—January 17, 1892. First interview with Girard, abbé of the Marseille diocese. Obsessional mania, not dangerous. The patient eats, sleeps, and moves about normally, but cannot engage in any coherent conversation. To questions relative to his past life he invariably responds, “Allah Kerim! Allah Kerim!” and then begins to sing aloud. So far as we know, he has not served in our African missions. Has he spent time in Muslim countries? We don’t know. Cold showers and sleep will help him recover his memory. Fluorine hydrosulphate. Herbal teas as a palliative and sleeping pills.
—February 22. Nurses report that Girard speaks oddly but on a variety of subjects. Progress. However, the other inmates of Pavilion B group themselves around him to listen, even at mealtimes. Report these groups to me and take notes on the patient’s disjointed remarks.
—March 19. Girard seems to have recovered his faculties. But this improvement is accompanied by a curious identity crisis: thus, the patient claims his first name is Arthur and not Claude. He speaks of travels in Europe, to Java, to Cypress, then to the Middle East, to the Somali desert, to Harar, Aden, etc. He especially mentions another country that nobody here ever heard of: Aséré or Aseroé, it remains unclear.
—April 21. Isolate Girard for one or two weeks. His strong influence on the patients has led to a kind of collective delirium. Fear of violent attacks. The nurses aren’t watchful enough. What are they afraid of?
—May 20. This Abbé Girard is strange. He asked to see me without waiting for the usual appointment. When we were alone in my office, he took hold of my head very gently and told me unbelievable things. I’ve never heard anything so beautiful. I am troubled.
—May 22,1892. Yes, at last, WE ARE IN THE LAND OF ASÉROÉ. I am Dr. Kruger, but is this really certain? I …
Here the medical record breaks off. The registers contain nothing else relating to Abbé Girard or to his doctor. I did not find the name of Girard on the release records, although I pored over them from 1897 to 1940.
I decline to pursue the inquiry concerning Dr. Kruger. Let others, more qualified than I, carry on…. As for the land of Aseroë, I know, alas, what to think of that.
3
Aseroë
THAT INERT OBJECT, bespattered with black markings and which represents the written page, offers no organic life, no soul distinct from its flesh. In that restricted space where the eye momentarily encounters it, it barely manages to conceal those memories or expectations that it transforms into costume jewelry or a child’s chipped cat’s-eye marble, bird feathers, yellowed photos, or a gold chain. But supposing that the reader’s vision emerged altered by the work? Would light and shadow no longer clash? Rimbaud’s Noël sur la terre. Christmas on Earth. The rediscovered baubles of childhood, the awkwardness of angels entangled in their own splendor. And as the light of day breaks, colors seem invented, today, for the first time. (6:12 A.M.)
On February 12, rereading these lines scribbled in a notebook three days earlier—from “that inert object” to “colors seem invented, today, for the first time”—I traveled to the city of Semur-en-Auxois to haunt a house lent by a friend.
At lunchtime, I went into the Café du Donjon and sat down far enough away from the bar not to be disturbed. The waitress spread out paper place settings, set white dishes on the tables, decanters, bread, and wineglasses. She bustled about cheerfully, her bright virgin’s face dappled with sherbet and kisses.
There were a few patrons, mostly oldsters. A woman entered holding the hand of a tubby little girl whose stare alighted on me and never strayed till the end of the meal. When the waitress announced the menu (fresh vegetable appetizers, andouillettes, boiled potatoes, a tray of cheeses, coffee—all for fifty francs), the girl giggled agreeably. Her mother showed her to a table and sat next to her. With an easy, tender motion innocent of any impatience, she wiped the girl’s childish chin, tied the napkin around her neck, and ran her hand over the child’s hair.
Sitting at my table, three times I crossed out and recopied the sentence running from “That inert object” to “colors seem invented.” Bright sunlight was streaming into the room, despite the thick frost on the windowpanes. As a child, when I was ill, I would sometimes experience this same high degree of light and would anticipate its caress approaching my face and enveloping me. On this particular day, I was not feverish; my mind, alert to the point of cynicism, declined the surrender I might have otherwise welcomed. Let me hit them with a line of poetry, I thought—a nasty impulse immediately shunted aside by the sensation of completely blanking out, of feeling completely drenched in light.
