According to Hans Robert Jauss, in Julie, or the New Heloise (1761), French literature of the classical era underwent a kind of auto-da-fé, which was incredibly wide-reaching: Corneille, Racine, La Fontaine, La Bruyère and La Rochefoucauld do not withstand the implacable literary judgement of Rousseau. With one exception, though: The Princess of Cleves, which he would like to be a pair with Book IV of Julie. If The Princess of Cleves kills the passion of the heroine at its source by shutting her away in a monastic life based on repetition, Julie, or the New Heloise does the same—hence the exceptional treatment given to the novel of Madame de Lafayette—by preventing the passionate relationship between Saint-Preux and Julie from coming to fruition, and conversely by attempting to realise the happiness of the woman in a durable and permanent state—like that of the retreat of Madame de Clèves—that marriage to the wise and impassive Wolmar guarantees. The terror of men and women before natural law, according to which everything is worn away, has also left a remarkable imprint on this work. ‘There is no passion’, Rousseau declares,
that creates such a strong illusion in us as love: we take its violence as a sign of its lasting; the heart that is laden with such sweet feeling extends it so to speak into the future, and as long as this love lasts we believe that it will not come to an end. But, on the contrary, it is its very ardour that consumes it; it becomes worn away with youth; it is effaced with beauty, it is extinguished beneath the icy wastes of age; and since the world began two white-haired lovers sighing for each other is a sight that has never been seen.
Don Juan is the unfaithful one par excellence. Mélodie remains in an eternal present, which occupies, from the past to the future, the whole duration of time. But Don Juan lives in a temporality radically opposed to Mélodie’s: he lives in a present disconnected from both the past and the future. The donjuanesque existence is that of the seducer who, thumbing his nose at the authority of the past and the promise of the future, gives himself up wholly to the exclusive pleasure of the present. It is a discontinuous existence, made up of fleeting moments of sensual delight. At the end of Molière’s play (1665)—or Mozart’s opera (1787)—Don Juan—or Don Giovanni—is punished by divine power represented by the statue of the Commander: he is struck down and swallowed up into the dark abyss. In the direct contrast between the discontinuity of unstable desire and the permanence of the divine order, between the fleeting present of carnal pleasure and the untouchable immobility of the dinner guest of stone, between the empty volubility of the dissolute son and the sacred word of the inflexible Father, between the modern and the ancient, it is the ancient who ultimately annihilates the modern by a radical condemnation. But it is precisely this radical condemnation, in some way fully purged, that we moderns have put aside, without shame or embarrassment, under the new guise of a super seducer addicted to the maximum intensity of moments with no tomorrow. The damnation of Don Juan, in the same way no doubt as Madame de Clèves in her monastic life of exemplary austerity, paved the way for the birth of all the Don Juans in the centuries to come.
Diderot, in the Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville (1774), gives the Tahitian Orou the audacity to expose the absurd and untenable nature of the principles of the chaplain, his interlocutor, in the face of the ‘general law of beings’:
Is there anything, in fact, that appears more unreasonable to you than a precept that proscribes the change which is in us, that demands a constancy that cannot be there and which violates the nature and freedom of the male and the female by chaining them to each other forever; than a fidelity that limits the most capricious of pleasures to the same individual; than an oath of immutability of two beings of the flesh, under a sky that is not for an instant the same, below caves that threaten ruin, at the bottom of a cliff that crumbles away, at the foot of a tree that cracks, on a stone that moves beneath you?
Unquestionably, essential to Diderot’s dynamic materialism is the theme of change in all its forms, notably that of the weather that changes. We meet it throughout his work: Rameau’s Nephew, for example, is placed ‘under the malign influence of each and every Vertumnus’. Vertumnus was the god who presides over the changes of weather and season.
