“Why did they call him Putty?” I tried asking him.
The janitor smiled in the dark, or so it seemed.
“Because he used to eat the putty!” he replied. “At that time, the panes of glass in the windows were fixed into the frame with putty. When a broken pane had to be changed, or when it rattled a bit because the putty had gone dry and was falling out, the glazier came and fixed it. He pulled out a ball of putty from his leather bag, broke it into smaller pieces and spread it carefully along the frame with a spatula so that the glass was firm. But the putty soon disappeared. The glazier was continually being called out to put in new putty, otherwise the glass would rattle and there was always the risk of it breaking when the windows were being opened and closed. It never had time to dry. When it was still fresh, you could always see little fingerprints on the surface that had been smoothed out by the knife, because the children enjoyed taking out pieces to make little balls or other things. But he, no, he used to take it and eat it. That’s why they called him Putty!”
He laughed a little. In the darkness I could just about see the upper plate of his dentures hanging slightly loose from his gums.
“Did anyone come to meet him, when he left?” I suddenly asked.
He paused for a moment, thinking.
“Sometimes an animal used to come to meet him.”
“An animal? What animal?”
“It looked like a dog, but I don’t know whether it was a dog … It sat there in front of the entrance, on the other side of the road, waiting for him. I used to see it when I opened the door, there, perfectly still, with its ears sticking up, watching closely. When they began coming out, its head would move back and forth all the time so as to spot him among the other children. They went off together, him and that kind of dog, walking side by side, in silence.
“But no one else ever came to meet him? Only an animal?” I asked again, too loudly perhaps.
He remained silent for a few moments.
“Sometimes there was also a person who came to meet him …”
“Oh yes? A person? And who was that?”
I wasn’t sure whether he replied, I couldn’t hear. He seemed to turn toward me and to gaze at me with wide-open eyes, lifting both of his hands to his head, in the dark.
We were probably walking down the stairs because, every now and then, there was no ground beneath my feet, between one step and another.
We eventually arrived at the small door at the rear. The janitor opened it. I could hear him saying goodbye, with his kindly voice, in the thickest darkness. Before leaving, I had the feeling that he stroked me on the back of my neck, from behind, high up, with his large hand, in the dark.
As I was returning home in the car, deep in the night, on one curve a large insect was squashed against the windshield. I saw it thrown from its meandering course, blinded by the headlights, a moment before it collided against the wall of the car racing through the dark. Then the trail of its innards that oozed yellow over the glass.
24
“Who knows if the sky has another sky above it?” I ask myself as I sit looking out from the precipice. “The sky that I can see from here at least, from this gorge, above this group of houses and abandoned ruins. Who knows if the light itself isn’t inside another light? And what kind of light is it, if it’s a light you can’t see? Even if you can’t see the light, what else can you see? Who knows if the matter the universe is made of, at least the little we’re able to perceive in the sea of dark matter and energy, isn’t inside another infinitely larger matter, and the dark matter and energy aren’t also inside an infinitely larger darkness? Who knows if the curvature of space and time, if there is a curvature, if there is space, if there is time, aren’t also themselves inside a larger curvature, a larger space, a larger time, that comes first, that hasn’t yet come? Who knows why things have ended up like this, in this world? Could it be like this everywhere, if there is an everywhere, in this maelstrom of little lights that pierce the darkness in this cold night and in the deepest obscurity? Could there be someone watching us, from one of those planets that orbit round those masses of blazing gas that appear to us from far away like white stars, as that man thinks, the one I went to see in the cattle stall, surrounded by those animals that had been spirited away into hyperspace? What could life be like for them? Why would they have gone travelling off into the universe in that egg of light without a shell? Can their life be as unhappy as ours? And do pain and evil also bring some distraction for them, at least for a few moments, from unhappiness? Do they too have that short, cruel dream that has been called love? Could that also be inside something that exists somewhere else? Does someone else exist in the middle of all these spheres of gas that burn in the deepest obscurity and these conglomerations that cool and calcify, with their mineral surfaces full of wounds and gashes, in the middle of all these dead experimental masses crammed into this vertigo that we have called space? Alpha Centauri, the star closest to our sun, is four light years away. The Large Magellanic Cloud, the galaxy closest to our galaxy, is a hundred and sixty-five thousand light years away from our solar system. And I am here, sitting on this metal chair that sinks lower and lower into the ground, in this place far away from the world, about the same distance from everything and from space and from time and from my life and from my death …”
Sometimes I think there are no more living people in the rest of the world. But there are. Because today, while there was still some daylight, suddenly looking up, I saw that the clear blueness was crossed from side to side by a perfectly straight white streak that stretched out in the sky, traced by an airplane so far away that you couldn’t even hear its roar in the vastness of space.
25
The world is changing in front of my eyes. The ground gets ever colder. The leaves are curling up, falling. A few of them remain dangling here and there from the stump of a branch. The trees are barer and barer. There’s no longer any distinction between the living and the dead.