Objects became sharply outlined; bodies were rendered readable: veins on the skin, strands of hair, wrinkles and crow’s-feet on the face, the fibers of the clothes. Each voice, despite the slight humming in my ears, called out to be heard, to be acknowledged. I crumpled the pages of my notebook (where I had written of “baubles,” of “angels” and of “colors”). Instead, I watched and listened.
The air was stirring around us; I was aware of its currents, its sworls; but what magic was suffusing this café that smelled of frites and tobacco? “Eat!” said the mother. The girl moved her head and waved her right hand above her plate without lifting her eyes from me. “Look at your plate, and eat!” I lowered my eyes to escape her too-insistent stare. I became awkward. My glass of red wine, overturned on the tablecloth, stained my abandoned pages, but this accident did nothing to break the charm: the sunlit dirty walls, the smirched tablecloths, the dumb smiles, the smell of fried fat.
The girl’s stare bore down on me again. Her right hand dropped the fork and moved back and forth in the air, her thumb glued to the tip of her middle finger. Confronted with this obscene gesture, I lowered my eyes and then saw, under the table where she was sitting, her fat legs, her cotton stockings, her snow boots. She was pissing with joy! One of her legs was drenched, while she continued to wave her wrist over the table. The mother grabbed her daughter’s hand and put the fork back in it. “Eat, Nathalie.”
Everything was covered in white light. The bread, the cheese: heavenly manna, its taste heightened by the brightness. Sadness, disgust were gone. Everyone was feeling what I felt; I could tell by watching the surprised faces of the guests. Some were lifting their hands to touch the air; some were laughing like children.
The needles of ice on the windowpanes—melted by sweetness?—parted to let the bright rays shine through, forming stained-glass windows of mother-of-pearl, opened like wings. The fake flowers on the bar counter became as white feathers, beaded with blood.
The idiot girl started to stir again, looking for my glance, waving her obscene hand. A cruel thought assailed me, and I made an effort not to shout aloud “Let her sing, the little fool! Let her sing once or twice in her life, the little bitch!” What she sang wasn’t exactly Orpheus’s song, as you might well imagine.
Mouille mouille paradis
La femme est à l’abri
Mouille mouille paradis
Les agneaux sont guéris.
Paradise, cream in your jeans
A woman by any other means
Paradise, cream in your jeans
The lambs are full of beans.
The little idiot was onto me. Crazed with delight, she dropped her piece of cake, hid her face in her mother’s bosom, and then grabbed at the waitress’s apron in passing, demanding her pencil and order pad in a whiny voice: “Lalie wants to draw! … Gimmee!” “Shut up,” said her mother. “I’m going to take her outside; she’s too worked up.” The waitress said, “Wait!” and looked behind the counter for another pad, another pencil. “Here, Nathalie, you can write and draw all you want.” The mother agreed, all smiles.
The light was a pearly white, coating every object in its caress. I considered this carefully, holding my breath so as not to break this gathering force by a single word—just as a single first step might crush the eggs of insect larvae barely hatched between the soil and the dew.
Now the light was chasing away all the
shadows with frightening speed. The frost tightened its grip on the windows and, for a fraction of a second, the rays, diffracted by the crystals, traced an orange star upon the tablecloth where Nathalie was seated.
The girl was waving pages scribbled with circles, crosses, and hatchings every which way. “All done! All done!”
Gone was the charm and play of light. The bistro returned to being a mere bistro: cheap drinks, coffee, grease, and smoke. The faces were extinguished. “Leave it there. Come, come on! …” The mother got up and took her daughter by the hand.
Nathalie stuffed the papers into one of her pockets; her mother dragged her to the door. But as she was about to leave, the little idiot wheeled around and marched up proudly to me and placed the papers on my table.
