Adventures In Immediate Irreality (9 page)

Chapter Nine

With Edda’s arrival the upper story of the Weber house was
brightened with cool air and shadows, as clearings in a deep wood are burnished by a
green light deepened by the foliage. The first thing she did was to curtain the
windows and carpet the floors, thereby dampening all the echoes the empty rooms had
been prey to. The entire story took on an ineffable scent that altered its content,
as an essence added to an alcoholic beverage alters its taste.

I spent every morning up on the terrace, making an inventory of myriad strange, bogus
items from various glass-fronted cabinets. Ozy and I would wipe them off
conscientiously only to toss them into a box or the rubbish. Edda came and went,
wearing a blue dressing gown and slippers whose heels clicked with every step.
Sometimes she rested her elbows on the balustrade and, half closing her eyes, gazed
up at the sky. The perfection of the light was always about to burst open like a bud
that must break through its integument to breathe fresh air.

All these changes made so unforeseen and abrupt an appearance in my life, and were so
isolated by their contours from the past, that I was unable to fathom them. Edda
became one more object, a simple object whose existence beleaguered and tormented me
like a word repeated many times, a word that becomes more and more unintelligible
even as the need to understand it increases urgently.

There was something going on during those summer mornings on the terrace, and I
strained every part of my being to get at it. In preparation for the encounter with
Edda I had armed myself with all the bitterness, humiliation, and ridicule required
for an adventure.

One day, the Weber residence underwent a sea change: white linen bound with bright
ribbons made its way into the glass-fronted cabinets—a four-character pantomime
came to revolve around Edda: Paul turned earnest and steadfast; old man Weber bought
himself a new cap and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles; Ozy would wait, panting, for
Edda to summon him upstairs, and I would simply stand there, my watery gaze lost in
the void.

Every Saturday we gathered in the front room, where the gramophone played the
oriental melodies of
Kismet
and Edda served us half-sweet, half-bitter
pastries made with honey and almonds. There were always nuts in a bowl, and Samuel
Weber, who was especially fond of them, would swallow them slowly, peacefully, bit
by bit, his Adam’s apple bouncing up an down like a puppet on a rubber band. He
would keep his legs crossed, which was totally incongruous with the profession of
grain merchant and more like an actor on stage, and when he spoke he would purse his
lips to hide his gold teeth. He was afraid to rest his hand on the smallest thing,
and when he walked through the bead portières he would turn and quietly bring the
two halves together to avoid the slightest clicking noise. Ozy’s deformity was
heightened by the constant tension he was under: his hump seemed to stick out more,
as if going into contortions to catch her every word, to be there in advance. Only
Paul strode back and forth with equanimity and self-confidence, with economy and
grace, and when he took her in his arms we were all perfectly happy: he did it
better than any of us.

As for me, I don’t know what was going on in me at the time. On one of those
afternoons I was reclining in an armchair, my head weighing heavily on the material,
its tiny prickles gouging my face and producing a rather painful sensation. I
suddenly felt a burning desire—as absurd as it was sublime—for heroism, one of
those ridiculous thoughts that surges into one’s mind only on a lazy Saturday
afternoon when one is listening to music on the gramophone. I pressed my head down
even harder, and as the pain grew more intense my desire to withstand it grew more
tenacious.

Perhaps there exist other forms of hunger and thirst than the organic ones, and
something inside me was seeking relief in a simple, acute pain. Deeper and deeper I
ground my cheek into the material, grinding it into the hard bristles, tormenting
myself with a suffering that was becoming excruciating.

Suddenly Edda, who was walking past with a record in her hand, stopped and stared at
me, stupefied. The silence enveloping us made me extremely uncomfortable.

“What in the world has happened to him?” she asked.

I looked in the mirror. I looked ridiculous, utterly ridiculous: I had a purple patch
on one cheek with drops of blood oozing out here and there. Staring at my bleeding
cheek in the mirror, I could not help thinking of how I allegorically resembled a
representation of the Russian tsar on the cover of a popular book: the victim of an
assassination attempt, he was shown pressing his hand to his cheek. More than the
pain in my cheek it was the miserable destiny of my heroism that plagued me now: it
had ended up as an episode in
The Mysteries of the Petersburg Court
.

Edda dipped a handkerchief in alcohol and wiped my face with it. I shut my eyes, the
better to withstand the smart. My skin felt as though it were in flames.

I went downstairs in a daze, and the avid streets welcomed me back into their dusty
monotony.

