Madame

by Antoni Libera

  Madame was not quite thirty-two years old. That, I calculated, was exactly 11,613 days. Which came to sixteen million minutes, or just over a billion seconds. If you subtracted half of that for sleep, and then another hundred million or so for the years of her early childhood, that left a conscious life of roughly four hundred million seconds, or seven million minutes. How much of that had elapsed since I had known her – before my eyes, as it were? What percentage of her life overlapped with mine? Three hundredths? Four? And even in that small fraction I had seen no more than the surface, the appearance – what philosophers call the phenomena. I had no access to the reality beneath, to the thing-in-itself. Every single one of those seconds was filled with something. But what did I know about them? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Not to speak of the time she spent elsewhere, out of my presence.

  I thought about the various moments of her life, important and less important, trivial and unnoticed. The year 1939: the central train station in Warsaw. Evening, the sleeping-car, Constant on the platform. She’s looking at him through the train window – in her compartment or in the corridor? Does she remember the moment? Does she remember there was such a moment? Is she aware of the nature of Constant’s feelings for her mother? And then France: home, school, lessons; her teachers, her friends. Long days, mornings, afternoons; her first sleepless night. Holidays: the Alps? the Atlantic? the Mediterranean? Her hours of solitude, her dreams. Maturity: discovering her own body. And then the accident: the death of her mother; the day of the funeral. How much had she known about her father’s life, his Spanish adventures, the whole tangled story that led to his death? How much had she understood, and how much did she understand now? Why hadn’t she come to the celebration? Who was the man she’d wanted to marry, and what did he mean to her? And what was the story with Freddy? Had there been anything between them?

  As the questions succeeded one another, I realised that my newly acquired knowledge was affecting me in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Instead of inducing a pleasant excitement and a feeling of curiosity satisfied, inspiring me to invent further verbal games with which to assail her, it was making me nervous and confused. The more I knew, the more I wanted to know; at the same time, the knowledge that this ‘Alpine flower’, this proud and unbowed ‘victory’, had been deeply hurt and touched by tragedy gave my insouciant longings a darker shade and made them, paradoxically, all the harder to bear.

  As the proud, distant Ice Queen she had inspired dreams of savagery and violence, making one want to rip off her disguise and strip her naked, catch her off balance, uncover her weaknesses – find out, in short, if there was another side to her nature, and if so what it was like. But when she appeared as a person of flesh and blood, when the concrete details of her life, in all its harshness and bitterness, struck her down from her Olympian heights and returned her to earth, the dark, feral lusts and perverse longings gave way to awe and mute fascination, with a solid base of respect and sincere sympathy. And that was hell; that was the intolerable thing. Because there was no hope of remedy. The choking excitement, the injured pride and sense of insignificance I had felt before could be dealt with or at least assuaged. In my plan to learn as much as I could about her and then taunt her with my knowledge, play with her, pester her, draw attention to myself, there had been at least a chance of consolation, if not fulfilment. But a fascination full of respect and pity left me helpless. What could I do with such a combination of feelings? How was I to seek consolation? Through words, through speech? Go on playing with risky allusions and deliberate ambiguities? Make it clear that I knew everything about her? There was no point any more; it might even be harmful. Besides, I had promised Constant silence; I had given my word. I could still feel his iron grasp on my hand.

  What now? What next? I had no idea what to do, how to find a way out that wouldn’t harm anyone or betray Constant’s trust but would still give me something, some profit, some gain. Something that might at least allay my humiliating torments. Nothing came to mind. In the meantime, my overheated imagination had dissipated all desire for sleep. I was trapped. I reached out for the light switch and turned on the lamp. I took a volume down from the shelf, settled myself on my side, and began reading Conrad’s Victory.

  I was woken by my mother’s voice.

  ‘It’s twenty past seven. Do you want to be late for school?’

  I hauled myself, with some effort, into consciousness. ‘I’ll be up in a minute,’ I mumbled blearily.

  ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?’ she asked, with grave concern. ‘Why is the light on?’

