* * *
—
The man who knew this story was aware that it couldn’t finish in any other way. Before writing his stories, he loved telling them to himself. And he’d tell them to himself so perfectly, in such detail, word by word, that one might say they were written in his memory. He’d tell them to himself preferably late in the evening, in the solitude of that big empty house, or on those nights when he couldn’t sleep, those nights in which insomnia yielded nothing but imagination, not much, yet imagination gave him a reality so alive that it seemed more real than the reality he was living. But the most difficult thing wasn’t telling to himself his stories, that was the easy part, it was as though he’d see the words of the stories he told himself written on the dark screen of his room, when fantasy would keep his eyes wide open. And that one story, which he’d told himself in this way so many times, seemed to him an already printed book, one that was very easy to express mentally but very difficult to write with the letters of the alphabet necessary for thought to be made concrete and visible. It was as if he were lacking the principle of reality to write his story, and in order to live the effective reality of what was real within him yet unable to become truly real, he’d chosen this place.
His trip was planned in fine detail. He landed at the Hania airport, got his luggage, went into the Hertz office, picked up the car keys. Three days? the clerk asked, astonished. What’s so strange about it? he said. No one comes to Crete on vacation for three days, the clerk replied, smiling. I have a long weekend, he responded, it’s enough for what I have to do.
The light in Crete was beautiful. It wasn’t Mediterranean but African; he’d reach the Beach Resort in an hour and a half, at most two, even going slowly, he’d arrive there around six, a shower and he’d start writing immediately, the hotel restaurant was open till eleven, it was Thursday evening, he counted: all of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, three full days. They’d be enough: in his head everything was already written.
Why he turned left at that light he couldn’t say. The pylons of the freeway were clearly visible, another four or five hundred meters and he’d be at the coastal freeway to Iraklion. But instead he turned left, where a little blue sign indicated an unknown place. He thought he’d already been there, for in a moment he saw everything: a tree-lined street with a few houses, a plain square with an ugly monument, a ledge of rocks, a mountain. It was a flash of lightning. That strange thing which medical science can’t explain, he told himself, they call it déjà vu, already-seen, it’d never happened to me before. But the explanation he gave himself didn’t reassure him, because the already-seen endured, it was stronger than what he was seeing, like a membrane enveloping the surrounding reality, the trees, the mountains, the evening shadows, even the air he was breathing. He felt overcome by vertigo and was afraid of being sucked into it, but only for a moment, because as it expanded that sensation went through a strange metamorphosis, like a glove turning inside out and bringing forth the hand it covered. Everything changed perspective, in a flash he felt the euphoria of discovery, a subtle nausea, a mortal melancholy. But also a sense of infinite liberation, as when we finally understand something we’d known all along and didn’t want to know: it wasn’t the already-seen that was swallowing him in a never-lived past, he instead was capturing it in a future yet to be lived. As he drove among the olive trees on that little road taking him toward the mountains, he knew that at a certain point he’d find an old rusty sign full of holes on which was written: Monastiri. And that he’d follow it. Now everything was clear.
Translated by Martha Cooley and Antonio Romani
Little Gatsby
“I hope it’s beautiful and a fool – a beautiful little fool.”
– Zelda Fitzgerald
The evenings were slow, lingering, bloodstained with magnificent sunsets. Hot languid nights came after, punctuated by the green sob of the lighthouse across the gulf. That’s how you’d like my story to begin, right? You were always so fond of convention. Beneath your quiet, discreet sophistication – your charme – there hid a veneer of bad taste that was yours alone. And yet how you hated “bad taste!” It disgusted you. And the banal, the everyday: these were monstrous things. All right, then, here’s how my story can begin. Of course I loved the villa. The evenings were slow, lingering, bloodstained with magnificent sunsets. Hot, languid nights came after, punctuated by the green sob of the lighthouse across the gulf. I stood at the window. I always slept very little – you never realized. I’d get up and stand by the window, behind the curtains. Around two, sometimes a light breeze would rise and ripple the surface of the water. It slipped over the extremely hot tiles of the portico and, reaching my face, was tepid, almost comforting. There were always a few ships gliding into the frame of the window, mainly freighters, I think, guided by the call of the lighthouse. In the background, on the left, the harbor teemed with lights. It seemed to be waiting. For what? Was I waiting for something? The minutes slowly passed, the breeze filled the curtains. A restlessness flowed through my blood. I barely managed to control it, leaning on the windowsill, facing the sea. The coast was a promise, lights glittering like a holiday. I repeated to myself that my story was inside me and that one day, I’d write it. I’d sit down at the table as in a dream, not even looking at the sheet of white paper in front of me, and the story would gush forth like water from a spring: and then I’d write, as if by magic, the words would arrange themselves on the page, as if enchanted, drawn by a magnet called inspiration. Would you expect me to think this way, leaning on the window? Naturally, I didn’t. It never crossed my mind – I’d never write another line.