Summer had filled the park, trees, and air with a chaos
reminiscent of a madman’s drawing, its hot, heavy breath monstrously swelling the
already thick, exuberant foliage. The park seemed to be flowing, like a lava bed,
its every stone red hot. My hands were red as well, and heavy.

In my soft, scorching seclusion I kept passing Edda’s image before my eyes,
multiplying it over and over into ten, a hundred, a thousand Eddas, one beside the
other in the summer heat—identical, haunting statues.

There was a brutal yet lucid despair in everything I saw and felt. Parallel to my
simple, elementary life a phantasmagorical internal leprosy of seething, secret, and
much cherished intimacies. I would compose imaginary scenes with the most minute
details. I pictured myself in hotel rooms with Edda lying at my side while the
twilight filtered in through thick curtains, their fine shadows tracing a circular
pattern on her sleeping face. I saw the pattern of the carpet where she had left her
slipper, a corner of her handkerchief protruding from a half open reticule on the
table, the mirror in the wardrobe door reflecting half the bed and the painting of
flowers on the wall. It left quite a bitter taste in my mouth.

In the park I would trail women I did not know, following at their heels until they
arrived home, where I stood staring at the closed door, broken and despondent. One
evening I ended up at a door separated from the street by a small garden feebly lit
by a single bulb. On a sudden impulse—I did not know I had in me—I pushed open
the gate and slipped into the garden. In the meantime the woman had entered the
house without having noticed me, and I was left on my own. Then a strange idea came
into my head.

In the middle of the garden there was a round bed of flowers. On the spur of the
moment I knelt at its center and placed my hand on my heart as if in prayer. My
intention was to remain there as long as possible, immobile, a monument in stone.
For a long time I had been plagued by a desire to commit an absurd act in a totally
strange place, and here the opportunity had presented itself spontaneously, without
effort, a true windfall. I felt an enormous satisfaction at having taken so
courageous a decision and, as the evening hummed warmly about me, I resolved not to
move an inch, unless forced to do so, until the next morning. Slowly I felt my arms
and legs stiffen and my inner world take on a shell of infinite calm and
serenity.

How long did I remain thus? At one point I heard a commotion in the house and the
outside light went off. The darkness made me more aware of the evening breeze and my
isolation in the garden of a strange house. Several minutes later the light went on,
then off again. Someone in the house had turned it on and off to observe the effect
on me. I remained motionless, my hand on my heart, my knees on the ground. I was
determined to confront reactions more drastic than the light game.

Suddenly the door opened and a figure appeared in the garden, while a coarse voice
inside called out, “Let him be! Leave him in peace and he’ll go away by himself!”
The woman I was following came up to me. She was now wearing a dressing gown and
slippers, and her hair was down. She looked me in the eye for a few seconds and said
nothing. We were both silent. Finally she placed her hand on my shoulder and said
gently, “That’s enough now,” as if wishing to show me she had understood my gesture
and had waited a while in silence to let it play itself out.

Her insight disarmed me. I rose and brushed the dirt off my trousers.

“Don’t your legs hurt?” she asked. “I’d never be able to kneel for so long.”

I wanted to say something, but succeeded only in muttering “Good night,” and departed
in haste.

Once more all my miseries took to howling inside me.

Chapter Ten

I was tall, thin, and pale. My spindly neck rose awkwardly
out of my tunic. My long arms hung from my sleeves like newly skinned animals. My
pockets so bulged with papers and objects that I could scarcely extract a
handkerchief to wipe the dust off my shoes when I came back from the “city
center.”

The simple, elementary things in life were taking place all around me. If a pig
scratched itself against a fence, I would stop and stare: nothing could surpass the
grate of the bristles against the wood; I found something immensely satisfying in
it, a calming assurance that life went on.

I would also spend a good deal of time in a folk sculpture studio in an outlying
street. It was filled with a myriad of flat white objects in the midst of the curly
shavings that fell from the plane, filling the room with their stiff, resinous foam.
As the pieces of wood beneath the tool grew thinner and paler, their veins appeared
clearly and well defined as beneath a woman’s skin.

On a nearby table there were balls made of wood, stolid, heavy balls that filled
every inch of my hands with their smooth, ineffable weight. Then there were the
chess pieces redolent of fresh varnish and the walls covered with flowers and
angels. At times the materials revealed sublime eczemas with lacey painted or
sculpted suppurations.

In winter, the heavy water turned into long, slender icicles; in summer, flowers
gushed forth in thousands of tiny explosions, their petals flames of red, blue, and
orange. And throughout the year the master carpenter with the monocle extracted
smoke rings and Indian arrows, conches and ferns, peacock feathers and human ears
from his supply of wood.

