Blue Self-Portrait

by Noémi Lefebvre

  After his concert in Lyon, a concert of resistance for which he had composed resistant music, not just composed but interpreted its resistance at the piano, a general resistance but also specifically to Lyon, the pianist had decided to see the exhibition and followed the guide through the rooms commemorating the deported and begun to consider the Jasager, he who says yes. The question of Ja or Nein appears to the pianist not a new question but an old one, a very old, ancestral question, the Jasager’s ancestors whom we’re obliged to deal with, doing deals with the ancestral Jasagers is an ongoing business. Composing a Neinsager would be one way of not giving in to the yes, the pianist thought; he had decided to talk about the Jasager in the Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation’s lecture hall specifically in the presence of a communication specialist, i.e. a specialist on Jasagung, on communication in the Resistance as everywhere else and on the piano in communication as on Resistance and Deportation in communication, the communicant was asking the pianist questions about music and the Resistance and the pianist answering the communicant, the pianist sitting beside the Jasager was seeking an escape route, caught sight of the fire extinguisher, choosing not extinction but exit, saying yes to say no and not no for no, no for yes but not yes for yes, the extinguisher is no for no the exit yes for no, ultimately in the dark was hunting for his escape route. She was there. Sitting not on a folding seat but perched on the steps. He looked at the perched girl, saw nothing beyond the girl yes her alone, legs crossed and uncrossed and hair around her finger twisted then untwisted, now to leave the plateau of Resistance and go into hiding, to abandon the Jasager and abduct the girl, come now, I’ve an hour before the plane, just one no more, no time to resist you any longer, don’t tremble the pianist said, took her by the waist oh minuscule waist in the pianist’s hand, come follow me don’t speak whatever you do don’t say a word don’t be afraid I shan’t do anything to upset you, nothing I swear we’re just going to walk to the bridge and on the bridge you’ll see the river just that and you’ll have that particular air coming off the water to breathe, the air will rise off the water up to you and in the air if you like I’ll kiss you the French way, leaving the Gestapo HQ transformed into a museum and with his hand around, beyond believing, his hand around her, the girl’s waist so slim it was unbelievable, couldn’t get over her waist and dared not move his hand away, the pianist’s hand keeping her feet on the ground, with my hand here on her surface I’m keeping her on the ground and among the living, she is so light the pianist considers the air off the river would be enough to lift her, a squall not required to carry off the girl, a mere flux of river air and she’d be gone; he stops in the middle of the bridge, he is standing above the water, what to talk about now between the Gestapo and the airport, the girl’s hair hides her face from him, he reaches out, brushes the hair away, leaves his hand in her hair and the other hand, the one from her waist, moves to her neck, and up to her cheek her temple and the forehead of the motionless girl who doesn’t see the green river, she sees only me the pianist knows, me that’s all, I fill her vision now and moves closer to the girl and kisses the girl, kissing her would make her die the pianist knows but kisses again and dying over again, don’t move don’t say anything not a word nothing please be quiet the pianist says and kisses her again and infinitely on the bridge like that above the river, no thought of the future, suspended together eternally above the river as if after Goethe neither Flaubert nor Beckett had followed it’s funny to think, as if after Beethoven there’d been neither Wagner nor Schoenberg and yet he lets go, a pianist can’t play with his hand clenched, has always inscribed his hand in time and inscribed music in the gesture and the gesture in time, music without time is an imposture the pianist knows, he knows his departure time, doesn’t look at his watch, sand can’t be gripped in a fist, has never missed a flight, takes off at the pre-ordained hour every time but on this bridge with the girl how not to stay forever, a little of that slight gold still held between his fingers, once more please the pianist says, küss mich noch einmal, he is young Werther, won’t wait for her reply and mingles oh yes his tongue with the girl’s which doesn’t respond as a usual accompaniment’s would, responds without motherliness or understanding but in way that’s so strange it’s almost savage, not violently savage but strange and naturally savage, which is to say not cultural, no trace of culture in this girl’s tongue, nothing to suggest any command of culture, wholly uncultured from head to toe, this is what drives the pianist completely crazy, intolerable ignorance, stop! the pianist says to her, hör jetzt auf! bitte hör auf! repeats at the girl but actually to himself, and she then not asking why because she knows without having learned it and as if by magic, parts her tongue from the pianist’s tongue and parts the pianist’s hand from the nub of compressed sand and his other hand from her neck and fingers from her cheek, ear from his eyes, the substance from the form and the parts from the whole, goes on her way completely parted onto the western bank, as if by magic goes away on the other side of the bridge, doesn’t look back just goes, so it goes, in the realm of Resistance, thinks the pianist and as if it were important, thinks this not vaguely but in these precise words as if to be written in a private notebook, ridicule does not kill, quite the contrary.

