Arsène would like to explain that insults are more hurtful than any blows, that he couldn’t just stand there without reacting. His anger had deepened without his being able to control it. Why should he be ashamed of these long sessions spent behind closed doors with ‘Madame Suzanne’ to tell her a story that he’s incapable of writing himself? The jeering had made his blood boil, the instinct to hit had actually taken him by surprise, unaccustomed as he was to use his fists.
The hours spent in the classroom to state the unspeakable, to describe the unthinkable, had forced him to make a great effort to remember, which the ridicule from this stupid student had reduced to nothing. Telling his story meant living it, not reliving it. Arsène’s suffering could be healed only through words.
Suzanne puts her hand on Arsène’s hand. She’d caught wind of the incident. The principal had told her in detail about the ‘affair’ and let her know that no further altercation would be tolerated inside the school. He also knows that the other student had provoked Arsène and pushed him to the limit.
Arsène is mute, Suzanne won’t get him to tell her the rest of his story. Again she puts her hand on his, tells him that it might be good to give himself a rest. Instinctively, Suzanne looks through the window at the large oak tree in the playground. It’s very much a matter of a tree here, of his ancestors’ tree, and of a broken branch. Arsène gives up, he’s like that part of a branch where the sap no longer flows. The points where it’s been cut are still tender spots, a wound still bleeding: Arsène is a branch in pain. Suzanne closes her notebook, tries to catch his eyes. But she doesn’t insist and leaves the child in that abandoned house in a phantom village where the account has stopped.
Arsène stands up, leaves the classroom. As he slams the door, he flees from the story, his own story. The wind swirls around the courtyard, circles the big oak. Staring, Suzanne recalls the long hours she spent within the walls of this school observing this same tree, seeing it change with the seasons. Watching it used to help her get away from the place, stave off her boredom and reassure those who were anxious. Suzanne already regrets Arsène’s absence, his poignant account is helping to heal her own pain, soothing her wound of abandonment. Aren’t they both seeking to create themselves out of a gaping wound? Spoken words for one, written words for the other are guiding them in a search for self. Suzanne hasn’t gone through the same experience as Arsène but she’s uniquely qualified to imagine what it would be like to live it.
Suzanne gets up, today her notebook is blank.
She turns off the light, closes the door, and takes the stairs Arsène rushed down only a few minutes earlier.
She’ll have to wait until tomorrow, or longer, to find out how the child and his suitcase managed to survive in that lifeless village.
Suzanne presses the intercom of her former home. She likes visiting the old lady. What they share is the loss of a beloved person. The husband’s demise in the apartment echoes the death of Suzanne’s father. The two disappearances took place thirty years apart within these same walls, those of the master bedroom. The old lady seems to console Suzanne by forgetting that she herself has just suffered a bereavement. Thirty years have gone by and yet Suzanne’s sorrow is more acute than that of her hostess.
They go through the apartment together, walking down the long entry hall, sprinkling the visit with personal comments. Suzanne can’t get enough of revisiting the place, stroking the walls, staring at the window ledges. She answers her hostess, but her mind is elsewhere. She can’t get over the fact that she’s here, that she’s home again, in the apartment that’s never stopped being hers. She left something here that belongs to her, hidden in the fireplace in the dining room. Suddenly Suzanne stands up, crosses the living room like a robot as the widow looks on in bewilderment. When she’s reached the dining room she squats down on the floor, feels the chimney’s marble flue as far as the small oval grate and its handle. Her heart is beating fast, she hopes that what she’s looking for is still there. The woman watches her compassionately, asking no questions. It’s a reverent moment, speaking would break the stillness. Suzanne opens a balled-up piece of paper that’s been lodged there for more than thirty years. Her right hand gently flattens it out and puts it against her heart. She can’t hide her tears. Moved, the widow leans over to see it more closely.
Thirty years before, as she was leaving the apartment of her childhood, Suzanne had left a bit of herself and her father behind in the chimney flue. At last the paper shows the two pipe cleaners her father used for his pipe, the remnants of a fistful of tobacco reduced to a small pile of dust, a cufflink engraved with the initials J.G., and a tightly folded note with the words ‘FAREWELL PAPA’ written in capital letters. Suzanne could never truly bring herself to believe in this goodbye to her father, preferring to imagine he’d never existed. Feeling the ball of paper resurrects the so characteristic smell of his tobacco that used to fill the house in the evening. Suzanne remembers the pinches of tobacco her father would ask her to stuff into his briar pipe. Before the lit match would set it afire her child-sized index finger tamped down the moist, sweet-smelling sprigs better than anyone could have. The crackling and the smoke were signs of the real moments of relaxation her father would have after a long day’s work. Inside the crumpled piece of paper lies the persistent memory of a protective presence, that of the only man in her childhood. Her father’s death, his sudden disappearance put an end to this ceremony. A few objects brought back his presence, such as the shoehorn at the foot of the bed or the wooden valet leaning against the bedroom wall.