  I opened my eyes and closed them again quickly. I wondered what time I’d fallen asleep. ‘I was reading,’ I said sleepily. ‘I must have fallen asleep over my book. I feel fine.’ I sat up slowly.

  ‘In that case you’d better hurry up,’ she remarked drily, eyeing the slowness of my movements, and vanished behind the door.

  Accustoming my eyes slowly to the light, I looked down at Conrad’s novel, lying open, spine upwards, on the floor beside my bed. I bent down lazily to pick it up and looked at the page I’d got to. ‘I’ll drift,’ was the first sentence that caught my eye – Heyst’s announcement of his decision. I looked at the preceding paragraph, something about reflection as a destructive process that instilled mistrust in life. ‘It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world,’ writes the narrator; great achievements, he claims, are born of impulse, ‘accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog’, not in cold calculation.

  I got dressed, threw my school things together and, skipping breakfast, left the house. On Mondays, French was in the fourth period: the first period after morning break, at ten forty-five. I had done a lot of thinking by ten forty-five.

  At first I was lighthearted and optimistic. What a fuss, I thought; nothing to get so worked up about. True, my hands were tied: I knew all about her and I couldn’t reveal my knowledge. But that wasn’t the end of the world. It made things difficult, certainly, but not impossibly so. There were always other cards to play. Simone de Beauvoir, for instance. There – just the thing! Even better, in fact. Especially when I had an ace up my sleeve: I’d heard Freddy’s arguments and opinions on the matter. The perfect handle. If I managed it well, it might prove more effective than anything else. Opening that door would give me an insight into practically every aspect of her character that was important to me: literary taste, personality, ideals, emotions, intellect, political views. A conversation about Beauvoir, initiated and conducted with appropriate subtlety, would be an infallible test. It wasn’t a subject one could talk about without revealing something of oneself in the process. If my questions were well thought out, her replies would speak volumes about her.

  After a while, however, my optimism began to flag. Literary debate as a way of plumbing another’s soul, snatching those ‘illusory moments of closeness’, was a lovely idea, but what did it mean in practice? For one thing, it would take a vast amount of preparation. I’d have to plough through those dreadful novels and dreary memoirs all over again, and reading them wouldn’t be enough: I’d have to study them in detail – learn them by heart, almost! A hellish prospect. And then, of course, I’d have to think out my strategy for the conversation itself: how to steer it in the direction I wanted, how to phrase my questions so that they would subtly elicit the desired confessions. The backbreaking effort this would require was beyond me. And even supposing that I managed it all, how was this conversation supposed to arise, and where? In a classroom? In her office? Unlikely, to say the least. As if I hadn’t witnessed enough efforts, with aims far more innocent than mine, nipped in the bud!

  By the end of the third period I had lost the remnants of any faith I’d had in my various schemes. I no longer believed there was any action I could take to ease my Werther-like sufferings. And then a new fear took hold of me. I became convinced I was completely transparent, that my pathetic and humiliating torments, as well as the fact that I was harbouring some secret knowledge, must be plainly visib
le. And the thought that in half an hour I would be face to face with her made me panic. No, I couldn’t let her see me in this state. I would have to abandon the field until I was in better shape.

  During the first break, without a word to anyone of my intentions, I quietly slipped out of school.

  At first I wandered the streets for a while, trying to imagine what was happening in the French class, and especially how it had begun. She would take attendance; when I didn’t answer she would check the register: no ‘ab’ for ‘absent’ in the first three spaces of the column next to my name. That meant I had been present earlier. ‘Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? Where is he? He was here before? And then what? Disparu? Did he have permission to leave? No one knows? Curious habits the boy has.’ What would happen? Would she lower my mark for the term? Would she ask me about it? Demand an explanation? And what would I say? My notebook! That’s it. ‘I haven’t got my notebook. Vous le gardez toujours. Besides, I thought you’d had enough of me and my clever ways. So I didn’t want to impose . . .’ That wasn’t bad. What would she say to that?