I looked at the torn pages she had offered to me. Circles, crosses, hatchings (the uncanny parody of some unknown form of handwriting?), but also featuring real letters like S,A,E,R,N,O,G … Then, on another sheet, these three lines, carefully scripted:
A*É*O*É
L’ANGE É PARTIE
J’É LU DANS TES PENSÉES
A*E*O*E
THE ANGEL WEN TAWAY
I RED YOUR THOTS
4
Aseroë
I HAVE NOT BEEN SPARED from the ravages of forgetting. I wouldn’t be able to point to the exact street or to the house in front of which all this took place.
First, there was the Concert of Angels on the Isenheim Altarpiece, their fiery garments the same hue as those November vineyards back then in Colmar, and the Virgin with her incandescent crown, of which I had had a premonition the previous day, gazing at the starry sparkles of the local Moselle wine at the bottom of my glass…. But, most of all, there was the presence of Gunther and Claudine, whose friendship shielded me from difficult days.
I’m often haunted by those who’ve died young. Today I’m again haunted as I think of Claudine, my act of writing transforming my uneasiness into a species of terror, once I come to realize that all those who have died before their time, all those who never even had the chance to reach their prime, have now suddenly become my elders. Their faces have thereby achieved the status of icons, their smiles hanging frozen in the air, not as they might appear in past snapshots, but now frozen in the very air before me, at moments when I was sure they had completely vanished from my mind.
I find the streets and houses of this town quite uncanny, bearing as they do the imprint of someone now gone. Were I to return here, all these fine façades would be wrecked for me, as would the cathedral. The rain would be unremitting; everything would turn ugly before my eyes.
I hear Claudine laughing and making her little sarcastic comments, which so manage to impress and seduce both of us. I’m not talking about her beauty here, but about her voice, about her quirks of thought. We are carried away by her gaiety, but as soon as she has managed to draw the two of us into her mirth by a well-placed quip or caustic observation, she waits for just the right moment to deflate our laughter, brutally reminding us what fools we have been to fall for her dumb little jokes. Then, having reduced us to utter embarrassment by some dry or cutting remark, she then starts up again, captivating our bemused attention by commenting on this or that passing face or scene that she has just noticed as we three make our way down the street. In short, she loves leading us along by our noses. Which is, of course, why, without letting her know, we so adore her.
I had more or less forgotten all about her when, three years later, I received a long letter from her containing poems that struck me as rather arty. After signing off with “xxx kisses,” she added the following sentence, which I also thought was just a young girl’s daydreaming: “When it comes time to get out of here, we’ll take everything along with us, the entire world, meaning even Gunther, and even you.”
I wrote her back a letter that received no reply; a month later, Gunther wrote to tell me that Claudine was dead.
The Concert of Angels and the lovely face of the Virgin have retreated behind another more ancient altarpiece that I glimpse upon entering the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar: its Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell are just as terrifying. Claudine is walking ahead of us, pointing to the panel of infernal torments to show us the figure of a woman utterly racked with pain. “You’ll soon get a good look at her,” she said. “What do you mean, soon?” “You’ll soon see her, if I manage to find her, and if she agrees.” These unsettling words erase the boundary between this picture of Hell and our present life. I shrug my shoulders, suggesting that Claudine just take in the painting in silence.
Several hours later, after we have all had lunch, we cross a public garden and then wend our way through one narrow street after another. Standing in front of a stoop is a tall woman—very dignified, very erect. Every now and then she raises her hand to greet someone we do not see. Claudine leans into me to say, “Here she is, the woman in the altarpiece.” I recognize the pallor of her face, creased by deep wrinkles. In fact, she is looking at nobody; her eyes are cast toward some unknown place beyond the neighboring houses. She is waiting. Her right hand, slightly outstretched, bears wounds above the palm. Her other hand is clenched against her belly…. We pass by. The woman raises her hand to her mouth and bites at the wound, then extends her hand again without appearing to suffer; then she curls her lips into a grimace, and then brings her hand back to its earlier position.
I turn to look at her and observe the same cruel gesture repeat itself, slowly, obsessively: hand moving to mouth, mouth biting at the wound, grimace, relaxation of hand, hand again outstretched, then reaching toward mouth, mouth biting hand, mouth grimacing, then relaxation of hand.
