She could see the night against the window-panes. No, she thought, not in the night; in the morning, so that she’d be facing the light, as if facing hope. The window was high and difficult and it was the only thing that mattered. Lennie lowered her eyelids. Someone opened the door: she could feel the draught of cold air on her arms and legs. Who’s bothering me now? Turning her head she opened her eyes and in front of the half-open door stood her child, all clean in his flowered pyjamas. He was moving his lips.
‘Come on in, then,’ Lennie said. The child’s lips were moving: he was waiting for Lennie to move towards the jewel case on the table, for her to take out an object shaped like a horn and place it against one side of her face. The child was waiting for the large black shell that would let him be heard by his mother.
Lennie’s hand didn’t move. ‘Off you go, then,’ she said. She was alone again, she was light and she was free, and her hands were lying in the lap of her dress.
‘How my death embarrasses you, Clara… No, my hand didn’t move, I didn’t hold this strange black shell up to my face. My vastness is without waves and without submarine fauna and no shell carries its echoes into it, no mother-of-pearl can transmit its murmurs. What did my child have to do with my movements of death?
‘I could tell when it was you they were talking about, Clara, because the harsh, clamorous sound of your name came through to me. You loved me – but now you rend my heart, as if you were crying out instead of speaking to me: your name rends me like a cry.
(The woman came in. ‘Aren’t you hungry, aren’t you cold?’ ‘No,’ Lennie said.)
‘It’s not very long since we met. I was sitting with a group of happy, pretty women, and some men who were talking to each other. You were sitting opposite, watching me: sometimes someone spoke to you… Your name rends me like a cry. As I held the black shell up to my face your look distressed me and I put the strange object back in its case. You smiled at me, Clara, and I smiled back. You knew the price of my silence – you knew that locked in my silence I could wander in all kinds of unknown sounds, just as the seeker of buried treasure is attentive to the signs wherever he goes. And because of this you believe that I died not so much because of my silence, but rather thanks to it. And yet my death still embarrasses you…
‘Another day, you lit a fire when I was in the room with you. You picked up some logs, and your hands lingered over the pattern of the wood, as if the marks had some meaning, and they lingered too over the particles of soil and the moss that was still sticking to the bark. White flakes fell off the moss into your hands; you could see right through them, tiny whitish specks. We didn’t say anything, but you put the white flakes back under the moss, and I put the log on a piece of furniture behind me. Through this infinitesimal fragment, the forest haunted us still. We didn’t say anything but we turned the mystery over in our minds, and our hands were a part of the miracle. We had to remain silent, and let everything fall apart.
‘Someone came into the room then, and we talked and drank our tea with proper decorum. How calmly one behaves in the face of anguish, mysteries and miracles. I no longer wanted to put up with that kind of proper behaviour, nothing had any value except as a symbol or a word, and I could no longer build on that. I needed my truth, Clara. I wanted to rejoin the great gulf of infinite truth, where everything is pure beginning; I wanted to be part of the eternally recurring event again. Freed from all other passion, the only thing that was pushing me towards death was death itself: I didn’t call for it as one cries for help, but I threw myself at the heart of death… I was free and that is what I chose to do. Will you tell me that it wasn’t a choice but a refusal? Clara, is a choice ever anything but a refusal? I needed my truth, I needed my death as I needed eternity…’
‘She was deaf. It seems it’s worse than being blind.’
‘It’s right at the end there, in the fifth avenue. Are you cold, Clara?’
‘No, I’m not cold.’
And keep your peace, while we’re following her dead body. Footsteps and footsteps, my steps in yours – but leave me be, leave me to walk by myself. Lennie: light, transparent, hair in criss-crossing plaits on top of her bent head. ‘Off you go, then,’ Lennie had said to her child. She was alone again now, immobile, free.
‘No, my hand didn’t move. Did you expect me to cry out, then, to let these child’s arms join round my neck to make a link which would restrain me? Did you see the flowered pyjamas that the child wore in readiness for his innocent night as a symbol of humanity? No, my kingdom has no symbols and no legends. That’s not where the crowd is, the heart of the crowd.