In vain did I follow his painstaking work to catch the moment when the wet and jagged
block of wood was reborn as a rose; in vain did I attempt to work such miracles
myself. I would begin with a rough-hewn chunk of fir, splintery and hard as a rock,
and what emerged from under the plane was something slippery and limp.

Perhaps the moment I started fashioning the wood, I would fall into a deep sleep and
extraordinary tentacular forces would fill the air, entering the wood and causing
the cataclysm. Perhaps everyone closed down at that moment and lost track of time
passing. Yes, the master carpenter must have been in a deep sleep when he sculpted
the lilies on the wall and the voluted violins.

When I awoke, the wood would show me the lines of its age, as a palm shows the lines
of its destiny, and I would pick up one object after another, dazed by their
diversity. I would pick up a ball and slowly run my fingers around it, rub it
against my cheek, spin it, and let it roll. In vain, in vain. It was of no
interest.

I was surrounded by hard, fixed matter on all sides—here in the form of balls
and sculptures, outside in the form of trees, houses, and stone. Vast and willful,
it held me in its thrall from head to foot. No matter where my thoughts led me, I
was surrounded by matter, from my clothes to streams in the woods running through
walls, rocks, glass . . .

From every nook and every cranny the lava of matter flowed out of the earth, taking
shape upon contact with the air, turning into houses with windows, into branches
reaching upward to prick the void, flowers filling curved volumes of space with
their fragility and color, churches urging their cupolas higher and higher to the
thin cross on top, where matter, powerless to proceed, is forced into submission.
Everywhere it had infested the atmosphere, erupting and populating it with the
encysted abscesses of its rocks, the wounded hollows of its trees . . .

Things I saw that were destined not to escape drove me mad. Yet in my wanderings I
did occasionally come across an isolated spot where I could find repose, and when I
did I would regain my balance and calm down. I once discovered such a refuge in the
strangest and most inauspicious part of the city. So strange that I never would have
dreamed it would make the perfect hideaway. What led to the adventure was an ardent
desire to fill the void of my days.

Passing the Municipal Music Hall one day, I screwed up
my courage and went in. It was a calm and sunny afternoon. I crossed a dirty
courtyard. All the doors were closed except for one, which was located at the far
end and led to a staircase. There I found a woman washing clothes. The corridor
smelled of lye. I started up the stairs. At first the woman said nothing, but when I
was halfway up she turned in my direction and muttered, more to herself than to me:
“So you’ve come,” clearly taking me for someone she knew.

When, thinking back on the adventure, I recalled this detail, the women’s words no
longer appeared so simple: they perhaps heralded the tribulations to come, an augury
from the mouth of a washerwoman that the very site of the adventure was predestined
and I had no choice but to fall into it the way one falls into a skillfully laid
trap. “So you’ve come,” said the voice of destiny, “you’ve come because you had to,
because there was no way out.”

I soon reached a long corridor, stifling hot from the sun streaming in from the
courtyard through the windows. The doors to the rooms were shut, and not a sound was
to be heard but the incessant drip of a tap in a corner, the drain absorbing each
drop as if sipping a drink too cold for it.

At the far end of the corridor a door opened onto a loft, where I found some laundry
hung up to dry. Passing through it, I came to a series of small rooms, clean and
newly whitewashed, each with a trunk and a mirror. They were obviously the
performers’ dressing rooms. I also found a staircase, and following it down I ended
up on the stage.

There I was, standing on an empty stage facing an empty hall, my every step producing
a strange resonance. All was ready for the next performance. The set behind me was
of a forest. I felt the need to open my mouth, to say something out loud, yet could
not bring myself to break the silence.

It was then I noticed the prompter’s box. I bent and peered into it. At first I could
discern nothing, but little by little I made out a few broken-down chairs and some
props. I lowered myself into the box as prudently as I could.

Everything was covered by a deep layer of dust. In one corner I saw a pile of stars
and crowns made of gold-backed paper, the remains of some extravaganza; in another,
a set of rococo furniture: a table and some chairs with broken backs; and in the
middle of the room, a majestic armchair, more throne than chair. Exhausted, I sank
deep into it. I had finally found a neutral space where no one could know a thing
about me. Resting my arms on the arms of the chair, I plunged into the blissful
state of solitude.

The darkness around me had dissipated somewhat, giving way to a dusty, dirty daylight
that filtered through a series of double windows. I was remote from the world, from
the hot, exasperating streets, in a cool and secret cell in the center of the earth.
An ancient, musty silence hovered above me. No one could conceive of me in that
place, the most curious place in the city, and I felt a calm joy at the thought of
my presence here. The crooked seats, the dusty beams, the abandoned props—it
was the space of my every dream. I remained there for several hours in a state of
perfect bliss.

