off every time so that in the end I missed the melancholy I was just too late, once over it’s over, on balance relieved to have missed it, having practically forgotten melancholy and even forgotten having missed it yet now I’m here brutally confronted with melancholy in the beating heart of Berlin, a stone’s throw from the Philharmonic, practically next door to the Staatsbibliothek and not much further from the Sony Center where waiting for me though I didn’t yet know it was my tragic destiny, confronted once more with the decision of going or not going, the possibility of a detour via melancholy before facing the tragic destiny crossed my mind, look there’s that exhibition from the Grand Palais at the Nationalgalerie, I said to my sister, so the question of melancholy reared its head again when I thought I’d decided it once and for all by dint of my apathy which almost instantly made an enthusiasm for melancholy seem vulgar and laughable. No step was taken, no commitment on my part either directly or from afar in favor of melancholy but a vague impulse, one at least, hardly framed before it was demolished by the apathy, but here in Berlin a fresh chance to bear out my good intentions, we could go I said to my sister but instead of joining the queue for tickets I snuck straight off to the Nationalgalerie toilets, the basement ones, actually not just for a pee, I’m better at holding on than my sister, but to change my Eleganti hold-ups. For a good half-hour my left stocking had been showing signs of weakness and for the last fifteen minutes had no traction on my leg at all, slithering down to a crumple, first a millimeter-by-millimeter creep then a more rapid centimeter-by-centimeter and finally in one go from the top of my thigh to my knee, forcing me to bend at almost every step to pull it up again, hoicking my Elegantis up the whole time while continuing to walk towards the Sony Center instead of heading to Brecht’s house, restricting me to a hobble not only unnatural but also thoroughly ridiculous, to the extent that my need for a change of Eleganti was a good deal more urgent than that for a piss. Luckily I’d found a Woolworths on Friedrichstrasse where I bought a new pair of Elegantis and some souvenirs from Berlin for those who can’t remember it because they weren’t here, I shan’t ever forget it, on seeing the Nationalgalerie my first thought was not of the melancholy exhibition but of the Nationalgalerie’s toilets and I didn’t waste a second before heading straight to the basement, going down for no melancholy reason but entirely focused on resolving my hold-up situation. Was, in a way, forced to visit the Nationalgalerie toilets instead of choosing to visit the exhibition on melancholy, we’ll go another time, I said to my sister who while waiting for me had already begun to descend into melancholy, had instinctively got herself in the mood, don’t go down, I said to her and snatched my sister’s arm before melancholy could suck her into its depths, literally snatched her from the jaws of melancholy, no time, come on, I said to my sister, there’s nothing here for us because I know my sister, she and I had the same education, everything that runs through my sister tends to run through me too like this taste for melancholy and our fascination for what lies deepest. Come on, I’d already said to my sister, there’s nothing for us here, that day my sister was not in the least
radiant but clung to my arm, dangled from me, was wholly supported by me who ought to have shone at her side that day, I’d literally snatched my sister away from melancholy, led my sister back to the family home before the body was carried to the cemetery and each of us had thrown our handful of gravel on top and pronounced our last goodbyes too late but for oneself one last pointless time, for my sister it was enough to see the coffin, Papa inside it and the candles on top, enough for her to hear Fauré’s Requiem, not Verdi’s, much more of a laugh than Fauré’s, that one really gets you plumbing the depths and keeps you at rock bottom from the first note through to the last, come on I’d said to my sister, leaving the church ahead of everyone else and leaving Papa stuck there behind us, the two of us leaving together arm in arm and singing happy songs all the way home, you couldn’t have found happier ones, listen to this, I said to my sister, it’s Charles Trenet no one’s ever done happier, Y a d’la joie is nothing beside N’y pensez pas trop, I was singing N’y pensez pas trop to my sister who was hardly thinking at all by now, she’d started to go back over this day of Papa’s burial, decomposition recomposes us one way or another, the pianist might one day have explained to the girl, that was in Brecht’s house, you have to go through decomposition in order to regain composure and face everyone again, everyone else provides the raw materials for composition, what’s left isn’t the unnecessary but precisely what’s needed, what’s left after decomposition is the raw material of composure, and that composition consists of reconciling what’s left, she was in practically the same state as Papa the day of the funeral but she revived while he didn’t, I held the spoon to my sister’s lips, one spoonful for Papa, one for Maman, one for you, I sang Trenet to my sister and set her back on her feet, made her do easy little walks in the garden until she was fit to take her violin out of its case, to hold the violin under her chin and herself against it, and to start to revive by playing, leaving the Nationalgalerie my sister was walking in the evening sun and glowing in the luminous decline, water has flowed under the bridges declared my sister who can read my mind, we can breathe more freely here, I was breathing in the fresh air, walking towards my tragic destiny on the arm of my sister who was also breathing, never twice in the same river, once is enough, that’s how it was I saw the tragedy ahead, no comedy of repetition in the tragic, we keep going and that’s all. I kept going with my plastic Woolworths bag in my hand and my sister on my arm towards the Sony Center and not to Brecht’s house, tragically towards the Sony Center, going on and that was all, leaving the Philharmonic on the left and the Staatsbibliothek on the right, my left and my right I’ve never been sure of them but I’m guessing that the hand which holds her arm is the right one which is it seems the more important hand but only from one point of view, guess where I am, my sister said to her phone, guess! Outside the Philharmonic! Imagine, me right here, in front of the Philharmonic! she was glowing lit up by the setting sun which was sinking behind the point of the Philharmonic while I was walking tragically towards the Sony Center, declining towards the center, I’m going back to the B&B my sister was saying to her phone, I’m leaving my sister in good company, I’ll have a drink with her first, fire her up and remind her how she’s really worth it, she’s worth a lot, an awful lot, under-estimating her is bad for the exchange rate so I aim for inflation, I big her up and I leave her in good company, she’s waiting for the pianist to call, she’s head over heels for him, my sister said, she’s in pieces, I’m not going to leave her in pieces and arse about face, I’ll raise her exchange rate and then she’ll be on a level playing field with the pianist, I’ll wait for her at the B&B, leave her in that inflated state and get busy with my violin, I’ll play in my room in this little Polish B&B, I’m going to work at it like a madwoman, I’m itching to play the violin, I have to play, it’s the last evening before we fly, just this evening left and tomorrow we’re off. Tonight Berlin and tomorrow Paris, we’ll come back, we’re going but we’ll come back.