‘My source is pure, nothing needs interpretation. I was in silence, Clara, and thus almost in God. My sea had no black shell, and the sweetness of my death will be transmitted to you in spite of logic. And then it will no longer be a dialogue.’
A sun without warmth touched the half-open earth. There was no rustling in the trees bordering the avenues, no sign in the colour of the air. Neither joy nor pain destroyed space or time, and nothing moved in the watching universe: it was not transient. No fragment of space or of time slipped in with Lennie when, light and transparent, she slid from four men’s arms without weighting down the earth. All around her there was a startled sweetness.
The sweetness was there again in five more avenues – and then there was a road: long, calm and indifferent. More footsteps, and my steps in these other steps. It was indeed not logical that Lennie’s death should have been transmitted to me… all is pure refusal in the watching world. It is not transient: if one doesn’t preserve in oneself a fragment of space or of time, then…
‘Are we all getting the bus?’
‘Yes, come to my place; I’ll make some tea, that’ll warm us up.’
‘Clara, will you come too? I know you’re cold; it’s true, isn’t it, you’re cold?’
‘No, I’m not cold.’
From you to me, bound together in silence. You opened the window on the rising dawn, the silent dawn which brought with it a song of endless shadows. At last everything was going to be born, and the time for words would come. Oh Lennie, from what pride, what weakness, what fascination, did you… Did you think that you had only to die to slip into the heart of the universe? The lips of the child moved, and your hand remained still!
Now the road was empty of any faces that she knew. Clara walked on slowly, without companions, through an unfamiliar burble of words and sounds. A cart passed by, some children shrieked, she could see countryside on both sides. In the village square she got on to an empty bus. As he waited for his passengers, the driver jumped up and down to warm himself and blew hot breath into his gloves. A man got on the bus and as he passed the driver he slapped him on the shoulder in a friendly gesture.
‘You going into town?’ the driver asked.
‘Yes, I thought I’d go to the cinema,’ said the man.
A couple came next. The woman said, ‘We’re going to pick up a sack of wood.’
The driver, who was issuing the tickets himself, stretched across Clara towards the half-open window. ‘Would you like me to shut it, are you cold?’ he asked her.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Silence. The driver closed the window, sat down and started up the bus. Black branches of passing trees brushed against the windows, and fields stretched out beyond them. Darkness fell, and in the distance clouds banked and turned red, as though the night was sacred. ‘Yes, we’re going to pick up some wood,’ the woman said. She opened a paper bag and handed her boyfriend a sweet – purple, shaped like a violet.
BLANCHE
‘BLANCHE, IS MY SHIRT IRONED?’
No answer. He shouted down again: ‘Blanche!’
He was on the landing, stripped to the waist. Blanche hadn’t heard him. It wasn’t worth shouting again: he knew she wouldn’t have ironed his shirt. He went back into the bedroom. Too bad, he could put on the one he had worn the day before. Blanche was an absent-minded woman and she often forgot things that
he had asked her to do. He’d have liked to put on a clean shirt, though. It was a bore, Blanche being so absent-minded. In three minutes he was dressed: tie knotted, hair combed. He went downstairs and collected his hat and overcoat. As he passed the kitchen door he could see Blanche standing there, her hand outstretched towards the cupboard, as if she was just about to open it or as if she’d just shut it.
‘Goodbye, Blanche. See you later.’
‘You’re rushing off so quickly…’
‘I’m late, Blanche, goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, Louis.’
Louis stepped out on to the drive, between the hedges. What a filthy old drive it was, all mud and water. There’d been a storm in the night, and he hopped from right to left in an effort to avoid the puddles. Why on earth do we live in a place like this, he thought, when we could have a ground-floor flat in the centre of town. It was Blanche who wanted this rotten little house. Which meant that he had a twenty-minute walk to get to the solicitor’s office where he worked, and he always arrived with muddy shoes. When you work at a solicitor’s you like to have clean shoes – and a clean shirt. That’s only natural, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it? And I had asked for a clean shirt, after all.