I walk on a carpet of charred leaves that crackle under my feet. They completely cover the paths, I feel the cracking of their veins and of their lifeless tissues disintegrating under the weight of my vertical body as it presses on the ground. There are almost no more sounds in the wood. The animals have left or are preparing to hibernate. They dig their little holes in the cold ground which begins to freeze at night and is already being covered by the first light flurries of snow which leaves its white veil, dissolving in the first sun of the day. They dig headfirst with their claws, their teeth, to get deeper down into the ground, where there is still some warmth.
This morning, in a ruined house, I surprised a group of bats in hibernation. I was walking along the empty streets, among these walls covered with creepers and this dry vegetation and these trees that have grown between the stones, among small flights of loose steps that go up to the doors of derelict houses. I passed in front of a ruin I’d never been into before. It’s strange how this place is so small and yet I still don’t know it all. With my foot I pushed the door with its now broken hinges. It opened. I went in. It was completely dark inside, since there wasn’t even a window. Just stone walls and a wooden ceiling high up. All of a sudden I saw a great number of bats in front of me, hanging upside down, staring at me with their bulging eyes. There must have been some light then – at least the light coming from the door I’d just opened, even though it seemed dark in there, unless it was coming directly from the circles of their terror-stricken eyes, woken from their hibernation. It was an instant. The casings of their whole bodies which until a moment before were upside down, wrapped in the membranes of their black wings of skin, hooked with their claws onto the old beams and wall ledges, had suddenly launched into flight, terrified, searching for a way out. I flung myself against a wall. Their frantic black bodies were crashing against the walls and the ceiling. Then they found the gap in the doorway from which I’d come and, hurling themselves against me from every direction, they flew out in a whirl of nake
d wings and eyes.
Before going to sleep I peered for a long time at that little light. It has been shining much more brightly for some time, it seems, because the air is colder, the sky is clearer.
I changed the bed sheets and the pillowcase. I put on the heavier blanket. Over it I carefully folded back the upper sheet. I also turned down the corner of the blanket and sheet on one side, before getting undressed and putting on my heavier pajamas that I had pulled out of the wooden chest of drawers which creaks slightly from the change of temperature. In this way I would find everything ready for me when I undressed for bed and climbed in, as though that act had not been done by me, as though someone else who doesn’t exist had done it for me as a secret act of kindness.
Now it is night. I’m lying here staring, it seems, into the dark. I can’t say whether I’m awake or asleep. Just now there were some earth tremors. But faint. Slight vibrations that rose up from the deep. But so slight, so slight that I can’t say whether they have woken me up or sent me to sleep.
I think I even smiled a little, recognizing their sweet voice in the dark.
26
The boy invited me to eat with him again today.
I left early, but got there late as it had started snowing and the road up to the ridge was covered with a white shroud and I had to go slowly, carefully, so that the wheels didn’t slide on the downward slopes and in the ruts, and even more so on the path that went through the woods and over the narrow timber bridge made slippery with the thin coating of snow.
When I arrived, the boy was at the door, looking out, as though waiting for me.
I pulled down the hood of my parka before going in, and brushed the snow off my shoulders with my hand to avoid taking it into the house.
He ran inside, happy, or at least he seemed to be.
He went to the plate rack, climbed on the crate and pulled down a saucepan.
“Do you want to stay to eat?” he asked, once I was inside, and I took off my coat and shook it a little, by the door.
“Yes, but I’ll do the cooking this time!”
He didn’t object.
“Alright!” he said calmly.
He let me take over at the cooker and went to sit on the bottom step of the wooden staircase.
I looked at him.
“Your knees are red. Are you sure you’re not cold in those short trousers?”
“No, no,” he replied. “I’m used to it.”
I put my bag of shopping down by the sink.
The boy, still sitting on the staircase, watched me silently with his round eyes as I pulled from the bag the things I had bought in the village.
I too looked at him every now and then, turning my head, as I stood at the cooker.
I stirred the rice with a spoon so that it didn’t stick to the saucepan before adding the water and the ingredients that I had bought.
The boy carried on watching me in silence, sitting on his step.
“Do you like eggs?” I asked.
“Yes, a lot!” he replied.
I broke four of them, two for me and two for him, on the edge of the saucepan where the butter was melting.
The boy got up. He took a freshly washed and ironed tablecloth and began setting the table, climbing onto the crate to take down some dishes and cutlery.
I switched off the rice and poured it steaming into the bowl. I grated some cheese over it and began stirring it with a spoon. It was still steaming as I served it on the plates. The boy looked on eagerly, making the gesture of licking his lips.
We began eating, first the rice, then the eggs. The boy cut them in half with his fork, to watch the yoke as it ran onto the plate. Afterwards, I pulled some oranges from the bag, as a surprise.
“I love oranges!” the boy exclaimed when he saw them.
I watched him as he peeled them with his little fingers and using his nails to help.
“What have you done to your hands?” I asked, since they looked as though they’d been damaged.
