My Year of Love

by Nizon, Paul.

  I said to myself: how on earth did I get onto this wobbly scaffolding, I must have gotten lost while climbing, and also, was I so blind that I didn’t even know that a building and a friend and help was near at hand. That could easily have resulted in my death, I thought, but in the end, I had climbed in, but where? into the building; or just into an inhabited floor of the building, where my friend lived? in any case, I was no longer alone.

  What can that have to do with my book, I wondered again. Could it be that I was so lost while climbing, so off course that I kept waiting for the beginning of my book or my “marching orders” to be handed to me on a plate when I’d already long since made a start in my daily writing exercises, with this warm-up writing, I had already climbed into life, all kinds of lives, into a world, a world of memory, largely, stations of a journey, and even if I hadn’t realized, my foot, which had already set out on this path, the foot that had stepped over the border into freedom, had not forgotten. I can still be a part of it if I just bend down far enough, and if I use my paper to fly off from this spot I call my room: if I just let myself go, flow, fly, sleep, and dream.

  Seen that way, I could even imagine that I’m not alone at all, at least not in my thoughts, not in the ones that ignited my writing and had it burn along this safety fuse

  and as for the book, hadn’t I already, several times already, dreamed that such a book lay before me without my having had the slightest idea that it existed, without my having the slightest idea of how it had come into being? Once, it was at a reading, in a bookstore, that I discovered, among many new releases laid out on a table, a book by me, just lying there, a new book, and it stood out a mile, insofar as it was mainly pieced together out of manuscripts, albeit between two covers, it was a combination of typescript and properly printed and published pages, all in a bundle, and there were handwritten pages too, it was a heterogeneous thing, and consisted of exactly 146 pages, and it had obviously been published, even if that had happened without my knowledge, and now it existed, and with some embarrassment, and at the same time joy, I took note of it, in my dream.

  And there was another time that I found a new book by me in a bookstore, it was a tiny thing, and when I opened it, I saw it was an illustrated book, but the text and the pictures had been printed on the same pages, the beginning lines of the text were legible, I read them, read them out loud in amazement to someone else, but as it went on, the lines became increasingly inundated by the surging waves of the illustrations, I tried everything to retrieve them, but the words always sank below the surface.

  Was that too an indication that I had already written something without knowing it? In my warm-up writing exercises, I had written rather indiscriminately, the main thing was to be writing, for me, that was as necessary as breathing. And now I thought, I’m right, my dreams are right, those sessions when the words bubbled out of me had already attracted all kinds of figures, my room is a real dovecote sometimes, and by doves I mean thoughts, those whirling, wailing creatures that echo through my head, there’s often a humming sound, as in a beehive, so really my room is quite populated, I should read up on this phenomenon sometime, I thought, but I didn’t take the time to do so, the main thing is, you’re writing

  let it bubble, like the gutters bubble here in Paris, I still loved these gurgling, gushing grates, they don’t exist in Switzerland, but they do here in Paris, and I’ve often stood and observed them, even when I was a boy, when I used to visit my aunt, when Paris was still my aunt’s Paris, I had often stared in awe at those gurgling holes, and also at the usually black street sweepers with their wonderful brooms, when they swept the sputum and trash down from the sidewalk, toward the cleansing water that was bubbling out of the holes they had opened, directing it down into the sewers.

  For me, the bubbling and gurgling was a wonderful sound, it would be nice to have a mouth that bubbled like that. The idea of a mouth spitting words and sentences appealed to me, no: of being or being able to become a gurgling mouth. It would be like an oratory; or a broadcasting station, a transmitter? Maybe that’s the meaning of your emigration, maybe that’s what you’re about; maybe you had to let yourself be oppressed by this city until the gurgling began and now you’re overflowing, be grateful for the oppression. You’re afraid that life is passing you by outside, but perhaps there is no other life.

  But, I tell myself, in my room I can only remember the other, the past life. What happened long ago is reaching me now. Now it has overtaken me. Its ruins roll to the threshold of my present day like a message in a bottle rolling up on a beach. And while I’m collecting all kinds of life here, and that is: past life!—while I’m preoccupied with it, it is “my life”—there is already a new life taking place, to which I as yet have no access.