There was something else far more urgent. I murmured the opening lines of a novel: Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow, said Mrs. Ramsay. But you’ll have to be up with the lark; the wind shifted the curtains, you slept on, the lighthouse sobbed, the night was peaceful, almost tropical; but I’d arrive at my lighthouse soon, I could feel that it was near, that I only had to wait in the night for it to send me a signal of light, and I wouldn’t let this opportunity escape (this, my one and only opportunity), I wouldn’t spend my old age regretting a missed trip to the lighthouse. And meanwhile, I was growing old, I realized. Yet I was still young, still a “good-looking man” – when I stepped onto the terrace I was aware of the furtive, appreciative glances from your girlfriends – but the age I felt had nothing to do with any registry office, it was suffocating, like a curtain drawn around my face. I studied my hands on the windowsill: they were long, strong, supple. And they were old. Not you. The old age you feared was something else. You tried overcoming it with creams and lotions, afraid of those little spots appearing on the backs of your hands; your worst enemy was the midday sun, and when you smiled, two small menacing lines marked the corners of your mouth. You were jealous watching your guests bask in the sun, plunge into the swimming pool, stroll down to the beach, indifferent to the salt. Such a fool – all your suffering for nothing. You were truly young, that’s not old age, you should’ve understood back then, you understand this now; you had a splendid body, I’d stare at your legs, the only part of your body you dared expose to the sun, your long, smooth legs. It was a Mediterranean midday. Gino wandered around the veranda serving Calvados, Bacardi, and Mazagrán. Someone lazily rose: “We’re going down to the beach, Martine. We’ll wait for you there…” You half-opened your eyes, the faintest smile marked the corners of your mouth. I was the only one who noticed because I knew those two little lines; you didn’t move, you just sat back on your deck chair, immersed in a pool of shadow, just your legs glowing in the sun, the fringe of the beach umbrella shifting in the breeze.
Of course I loved the villa. I liked the two mansards with their tiled crowns high on the rooftop, the portico with its bell tower like a monastery, the white shutters freshened up every summer. Early in the morning, while you slept, the palm grove was full of seagulls that came for the night and left traces of their wanderings in t
he sand. The afternoons were sultry, so Mediterranean, smelling of pine, of myrtle; I sat in my wicker chair in the colonnade, by the small granite stairway covered in vines, waiting for Scottie to wake up. Around four she arrived, barefoot, with pillow marks on her flushed face and dragging a doll by one leg.
“Do you prefer being called Scottie or Barbara?”
“Scottie.”
“But Scottie’s not your real name.”
“It’s what Miss Bishop calls me – she says you came up with it.”
“Not me.”
“Well, a friend of yours, anyway, the one who’s a writer, and when I grow up, I’ll be a little fool.”
“Did Miss Bishop say that, too?”
“Yes, because she says there’s no escaping the fate of the babyushka.”
“The what?”
“The little girl. But Miss Bishop calls them babyushkas because that’s what a lady named Zelda said, too.”