His little nails were chipped, his palms full of blisters and small cuts, his fingertips grazed.
“I’m doing some work,” he replied.
“What work?”
He dropped his head and smiled, at least that was how it seemed, or perhaps he was just biting his lips.
“I’m tidying up that little house in front …” he answered after a while.
There was a nice smell of oranges in the kitchen.
“I’m clearing out the rubble, the stones,” he continued. “I’m scrubbing down the floorboards …”
“Why are you doing it?” I asked, barely able to breathe.
He blushed a little and made no answer.
The panes of glass in the door were covered with a thick veil of water droplets.
Neither of us spoke.
“I’ll light the fire!” he suddenly exclaimed, jumping down from the chair.
I got up as well and began clearing the table. I folded the tablecloth and napkins and put them back into the drawer. I put the garbage into the plastic bag under the sink. I began to wash the few dishes, the two pans and the knives and forks.
Meanwhile the boy had cleared the ashes and dead embers from the back of the fireplace with a dustpan, taken some small bundles of twigs, arranged them in a pyramid and pushed some crumpled paper bags beneath them.
When I’d finished washing the dishes, I went over too. He was putting two larger logs on top of the pile.
Before lighting the paper with a match, he ran to get the two chairs that were still at the table, one by one, holding then up with the strength of his little arms. He put them in front of the fireplace.
He made me sit on one of them. Then he lit the fire.
The flames rose quickly from the crumpled paper bags to the first bundles of twigs which were already starting to crackle. Then still higher, until they lapped around the two logs full of loose filaments and splinters, carrying with it a little smoke that disappeared up the chimney.
He too sat down, on the other chair.
“Let’s watch the fire!” he said.
We remained sitting by the fireplace for I don’t know how long, next to each other, because you can watch a fire for hours and hours and never get bored. It never stays still. The twigs crackle, snap, you see their little incandescent skeleton for an instant while the flames climb upward, begin to eat away at the inner parts of the larger pieces of wood, with that sound that resembles a sigh, constantly change color, turn blue, even green, merge into a larger knot with other little flames that rise here and there from the stack, starting from below, hissing, suddenly sending out clouds of sparks that hurtle far, as if from an explosion.
We drew back from time to time so that the sparks wouldn’t hit us in the face. The fire was now burning noisily. It had already enveloped the whole pile and seemed to want to demolish it. The flames leapt up into the chimney. Meanwhile, outside, up above, there was a lone smoking chimney pot, on the top of the empty ridge, in the middle of the woods.
We got up without saying a word each time a log dropped on its side and suffocated the flame, taking it with two fingers at the point where it hadn’t yet caught fire, or with the fire tongs, to rebuild the pile and create gaps in which the fire could find oxygen and flare up again. Gradually we put on more logs as the first ones burned down and the flames needed new fuel. The boy in one way, I in another, because each person has a different way of conversing with fire. Then we went back to our seats and watched the blaze in silence.
There was a good warmth. The panes of glass dripped with condensation. I noticed beside me the boy’s head leaning slightly forward, his face lit up by the glow that came from the fireplace, his large eyes gazing intently into the flame.
We remained side by side for quite some time, not saying a word, while that little room grew warmer and warmer. Time passed. It began to get dark. I even seemed to doze off for a few moments, from time to time, in front of the fire which carried on burning new portions of the wo
od and of the world, over the large embers that pulsated in the half-light.
“Why are you fixing up that little house?” I remembered to ask him again, all of a sudden, stirring from a brief moment of drowsiness during which I could still see everything.
He remained silent, looking into the fire.
“That little house you are cleaning up, who is it for?” I asked again, with a shudder.
“For you,” he answered.
27
It’s really winter now. Everywhere is white with snow, as far as the eye can see. The mountains, the ridges, the footpaths, the bramble hedges, the ruins with collapsing slate roofs, the great immobile trees from which white powder falls when I pass beneath them walking in my rubber boots. The sky is also white. No more animal cries are heard, on the ground, in the air. Absolute silence.
This morning – I’m not sure why – I put snow chains on the car and drove to the village where that man lives with the animals, while the snow is still fresh, before it freezes and makes the wheels slide.
The snow swished and gave out that sound of soft catastrophe as the myriad structures of crystals, each different from the other, were annihilated and agglutinated under the press of the car tires.
I got as far as that village, advancing slowly, round the white curves, with windows down, in absolute silence, in the white world. The fresh snow that had not yet hardened chafed beneath the wheels. All I could see before me were expanses of white and it was barely possible to work out where the roads ended and the rest of the world began.
There was no one in that small open space by the church. All the houses were closed up, just the odd chimney here and there that smoked.
I stopped the car. I reached that place on foot. But there was no one there. The mountain of manure was completely white. I walked down the short slope, wearing rubber boots, trying not to slip, and entered the cattle stall: it was empty. There were no animals, no computer screen on the bench, not even the bench was there. No goats, no dog, no billy goat. Nothing.
Distant Light Page 9