  We don’t know why, on leaving the bridge by the eastern side, the idea first came to the pianist here of a self-portrait, a portrait of a man alone and handsome, alone but not destroyed, the solitude of the composer, atonality as an abstraction, abstraction as an isolation, isolation as a resistance to the world, the world as unacceptable reality, impossible to make peace with reality, aware of the day as of the time and returning to the Gestapo HQ he would learn through the composition of this self-portrait, would understand through the self-portrait the refusal to compromise in composition, saying this in front of the Gestapo he found the cultural group he had left behind there and the Jasager, the group leader is always a yea-sayer, follows them into the Gestapo to drink a last beer with the Jasager and his aggregation, last drink before the airport, in the Gestapo’s little drawing room with this restrained group that is, the pianist realizes, the Jasager’s accompaniment, but in the Gestapo lounge waiting for his last minutes to pass, he was already writing the first bars of the Self-Portrait, inventing by unknown technique a minor-key atonality is this imaginable around F-sharp, could clearly see minor atonality anchored around F-sharp, a bit of good fun, this called for an allegro in sonata form without a true second subject, then descending via D-flat a scherzo veering into scherzando, the comedy of the Self-Portrait suggested it, the isolation of the comical dispatched by, why not, a Beethoven-style pedal effect, and as if inverted, a comical, burlesque self-portrait, we’d be in the river here, he considers a green shade but for this portrait seeks a more negative color, one colder than cold, the correspondence of colors and sounds an idea to follow among the feathers and squawks of nature but also into the science of cultural confusion, this idea of a muddled science that’s always producing images without light, performances without audience, pure and fantastical abstraction, the chill of colors and the chill of sounds, considers a correspondence around F-sharp, this F-sharp turning slowly into E-flat, had time to write none of it here, was trying to hold on to the key ideas even while drinking to the Resistance in the Gestapo HQ, drinking a toast with the Jasager, distractedly finishing because composing elsewhere and already on the plane.

  We’re still airborne but lower and lower said my sister, feel how we’re lowering, we’re beginning the descent, I’d say we’ve turned south-west, my sister said again who has a sense of direction, I don’t, I’ve never known my right from my left never mind the points of the compass, my sister does though, has always had a sense of direction never been wrong about a route except when being contrary but otherwise never, knows all the possible trajectories in advance, knows where they go and never questions them while I do, one route or another most of the time I don’t see the difference or much too late, in my car bellowing on the road, I
don’t know which road, know nothing about that road except it was twisty and there was snow on it and I used to take it every day in the days of my apparently reasonably solid marriage which was actually already a total failure, going up and coming back down every day the same route to get away from my failed marriage as I headed down and believing as I came back up in my successful marriage, going down with the hope of not coming back and coming back up with the hope of one day going down without the hope of not coming back up, going down with a desire to live and coming back up wishing I could die, going down to live and returning to die, then one day going down to avoid dying, which I did in fact manage, I said to my sister, not only managed not to die but managed to come back to life, that’s the very minimum, I managed that minimum, almost didn’t make it, just made it, my sister said I know. I know you off by heart, you think you’re doing the minimum when actually you’re always doing the maximum, that’s what my sister was saying, and your maximum is not everyone elbe’s maximum but an exceptionally lofty maximum, my sister said, your maximum is fearful to behold, that’s why you need to eat well and sleep well every day and every night, you need to be taking care of yourself my dear, she was betting on health, saw in wellbeing the only way in general and for me in particular, begin with short outdoor walks, I know you like walking and nature when it’s untamed, my sister said, you can’t be counted on to cycle or get into jogging or go to the gym but outdoor walks are what works for you so start there, my thing would be Turkish baths, rather, yours is outdoor walks, remember you once saved me with a nature walk my sister said, walking up as far as the oak and coming back down again was enough to revive me remember, my sister said, sometimes that’s all you need, Kant went for outdoor walks, Bergson too and Schoenberg took constitutionals and Thomas Mann went for walks and Proust too was into walking, Papa took them, said my sister who knew Kant and Schoenberg and Mann and Proust and Papa very well and thinks I know them too because my sister and I had this shared education which makes my sister expect we’ll have shared affinities, my sister has a habit of forgetting that in my case this successful education has rendered me unfit for Kant and for Bergson, unfit for Schoenberg as well as for Thomas Mann, Proust and Papa, even though failure in her case opened the door to all of Kant and all of Bergson and all of Schoenberg and all of Mann and all of Proust as well as all of Papa, I didn’t dispute it though because I really like how my sister believes that like her I’m completely free to discover the constitutionals of inspiring great men and to envisage this incredible synthesis of great men’s constitutionals in general and of these men’s in particular, synthesis I’d never have thought of myself, I need my sister to believe in my admiration for great men, my sister’s admiration for great men is equal to her knowledge of great men while mine is on a level with my ignorance.