It is this same theme of change as the general law of beings that we meet fully developed in Mozart’s Così fan tutte (1790). The plot of the dramma giocoso revolves around the old and lucid philosopher, Don Alfonso, who tries to disillusion the two young officers, Guglielmo and Ferrando, sad and pitiful prisoners of a stubborn illusion: the unconditional fidelity of their respective fiancées, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, the two sisters who do not for a second doubt the constancy of their own hearts. They first resist the seduction practised by their lovers, who are transformed in their disguise as Albanians, but they soon succumb. Mozart has placed towards the middle of Act One (Scene 6) a trio of sublime beauty ‘Soave sia il vento …’, sung by Fiordiligi, Dorabella and Don Alfonso just as they are saying their adieus to the two officers who are leaving their sweethearts: ‘May the wind be gentle, may the waves be calm, and may all the elements, peaceful now, be responsive to our desires.’ This is one of the most beautiful musical moments of the work. The music, of great serenity, marks the end of an idyllic temporality based on the permanence of things and feelings. After this moment of rupture the lovers will find themselves irremediably caught up in a process, a becoming that is fatally subject to change, to alteration, to wearing away ...
In his only opera, Fidelio (definitive version 1814), Beethoven celebrates the triumph of an exemplary conjugal fidelity over the political oppression of a tyrant. It is said that he had a deep aversion to Così fan tutte and Don Giovanni. That is understandable. But how is it that the music of infidelity appears to me infinitely more satisfying and complete than that of fidelity?
* Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France from 2007 to 2012, created a minor furore when, in 2006, he made sarcastic comments about the appeal of the classic work by Madame de Lafayette.
24
THE FINAL DAYS
ON 6 AUGUST 2009—I remember it very well because it was the day after my birthday—Michèle had left for her native land to see her elderly mother, with whom she hoped to spend most of her holidays. As for Julia-Madoka, she’d left on 18 August to go to university in Paris. So I was on my own in Tokyo with Mélodie. I was busy correcting the final proofs of the translation of School Blues by Daniel Pennac.
On 26 August, returning home around 4pm, I found Mélodie lying down listlessly in the kitchen near her bowl, and I’d never seen her lying there like that before.
I’d left the house at the beginning of the afternoon, around 2pm, to go and see the publisher of School Blues. The purpose of this brief meeting in a jazz cafe not far from Nakano Station was to hand over to her the final proof, which I’d now corrected. I stayed on a little while—the editor and I not denying ourselves the pleasure of taking the conversation beyond the strictly professional to discuss music, our common passion, and the CDs and concerts that we’d particularly enjoyed. With a somewhat unwonted enthusiasm on my part I’d talked to her in some detail about the performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony conducted by Claudio Abbado that I’d listened to a few days before over the internet, live from the Festival of Lucerne. The emotion that had gripped me as I listened was extraordinarily profound; its power was unsettling; I had never experienced it before. And in fact that emotion remains unchanged: it comes back to me; I am seized by it again every time I listen to the recording of that concert. That first listening had marked the beginning of my growing interest in all of the Italian maestro’s Lucerne recordings of Mahler. What is it that makes a miracle like that possible?
During our conversation, however, my thoughts kept returning to the one who was waiting for me with her patiently controlled impatience. I apologised, without giving the reason, for having to put a rather abrupt end to the conversation. I took my leave of the publisher. I got my bicycle and hurried home. When I arrived, a little breathless, it was past 4pm. It wa
s still hot outside.
Mélodie was not in the hall. I was expecting to find her as usual behind the door and to be greeted by the full gamut of expressions signifying her uncontained joy now that the wait she’d endured was over. But no. She hadn’t come to meet me. I called her. No answer. I took off my summer jacket and put my things down in my study. She wasn’t in there. I kept on calling her. Silence. Panicking a little, I went into the dining room and glanced towards the kitchen. And there I saw her: she was lying down, near her bowl, she seemed exhausted, all her strength gone …
‘What’s the matter, Mélodie? What’s going on? Are you ill? Is something hurting?’