In the dining room time has come to a standstill; squatting on the floor Suzanne is clutching the paper ball against her, the little ball of sorrow that has brought her back to the core of her childhood. Now the widow speaks in a soft voice, alone, thinking Suzanne is listening. But she is somewhere else, engulfed by other voices, other whispering. Reactivating the past has awakened unsuspected things, simultaneously pleasant and painful. Remembering is a feat and memory a miracle. She rises, staggers, probes the spirit of the place one last time. The widow has stood up, takes her hand, and with a long affectionate gesture thanks her. The grief that each of them carries has been transmitted through the same echo.
Suzanne leaves the apartment and as she closes the door she knows she will not return again. By leaving the place, she closes the heavy book of her childhood, a dull, weighty sound. The light outside is blinding. Suzanne stares in the distance, starts moving in an unfamiliar direction.
The class sessions continue without any trouble. Suzanne explains the rules of how to write a story, advises the students without ever looking at Arsène who stares at his blotter without raising his eyes to the board. His mouth sulky, he scribbles on his sheet of paper, drawing interminable mazes to hold boredom at bay. Suzanne pretends to ignore him, as if his chair and table were empty, the student absent.
But in her briefcase, there are some twenty pages already filled with a lush landscape, a child wandering through it from one chapter to the next, one trail to the next, lugging an empty suitcase with one hand. Shortcuts are taken at random, inspired by a ray of sunshine or a cloud scattered by the wind. The little boy’s fingers are tightly balled from clutching the suitcase, but he can’t go on without it. He talks to it, reassuring the object to reassure himself, sometimes asks it questions and answers them, always having the last word. Written several weeks ago, these pages smell of sweat, soil, and dust. Suzanne would like to know how Arsène had ended up in this classroom, this school, this country.
But for now, she must wait, force nothing, he’ll come back to her by himself, she knows it: he can’t stop on the side of the road.
Suzanne talks aloud, wandering through the aisles to look at the most recent versions. The students tremble as she comes near, dreading to be read. They’ve given a lot of themselves in these stories, except for one or two completely recalcitrant ones. Suzanne collects the papers, which she’ll read quietly at home, one after another, disco
vering the stories of very diverse objects: a meteorite, a wooden clog, a telescope, a fan for a ball. Arsène hands nothing in since it’s she who is writing his story.
During their interviews, Arsène would search for his words, and frown as if to activate his memory. He’d look at his fingers as he spoke, twist and tangle them when danger threatened and separate them when he’d found shelter. Suzanne was taking notes but after a few sessions that was no longer necessary because the memory of the account was so lively. She never interrupted him, the words had such a hard time coming out that she’d let him take his time as he saw fit. With emotion she remembers the very first session in which he’d talked a great deal about his grandmother. His shaking voice revealed his anguish, Arsène was searching for his words as if they scared him off, as if the words themselves were birthing the reality. Arsène also started to use the top of his table to describe his wanderings, his fingers would then drift over the smooth surface marking the boundaries of his slow progress. Sometimes his index finger would mark a hill surrounded by other hills, his hand would draw a curve to suggest the long winding road and the steep mountains in the area. Despite the eight years that had passed since then, Arsène’s memory of the region was very distinct.
Suzanne collected the completed papers. The bell rang in the hallway. It was time to go. Checking up on Arsène one last time would lead to nothing: he’s running from his story, he’s running from himself.
Suzanne leaves the room, gently closing the door behind her and gets ready to go down the two floors that lead to the outside. Rushing to the exit eager to be free again, two adolescents bump into her. The comings and goings in the halls make her dizzy; clutching the banister, afraid to lose her balance, she slowly goes down the steps.
A voice brings her out of her deep reverie. Still grasping the banister, she stops:
‘Madame, Madame, please!’
Suzanne turns around and sees Arsène near the fire door.
‘Please, I’d like to tell you the rest.’ Suzanne smiles.
You are at this farm for three days. The fine morning mist doesn’t diffuse the stench. After a few days you yourself have that smell of death even though you’re the only living thing in the place. The leftover food is no longer edible, but you stay in the only house that contains no corpses, stuck between these four walls with your suitcase. It’s never very far away from you, you drag it around with you wherever your feet go. It sits enthroned on a bed when you sleep, serves you as a chair when you sit outside to stare off in the distance, or is a screen between you and a body on the ground when you do your laundry in the river. Without it you’d be alone, all alone. You talk to it, explaining every one of your activities, describing the forgotten flavor of your grandmother’s dishes. Sometimes you look at it, convinced that it will answer you, sometimes your hand strokes it, convinced it needs comforting.
You no longer look at the dead, having mentally turned them into an abstraction, covering them with a white sheet or a blanket you found. At nightfall wild animals approach, your staccato screams rip through the night, you shriek to chase them off. Your grimaces and shouts defy these obscure silhouettes, crawling, excavating, rummaging around, guided by smell the way we are by light. Sometimes they eat the mortal remains; that’s when you lie sobbing on the bed, gripping your suitcase, finding the goings-on outside unbearable and barbarous. Then you whisper things as if to banish the horror.