  I am the son of my father and my mother, I say to myself, the product of this meeting and mating, both their worlds flow together in me, and God knows, the two of them, for their part, were messengers from different, far distant ends of the earth; I am their product, just as I am the product of a long history and also the product of everything that has ever influenced me; I am saturated with thousands of things, a sum of hovering particles, teeming and whirling, and I am a responding, corresponding instrument; I’m connected with everything, whether I know it or not, after all, I’m just the innkeeper, and what does an innkeeper know . . . but when I occupy myself with these listening devices, I can receive things and pass some of them on, I’m writing to communicate something of what gives me a foothold.

  Well then, get writing, I hear my dear friend Beat say to me in my thoughts, your life, as I now realize, can only be reached through writing, so what’s the fuss, get down to it, and accept the fact.

  I say, Beat, I say, life consists of what a person thinks in the course of the day, at least that’s what I read, I think Emerson said it, it’s his sentence, though it’s horrible to go along with it, I’d rather life were in my shoes and I could scratch it off the soles and untie it with my shoelaces.

  This dream, I’m writing it down late at night, still here in my boxroom, somewhat tired, while in Lebanon the Syrians are attacking the Israelis and the Israelis are attacking the Syrians, and while in France the increasingly embittered election campaign is coming to a head; while the stock market is crumbling; and now I remember that Brisa phoned me recently, her voice sounded crackly through the receiver, there are always these disruptions, I don’t know if the problem is in my telephone, lately there’s been more and more crackling and rustling on the line, I should have someone come to check it; my conversation with Brisa got interrupted before I understood what she wanted to say; I’d actually like to fly to Rio, if I could, I once heard that there’s no problem with racism in Brazil because everyone is biracial anyway, I don’t know if that’s true; Brazil, I think, must be beautiful, but I thought that about East Asia too, before I actually arrived there, and now I see myself in the airplane, we are en route from Singapore to Medan, Sumatra, seen from the airplane this island kingdom really took on character, the islands, small islands, bridging islands looked like bubbles of steam and specks of fat, like plasma in the boiling soapy water of the ocean, they sprinkled the surface of the sea in lovely curves and roundels, a roundelay of creation, it was like a lesson about the origin of the earth out of the depths of the sea, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, these small landmasses pulsated in the aura of their torrid, hazy pall, as in the book of Genesis, and sparkled up to us, to the people flying overhead in a stifling hot crate. The pilot fiddled lazily with his instruments, when he hadn’t simply flopped back into his seat, we could watch him when we weren’t looking down onto this oceanic scene, onto this part of the globe where the stories by Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham are set, and then I fell asleep and dreamed of a wild rose, a single, unassuming rose that was blooming on a wall of my childhood, and when I woke up in our crate of a plane that was pitching and tossing high up in the air, and hot as a greenhouse inside, when I regained consciousn
ess, I still had this image from my dream before my eyes, and I held fast to it like an amulet while we were descending and land thrust itself under our wings, it was the steaming top of the jungle in a haze of heat, then forests of palm trees, now and then I saw bits of corrugated metal gleaming up out of this tangle of green, those were huts or settlements, and when we landed, I saw ourselves surrounded by palm trees, nothing but straggly palm trees, it looked as though we were being greeted by dancing warriors in skirts of leaves; and there was this light, this humming interior lighting, as if one was on the inside of a lamp, a relentless light that illuminated everything, I’d soon had enough of it, so I started to long to be back in Europe; maybe I’d feel that way in Brazil too, and why go to Brazil, I think, you’re in Paris and here you’ll stay, I say to myself as I look out at the old dove man, who will leave the stage very soon now, by which I don’t mean that he’s going to die, God forbid, but that he will disappear from the window, I think he goes to bed shortly after eight in the evening, just as he’s already up before six in the morning, it’s inexplicable to me why he does that, my mother too always gets up that early in her senior’s apartment, although she could sleep in now to her heart’s content, you have all the time in the world, I tell her, but she doesn’t like to hear that