  The thought of my notebook inspired me to action. In Paris Commune Square, not far from the spot where the unhappy Ruhla had met its fate, I boarded a bus that took me down to Aleje Ujazdowskie, where there was a bookshop called Logos-Cosmos. It stocked mostly foreign-language books imported from the West; the Soviet and East German art books prominently displayed in the window were exceptions. You could order books there (the wait was four months if conditions were favourable, a year if they were not, and an eternity if they were frankly inclement), and they specialised in antiquarian volumes, of which they had an excellent selection. I liked going there and did so often, although my visits tended to be painful: the astronomical prices, especially for new books from ‘bourgeois countries’, meant that I usually couldn’t afford anything. But I continued my visits undeterred, even when I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. For besides its wide range of stock and its services, the Logos-Cosmos had other attractive features: its interior, the attitude of its staff and the process of effecting a transaction were all much more pleasant than in other bookshops, and, most important, you could browse. The bookshelves and counters were set against the walls, and the customers were actually allowed to approach them and take down the books they wanted by themselves. They were even permitted to shuffle randomly through the stacks piled up on the counters and shelves. But if you were in a hurry or couldn’t find the book you wanted, an eager and polite assistant was always on hand to help you; you might even be invited to ‘please be so kind as to follow him’ into the mysterious back regions of the shop.

  I pushed open the heavy door and with pounding heart headed straight for the French section. Would it be there? Yes, there it was! Or, strictly speaking, there she was – for ‘Victory’ in French is a feminine noun. The eight red letters of the title stood out strikingly on the cream-coloured cover:

  Joseph Conrad

  VICTOIRE

  Du monde entier

  Gallimard

  I looked at the back, where the price was marked. Eighty-two zlotys! A fortune! For that amount of money I could buy at least three chess books in the bookshop known as ‘Soviet’ or a decent LP in the music shop, not to mention other desiderata and pleasures such as the cinema (seven tickets), the theatre (at least three) or taxis (five rides from home to school). But I didn’t hesitate. Setting my teeth and clasping my find firmly to my breast, I went on to the German section.

  Schopenhauer, Joanna. Jugendleben something something. I couldn’t find it. But I did find Friedrich Hölderlin’s Gedichte, an old hardcover edition in Gothic script. On the flyleaf was a circular black stamp with a swastika and an eagle and the words: Stolp – Garnisonsbibliothek. I looked at the table of contents to see if the Rhine hymn was there. It was: Der Rhein. The price was six zlotys. Excellent. Sold.

  At the cash desk I asked nonchalantly, with the air of a world-travelled scholar, whether they ever had Joanna Schopenhauer’s Jugendleben und . . . Wander. ‘You know,’ I added, ‘the mother of the philosopher.’

  The assistant paused in the wrapping of my precious acquisitions, looked at me keenly and disappeared into the back regions. A moment later he returned bearing a book with a yellowish-cream cover and a title in black Gothic-style letters:

  Joanna Schopenhauer

  MEMORIES OF A GDANSK YOUTH

  ‘Is this what you had in mind?’ he inquired with a hint of amusement.

  ‘Well, well! A Polish edition!’ I exclaimed in the confident tones of an expert, trying to conceal my surprise. ‘When was it published?’

  ‘Oh, a good seven years ago,’ he replied politely. ‘In ’59. It’s catalogued as antiquarian.’

  Slowly, unconcernedly, I began to turn the pages, looking for chapter thirty-nine. ‘Is the translation any good?’ I asked offhandedly.

  ‘It’s Ossolineum – best publisher in the country!’ he said with feigned indignation. ‘Do you have doubts about their competence?’

  My eye, in the meantime, had alighted on some of the French phrases, printed in italics, that I’d seen in the Gdansk edition of Joanna’s memoirs at Constant’s. ‘Ah, quel chien de pays!’ Yes, this was it. Here was the description of the journey back to Gdansk through Westphalia. I looked hastily for some stylistic infelicity, found it, and proceeded to read aloud:

  We were reluctant, however, to stray from the main roads through which we had to crawl for days on end, called highroads, which were bestrewn with huge stones from the fields, for the smaller roads which ran alongside, which were called summer roads, in which our carriage sank in the mud up to its axles.