Rummaging through the house takes your mind off what’s happened, by the light of a torch you poke around in things belonging to a family you never knew. Tools litter the ground, bits of scrap metal, bolts, masses of nails, worn and new. The racket you’re making inside distracts you. You wander about on tiptoe so as not to stumble. Another crate draws your attention: it has photographs haphazardly stored, you look at them without dwelling on them too much, these folks are smiling the way your parents used to smile on holidays. You toss the pictures on the table before you try to go to sleep to forget everything. Memories and the remembrance of your people vanish when sleep overtakes you. Sometimes, when you wake up in the middle of the night, you don’t know where you are anymore, then little by little your thoughts grow clearer, and reality resumes its place. Going back to sleep once again puts an end to your anxieties, your discouragement.
At daybreak, you told yourself you had to leave, that there was no point to staying in the village like this. With your feet you shoved aside the odds and ends, gathered up the maximum possible in provisions, and a water supply that would last for several days. The noise of the flies ripples from one ear to the other, this farm was not a farm anymore, it had become a roofless morgue.
You took the road in the opposite direction, distancing yourself without ever looking back. As you walked on the revolting stench disappeared.
You imagined that the wildlife would once and for all take over the place as soon as you left that day. The animals were going to be able to use it without any fear. Once you were gone, there wouldn’t be a single human being present anymore, no more cries in the night to chase them away from the realm of men. Your suitcase seemed lighter than when you arrived, perhaps you’d grown in the interim and recovered your strength.
Instinctively you headed west, you were as if magnetized by that hill calling for you, the wind pushing you toward it, shoving you as if to increase your stride. Even your suitcase was flying in the air. Although you weren’t running, your kept a racer’s pace. You weren’t out of breath, even though in a few minutes’ time the farm was no more than a tiny spot in the distance.
That day you were singing, a happy cheerful song, one you used to sing when you lined up in front of your village school. You were smiling, your heart was filled with great joy. With the lyrics and your movements to the beat, you charged ahead.
Suzanne had let Arsène know that she would like to meet his adoptive parents. They are schoolteachers, and Arsène is their only son. His parents are warm and welcoming, Suzanne felt it as soon as she came in. For more than an hour they conversed softly, almost in a whisper, the discussion based so much on their intimacy.
Dressed in a suit for the occasion, Arsène’s right leg was nervously shaking to hide his discomfiture. For an hour the discussion had been solely about him, evoking his arrival in the house as well as the difficult adjustment period. His parents’ hands were patting his hair or placed on his knee as a soothing gesture. Suzanne listened, watching Arsène from the corner of her eye to catch his emotions while his parents were describing their confusion.
When he arrived at the house, Arsène had lost his power of speech, not a syllable came out of his mouth, which continued for several long weeks. He did everything he was asked to do, was actually very meticulous with each chore, but he didn’t speak. The first ten days he slept on the floor inside his suitcase, while his calves and his long arms would stick out. A cushion and a pillow case folded in four made the inside more comfortable.
Arsène’s parents had understood very quickly that the suitcase was symbolic of events that went beyond their comprehension. They proved to be patient. The smell of the suitcase was indescribable, had spread throughout his bedroom. It had brought his country, his land, his family right into the room. At night, they would put him to bed in the suitcase, kneeling to kiss him goodnight. In the middle of the night, they’d come and go to make sure he was sleeping soundly.
After two weeks of life together, two weeks of silence, his adoptive parents received an encouraging sign that comforted them into thinking the boy was beginning to feel gradually more at home. In the middle of the night, the father opened the door to his room to check and see if Arsène was asleep. And there, to his great surprise, he saw Arsene sleeping on the bed, his right hand on the edge of the suitcase. Softly he called his wife: it was their first victory. Arsène’s hand across the empty space made it clear that he would not let go but a distance had been gradually created. The symbolic hand was still being buffeted between two worlds: his own, which he had been forced to
flee, and the world of ‘the others’, which was becoming his—a little bit more each day. When they turned off the light in his room and walked down the hallway to their own bedroom Arsène’s parents told each other that their patience had gotten the better of his silence. They were so happy that it took them a while to fall asleep. The suitcase no longer served as a bed. It had been moved to the center of the room, closed during the day and open throughout the night. It was almost as if he were sleeping under the stars in the darkness of his native land. Slowly, Arsène moved the suitcase, confining it to a corner of the room, but still close to the bed. Months went by, he no longer opened it; it was gathering dust, becoming the locker for clothes he disliked, books to be given away, the general mess one likes to hide. One day he relegated it to the top of the hallway closet, wrapped in two torn old sheets.
Suzanne hasn’t taken her eyes off Arsène. The conversation is coming to an end. The boy has become a man, His language is that of his entourage: expressions and interjections of adolescents who move as a group. Suzanne thanks the gracious couple, they walk her to the door, and as if to show his gratitude Arsène smiles at her for the first time.
Suzanne goes down the staircase, inside her head putting together the account she’s heard. Her thoughts file past, faster with every step she takes. As she leaves the building, blinded by the day’s brightness, she tells herself that Arsène hasn’t told the whole story.
For A Long Time, Afraid Of The Night Page 5