In the evening we talked about Fitzgerald and listened to Tony Bennett singing Tender Is the Night. The truth is, nobody liked the movie, not even Mr. Deluxe, who really wasn’t all that difficult to please. But Tony Bennett had a voice that was “all-consuming, like the novel”; listening to him provided atmosphere, and Gino had to keep playing that record over and over, who knows how many times. Inevitably, they asked me for the opening lines of the book, everyone found it delightful that I had all the opening lines to Fitzgerald’s novels memorized – just the openings – it was one of my passions. Mr. Deluxe, serious as always, asked those present to be quiet, I tried getting out of it, but there was no refusing, the Tony Bennett record was playing softly, Gino had served the Bacardi, I stared at you, and you knew those lines were dedicated to you, almost as if I’d written them myself, and you lit a cigarette and slipped it into your holder, and that was a part of the performance, too, you were playing the flapper, but there was nothing of the flapper about you, you didn’t have the hair for it or the rayon stockings, and certainly not the soul: you belonged to a different category, to a Drieu or Pérez Galdós novel maybe; you had a tragic sense of life, like you were condemned, your insurmountable egoism, maybe. Then, with the others growing impatient, I began, and Gino stopped serving drinks so as not to disturb anyone, there was only the voice of Tony Bennett and the lapping of the Mediterranean: On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed façade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people; a decade ago it was almost deserted after its English clientele went north in April…
As usual, Bishop went to change the record. The sickly sweet tones of Cole Porter swept over us – Bishop was crazy about him, thought Cole Porter was perfect for Fitzgerald; or maybe she put on Nat King Cole singing Quiáz, quiáz, quiáz. Anyway, I liked the King Cole song, too, it seemed to be about me somehow and made me slightly wistful, Siempre que te pregunto, que cómo dónde y quándo…I tried to go on, you were all looking past me, to the sea and the lights of the coast, In the early morning the distant image of Cannes, the pink and cream of old fortifications, the purple Alp that bounded Italy, were cast across the water and lay quavering in the ripples and rings sent up by sea plants through the clear shallows…but something hindered me, I could hear it in my voice, an uncertainty. Why was it painful to go on? Was it perhaps the evening? The lights of the coast? Nat King Cole? I stared at you in the shadows, y así pasan los días, y yo, desesperado…you might have nodded at least, but no, you calmly looked at me like the others, like you didn’t know that all that concerned me: I’m okay for the night, right, Martine? I was telling you with my eyes, good for a few nocturnal moments, but then you fall asleep, and sleep, sleep, sleep, the wind fills the curtains, and there are lights down the coast…but in daylight – what’s your Perri in daylight – a character in some little game, a figurine in some story.
Enough. I didn’t feel like reciting anymore, and the others didn’t feel like sitting and listening anymore, either; the game had opened up, that beginning was enough for openers, now Bishop felt like Rosemary Hoyt absorbed in a slow, very sentimental dance; okay, she wasn’t eighteen anymore and she couldn’t manage Rosemary’s “choppy little four-beat crawl” in the water, but so what? Everything was so mixed up: Rosemary Hoyt was dancing with Tom Barban, who should be dancing with you, but that would happen tomorrow night, maybe; that night, the roles had been assigned, and Mr. Deluxe was perfect for the adventurous, dissatisfied ex-aviator, not bad at all, well, maybe a bit too distinguished, too well fed for a legionnaire. As for the other two, it didn’t take much imagination to place them. They were so irrelevant, so interchangeable, the handsome Brady and his little blonde. And as for you, yes, you made a splendid Nicole, you were doing her perfectly, you looked like Lauren Bacall, our Tom Barban was saying, that’s what I heard him whisper to you. So annoying. And his clumsy efforts, pulling at his jacket, trying to hide his erection under his linen pants? Unbearable. But he was Tom Barban, the legionnaire: legionnaires are quite virile, you know, while dancing with a lady who looks like Lauren Bacall…
And I, who was I? I wasn’t Dick even if did have his role – in real life, I mean. And, no, I wasn’t Abe North, either, in spite of my old novel, and while everyone pretended otherwise, I’d never know how to write another, much less the story of our painful story. The only thing I knew how to do was memorize the openings of other people’s novels, I belonged to a similar story, was a character who’d migrated from another novel, stylized on a smaller scale, without the grandeur, the tragedy; at least my model had his own sort of gangster grandeur; but my part didn’t foresee madness, had no dream to sacrifice life for, not even a lost Daisy – worse yet – my Daisy was you, but you were Nicole. I was a game in our game: I was your dear little Gatsby.