  while the dove man says good-bye to his favorite dove for the night, and while from the other windows facing the courtyard the televisions, the kitchen noises, many different voices, screams, laughter, and various kinds of music come together to create our regular evening racket, for some it’s cacophony, but not for me, I’m writing down this dream in which I find myself standing in a magnificent apartment with high ceilings and big windows, the windows and the balcony doors are open, I’m standing in the light of a September morning, and now I suddenly know that I’m in Spain; I’m standing there, still very young, and watching an older man who’s about forty, he’s dark, slim, careful in his movements, and he’s in the process of preparing for a trip; just now he’s putting his suitcases beside an armchair, they’re the most beautiful suitcases I’ve ever seen, made of blond calfskin, soft and sumptuous, and they have big, soft side pockets and straps; I’m standing there, not doing anything, but I’m waiting, not exactly for orders, but still waiting to take action, because the energetic man is the KING, and I’m, well, what exactly am I? I don’t really know, I’m something between a secretary and a close friend, not really in his employ, but not just a guest either, something in between; I’m standing there, waiting, in the very sunny room with the cool air coming in, and now the king speaks, in a very quiet but firm voice, he asks me to please look after the goldfish in the aquarium during his absence, and don’t forget to feed it, he says; and later, when I’m alone, I discover that the aquarium has tipped over and is empty except for the goldfish, it’s lying motionless on the light-colored little stones, lying on its side, I’m shocked by my inattentiveness, I place the aquarium upright again, it immediately fills up with water, and lo and behold, the big goldfish moves, recovers, and starts slapping against the upper surface of the water with these rapid splashes, its mouth protruding

  that was lucky, once again things turned out well, and now I think, what would have happened if it had just lain there and not come back to life? and now it occurs to me that I had recently received some glad tidings from someone I didn’t know, it was late, I’d been at the movies in Clichy, and now I was going home along Rue Caulaincourt, under the trees, their canopies of leaves shining magnificently in the dark, I was almost walking on tiptoe so as not to break the magic spell of the quiet street, and at the one bar that was always open until late in the night, I had a whiskey brought to me outside, I sat facing the darkness of the street, and behind me was the bar, it seemed as though it must be sweltering in there because it was so bright and busy, of course it also seemed to shine like that because everything all around it was submerged in the silence of the night; inside several tipsy regular customers were laughing at one of their own who was trying to talk English with a foreign woman, a tourist, who was playing pinball. I sat at my little table outside, and these bursts and then waves of laughter came at intervals, I was happy, I was at home here, in my district, and I didn’t want to go back to the apartment yet; then a man came up to me out of the darkness and laid an envelope beside my glass, on the envelope I read the words

  Mr & Mme

  [Dear Sir or Madam

  Je suis sourd-muet

  I am a deaf and dumb person

  et vous présente

  and in an appeal to your generosity

  Le »Message du Bonheur«

  I am presenting you with a

  à votre bon cœur

  “Message of Good Fortune”

  Prix : I Fr. Merci!

  Price : 1 franc. Thank you!]

  and then I opened the envelope, after I had paid the asking price, a one-franc coin, and on the folded paper I read the announcement

  Révélation du Destin

  [Revelation of your Destiny]

  and when I unfolded the paper, the following text:

  Vous êtes d’une nature indécise, c’est- à-dire que vous ne savez jamais quoi faire, un rien vous embarrasse, ce qui est le plus fort c’est que vous voulez tout faire à la fois. Toujours plusieures idées en tête, vous ne savez pas laquelle entreprendre et cette indécision vous a déjà causé beaucoup d’ennuis dans la réussite de vos projets. Vous avez une bonne idée en tête, suivez-là jusqu’à complète réussite sans vous occuper d’autre chose et le succès est certain.