It was late in the day when I finally abandoned my hideaway and left by the route I
had come. Oddly enough, I met no one this time either. The corridor seemed ablaze
with the flames of the setting sun. The drain was still ingesting water, sip by
regular sip.

Once outside I had the momentary impression that none of it had happened. Yet my
trousers were covered with dust, and I did not brush it off, leaving it there as
proof of the wonderful intimacy I had now left far behind.

The next day at the same hour of the afternoon I was suddenly overcome with a
nostalgia for my subterranean hiding place, but I was nearly certain I would meet
someone this time either in the corridor or in the hall. For a time I tried to
resist the temptation to sally forth again, but I was so tired and too inflamed by
the heat to be frightened at the prospect of the risk. Come what may, I had to
return.

I entered from the courtyard by the same door and climbed the same staircase. The
corridor was just as deserted, and no one was in the attic or downstairs in the
hall. Thus in no time I was back at my place, in my armchair, in my delicious
solitude. My heart was pounding: I was terribly excited by the extraordinary success
of my escapade. In my ecstasy I began stroking the arms of the chair. I wanted the
state in which I found myself to course through every fiber of my body, penetrate my
depths, crush me with its weight, and thereby impress its truth upon me. I remained
thus for quite some time, then left without meeting anyone . . .

I started visiting my hideaway on a regular basis. As if nothing could be more
natural, the corridors were invariably empty. I would fall into my armchair,
overwhelmed with rapture. And always the same blue, cellar-cool light filtering
through the dirty windows, the same covert atmosphere of perfect solitude reigning.
I could not get enough of it.

Then, one day, these daily excursions to the bowels of the theater came to an end in
as strange a manner as they had begun.

As I entered the corridor from the attic at twilight, I found a woman taking water
from the tap. I passed her quietly, fearing she would ask me what I was doing there.
But she went on with her task with that air of indifference and self-defense a woman
will assume when she suspects a stranger wishes to accost her. I paused at the top
of the stairs, desirous by now of entering into conversation with her: I had
hesitated too long, and the pouting woman clearly seemed to expect it. The murmur of
the water from the tap divided the cold silence into two highly distinct
domains.

I turned and went up to her. On a whim I asked her whether she knew of anyone willing
to pose as model for some sketches. I pronounced the word “anyone” as jauntily as I
could, not wanting to give the impression I simply wanted an excuse to see a naked
woman; no, all I cared about was the purely artistic desire to draw.

A few days earlier a student—hoping to shock me, no doubt—had told me
that in Bucharest he would invite young girls to his house under the pretext of
drawing them and would then sleep with them. I was certain there was no truth to the
matter, having detected in his tale the unnatural quality that comes of retelling an
adventure one has heard rather than experienced. Yet it had remained imprinted in my
mind, and I now had the perfect opportunity to make use of it. Thus did an adventure
experienced by a remote stranger prove fruitful enough, by passing through the
seemingly barren field of another, to return to reality.

The woman failed to understand or pretended not to, so I was forced to explain the
matter in plain terms. While I was doing so, a door opened and out came another
woman. The two deliberated in whispers.

“Why don’t we introduce him to Elvira,” said one of them. “She’s got nothing to
do.”

They took me to a small, dark, low-ceilinged room next to the attic. I had not
noticed it before. For windows it had two holes in the wall, and a current of cold
air was blowing in. It was the projection box used in summer to show films in the
theater’s garden. The cement stand on which the projector had stood was barely
disguised. In one corner I saw a woman lying in bed, a blanket pulled up to her
chin. Her teeth were chattering. The other women departed, leaving me standing in
the middle of the room.

I went up to the bed. The woman took a hand out from under the blanket and held it
out to me. It was shapely, delicate, and ice-cold. I mumbled an apology, told her in
few words that there had been a misunderstanding, I had been sent to her by mistake,
I had needed help with a competition I was entering. All she seemed to grasp was the
word “help,” and in a feeble voice she replied, “Yes . . . Fine . . . I’ll be glad
to help you . . . as soon as I’m well . . . I have nothing now . . .”

She had assumed I was in need of financial assistance. I gave up trying to explain
things to her and simply stood there embarrassed, not knowing how to take my leave.
She for her part launched into an unpretentious lament, an attempt to apologize for
being unable to come to my aid.

“As you can see, I have ice on my stomach . . . I’m hot . . . oh so hot . . . I feel
terribly ill.”

I left, depressed, never to return.