  I admire you, I’d told the pianist no joke in the corridors of the Auditorium and remembering that now as we came in to land made me scream there and then soundlessly as a cow might perhaps scream soundlessly when after a few days her calf is not there, scream without calling for it knows perfectly well where to draw the line, already screaming no longer in hope but with death in its cow’s soul, is apparently grazing peacefully as if no calf never carried one nor gave birth nor fed nor loved in its instinctive cow way but thinks of it screaming as I was thinking while silent screaming that I’d said to the pianist unlaughing that I admired him, which was entirely false, I swear on my sister’s life which is much dearer to me than my own life: I’ve never admired the pianist. I really think I said I admire you to him solely in order to test the effect admiration might have on the pianist and as a kind of kamikaze operation, for his violent disappointment was patently visible, the pianist stopped mid-declamatory flow, brutally cut short, a stop put to his continued declamation by means of my declaration, his eyes emptied of all positive expectation, entirely filled with negative disappointment, I’d have liked to tell him, but couldn’t tell him, as I had thought to myself while saying I admire you, that it was for a laugh, that I didn’t actually believe in admiration and didn’t in fact admire anyone as a rule nor pianists in particular nor this one among them all but was truth be told unfit for admiration, I’m not fit to admire great men, admiring Kant and Bergson and Schoenberg, same with Mann, Proust and even Papa is not something I can do, yet I said I admire you that day to the pianist, I did wonder why seeing the pianist’s face and his disappointment, because I really didn’t admire him and had no intention of admiring him nor any likelihood of finding admiration in a future either near or far but I said it and when something’s said it’s said, I put it down to my suicidal education in collective happiness and have torn my hair out over this education which is always catching up with me, actually it arrives before me, I blamed my education but not my mother or my father who have nothing to do with it, I recalled in the plane, they managed to make a nice girl out of me, it’s pretty rare to get as nice as me never mind my sister. What I like about myself, I said to my sister who was watching the earth’s approach through the porthole, is that I’m a nice girl, and you too such a nice girl. I know my sister said and I knew she knew for she knows everything I like about her and about myself, as nice as us is exceptional, I was saying while shivering hot and cold all over, everything all at once, this flaw is our best flaw, I also said to persuade myself, niceness should not prevent us from being inventors of air brakes, my sinter’d lamented, I’d really love to have invented them myself air brakes but I was much too nice, between air brakes and niceness the line is you have to choose, I’dave had to stop being nice to do air brakes, I tried but I didn’t succeed, if I’ve one regret it’s having failed with air brakes, will you look at that handsome invention, an invention such as the air brake makes my head spin, the pianist could equally have invented it, that air brake, I said, he had everything going for him from the start, instead of which he makes do with playing the piano, but he could have done it too, not that he’s a bad person either, nothing bad in the pianist and absolutely everything non-bad but non-bad isn’t nice you follow. Of course I follow, my sister said although she couldn’t actually see the difference between being non-bad and being nice because she thinks absolutely everyone is nice. I didn’t feel like explaining my ideas on nice and non-bad to my sister, it wouldn’t have done my sister any good to change her world vision according to my notions of the nice and the non-bad, every aspect of my sister’s vision is all right by me because it works for her, one’s world vision can be a great and beautiful thing I thought as we went on flying although much lower, a great and beautiful thing when it’s my sister’s but otherwise not, if not hers a world vision would be better smaller-scale than so big, Weltanschauung I translated automatically and that took me straight back to Tannhäuser, I felt a chill rising through my legs and running under Adorno on one side and under Mann on the other, each warming the blood and returning the blood to me at about the right temperature by the time it flooded my thumping heart which has nothing to do with the open heart of heartiness, heartiness is found not in the beating heart but in the one that is disciplined, far from the blood and screams of a cow on losing its calf. The vision of Tannhäuser destroyed by the cow’s desperate love for its calf, this was a total Weltanschauung which rather screwed me up and by means of a recreated instant screwed up the time of the cow, which truly does see each second’s dying.