  [You are by nature indecisive, that is to say, you never know what to do, you make mountains out of molehills, and the worst part of it is that you want to do everything all at the same time. You always have several ideas in your head, and you don’t know which one to attempt, and this indecision has already made it very difficult to succeed in your projects. You have a good idea in your head, follow it through to completion without getting distracted by other things, and you are sure to succeed.

  Vous avez dans votre existance une personne vous aimant beaucoup et il est mal heureux pour vous que vous ne partagiez pas ses sentiments.

  There is someone in your life who loves you very much, and it is unfortunate for you that the love is not reciprocated.

  Comme vous êtes très agréable en société, vous avez l’estime de votre entourage et tout le monde aime votre société.

  Since you are a very pleasant person to be with, your friends hold you in high regard, and everyone appreciates your company.

  RÉSUMÉ

  SUMMARY

  Caractère: Enjoué, plutôt bon, même trop confiant.

  Character: Playful, quite kind, and even trusting.

  Famille: Nombreuse, don’t une partie fera sa carrière dans l’armée.

  Family: Large, some of whom will have careers in the army.

  Amour: Beaucoup de chance pour vous et pour ceux quivous aimeront.

  Love: You are very lucky, as will be those who love you.

  Jeu: Assez de chance, main surtout pas trop d’entêtement.

  Gambling: Lucky enough, but especially when you don’t get carried away by it.

  Jours de chance: le 9 et le 1.

  Your lucky days: the 9th and the 1st.

  Existance heureuse et vieillesse tranquille.

  You will have a long and happy life.

  Votre porte-bonheur sera: l’Opale.

  Your lucky charm is: the opal.]

  I thought this guy knew me astonishingly well, at least the most important things about me, and now of course I was even happier than before; such a heavenly evening is usually only possible in a dream, I told myself, so much flows through such an evening, an evening tailor-made for the flow of thoughts, I ordered another whiskey

  and now I’m thinking of my mother and how nice it would be for her if I could treat her to a meal here, she always says, when I visit her, you are the only ray of light in my life, she says, and some day, you’ll see, I’ll come to visit you in
Paris, Paris, she says, is the city of my dreams, it always has been, and then she tells me of her visits to her aunt, that was at the beginning of the 1930s and even before that, when she, a stylishly dressed young woman, wore the most elegant shoes of that time, and traveled repeatedly to Paris, and that aunt also had a little dog, its name was Fleurette, and at the last, it was short of breath and fat, I knew both the little dog and this aunt, who was my great-aunt, and when she was almost eighty, she moved to Bern to live with us, she had lost her husband in Paris after a long life, he had been a pharmacist and an officer of the Legion of Honor; but I’ll probably never see my mother here, I think, how could I, how could she get around here on her legs, on which she comes running with such stiff little steps to the door when I ring her doorbell, she could neither get down to the subway, nor climb up onto the bus, and a long train trip or car ride is quite out of the question, but she probably sees it differently; and I think I’d also like to have my dog here, but I wouldn’t dare to bring him, where could he run loose here, and, God knows, I wouldn’t be able to take him out for a walk every evening here, and into the open, which is what he was used to, I thought of my tiny apartment and the different customs here, I was afraid, so I left him with friends back in Switzerland, he had it good with them, he had a garden, and his master was a retired gentleman who spoiled him, but my dog didn’t last much longer, he died soon afterward; Florian had also gotten along well with my dog, not to mention Karel; but Beat didn’t particularly like him, he doesn’t like dogs, he finds that people who have dogs are people who like to dominate others, he rubbed that in several times; I don’t ever want to have another dog, I’m my own dog, but I found Beat’s arguments superficial and heartless, and now I’m reminded of my first dog, whom I had to have shot shortly before my final exams in high school, he was fourteen years old and had edema, could hardly stand on his legs anymore, and so I took him to the animal hospital one day, the attendant told me to bring my dog, who was resisting, into this shooting chamber, I said, here boy, heel, I said, and saw the dog overcoming his reluctance because he trusted me, he followed me, and when we were inside, he laid his old head against my knee, then the attendant gunned him down, my dog was still wagging his tail as he died, they handed over his collar and leash to me, and I set off for home with the two items.