Mélodie didn’t move. Lying on her side, fully stretched out, the look she gave me can only be described as distraught. I didn’t delay before calling Mr D, the vet. The phone rang for a long time. There was no answer. I called a woman vet we’d once taken Mélodie to see when she had some mysterious problems with vomiting. At the time she’d been incom petent, but it was the closest clinic. So I resorted to ringing her. Stammering, I described Mélodie’s state to her and asked her if she could come and see her. She said she couldn’t because she had too many appointments. My only option was to take Mélodie by car to a third vet whose practice was a little further away. First, in the dining room, I spread out a big navy blue furoshiki, a square of material a metre in width that in the past we used as what I’d describe as a makeshift clothes bag. My plan was to place Mélodie on the cloth in her outstretched position, then to carry her as if in a bassinet with the help of Mrs O, a neighbour I would get to come and help me. I spoke to Mélodie, ‘Mélodie, can you get up? Can you come and lie down here? We’re going to see Mr K.’
She didn’t move a muscle. So I picked up in my arms this body weighing about thirty kilos. Given the state of my back this was most ill-advised, but I couldn’t do anything else. She gave a little groan but she didn’t resist. Just when I was about to put her on the furoshiki, to my utter amazement she got up and stood firmly on her four feet.
‘Ah, good on you … You’ll walk to the car? We’ll take the lift to go down, OK? Wait, I’m going to get my things … and your bag too …’
The vet informed me that Mélodie’s lungs were full of fluid and that it was necessary to drain it off in order to examine whether or not it showed any malignancy. I asked him to do everything necessary for her to get better again as quickly as possible.
Mélodie’s condition didn’t really improve. There were ups and downs in September and October. But the moments of relief became fewer and further between and gave way to those of increasingly frequent and prolonged anxiety. Mr K, his attitude one of depressing uncertainty, acknowledged his powerlessness and advised us to try to get in at one of the biggest veterinary hospitals in Tokyo, further away again and more expensive.
Finally, a large, probably cancerous, tumour was discovered above the heart. Would she have an operation? No, what good would it do? There was no point in battling an illness when it was impossible to stop its inexorable, implacable, merciless progress. That being the case I could think of one thing and one thing only, an obsession: to take any measures clinically possible and financially within our means if not to inhibit at least to lessen the dog’s suffering. She was given painkilling medication and we returned home. It was 16 October 2009. Mélodie had forty-seven days ahead of her.
She was finding it more and more difficult to walk and to relieve herself. When she squatted the muscles of her back legs could no longer support her: they gave way and she made a mess. We tried to find a solution and came up with a sort of jacket with two sleeves so that we could help her to support herself.
The tumour grew bigger. It now formed a lump above her shoulder. Her legs, especially her front ones, had grown fat and round like little tree trunks. Was this because they were filling with liquid from the tumour? I don’t know. She walked painfully and with difficulty, and no doubt the pain was more and more unbearable despite the medication.
Even so she kept up her morning and evening walk. Michèle and I tried to be together as often as possible in accompanying her, while the walk, which really hadn’t been a walk at all for some time now, became shorter each day. In the end it had just become a matter of going out so that she could relieve herself.
A wolf howl—short, strident, desperate—shattered the silence and dragged me brutally from sleep. I gave a start and sat up. I rubbed my eyes. In the semi-darkness I saw Mélodie’s head, slightly tilted to the side; she was anxious, watching me. She was lying as usual on the bath towel placed at the foot of our big bed. Michèle, who’d been in a light sleep beside me, asked what was going on.
‘It’s Mélodie, she’s woken me up. Didn’t you hear her?’
The dog repeated her howling, longer and deeper this time, pointing if not to actual pain that she was experiencing, at least to the fact that the level of discomfort was increasing. Mélodie’s plaintive cry was so eloquent, so expressive, that it sounded to me like a plea for help. I went to her, she all the while continuing to watch me. The fading light from outside, wan and colourless, which was coming through the chink in the shutter, which had been left slightly open, fell on the upper half of her head, showing up her advanced years. And it accentuated the devastating power of the illness she now carried inside her. I noticed that she was panting, when hardly a few minutes before I thought that she’d been resting peacefully in the gentle warmth of the night.
‘What’s the matter, Mélodie? Are you in pain? Are you trying to tell me something?’