I observe her wound—violet, swollen—which returns again and again to welcome her bite in a very precise cadence. Not a single complaint on her part, not a single murmur.
Claudine explains in a completely matter-of-fact fashion: the Occupation, her husband tortured to death by the SS under the eyes of his young wife and in this very house, below the front stoop, which she now refuses to leave. She goes to do her shopping; she chats with her neighbors. There are days when they see her prostrate in front of her door. They say of these days: her hand is going nuts.
I no longer hear Claudine’s words. My mind, my body are beyond sick, shot through by commands sharper than arrows: “Auf die Knie! Hände hoch, Jude!” “On your knees! Hands up, Jew!” My stomach is turning; I feel my head emptying out. Little by little, a memory that is not mine erases my own recollection. I no longer have the energy to fight back against this mental intrusion. Why should I be forced to relive something I myself never experienced? Horrible thoughts assail me on all sides. I hear blows addressed to me from the past. I undergo these blows. The SS breaking into the house, then the fake search of the premises carried out by the underling thugs, who toss around the furniture and destroy whatever lies within their reach. I feel the kicks addressed to my belly and to my face. They strap me down on the kitchen table so I might witness him getting his teeth bashed in and his fingernails ripped out. Why? Because he is simply guilty of existing, guilty of having a name. Four men hold him down on the tile floor; a fifth man pummels his face into a bloody mess and pisses on him while barking orders. The man is already dead, but they keep going after him. “Get him to talk!” They keep on beating him; they want to leave him more than dead. Their hatred knows no end.
I have no more I at my command to write to the end of this scene. As I extend it and retract it in order to gnaw at it, can my writing hand attain any sort of definitive solution that might at last release it from these irrevocable deeds? I bear witness—but without having witnessed anything of the above. Time is out of joint, projecting me toward a past that is not mine. The disaster is so intense, it echoes far ahead into the future.
This grisly state of possession gets all mixed up with a memory that is far more mundane: the memory of a documentary that included German newsreels from the year 1939. It’s springtime, and the Mädchen are dancing in the fields. There th
ey are in a circle, cavorting around the Ideal Aryan Girl (the film is in black and white). The Ideal Blonde is clutching a bouquet of daisies, her fair locks are wafting in the wind, and she is puffing light tufts of dandelion into the breeze. I see their seeds disappear into the sky, a lie on the level of SS spittle. I hear the Nazis chanting their anthems. Flags, the whole military-industrial complex, people in uniform, goose steps, Heil Hitler salutes. The images all blur: the young girl’s lovely hand, her fresh breath, the flowers, the shouts suspended in air, the tortured hand of a madwoman who reminds us of everything we forget. The two figures—the picture of youth subjected to propaganda and the picture of youth subjected to torture—are overlaid. I am driven by a dark instinct to disentangle these two scenes in my mind’s eye. I am driven to submit to this command: “Remember that which you have never experienced!” But this hand going nuts is something that cannot be forgotten. The permanence of the wound cannot be stanched. It is the Devil bowing and bussing your hand.
Placed as she is on her stoop, a statue made of flesh, this Altarpiece Woman does not see me. A Cassandra of modernity at its most abject, is she enough to conjure away this massive act of forgetting—of which she knows absolutely nothing? Is she enough to stave off that most sickening expression of such forgetfulness—namely, “communication”?
Mouths functioning without words, and words without mouths, each disarticulated from the other. That lips should move, speaking in order to say nothing, that lips should impose onto other mouths the oblivion of speech, that words in exile should collapse into one another or throw around their weight on various wavelengths, intercut with the hurrahs of sports fans or canned laughter—all this astonishes me, all this fills me with dread.
I would like to reread these pages and substitute the words with others. I do not recognize them; they no longer belong to us. I can hear the command: “On your knees! Hands up, Jew!” But I can also hear the lines of one of my favorite German poems: “Händen des Mädchen von einst und jetzt” (“The hands of this girl of now and yore”). There is no throb of the heart strong enough to cancel—be it by a succinct universal phrase—the infinite distance that separates the person who tries to speak, and then to sing, and the person who pays no attention to his mouth, spitting out crazed discourses of extermination.
Aseroë Page 3