Mud and puddles everywhere. It’s best to stick really close to the hedge, like this. Louis was munching on a small leaf that he’d plucked from the hedge – but then he worried that he might have a speck of green between his teeth when he arrived at the solicitor’s office. He spat it out and passed his tongue over his teeth. It’s such a shame, he thought, about Blanche: she’s gentle, she’s quiet, and she’s quite pretty, so why is it that she’s so – well yes, I’ll say it – so stupid?
Damn it, I forgot to… Louis looked left and right: there was nobody about, so he could safely go up against the hedge. Barely worth it! A little shake of the legs and everything was back in place. Yes, Blanche was stupid. When someone spoke to her all she could do in reply was smile, because she was so kind. In short, Louis thought to himself, I, Louis, deserved better than that. I do love her; well, I sort of love her; but she’s a stupid woman.
Louis hopped and skipped his way down the road, missing the puddles. He shrank into the distance, getting smaller and smaller until distance overtook him and obliterated everything.
Blanche, in the kitchen, was still standing in front of the cupboard with her hand on the door, as if she had either just shut it or was about to open it. She could open it, or else she could go on waiting. She had to wait, but for how long? She had to wait until peace was resumed.
She’d been near the table when Louis’s words had reached her through the layers of the air around her. But instead of cutting cleanly and resonantly through the air like an arrow, the words had had a disturbing effect. Everything should have been so straightforward: ‘Blanche, is my shirt ready?’ ‘Coming, Louis, coming.’ She could have taken the shirt upstairs, helped Louis to attach the cuffs, and come down again, peace in her heart and all around her. She’d been near the table, and the shirt was in front of her, neatly ironed and folded, all starched and shiny.
As she passed her hands round the collar, there had appeared beneath her searching fingers a tiny thread caught in the starch, marring the shine that she had thought was immaculate. It was then that Louis’s words had reached her – not cutting through the layers of air but disturbing them. Blanche had not answered; she’d gone on smoothing the collar so as to make the thread disappear. ‘Blanche!’ he’d cried, in tones that now disrupted and cut through the layers. Still Blanche had not replied; she smoothed the collar faster, completely taken up with her task. She opened the cupboard and slipped the shirt in, waiting, her hand still on the closed door, for Louis to call out to her again. And, ultimately, for everything to revert to a state of peace. Peace – my God.
It was then that Louis had passed the kitchen door with his hat and coat – ‘Goodbye, Blanche’. She waited for the layers of air to re-form themselves and be healed, for them to join up again and for the air to be one, without fissure or tremor, and for peace to inhabit her. She opened the cupboard and looked at the white shirt, folded and shining, on the ironing-board cover in the corner. ‘Blanche, is my shirt ready?’ She could have taken it upstairs to him… if only she could recreate that ill-conceived moment, give it a perfect birth. But you can’t wipe things out and start over again just like that. In the stifling air, Blanche could only wait.
On the stove, a pan of water began to boil furiously, in huge bubbles, spitting noisy little drops on to the metal surface. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Blanche, ‘give me a minute.’
Again she looked at the shirt, and then shut the cupboard door. She stayed in the same position, her hand resting on the door, as if ready to open it one more time. But the pan of water went on issuing its calls for help.
‘All right, I’m coming,’ Blanche said.
She picked up the pan, emptied it into a washing-up bowl, filled it again, put it back on the stove and started to wash the dishes. But when emptying the pan into the bowl some water had run down the outside and it immediately began to hiss again. The hissing went on, and every other moment a drop of water spat on to the stove. It was as if the pan had a hole in its pocket.
‘You’re getting on my nerves,’ Blanche said.
At last the fire managed to consume the water and the noise died down. In the silence that followed Blanche could feel all the suffering that was in the air around her. She grabbed hold of the full pan with both hands, plunged it into the washing-up bowl and put it back on the stove. ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘Just carry on as before.’
Then Blanche dried the plates. In no time at all she had run the tea-towel first over the hollow part, then over the base and finally over the edges. Loyally, she used precisely the same movements for every single plate, no more and no less for the one that was a little chipped, and which she slipped into the middle of the pile: no need to expose its unhappiness publicly. Though after all, she thought, whether perfect or cracked, one plate ends up much like another – in little pieces in the waste bin. It’s all grist to the mill, the final windmill of the plates: it’s just a stage, that’s all. The final windmill. The finishing point.