The night advanced in small steps. You’d like this to be a line in my story, wouldn’t you? I’ll indulge you: the night advanced in small steps. No – the tender night advanced in small steps. Now the phonograph was playing Charlie Parker’s “Easy to Love,” I’m the one who bought that record, beneath poor Bird’s sobbing horn came Stan Freeman’s chattering piano, almost happy, choked-on chuckles, a brief phrasing of happiness. I’d have preferred Jelly Roll Morton, but Rosemary thought he was a bore – you couldn’t dance to Jelly Roll Morton. Okay, then, what’s there to do at that hour of the tender night advancing in small steps? St. Raphaël or l’Hôtel du Cap? St. Raphaël was better, what’s there to do at the Cap once you’ve had your Negronis? You’ll die of boredom; and the handsome Brady (but what was the handsome Brady’s name in real life?) would agree to any program as long as he could moon over you, his stupid little blonde would follow him anywhere, “c’est cocassse,” she’d chirp, “c’est cocasse,” everything was cocasse. Even Deluxe’s old Benz was cocasse, with its beige fenders and its glass partition; it was once owned by a Parisian taxi driver, Deluxe liked to brag about getting it for peanuts, “but it breaks my heart that he wanted to keep the meter – people get so attached to silly things!” and he laughed with all those extremely white teeth. He had too many teeth: de luxe teeth. Or was that too easy?
But who was this Mr. Deluxe – a sophisticated musicologist? Come on – that name of his! I think he was a little cocasse himself, like his Benz, “I so loved your novel for its musicality,” he told me. What a twit. “But in your next novel – because you are writing another, aren’t you? – in your next novel you must have the courage to express your love for music. Don’t be afraid to include citations, cram it with names, with titles – once they’re added, a novel becomes magical, add Coltrane’s name, Alban Berg’s, I know you love Coltrane and Alban Berg, and I completely agree.” He talked about loving Alban Berg, that he wished he had “more time to discuss this,” but then he didn’t go beyond Gershwin. But how could he understand death, with that
big, beautiful smile of his? You couldn’t understand death, either. It was beyond your grasp, for the moment. You could understand the dead, but death and the cadaver are two different things. Death is the curve in the road, to die is simply not to be seen, do you remember these lines? I said them one evening, but I deceived you all, they weren’t from Fitzgerald, like everyone thought; it was a fake quotation, and deep down, I enjoyed the ruse. We were driving along the coast, I think near Villefranche, I recited this and said: Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise. Deluxe braked a bit sharply. He murmured, “Sublime, sublime,” or some stupid nonsense, and he wanted us to go down to the beach, we had to take off our shoes and walk right up to the water’s edge, one man, one woman, a chain, it was absolutely urgent to do something lustral, his words, an homage to being, to being there, to being on the straightaway of life: so, screw the curves – that was the basic idea.
Your mother, yes, she understood death. Right when I met her I understood that she was a woman who understood death. And she understood this about me as well. That my horrible novel included a bit of this, and that’s why she worked so hard for it to become a book, she kept me from Menton, freed me from the state of the “poor, aspiring young writer, the immigrants’ son, returning to his native land with a manuscript in his pocket.” Did you think my love for Fitzgerald was so vast that it drove me on a pilgrimage over his route, that my descriptions of his Baltimore hotel were the result of fanatical passion? Not really. Let’s just say I’m a reporter. And that hotel’s where I spent my childhood. I’d rather skip the details. For twenty-nine years, my father was a waiter there, and yes, he knew Fitzgerald, had some books inscribed by him, often talked to me about him, and about Zelda too, who’d loved him, was fond of him because he made her such generous drinks, she even put him in Save Me the Last Waltz, under a different name. Then over the years the hotel went into decline, the clientele grew worse, my father and I were given a room in the back wing, after my mama died he didn’t know anyone he could leave me with, at least I was safe there, or so he thought; he spent his final years serving dinner to old fur-wrapped whores, to refined morphine addicts, to quarrelsome pederasts…So that’s him, my Fitzgerald. Your mother understood a great deal about me. And I about her. Would you like to know what our relationship was exactly? It’s not something described in a few lines. I loved her very much – that’s enough, I think.
Message from the Shadows Page 18