We’d set off once more for Sfax in the French Institute’s car and, sitting in the back, I remained silent and was careful each time I moved my feet not to touch the fine green canvas espadrilles of the woman sitting next to me. She was in the middle of explaining to me courteously that it wouldn’t be long before we approached the El Djem Coliseum, without doubt one of the most interesting Roman curiosities in the region, which she would make sure to point out to me when we passed it. The driver kept quiet at the wheel and we continued speeding down the long tree-lined straightaway, keeping our eyes peeled for the El Djem Coliseum. I’d heard about the El Djem Coliseum at a dinner the previous evening and I don’t know why, for some bizarre reason I’d associated the word with a natural phenomenon, a gorge or an erg, something like the Roccapina Lion or Thermopylae Pass. Needless to say we weren’t exactly keeping our eyes peeled for the same thing, the two of us, leaning side by side out the open backseat window, while from time to time I pushed back her long black hair which was flying in the wind and brushing against my face, keeping it out of my eyes and casually detaching a few twisted strands which the wind had blown against my lips. There it is! she cried at last, pointing out the distant silhouette of a small amphitheatre. The El Djem Coliseum, because that’s what it was, was in fact a Roman amphitheatre, plain and simple, all it took was a quick look for me to recognize the word and mentally re-associate it with its appropriate image, a Roman amphitheatre in ruins surrounded by fields, tiny on the horizon, its crown abandoned in the emptiness and worn away with time, toward which we advanced in silence, still a good distance from the site — a couple of miles I’d say — and never getting any closer, either, as the road curved around to avoid it.
When we got to Sfax I said good-bye to my archaeologists and went to open the trunk and fish out the remains of my flexible black travel bag from under the heap of archaeological material they’d piled on top. Holding my bag which was still flexible but now somewhat battered, I crossed the street giving them a polite little wave as the car pulled off, then went into the Abou Nawas Hotel where a room had been booked for me. That very evening, changed and refreshed, I gave my reading at the French Institute in Sfax, introduced and questioned by a renowned Sfaxian academic who was the spitting image of my university friend Romano Pistoletto (Ciccio). This Sfaxian academic and myself were sitting side by side at the head table of a conference room in the French Institute, a makeshift arrangement consisting of a long pale green Formica cafeteria table embellished with a complicated network of electric wires and microphones, next to which two mustard glasses and a large bottle of mineral water had been placed for the speakers. Sitting in light-colored wooden classroom chairs, the audience across from us consisted of around eight or nine people (maybe ten with the organizer) — which is to say that the group was very sparse and most of the rows of chairs put out for the audience remained unoccupied. The director of the French Institute, who was biting his lips at the door on the lookout for hypothetical latecomers, finally decided to open the meeting and, advancing to the podium to welcome the audience and present the speakers, turned the floor without further ado over to my distinguished partner, who, his voice stricken with stage fright, gathered his notes and launched into a detailed study of the themes of my books, which he started to analyze one by one in the chronological order of their appearance. The whole time he spoke, in a clear voice that gradually gained assurance, he fingered his bundle of notes with trembling fingers while, sitting next to him at the head table in a totally creased white shirt which I’d only recently rescued from my travel bag, I listened to him with a serious and concentrated look, my long immobile hands crossed on the table, my eyes traveling alternately from his undeniably Pistolettian face to some particularly attentive (or just strikingly female) member of the audience, resting for a moment on the bottle of mineral water in front of us on the table, which was also quite tempting, I must admit, and which I finally ended up opening noiselessly with the bottle opener put there for the speakers, pouring myself a large glass of mineral water without altogether managing to avoid drowning out the speaker’s voice for a few moments with a fizzy bubbling of liquid. Without losing the thread of his analyses, Ciccio’s look-alike glanced once or twice out of the corner of his eye to see what on earth I was doing. Among the silent and increasingly sleepy group in front of us (who, it must be said, watched me fill my glass with a fleeting burst of goodhearted curiosity), I of course couldn’t fail to notice the discreet presence of my two archaeologists, who’d changed and put on a touch of eye shadow, seated six rows back, attentive and studious, a little worried, it seemed to me, preoccupied, as they listened to Ciccio presenting on the subject of, let’s face it, my really rather wonderful books.