No, she thought, I mustn’t think like that while I’m just at the end of drying this saucepan. My thoughts are saturated with that idea, and as all the gestures I make are saturated with my thoughts, the saucepan, back on its shelf, will retain the imprint of my gestures… it would sit there, infused with all the unhappiness of the world, and it would spread it all around itself, like a fluid.
Although the saucepan was dry, Blanche began to wipe it again, forcing herself to use movements that seemed natural, indifferent. Again and again she ran the tea-towel over the enamelled edge of the pan. The final windmill. No, carry on wiping… To the finishing point. No, wipe, wipe, wipe… It seemed as though a sea-swell was surging up inside her, an immensity of fluid stretching out everywhere. A wave of visions came to her, one on top of the other: snatches of conversation, muted reproaches, the image of a child – a child’s body lying in a man’s arms. ‘Madame, the child was playing in the field, on the way back he was knocked over by a lorry!’ ‘Madame, the dog has bitten the child, the dog has bitten the child’s throat!’ Do you remember that man lying on a lorry, his mouth open, his mangled bicycle next to him? News items from all over the world, each one locking into another like pieces of chainmail, recalled by each movement of Blanche’s hands on the ever more glistening saucepan.
Suddenly, in mid-movement, holding the pan close to her body, Blanche stopped, rooted to the spot. If only this dangerous minute could stop too, this minute which might enter into the shaping of destiny, exactly as it was now… Fortunately only Blanche had been present when she had given birth to it and only Blanche had the power to revive it. If only the moment could be wiped out, once and for all…
The saucepan was clean and polished but the remains of the stew which it had contained were still sitting there on a plate. B
lanche tipped the stew into the pan and put it on a corner of the stove, just as it had been at the time when the minute had started. There was nothing for it but to wait, to start all over again. She ran her hand over her forehead and the rest of her face. Oh my God, please give me one moment of peace…
She opened the door into the garden. Nothing to do but wait… and yet so many necessities remained to be dealt with before Louis and the child came home. So as not to waste time, she decided to go out and dig up some leeks for the soup. She loosened them with a spade and then pulled them out by hand, one by one. She was calmer now, because she was kneeling on the ground and because the clods of earth surrounding the leeks fell off easily when she shook them. A transparent red worm, only half visible, struggled to free itself from the earth. She might have killed it with the spade, Blanche thought; she only just missed dispatching the creature to the earthworms’ final windmill. Laughing, she broke up the earth around the worm and watched it wriggling about in the hollow of her earthy hand, well and truly alive.
She threw the leeks in a pile on the edge of the path. After breaking up the biggest clods of earth with her hands on the patch of earth she had just disturbed, she smoothed it all over with her palms and stood up straight. She picked up the vegetables and walked to the kitchen. Her bunch of leeks in her arms, Blanche lingered for a moment on the threshold.
In front of her, beyond the hedge, there was a meadow, and then a road; and beyond the meadow and the road there was a big corn-field. The sheaves of corn stood tall and straight as if rooted by their own strength, stretching upwards in the heat of the sun. The sky above was incorruptible, all-powerful. Blanche looked, first once and then again, at the corn-field and at the sun. Her eyes were wide open, she didn’t try to shield them as she watched the glistening corn beneath the summer sky. Her face burning, she could see the field and the sky joining together, the sun sending down the full force of its rays, twisted in sparkling coils or trailing down, the sun itself slipping as it whirled down towards the corn. It was a chaos of yellow fire, a miracle of heat and twisting shapes that was going to spread all over the earth – not to devastate the world but to embrace it and to merge it with the fiery sky, so that earth and sky and the whole universe became one. My God, Blanche said, my God, are you there? Is it you, this force, and are you nothing else? Or are you elsewhere, further away, beyond this force, so that it depends on your will? Or is it only my burning eyes? Oh God, where is your sign?
A Nail, a Rose Page 9