  Raising my eyes from the page, I said with a grimace of distaste, ‘You think this is good? It’s hardly what I’d call a balanced sentence. All those subordinate clauses, for a start, flung in any old how, with no order or rhythm, and then those whiches all over the place – through which we had to crawl . . . which were bestrewn . . . which ran alongside . . . which were called – you must admit it doesn’t exactly bowl one over with its syntactical beauty. And that peculiar choice of verb: bestrewn?! Please!’ I rolled my eyes. ‘It’s all so clumsy and stilted. I’m sure this isn’t how Joanna Schopenhauer expressed herself. Now if I were writing this,’ I went on, ‘and had to stick with this unfortunate choice of vocabulary, at least I’d arrange it better. For instance, oh, I don’t know – like this: ‘The main highroads were littered with huge stones from the fields, so that we had to crawl along for days on end. We were nevertheless reluctant to abandon them for the smaller roads that ran alongside, known as summer roads, for there our carriage sank to its axles in mud.’ Isn’t that better? Clearer? And it gets rid of all those whiches. And the phrasing . . . the rhythm . . . the balance.’ I closed my eyes in blissful contemplation. ‘I trust you appreciate the difference.’

  The assistant laughed as if I were a monkey which had just performed a clever trick, but there was respect in his amusement. (It was in just this way that S. had laughed when I’d suddenly begun to recite Shakespeare and then improvise.)

  ‘Oh, indeed I do,’ he said, chuckling, ‘indeed I do.’

  ‘How, then,’ I pursued, adopting a mock-serious tone, ‘do you propose to express your appreciation in your attitude to me as a party in the transaction between us?’

  He chuckled again and took up the game. ‘In what way, if I may ask, do you imagine that it might be expressed?’

  ‘In what way? Obviously,’ I replied, ‘by reducing the price.’ I widened my eyes in surprise that this simple solution had not occurred to him. ‘By a magnanimous rebate. Let’s see.’ I closed the book and placed it on the counter, back cover up. ‘The original price was . . . twenty-eight zlotys. And what is it now?’ I glanced inside the dust jacket. ‘Ten zlotys more! How do you justify such a drastic increase? Surely not by the quality of the translation.’

  ‘It’s not the translation that determines the price. It’s demand.’

  ‘Do you mean to
suggest that Joanna Schopenhauer’s memoirs of her Gdansk youth are in demand in this country as an article of the most urgent necessity?’

  ‘Perhaps not the most urgent,’ he conceded with a straight face, ‘but urgent enough to justify thirty-eight zlotys. Hardly excessive, I would have thought – indeed, it’s something of a bargain. Many people,’ he continued, picking up the book and stroking its cover as if he were brushing away dust, ‘would happily pay double that amount for it, and be grateful.’

  ‘Possibly, but where are they?’ I looked about me. ‘They don’t appear to be exactly crowding around. I’m not sure it would be wise to bet on them. Here, on the other hand, you have a sure thing: a customer eager to part with his cash. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to meet him halfway than to wait God knows how long for that fabulous beast, the buyer who’ll allegedly be happy to pay even more?’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by meeting him halfway?’

  ‘Oh, very little, really. Annul that draconian increase and revert to the original price printed on the cover.’

  ‘Twenty-eight zlotys?!’ He laughed with derision. ‘You must be joking!’

  ‘All right, then, thirty-two. That’s all I can pay. One hundred and twenty zlotys is the sum of my assets.’ I extracted two crumpled bills from my pocket and displayed them: a brick-coloured hundred-zloty note bearing a portrait of the Worker and a dark-blue twenty with the Peasant Woman. ‘For these two,’ I said, nodding at Gedichte and Victoire, ‘I owe you the horrendous sum of eighty-eight zlotys. That leaves thirty-two. Which is all I have.’

  ‘In other words, you’re demanding a reduction of six zlotys.’