return to kyoto
The tears didn’t come, although I would have welcomed the voluptuous sensation of crying. I was leaning on the rail of Sanjo Bridge, my chest empty, my immobile fingers trembling slightly (I’d drunk too much the night before), looking down at the silently flowing waters of the Kamo. The weather was bleak and gray and I’d pulled my black wool hat down over my ears. People walked behind me on the pedestrian section of the bridge, crossing paths under transparent umbrellas, under blue umbrellas, under beige umbrellas. I’d stopped beside a pillar out of which rose a decorative cast-iron flame and, motionless under the cold rain whose inconveniences I made no attempt to avoid, seeking them out even, turning my face skywards to feel the raindrops splatter against my cheeks, I thought of the time that had passed, and would have liked to add these rainy tears to its flow. At a loss as to what to do with this very pure moment of melancholy, I wondered how to conserve its essence. I was aware of its exceptional nature, of the unique combination of circumstances that had given rise to it (I’d returned to Kyoto exactly a day ago after a two-year absence). Turning my head towards the Sanjo intersection I saw the hills of Kyoto in the distance, which could just be made out in the mist and, marshalling my forces, closing my eyes to concentrate, I tried to let myself be overcome by tears. I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to cry, but even if no tears came out, my spirit was weeping. I looked down at the flowing waters of the Kamo, I was standing on the Sanjo bridge, a fixed stare on my face, my spirit in tears. My chest swelling slowly in time with my breathing, I was taken by a warm and sensual wave of melancholy that I did nothing to restrain, letting these few timeless tears flow before me into the Kamo.
Walking on, I crossed the bridge while my eyes lingered on the water behind me. It looked gray and dirty, sluggish and rippled, weary of swirling languidly downstream before flowing over a natural dam in the riverbed. Coming to the crossing, I walked by the entrance to the Keihan subway line and headed toward the streetcar station on the other side of the street. The station gates were locked and, stopping a moment, I put my hands on the bars and saw that the station was silent and empty, apparently abandoned for several weeks. The platforms were deserted, above them rose immense canopies whose pillars were starting to rust. A few advertisements with faded colors, very pale fuchsias and pinks, with incomprehensible, practically obliterated kanji remained pasted on billboards for the benefit of implausible commuters. Crude lattice fences had been put up on either side of the main entrance, into which planks had been nailed in a cross to board up the entryway. The rails had disappeared from the tracks below, making way for a sort of no-man’s-land between the platforms, a sprawling gravel landscape strewn with stones and old lighters, broken glass and clumps of weeds that had grown up here and there beside the puddles. I didn’t move, there on the other side of the bars, my eyes fixed on those large motionless puddles reflecting the sky, studded relentlessly by the steady drizzle.
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen a place I’d frequented in the past disappear in this way, the transformation of a location I’d known, but seeing this desolate spectacle, this abandoned station out of bounds behind iron bars, this deserted station with its disused platforms, whose tracks had become a craggy rain-soaked wastelan
d and whose main hall with its ticketing machines was now a junkyard where a rickety turnstile lay askew in the mud, I realized that time had passed since I’d left Kyoto. And if this affected me so deeply on that day, it was not only because my senses, numbed by the prevailing grayness and the alcohol in my blood, naturally put me in a melancholic frame of mind, it was also because I suddenly felt sad and powerless at this brusque testimony to the passage of time. It was hardly the result of conscious reasoning, but rather the concrete and painful, fleeting and physical feeling that I myself was part and parcel of time and its passing. Until then, the feeling of being carried along by time had always been attenuated by the fact that I wrote — until then, in a way, writing had been a means of resisting the current that bore me along, a way of inscribing myself in time, of setting landmarks in the immateriality of its flow, incisions, scratches.
about the author and the translator
JEAN-PHILIPPE TOUSSAINT is the author of nine novels. His writing has been compared to the work of Samuel Beckett, Jacques Tati, and Jim Jarmusch.
A native of Vancouver, JOHN LAMBERT studied philosophy in Paris before moving to Berlin, where he lives with his wife and two children. He has also translated Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s second novel Monsieur.
Self-Portrait Abroad Page 5