I took Mélodie’s right paw, which she held out gingerly. I rubbed my cheek against hers. Then I whispered in her ear,
‘You can come and lie next to me, OK?’
As soon as I’d said these words, with one movement I shifted the dog about two metres by pulling the bath towel on which she lay motionless, her intense gaze still trained on me. She was now very close to me, just ten centimetres from the edge of the bed, like a frightened child who nestles into its father’s arms.
‘Good night. Sleep well, Mélodie-chan.’
Mélodie stretched out. I placed my hand on her swollen shoulder. Then I slid it gently right down her back in the direction her fur grew. I repeated this several times. After that she became calm again, and her breathing grew regular. All the fear, all the restless anxiety of the lonely and interminable night seemed to have gone; she now abandoned herself to the powerfully reassuring and soothing feeling of not being alone, to the sensation that was at once tactile and olfactory of the immediate proximity of her human companion.
Finally, I went to sleep, my right hand placed very lightly on her neck, its protruding lump like the sign of an unassailable morbidity.
The next morning when I woke up I found myself in exactly the same position. My hand hadn’t left Mélodie’s body, which was relaxed and yet very ill. She hadn’t moved an inch either.
It was Wednesday, 2 December 2009. Michèle and I had to hurry because we both had an early morning start.
‘Come on, Mélodie-chan, we’re going for a little walk’, said Michèle in her clear voice.
I helped to get her up. I slipped her two-sleeved jacket over her back. She began to walk, slowly, putting one foot in front of another, hesitant and uncertain. Really she was just staggering along. I remembered my father, who, in the last days of his life, wasn’t very clear about the order in which to put his clothes on. After a few tottering steps Mélodie couldn’t hold on any longer: she peed, just a little, in the hall. This was the first time she’d had a problem with incontinence if we don’t count the accidents that occurred when her joyful outbursts got the better of her.
She started walking again. While Michèle cleaned the yellow liquid from the tiles, I went with Mélodie towards the lift, which we’d been using for several weeks now to go down to the ground floor from the first floor. Once in the street, contrary to her usual habit of waiting for her mistress, she started off straight away. She went thirty metres and stopped on t
he edge of the footpath on Nakano Avenue. Then she passed all the remaining urine into the gutter. She looked at me, tilting her head imperceptibly to the side in the way she had. It was a look of pleading. I understood that she couldn’t or wouldn’t go any further.
‘I understand, Mélodie. We’ll go home, we’ll take it very easy.’
I took two or three steps. But Mélodie didn’t follow me. ‘So we’re not going home?’
Mélodie threw me a second pleading look, one of infinite, heart-wrenching sadness.
She was completely exhausted. She couldn’t go any further.
I picked up her body which, having given up completely, seemed heavier than when I’d had to lift it two months before when I took her to Mr K, the vet. With Mélodie in my arms I walked with quick, jerky steps. Without meaning to I pressed against the bulging area on her shoulder. She cried out as if she’d felt a surge of sharp pain. Michèle came to meet us.
‘She can’t walk any more, poor thing. Well, she’s in a lot of pain … I’m trying not to touch the lump but it’s still hurting her …’
I reached the house at last. She groaned with every step I took, but she calmed down completely as soon as I put her on her four feet in the little lift that took us up to the apartment. We had to hurry. I rapidly swallowed a piece of bread and butter and set to preparing Mélodie’s bowl of food. To the usual kibble I added some slices of beef, some natto (she loved these fermented soya beans) and some boiled cabbage to stimulate her appetite. I put the meal, more elaborate than usual, down in front of her, now she’d gone to lie down on the bath towel at the foot of the bed of her master and mistress. She didn’t get up; she showed no interest in what I’d given her. For the first time she didn’t want to touch her food. I put a little bit of cabbage and natto on the palm of my left hand and put it under her lips. To no avail, she wasn’t interested. I wanted to look at her tongue; I was struck by the pale colour of her gums, which had always looked bright pink to me in contrast to the yellowish white colour of her teeth.
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